by Philip Smith
When I got to the church, a run-down storefront operation conveniently located around the corner from my father’s design studio, I took one look around and had to quickly recalculate my expectations. There were no futuristic sentries guarding the holy laser beam that contained all universal truths. Instead there were a few pieces of abandoned office furniture, a rickety pine bookshelf loaded with paperback copies of Dianetics featuring an exploding volcano on the cover, and a massively overweight woman wearing an Indian block-print muumuu sitting behind a gray metal desk. To my surprise, style was not a huge consideration in this religion of the future. The woman automatically smiled at me with one of those big and insincere stewardess smiles that discourage any real interaction. It was just me and her smile one-on-one in the holy church. There were no masses of worshippers engaged in scientifically induced religious ecstasy. No one was storming the gates of Scientology looking for the next great thing—except me.
I wasn’t quite sure what to do as I stood there in my paisley print shirt, square-toed boots, and hip-hugger bell-bottoms made out of mattress ticking, so I picked up a pamphlet describing the philosophy of Scientology. I then walked over to the desk and handed the woman my ticket. “Um, hi. I’m here for the free lecture on Dianetics.”
“Great!!!!”
“This is kinda my first time here.”
“Great!!!!”
“Okay.”
“Great!!!!”
“Uh…”
“Hi, I’m Toni!!!! Who are you?”
“Philip.”
“Great!!!!! Well, Philip, we don’t have any clears in the Org today, and none of the auditors showed up, so…”
“Huh?” I was used to space talk and speaking in tongues, but this Scientologyspeak was something new. The truth was, I kind of liked it. It all sounded so “yes sir, right away, sir.” I would eventually learn this new vocabulary, in which “clears” were enlightened individuals and “auditors” disseminated Scientology. “Maybe you could come back tomorrow?”
“Yeah, I guess tomorrow is okay.” But I was more than a little disappointed. I wanted my new life to start right then and there. I didn’t want to leave until I had some real idea of how I was going to fit into Scientology’s grand scheme of advanced global human evolution. The least Toni could have done was give me a tour of the church. But that offer was not forthcoming. I turned to go.
“Hey, Philip, I have a great idea. Why don’t you hand out some tickets for our free daily lecture? Brian would really like that.”
“Who’s Brian?”
“Oh, Brian is our best auditor. He’s from England and knows Ron.”
“Ron?” This place seemed like one big, happy family. Maybe Scientology would become my new home after all.
“Ron.” Toni just kept smiling as she said the name. She was so dazzled by saying his name that she seemed incapable of explaining to me that Ron was L. Ron Hubbard, a former science-fiction author and founder of the church. L. Ron, or just plain Ron, was revered by devoted Scientologists throughout the universe. He had taken a few tenets of basic psychology, added “e-meters” (which function as a kind of lie detector to psych out sensitive emotional problems), mixed in a bit of his own science-fiction language, and presto!—a religion that enjoyed tax-free status from the IRS.
“Um, okay, I’ll do the ticket thing,” I decided. Toni handed me a stack of about two hundred tickets—just like the one that I had brought in. “Where should I go?”
“Anywhere…everywhere…” She spoke these two words with a smile and a far-off look. Her tone seemed to imply that by this humble act of handing out free Dianetics lecture tickets, I would be taking my first step to becoming a Scientologist extraordinaire.
Miami was just not the kind of place where you saw people walking on the sidewalk, so handing out tickets was not going to be an easy job. Everyone, except the extreme poor, drove everywhere or stayed home. However, in my quest for enlightenment I was willing to give it a try, so I left the church, turned right, and walked down Biscayne Boulevard. After three blocks, I finally saw a guy coming toward me. “Hi, free ticket for lecture at Scientology…” He passed right by me without even looking up. “Please join us at the Church of Scientology for an important lecture…Hi, here’s a free ticket for a lecture!” I shouted after him, giving it my best.
Another block later was the bus stop in front of Denny’s on Thirty-sixth Street. A group of about six black women was waiting. As I approached, half of them feigned a strong disinterest while checking me out with careful sideward glances, and the other half stared at me with outright hostility.
“Um, free tickets.”
They didn’t even look at what I was offering. As I turned to go, I noticed an elderly Bahamian woman wearing thick black-framed glasses and a straw hat with a wilted rose sticking out of the side holding up two copies of The Watchtower. A Jehovah’s Witness. She looked at me over the rims of her glasses with passing interest. I don’t know if she thought I was competition or just some nutty white boy in the wrong part of town.
This wasn’t working. I turned around, and as I walked by the church’s large picture windows, I quickly stuffed my stack of undistributed tickets under my shirt so Toni would not see my failure. She was sitting behind her desk, staring out the window, and didn’t seem to recognize me as I walked toward my car in the parking lot. I needed to try some other part of town.
