Former Scn celeb denounces "nightmare" of cult

[Chris Owen]

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A MIND-BENDING EXPERIENCE
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The Guardian Weekend, January 4 1997, pp.18-22

What are the secrets of Scientology? Is its central doctrine - that you
should purge yourself of all emotional baggage - helpful? Joe Boyd was
curious. The band he managed had enrolled with ambiguous results. He gave
it a try himself and here he describes his life in the Church of L. Ron
Hubbard - and the pervasive paranoia that made him leave.

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[3 PHOTOS - CAPTION: Once more without feeling: L. Ron Hubbard, founder of
the Church of Scientology, attaches his E-meter to an apparently sentient
tomato. The meter is a crucial part in helping would-be Scientologists
abandon the pain and sorrow experienced in their past. Mike Heron (left) of
the Incredible String Band was a keen convert. Joe Boyd (above, during his
brief flirtation with Scientology) was more sceptical.]

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Back in 1971, I "infiltrated" the Church of Scientology. Inspired by
curiosity, my adventure took me through more than 60 hours of auditing",
the central "sacrament" of this so-called religion which is supposed to
unburden you of your past and lead you to certain success in life. It
culminated in a confrontation with aspects of the organisation that I found
sinister, flawed and even potentially dangerous. Last August I was reminded
of my experiences by a Guardian article that raised many questions about
Scientology. The answers to some of them were what I set out to discover
all those years ago.

It all began in the early Sixties with a former dope dealer and harmonica
player named David Simons. I'd known him in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where
he went under various imaginative aliases, such as Hugh Biali and Rex
Rakish. Then he disappeared into the underworld of hippy drug culture (or
so I thought), while I moved to London and was producing records and
managing various groups, including some of the leading characters in this
story, the Incredible String Band.

The Incredible String Band were Sixties icons with one of the highest
fame-to-obscurity ratios it is possible to imagine. At the height of their
success between 1967-70, they filled the Royal Albert Hall over and over
again, as they did the Fillmore West in San Francisco and the Lincoln
Centre in New York. They were the first world-music group, combining
Blakean mysticism with exotic instruments and rich, inventive harmonies.
They were, first and foremost, Robin Williamson and Mike Heron, who were
subsequently joined by their girlfriends "Licorice" McKechnie and Rose
Simpson. The psychedelic Sixties have again become fashionable in the
Nineties. But the Incredible String Band has remained in the un-hip
twilight of musical history - partly because of their folksy image, but
not entirely. Perhaps the lack of recognition has more to do with their
precipitous decline following their "conversion" to Scientology in 1968.

When I met Mike and Robin in 1965, they had long served as advance scouts
into the territories of drugs, Orientalism and mysticism, but they were far
from mindless flower children. They were, still are, highly intelligent
and thoughtful people, besides being inventive and original musicians.

One evening in the autumn of 1968, following a sell-out concert in New
York, I took the band to a vegetarian restaurant on East 5th Street, off
Second Avenue. To my amazement, the manager of the restaurant was David
Simons. He found us a good corner table, where he and I reminisced about
long-lost acquaintances from the Cambridge underground.

After he had taken our order and disappeared into the kitchen, I took the
fateful step of telling the band everything I knew about him. I said I was
stunned by the transformation in him: when I'd last seen ban, he had been
a mumbling, stoned, shambolic figure, witty and sardonic, but seemingly
determined to jettison any positive course open to him - in music, for
example - in favour of a darker and more chaotic path. Now he had
metamorphosed into a friendly, efficient and energetic restaurant manager.
Then I made my second mistake of the evening: I left the band in the
restaurant as I was going on a short business trip to California early the
next morning.

The first inkling I had of the events that followed came when the band's US
agent telephoned me at my LA hotel. He wanted my approval to give the group
all the cash that was due to them from the mini-tour of the east coast
which we were just one concert away from completing. The request puzzled
me. After all, I'd already given them what they had asked for as spending
money, the hotel bill was taken care of, and we had agreed that the balance
would be sent to the group's UK bank account. I called the Chelsea Hotel,
where the band was staying, but could not find them.

