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Inside Scientology; How I Joined Scientology and Became Superhuman.

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Perhaps, reader, you are one of those who have been bombarded with a TV and billboard campaign promoting the book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, by L. Ron Hubbard. Dianetics contains information that will bring freedom and self-fulfilment, say the ads. What the ads don't tell you is that Dianetics, a "fringe" therapy that first appeared in book form in 1950, is really a "hook" to pull people into the Church of Scientology, a powerful hydra-headed international organization that extracts money and services from its members through its control of their minds and pocketbooks. Scientology (the collective term for the teachings, techniques and network of church corporations created by the late L. Ron Hubbard) sells "mental processing" that bears little resemblance to the book Dianetics. However, Scientology, for reasons my own book makes clear, uses Dianetics to lure "raw meat" (non-Scientologists) into its thought-control machine.

The words "Dianetics" and "Scientology" are built on Greek and Latin roots and sound "scientific" and innocuous. Dianetics and Scientology are not sciences, and they are anything but innocuous. Deceptive use of the name "Dianetics" is typical of Scientology's operations. The organization has much to hide. Scientology and its other "fronts" such as Dianetics speak of freedom. But what kind of "freedom"? I am one of those who spoke out about Scientology. Agents devised a way to enter my home and photograph my papers. A piano concert I booked to play at Carnegie Recital Hall in New York City was canceled at the last moment by a man identifying himself as "Robert Kaufman." My publisher was destroyed in Great Britain by a massive campaign of theft, forgery and poison pen letters.

Scientology tried to steal my freedom of thought and speech, both when I was a member and after. That has only made me want to speak out all the more. In doing so, I have your freedom in mind also. You are about to enjoy a true science fiction adventure in "another world here on earth." Entertainment, yes. But I also wish to share with you -- perhaps with an intensity you haven't known for a while -- the preciousness, the blessedness, of our right to think and speak as we choose.

Your freedom. My freedom. Our freedom.

This book is a very difficult book to read and review.

The first characteristic is that this is the recollection, report of someone who got into Scientology, managed to climb to nearly the top of "qualification," though certification would be a better term. He paid for every single step of it, a real fortune, in 1967-1969. As such it is of course essential since it actually tells us one particular experience of this trip down under into one of the most secretive cults that exists on this planet. But as such too it is difficult not to see that there is always a personal dimension, even emotional, especially since scientology negates emotions that are considered as dangerous and negative. When he got out of it he rediscovered the beauty of emotions. We must not consider this testimony as the truth but as a truthful testimony, which is not exactly the same.

But this testimony is very disturbing because it definitely clarifies a couple of things anyone who has lived long enough can know. The first form of this cult was Dianetics, a book published in 1950. I have covered that book by itself and will not repeat what I already said. But this here book clearly explains how Scientology came later and at the end of the 1960s had pushed Dianetics down and replaced it with a new ideology which was a lot more cultish. But after 1968 the Church of Scientology was under attack in many countries, including Australia, England, the United States to only consider English speaking countries. And at the same time quite a few lawsuits were started all over the world against these organisations. They went on with their activities, but this time they advertised it in the 1980s, starting before the death of L. Ron Hubbard in 1986, under the color of the New Era Dianetics, a new edition of the original book. I cannot compare the two editions because I do not have the original one.

If we only consider Dianetics we could and should discuss some concepts and some approaches but it is always draped in some very self-assertive scientific language that sounds positive, slightly bombastic, but never totalitarian. What the book contains is debatable but not forcibly hostile or antagonizing. It certainly does not contain any real mesmeric, not to mention hypnotic, language. Some people can be easily captured by the authoritative language that may compensate some want, lack, or satisfy some need, but if we keep the normal critical distance that we are supposed to keep when reading any philosophical or ideological book we are definitely safe.

But that has little to do with the advanced form under the name of Scientology and the practices that go along with it inside the church of scientology. I am just going to state a few of these practices drawn from this here book.

First there is the use a totally esoteric language with an abundance of neologisms, acronyms, mono-syllabic abbreviations, etc. Many words are also shifted in discursive categories from verb to noun and vice versa quite freely and the syntax is also at times original with transitive verbs turned into intransitive verbs for only one example. Some call this language scientologese. It definitely sounds like any hyper specialized language like police talk or air talk and a few others like medical talk. This requires an effort and this creates a closed mental world in which the people are cutting themselves away from the real world.

Second the time scale is completely berserk. The use of trillions, zillions of years, the origin of human things pushed so far away that we are practically at the Big Bang, that it all started in the cosmos and man was nothing but an abstract spirit that through all these zillions of years managed to get embodied into flesh and bone by some vast cosmic evolution. We must understand there are billions of such spirits still freely floating all around looking for some carriers. These spirits are thetans and the freely floating ones that stick onto our legitimate thetans and bodies bacome parasite body thetans causing all kinds of problems. In other words science fiction has been transformed into a real history of the universe and the human species.

Third the world is cut into two groups of people: the clears who are already initiated into the system, and the others who are wogs. These wogs become raw meat when they are attracted into the church of scientology and there pre-clears when they start their initiation. This initiation costs a tremendous amount of money. Then among these initiated people, you have those who stay inside and can pay their way up and their affiliation, and those who work for the church in order to pay their way up and through to the top certification. They are working like hell for a pittance and that solution takes a great and long time to come to some kind of result.

Fourth In this initiated population you have the privileged very few who managed a franchise of the church in the form of an educational scientology center under their own responsibility and at their own risks, and paying a percentage of their gross income to the church of scientology. You also have the proletariat of this population, the super exploited workers in the various centers and in the old days the lumpen proletariat working on the flagship of L. Ron Hubbard who were working for nothing at all because it was for them a punishment, and eventually they may become the Sea orgs, those who were sent to the various centers to check up the good work there.

Fifth the initiation work is a total subordination of each individual to an exacting system that forces them to work long hours, everyday without stopping, do very repetitive tasks, and under constant surveillance and pressure that make them completely dependent. They have to get punished, get summoned and pressurized, get vilified and downtrodden all the time to just go on advancing. What's more the guidance personnel is there to remind everyone that they have to find all answers to all questions exclusively within a corpus of official documents, some highly secret, and all that by themselves without getting any help from others. This is practically impossible to maintain all the time but the result is suspicion, conformity, paranoia, absolute self-centeredness within a hermetically closed group and society. Add to that the use of e-meters and a standardized hypnotic language in all exchanges and checkups of each individual student and you have the factory of mind manipulation, some say brainwashing depicted in this book.

Sixth and last every student, member, affiliate, believer, faithful or whatever indoctrinated person has to constantly swear their allegiance to L. Ron Hubbard and Mary Sue Hubbard, which must have become more difficult now since both are dead. They can only read and think within the official library of books, circulars, bulletins, newsletters, tapes or whatever signed by the boss. They must report those who do not believe that fully and they better report themselves if they happen to disbelieve one little point before someone reports them.

That's the picture we get from that book. Scientology then is depicted here as a purely totalitarian frankly fascistic system. Is it a true picture? Is it a truthful record of a particular experience? Is it purely fantastic ranting and raving? Is it the figment of the insane imagination of some warped and distorted mind? I cannot say and I do not want to say. Read, and read more and get your own information and build up your own opinion. Mine is very deeply moved by that testimony and I tend to believe that man is truthful because he is a musician and musicians don't lie even when they have a very sonic way of listening to the world.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU