From their book, The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival and Cult Formation.
by William Sims Bainbridge and Rodney Stark
Despite predictions of its demise, religion remains a vital force in contemporary society, and the academic study of religion is experiencing renewed interest. For decades, prominent social scientists anticipated that science, education, and modern economies would inevitably lead to the decline of religion. However, this prediction has not been borne out.
In their research, Stark and Bainbridge sought to understand why religion has persisted. Drawing on a wide range of data, including surveys, censuses, historical analyses, and fieldwork, they examine the diverse landscape of modern religion, from established denominations to fringe cults. Their findings are presented within a theoretical framework that views religion as a social phenomenon, addressing both universal human needs and the specific desires of those who lack economic and social advantages. By analyzing the various forms religion takes in the present day, Stark and Bainbridge offer insights into its endurance in a secular age and its potential trajectory in the future.
Scientology: To Be Perfectly Clear
A significant portion of the book delves into a general theory of religion developed by the authors. One chapter, titled “To be perfectly clear,” examines Scientology through the lens of this theory.
Pluralistic ignorance refers to a situation in which virtually every member of a group privately disagrees with what are considered to be the prevailing attitudes and beliefs of the group as a whole.
A key concept introduced by Stark and Bainbridge, derived from their research on UFO groups, is “Pluralistic Ignorance.” This concept sheds light on why Scientologists continue to participate despite not experiencing the promised benefits.
Scientology enforces strict rules against discussing its doctrines and practices, known as “Verbal Tech.” This prevents Scientologists from sharing their experiences and comparing notes. Additionally, every advancement within Scientology is accompanied by a public “success story.”
Stark and Bainbridge suggest that individual Scientologists who haven’t personally experienced the promised benefits hear these “success stories” and assume they are the only ones who haven’t achieved success. This leads them to persevere, hoping they will eventually experience the benefits themselves.
In reality, the authors propose, none of the participants are experiencing the promised benefits, but they all believe that everyone else is.
Abstract: Advances a theory to explain the apparent success of Scientology in raising its members to a superhuman level of functioning known as “clear”. It is argued that empirical evidence does not support this claim and that the state of “clear” “is not a state of personal development at all, but a social status conferring honor within the cult’s status system and demanding certain kinds of behavior from the person labeled `clear’.” Hubbard’s social mechanisms used to establish and defend the status of “clear” are discussed. Scientology caters to those people who suffer from chronic unhappiness or inability to perform at the level set for themselves. It does not solve the underlying problems; it merely “cures the complaints by ending the person’s freedom to complain.”
A clear can be tested for any and all psychoses, neuroses, compulsions and repressions and can be examined for any autogenetic (self-generated) diseases referred to as psychosomatic ills. These tests confirm the clear to be entirely without such ills or aberrations.
— L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics: Modern Science of Mental Health
This post is excerpted from The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival, and Cult Formation, by Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, University of California Press, 1985. Chapter 12, pp. 263283, supplemented with a section of chapter 21, pp. 483484 (Scientology in Europe) and portions of chapters 1 and 2 (Theory). You may order the Kindle versionof this book from www.amazon.com.
An early version of this chapter was given at the 1979 annual meeting of the Association for the Society of Religion and published as William Sims Bainbridge and Rodney Stark, “Scientology: To Be Perfectly Clear,” Sociological Analysis, 1980, 41:2, pp. 128136.
Rodney William Stark (July 8, 1934 – July 21, 2022) was an American sociologist of religion who was a longtime professor of sociology and of comparative religion at the University of Washington. At the time of his death he was the Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University, co-director of the university’s Institute for Studies of Religion, and founding editor of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion.
William Sims Bainbridge (born October 12, 1940) is an American sociologist who currently resides in Virginia. He is co-director of Cyber-Human Systems at the National Science Foundation (NSF).[1] He is the first Senior Fellow to be appointed by the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. Bainbridge is most well known for his work on the sociology of religion. Beginning in the 2010s he has published work studying the sociology of video gaming.
Scientology: To Be Perfectly Clear
Introduction
Fantasy image representing the religious magic of Scientology generated by Recraft.Ai.
Magic is risky merchandise. Sometimes it will seem to work. At other times, it will clearly fail. The more specific and serious the aims of magic, the more often it will be seen to fail. For example, magic meant to improve our spirits will succeed more often than magic meant to cause passionate response in a specific object of our affections. Magic intended to bring rain soon will more often seem to succeed than magic meant to bring rain tomorrow. Yet even unspecific magic can fail. Personal misfortunes can follow a ritual meant to cheer us up, and it might not rain again for a year.
In previous chapters, we have emphasized that religion as such is not vulnerable to empirical disconfirmation and that, for this reason, religions tend to discard the practice of magic. For similar reasons, magical client cults often are prompted to evolve into fully developed religions. In this chapter, we examine these matters closely through a case study of the Church of Scientology. This case is of special interest for a number of reasons. First, Scientology is not just another obscure cult movement, but an international organization of considerable magnitude. Second, Scientology has been the training ground for a host of other cult founders and has served as an inspiration for many new cult movements (Bainbridge, 1984). Third, its history has been extremely well documented, not only by journalists, scholars, and even government commissions and courts, but in exquisite detail through its own prolix publications. Finally, Scientology is of exceptional interest because it has not yet been able to escape its primary basis in extremely specific and serious magical claims.
This chapter examines the heroic attempt of Scientology to preserve its high tension magic indeed, to convince clients it has delivered on its impossible promises and the extreme lengths to which it went to protect its magic from disconfirmation. But this struggle is doomed to failure.
It will be noted that a significant event took place one year following the publication of The Future of Religion. In 1986, Scientology faced a significant turning point with the death of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. His passing posed a challenge for the group, which heavily revolved around his persona. A relatively unknown 25-year-old, David Miscavige, emerged as the new leader.
Miscavige had been a member since childhood and a favorite of Hubbard’s, but he had operated largely behind the scenes. When he announced Hubbard’s death at the Hollywood Palladium, many in the audience were unfamiliar with him.
Interestingly, it was around this time that Mimi Rogers introduced Tom Cruise to Scientology. They married soon after, and Cruise would later become a prominent advocate for the organization, forming a close relationship with Miscavige.
Scientology’s status as a recognized religion in the US has a complex history. The IRS revoked its recognition for years, leading to a billion-dollar tax bill. Scientology then pressured the IRS through numerous lawsuits, ultimately regaining its religious status in 2003.
This “victory” was celebrated in a grand “the war is over” event, where Miscavige boasted about the legal battles. This solidified their religious image and largely resolved the tax issue.
Today, Scientology raises millions in tax-free “donations,” often used for real estate and renovations of existing properties, which are then presented as “new churches” to members. As a tax-exempt organization, they avoid property taxes on these properties worldwide.
Bainbridge and Stark obviously misjudged that one.
Early in its history, Scientology switched from a pure client cult to one that presented two faces to the world. Many a recruit was told the group’s specific claims were based on science and that the most marvelous real benefits would be received almost immediately. But, at the same time, the group claimed the official protection of religious status. That this double game was a very difficult one for the cult to win will be evident as we see the extreme tactics required to defend Scientology’s magic.
Although this chapter is primarily theoretical, it rests on an empirical base. Bainbridge (1970) carried out six months of intensive ethnographic research inside the Boston branch of this group. Subsequently, we obtained a large library of Scientology publications, reports by outsiders and former members, and literature from groups related to this important innovative religion.
Chris Shelton, Ex-Scientologist and Sea Org member of 27 years:
Unfortunately for Scientologists, there is no actual evidence in the scientific sense for the claims made by Scientology, mostly because the claims that are made in ads such as these are 100% subjective. They refer to one’s state of mind or “inner peace” and that sort of thing which are not measurable or reducible to scientific study. This is very much done on purpose and the reason for that is because when Hubbard was first touting Dianetics as the “modern science of mental health” he was making some very absurd and unsubstantiated claims: that Dianetics would cure cancer, leukemia, arthritis and poor eyesight, for example. He claimed that a Dianetic “Clear” would have full 3D eidetic recall of his entire life, that he would be able to compute answers to questions at a speed comparable to a computer, etc. I’m not making this up – it’s all in Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, chapter on “The Clear”. He continued making these kinds of claims when he started Scientology. However, over the years the yardstick changed and these medical claims had to be put to rest because not only were they not being achieved but it’s actually fraudulent to be saying you can do stuff like this when you can’t. There are plenty of Scientologists who have achieved its highest levels who have all kinds of health issues and who die of cancer, suffer from emphysema and arthritis, require glasses until the day they die, etc.
