Why Not Scientology?

I sat dead still, in shock and horror. Tom Cruise jumped up on Oprah Winfrey’s neutral-toned couch and rhapsodized about Katie Holmes, shouting, “I’m in love! I’m in love!” Mocking Cruise at this point was like kicking a sleeping dog. Nevertheless, I turned to my friend. “He’s deranged and his career is over,” I said.

My friend Allen nodded. “Insane.”

But I felt embarrassed for him, too.

Lightning struck twice. A few days later I watched Cruise and Matt Lauer, both steely and focused, debate antidepressants—or psychotropic drugs, if you listen to Cruise—on The Today Show. Cruise insisted that Lauer didn’t know the history of psychiatry, but that he did. Lauer said that antidepressants had helped some of his friends. Cruise accused Lauer of being “glib.” The viewing public chalked Cruise’s antics up to his infatuation with Scientology. I agreed, congratulating myself on my educated rationality.

Most of America’s first and only introduction to the Church of Scientology comes from a glossy magazine or a television news program. After Cruise’s outburst, media sources from Entertainment Tonight to Time lionized him as a symbol of a twisted religion, and Cruise did little to stymie the negative onslaught. He promoted Scientology at a Nobel Peace Prize concert to widespread boos. He publicly stated that Brooke Shields should have used vitamins and exercise instead of antidepressants to help cure her post-partum depression; in response, she published an opinion piece in the New York Times. And when a Rolling Stone interviewer asked what he had to say to people who dislike Scientology, Cruise replied, “Fuck you. Period.”

Cruise was a sinking ship, and he was taking Scientology down with him. Although he brought unprecedented attention to the religion, he also brought mockery and derision. How a rational human being could become entangled in it, I wanted to know.

It starts

I’m not sure why I decided to pursue Scientology as a kind of pet project. But I spent a week perusing internet sites with hyperbolic accounts of the religion’s dangers and benefits, even checking L. Ron Hubbard’s “Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health” —the book that started the religion some 50 years ago—out of Lamont. I’d spent my school year studying abstract critical theory (I’m an English concentrator), and now I wanted to study abstract religious hucksterism.

At first my interest was voyeuristic. Allen and I read crazy quotes aloud to each other, laughing at their sheer absurdity. Allen proceeded with characteristic skepticism. But the more I read Dianetics, the less I laughed and the more I was seduced. In Hubbard’s manifesto I had expected to find the psychopathic derangement Cruise had recently taken to exhibiting, or at least a monolithic definition of the good life.

But that wasn’t what I found. I discovered that Scientology is less a code of ethics than a how-to guide for the achievement of power and self-control. Sure, I felt that there was a lot of pseudo-science. But there was also the promise of actual superpowers. Follow his steps, Hubbard wrote, and you will not only achieve increased happiness and stress relief, but also telekinesis, extrasensory perception, and mental telepathy.

I read on, somewhat embarrassed by my growing interest. I also visited the Church’s website.

Hubbard claims to have found the “single source of all insanities, psychoses, neuroses, compulsions, repressions and social derangements”: repressed, painful memory. Dianetics promises release through a process called auditing, a kind of non-evaluative therapy. After several courses of auditing, a Scientologist can become a “clear,” a person with no psychotic reactive tendencies. (Cruise is now an “Operating Thetan 6,” six stages beyond clear.)

The Church of Scientology’s website welcomed visitors to take a personality test or come to visit the church. Allen and I decided to take them up on the offer.

The 100-question online personality test asked questions like “Is your life a constant struggle for survival?” and “Do children irritate you?” (no and yes, respectively).

The church’s other promotional material trumpeted: “Do you know who you can trust?” (Yes.) “When life becomes a battleground, your mind is your best weapon.” (Depends on the battleground.) “What blocks you from using your mind’s full potential?” (Alcohol and the Core system.)

According to multitudes of websites on Scientology, the Church was little better than a cult, the religion little more than a tax dodge, its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, little more than an egotistic pathological liar. But Allen and I committed to go see for ourselves.

