🚀 go-pugleaf

[ Article crossposted from alt.religion.scientology ]
[ Author was Tilman Hausherr ]
[ Posted on Sat, 02 Aug 1997 06:34:24 GMT ]

Here the article that was typed in by several people, whom I cannot thank
enough. It was really a hard work because there was a lot of "guessing" for
certain words. I have made a HTML version which looks much nicer than this,
contact me directly. This would be nice for one of the existing media pages.
This article is from 1968, but you will notice that almost nothing has changed.
It is an excellent description of scientology in an easy-to-real language.

SCIENTOLOGY --
Menace to Mental health

Today's Health, Dec. 1968, p. 34

     Couched in pseudoscientific terms and rites, this dangerous cult claims
     to help mentally or emotionally disturbed persons -- for sizable fees.
     Scientology has grown into a very profitable worldwide enterprise...
     and a serious threat to health.

                             By Ralph Lee Smith

[Picture in upper right of page caption: L Ronald Hubbard, Scientology's
founder.]

[Picture in lower left of page caption: Bust of Hubbard flanks "altar" in
Scientology "church" near London. Among his accomplishments, Hubbard claims
to have been dead and recovered, to have visited Venus and heaven.]

LAST SUMMER in New York City, a seriously disturbed woman who was receiving
psychotherapy heard about a wonderful new way to solve emotional problems.
It was called Scientology. "Step into the exciting world of the totally
free!" Scientology leaflets read. "Scientology processing releases you
smoothly and swiftly from the tensions, oppositions, frustrations, and
problems that sap your vigor and inhibit your abilities . . . Your gains
will come quickly, easily."

The woman went to a Scientology center, was impressed by the sales pitch,
signed a contract to be "processed," and informed her analyst that she was
abandoning therapy. "As you know," the enthusiastic new convert said,
"Scientology and psychoanalysis don't mix."

In Washington, D.C., a man of modest means, living with his wife and family
in a suburban home, fell under the Scientology spell. So far he has spend
$5000 being processed. "The only difference in him," observed a neighbor,
"is that he has lost his sense of humor, constantly talks in a language of
gibberish that no one can understand, and is letting his family drift slowly
into bankruptcy."

A Los Angeles housewife told a district attorney that she had spent $1000
[illegible - could also be $4000] on Scientology processing, on assurances
that it would help her to overcome frigidity. The net result of her
investment was that her husband divorced her.

Scientology is a cult which thrives on glowing promises that are heady stuff
for the lonely, the weak, the confused, the ineffectual, and the mentally or
emotionally ill. For a healthy fee, Scientology claims it can "help people
do something about the upsets and travails of life. Hope and happiness can
return again through Scientology."

Believers have established a firm foothold in the United States and a number
of foreign countries. From its international headquarters in England, the
organization oversees active groups in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa,
and Canada. In this country, Scientology centers are operating in major
cities including New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Detroit, Minneapolis,
Miami, San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, and Honolulu.

On street corners and college campuses, eager Scientologists press their
literature into the hands of passers-by. Widely advertised free lectures,
films, and parties are given almost continuously at Scientology centers.

[Picture in upper right caption: Modern teaching methods provide aura of
authenticity to instruction at Hubbard College of Scientology in Great
Britain.]

[Picture in middle right caption: Students practice "auditing," using the
E-meter, which supposedly measures when a person is suppressing
information.]

[Picture in lower right caption: Popularity of cult spurred expansion of
Saint Hill complex. This recently completed annex is "Castle Number Two."]

One Scientology source says that the cult is growing at the rate of 250
percent a year in the U.S. Another enthusiast states that the total
membership already is "in the millions."

Whatever the actual figures may be, it is clear that large numbers of
persons are responding to Scientology's promise of a quick, easy road to
mental and emotional health. Unfortunately for many, the road may lead not
to health but to tragedy and disaster for themselves and their families.

At the head of this activity, ensconced at Saint Hill (a magnificent 18th
century manor near London, England), surrounded by servants and scores of
the faithful, with a chauffeur-driven black Jaguar at his constant disposal,
lives a solidly built, broad-faced, ruddy-complexioned American named L.
(for Lafayette) Ron (for Ronald) Hubbard. Hubbard, the inventor of
Scientology and its predecessor Dianetics, rules over the worldwide
organization with a smile, a gentle voice, and a silken-gloved iron hand.
His easy assurance befits a man who says that he has been up on the Van
Allen radiation belts, has dropped in on the planet Venus, and has visited
heaven twice.

