SEINFELD: The Making of An American Icon, Chapter 19 - The Dianetics Kid
Claire Voyant
An Unauthorized Biography of Jerry Seinfeld
By Jerry Oppenheimer
Harper Row Publishers, 2002.
Chapter 19 - THE DIANETICS KID
Like Bill Cosby, whose clean, observational, monologist style set the
standard for Jerry's own brand of comedy, and like Ed Greenberg, who
gave him the freedom to develop his material in college, Jerry also
found a guru for the focus, concentration, and discipline he felt was
required to become successful in the knock-down, drag-out world of
stand-up comedy in the late Seventies.
Jerry's motivational guide was L. Ron Hubbard, a science-fiction
writer, self-styled pop psychologist, and shrewd marketer, who began
what he described as "studies of the mind and spirit" in the early
1920s ľ when he was only twelve. By the late 1930s, Hubbard, who
studied engineering at George Washington University, had written a
paper about his so-called research, titled Excalibur, but decided
against seeking publication because, as he asserted later, it didn't
deal with any sort of "therapy" but rather was a discussion of what he
termed "the composition of life." His then little-known work was the
first to use a word that would carry with it controversy by the time
Jerry became a believer in 1977.
Hubbard defined "Scientology," the word he coined, as the study and
handling of the spirit in relationship to itself, universes and other
life. Man, he asserted, is an immortal spiritual being whose
experience extends well beyond a single lifetime, with unlimited
capabilities, even if not presently realized.
In 1947, Hubbard wrote a tract dealing with something he called
"Dianetics,' which he claimed, provided "therapy" that could easily be
used by anyone. His unpublished writing was quietly circulated and
reportedly had a huge underground following. Hubbard's first article
on Scientology and Dianetics ľ titled "Terra Incognita: The Mind" ľ
was published in the 1950 Winter-Spring issue of the respected
Explorer Club's Journal; a second, similar paper by Hubbard appeared a
short time later ľ in a newsstand pulp magazine called Astounding
Science Fiction.
Not long after, the bible of Scientology ľ Dianetics: The Modern
Science of Mental Health ľ found a publisher and quickly became a
national best-seller. Almost four decades later it was still on the
New York Times best-seller list.
Hubbard hit gold because, according to the Church of Scientology
International, tens of thousands of paying readers of the book began
organizing groups and applying the techniques of Dianetics, which
didn't come free.
"It soon became apparent that many people audited on these procedures
were coming into contact with incidents that seemed to occur in
previous lives," the Scientology people said, somewhat cryptically.
"Although certain officials in the Dianetics organizations attempted
to suppress research into this phenomenon, Hubbard refused to allow
this." During further research, Hubbard concluded that Dianetics
addressed "man's spirit," and he discovered that "you could do things
with it from a very practical standpoint that nobody had ever done
beforeů"
In 1954, in the same year Jerry was born, the first Church of
Scientology was formed in Los Angeles, and by the time that the
Seinfelds had moved from Brooklyn and settled in Massapequa and Jerry
was being schlepped off to Hebrew school at Temple Beth Shalom,
churches of Scientology had been formed across the country and around
the world, as Hubbard continued to research what he described as the
spiritual nature of man. By the time Jerry got involved with
Scientology, the church was raking in enormous revenue from its
various courses and publications.
Unlike Judaism ľ which appeared to turn Jerry off, if his half-hearted
interest in Hebrew school, bar mitzvah studies, and his abandonment of
his father's synagogue are any indication ľ Scientology is billed as a
religion without dogma. The fact that no one in Scientology is asked
to believe anything on faith, or at least that's what Scientology
promotes, was a concept that appealed to Jerry's independent nature.
"As far as being a strong, religious Jew when we were close friends,
Jerry was not," observed Mike Costanza, whom Jerry tried
unsuccessfully to enlist into Scientology. "There was no Jewishness.
He was devoid of any religion. Jerry celebrated Christmas. We
exchanged Christmas gifts. For years I would say to him, ĹHappy
Hanukkah,' and he'd say, ĹOh yeah, when is that?' Being Jewish never
seemed to be a big deal for him."