Perhaps Coconut Grove, with its large bohemian population, would be a good location. I certainly felt a lot more at home there. After I parked the car behind the 7-Eleven, I walked up and down Main Highway, circling through Commodore Plaza and ending up on Oak Avenue. My free tickets were a hit with every stoned hippie I encountered. “Hi, free ticket to Scientology lecture” was consistently met with either an understated “wow” or a tepid “far out.” I quickly unloaded about half my tickets. The rest I left on a ledge in front of the Oak Feed Store, the only health food store in Miami that sold bulk foods. The place had that “Ye Olde Country Store” feel and was one of the few locations where you could see a large group of unwashed people all wearing tie-dyed T-shirts and harem pants breast-feeding their natural children while they occupied the stools at the juice bar for the entire day.
Having done such a good job, I was looking forward to reporting to duty the next day at the church, or as Toni had called it, the “Org.” When I walked in on Sunday morning, she was still wearing the same Indian print muumuu and sitting behind the desk, smiling. I didn’t know if Toni spent the night behind the desk or if she had gone home and not changed her clothes. I was betting on the former. She smiled but did not seem to recognize me.
“Hi!!! Welcome to Scientology!!! I’m Toni.”
“Uh, Toni. I was here yesterday.”
“Great!!!”
“I’m Philip. Remember?”
“Great!!!”
“I handed out all the tickets.”
“Great!!!”
“Is Brian here?”
“Brian?”
“Yeah. To give the lecture.”
“Lecture?”
“Yeah. Free Dianetics lecture.”
“Oh!!! Free Dianetics Lecture!!!”
“Yeah. Free Dianetics lecture.”
“There’s no lecture today. Brian is busy auditing.”
“I thought the ticket said free Dianetics lecture seven days a week at one o’clock.”
“Hey, I have a great idea. Our communications class starts in half an hour. Why don’t you take that?”
“Communications class?”
“Yeah. It’s great. You need to take it anyway.”
“I do?”
“Yeah!!! You want to communicate, don’t you? Clear communication between beings is the first step in practicing Scientology. It helps reduce the power of the reactive mind. Fifteen dollars.”
“Huh?”
“Fifteen dollars. For the communications class.”
It never occurred to me that Scientology actually cost money or
that there was a detailed price list attached to the different levels of enlightenment. All I had was $3 and change in my pocket. I asked Toni if I could owe her the rest.
“Great!!! Hey, I have a better idea. Why don’t you come work at the Org? This way you would be around a lot of clears, and it would help pay for your auditing. So why don’t you come in around ten tomorrow morning?”
“Um, I go to school.”
“Why? That’s a real waste. You should come here. We’ll teach you everything you need to know. I dropped out of school, moved to San Francisco, and became a Scientologist. Now my life is great!!! I used to live with this black guy, and we sold drugs and balled all the time, and then he got busted, so now I’m here, and, wow, it’s really great. Just great!!!”
“Oh.”
“So come after school; say, four to ten? Weekends are good too. Okay? See you tomorrow.”
At this point, my knowledge of Scientology was limited to what I had read in the pamphlet I’d picked up the day before, but now that I would be working at the Org, I guess I was a Scientologist. When I walked into the house, I announced, “Hey, Mom, I got a job.”
“Oh really?” She was totally surprised; suddenly her layabout hippie son was appearing to be responsible.
“Yeah. I’m working at the Org.”
“What exactly is your job?”
“I forgot to ask.”
“Well, then, how do you know you have a job?”
“They asked me to come in and work.” I hated when my mother asked realistic questions like this. She was the opposite of my father; she had too much reality, he had none. What did she know? Of course I had a job.
“Who’s they?”
“The Scientology lady, Toni. It will pay for my auditing.”
“Who’s Toni?”
“The Scientology lady.”
“Scientology? Is this like a medical place?”
“No. Forget it. I’m going next door to talk to Pop.” It was too hard to explain to my mother about my spectacular new future at the Org. I went next door to see my father. He was sitting at his desk, holding a pendulum over a map of Canada.
“Hi, Pop. What are you doing?”
“I’m looking for someone.”
“Who?”
“I think his name is Mark…”
“So how can you look for him if you don’t know his name?”
“Oh, that’s easy. I just tune in to his vibration. He’s lost somewhere around here in the mountains. His wife called me today and asked me to find him. She called the Canadian Mounties, but they haven’t turned up anything. It’s been over a week.”
“He may not be alive. That’s a long time to be lost in the mountains.”
“He’s definitely alive. The pendulum told me. I’ve tuned in to him now. I’ll find him in a few minutes. He’ll be okay. What’s up?”
“I just got a job.”
“Hey, that’s great, congratulations.” Pop continued to dowse the map as he spoke to me. “So where are you working?”
“Over at the Org on Biscayne Boulevard.”
“What are you going to be doing?”
“I don’t know.”
All of a sudden the pendulum began spinning rapidly. “Got him.”
“Huh?”
“Here. He’s right here.” My father was tapping on the map with the straightened paper clip that he used as a pointer. “Okay. I’ll be right with you. I have to call Margaret.”
“Who’s Margaret?”
“The wife.”