My point is that the “states of being” that Scientology provides are all purely subjective and can be individually re-defined by anyone who mean just about anything they want it to mean. A Dianetic Clear, for example, is now defined as “a being who no longer has his own reactive mind”. How would you know? How could you prove such a state? Or the level of OT III is supposed to provide “Freedom from Overwhelm”. What does that even mean? Overwhelm from what? When? How? Totally subjective states.
In our view, Scientology has great difficulty protecting its magic from empirical disconfirmation, a view that may not be held by all of our colleagues or (at least officially) by many practicing Scientologists. Yet there is much public evidence that the defense of its magic is a tough job for the cult. For one thing, Scientology has taken several authors and publishers to court, seeking to stop publication of debunking reports. Among the popular books involved were Scientology, The Now Religion by George Malko, The Scandal of Scientology by Paulette Cooper.
In the annals of religious persecution, few cases are as chilling and outrageous as Tom Cruise’s Scientology religion and its relentless campaign to literally destroy the life of journalist Paulette Cooper.
Certainly, Scientology has good reason to resent the attacks made upon it by the secular institutions of society over the years, which are, typically, aggressive rejections of the cult’s claims. One of the more dramatic moments in this continuing struggle came in 1963 when agents of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration raided the Founding Church of Scientology in Washington, D.C., confiscating “EMeter” electronic equipment allegedly used in improper attempts to cure diseases, action finally reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals six years later. For a time, both the Australian and British governments seemed bent on banning Scientology, and disputes with the American government have continued unabated, marked by such extreme indicators of tension with the socio-cultural environment as another government raid in 1977, this time on the Los Angeles branch.
NOTE: When Scientology goes to court, it likes to play rough — very rough.
Food and Drug Administration agents who raided the headquarters of an organization known as the Founding Church of Scientology six years ago confiscated neither food nor drugs. Instead, they carted off books, pamphlets, and a collection of electronic gadgets called E-meters. In court, the Government said that the literature had made misleading statements about the machines’ curative powers and had thus violated the fed eral law against improper labeling. A federal jury agreed. Last week, however, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., reversed that decision.
Until the Government can refute the claim that Scientology is a religion, said the court, the E-meters and their accompanying leaflets are protected from seizure by the right of freedom of worship—which puts them beyond the reach of the FDA.
Although Scientology has frequently succeeded in getting unfavorable court decisions overturned on appeal, often relying on the protection of its status as a religious organization, it has suffered from many attacks by dissatisfied customers of its magic. In 1979, an Oregon court awarded just over $2 million in damages to Julie Titchbourne, supporting her claim that Scientology had defrauded her in its promises to improve her life. Following a preparatory judgment by the state supreme court, the jury had been instructed that Scientology did not enjoy religious immunity for any promises that were not religious in nature (Lang, 1979 ).
Jubilant Church of Scientology members called a judge’s rejection of a $39 million fraud award a victory for freedom of religion, but the attorney for the ex-member who brought suit vowed to continue the fight.
Multnomah County Circuit Judge Donald Londer voided a $39 million fraud verdict against the church Tuesday, declaring a mistrial in the suit by former member Julie Christofferson Titchbourne, 27, who was not in the courtroom.
In a ruling frequently critical of his own conduct during the 11-week trial, Londer said the case had gone astray from the fraud accusations leveled by Titchbourne and had become an attack on the Church of Scientology itself.
The judge also said Titchbourne’s lawyer, Garry McMurry, violated the judge’s instructions by telling jurors in his closing arguments that Scientology is not a religion. Londer said the Oregon Court of Appeals previously ruled that Scientology is a religion.
The judge also took McMurry to task for comparing Scientology to totalitarian communism and referring to church founder L. Ron Hubbard as a ‘warped sociopath.’
From our perspective, many of Scientology’s claims promise specific benefits, capable of empirical test but offered without public evidence of their truth.Thus, Scientology provides the specific compensators of magic, perhaps overshadowing the general compensators that mark religion. In effect, the Oregon courts decided that many of Scientology’s claims were indeed magical, not religious, and thus susceptible to empirical refutation and legal attack. The following analysis demonstrates this point, with particular focus on the chief benefit originally promised by the cult.
Clear Status
Scientology, the vast psychotherapy cult founded by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, offers members an alleged state of high mental development known as clear. A recent advertisement urged: “Go Clear For the first time in your life you will be truly yourself. On the Clearing Course you will smoothly achieve the stable State of Clear with: Good Memory, Raised I.Q., Strong Will Power, Magnetic Personality, Amazing Vitality, Creative Imagination.” For years, going clear has been the prime goal for Scientologists and for members of Hubbard’s earlier Dianetics movement. Outsiders may doubt that Scientology actually can create clears, as clear persons are called, but Clear News, a Scientology newspaper, reported that a total of 16,849 people had reached this marvelous state by the middle of 1979.
WHAT IS THE STATE OF CLEAR?
Clear is the name of a state achieved through auditing and describes a being who no longer has his own reactive mind, the hidden source of irrational behavior, unreasonable fears, upsets and insecurities. Without a reactive mind, individuals regain their basic personality, self-determinism and, in essence, become much, much more themselves.
The full glory of the state of Clear has no comparable description in any writings existing in our culture. It is a goal Man has dreamed of achieving for more than 2500 years, yet the state of Clear is far above anything anyone even conceived of previously. Indeed, that one could become something far higher and better than a human being, personally and in a single lifetime, is a brand-new concept.
The state of Clear does exist today and is attainable by all. Thousands upon thousands of Scientologists all over the world are Clear and more achieve this state with every passing day.
Perhaps Scientology’s claims are true, and these legions really have attained a supernormal level of mental functioning and emotional health. But there are good reasons for doubting the testimonials of even 16,849 Scientologists.First, other techniques based on tested principles of behavioral science cannot produce a state like clear. Second, controlled, scientific studies verifying the characteristics claimed for clears have not flooded the standard journals. Third, although Scientologists have created a vigorous religious movement, they have not taken charge of major secular institutions as true supermen and superwomen could. Fourth, reports by independent observers (including one of us) who have interacted with clears do not convey the impression that clears are markedly superior people. Of course, alternate explanations exist for each of these four points, but they render plausible the view that the claims for clear are false and raise the question of how thousands of individuals could be seriously mistaken about their own abilities.
This chapter offers an analysis explaining how people might agree they had indeed gone clear without a significant real change in their objective abilities or even in their subjective state. Although inspired by six months’ participant observation inside the cult and by a large body of literature by and about Hubbard’s movement, this chapter is theoretical rather than ethnographic.
Our central thesis is that clear is not a state of personal development at all, but a social status conferring honor within the cult’s status system and demanding certain kinds of behavior from the person labeled clear. Such externally demonstrable qualities as good memory and high IQ may have nothing to do with it. Although our theory of clear is designed to explain acceptance of this status within Scientology, it might be adapted to explain a variety of similar statuses of alleged personal perfection, such as salvation in fundamentalist Christianity and satori in Zen.
Hubbard first described clear in an article in the May 1950 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. He began by discussing “the optimum brain,” modeled on “the optimum computing machine.” Hinting that his readers might personally acquire an optimum brain, he said, “modified by viewpoint and educational data, it should be always right, its answers never wrong” (Hubbard, 1950a:46). A calculator can give wrong answers if, for example, a constant five is added to every computation because of false programming. To restore the calculator’s mathematical perfection, we need only clear the five. To restore perfect functioning to any intact human brain, we need only clear false programming acquired in the owner’s past experiences. The task of Dianetics, as Hubbard called his early techniques, was to develop the right procedures for successful clearing. In the bible of his cult, Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health, Hubbard’s (1950b:30) claims for clear were extremely optimistic.
A clear can be tested for any and all psychoses, neuroses, compulsions and repressions (all aberrations) and can be examined for any autogenic (selfgenerated) diseases referred to as psychosomatic ills. These tests confirm the clear to be entirely without such ills or aberrations. Additional tests of his intelligence indicate to [sic] it to be high above the current norm. Observation of his activity demonstrates that he pursues existence with vigor and satisfaction.
