1997 article detailing Incredible String Band's Scientology experience--plus an infiltration
moontaco
of it since, and it also doesn't come up on a Google web search. I
thought it would be good to make a new post for it. I found the
original web posting of it via the Wayback Machine on the Internet
Archive: http://tinyurl.com/qs5nt
A MIND-BENDING EXPERIENCE
The Guardian January 4, 1997
~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.~
By Joe Boyd
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
him, 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 cast of ten 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 U'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 was 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
so, 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 'Recall a 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 out loud 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 E-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 stove 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 engrams, 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 lighter, 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 Swann, 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.
Mischieviously, 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 run 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 might 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 the pain
in my neck had not gone away, so I owned up to it. The audit for that
day was cancelled 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 arms,
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 unauthorised biography of Hubbard, which exposes his numerous lies
about his military service and other aspects 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), Mike 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 for 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 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 world- wide and an annual
income of pounds 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 turns into a nightmare for
all of them, but I'm sure it would have for me had I continued.