What
You Didn’t Know About Scientology
by Mark Owen
“All men shall be my
slaves.
All women shall submit to
my charms.
All mankind shall grovel at
my feet.”
L. Ron Hubbard Affirmations
There has been a revival of interest in
Scientology recently, largely driven by the ministrations of
An episode of
The cartoon featured Scientologists Nicole
Kidman and John Travolta trying to coax Cruise out of a closet, a reference to
rumors concerning his sexual preference.
Also featured was an L. Ron Hubbard
character denigrating Cruise’s acting ability.
The extremely litigious Cruise immediately
threatened
and it is unlikely that the episode will
air again.
It is perhaps timely to revue some of the
history of the ‘church,’ its membership and especially its mercurial founder
Lafayette Ronald Hubbard.
Various Scientology hagiographies of
Hubbard are widely divergent from known facts.
This is mainly due to the phantasmagoric
history that Hubbard fashioned for himself and repeated ad nauseum to his
followers.
Hubbard would often boast of a
distinguished pedigree, claiming descent from nobility going back to the Norman
Invasion. He also claimed at various times to have been a barn-stormer in a
circus, a great white hunter in Africa, an explorer of the upper Amazon and a
heavily decorated naval officer, the recipient
of more than 2 dozen medals and palms. He
also claimed that his naval exploits were the inspiration for Henry Fonda’s
character in the film Mister Roberts. On the day the Japanese bombed Pearl
Harbor he stated that he was the only person to survive the sinking of the destroyer
he was on near the coast of
The truth is somewhat more prosaic. In
fact, Hubbard’s urinary difficulties stemmed from a bout of gonorrhea
contracted after sex with a prostitute named Fern. Court documents in Hubbard’s
own handwriting later confirmed this.
His shirking in the navy was commented upon
several times by superior officers. In 1942 the US Naval Attache wrote, “…he
[Hubbard] became the source of much trouble […], is not satisfactory for
independent duty assignment. He is garrulous and tries to give the impression
of his importance.”
Twenty years later Hubbard would brag to
credulous followers that after he left that particular assignment, it took a
captain, several commanders and 15 junior officers to replace him.
Although Scientology accounts claim that
Hubbard served in all five theaters in WWII, more often than not, records find
him on the sick list complaining of a variety of ailments from conjunctivitis
to ulcers. These same records show that he was never engaged in enemy action
and that he received only 4 awards, none for action or combat. Upon being
mustered out of the navy, he immediately applied for disability benefits, often
writing to the VA pleading for an increase citing long bouts of depression and
recurring thoughts of suicide.
Hubbard spent his convalescence in
Parsons was in communication with
Parsons and Hubbard engaged in various
black magic rituals over many nights in an effort to produce a homunculus.
Although reports of their association make interesting reading, the two eventually
had a falling-out and Hubbard would abscond to
Parsons would later self-immolate in his
garage during an experiment that went awry. His mother committed suicide the
following day. Police would find home movies of Parsons having sex with his
mother and the family dog.
Thereafter, L. Ron Hubbard spent several
years grinding out science fiction and short stories for
In truth, Hubbard loathed
Hubbard would later morph the tenets of
Dianetics into the spiritual crazy glue known as Scientology, employing a
confounding nomenclature sometimes referred to as ‘org-speak.’ The first
According to Hubbard eschatology, 70
million years ago the planet Earth, then known as Teegeeack, had been one of 76
planets of the Galactic Federation that was badly overpopulated with hundreds
of billions of people. The evil overlord Xenu deccreed that excess populations
on these planets should be sent to Teegeeack, put next to volcanoes and blown
to pieces. The spirits or thetans of the victims were implanted with religious
and technical images for 36 days. They were then sent either to
In a 1983 Penthouse interview, L. Ron
Hubbard Jr. stated that he was born prematurely after his father botched an
abortion attempt on his mother. He claims that his father used copious
quantities of drugs and even witnessed him injecting cocaine. Hubbard Jr. has
stated, “I believed in Satanism. There was no other religion in our house!
What a lot of people don’t realize is that
Scientology is black magic spread out over a long time period.
It’s stretched out over a lifetime and you
don’t see it.
Black magic is the inner core of
Scientology and it is probably the only part that really works.
Also, you’ve got to understand that my
father did not worship Satan. He thought he was Satan.” Ron Hubbard Jr. also
claimed that his father practiced something called ‘soul-cracking.’ Hubbard Sr.
would apparently beat his many mistresses and shoot them full of drugs in order
to reach a state whereby, like a psychic hammer, he would break their souls and
allow demonic powers to pour through them. Junior also declared that the
Scientology Operating Thetan techniques do the same thing. Junior would go on
to co-author the popular 1987
book ‘L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman.’
In that year the Church listed $503 million in income.
Two sinister Scientology graduates of the
60s were Robert DeGrimston and his wife
Mary Ann. He was a former architecture student and she was a former
prostitute who believed herself to be Joseph Goebbels incarnate. Both had an
insatiable preoccupation with death and violence and it is perhaps inevitable
that they ended up in
Robert Degrimston published several books
on war (his favorite theme) and commanded his followers “THOU SHALT KILL!”