The sense perceptions of a clear are said to be more vivid and precise than those of a preclear, a neophyte still working to go clear. The clear is unrepressed. A clear does not have any “mental voices”! He does not think vocally. He thinks without articulation of his thoughts and his thoughts are not in voice terms…. Clears do not get colds…. A clear … has complete recall of everything which has ever happened to him or anything he has ever studied. He does mental computations, such as those of chess, for example, which a normal would do in half an hour, in ten or fifteen seconds…. The dianetic clear is to a current normal individual as the current normal is to the severely insane. (Hubbard, 1950b:38,101,107,179,15)
In 1950, Hubbard thought that clears might be produced in short order; yet the movement now says that the first member did not go clear until early 1966 (Hubbard, 1968b:111). Apparently, it took this long for Hubbard to develop the social mechanisms to establish and defend clear status.
For most of its history, Scientology has been synonymous with L. Ron Hubbard. For a few years in the late 1960s, though, a slim, fair-haired South African named John McMaster held an exalted position as the “World’s First Real Clear” (designated thus by Hubbard) and the first and only “Pope of Scientology.” His charisma and spirituality made him a highly effective spokesman for Scientology and attracted thousands to his talks at Saint Hill Manor in England and other locations around the world. Celebrity Scientologists like William Burroughs flocked to receive auditing from him. Bent Corydon, who attended McMaster’s talks, felt that they were “evidence to me that he had attained and experienced something paranormal, existential, or whatever words people use in a vain attempt to convey whatever is considered a true ‘religious experience.’ John’s glow of affection, and his other spiritual qualities, seemed evidence of the achievability of the most cherished dreams of Scientologists. The fact that he was Hubbard’s representative and ‘the world’s first real Clear’ gave credence to Hubbard’s many written claims. John’s talks and ‘presence’ reminded each listener of their own brushes with this ‘reality of our true godlike nature.’”
He developed innumerable rules, procedures, and doctrines over these years; but our theory conceptualizes them in terms of four main interdependent strategies: (1) prohibition of independent creation and evaluation of clears, (2) development of a hierarchy of statuses below clear, (3) isolation of the preclear at the crucial stage in upward progress, (4) development of a hierarchy of statuses above clear. Running throughout these is the theme of costs and rewards for the committed Scientologist, failing to achieve clear is extremely costly, but the apparently ever increasing rewards to be gained rising through the ranks cannot be obtained outside the Scientology organization. We will examine the strategies, in turn, as Scientology employed them in the 1970s.
Prohibition of Independent Evaluation
Hubbard’s first Dianetics publications urged readers to try the technique, becoming auditors (therapists) either by simply following the instructions in the first book or by joining in the formal Dianetics movement. A strong impression was conveyed that clears had already been produced and that a skilled auditor could duplicate Hubbard’s successes. Dr. J. A. Winter, who collaborated with Hubbard in setting up the movement, says Hubbard claimed “that a `clear’ had been obtained in as few as twenty hours of therapy.” But Winter himself never saw a single convincing clear during his association with Hubbard.“I have not reached that state myself, nor have I been able to produce that state in any of my patients. I have seen some individuals who are supposed to have been ‘clear,’ but their behavior does not conform to the definition of the state. Moreover, an individual supposed to have been ‘clear’ has undergone a relapse into conduct which suggests an incipient psychosis” (Winter, 1951:34; cf. Wallis, 1976:85).
Joseph Augustus Winter, an American medical doctor and “psychosomatacist”, had previously served on the board of directors and as the medical director of L. Ron Hubbard’s Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation (HDRF). He also wrote the 1950 original introduction to Hubbard’s Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. Winter resigned from the HDRF in October 1950, stating “there was a difference between the ideals inherent within the dianetics hypothesis and the actions of the Foundation”. He also felt that Dianetic techniques were potentially dangerous if performed without medical training and disapproved of the lack of scientific evidence supporting Hubbard’s claims. Prior to their falling out, Winter had stated that the Dianetic technique of auditing had cured his six-year-old son of fears of ghosts and the dark.
Martin Gardner reports that, in 1950, Hubbard presented a young woman to a Los Angeles public meeting, saying she was a clear with a perfect memory. “In the demonstration which followed, however, she failed to remember a single formula in physics (the subject in which she was majoring), or the color of Hubbard’s tie when his back was turned. At this point, a large part of the audience got up and left” (Gardner, 1957 :270).
As the highlight of the evening approached, there was a palpable sense of excitement and anticipation in the packed hall. A hush descended on the audience when at last Hubbard stepped up to the microphone to introduce the ‘world’s first clear’. She was, he said, a young woman by the name of Sonya Bianca, a physics major and pianist from Boston.Among her many newly acquired attributes, he claimed she had ‘full and perfect recall of every moment of her life’, which she would be happy to demonstrate. He turned slowly to the wings on one side of the stage and said: ‘Will you come out now please, Sonya?’
The audience erupted once more in applause as a thin, obviously nervous, girl stepped out of the wings and into a spotlight which followed her to centre stage, where she was embraced by Hubbard. In a tremulous voice she told the meeting that Dianetics had cleared up her sinus trouble and cured her ‘strange and embarrassing’ allergy to paint. ‘For days after I came in contact with paint I had a painful itching in my eyebrows,’ she stammered. ‘Now both conditions have cleared up and I feel like a million dollars.’ She answered a few routine questions from Hubbard, who then made the mistake of inviting questions from the audience: they had clearly been expecting rather more spectacular revelations.
‘What did you have for breakfast on October 3 1942?’somebody yelled. Miss Bianca understandably looked somewhat startled, blinked in the lights and shook her head. ‘What’s on page 122 of Dianetics, The Modern Science of Mental Health?’ someone else asked. Miss Bianca opened her mouth but no words came out. Similar questions came thick and fast, amid much derisive laughter. Many in the audience took pity on the wretched girl and tried to put easier questions, but she was so terrified that she could not even remember simple formulae in physics, her own subject.
As people began getting up and walking out of the auditorium, one man noticed that Hubbard had momentarily turned his back on the girl and shouted, ‘OK, what colour necktie is Mr Hubbard wearing?’ The world’s first ‘clear’ screwed up her face in a frantic effort to remember, stared into the hostile blackness of the auditorium, then hung her head in misery. It was an awful moment.
Hubbard, sweat glistening in beads on his forehead, stepped forward and brought the demonstration swiftly to an end.Quickwitted as always, he proffered an explanation for Miss Bianca’s impressive lapses of memory. The problem, Dianetically speaking, was that when he called her forward, asking her to come out ‘now’, the ‘now’ had frozen her in ‘present time’ and blocked her total recall. It was not particularly convincing, but it was the best he could do in the circumstances.
Forrie Ackerman, who was at the Shrine that night to see his client perform, summed up the feelings of many people who were there: ‘I was somewhat disappointed not to see a vibrant woman in command of herself and situation. She certainly was not my idea of a “clear”.’
——–
Hubbard was apparently so embarrassed by the debacle, it would be another 16 years before he claimed that he had finally produced the world’s first true Clear in the form of John McMaster, a fascinating figure in his own right.
But what happened to Sonya? After her night at the Shrine, she seemed to vanish.
The second Dianetics book (Hubbard, 1951) continued to claim that the great benefits of treatment could be measured objectively and listed a number of diseases it could cure. These strong claims may have attracted sufferers seeking real solutions for specific problems, but they left the entire Dianetics movement open to being discredited in public. The safer course was to prevent outside evaluation, especially of clears, insulating individual followers from knowledgeable independent assaults on their hopes.
Not only was failure a threat, so was the alleged success of rivals.Sociologist Roy Wallis (1976:84) reports, “A severe challenge to Hubbard’s standing in the movement came when independent auditors began to proclaim that they had produced `clears.’ Such auditors were eagerly sought for guidance, training and auditing, and rapidly moved into positions of leadership in the Dianetics community.” Dianetics had been presented as a science, a public process of discovery, open to all who would experiment with the new techniques. This meant not only that some, like Winter, would be disappointed at the empirical results, but also that more sanguine auditors could claim to equal or surpass Hubbard’s achievements. This, presumably, was one of the main reasons Hubbard recast his science as a religion, establishing the authority of a prophet with the incorporation of the Founding Church of Scientology in 1955 (Hubbard, 1959; Malko, 1970; Wallis, 1976).