Hubbard was born in Tilden, Nebraska, on March 13, 1911. Scientology
literature claims that he graduated with a B.S. in civil engineering from
George Washington University and was "trained as one of the first nuclear
physicists."

In a tax case involving a Scientology center in Washington, D.C., university
officials testified that Hubbard entered school in 1930, took -- and flunked
-- physics, was placed on probation after his first year, never returned
after his second, and received no degree.

According to Scientology brochures, Hubbard also attended and received a
Ph.D. from an institution called Sequoia University in California. No such
university is recognized by the state Department of Education. There is a
junior college in California named College of the Sequoias, but this school
certainly does not grant doctoral degrees.

In the 1930's, Hubbard became a writer of science fiction and novels, using
such hairy-chested pen names as Winchester Remington Colt. In 1938, he
finished the manuscript of a book called Excalibur, containing the ideas
that he later amplified into the concepts of Dianetics and Scientology.

In World War II he served in the Navy. After he left the service in 1947, he
went back to work on his theories. Dianetics, the fruit of his reflections,
was given to the world in an article in the May 1950 issue of Astounding
Science Fiction. Soon thereafter he published a book entitled Dianetics: The
Modern Science of Mental Health, which became a surprise best seller. He
subsequently made a few additions to his system and rechristened it
Scientology, although the term Dianetics is still used. Since then he has
nearly buried his ideas in millions of words written in scores of books. He
has devised such an elaborate special vocabulary that he even published a
Scientology dictionary to enable people to plow through his writings.

His basic ideas, however, are simple -- some say simplistic. The mind, he
says, is divided into the analytical mind (which is similar to the conscious
mind of psychology) and the reactive mind (which roughly corresponds to the
unconscious). The analytical mind is rational: it perceives, reasons,
figures things out. The reactive mind, under certain stimuli, takes over,
shorts out the analytical mind, and causes irrational behavior.

The object of Scientology is to bring the reactive mind under the full
control of the analytical mind, thus achieving "total freedom" from nutty
behavior. This ultimately will bring about "a condition of high
intelligence, above genius," will put the person in possession of unlimited
powers, and will cause him to overflow with happiness, Hubbard claims. A
person who has achieved this state is called a "clear."

Hubbard, and Hubbard alone, has discovered how people can be "cleared."
Scientology, and Scientology alone, is the avenue through which it can be
accomplished. "No such knowledge has ever before existed," Hubbard notes
modestly, "and no such results have ever before been attainable."

According to Hubbard, the reactive mind stores "engrams." These are
impressions made on the protoplasm of the mind by an acute emotional shock
or pain. When some incident in the present has elements that resemble some
painful past experience, the appropriate engram is "keyed in." The reactive
mind promptly takes charge of the person's behavior and causes him to act
irrationally.

A third entity in the theory is called the "thetan," which roughly
corresponds to the spirit. A person's thetan, says Hubbard, is immortal, and
has lived in countless bodies, human and animal, on this and other planets,
since the beginning of time. In its wanderings, it has picked up engrams
like barnacles. To be cleared, a person must be released, not only from
engrams created by traumas in his own life, but from all the engrams that
his thetan has picked up since time began.

A person who arrives on the doorstep of a Scientology center encrusted with
engrams is called a "preclear." On the wall he will find an immense chart
showing the "grades of release" through which he will pass as he shucks off
his engrams. If his money holds out, he will scale the ladder to
blessedness. He is told that it is an easy and joyful experience, and he
will make swift, glorious strides.

Processing involves regular sessions with a Scientology auditor. The
preclear is quoted a blanket price for a series of sessions that will bring
him up to certain specified levels, and he is required to sign a contract
for the full amount. The price works out to about $30 for each one-hour
session. A course that will carry the person up through the first four
stages of release costs about $1000. Completion of all courses and levels
offered by Scientology costs several thousand dollars. Police records cite
the case of one wealthy Floridian who spend some $28,000 on Scientology
processing.

From the time that the Astounding Science Fiction article appeared,
disturbed persons have been beating a path to Hubbard's door to press their
money into his willing hands. Few have heeded the warning of the American
Psychological Association that Hubbard's claims are "not supported by
empirical evidence." They ignore the statement by the late Dr. William
Menninger, one of the founders of the famed Menninger Clinic of Topeka,
Kansas, that Hubbard's system and ideas "can potentially do a great deal of
harm."