A day in the life

James F. “Jimmy” Collins ’07 was just starting elementary school when he studied the dictionary. It was the first of many practical courses that Jimmy would take with profound implications for his schoolwork, his morals, and his outlook on life.

Also baptized Catholic, Jimmy was born into a family of Scientologists. His parents, disaffected with traditional religion, had joined the Church in the 1970s, part of an early wave of American converts. L. Ron Hubbard started the religion in the late 1950s, and it was soon adopted by urban intellectuals and curious others in Washington D.C., New York, and Los Angeles. Today, there are around 77,000 practitioners in the United States, according to the City University of New York’s 2004 American Religious Identification Survey. (By way of comparison, the same survey reports that there are around 400,000 Wiccans.) The church claims to have a membership in the millions.

The church provided a community for Jimmy and his family. He attended classes at the church throughout elementary and middle school; lessons on the dictionary were just the beginning. He attended summer courses in Scientology and received auditing, the process of memory recall and self-discovery that is the heart of the religion. He also began reading some of L. Ron Hubbard’s books, learning about Dianetics and Hubbard’s view of cognitive science.

One of the courses that Jimmy took, a course integral to Scientology, is called “Key to Life.” It teaches “study technology,” Hubbard’s method for learning to learn. Jimmy credits the course with helping his schoolwork and his later studies in Scientology. Other courses in subjects like communication, he says, helped him become more comfortable talking in groups and with strangers.

In his teens, when his friends began using drugs and alcohol, Jimmy used the code of ethics he studied in one of L. Ron Hubbard’s books to stay straight. This never alienated him from his friends, whom he says he loved and enjoyed spending time with.

His auditing sessions in high school also proved fruitful. During one session to solve a particular problem, his trusted auditor asked him to recall a memory. Jimmy remembered an event from when he was five. Jimmy says that the auditor urged him to remember an earlier time. So Jimmy went back to age three.

But the two felt that the problem wasn’t solved. Jimmy continued to think earlier and earlier, back into the deep recesses of his memory. Without realizing, without thinking, he says, he remembered being an old man—remembered sitting and speaking with his son.

Jimmy was stunned. He had remembered a past life. And he felt no doubt that the memories were true. They were as bright as day, as real as anything else in his life.

Between high school and college, Jimmy decided to take a year off to play with his band and devote more time to Scientology. Wanting to give back to another Scientologist what Scientology had given to him, he learned how to audit.

And then he came to Harvard.

Want to be a famous actress?

The Church of Scientology in Boston occupies a multi-million-dollar town house overlooking the Charles River on Beacon Street. The floors are marble, the walls covered in heavy, creamy wallpaper. The Church looks like an expensive doctor’s office, not a local parish. A bookshop and seating area on the first floor sit opposite a desk complete with a smiling teenage receptionist.

The receptionist introduces Allen and me to Jeff, a representative of the Church who offers to show us around. At first, I feel only a fight-or-flight response. I look out the door. But Allen tips me to “fight.”

Jeff shakes my hand and asks about my experiences with Scientology in a lilting voice. He has large, lidded eyes that stare for uncomfortably long. Allen expresses a degree of incredulousness about the religion right off the bat; he asks about a story gleefully popular on anti-Scientology sites on internet, that Hubbard believed that an intergalactic ruler named Xenu banished human spirits to earth 75 million years ago. Jeff dismisses the story outright and addresses the question by introducing a central tenet of the religion: it’s not true unless it’s true for you. (The story is not part of the Church’s creation myth and is not present in any of the Scientology documents I read.)

We walk up a staircase, past major construction to renovate the building. As we wind upstairs, Jeff tells us about himself. He had weathered a troubled adolescence. Then, 10 years ago, he became a Scientologist. The religion worked magic for him; he is now happy, employed, married, and substance-free. To demonstrate, he gesticulates and frequently smiles. Somehow, I find this endearing. Fleeing is getting less and less appealing.

We reach the second floor, where a group of parishioners are holding a family study session. Children and their parents sit in a reading room with large windows as another member draws on a chalkboard and leads a lively group discussion.

