Going Clear

by Lawrence Wright

  “I was never the same again.”

  With his new acceptance of past-life experiences, Hubbard could now describe the individual as being divisible into three parts. First there was the spirit, or soul, which Hubbard calls the thetan. The thetan normally lives in or near a body but can also be entirely separate from it. When a person goes exterior, for instance, it is the thetan part of him that travels outside the body or views himself from across the room. The mind, which serves mainly as a storehouse of pictures, functions as a communication and control system for the thetan, helping him operate in his environment. The body is merely the physical composition of the person, existing in space and time.

  Anyone who stands in the way of a thetan’s spiritual progress is a Suppressive Person (SP). This is a key concept in Scientology. Hubbard uses the term to describe a sociopath. The Suppressive instinctively fights against constructive forces and is driven berserk by those who try to help others. Hubbard estimates that Suppressives constitute about twenty percent of the population, but only about two and a half percent are truly dangerous. “A Suppressive Person will goof up or vilify any effort to help anybody and particularly knife with violence anything calculated to make human beings more powerful or more intelligent,” Hubbard writes. “The artist in particular is often found as a magnet for persons with anti-social personalities who see in his art something which must be destroyed.”

  Naturally, anyone who is close to a Suppressive Person is in great danger of falling under his influence. Hubbard called that person a Potential Trouble Source. If, for instance, a parent opposes a child who wants to join Scientology, that parent is likely to be declared an SP; and as long as the child remains in contact with the parent, he is in danger of being defined as a PTS. He will be denied auditing and training. Eventually, the child will have to make a choice, either to leave the church—which offers him a path to career success, personal improvement, and salvation—or to disconnect from his parent, who is the cause of his failure to achieve happiness and realize his dreams.

  Hubbard had learned some difficult lessons from his experience with Dianetics. He was by nature an autocrat, but his work beckoned to amateurs. The movement inspired by his book had sprung up so quickly there was no real chance to rein it in and exert the kind of authority that might have made it more durable. Although he tried to impose order by creating professional training schools for auditors, in truth he had more or less surrendered control of the movement from the moment of inception by empowering his readers to become practitioners themselves; all they had to do was to follow the formulas sketched in his book. Entrepreneurs grabbed hold of the concept and snatched it out of his hands. They spread the message, but they also diluted it. When the Dianetics movement subsided, Hubbard was unable to restore the momentum that had given it such a rocket-powered launch. Imitators and competitors came onto the field, some even rivaling Hubbard himself. He was determined not to make the same mistakes with Scientology. From now on, he would exercise total control. His word was law. He was not just the founder, he was “Source”—the last word, whose every pronouncement was scripture.

  In the evolution of Dianetics to Scientology, however, there was a larger wheel turning inside Hubbard’s protean imagination. Until now, religion had played little or no part in his life or his thought—except, perhaps, as it was reflected in the cynical remark he is reported to have made on a number of occasions, “I’d like to start a religion. That’s where the money is.” One of the problems with Dianetics, from a moneymaking perspective, was the lack of a long-term association on the part of its adherents. Psychotherapy has a theoretical conclusion to it; the patient is “cured” or decides that the procedure doesn’t work for him. In either case, the revenue dries up. Religion solves that problem. In addition to tax advantages, religion supplies a commodity that is always in demand: salvation. Hubbard ingeniously developed Scientology into a series of veiled revelations, each of which promised greater abilities and increased spiritual power. “To keep a person on the Scientology path,” Hubbard once told one of his associates, “feed him a mystery sandwich.”

  It may be true that his decision to take his movement in a new direction had more to do with the legal and tax advantages that accrue to religious organizations than it did with actual spiritual inspiration. He was desperate for money. The branches of his Dianetics Foundation were shuttered, one after another. At one point, Hubbard even lost the rights to the name Dianetics. The trend for his movement was toward disaster.

  A letter Hubbard wrote to one of his executives in 1953 shows him weighing the advantages of setting up a new organization. “Perhaps we could call it a Spiritual Guidance Center,” he speculates. “And we could put in nice desks and our boys in neat blue with diplomas on the walls and 1. knock psychotherapy into history and 2. make enough money to shine up my operating scope and 3. keep the HAS [Hubbard Association of Scientologists] solvent. It is a problem of practical business.

  “I await your reaction on the religion angle.”

  In the anti-Scientology narrative, this is one of several clear statements of Hubbard’s calculations and proof that the “church” was nothing more than a moneymaking front. But Hubbard follows this with the observation, “We’re treating present time beingness, psychotherapy treats the past and the brain. And brother, that’s religion, not mental science.” At the end of that year, Hubbard incorporated three different churches: the Church of American Science, the Church of Spiritual Engineering, and the eventual winner in the brand-name contest, the Church of Scientology. The Church of Scientology of California was established on February 18, 1954, quickly followed by another in Washington, DC.

  The fields of psychotherapy and religion have bled into each other on many occasions. They have in common the goal of reshaping one’s view of the world and letting go of, or actually renouncing, one’s previous stance.1 Hubbard said there were “many, many reasons” to ally Scientology with religion. “To some this seems mere opportunism,” he later admitted to a reporter. “To some it would seem that Scientology is simply making itself bulletproof in the eyes of the law.”

  Among the many other incentives to turn Hubbard’s movement into a religion, there is one that might be considered especially in light of the frequent charge that he was insane. Religion is always an irrational enterprise, no matter how ennobling it may be to the human spirit. In many cultures, people who might be considered mentally ill in Western societies are thought of as religious healers, or shamans. Anthropologists have called schizophrenia the “shaman sickness,” because part of a shaman’s traditional journey requires suffering an illness that cannot be cured except by spiritual means. The shaman uses the powers and insights he gains from his experience to heal his community. This is exactly the history that Hubbard paints as his own: a blind cripple in the Navy hospital, given up for lost, who then heals himself through techniques he refines into Dianetics. This is the gift he humbly offers as a means of healing humanity. “The goal of Dianetics is a sane world—a world without insanity, without criminals and without war,” he declares. “It can be stopped only by the insane.”

  For both the shaman and the schizophrenic, the boundaries between reality and illusion are soft, and consciousness slips easily from one to the other. Hubbard, with his highly imaginative mind, certainly had immediate access to visionary worlds; his science-fiction stories are evidence of that. But it is a different matter to be able to cast the nets of one’s imagination into the unconscious and pull out best-selling books. The schizophrenic is rarely so productive in the material world.

  Sometimes in Hubbard’s writings, however, he puts forward what appear to be fantasies of a highly schizophrenic personality. In 1952, for instance, he began talking about “injected entities,” which can paralyze portions of the anatomy or block information from being audited. These entities can be located in the body, always in the same places. For instance, one of the entities, the “crew chief,” is found on the right side of the jaw
down to the shoulder. “They are the ‘mysterious voices’ in the heads of some preclears,” Hubbard said. “Paralysis, anxiety stomachs, arthritis and many ills and aberrations have been relieved by auditing them. An E-Meter shows them up and makes them confess their misdeeds. They are probably just compartments of the mind which, cut off, begin to act as though they were persons.”

  Hubbard says there are actually two separate genetic lines that, in the history of evolution, first came together in the mollusk, but have been contending for dominance ever since, even in human beings. “In the bivalve state, one finds them at war with each other in an effort to attain sole command of the entire bivalve,” Hubbard writes. This primordial contest manifests itself in higher forms of life in such things as right- and left-handedness. “Your discussion of these incidents with the uninitiated in Scientology can produce havoc,” Hubbard warns. “Should you describe the ‘Clam’ to someone, you may restimulate him to the point of causing severe jaw hinge pain. One such victim, after hearing about a clam death, could not use his jaws for three days.”

  HUBBARD’S THIRD WIFE was smart and poised, a decorous partner for him. She was so slight and weightless that it might be easy to overlook her, but her Southern manners and Texas accent concealed a hard and determined nature. Unlike Sara or Polly, Mary Sue was a true believer, a natural enforcer. One of Hubbard’s executives later described her as “pragmatic, cold, cunning, calculating, efficient, and fiercely loyal.” She had flinty blue eyes, a sharp, prominent nose, and a rare lopsided smile that would expose her uneven, slightly crossed front teeth.

  Mary Sue and Ron with Diana, Quentin, Arthur, and Suzette

  Ron and Mary Sue, with their burgeoning family, began a restless search for a new home—for themselves and for the international headquarters of the church. In 1955, they moved to Washington, DC, but they stayed only a few months before moving to London. Less than two years later, they were back in Washington, living in a dignified brownstone near Dupont Circle, across the street from the Academy of Scientology. Hubbard was prospering once again, with mounting commissions from the sale of E-Meters and training processes, and royalties from sixty books in print. In 1956, his salary from the church was only five hundred dollars a month; but the following year, the church began paying him a percentage of its gross profits, and his income took a gigantic leap.