My father dialed the phone. While he waited for Margaret to answer, he wrote down in a notebook the longitude and latitude where he found the missing man. “Hello. Is this Margaret? Yes, this is Lew Smith. Lew Smith. Yes, you called me about ten minutes ago about your missing husband. I understand. Of course. Well, let me give you the exact location. It’s a place called Castle Mountain in Alberta, and on a map the coordinates are approximately 51 degrees north and 115 degrees west. Uh-huh. No, I have no idea how he got there, but he’s there. Yes, I’m sure. He’s okay. He seems to be in a state of shock and really dehydrated, but he’ll be okay after a couple days at home. Sure, yes, I think you should call and tell them where to look. They may not see him from a helicopter; there are a lot of trees. I don’t know, tell them whatever you want. They may hang up on you if you tell them a psychic in Miami found him. Why don’t you tell them that it came to you in a dream? You’re right—they’re not going to believe that either. But they’re certainly not going to believe you if you tell them that a stranger in Florida found him. Look, just call them now, don’t waste any more time. Just tell them that’s where he is, and they need to go get him right away. That’s it, don’t answer any more questions. Once he’s settled in, would you please give me a call and let me know that everything’s okay? I’ll manage his care from here. No, nothing’s broken. It seems that night came, and he lost his way. He’s very scared and needs to be kept wrapped in blankets for a few days. What’s his name? Something with an M? Mark? Michael? Mark. Okay. Good. Okay. No, you don’t owe me any money. I’m happy to help. You’re welcome. Bye.” My father turned to me and asked, “So who are these people you are working for?”
“The Scientologists. I think it’s kind of interesting. Maybe you would like it. It’s all about one’s potential. Their goal is to make you a clear. You should come by the Org sometime. They do this thing called ‘assist’; it’s like your healing. When someone has a cold or something, they put their hands near the person and send energy just like you do.” I thought this would convince my father that Scientology was a good thing. It also made me feel a bit comfortable in that I was doing something that was similar to but different from what he was doing. “They also have a way of explaining how the spirit survives death, sort of like reincarnation. It’s kinda what you do.”
“Let’s see…” My father picked up his pendulum and watched it for a minute. It swung in a counterclockwise direction. He looked at me. “No good.”
“What?”
“This is not the place for you. There are a lot of people with negative vibrations at this place. They don’t know what they’re doing. Unintentionally, they hurt a lot of people. They open them up psychologically, get in there, and fool around, promising them something they can’t deliver. Also, certain people there are on a power trip and use that to control some of the newer people. I’m not saying that’s true of the entire organization, but this particular place is really low. Some of the people in charge have dark forces in them.”
“You sure? I kind of liked it over there.”
“Well, you haven’t met everybody yet, have you? Go. It’s up to you. You may spend a few months there, but that’s it. There’s nothing there for you. There are other places for you to learn. Besides, it’s going to cost you a lot of money that you don’t have.”
“No it won’t,” I said smugly.
“Why?”
“Because I’m going to work there, and all my lessons will be free.”
“Well, maybe that’s what they told you.”
“Pop, I really think I should do this. It’ll be my own thing.”
“I understand. Just be careful; there are some strange, unhappy people over there.”
Of course, I had no interest in listening to my father. I was determined that Scientology would set me free.
While other kids at school spent their weekends hanging out at the beach or just driving around getting into trouble, I went to work at the Org. At seventeen, I was the youngest person in the place. My duties included basic filing, answering phones, handing out free lecture tickets, and straightening up the Dianetics books. Occasionally I would complain to Toni that I wanted more important work. She always convinced me that I was making an invaluable contribution to the Org—that I was part of a larger mission to propel humanity into the future and as far away from 1969 as possible. Toni reassured me that my being around the Org and all the clears was what was really important for my growth. I usually g
ot home from work about eleven at night, grabbed some cold soybeans from the fridge for dinner, and went to bed.
It was extremely difficult to balance school and a full-time job. My grades were slipping. I was now averaging Ds in most classes. The guidance counselor had warned me that I was no longer college material and that I should consider attending a trade school. After weeks of research into suitable careers for me, she suggested that plumbing might be an ideal choice, since I was good with my hands.
As a Scientologist, I considered her advice and the rest of my schooling irrelevant. After all, I was on the path to the ultimate truth. I envisioned myself at the Org for the rest of my life, eventually becoming best friends with Ron, hanging out with him on his yacht, known as Sea Org, and bringing his science-based enlightenment to the world. Toward this goal, I had quickly developed an ongoing correspondence with L. Ron Hubbard, sharing my various thoughts about making the Miami Org more visible and spreading the gospel of Scientology worldwide. He would write back and encourage me to disseminate my ideas throughout the organization.
Toni was not interested in hearing about my correspondence with Ron. She was too busy telling me about her traumatic romances (“Oooh, he’s so fine” and “Boo-hoo-hoo, he beat me last night”) while asking me to marry her. This was a huge compliment because Toni had a well-known policy of dating any black man who even looked at her. She drove an aging Volkswagen bug and lived deep in Liberty City, the poorest black section in Miami. The one time I went to visit her, I could not help but notice that the presence of a 350-pound white woman wearing Indian print muumuus created some hostility among her single black women neighbors. They loudly accused her of bringing nothing but trouble to an already troubled neighborhood and trying to steal their men. Back then a black man having sex with a white woman was, if not punishable by law, certainly considered grounds for an arrest and a beating by the Miami cops.
