Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief (16 page)

Hubbard at
Saint Hill Manor in 1959 showing an E-Meter to his children, Quentin,
Diana,
Suzette, and Arthur

In school, other children would ask the older Hubbard kids about their father and what was going on in the castle. They realized that they didn’t actually know. One day, Diana, Quentin, and Suzette marched into Hubbard’s office and demanded, “What is this ‘Scientology’?
” Hubbard put them all on a starter Dianetics course.

Scientology was in its formative stage, still unfurling from Hubbard’s imaginative mind. This was a volatile moment in Hubbard’s life and the development of his movement. The fervent response of so many to his revelations must have added reality and substance to what otherwise might have seemed mere fantasies. Not only was he inventing a new religion, he was also reinventing himself as a religious leader. He was creating the legend of who he was in the minds of those who believed in him. And inevitably, he became imprisoned by their expectations.

His followers lived in a state of constant anticipation, trading legends among themselves about the marvels they had experienced or heard about, and speculating upon what was to come. Moments of magic and transcendence kept reason at bay.
Ken Urquhart, who served as Hubbard’s butler and later as his secretary—or “Communicator”—recalls coaching a “little old English lady
” on a Scientology training exercise. As he observed her, “I noticed her nice skin, her eyes, eyebrows. I noted that behind the skin on her forehead was the bone of her forehead, and I knew that behind that lay her brain. As I thought that thought, her forehead absolutely disappeared. I was looking directly at her brain. I was first astounded and then quickly horrified. Here I was exposing her brain to germs and the cold. At once her forehead was back in place.”

If Scientology really did bestow enhanced powers upon its adherents, Hubbard himself—of all people—should be able to exercise them. Hubbard’s
frailties were obvious to everyone; among other things, his hands shook from palsy and he was hard of hearing, constantly exclaiming, “What? What?” He sensed the presumptions that surrounded him. “Your friends
,” he said one day to Urquhart as his bath was being prepared, “might be curious as to why I employ somebody to open the shutters in my room when I can do it myself.” He meant
that he should be able, by sheer mental power, to project his intention and the shutters would open themselves. “Well, a lot of people would like me to appear in the sky over New York so as to impress the world. But if I were to do that I’d overwhelm a lot of people. I’m not here to overwhelm.” Urquhart thought of saying that he was perfectly willing to be overwhelmed in order to see such a demonstration, but he wasn’t altogether sure that Hubbard could actually do it. The failure of Hubbard’s followers to challenge him made them complicit in the creation of the mythical figure that he became. They conspired to protect the image of L. Ron Hubbard, the prophet, the revelator, and the friend of mankind.

On the other hand, there were moments when Hubbard seemed to be toying with the limits of possibility. It was rumored that
he could move the clouds around in the sky or stir up dust devils in his wake. Urquhart remembers a time when Hubbard was talking to him while sitting in a chair more than an arm’s length away. “My attention wandered
,” he recalled. Suddenly, he felt a finger poking him in the ribs. “I came back. He was talking away, grinning and eyes twinkling. He had not moved his arms or gotten up from the chair.” Such ineffable experiences seemed to add up to something, although it was not clear what that might be.

Hubbard’s neighbors soon learned more about the new lord of the manor. Scientology’s
expansion, coupled with the increasingly bold claims that Hubbard made about the health benefits that could be expected, brought the organization under scrutiny by various governments. The f
irst blow was a 1963 raid by
US Marshals, acting on a warrant issued by the
Food and Drug Administration to seize more than a hundred
E-Meters stored in the Washington church. The FDA charged that the labeling for the E-Meter suggested that it was effective in diagnosing and treating “all mental and nervous disorders
and illnesses,” as well as “psychosomatic ailments of mankind such as arthritis, cancer, stomach ulcers, and radiation burns from atomic bombs, poliomyelitis, the common cold, etc.”
²