Today, clear status can be conferred only by high ranking ministers of the church, and clears are not presented for examination by outsiders. Clears are discouraged from demonstrating paranormal abilities even for lower ranking insiders. Persons taking the clearing course are enjoined from communicating about it to anyone other than those directly in charge of it (Hubbard, 1968b: 112). Attainment of new status, however, is marked by triumphant ceremony, especially in the case of clear. Each new clear is given a unique international clear number, engraved on a silver bracelet, awarded a “beautiful Permanent certificate,” and “joyously announced” in a Scientology newspaper. Clears have higher status than the many preclears below them, whether or not their individual abilities have increased.
Scientology does not recognize claims to status of members of rival groups, such as Jack Horner’s schismatic Dianology movement, which also attempts to produce clears (Horner, 1970).
Jack Horner was a good example of early Scientology. He ran ACCs, in 1956 Scientology published his book Summary of Scientology, he was active in England, USA and South Africa, he left Scientology 1965, formed a “splinter” group and gave a series of lectures to the group many of which represent original Scientology.
Thus, clear has become a status within the social system of Scientology, rather than an objective state of being. Aside from the social power it confers within the cult, it is a compensator. Within the limits of the cult, it is not vulnerable to challengers from outsiders.
A Hierarchy of Lower Statuses
The years from 1950 to 1966 may have been frustrating for persons who had long followed Hubbard in the quest for clear, but, during this period, the movement developed a complex structure of other statuses to distribute among members.One kind of status was professional, which designated various levels of skill and training in performing the therapy. By 1954, these went as high as a doctor of Scientology, or D.Scn. degree (Hubbard, 1968a:12). Since then, the number of levels of auditor has steadily increased, each empowered to perform therapy on preclears and clears of different statuses. Of course, these auditors have a stake in maintaining conviction in their own successes. Their training is time-consuming and expensive. The honor they receive is partly dependent on their clients’ satisfaction.
Another kind of status invented was that of release. When Hubbard had to confront the fact that his first clears were not very clear, he redefined their status as Dianetics release, a condition of superior improvement, but not yet clear.Hubbard developed literally hundreds of mental exercises and therapy routines, each supposed to deal with a problem of the human mind identified by the ever growing ideology of the cult. As the years passed, levels of release proliferated, until, in 1970, there were five basic release statuses, listed here from the lowest (grade 0) to highest (grade IV): communications release, problems release, relief release, freedom release, and ability release (a sixth release grade is awarded in the midst of the clearing process). Below these levels is the mass of newcomers, active in various introductory classes, the main effect of which is to create social bonds linking the neophytes and incorporating them in the social structure of preclears, who stand in the release hierarchy.
Many of the lower level therapeutic procedures seem well designed to train the preclear in compliance to the role demands of clear. Perhaps the most important attribute acquired is a confident acceptance of impossible ideas with a consequent willingness to make statements that outsiders would find incredible. At the very beginning, in the so-called Alice Games of the Communication Course, preclears are made to recite wild sentences from Alice in Wonderland as if they were their own confident statements about reality. Later, in Dianetics and Scientology auditing, they will come to “recall” traumatic experiences in the womb, as their mother tried to abort them, and to relive the adventures of previous incarnations centuries ago (Hubbard, 1950b, 1958). On the one hand, preclears are trained to express their emotions through the radical ideology of the cult, and, on the other, numerous exercises reward them for inhibiting spontaneous expressions of feeling. In one of the most basic, TR0, they must sit immobile and unresponding for up to two hours, regardless of what stimuli are bombarding them.
After as much as a year or more of work at the lower levels, a preclear is probably heavily committed, having invested time, money, and emotion in the clearing process.To abandon the quest at grade IV release, when clear is supposedly within reach, would be to lose a great investment that could be preserved at little apparent extra cost. Although they originally may have been invented to mollify impatient preclears while they awaited Hubbard’s discovery of real clears, the release grades now serve to commit Scientologists to extreme exertions to achieve clear and give them psychological momentum in its direction.
Isolation of the Preclear
Preclears will have received their release grades and other preliminary treatment and training at their local Church of Scientology or at the mission branch of a church. But when it comes time to go clear, they must travel to one of the advanced organizations or to Flag Land Base. Since the late 1960s, there have been three “advanced orgs” in the United States (Los Angeles), Britain (East Grinstead, Sussex), and Denmark (Copenhagen). In 1976, an extensive Flag Land Base was established near Tampa, Florida, offering a full range of advanced processing, including many courses and levels not available even at advanced orgs.
Preclears must pilgrimage to these four centers from as far away as churches in Australia and South Africa. Each center is organizationally and physically separate, even from its local Scientology church. At the org or at Flag, preclears are removed from the social supports for their old status in the cult, isolated from the audience for which they will later play the clear role, and subjected to an unfamiliar situation among strangers, fraught with psychological challenges.
To this point, preclears have always been relatively passive recipients of auditors’ treatments, but now they must complete a solo auditor’s course and take responsibility for raising themselves up to clear. Several of the earlier processes involved the use of a simple lie detector, the E-Meter.The preclear would sit on one side of a desk or table, clutching tincan electrodes, one in each hand, while the auditor would sit on the other side, asking penetrating questions and giving commands while privately watching the dial that gave an approximate reading on the preclear’s emotional responses. As part of our empirical research on Scientology and related cults, we obtained an EMeter, received training in its use, and experimented extensively with it. In addition to giving a “scientific” flavor to the therapy sessions, the EMeter really does guide the auditor to some extent and increases his or her authority with the preclear.
Scientology, like the tombs of the pharaohs of old, is an enigmatic and labyrinthine layer cake of intrigue from which only the most lithe and sinewy escape. Stories about the inner workings of the church manage to leak out from time to time, and somehow the added details only raise more questions. Billion-year contracts and sweatshop wages and celebrity endorsements of the route to true enlightenment only leave the outside observer more curious than when they started reading the Gordian knot of articles on the subject, asking again and again, as if trying to fill an endless void with one guttural syllable, “Huh?”
With so much to unpack, it might be wise to start in the same place that many soon-to-be Scientologists do: with an E-Meter.
Emeter model available onebay.If this one disappears, just followthis linkfor more.
THE E-METER, SCIENTOLOGY, AND YOU!
The E-Meter, or Electropsychometer, is a lot of things to a lot of people. According to the official Scientology website, it’s a “religious artifact” used to measure “psyche, the human soul, spirit, or mind.” According to Carnegie Mellon University, it’s basically an off-brand lie detector. Originally created by a chiropractor named Volney Mathison and used in the early days of Scientology, the OG design fell out of favor with the Church when Mathison decided against handing over the patent to his creation. A few years later, one of L. Ron Hubbard’s followers made some adjustments to the first version, had it patented under Hubbard’s name, and the E-Meter readings became an essential part of the “auditing” process.
During an auditing session, a person (referred to as a “preclear” by the Church) makes physical contact with a pair of electrodes and talks through different images and emotions from their past. In theory, the E-Meter measures the spiritual response that a person undergoes while thinking these thoughts. In scientific, objective practice, it gives a reading of the electrical conductivity of a person’s skin.
If this seems harsh, it might be worth mentioning that the FDA had some harsh words about the Church’s early claims regarding the E-Meter’s capabilities, which ended with a court order that all E-Meters be labeled with a warning stating that, among other things, it was “not medically or scientifically capable of improving the health or bodily functions of anyone.”
After months or even years of passively receiving authoritative auditing, in preparation to go clear, the preclears must learn to play both roles simultaneously, holding the two cans (separated) in one hand while operating the EMeter with the other. All alone, they will process themselves up the last few steps to clear. Thus, at the last moment, Scientology transfers responsibility for achieving clear status to the preclears. If anything goes wrong, the fault is theirs. Isolated from fellow preclears, they are prevented from launching a serious challenge to the validity of the process.
There remains the possibility that the person will seek help, either before or after being labeled clear. Help is available, but at extra cost. Unlike other religions, Scientology charges precise amounts for its services. In mid-1979, the Los Angeles org was charging $3,692.87 for the solo audit course, $1,777.84 for the grade VI release that followed it, and $2,844.54 for the clearing course. Solo assists, if done separately from the solo audit course, cost $923.22 for those individuals who sought this help. Among the most expensive special aids, New Era Dianetics, offered to clears, was sold at about $250 an hour. How many hours an individual needs depends on how long it takes him or her to decide to play the assigned role and stop asking for help. The org offers package deals, and, in mid-1979, 50 hours of New Era Dianetics suitable for clears was available for a straight price of $12,603.61. Over the years, Hubbard devised many “case remedies” and other special processes. The alternatives to acceptance of the clear role can be expensive.