Jeff plays tour guide, walking us to a larger classroom, where students sit at long wooden tables laden with dozens of wooden boxes. “It’s a goal-oriented religion,” he says. If you have a goal, he tells us, Scientology will help you accomplish it.

Then he looks at me. “Do you want to be a famous actress?”

I mumble no, caught entirely off-guard.

Despite its awkward allusions to Scientology’s Hollywood denizens, Jeff’s question is entirely in earnest. He says that whatever I want to do, Scientology will help me do it.

Downstairs, in a luxurious video screening room, Jeff leaves us to ourselves to watch an introductory film on Scientology. The film has a B-movie sheen. Women in suits with shoulder pads talk to men whose hair looks shellacked while a cheesy soundtrack plays in the background. Kirstie Alley, John Travolta, and a number of doctors, police officers, and businesspeople deliver testimonials on how Scientology has improved their lives. The religion has given them a template for self-control and success.

In the final scene, the narrator stares directly at the audience, walks forward slowly, and stops. Then he sells Scientology like he’s on QVC.

“By joining Scientology you’ll be a friend to yourself,” he says. He makes a comment about how you could not join Scientology but you could also jump off a bridge or buy a gun and kill yourself.

The film ends, and Jeff returns into the screening room. I mention the doomsday rhetoric and he laughs it off. He invites me and Allen to return to the church. Looking at me, he describes how his IQ has gone up since becoming a Scientologist (a claim I heard repeated by several other adherents). He smiles.

Jimmy at School

In middle school, Jimmy was terrified to go into airplanes or elevators—he’d try to take the stairs, or would go into panic mode. But in an auditing session, he came to realize that his fears were irrational. He talked through the problem.

“Since that moment, I haven’t been remotely scared of elevators or planes at all. At all,” he says. “I’ll go in any airplane or elevator, no matter how shady it is…Within reason. Not like a plane without propellers. But it doesn’t bother me anymore, it’s not a fear I have anymore.”

Such anecdotes abound. As the president of the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra (HRO), Jimmy faces a crowd of more than 100 twice a week. He organizes, coordinates, plans concerts and competitions, and addresses the concerns of individual members. He seems never to lose his ground.

“I used to be pretty shy growing up and never really considered myself someone who could easily get up in front of over 100 people and say what was on my mind. Now I do that twice a week, no sweat,” Jimmy says. The communication skills that he developed during his year off have also come in handy at HRO. “Not that I’m imposing Scientology on anyone there, but what I use as my tools for running the orchestra is very much based on what I’ve learned from Scientology.”

Indeed, since coming to Harvard, Jimmy says he can’t count the number of times Scientology has helped him. For one thing, it’s improved his memory recall. “It’s one thing that definitely improves. You’re able to remember a lot more than you would have,” he says. He describes the things he’s gotten as “tangible benefits,” and says it’s a “religion you can use.”

Jimmy continues to take Scientology courses, even while attending school. “It’s unlike Harvard classes. You do all the reading for a Scientology course. You do complete everything—and you’re not done until you do. It’s a cool way to learn, because you’re actually interested in everything you’re learning,” he says.

Jimmy says the most important influence has been on his character. Before school began this year, he went to Baton Rouge to help hurricane victims. He participates in HRO to bring joy to others. He has a normal social life, and his many friends speak of him in almost beatific terms. And he feels happy, clear, and in control.

“I feel like something will happen now and I’ll know exactly what’s going on. I used to feel like I was along for the ride, but now I feel like I’m in control,” he says. “I feel like I know what I’m doing, where I’m going, what my plans are. I look at myself five years ago and I look at myself now and I’m like, wow, I’m better.”

His freshman year, Jimmy filled his room in Weld with friends and acquaintances. He gave a PowerPoint presentation on Scientology and offered to explain the religion to anyone curious or interested. Jimmy thinks he’s Harvard’s only Scientologist. But he can’t say enough about it.

facing the problem

All skepticism about Hubbard and the more outlandish facets of Scientology aside, from the beginning I felt like I kind of got auditing. Other things in Dianetics seemed weird. This I could relate to. At the heart of the religion, auditing touches on a common experience. When I have issues, I talk them out with my friends. When some of my peers have serious issues, they seek counseling. When Scientologists have issues, they work them out with their auditors.