[Picture along bottom of page caption: Students, young and old, flock to
Scientology's mecca, Saint Hill, to become auditors and spread the gospel
throughout the world]

In 1955, Hubbard and his third wife Mary Sue set up the "Founding Church of
Scientology" in Washington, D.C. Three-week intensive processing courses
were offered for $1250. Scientology auditors, calling themselves
"ministers," were instructed by Hubbard in the fine art of beating the
bushes for customers. The techniques included:

   * "I Will Talk to Anyone." Auditors were instructed to place newspaper
     ads saying that "Reverend" so-and-so "will talk to anyone about
     anything." When calls were received, the "minister" assured the caller
     that his problem was indeed significant and that he should visit the
     "church." When the caller arrived, he was given the pitch on
     Scientology processing.

   * "Illness Researchers." Scientology disciples placed newspaper ads
     asking victims of polio and other crippling diseases to volunteer for
     examination by a "research foundation" or "charitable organization."
     When a person responded, he was told "that there is a way (via
     Scientology) to improve his ability to walk or breathe or whatever."

   * "Casualty Contact." Under this heading, the "ministers" were instructed
     in the techniques of the ghoul. They were to follow accident stories
     and death notices in newspapers, note names of families involved,
     contact them, "express compassion and concern," and try to get the
     persons to come to the Scientology "church."

[Picture in upper right caption: Worldwide headquarters of Scientology is
magnificent Saint Hill Manor at East Grinstead, about 30 miles from London.]

[Picture in middle right caption: Church of Scientology of California,
housed in Los Angeles mansion, is one of cult's 10 centers in the United
States.]

[Picture in lower right caption: Hubbard's writings and devices are major
sources of cult's profits. Books sell for up to $7; E-meters cost about
$149.]

In the four-year period from June 1955 to June 1959, the center brought in
$758,982. It denied that it owed any federal taxes on this amount since it
was a church. The Internal Revenue Service began an investigation.

In March 1959, Ron and Mary Sue moved to England to preside over the
expansion of Scientology from Saint Hill Manor. The tax case moved slowly.
Finally, in August 1968, the U.S. Court of Claims ruled that the Washington
center was not a church but a profit-making commercial enterprise, and
required that it pay taxes.

The Scientology movement is coordinated and governed through the "Hubbard
Communications Office-World Wide" (HCO-WW) at Saint Hill. This office
distributes Hubbard's decisions, policies, dicta, and accounts of such
things as his visits to heaven. It is also Hubbard's vigilant international
collection agency, raking in a slice of the action wherever preclears are
being processed.

"Subsequent to L. Ron Hubbard's departure to Saint Hill," says the U.S.
government, "the weekly remissions by the affiliated Scientology churches
and congregations and franchised Scientologists (of 10 percent of their
gross income) were made directly to L. Ron Hubbard in the name of HCO-WW.
Some of these checks were deposited in banks in Switzerland."

The international office's take also is increased by Hubbard's refusal to
permit most of his centers and franchisees to process preclears all the way
up to the state of clear. After the clients have reached a certain level,
they must make the journey to Saint Hill for the final stages of clearing,
and may be declared clear only by the Saint Hill Qualifications Division.

The Saint Hill headquarters recently inaugurated a super course for people
who have been cleared, which carries them yet another step upward to the
state of O.T. -- "operating thetan." This state is described as achieving
something akin to complete omnipotence.

(The only operating thetan that I have met is the co-owner of a Scientology
franchise who recently returned from Sain Hill, his O.T. certificate in
hand. He is a former narcotics user, a former proprietor of a health-food
store, and an enthusiastic proselytizer for the "macrobiotic diet," a fad
that recently caused at least one person to die of malnutrition. He usually
is attired in unpressed dungaree pants and shirt, with a dingy T-shirt
visible at the neck.)

What goes on in Scientology auditing sessions? Preclears won't tell you --
they are forbidden to discuss their experience with anyone. They also are
forbidden to speak any word of disparagement of Scientology to the press or
to listen to any condemnation of the cult. If the preclear's superiors think
that he is guilty of any conduct "undertaken knowingly to suppress, reduce,
or impede Scientology or Scientologists," he may find himself labeled a
P.T.S. -- potential trouble source and charged with "high crimes." The
penalty is dismissal from Scientology. Others in Scientology, who might
presumably include his friends and/or members of this family, are instructed
to "disconnect" from him.