Moreover, Jerry was attracted by Scientology's promise to improve his
life (i.e., help him to make it in comedy by making him more centered
and in control) if he applied its teachings to himself and those
around him ľ with the ultimate goal of true spiritual enlightenment
and freedom.
Despite its lofty promises, Scientology has been criticized virtually
from its inception. Be that as it may, beginning around the same time
he broke into comedy, Jerry became a true believer and proselytizer in
the Church of Scientology, which caused the more cynical of his
friends to wonder how this Jewish boy from Long Island, a kid with
lots of sechel who was trying to establish himself in the hip, cool,
irreverent, and cynical world of stand-up comedy, could become
involved with something as seemingly oddball as Scientology, despite
its promises to make his life better. Had Jerry, whom his friends
viewed as so controlled and contained emotionally, undergone some
quasi-mystical experience, or had he had an epiphany of sorts, which
led him down L. Ron Hubbard's mysterious path?
"One day, out of the blue, he said to me, ĹI'm into Scientology. You
should take courses with me. It's great," said Costanza. "I remember
walking him there a few times, but I never went in. He kept telling me
it would be good for me, but he already knew well enough to know I
wouldn't buy into it. I grew up in an Italian culture, was brought up
a Catholic. That kind of new religion wasn't my thing."
Yet, alone among Jerry's close friends, Costanza wasn't completely
bowled over by his sudden interest in Scientology either. From the
time they first met, Costanza was aware of Jerry's exploration into
ideas and concepts that were considered off-the-wall in the provincial
cultures of blue-collar Queens and parochial Massapequa, such as his
meditation exercises. "It was part of Jerry's personality to explore
different things when it came to the mind," he noted. "He didn't do
drugs. He didn't drink. He didn't use salt or sugar. He didn't eat
meat. Very early on he was into that kind of diet. He was always out
in front on all that stuff."
In fact, Jerry had traveled the road to Scientology from a deep
involvement in Transcendental Meditation and the teachings of the
white-haired, bearded, and robed guru known as the Maharishi Mahesh
Yogi, who preached that this kind of meditation opened "the awareness
to the infinite reservoir of energy, creativity, and intelligence that
lies deep within everyone." While still at Queens College, Jerry had
become one of millions of adherents worldwide who were practicing the
Maharishi's technique in hopes of gaining deep relaxation, eliminating
stress, promoting health, and attaining inner happiness and
fulfillment.
"Jerry always wanted to see if there was any way to improve himself,"
Costanza observed. "The meditation, the Scientology ľ they were all a
part of his self-improvement plan. But in all the years that I have
known him, I never really knew what was in him that he needed to do
all those things. As his friend ľ and at the time probably his best
friend ľ I liked him just the way he was, so I never understood why he
needed to do anything more to change himself, because he was
controlled and focused anyway."
During college, Jerry spent considerable time at the Costanzas,
sleeping over many nights, and that's when Mike first learned of
Jerry's esoteric interests, causing some humorous episodes in the
household.
On one occasion, for example, Costanza's father ľ a real character who
was said to be the model for George Costanza's father, played by Jerry
Stiller on Seinfeld ľ found Jerry sitting on the daybead in the
basement recreation room, with his eyes closed, in what appeared to be
a zombie-like state. When Costanza told his father what Jerry was
doing, the senior Costanza shouted, "What meditating? He's out like a
lightůyour friend looks like a corpse. Ya better find out what's wrong
with him." Roused out of his trance by the tumult, Jerry made light of
the situation, telling Mike his father had taught him a new mantra ľ
"Pasta fazool, pasta fazoolů"
While Costanza rejected Jerry's overtures to join Scientology, Jerry's
loyal and malleable girlfriend, Caryn Trager, succumbed to his
proselytizing about its glories. "He got into TM and he stayed with it
for a long time," she said. "I tried it, but I never got it. It didn't
do anything for me. And then he got into Scientology and that he
thought that would be good for me, too. He dragged me in. I went
because of our relationship. But I didn't like it either. I thought it
was very secretive, and anyone who was at what the Scientologists
called a higher level, including Jerry, wouldn't really tell you what
went on until you got there. Jerry kept going to higher levels. He
stayed with it. But I only took one or two courses. He would have
preferred if I had stayed. He tried very hard to encourage me to stay
with it. I was forced to do these very theatrical exercises with other
people ľ you'd have to sit there and touch knees with them. You had to
read their books and look up words in the dictionary that you did not
understand. I didn't get any of it. I didn't get what I was going
towards. I told Jerry I didn't want to continue because it was a
mystery. They don't tell you why or what. I was in it for maybe six
months and then I left. It all seemed so stupid to me, but Jerry took
it very, very seriously. Back then he always had an open mind and
would look into anything ľ and experience it. My view was that he got
into Scientology to become intellectually and emotionally a better
performing person. He was searching for self-improvement."
Jerry told Trager and other members of his circle that within the
church he wasw known as a "preclear ľ a person not yet clear, a person
learning more about himself and life. As a "preclear," he said, he was
involved in a form of personal counseling called "auditing" ľ
one-on-one sessions with a Scientology minister known as an "auditor."
Auditing uses "processes" ľ questions or directions given by the
auditor to the preclear to help him find out things about himself and
improve his condition, and free himself from what the Scientologists
claim are unwanted barriers that inhibit, stop, or blunt natural
abilities; the object is to increase those abilities so that he comes
brighter and more able. (In its literature, the Church of Scientology
has a disclaimer, which maintains that during auditing "there is no
use of hypnosis, trance techniques, or drugs,")
"Jerry told me his goal in was to get clear," Trager stated. "He was
dedicated to it. We all thought it was moronic."
Lucien Hold, who managed the relatively new Comic Strip, and Upper
East Side club where Jerry began working on a regular basis in the
late 70s, said that "while the Scientologists suck you in, try to get
you more deeply involved," Jerry spoke "very positively" about the
classes he was taking, claiming that they were helping him to learn
more about the science of the mind, and credited them with helping him
to organize his own mind.
Hold, who was starting to see Jerry at the club regularly, noted that
the longer Jerry was involved with Scientology, the odder some of his
behaviors became. For instance, at one point, he got involved in sleep
deprivation to heighten his senses.
"He started out writing material an hour a day, then two hours, and
then it became four hours," Hold said. "The sleep deprivation allowed
Jerry to work longer hours. He did this over a period of months. It's
not something that he did one or two nights, but as a matter of
course. If you're able to make sleep deprivation work, and Jerry was
able to, it got his adrenalin going, and that's what kept him awake. I
guess he was getting four to five hours of sleep a night at most.
"Jerry was looking to optimize every minute of every day. You'd be
talking to him, it'd be ten minutes to one, you'd be in the middle of
the most engaged part of the conversation ľ you might be telling him
about the death of your mother, it didn't matter what it was ľ but
Jerry would always look at his watch. ĹGotta go. Gotta go. Gotta be in
bed. See ya." That's how the sleep deprivation worked. He had to be in
bed at the same time every day, get up at the same time every day. He
programmed his body to function that way, so he would be up early in
the morning to write. By the time his friends were up in the
afternoon, Jerry would be free. He could then hang out. He'd already
done his work for the day."
Costanza had also become aware of Jerry's odd new habits. "It all had
to do with the Scientology thing," he said. "It had to do with pain ľ
being able to withstand pain, being able to not sleep. It was all tied
in. Jerry started talking about how he didn't feel pain anymore. He
believed that if you willed yourself not to have any pain, you
wouldn't experience any pain. I think I was with Jesse [Michnick] or
Joey [Bacino], and I turned to Jerry and I said, ĹWhat the fuck are
you talking about? You don't feel pain?' I said, ĹI'll make you feel
pain.' Jerry was talking about his Scientology and said he was
attempting to get to some new level of consciousness, and this guy
Jerry was with, who was going to Scientology with him, put a lighted
match under a penny and it got real hot and put it between his fingers
and said he felt no pain. Jerry said, ĹIt really works for me, too'
And I turned to one of the guys and said, ĹHe's fucking nuts.' The
Scientology thing with Jerry was getting a little bit spooky."