The day before I was due to return to New York, I finally got through to
Licorice. She told me they wanted the money to pay for some "courses" at
the Scientology headquarters. I had barely heard of the cult at that time,
but what I had heard was not positive. I suggested a meeting for when I
returned the next day.

The band had always been fractious - Robin and Mike had no great fondness for
each other, while the girls had a barely-concealed mutual contempt - but
at the Chelsea Hotel that day I was confronted with a strangely unified
foursome. They wanted all the money and they wanted to give it to the
Church of Scientology. Then they told me why.

After I had left the restaurant, Simons had joined them at the table.
They'd been intrigued by what I had said about him and his transformation
which it emerged, was due to the Church of Scientology. Simons had invited
them along to the church's New York celebrity centre. By that same
evening, Robin and Licorice were convinced.

In the face of my reluctance to write the cheque and my insistence that
they think it over, Mike and Rose agreed to wait until we'd got back to
London before making their final decision. But within days of their
return, the die had been cast.

I understood little then of what was involved in becoming a Scientologist.
The band spent weeks in London being "audited". They told me about "going
clear", when the auditing process reaches its first plateau of
accomplishment. I hated the jargon, but I began to notice positive changes
in their personalities. All of them had always avoided any discussion of
money; now, though, they eagerly convened meetings about the group's
finances. It had always been hard to get answers from them about future
touring schedules and recording plans; now, such matters were sorted out
quickly and efficiently. They even took the time to thank me for the job I
was doing for them - previously unheard of. And among themselves, their
simmering quarrels and jealousies seemed to evaporate overnight.

They stopped taking drugs or alcohol. They became charming company. They
never tried to push me into joining.

I was torn. Everything I'd read or heard about Scientology seemed horribly
obscure, self-important and dubious. But the results were there to See: a
happier, saner group of people who had become a pleasure to deal with. The
first recording sessions after their "conversions" went very well. There
were some great new songs. We finished the double album Wee Tam And The Big
Huge, and it was released to critical and commercial enthusiasm. Everything
was going smoothly. I was intrigued by what I took to be the sexual
evolution of the group. Mike and Rose remained close friends and shared a
cottage in the Row, a group of eight cottages on the Tennant estate in
Scotland that the band rented. But they seemed to sail effortlessly through
various other entanglements - Rose with David Crosby during a visit to San
Francisco, Mike with various other girls who Rose just laughed about even
a brief affair between Rose and myself, and finally, a more serious
relationship between Mike and Suzie, the woman I had hired to take care of
the band's day-to-day management. But I was confused. I retained my hostile
scepticism about Scientology, particularly as I watched thousands of
pounds flow from the ISB's account into "church" funds.

Another thing that worried me was the music. Slowly, over the two years
following their encounter with Simons, ISB's output lost its inventiveness,
its charm and the wild beauty of its melodies. They were more efficient in
the studio, but there were fewer moments of surprise and inspiration. Songs
began to sound much the same. Was this a natural decline after years of
tremendously original output? Or was it Scientology?

Soon after, other things changed too. Together with the other residents of
the Row, the group organised a pageant called U. They wanted to take their
new creation on tour, but I was unsure: with a east often dancers and
musicians, plus sets and costumes, it was going to be an expensive show to
take on the road. Many of the songs had meanings even more obscure than
those of their opaque masterpieces in the past.

Promoters who had earlier been happy to book the ISB were dubious about U.
Guarantees were reduced, the group was financially at risk everywhere, and
audiences began to level off. Poor reviews and responses to 's first few
performances made me beg them to call off the rest of the tour and rebuild
ISB. They would hear none of it. Their confidence was impossible to dent -
they were sure U would work. It didn't and we lost a great deal of money.

The saga of U helped me decide what to do next: I sold my production
company and moved away from London. I left Suzie - who by this time was
living with Mike and had become a Scientologist herself - in charge of the
band. They continued to live at the Row, to tour, and to record, but U had
slowed their momentum.

I headed to Los Angeles to take up a job with Warner Brothers, supervising
film scores. My first new friend at WB was the late Don Simpson (who went
on to produce Beverly Hills Cop, Top Gun, Flashdance, among others, and who
added a whole new chapter to Hollywood's saga of sexual, chemical and
financial excess before his death last January).