Of course, when the new clears return home, they are likely to defend their valuable status in the group by making a public show of being clear. They may give inflated testimonials, whether formal statements of how wonderful they feel or more subtle hints about their newfound confidence and ability. Given the social isolation of the clearing process, the new clear probably operates in a condition that social scientists call pluralistic ignorance: each person thinks that his or her experience is unique, but in fact it is identical to that of many others. In this case, clears may feel that their state is not as good as those of their fellows, but be reluctant to admit it. They may privately wonder how they can become as successful a clear as their fellows, misled by their inflated testimonials and ignorant of the fact that each of them has similar private reservations (cf. Schanck, 1932).
Our field research in other cults suggests that pluralistic ignorance is a widespread mechanism by which faith is maintained, or at least insulated from overt expressions of doubt. For example, Stark spent a considerable period in the early 1960s with the flying saucer cults that flourished at that time, observing “contactees” persons who claimed to have had direct personal contact with creatures from outer space and even to have taken interplanetary trips with them. A great number of separate clues strongly encouraged the conclusion that most contactees were aware that they were making it all up. Some of them, among the most successful, were not bothered by this knowledge because they were con artists of long standing who were merely exploiting the latest sting. But the majority of contactees appeared to believe the claims of the other contactees and to think they were the only ones who were shamming
We have also found evidence that some quite successful contemporary cult leaders are conscious frauds, aware that they have no psychic or mystical powers, but still think some other people are genuine psychics and mystics. Thus, we have the odd spectacle of cult leaders who have thoroughly convinced a group of adherents that they alone possess access to the divine mysteries yet who continue to seek their own religious answers by dabbling incognito in other cult movements, unbeknownst to their followers.
In these examples, pluralistic ignorance was sustained without benefit of an organization designed to promote and preserve such misperceptions. In Scientology, such a design is highly developed and perfected. Individuals confer the title of clear upon themselves. If they privately think they are not as clear as they hoped to be, they are at fault. But to admit their shortcomings will only cost them their coveted status in the group and a great deal of money for the additional therapy needed to become more adequate.Indeed, one could usefully think of Scientology as an elaborate and most effective behavior modification program in which potent reinforcement schedules are employed to cause individuals to learn how to act like clears and to keep their doubts and problems to themselves (cf. Bandura, 1969). Scientology may or may not help anyone solve psychological problems. But it most certainly makes it extremely expensive for people to admit their therapy has been less than a resounding success. It is a therapy in which patients rapidly are taught to keep silent about their dissatisfactions and to perceive satisfaction in the silence of other members.
It is vital for the movement that clears not communicate dissatisfaction to preclears. One aid to this is that the clears are finished with the basic processing offered by their local church and will come around the place only for group meetings at which they are one of a parade of celebrities, socially rewarded for playing the clear role well. If they are members of the church staff, they will have regular contact with preclears, but thorough training and constant reinforcement will guide them to play a convincing clear. Of course, expressions of dissatisfaction may begin to leak to Scientology friends and relatives. Hubbard developed a final strategy to sustain the clear’s optimism: minimizing the significance of the clear state and creating several levels of status above clear.
A Hierarchy of Higher Statuses
Although the first Dianetics book remains required reading for all Scientologists, its descriptions of clear are no longer definitive.The Scientology Abridged Dictionary (Hubbard, 1965) defines the word as follows: “CLEAR: (noun) A thetan who can be at cause knowingly and at will over mental matter, energy, space and time as regards the First Dynamic (survival for self). The state of Clear is above the Release Grades (all of which are requisite to Clearing) and is attained by completion of the Clearing Course at an Advanced Organization.”
The second sentence is quite intelligible and summarizes information we have already given about how the status of clear fits into the Scientology hierarchy. The first sentence is utterly unintelligible to persons untrained in cult doctrine and therefore does not represent a claim that is disconfirmable by outsiders. The word thetan might be translated as “soul of a human being” and to be “at cause … over mental matter, energy, space and time” means “good mental and emotional health.”
Cult advertisements and informal comments vary, but, in general, it is no longer boldly asserted that clears are geniuses or that they never get colds.Clear status has been mystified and subtly deflated. Even the most doctrinally learned Scientologists may be unsure exactly what palpable qualities a clear is supposed to manifest, other than confidence and loyalty to the cult. Therefore, new clears may not feel justified in criticizing the quality of the clear experience, but they still may want more than they have received. The original promise of clear, and much more, is offered by a still growing series of levels above clear, the operating thetan or “OT” statuses.The “first dynamic” overcome by clears is only one of eight dynamics, each representing a sphere of human motivation the first is the drive for personal survival; the second is the urge toward sexual reproduction. Mastery of dynamics beyond the first, and ultimately full control over the physical as well as mental universe, are among the goals for OTs.
For OT processing, the Scientologist must return to the advanced org. and a common pattern is periods of normal life and money raising at home punctuated by trips to gain one or two more levels. A February 1980 price list from the Los Angeles org offers a package deal for basic processing from OT I through OT VIII, costing $15,760.03, not counting special treatments. OT processing continues the exchange of wealth for status that began when the individual entered Scientology and is the chief way a member may remain an active Scientologist after going clear.The cult does not worship a deity, and, except for lectures and occasional celebrations, a clear who had not become a professional auditor would have little cause to come to the church. Outside Scientology, clear status has no meaning; so the status can be maintained, let alone increased, only by further expenditure for further therapy.
Progress up the Scientology status pyramid remains slow, and only just over a thousand persons had achieved OT VII at the Los Angeles org by mid-1979. A high proportion of these probably consists of professional auditors committed by all aspects of their lives to the cult. Therefore, the value of the top OT levels has not been disconfirmed within the cult, and they may be followed by yet other levels in future years. Essential to preservation of their value are two conditions: (1) maintaining secrecy and isolation of these statuses and (2) keeping the numbers of people at the top of the Scientology pyramid relatively small. If everyone were at the top, and everyone could see that even OTs are not superhuman, the entire structure might be threatened. But, for the time being, the OT levels serve to defend clear and other lower statuses by offering continued hope that ultimately all the promised benefits will be provided.
From Magic to Religion
Clear is not a state of being, but a status in a hierarchical social structure. It demands that its incumbents play the role of superior person and surrounds them with strategic mechanisms that prevent departure from prescribed behavior. Many people come to Scientology with specific complaints about chronic unhappiness or inability to perform at the level they demand of themselves. We suspect that Scientology cures the complaints by ending the person’s freedom to complain, not by solving the underlying problem.
Of course, for some people suffering low self esteem or anomie, the status of clear may be an efficacious compensator for the problem, even though it is only a status and does not transform the person’s basic nature. Our analysis is meant to explain the successful creation and maintenance of clear status without assuming that anyone necessarily benefits objectively from Scientology. If clear were a true reward rather than a compensator, it would not be so closely guarded from evaluation.
After we completed the analysis presented in the foregoing pages, we received a new piece of evidence supporting our interpretations. In 1978, Hubbard once again redefined clear, reducing the importance and thus the vulnerability of this status. Scientology is always changing, and the fluidity of its claims and practices shows how precarious is its definition of reality. As the cult becomes larger, better established, and more familiar to outsiders, its effort to convince members that they have achieved the impossible gets progressively more difficult. Calling 1978 “the year of lightning-fast tech” (tech means auditing technology), Hubbard (1979:6) announced, “We are making Clears these days in many cases so fast that Clearing Course bracelet numbers are jumping up by the thousands per month. We are also finding that some old Dianetic pcs [preclears] had gone clear and the auditors didn’t even notice.”
“He [Hubbard] told me he was obsessed by ‘an insatiable lust for power and money.’ He said it very emphatically. He thought it wasn’t possible to get enough. He didn’t say it as if it was a fault, just his frustration that he couldn’t get enough.” From a 1986 interview of former Senior Case Supervisor International, Class 12, and Hubbard’s former personal auditor (counselor), David Mayo. He broke free in 1983, but took years to fully recover.In late 1978, the state of “dianetic clear” was announced. Within a few months two other “states of clear” were introduced: the state of “natural clear” and the state of “past life clear”.This change had two immediate consequences:1. The number of people attesting (correctly or falsely) to having attained the “state of clear” increased enormously.