The IRS began an audit
that would strip the church of its religious
tax exemption in 1967. At the same time, an
Australian government board of inquiry produced a sweeping report that was passionate in its condemnation. “There are some features
of Scientology which are so ludicrous that there may be a tendency to regard Scientology as silly and its practitioners as harmless cranks. To do so would be gravely to misunderstand the tenor of the Board’s conclusions,” the report began, then emphatically added: “
Scientology is evil, its techniques evil, its practice a serious threat
to the community, medically, morally and so
cially; and its adherents sadly deluded and o
ften mentally ill.
” The report admitted that there were “transient gains” realized by some of the religion’s adherents, but said that the organization plays on those gains in order to produce “a subservience amounting almost to mental enslavement.” As for Hubbard himself, the board described him as “a man of restless energy
” who is “constantly experimenting and speculating, and equally constantly he confuses the two.” “Some of his claims
are that … he has been up in the Van Allen Belt, that he has been on the planet Venus where he inspected an implant station, and that he has been to Heaven. He even recommends a protein formula for feeding non-breast fed babies—a mixture of boiled barley and corn syrup—stating that he ‘picked it up in Roman days.’ ” Although Hubbard has “an insensate hostility
” to psychiatrists and people in the field of mental health, the report noted, he is himself “mentally abnormal,” evincing a “persecution complex” and “an imposing aggregation of symptoms which, in psychiatric circles, are strongly indicative of a condition of paranoid schizophrenia with delusions of grandeur—symptoms common to dictators.” The report led to
a ban of Scientology in two Australian states,
³
and prompted similar inquiries in New Zealand,
Britain, and
South Africa. Hubbard believed that the US Food and Drug Administration, along with the
FBI and CIA, were feeding slanderous information about the church to various governments.

In the midst of all this upheaval, in February 1966 Hubbard finally declared another “
first
Clear
.” This time it was
John McMaster, a dapper, blond South African, in his mid-thirties, who was the director of the
Hubbard Guidance Center at the church’s Saint Hill headquarters. Charming, ascetic, and well-spoken, McMaster had dropped out of medical school to become an auditor. He immediately proved to be a far more urbane representative of Scientology than Hubbard. His wry
manner made him a welcome guest on talk shows and on the lecture circuit, where he portrayed
Scientology as a cool and nonthreatening route to self-realization. Suddenly the idea of going Clear began to catch on. McMaster adopted a clerical
outfit that befitted his designation as the church’s unofficial ambassador to the
United Nations. At one point, Hubbard designated him Scientology’s first “pope
.” It was a matter of puzzlement to Hubbard’s closest associates, given Hubbard’s disparagement of homosexuals in his books, that he would enlist a person to serve as the church’s representative who was obviously gay. “He was very pronounced
in his affect,” one of Hubbard’s medical officers remembered. But Hubbard’s relationship to
homosexuality was apparently more complicated in life than in theory.

CONVINCED THAT
the British, American, and Soviet governments were interested in gaining control of Scientology’s secrets in order to use them for evil intentions, Hubbard began looking for a safe harbor—ideally, a country that he could rule over. England had taken steps to “curb the growth
” of Scientology, and Hubbard took the hint. He also suffered from the damp weather. “I had been ill
with pneumonia for the third time in England and on the suggestion of my doctor was seeking a warmer climate for a short while in order to recover,” he said, in an unprompted explanation to the CIA. He resigned as
Executive
Director of the Church of Scientology and sold his interests in the
Hubbard Association of Scientologists International, although he maintained actual control of the organization through his innumerable telexes. He journeyed to
Rhodesia, the South African republic that had recently declared its independence from the United Kingdom (it later became
Zimbabwe). Isolated, diplomatically spurned, and subject to international sanctions, the Rhodesian government served a clique of white colonists who ruled over an insurgent black majority. To Hubbard, Rhodesia seemed ripe for a takeover. He felt a kinship with the republic’s dashing and flamboyant founder,
Cecil John Rhodes, who also had red hair and a taste for swashbuckling adventure. Hubbard believed he might have been Rhodes in a previous life, although it’s unclear whether he knew that Rhodes was homosexual
.