  In Washington, Hubbard set up visiting hours from four to six every afternoon, and made a point of warning the pilgrims who trod the path to his door not to mistake him for a god or a guru, “so knock off the idolizing.” And yet he couldn’t resist exaggerating his status. Identifying himself as a nuclear physicist, Hubbard published a book in 1957, All About Radiation, in which he promoted a formula he called Dianazene, a mixture of nicotinic acid and vitamins, that was supposed to cure cancer as well as sunburns. “It should be taken daily,” he recommended, “with milk and chocolate.”

  Ron and Mary Sue had four children in six years. Diana, born in 1952, was the eldest and clearly the dominant one. She had her father’s red hair and a generous splattering of freckles. Quentin, born two years later, was the only one who was not a radiant redhead; he was small with ash-blond hair, like Mary Sue, and would always be his mother’s favorite. Suzette was a year younger; she was a cheerful child, but somewhat overshadowed by her big sister. The baby, Arthur, was born in 1958. Seen together, the Hubbard family made a vivid impression, with their ruddy complexions and their striking hair color.

  Although the children had a nanny, they spent much of their time unsupervised. School was an afterthought; it wasn’t until Diana demanded to learn how to write her name that the children began their education. Mary Sue was a chilly presence as a mother; she rarely cuddled or even touched her children, but in the early years she would read to them—Mary Poppins, Winnie the Pooh, and Kipling’s stories—in her slight Texas twang. As she took on additional responsibility in Scientology, she became even more removed; but Ron would hug the kids and toss them in the air. The house echoed with his booming laugh. He taught the children how to play “Chopsticks” on the piano and showed them card tricks with his quick hands and perfectly manicured fingernails. He would play records and dance with the children to Beethoven or Ravel or Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite—bold, soaring music. He liked to sing, and he would burst into “Farewell and Adieu to You Fair Spanish Ladies,” and “Be Kind to Your Web-Footed Friends,” a children’s song that is sung to the tune of “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” He was fanatical about taking vitamins, and he made sure the children took theirs, as well. Afterward, they would all roar to see who was the strongest.

  Hubbard was restless in Washington, and in 1959 he moved his family back to England, to a luxurious estate in Sussex called Saint Hill Manor, which he purchased from the Maharajah of Jaipur. Hubbard employed an extensive household staff, including two butlers, a housekeeper, a nanny, a tutor for the children, a chauffeur, and maintenance workers for the estate. “Dr.” Hubbard presented himself to the curious British press as an experimental horticultural scientist; to prove it, he allowed a photograph to be published of himself staring intently at a tomato that was attached to an E-Meter. The headline in Garden News was “Plants Do Worry and Feel Pain.”

  Hubbard using the E-Meter on a tomato in 1968 to test whether it experiences pain

  The grand mansion was a terrific playground for the children. It was actually a U-shaped castle with crenelated rooflines, ivy-covered walls, and rumors of ghosts. There were fifty-two rolling acres to play in, with rose gardens, goldfish ponds, and a lake. The house itself had sweeping staircases, elevators, and even secret rooms where the children could hide from the nanny. The children also prowled through their mother’s closet. Left to herself, Mary Sue was an indifferent dresser, but Ron brought tailors from London carrying gorgeous bolts of cloth, and racks of clothing brought in from the top department stores, all in Mary Sue’s size. Her closet was full of sparkling gowns and shimmering dresses. Trim and regal by nature, Mary Sue was a wonderful model, but she really only dressed for him.

  Hubbard’s third-floor research room was the enticing inner sanctum; it was painted royal blue, with a bear rug in front of the fireplace, and a private bathroom that was redolent of the Spanish sandalwood soap he favored. Hubbard would disappear into his office every day for hours and hours, alone with his E-Meter, “mapping out the bank and looking for the next undercut,” as he explained, meaning that he was trying to inventory the reactive mind and discover a path through its many snares.

  School was, as usual, a secondary consideration. The children would take a taxi to class, when they actually went. Their father didn’t really believe in public education, so he didn’t pressure them. Sometimes, they had a tutor, but it was Diana who taught Suzette how to read. She didn’t want Suzette to suffer the same embarrassment she had when she started school so far behind her peers. By the age of nine, Suzette was reading adult literature. She decided she wanted to be a writer, like her father. Quentin developed an obsession with airplanes, and he would often persuade the nanny or the chauffeur to take him to Gatwick Airport instead of to class, so he could watch the various aircraft taking off and landing. He loved to stand near the runway with the heavy planes lumbering just overhead. He was soon able to close his eyes and identify the make of the plane strictly by its sound.

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

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

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

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