2. During and after that period, there was a considerable amount of upset and confusion about the “state of clear”.
There were those who considered that a dianetic clear was not a “real clear” and that the only “real clear” was one who (like them) had done the Clearing Course. Some felt that they had gone clear in their last lifetime. Some felt that dianetic clear explained why they had never been able to run dianetic auditing successfully. A large number of auditors, C/Ses, and others felt that there were a lot of people falsely attesting to the state of clear and either…
a. Felt unethical about letting the person attest, or
b. Tried to handle it and ended up involuntarily invalidating the pc. No matter how this was “handled”, it has persisted as a problem. So we can at least assume that there are aspects of it that haven’t been taken into account and handled.
Let us examine more closely what happened in late 1978 and early 1979. LRH was being audited and concluded that one of the things wrong with his case was that he had been audited on dianetic auditing after he had attained the “state of clear” (which he at first thought had occured in objective processing). He then issued a bulletin forbidding the running of dianetic auditing on clears and made various other technical and administrative changes.
He cancelled the state of “keyed out clear” by stating that it was the same state as “clear”. He changed the definition of “clear” (and subsequently changed it several more times). He order ed that the folders of pcs (and the pcs themselves) who might have gone clear in orgs and missions be routed to Advanced Orgs. This action resulted in an emptying out of the orgs and missions and a flood of people arriving at the AOs.
Throughout this period, the definition of clear and/or dianetic clear kept changing – in the direction of dilution. Thus people came to expect less and less from the “state of clear”, while the number of new clears (and thus new arrivals at AOs and Gross Income) steadily increased. None of the new definitions of “clear”, and none of the new techniques for handling clears or programming them for further actions, really solved any of the problems caused by the advent of dianetic clear.
It is of interest that the definition of “clear” had already been changed several times between its first definition in DMSMH (The book, Dianetics: Modern Science of Mental Health, 1950, by L. Ron Hubbard) and the time the idea of “clear” was put forth. In DMSMH, a clear was said to be 4.0 on the tone scale, with no aberrations (held down sevens), no psychoses, neuroses, nor psychosomatic illnesses. The clear was said to have eidetic recall and highly enhanced perceptions and creativity. Although this chappie didn’t have any OT powers, he was definitely quite a phenomenon!
It is also significant that the attributes of a clear, as described in DMSMH, were never actually attained, although in reading DMSMH, one might be led to believe that they were. When people started attesting to clear, the definition was watered down to the vague generality “at cause over mental MEST as regards the first dynamic”. This definition can mean many different things to many different people. Anyone is at least somewhat causative over his own mind. So anyone can find an interpretation of this definition of “clear” that he can attest to. The states of “MEST Clear”, “Theta Clear”, “Cleared Theta Clear”, “Clearing Course Clear”, “Clear-OT”, and, finally, “Dianetic Clear”, and “Word Clear” were equally absolutistic when first stated, but when people started attesting to them, the definition of each, or the criterion for allowing a pc to attest to each, was similarly watered down. This sequence has been repeated over and over throughout the history of scientology.
Thus, there came to be two routes to clear, the newer one designed to facilitate advancing those Scientologists who previously could not meet the role requirements of clear and the higher release grades. It seems that the significance of clear and of any single plateau is being dissolved into a long staircase of statuses leading upward into the stratosphere of OT. If the importance of clear has been diminished somewhat in the past few years, our theory is not made less relevant. Rather, the analysis of this chapter now extends more broadly to explain how all the higher statuses are maintained. And the progressive deflation of clear demonstrates our main point that magic is difficult, if not impossible, to sustain within a stable organization.
In the 1980 journal article on which this chapter is based, we suggested that clear would continue to lose significance as the cult evolved, and new evidence continues to support our prediction. Scientology publications issued in 1982 indicate that New Era Dianetics has become the standard route to clear. Release grades V and VI, and the solo audit course, are required only if the person “did not go clear on NED.” Apparently, clear has become sufficiently deflated that the solo audit strategy is now necessary only in especially difficult cases. The progressive deflation of clear has implied a continuing proliferation of OT levels, and, by 1982, there were 11 of these higher statuses. Eventually, clear may be submerged completely as but one of the steps in Scientology’s stairway to heaven. Or perhaps it will become a step of special ritual significance, similar to adult baptism or confirmation rituals experienced by Protestants who had been practicing members of their church for some time previously.
In 1950, Dianetics offered just two statuses: preclear and clear. By 1954, the reorganized Scientology movement offered six statuses to members: general member, Scientology group leader, Hubbard certified auditor, bachelor of Scientology, doctor of Scientology, and the still unattained status of clear. About 1965, according to the first “Classification, Gradation and Awareness Chart,” there were eight classification grades, labeled “0” to “VII.” Grade IV was simply “release,” later to become a series of release grades, VI was “clear,” and VII was “OT” or “operating thetan.” In 1970, after clear had been achieved, there were 41 distinct, named statuses, not to mention graduation certificates for various special courses.
Most recently, the 1982 booklet, “From Clear to Eternity,” lists 64 named statuses. The effective number of statuses is even greater than this because there are a further 30 steps in the processing regimes that do not confer a degree. The system always includes statuses that no member has yet attained. Clear used to be the most advanced unreached goal; now OT VIII is just being offered, and OT IX, OT X, and OT XI are not yet “released” and thus play the roles of rather general, superhuman compensators formerly played by clear.
In addition to the processing levels, there are innumerable bureaucratic statuses in the Scientology organization, many of which are called “hats.” On September 25, 1970, the organizational chart of the Boston org identified 27 departments under nine divisions, following a plan designed by Hubbard, in addition to the chief executive roles of “director” and “guardian.” The fact that staff actually numbered only 13 while 46 of these organizational positions were filled meant that each person, on average, held 3.5 positions. And levels of processing and training interacted in complex ways with these organizational statuses, the ranks in the bureaucracy and in the processing correlating highly, but not perfectly. For example, there were 30 Boston area clears, but only 4 of the 13 Boston staff were clear, and 3 of the top 5 executive positions were held by clears. Until Scientology lowers its tension with the surrounding sociocultural environment and becomes a respected church, none of these statuses will have much significance outside the closed system of the cult.
The Precarious Defense of Magic
Although our analysis was designed to fit a single, special phenomenon, maintenance of clear status in Scientology, it really explains something of more general interest: how people can sustain their faith in magic despite day-to-day experience of its failure.The Scientology processes to create clear are indeed examples of modern magic: mental and symbolic exercises undertaken to accomplish the impossible. The four strategies of Scientology show that faith in magic can be sustained:
✅ By separating performance of the magic from the world of ordinary experience;
✅ By committing participants to magical success through requiring great investment and membership in a cohesive, influential social group;
✅ By maneuvering each participant into accepting personal responsibility for success of the magic;
✅ By providing supplementary hopes for ultimate future success to compensate participants for any private dissatisfaction they may continue to feel.
Together these factors protect Scientology’s claims and insulate its magic against disconfirmation. However, the system is not wholly effective, nor is it, in principle, beyond empirical disconfirmation. That it is not wholly effective can be seen in the constant tinkering with the system that seems designed to add stronger inducements to members to continue their quest for supernormal powers. Even so, the system remains subject to potential disconfirmation because it primarily is dealing in magic, not religion. The difference is critical.
Magic offers to provide specific results that are subject to empirical verification. Although Scientology has fairly effectively prevented neutral tests of the results it claims, it does promise to provide members with tangible benefits that they, at least, are positioned to assess. Indeed, so long as the original claims about clear status were maintained, no clears could be created (and were not), for the fact is that, even within the persuasive structure of the cult, it was not possible to convince people that they had supernormal powers of such potency and specificity when they did not. Only by deferring these results to the new OT levels was it possible to create clears. But this is only postponement. Thousands of Scientologists still hope to gain the magical powers promised to them.
In contrast, religion offers its results in an inherently unverifiable context. Christianity, for example, does not promise eternal life in this world, but only after physical death and in another, nonempirical realm. Nor does Hinduism promise that a better life will come to the holy during their present incarnation but only that they will be reborn in a more exalted status. Such promises are beyond all possible empirical evaluation. Christianity is not haunted with people who have gone on to heaven but who still come around to Sunday services and who might suggest that heaven is highly overrated. But this is precisely Scientology’s current situation.