Hubbard had a fantasy
that he would be welcomed in Rhodesia, that the black population would embrace him like a brother, and that
eventually he would become its leader, issuing passports
and his own currency. However, the current prime minister
,
Ian Smith, was desperately trying to negotiate a settlement with the black nationalist movement that would preserve white-minority rule.
Hubbard thoughtfully wrote up a constitution for the government that he claimed would accomplish just that, but he couldn’t get anyone to take it seriously.

While Hubbard talked about his big plans for developing the country, the government became increasingly suspicious of his motives and his resources. Ultimately, Hubbard’s visa was not renewed. “He told me Ian Smith
was going to be shot because he was a ‘Suppressive,’ ” John McMaster said. “The real reason that Hubbard was kicked out of Rhodesia was that his cheques bounced.”

Hubbard returned to England with a new scheme. If the world’s governments were lining up against him, he would put himself beyond reach. Scientologists were whispering about a clandestine “sea project” that their leader was planning. He quietly began acquiring a small fleet of oceangoing vessels. Then he disappeared again.

This time, he went to Tangier, the Moroccan city on the Strait of Gibraltar, which was a famous hangout for hipsters and artists. There he began his research on Operating Thetan Level Three (
OT III), his “
Wall of Fire.” Mary Sue and the children remained in England, but Hubbard wrote to her daily, complaining of a barking dog that was interrupting his work, and various ailments—a bad back, and a lung problem that emerged from a lingering cold. He admitted that he was “drinking lots of rum
” and taking drugs—“pinks and grays”—while he was doing his research. He would sign off on the letters, “Your Sugie
.” Hubbard stayed only a month in Tangier before moving to Las Palmas in the
Canary Islands, where one of his followers found him deeply depressed and surrounded by pills of all kinds. “I want to die
,” he said. Alarmed, Mary Sue flew down to take care of him.

In September 1967, Hubbard made a recording for his followers to explain his absence and inform them of important discoveries in his OT III research. “All this recent career
has been relatively hard on this poor body,” he relates. “I’ve broken its back, broken its knee, and now I have a broken arm, because of the strenuousness of these particular adventures. One wonders then, well, if he is in such good shape what is he doing breaking up his body? Well, that is the trouble. I have great difficulty getting down to the small power level of a body.”

He also notes that he had directed Mary Sue to find out who was behind the attacks on
Scientology that were turning the governments against the organization. Mary Sue had hired “several professional intelligence agents,” who uncovered a conspiracy. “Our enemies on this planet are less than twelve men,” Hubbard discloses. “They own and control newspaper chains and they are oddly enough directors in all the mental health groups in the world.” Their plan was to “use mental health, which is to say psychiatric electric shock and prefrontal lobotomy, to remove from their path any political dissenters.” For the first time, he openly talks about the
Sea Organization, or Sea Org, an elite group who would form the committed inner core of the religion, Hubbard’s disciples, a Scientology clergy.

HANA STRACHAN
(now
Hana Eltringham Whitfield) was one of the first young recruits admitted into the Sea Org. Her deranged and manipulative mother was a follower of
Helena Blavatsky, the nineteenth-century spiritualist who was the founder of the
Theosophical Society. When Hana was about fifteen, she learned that Blavatsky had prophesied
a new race that would arise in the Americas in the 1950s; Hana was under the impression that it would be led by a man with red hair.

Hana escaped her traumatic family situation to become a nurse in Johannesburg, South Africa. A medical student there gave her a copy of
Dianetics
. It made immediate sense to her. She went to the local organization and said she wanted to learn more. “There’s a course starting
tonight,” she was told. In the hallway of the office Hana noticed a photograph of Hubbard standing outside the
Saint Hill headquarters. She was transfixed by his red hair. This must be the man Blavatsky was talking about, she decided. “That sealed it for me,” she said. She moved to Saint Hill and became Clear #60. For three weeks she was in a state of euphoria, feeling slightly detached from her environment and her body. “This is who we were in eons past,” she thought. She was convinced that Hubbard was a returned savior who would bring all humanity to an enlightened state.