Another Process publication urged readers to experience the pleasures of grave
robbing and necrophilia. A rant in the ‘Death’ issue of their magazine was
penned by Charles Manson. Manson’s rap was an amalgam of Process ideology and
the 150 hours of Scientology auditing he’d received during one of his numerous
prison stints (Charlie declared himself a ‘Theta Clear’).
Contrary to popular belief, the Process is
still around, having undergone numerous name changes over the years. The first
was the ‘Four-P Movement.’ Author Michael Newton wrote that the cult, “is also
deeply involved in white slavery, child pornography and the international
narcotics trade.” Still other name changes for the Process included The
Foundation Church of the Millenium, The Foundation Faith of God and then Best
Friends Animal Sanctuary.
Today it is known as The Best Friends
Animal Society and is located in
is their testament to this end. And the
animal sanctuary is a huge cash cow. In 2003 the Society raised more than $20
million. Perhaps the Degrimstons were wise to abandon Scientology when they
did. Robert currently works in
The Sea Org-
In the 1960s, after several years of generating vast sums
from credulous recruits, Hubbard took Scientology to sea, in order to stymie various governments who were set to move
against his church for fraud and tax evasion. He purchased several large ships
and drifted around the
He devised cruel methods of discipline for
recalcitrant followers that were enforced on a whim.
Once, he confined a 5-year old deaf mute to
a chain locker, the cold, wet, rat-infested area of the ship where anchor
chains are stored.
Other malefactors were consigned to rusty
tanks below decks where they chiseled off rust while standing in filthy bilge
water. Oxygen was supplied via tubes. Other Scientologists would periodically
pound on the hull to ensure that the scraping continued, oftentimes the
punishment lasting for days. A food bucket would be lowered down to the
offending parties. Stories of shipboard abuse are legion and too numerous to
recount in this limited forum.
In the power vacuum that followed the death
of L. Ron Hubbard in 1986, high school dropout David Miscavige emerged as the
de facto head of Scientology. Known to his enemies as ‘the poison dwarf,’ the
diminutive and asthmatic Miscavige even managed to depose Hubbard’s wife. He
also ordered Hubbard’s son Arthur to be his personal servant. Miscavige and his
followers do their best to attract high-profile members such as John Travolta,
who has been in the cult for 20 years.
Gay porn star Paul Berrisi claims to have
engaged in a homosexual relationship with Travolta that began in 1982 and
lasted eight years. Berrisi claims that Travolta dumped him for another man in
1990. In revenge, he sold his story to the National Enquirer in April of that
year. Shortly after the story broke, Travolta hastened to marry Scientologist
Kelly Preston. In 2000 Travolta starred in ‘Battlefield Earth,’ a film
adaptation of a Hubbard science fiction novel. Critics roundly excoriated it as
one of the worst films of all time. Roger Ebert declared that it was like,
“…taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time. It’s
not merely bad, but unpleasant in a hostile way.”
Alt rocker Beck [Hansen] was raised in the
cult. His parents have been members for 30 years. When pressed in interviews to
admit his Scientology bona fides, he replies with a terse, ‘no comment.’
Obviously, Tom Cruise is the most
high-profile Scientologist in the world. For 20 years he has been assiduously
courted by David Miscavige. Both men traded effusive praise at a 2005
Scientology gala in
Scientologist Nicole Kidman often
accompanied Cruise to the church’s 500-acre compound at Gilman Hot Springs in
the
Snickering and jibes aside, Tom Cruise is a
major
And Scarlett Johansson was bounced from the
cast of Mission Impossible 3 after proving unreceptive to Cruise’s Scientology
pitch.
Notwithstanding all of the celebrity
endorsements, the church continues to suffer large financial losses. In May 2002,
they paid more than $8 million to former member Lawrence Wollersheim after a
22-year legal battle. Miscavige astutely surmised that payment of the money
would prevent additional evidence being presented in court that could expose
Scientology’s controversial IRS charitable tax exemption to review or repeal
and the risk that top executives could be jailed for corporate and asset fraud.
Perhaps the final word on Scientology
should go to Jamie Kennedy, great-grandson of L. Ron Hubbard. Kennedy is a
25-year old slam poet from
Hellspawn, indeed…
Book sources: Bare-Faced Messiah by Russell
Miller, L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman by Bent Corydon and L. Ron Hubbard
Jr., Religion Inc. by Stewart Lamont, Programmed to Kill by David McGowan,
Blood on the Altar by Craig Heimbichner, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley by
John Symonds, Sex and Rockets by John Carter, A Piece of Blue Sky by Jon Atack,
The Family by Ed Sanders, Open Secret: Gay Hollywood by David Ehrenstein,
Raising Hell by Michael Newton
Articles: July 1983 Penthouse interview
with L. Ron Hubbard Jr., Secret Agent 666: Aleister Crowley and British
Intelligence by Richard Spence in Volume 13, #3 Journal of Intelligence &
Counterintelligence, Scientology Revealed For the First Time in the Sunday
Times 5 October 1969, Hubbard Used Black Magic by George Wayne-Shelor
Clearwater Sun May 16, 1984, Scientology: The Cult of Greed by Richard Behar
TIME Magazine (cover story) May 1991, Friends Find Their Calling by Louis
Kilzer in the Rocky Mountain News February 28, 2004, At Inland Base
Scientologists Trained Top Gun by Claire Hoffman December 18, 2005 LA Times.
(Mark Owen is a freelance writer living in
End