From our first meeting, Don and I got on famously. We talked about anything
and everything - sports, music, books - and met up most mornings for
breakfast and again for late-night dinners after watching movies. Back in
1971, California, as notoriously the centre of "self-improvement" much as
it is today, in fact. Meditation, re-birth therapy, Buddhism, yoga,
encounter groups, Esalen - the list was endless. Don was fascinated by them
all, and very cynical about them. He brought up the subject of Scientology
one day, and I told him of my experience with the Incredible String Band.
We were unsure about Scientology's motives, but were nevertheless
intrigued enough to take it further.

I had already met the head of the Scientologists in LA - the LA Org, as it
is known - backstage at an ISB concert, so I rang her up and made an
appointment for Don and me to go and see her. She and her staff were very
eager and friendly- L Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of
Scientology, in Los Angeles in 1954, had always emphasised the importance
of media. Being the former manager of one of their prime catches, namely
ISB, jazz musician Chick Corea was the only other prominent Scientologist
at the time), who now held down a big job in the film industry, I was to
be treated with special care.

Great, we thought. We could make all sorts of demands. We'd heard how
people who'd had "personality tests" were often subsequently bombarded with
mail shots and phone calls, so we made it a condition that we would receive
no mail and no phone calls. The Scientologists agreed. Usually, beginners
take the communications course", but we hated it, and walked out almost
immediately. They said no problem, and let us go straight on to the
auditing - the communications course was just for "wogs" (their term for
non-Scientologists), anyway. We were different.

We paid for the auditing courses - it cost about the same as a good shrink,
around $30 per hour - and I went down to the celebrity centre in downtown
Los Angeles one or two evenings a week, where I sat for several hours with
my auditor. I held a pair of tin cans which were wired to an "E-meter" (a
device which measures electrical impulses and, apparently, indicates your
mental state). Thus hooked up, the auditor would then give me a series of
commands: "Recall a time when you had fun," or "Recalls time when you gave
something to someone. Then there would be a more resonant command: "Recall
a time when you lost something you loved." The purpose of these commands
was to trigger "engrams". These, I was told, were "cellular records of
moments involving pain, loss or a real or imagined threat to survival".

Scientologists hold psychiatry in contempt, and for valid reasons: they say
that a shrink and a patient can go around in circles, endlessly following
the analyst's theories and the patient's idealised stories about himself,
which is true enough, I suppose. The E-meter, on the other hand, like a
lie-detector, does not permit such indulgences, they claim. It goes
straight to the heart of your inability to live "in the moment". Each of
the auditor's commands is designed to trigger a response of some kind, so
that when an image of an incident comes into your head, the E-meter
responds. If the image is engram-free, the meter just "floats" but if there
is "charge" attached, the meter reacts strongly. Then, instead of moving on
to another command, the auditor instructs you to recall the incident in
every detail: the sights, sounds, smells, emotions, thoughts, fears, pains
etc. Once you've done that internally, to yourself, not nut butt to the
auditor you are requested to do the same thing again. Eventually, as the
incident is gone over again and again, without judgement or blame attached,
it ceases to trigger the F-meter. The same incident can be called up a day
later and provoke no reaction. Then you get a new command: "Recall an
earlier similar incident". You keep going in this direction until you can
recall no "earlier similars". It is astonishing how much you can remember
that you'd previously thought had gone forever.

There is much merit in the theory behind this approach. After all, it seems
logical to assume that if, at the age of two, you were dropped on your head
in a room with pale blue walls, while chicken soup was on the store and
Haydn was playing on the stereo, your mood might well decline - at the very
least - should you enter a room 30 years later where some of those same
sounds, smells and sights were present.

A "clear" defines someone who has completed the first course of auditing
and is deemed ready to graduate to higher "OT" (that is, Operating Thetan,
Scientology-speak for free spirit) levels on the "Bridge to Total Freedom",
a "classification, gradation and awareness chart of levels and
certificates". Once you've been branded clear, and as you continue to
neutralise the debilitating engram, you become - in theory, at least - able
to respond to the present moment in real time and spontaneously, unfettered
by the charged memories which previously weighed you down, You should
become tighter, happier, more effective. And I have to admit that,
following my auditing sessions, I certainly had moments when I felt elated
and lightened. Don Simpson had similar experiences.