For 30 years, Scientology has sought public status as a religion while privately claiming to be a science as well. For a time, auditors sometimes appeared in public wearing crosses, and a book comparing passages from the Bible with utterances by Hubbard seemed to claim Christian connections for the cult (Briggs et al., 1967). But today the church suggests that it is closer to the Eastern traditions. A label on our EMeter says, “This Hubbard Electrometer is a Religious Artifact, Used in the Church Confessional, and is not Intended, Effective, or Ever to be Used for Attempted Diagnosis, Treatment, or Prevention of any Disease.” And the costs of various courses and processing given on price lists are called “donations.” Flag Land Base is said to be “a religious retreat maintained by the Church of Scientology for its parishioners.” “Sunday Services” are held at Flag Land Base and many other centers, and, in many cities, Scientology branches have sought membership in local councils of churches.
Recently, new leaders, in the central organization as well as in the many regional orgs, seem to be moving Scientology further in the direction of pure religion and of lower tension with the sociocultural environment.But shifts like this have happened before, only to be reversed later on. Thus, we resist the powerful urge to predict that Scientology will soon abandon its magic to seek more comfortable status as a new member in the family of conventional churches.
The history of a cult is shaped by the decisions of individual leaders, by accident, and by general sociological principles. Our theory can explain and predict general processes of evolution much better than it can prophesy the fortunes of any particular religious organization. But this, of course, is a limitation faced by all social science. Such examples as Scientology can demonstrate the extreme precariousness of such bold magical claims as clear, and we can see in Scientology both the potential to abandon magic for religion and social forces moving in that direction. But there can be counterforces as well, and the future success of Scientology may depend upon the outcomes of struggles between different constituencies within the cult and different segments of the leadership.
Brisker (far left) now 74, was once a member of the church’s upper echelons and for 30 years was, by his own admission, Chief Architect of Scientology’s Propaganda and a trusted right-hand man to Miscavige, 63. They are pictured together in 1991.
David Miscavige, leader of the Church of Scientology, is a reclusive man with a penchant for designer clothes, a hunger for gifts, fast cars, and superbikes and a fondness for thumping music.
And, according to one of his closest lieutenants, he ‘exiled’ his wife Shelly seemingly without a second thought because he was ‘done with her.’
This is the picture of the enigmatic man painted by Mitch Brisker, 74, former Senior Director and Creative Executive of Scientology’s Golden Era Studios.
For 30 years Brisker was, by his own admission, Chief Architect of Scientology’s Propaganda and a trusted right-hand man to its leader, Miscavige, 63.
Once a member of the church’s upper echelons, he left the church just over a year ago after clashing with Miscavige and losing faith in what it stood for.
According to Brisker: ‘There is not a greater control freak ever born in the existence of the human race.
‘Everything that happens in Scientology, right down to the soap they’re going to use on their luxury cruise liner is submitted to him for approval.
According to Brisker: ‘The whole church is a crime scene with victims scattered all over the place.
‘I think to say that the church and Miscavige is facing its biggest, most urgent crisis in living memory is an understatement. Considering all the pressure he’s under right now I think there’s a very uncertain outcome.’
Abandonment of the most precarious magic and evolution into a purely religious organization may be more in the interests of local Scientology churches than in the interest of Flag Land Base and the advanced orgs. Local leaders increase their own importance to the extent that they can build congregations content to hold the status of laity and enthusiastic about accepting the ministrations and rituals offered at the local church. But the advanced orgs and Flag need a constant flow of ambitious clients willing to leave the local org and invest great sums and much time in processing to climb the ladder of higher statuses. And it is the magical claims that provide a basis for that extensive hierarchy of processes.
Furthermore, the current magic is extremely labor intensive, and a switch to the pattern of more conventional religion would put many staff members out of work (and out of status) unless there were a sudden explosion in recruitment of new members, a trick Scientology seems unable to turn at the moment.Scientology is labor intensive because so many of the most important processing routines require an auditor to work for several hours a week with a single preclear, as is also the case for Psychoanalysis. When there were 13 staff members in Boston and an additional 4 at the Cambridge branch of the org, the total number of active Scientologists in the area was hardly 200. Thus, there were on the order of 10 lay members for each person who might be called clergy. At the same time, there were about 440 church members to each paid religious worker in the United States as a whole. Thus, Scientology was overclergied to a factor of about 44.
A religion might assign its staff extensive recruiting work to justify a high ratio of clergy to laity, but Scientology already does this and can hardly expand its recruiting efforts to fill slack time released by the abandonment of magical practices. Lower echelon staff members are now kept busy in such tasks as writing hundreds of letters to inactive members or immersed in labor intensive recruiting campaigns. For example, one week the Cambridge branch of the Boston org sent letters to a thousand schoolteachers in the area, and during another week it attempted to contact the 400 persons who had signed its guest book. From January through May 1970, this tiny branch distributed approximately 590,000 tickets on the streets, inviting people to attend the introductory lecture that recruited to the inexpensive HTHPI communication course, which itself was the main recruiting ground for Dianetics auditing. This is long, hard work. Yet, over these five months, only 62 people signed up for the course, most of them only to drop out soon after.
If the cult evolved fully into a real religion, and abandoned most of its magical work, there would be fewer organizational statuses to go around even in the local orgs. As earlier chapters have told us, such conflict between the interests of different constituencies can lead to schism. Thus, if Scientology were to move in the direction of a real religion, and lower its tension significantly, some leaders might try to lead unemployed auditors from the local orgs in a sect movement, thereby reestablishing an emphasis on the old magical traditions.
To reduce tension significantly, Scientology need not abandon all magic, only what is most difficult to sustain in the face of likely empirical disconfirmation. Many intangible benefits promised by auditing are difficult to evaluate systematically. Both privately to their friends and publicly in formal testimonials, Scientologists habitually report moments of ecstasy achieved in the treatments, often coupled with a highly personal sense of new insights. Who but the persons experiencing these grand moments can judge their authenticity?
If it stops making refutable promises to achieve the impossible, Scientology may become even more effective in its use of a therapeutic model as the basis of recruitment and as a primary focus of member activity. That is, by becoming less specific and ambitious, Scientology will become a more “effective” therapy. As we pointed out in Chapter 7, all therapies seem to work because of regression toward the mean and the random ebbs and flows of life. People who seek a therapy at a “bad” time in their lives (which is when they have a motivation to seek it) are likely to find that their lives soon improve just as most people will recover from many kinds of illness whether they receive medical treatment or not. Thus it is that magic always has gained and regained its plausibility. Magic often “succeeds.” If the shaman, the medieval witch, the psychoanalyst, and the water dowser must endure frequent failure, they also profit from frequent success. In similar fashion, many who begin Scientology courses find their expectations for increased happiness and self-confidence fulfilled, thus giving them “proof” that Scientology is valid and a reason for increased commitment.
Scientology already promulgates a belief that could be used to shift the cult away from its present reliance on magic to adopt a more religious solution to member needs: the doctrine of reincarnation.The superhuman capacities once associated with clear status, and now ascended to the levels of OT, may eventually move out of the empirical realm altogether. That is, people may no longer expect to develop genius-level IQ, perfect health, and a magnetic personality in this incarnation. But they may be promised such achievements in their next life, if they scrupulously follow Scientology’s procedures. The failure of our world to be flooded by superhuman Scientologists returned from the grave will be explained by the cult’s doctrine that reincarnation typically transfers one to a new planet. When Scientology truly becomes a church, dealing in supernatural general compensators, it will have escaped the pitfalls that beset all organizations based primarily on magic. And to be perfectly clear will be a posthumous award.
Conclusion
For Scientology, reduction of magic means reduction of tension with the surrounding sociocultural environment. It also means reduction in the capacity to offer specific compensators for scarce rewards. Many longtime members and new recruits will still want efficacious specific compensators, however.
In some cases, the local orgs are in direct competition with each other. Not long ago, a Scientologist canvassing the neighborhood came to Bainbridge’s door in Cambridge, Massachusetts, thus conveniently, if inadvertently, making a home delivery of sociological data. The revealing fact was that he came not from the Cambridge org, but from the rival Boston org, which is closely allied with the central organization of the church and appears much stronger than the one in Cambridge. The New York Times (Lindsey, 1983) reported that disputes over authority have recently caused several orgs to split away, although the decentralized corporate structure of the church can blur the degree of association so that only the most overt conflicts are visible.