During that July visit to the Church of Scientology, Jeff offered to show Allen and me how auditing works. We entered a small, windowless room. There were L. Ron Hubbard quotes in garish script tacked up on the walls, and a cherry wooden desk with chairs on either side of it. I could have been at a professor’s office hours.

Jeff explained that L. Ron Hubbard invented a machine to help an auditor (literally, one who listens) question and aid a subject. The e-meter runs a slight electric current—no more than a battery, Jeff explained—which forms a circuit through the subject’s body. If the subject sits still, the e-meter measures his or her internal tension. The subject holds two shiny metal cylinders, which attach to a console that looks ripped from a 1920s airplane cockpit. Jeff explained that triggers can access different parts of the memory, which is stored in photographic images. I sat down across from him and held the e-meter cylinders. He advised me to visualize.

“Think about someone,” he said. I blushed, and thought. The hands on the dial moved about, hovered, and fell.

“Who were you thinking about?” he asked, smiling.

“My family,” I lied.

“A little tension there,” he smiled sagely.

Then it was Allen’s turn. He took up the e-meter and agreed with Jeff that, indeed, his work is a source of tension.

My glance caught his eyes as he rolled them with exaggeration.

But I couldn’t discredit this part of the religion, no matter how silly I felt holding two tin cans in my hands. Scientology offers its parishioners a confidant or mentor—a means of free and clear communication. A fringe benefit of total memory recall, I thought, might be the ability, or backbone, or freedom, to say what I wanted to say. Further, I thought that Scientology offers its adherents the inverse of the education I’m getting at Harvard. Scientologists discover the world by examining themselves. I try to learn about myself by examining the world.

As I left the room, Jeff assured me that the religion was hard to take in all at once. He advised me to read more of L. Ron Hubbard’s books, to study the religion. He said that he thought that I’d come around to it. If I didn’t think it was true, it wasn’t true for me.

it ends

About a week ago, Jimmy agreed to meet with me over tea to discuss Scientology. He rushed into our meeting from the HRO concerto competition, smiling despite his hectic schedule. Jimmy has the look of a stereotypical Harvard student, with his backpack and button-down. He’s the kid you see milling about in your dining hall or talking in a section. He looked like the last person you’d expect to jump on a couch on national television, screaming Katie Holmes’ praises. We found out that we both like Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. We found out that we have many mutual friends, one of whom told me to speak with Jimmy after I went to the Church.

Nearly all the cynicism I had at the beginning of the summer eroded. Even now, I still receive emails and the occasional phone call from the Church of Scientology. (Despite the tabloid reports, nobody ever coerced me into anything. On the contrary, everyone I met was remarkably polite and open.)

“If someone wants to talk with me about anything—I feel like I can do that,” Jimmy said. I wished I could say the same about myself. Instead, I responded by mumbling more incoherent questions.

In Jimmy, I saw the benefits of Scientology realized. But if the benefit of Scientology is its promise to eliminate its adherents’ problems and questions, that a life’s worth of mistakes can be undone, I’m not sure that is true, or desirable.

Perhaps Jimmy put it best when I asked him about Operating Thetans, one of the highest levels in Scientology. OTs, as they’re called, have total memory recall, including of past lives, and do not suffer from irrational fears. They’ve reached the state called “clear.”

“The people I’ve met who are at those levels are just pretty incredible people. They’re just—I just—I feel a presence when I’m around them,” Jimmy said, glowing. “They’re obviously very controlled in their life and they don’t have any problems that I know of. I mean, they’re really cool people.”

Doubtless, Scientology offers something powerful. It tells its parishioners that they can be redeemed, right here, right now, if they just put their minds to it. But, as the Scientologists themselves say, if it’s not true for me, then it’s not true. I imagine I’ll always be an inarticulate cynic. I’ll also always surprise myself, for better or worse. And maybe, just maybe, Scientology wouldn’t be the worst thing, after all.