[Picture in upper left caption: Students examine clay figures, which are
used to depict preclear's progress up through the various grades of
Scientology.]

However, the procedures used in Scientology auditing are easily obtained
without imperiling any preclears. Hubbard goes into them in detail in his
books.

The first step is to get a preclear "securely under the auditor's command."
The preclear is required to answer very simple questions over and over
again, or is ordered to move a small object around a table, starting it,
stopping it, and changing its direction at the auditor's command. These
exercises are carried on until the preclear responds to all questions and
commands "quickly and accurately and without protest."

The auditor then begins to ask certain rather oddly worded questions, such
as "Tell me something real," or "Can you not-know something about that
person?" Following this confusing concept of "not-knowing," the preclear is
led to deny the existence of objects around him. "The auditor should not be
startled when, for the precelar, large chunks of the environment start to
disappear." But, Hubbard cautions, "the environment does not disappear for
the auditor." This mind-numbing questioning is "continued for 25 hours or
even 50 or 75 hours."

If the preclear shows a tendency to respond by bringing up some genuine
current problem in his life, such tendencies are sternly cut off. "To a
preclear who is worried about some present-time situation or problem," says
Hubbard, "no other process has any greater effectiveness than the following
one: The auditor, after a very brief discussion of the problem, asks the
preclear to `invent' a problem of comparable magnitude . . . If the preclear
is unable to do this, it is necessary then to have him lie about the problem
he has . . . After he has lied about the problem for a short time, he will
be able to invent problems. He should be made to invent problem after
problem until he is no longer concerned with his present-time problem."

Instead of discussing present reality, the auditor wishes to push the
preclear into a world of fantasy. To help him, he uses a device called an
E-meter, which consists of a meter and knobs mounted in a small housing. In
the sessions, the auditor and preclear sit facing each other across a small
table. The E-meter is placed on the table with its face visible to the
auditor only. The preclear is given two tin cans to hold in his hands. The
cans are attached to the E-meter by wires.

As the preclear answers the questions, the auditor watches the meter's
needle. Certain movements of the needle supposedly mean that the preclear is
suppressing something. The auditor "listens, computes, and commands,"
closing in relentlessly until the preclear comes up with the "suppressed
information."

When the preclear is eager to cooperate, is fully under the sway of the
auditor's will and the apparently scientific verdict of the E-meter, he
accepts the auditor's statement that he is suppressing something, even if he
can't remember anything. Sooner or later he begins to exhibit symptoms
resembling those of schizophrenia. These symptoms are encouraged; the
preclear is given to believe that the hallucinations he is experiencing are
factual incidents of his thetan's past, and that his discovery of them is
the high road to health and freedom. Hubbard has published numerous stories
that preclears have told in Scientology auditing sessions about their
thetans' past histories.

One preclear said that his thetan had inhabited the body of a doll on the
planet Mars, 469,476,600 years ago. Martians seized the doll and took it to
a temple, where it was zapped by a bishop's gun while the congregation
chanted "God is Love." The thetan was then put into an ice cube, placed
aboard a flying saucer, and dropped off at Planet ZX 132, where it was given
a robot body, then put to work unloading flying saucers. Being a bit unruly,
it zapped another robot to death, and was shipped off in a flyer saucer to
be punished. But the saucer exploded, and the thetan fell into space.

Another preclear recalled that he had been Mark Antony. He remembered
Cleopatra, but she apparently had given him such a whopping engram that he
couldn't recall the battles of Philippi and Actium.

A woman patient remembered that she had once been a male lion that had
gotten an engram by eating its keeper. This enlightening discovery, says
Hubbard, cured her psychosis.

As each trauma in the thetan's past is "discovered," the auditor pushes the
preclear for all the details he can supply. The event is then discussed
until the preclear no longer reacts to it emotionally, and until there is no
movement on the needle of the E-meter. The engram caused by the event has
then be "flattened," or erased.

To anyone but a Scientologist, it need hardly be said that the E-meter
cannot register, record, or assist the memory in recalling ray-gun zappings,
Cleopatra's wiles, badly behaved lions, or other alleged incidents of one's
past.

Far from being a triumphant product of space-age science, the E-meter is
simply a Wheatstone bridge, a circuit that has been used in quack medical
devices for decades. All its wiggling needle registers is the body's varying
resistance to a current provided by a small battery. In its tax case against
the Founding Church of Scientology, the government said that E-meters cost
$12.50 to build, and were sold to Scientology auditors for prices ranging
from $125 to $144.