Jerry had kept up his friendship with LuAnn Kondziela from Oswego, and
during this time period, after Jerry had moved into his first
apartment in New York, she came for a visit and was shocked to find
Scientology literature scattered around the apartment, including a
large chart on his refrigerator dealing with the precepts of the
church. "I remember thinking that that was very strange, that he could
be into that," she recalled. "To me, it was really off the wall. I saw
all that Scientology stuff in his apartment and I asked him about it
and he explained some of it to me, what Scientology was about and why
it was worth doing, and I remember coming away thinking, ĹThat's the
weirdest thing I ever heard.' It just didn't mesh with the Jerry that
I knew at college."
Jerry's involvement in Scientology was not short-lived, and he still
boasted about its influence in his life into the mid-80s.
"When he told me he was a Scientologist, I was like ľ what?" recalled
Susan McNabb, Jerry's girlfriend from the mid-80s until the early 90s.
"Not long after we became involved he said, ĹOh, by the way, I am a
Scientologist.' I said, ĹWell, that's crazy, you're not a
Scientologist, you're Jewish.' He said, ĹWell, you can be a
Scientologist and Jewish at the same time. It doesn't really interfere
with your religion. It's not like that.'"
McNabb thought Jerry's involvement with Scientology was "weird" and
she also got the impression that Jerry enjoyed the shock value of
telling people that he was into it. McNabb said Jerry's friend, Chris
Misiano, had told her that he had gone to Scientology classes with
Jerry in New York, but had not stayed with it. "I remember Chris
laughing because he said, ĹOnce you're on their mailing list, they
never leave you alone. My parents still get mail addressed to me from
them twenty years later.'"
As Jerry became famous, his involvement with Scientology began to
surface in questions from journalists, which infuriated him because he
felt it was no one's business but his own, an invasion of his privacy,
which he has guarded with intensity and stealth. The very
publicity-and-media savvy comedian realized the press's perception of
Scientology was not always positive, and figured he didn't need that
as a part of his public curriculum vitae. When the subject of his
Scientology activity surfaced, Jerry didn't disavow it, but he
downplayed it, and even was able to subtly dissuade at least one
writer from mentioning it in an August 1990 profile of him in Playboy.
The writer, Stephen Randall, said the subject of Scientology had come
up. But, curiously, there was nothing in his published piece about it
because, as Randall acknowledged, "I was sort of relieved" with
Jerry's explanation that his Scientology connection was minimal. At
the same time, Randall said, "The one thing I didn't want it to be was
just yet another Scientology story because it tends to color things,"
even though Jerry had told Randall that he was actually using what he
had learned his Scientology in his comedy acts. "He told me it taught
him, in a sense, how to handle hecklers better, and it gave him those
communication skills."
Leaving out the Scientology angle, which would have been the first
time Jerry's connection with the church became public, Randall did
make brief mention in his story that the "guarded" Jerry practiced
yoga, meditated, had a health food diet, and drank mineral water, and
he quoted Jerry as saying, "I like that kind of Zen Buddhist
atmosphere, very physically clean, mentally clean."
One of Jerry's characteristics that stood out during the time Randall
spent with him was his "mind-boggling discipline," which, of course,
was something that Jerry had sought from Scientology. "Here was a guy
on the road, in strange hotels, in strange cities, and he was able to
adhere to a rigorous diet. He was very, very picky about what he ate.
I remember having one dinner with him in Tucson, in the booker's
office, in a strip-mall comedy club, right before he went on stage,
and he was able to find a healthy salad. This was a guy who was forced
by circumstances to eat a lot of Jack in the Box, but through
discipline he never gave in, and only ate things that were good for
him. With that discipline, he wrote every day. No matter where he was,
he'd write for hours every day with a twenty-nine cent Bic pen. He did
his yoga every day. There was never a time when I saw him lose
control, and I'd been on the road with other comedians and seen them
get rattled, just be sort of undone by the road. Jerry never seemed to
suffer any of those types of emotions. It was just remarkable
discipline. He was a robo-comic." But Jerry's Scientology was never
mentioned
In the spring of 1992, Jerry sat down for an interview with a
different sort of writer ľ the Washington Post's respected and very
tough-minded TV columnist, Tom Shales. Shales had done his homework
and learned from Roseanne and Tom Arnold that Jerry was a
Scientologist. Shales quoted Roseanne, who is Jewish and an oddball
herself, as saying cryptically, "You can see it reflected in the kind
of comedy he does."