We found out about an experiment, conducted at the Stanford University
Research Laboratory, in which powerful psychics were asked to try to bend
the path of the accelerated electron in the Stanford cyclotron. The most
successful psychic tested was Ingo Swanti, a Scientologist, and of the
seven successful "benders", four were Scientologists.

Don even witnessed such powers first hand. One evening, he was dining late
at night with a group of auditors from the celebrity centre, along with a
visiting high-ranking official from the Mexico City Org. According to Don,
at one point in the meal the visitor asked for the salt and no one heard
him. He became impatient, and started staring at the salt-cellar. After a
few moments, the salt-cellar started moving, unaided, down the table and
into his waiting hand. Don was very impressed.

We soon discovered that there was more to Scientology than just auditing.
Hubbard, who was known affectionately as LRH, had written many texts, and
there were rules for almost everything. So great is Hubbard's influence
that even today, more than ten years after his death, each "church" has a
corporate-style office set aside for him, a plaque on the desk bearing his
name. If clears follow LRH's rules, the organisation must, by definition,
produce "up stats" Scientology-speak for success.

Mischievously, I asked if there were any cases when the rules were
followed, but the "stats" were not "up". It was then that I found out about
the dubious core notion of the "suppressive personality" and the
Scientologists' obsession with past lives. LRH's teachings reveal that a
suppressive personality is a thetan (spirit) who has suffered such a
painful death in a previous lifetime that nothing will deter them from an
agenda of revenge in the current one. All the auditing in the world will
not alter their negative aims. But how do you know when there is a
suppressive personality about, I asked. Simple, according to LRH: when an
organisation that is rim according to the thoughts of Chairman Ron does not
have "up stats", there must be a suppressive personality at work within it.
And a trained Scientologist can discover who the culprit is, isolate and
then expel them.

This explanation set the alarm bells ringing. This self-justifying
definition was a classic scapegoating exercise, obviously designed to
insulate Hubbard from any criticism that his methods might not be perfect
or that clears ought not be as all-powerful as they seemed. To me, it
explained much about the overweening confidence that I'd noticed with the
Incredible String Band.

I became increasingly aware of an atmosphere of paranoia. The past-lives
business and the jargon began to sound like a chapter from one of Hubbard's
badly-written sci-fi novels. The clears who would speak about how their
"earlier similars" took them into past lives seemed always to have been
Egyptians, or princes, or something colourful and romantic. The clears had
an unsettling lack of doubt: they had plans - often for show business
careers - and there was no question about them not succeeding.

One Sunday afternoon, I hurt my neck body-surfing at Malibu. I reported for
my Tuesday evening auditing session and was asked, as always, if I had
consumed any alcohol or drugs in the past few days or if I was suffering
any pain or discomfort. Auditing could not take place if the answer to any
of these questions was yes, but the pain in my neck had not gone away, so I
owned up to it. The audit for that day was canceled and I was sent instead
for a session of "touch assists", which involved an auditor directing my
attention to the light pressure of a finger on my body at a point "past"
the location of the discomfort. In my experience, this sometimes works,
because it steers your thoughts away from the pain. The experience of pain
is primarily the experience of the resistance to pain, and the touch-assist
process can loosen that resistance and evaporate the pain. This time,
however, it didn't work.

I was sent to a Scientologist chiropractor in the San Fernando Valley. The
waiting room was full of literature from the far-right John Birch Society.
After waiting a while, I decided the people and the place were too
unpleasant and left without treatment. I got a call from the celebrity
centre insisting that I go back. When I refused, I was summoned to the
Guardian's Office to explain myself to the area leader. I was asked about
my injury and was told that it was interfering with my progress in
auditing. When I insisted that I would let it heal by itself, I was asked
if I had been associating with "persons hostile to Scientology", which, I
was told, could impede healing and prevent progress in auditing. I
responded that most people I knew who were aware of the Church of
Scientology were hostile to it and that I had no intention of cutting
myself off from my friends. Robot-like, the guardian repeated phrases from
Hubbard's texts to the effect that I could not progress with auditing while
in contact with hostile persons. I got up, shook his hand and left the
celebrity centre. I never returned.