Hubbard and his followers have claimed that the E-meter could be used to
detect and treat scores of human ills, from colds to cancer. In 1963, the
U.S. government seized a number of the devices from the Washington Church of
Scientology, charging that they were misbranded. The Scientology group
contested the seizure. In the trial, held in April 1967, the jury returned a
verdict for the government. The case is being appealed.

Scientologists now seem to be making fewer claims for the E-meter's
effectiveness in treating physical ills, but its use for finding engrams
continues in full swing.

Scientology makes an active attempt to lure people away from psychotherapy
and psychoanalysis. "A Dianetic auditor can do more permanent good for a
person than every psychologist and psychiatrist in the world wrapped up
together," a Scientology official told a group of persons at a lecture I
attended. A necessary condition for receiving Scientology processing, says a
letter addressed to preclears by the Church of Scientology of California, is
"nonreceipt of any other form of guidance, counsel, or treatment."

Scientologists are amused by the notion that long preparation may be needed
to deal with human emotional problems. "A psychiatrist spends 16 years in
school," a Scientology auditor told me with a grin. "We train a Dianetic
auditor in 30 days." Scientologists are equally amused by the idea that
different kinds of problems may require different kinds of treatment. "We
use exactly the same process for each person," the Scientology auditor told
me. "It is a science."

In fact, such sessions with nonprofessional personnel are likely to further
confuse rather than help a psychologically disturbed person. In Australia, a
government board of inquiry listened with dismay in an adjoining room as a
Scientology auditor processed an emotionally upset woman. She floundered her
way through the nightmarish session, then feebly said she felt it had helped
her. Nine days later, she was committed to a mental hospital. The
investigators discovered that other Scientology clients also had been turned
over to mental institutions after processing.

In my visits to Scientology centers I encountered many enthusiastic persons
who claimed that they had achieved fantastic progress in short periods of
time through Scientology. They evinced total belief in the system. Their
attitudes toward their auditors, toward persons running the Scientology
centers, and above all, toward Ron Hubbard, bordered on reverence.

Such attitudes are familiar to every psychotherapist and psychoanalyst. In
the early stages of treatment, the patient usually regards his analyst as a
paragon of wisdom and knowledge. He also experiences what he believes are
sweeping "insight," and feels that he is making dramatic progress.

One of the many fundamental differences between Scientology and
psychotherapy is that a genuine therapist or analyst knows that these
feelings are illusory, and that they must be transcended by the patient on
his way to real emotional health. The analyst is not a god, a lawgiver, or a
great discoverer, but a fallible human being. Genuine insight comes with
painful slowness, and feelings of swift progress are nearly always a
chimera.

By contrast, Scientology keeps the patient in this illusory state and
exploits it for profit. Instead of being totally free, a clear is a person
who believes totally in Scientology and who totally reveres Ron Hubbard. The
clear feels, with happy certainty, that he now relates to the world with
complete success.

But this view usually is not shared by the world. To his family and friends,
the person who enters ever more deeply into Scientology seems to drift
further and further from reality and to live more and more in the special
in-group world that Scientology has created. Communication between converts
and the rest of the world lapses and fails. The Scientologist believes that
he is privy to exclusive truth, while everyone else suspects that he has
gone over the deep edge.

In the summer of 1968 a furor arose in Great Britain about the ever-swelling
flood of Americans coming to Saint Hill to be cleared. The British Ministry
of Health received some 65 letters of complaint from disillusioned former
Scientologists and from relatives and friends of persons who were actively
involved in the cult. Matters came to a head when the Ministry learned that
the Hubbard forces at Saint Hill were preparing to process children. While
the authorities had no power to close down the operation, they barred
Americans from coming to Britain on student visas to study at Saint Hill.

Scientology, warned British Health Minister Kenneth Robinson, is "socially
harmful . . . Its authoritarian principles and practices are a potential
menace to the personality of those so deluded as to become followers."

Shortly after this condemnation, Hubbard embarked on an extended
Mediterranean cruise aboard his luxurious yacht. But his organization is
still active.

Unfortunately, the numbers of those "so deluded" apparently are increasing.
Before it finally goes the way of all cults, Scientology may leave behind a
legacy of tragedy unmatched in the annals of fads and fallacies in mental
health.