Jerry acknowledged to Shales that he had taken "some" Scientology
courses, and emphasized that it was long over. "I was never in the
organization. I don't represent them in any way. I took a couple of
classes. It was great: how to improve certain conditions in your life,
your ability to work, your relationships. It was very pragmatic.
That's what I liked about it. It wasn't at all what you'd call
highfalutin, for lack of a better termůthat stuff I learned there
really did help me a lot."
Shales pointed out that a 1991 Time magazine story had been critical
of Scientology, but Jerry dismissed the article in his sit-down with
Shales as "really poor journalism."
An infuriated Shales noted in his piece: "Look who's an expert on
journalism now!"
Referring to Time's reportage, Jerry told Shales, "I don't let that
stuff stop me from getting the information that I want," adding,
"there are things in yoga that I don't agree with and I don't do. I go
to get what I need. And that's the way I approach everything."
Jerry also told Shales he'd always taken a lot of meditation and yoga
classes, stressing that "I'm very interested in Eastern thought and I
like to explore a lot of different ways of thinking. To me, life is
like flipping around on the TV set, you know? I flip around to get
what I want. It's there for me. But I don't embrace things
wholeheartedly. I dissect them and take what I want."
A year later, in a Playboy interview, Jerry once again asserted that
he had taken only "a couple" of Scientology courses, and described
them as "fabulous." Asked if he felt he was an unwitting dupe of the
church, he offered an emphatic "no." He said, "I've always had the
skills of extricating the essence of any subject I study, be it
meditation, yoga, Scientology, Judaism, Zen. Whatever it is, I go in
to get what I need. To me, these are supermarkets. I go in to get my
supplies, and then I leave."
A month before the final episode of Seinfeld in May 1998, with the
media covering the story as if the show's demise was on par with the
end of the world, Shales wrote his farewell piece, which was highly
critical of Jerry, and which again dealt with his Scientology
involvement. Shales pointed out that Seinfeld's "hip irreverence" had
become "mean and perverse" in a number of episodes over its nine-year
run.
He wrote, "The most conspicuous example was the show's treatment of
Jews and JudaismůSome jokes were about Jewish stereotypes and
ridiculed them ľ but other jokes seemed to be just at the expense of
Jews." As examples, he mentioned a young rabbi character on the show
who played "a platitudinous simpleton with no sensitivity toward human
problems," and Jerry's parents, who lived in the South Florida
retirement community where everyone "appeared to be made up of mostly
Jews who were selfish and mean-spirited."
Shales noted a number of other examples and wrote "somewhere an
anti-Semite is probably getting a big laugh out of this, too. Seinfeld
is Jewishůbut the Seinfeld he played showed no respect for Jewish
traditions or heritageůThe point of all this?" Shale asked his
readers. "Try to imagine Seinfeld spoofing the Church of Scientology.
Even vaguely. Even remotely. Impossible. Off-limits. Judaism, however,
a religion as old as recorded time, was fair gameů"
Shaless said Jerry "took painsůto defend the controversial sect" and
described the courses he took as very pragmatic and helpful.
In 1986, at a time when Jerry had started raking in thousands of
dollars a week in the comedy clubs of America, L. Ron Hubbard, to
quote the Scientologists, "departed his body." But the church's
literature in 2000 stated, "He is still with us in spirit, and the
legacy of his work continues to help people around the world realize
their true spiritual nature."
Tigger
for posting that information on Jerry Seinfeld. It was very
interesting. I read it last night and it was the first thing I thought
about when I woke this morning.
Does anyone know if Seinfeld is still a Scientologist?
Tigger
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September 13, 1999
"PLEASE KNOW THAT YOU CAN TRUST ME."
STACY BROOKS YOUNG BROOKS
Confessed LIAR ~ April 9, 2002
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December 1, 1998
"Now, we must remember Fanny McPherson's last death-bed instructions to
Ken Dandar: 'Ken, I want you to let the whole world know what
Scientology did to Lisa.'............................To further that
aim, last week I promised Lisa's family and Ken Dandar all the financial
support necessary to finally make Scientology take responsibility for
the purposeful punishment and torture inflicted on Lisa McPherson."
ROBERT S. (BOB) MINTON, Jr.
Confessed liar ~ April 9, 2002
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