Soon after, Don had a similar run-in and also left the centre. We took
stock. It had certainly been interesting, and auditing seemed to have some
value as a therapy. But the context in which it took place was that of a
paranoid cult. Any questioning of Hubbard's teachings meant the whole
edifice fell apart. There was no middle ground, no respect for auditing as
a valuable process in the context of a normal life.

Don and I were relatively well-off, and were welcomed with open antis, but
what of the average new Scientologist who was not earning a nice big
Hollywood salary? Many people I met at the centre had been granted only a
few hours of auditing and were desperate for more. It was like some
pyramid-selling scheme - by volunteering and dragging people in off the
street for personality tests, you earned auditing hours. Many inductees I
met had been working long hours in their spare time for more than a year
and had been granted less than 20 hours of auditing in my cavalier fashion,
I'd just gone out and bought 60 hours to indulge my curiosity. Obviously,
the more time and effort people invested in Scientology, the less receptive
they were to questioning or doubts.

My own doubts, however, continued to grow. I read Barefaced Messiah, the
unauthorized biography of Hubbard, which exposes his numerous lies about
his military service and other assets of his life. it also recounts his
1948 address to the Science Fiction Writers' Convention in which he advises
that if they really wanted to make money they wouldn't bother with sci-fi
novels, they would "start a religion".

Four years after Don and I left the LA Org, I had dinner with Mike and
Suzie. After a few drinks (Scientologists aren't teetotal - they just don't
drink 48 hours before auditing), Alike told me that during the 1974
Portuguese coup the previous year, Scientologists had gained control of one
of the most powerful radio stations in Lisbon with the intention of taking
control of the government. He was convinced that the "church" would
definitely have control of a country somewhere by the end of the decade.

Soon after, first the Incredible String Band, and then Mike and Suzie,
broke up. Mike and Robin have both now left the Church of Scientology. Rose
left LRH's cohorts behind years ago and, in her present capacity as
mayoress of Aberystwyth, revealed in a recent interview how Scientology
had narrowed the band's view of the world and how damaging that had been
to their music. Licorice has disappeared completely.

Suzie worked for a while as an executive for a major record company. She
told me that she was sad that she and Mike had not had children, and said
that she was finding it hard to meet people who could understand her
experiences. Then she was offered two jobs simultaneously. One was a
promotion at the record company, the other was a post at the Sea Org -
Hubbard's Florida headquarters. We had lunch and talked about the options,
after which I wrote her an impassioned letter urging her to stay in London
and take the record company job. She dropped me a line soon afterwards to
say goodbye; she was off to the Sea Org. I haven't seen her since.

In a funny way, my experience with Scientology made it clear to me that I
had a "soul". I could see that the clears, despite all the
engram-cleansing, retained all their old traits, positive and negative,
but with the added disadvantage of being convinced that they had been
transformed. Scrubbing engrams off my mind didn't seem to alter some
essence of myself that remained unchanged. I was cured of the desire to
transform myself into some super-efficient creature with no painful
memories.

Back in 1971, ISB and Chick Corea were the biggest names Scientologists
could lay claim to. Now they've entered a different league, where some of
the biggest names in Hollywood, from John Travolta and Tom Cruise to Sharon
Stone and Demi Moore, are eager disciples of LRH's word. Its influence has
grown enormously: the organisation now claims 8 million members worldwide
and an annual income of GBP 200 million.

Perhaps Scientology has changed since 1971, but I doubt it. Its sense of
self seemed, at the time, to depend on the immutable genius of the writings
of L Ron Hubbard. Despite the glossy packaging, it seems much the same
today. I still see Hubbard's seminal work, Dianetics, widely advertised and
even, occasionally, being read.

From this distance, those evenings at the celebrity centre in LA seem like
a surreal dream, but every day that dream is just beginning for many new
recruits. It is hard to say if it turned into a nightmare for all of them,
but I'm sure it would have for me had I continued.

--
| Chris Owen | c...@nvg.unit.no |
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