Scientology plays an outside role in the cast of new religions that have arisen in the twentieth century and survived into the twenty-first.
The church won't release official membership figures, but informally it claims 8 million members worldwide, a figure that is based on the number of people who have donated to the church. A recent ad claims that the church welcomes 4.4 million new people every year. And yet, according to a former spokesperson for the church, the International Association of Scientologists, an organization that church members are forcefully encouraged to join, has only about 30,000 members.
[Disclaimer: If any Scientologists are reading this, please remember that I am not the author of Going Clear, so don't harass me for sharing the insider information about your religion. Deal directly with Lawrence Wright, the plain-speaking, fearless author of Going Clear.]
Is there another religion so popular, so mysterious, and so polarizing as Scientology? With a pulp fiction writer as its leader, a required billion year commitment contract, and celebrity followers like Tom Cruise, John Travlota, and Kirstie Alley, Scientology is a fascinating mystery to outsiders.
Lawrence Wright, the Pulitzer Prize-winner author of Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, turns his extensive research skills on this religion in his newest book Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, & the Prison of Belief, uncovering previously unknown details about its origins, philosophy, creator, and current status.
Going Clear first focuses on the life and philosophy of L. Ron Hubbard, a fascinating, driven, charismatic, and possibly insane figure. Using quotes from numerous letters, reports, books, interviews, and recollections of Hubbard's friends and early converts, Wright slowly reveals Hubbard as a prolific author (he holds the Guinness world record for number of books published), an exaggerator of the truth, and a spiritual philosopher. A non-religious figure himself, Hubbard reportedly said to friends many times, "I'd like to start a religion. That's where the money is."
Through his international best-seller, Dianetics, Hubbard combined pieces of other alternative religions with his own philosophy into a simple pathway that would allow individuals to reach new levels of spiritual power and awareness without relying on any god. This philosophy immediately became popular in Hollywood during the early 1960s among those drawn to California for new answers, but unsatisfied by organized religion and drugs.
In Hubbard's new "Scientology," every human has subconscious memories and other mental blockages which prevent the achievement of a higher form of existence. Through intense auditing sessions, Scientologists can become immune to these negative forces ("going clear"). As a "Clear," a Scientologist can ascend higher on the Bridge to Total Freedom, leading to new levels of self-awareness and spiritual powers, including out-of-body experiences, ability to travel in space, and familiarity with previous lives.
Scientology actively recruited celebrities in 1969 via their Celebrity Centre in Hollywood. Classes were offered to actors to improve self-confidence, get in touch with their emotions, and use Scientology contacts in the TV/movie industry to land parts. John Travolta felt he received his breakout Vinnie Barbarino role in the Welcome Back Kotter TV series because his classmates at the Centre pointed together at the ABC studios and "telepathicaly communicated the instruction: 'We want John Travolta for the part.'"
But Wright reveals a darker side to Scientology right from the start with details culled from interviews with former Scientologists and administrators close to Hubbard. The Rehabilitation Project Force, an enforced isolation area (e.g., the hold of the Scientology boat, the basement of a building, etc.), was created for members with subversive thoughts against Scientology. Isolated in the RPF area from the outside world, members could get back into good graces through required physical work (such as scrubbing bathrooms with toothbrushes), minimal food (leftover table scraps), enforced silence, and cramped living quarters. Members often were confined at RPF for one to two years,
Member of the Sea Organization inner leadership circle could not have children and were forced to cut all contact with Suppressive Persons (those deemed to be irretrievably against Scientology), including parents and sometimes even spouses. According to interviewees, money was taken from members' personal accounts, leaving them penniless. Beatings were administered even to SeaOrg administrators for minor or no apparent reason.
Should someone try to escape from RPF or another Scientology base, there was a special security team ready to use either emotional, psychological and even physical force to bring the escapees back.
Wright presents an exhaustive bibliography of resources to back up the claims in Going Clear. Details from these interviews, reports, and articles are woven so skillfully together by Wright that one cannot help but be mesmerized by the organization, philosophy, and people of this religion. Wright does footnote wherever the church formally denies or explains specific occurrences.
Wright is probably used to handling any fallout from disgruntled subjects of his books (i.e., Al-Qaeda), so any Scientologist-stalking and character-assassination tactics launched against him (several such instances were documented in this book as carried out against other Scientologist exposers) won't be enough to discredit him or silence his exhaustive research.
Going Clear is a wild, highly-detailed, almost unbelievable inspection of Scientology, its people, and its power. Riveting and scary.
Happy reading.
Krakauer, Jon Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith.
Extensive research to give insight into the Mormon religion and its followers.
Bardi, Abby. The Book of Fred.
Fictional account of a girl who escapes an isolated cult and its leader named Fred (!). She then must try to deal with the real world using or overcoming her upbringing based on the religious text, The Book of Fred. Who could not be attracted to a storyline and leader such as this?
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