There have been other periods in which the threat of schism for Scientology has been high, and always before unity was reestablished in a short time. But now the situation is rendered more tense by apparently premature claims that Hubbard has died. Even if he survives for many years and actively guides his church through the rough waters ahead, this death scare underscores the fact that Hubbard has held in check the schismatic tendencies fueled by competing interests of different constituencies in both the leadership and the ordinary membership.
Aside from any guidance he gives the church, Hubbard is vital to its unity for two reasons.First, he is a figurehead and rallying point whom only one group may claim as its own so long as he lives. Many competing churches may claim the patronage of Jesus Christ because each has him only in spirit, not in the flesh. Clergy of one Christian denomination do not have to explain to their congregations why Jesus attends services at the church down the road rather than at theirs. Until Hubbard becomes a spirit, he will remain the property of the central organization.
Second, Hubbard is the only source of new auditing techniques and new levels of OT. Over the years, there has been an intense battle between Scientology and competing organizations, such as The Process, founded by exScientologists seeking their own independent routes to spiritual advancement. Indeed, the surest sign that a schism or leadership defection was brewing was unauthorized experimentation with new processes. So long as Hubbard lives and produces the higher levels above clear so useful in protecting the magic from disconfirmation, the central organization will hold a very strong hand in its dealings with the local orgs, with him as their trump card. But once his time on earth has come to an end, the forces pressing for schism will be fully unleashed.
A famed writer who seemed to revel in controversy, Hubbard spent the final years of his life in seclusion. Though he revered communication, a devastating brain lesion had impaired his ability to speak.
Only a privileged few knew where he was for roughly six years. He was a man about town, according to church representatives, but in SLO County where he died, on Jan. 24, 1986, he resided largely unnoticed.
L. Ron Hubbard’s body was found in a motor home with the air conditioner running, tucked behind animal stables on a small ranch outside Creston. His family wasn’t there. His wife was in prison and his estranged son believed he was either dead or insane. In his final moments, the man who created a religion with a massive following was accompanied only by his doctor and lawyer.
Deputy Charles Gassett and his partner Gary Bang were sitting in the Golden Hill Cafe in Paso Robles sipping coffee. It was a sunny day, Gassett remembered. “Just a typical sunny nice day in the middle of winter.”
A call came over his radio at about 7:30 a.m. It wasn’t overtly mysterious, just peculiar. Someone from the Reis Family Mortuary in San Luis Obispo made an apprehensive call to the Sheriff’s Department. That morning the chapel was contacted and informed there was a body that was to be gathered and cremated immediately, although the man died a day earlier. Gassett and Bang were told to make sure there was no foul play. The name didn’t register at first, Gassett said, but his partner knew exactly who they were going to see: L. Ron Hubbard had been living just north of San Luis Obispo, but two deputies inadvertently would be the first people outside the church to learn of it.
Gassett and Bang arrived at the ranch where they were met by Hubbard’s attorney, Earle Cooley, and his doctor, Gene Denk.
“It was like, ‘Here’s what happened and we don’t want anything else going on here,’” Gassett remembered of their conversation. “‘We just want you to take the body and do the cremation.’”
They were led past the southwestern-style house and behind the stables to a 1982 Bluebird motor home. Both remembered it was a pleasant day, but the air conditioner was running inside. Hubbard’s body was unattended.
The man they saw was unrecognizable from the image of a spry young writer Hubbard had pasted on so many of his book jackets. His body lay in bed with the covers drawn to its chest. His hairline was receded but his mane had been grown long over the back of the neck. Hubbard’s remains were slim with long, unkempt fingernails and toenails. His hands were folded on the chest, Gassett remembered.
Bang knew of Hubbard because he, like many others, had bought Scientology’s equivalent of the Bible: Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. The book was advertised as a powerful answer to life’s problems, so Bang decided to give it a try. He hadn’t read the first page, however, and after coming face to face with the author, he never did.
“After I saw what happened, I threw the book away,” he said in a phone interview from his Florida home. “He left the strings of his family [and] died by himself in the motor home.”
They gave the body a quick examination but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Hubbard had suffered a stroke a week prior. His cause of death was determined to be a “cerebral vascular accident,” according to the coroner’s report.
The message from Cooley and Denk was clear that Hubbard was to be cremated immediately. Hubbard had drafted a new will that stated there would not be an autopsy because it violated his religious beliefs. The will was signed, dated, and imprinted with Hubbard’s inked thumbprint. The new will, giving more assets to his family than a previous version, was dated the day before he died. At the time he was worth about $25 million.
The Sheriff’s Department feared controversy and pressed for an autopsy. Cooley and Denk finally agreed to allow the coroner to do an external examination and collect blood and urine. Records of his fingerprints were sent off to be matched with federal and military records to verify that it was indeed Hubbard. According to the coroner’s report:
• There was a bandage on his “right gluteal area” covering 10 “recent needle marks.”
• Hubbard’s blood contained traces of Hydroxyzine, also known as Vistaril.
The last detail has proven difficult for his followers to reconcile. Hubbard disdained “psychs” and their medications. In internal writings to Scientologists he often described psychiatrists as criminals and con artists who knew they could not cure mental illnesses. Scientologists are not against all prescribed medications, only the psychiatric variety.
According to the church, Hubbard suffered allergies from the animals he kept on the ranch and was prescribed Vistaril as an antihistamine.
The drug, however, has another use. According to the Food and Drug Administration, Vistaril in both the capsule and injected form is used for relief of anxiety and tension associated with psychoneurosis.
“He didn’t take it as a psychiatric medication, that’s all,” church spokesman Tommy Davis said in a phone interview. He added, “It’s one of those things that anti-Scientologists want to make an issue about. And we’re like, ‘Yeah, whatever.’”
Hubbard’s followers were formally informed of the death two weeks later. At the time, a young upcoming Scientologist named David Miscavige stepped in as the new front man. He addressed the parishioners in a large auditorium. That day, Scientologists were not told that Hubbard died, instead, “L. Ron Hubbard discarded the body he had used in this lifetime … .” He had achieved a spiritual level “unimaginable,” which was achieved “in an exterior state.”
No longer needing his body and unencumbered by its limits, Miscavige explained, Hubbard could continue to research more advanced levels of Scientology: Operating Thetan, referred to as the OT levels. The crowd broke into raucous applause.
Newspapers did report Hubbard’s death and final whereabouts but the Challenger space shuttle exploded days later and diverted media attention. The Telegram-Tribune ran a front-page story documenting a full tour of the ranch about a week after Hubbard’s death. A Scientology spokesman named Vaughn Young led the tour; he was writing Hubbard’s biography, which was never finished. At that time Young was a high-ranking spokesman for the church but not even Young knew where Hubbard was until after he died. After the death, Young was called to Creston to handle the press, despite having little first-hand knowledge of Hubbard’s last years.
This is according to Young’s accounts, which became available three years after Hubbard died when Young fled the church with his wife Stacy. A church statement provided by Davis stated Young was demoted in 1987 and left soon after. Earlier in the same decade Young was defending the church and blasting its critics. By 1989, Young’s sentiments had changed: Scientology became a cult, he said; Hubbard’s writings were doublespeak; and Hubbard himself was like “Big Brother” from Orwell’s 1984.
After leaving the church, Young changed his name and became known as Robert Vaughn Young. He wrote extensively and published online scathing accounts of Hubbard’s life and death, which he believed was the result of foul play. In 2003 Young died of cancer. He and his wife had divorced, but he had remarried.
Young’s widow verified his writings but otherwise declined to comment when contacted via e-mail. In a prepared statement, Davis said, “In 2002, Young’s ex-wife [Stacy] confirmed the falsities Young and she had been spreading by recanting the statements she had made during this period.”
Scientology lies.
In the late 1980s Robert Vaughn Young “escaped” from Scientology with his then-wife Stacy Brooks. He was among the highest-level executives ever to defect from the church. Young made a major contribution to Hubbard’s Church until he learned the truth about L. Ron Hubbard and his past. Robert revealed much of this truth after he escaped from the cult. Here is his story.