Inside Scientology/Dianetics - Apologetics Index

233 Pages·2001·1.82 MB·English

by  Robert Kaufman

Inside Scientology/Dianetics
How I Joined Dianetics/Scientology
and Became Superhuman
by Robert Kaufman
(1995 revision)
The first work ever to disclose the secret Scientology materials.
Foreword: Son of Scientology
Epigraph
Endorsements
A message from the author Robert Kaufman
A Letter in Scientologese
Preface
Introduction: Dianetics, the Ultimate Do-It-Yourself Book
PART I: The Franchise
Raw Meat
Preclear
Marty
The New York Org
Saint Hill
The OT II
The Dianetics Course
Auditing Live Preclears
A Scientology Party
Life on the Outside
An Evening at the Franchise
Scientology Cognition
PART II: The Hill
The Manor
The Power Process
Solo Audit Class
The Tapes
OTs and Other Superhumans
Solo Packs A-D
Bruce
Twin Checkouts
The Bank
The Sea Org
Albert Ward
Practical Drills
Final Preparations and Solo Audit
Out-Going Lines
PART III: The AOUK
The Upper Levels
The Special Briefing Course
PART IV: In the Wog World
Scientology Sickness
Beyond the Wall of Fire
Life in Present Time
Postscripts
APPENDICES: Scientologiana
A. Dramatic Personae Update
B. English Translation of "Scientologist's Letter"
C. Scientology Today
D. The High Cost of Infinity
E. Processing Revisited
F. A Message from L. Ron Hubbard, May 9, 1984
G. From Hubbard's Axioms
H. Success Stories
I. Security Checks
J. The Clearing Course Materials (1968 and Perhaps Subsequent)
K. A Tempered Word for Scientology
L. Whither Scientology?
M. Scientologese
N. First Abridged Unapproved Dictionary of Scientologese
Robert Kaufman died of cancer on 29 July 1996. During the final years of his life, Robert Kaufman
revised the manuscript of his book, Inside Scientology (published in 1972), but could not sell it to a
publisher. (The extent of revision may be roughly guaged by comparing the Tables of Contents.) In
late 1995, with his health failing, he gave a copy of the WordPerfect files to Keith Spurgeon
<[email protected]> for distribution on the Internet. In August 1996, Keith emailed the files
(which are in somewhat haphazard form) to Dean Benjamin <[email protected]>, who edited the
manuscript and formatted it for the World Wide Web in November 1997. Robert Kaufman was
eulogized on alt.religion.scientology by his friends Paulette Cooper and Monica Pignotti.
Foreword
Son of Scientology
(Life May Get Even Stranger When You Write an Expose)
This is my account of my several years immediately following breaking with a cult group, focusing
especially on events about the time of and subsequent to my publishing a book about my
experiences in the group.
Definitions of "cult" abound. The word began to undergo some change in usage several decades
ago. At one time it suggested a rather innocuous interest in or adherence to some subject or belief
(though even then there was, typically, a charismatic leader on the scene). Nowadays, "cult" implies
something onerous, sinister and threatening. Anti-cult factions sometimes use the epithet
"destructive" with "cult," just to make sure that it isn't the old relatively easy-going groups under
consideration.
The anti- (counter-) cult associations of the past few years have identified many signs and
symptoms of "cultishness." Organization such as C.A.N., the Cult Awareness Network, often refer to
the revealing list of cultish qualities drawn up by Professor Robert J. Lifton, in his Thought Reform
and the Psychology of Totalism, a Study of Brainwashing in China, such as a propensity to distort
language and to limit probative thinking.
For me, the word "predatory" says a lot about destructive cults; the organization, or guru in charge,
exacts money, administrative services and sometimes sex from its members.
An all-influencing leader (guru) is practically a requisite of these groups. As good a short definition
as any is framed in The Guru Papers by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad (Frog, Ltd., Berkeley,
California, 1995): "(cults are) authoritarian groups with a leader who has few constraints ... is
unchallengeable and considered infallible."
Around the early summer of 1968 I flew to England to take the so-called Scientology secret
processes. I had just turned age 35, what may seem like an advanced age for such a dubious
adventure, and my course from being totally ignorant of Scientology to pursuing it's founder and
leader L. Ron Hubbard's "stratosphere" was wayward. I had first heard of Scientology from friends
in the mid-'60s, and later befriended and came under the influence of "franchise owners," who ran
their own auditing establishment, though still affiliated with the central organization, who guided me
through Hubbard's elementary courses while seeking to avoid the excesses of what they freely
acknowledged was a fanatic group. Somewhere along the way I got "hooked."
The Lower Grades, the Scientology pathway I traversed in '67-'68 in New York, are rather
innocuous, dealing with earthly fodder, such as problems, guilt and communication. It was only
after I'd passed through all five Grades, and was taught to draw other people to the Franchise and
audit them myself (act as a Scientology practitioner), that the cultist's bug bit me, and I was
persuaded by my "in" friends that I should seek the Golden Fleece, specifically the "Clearing
Process," then available only at a training school not far from London.
My experience with the Scientologists, both in England and later in Edinburgh, Scotland, was a
disaster. (I've described it in detail in my book Inside Scientology/Dianetics, also available on The
Internet.) The powerful suggestions I was given via Hubbard's tapes and bulletins advising me that
Scientology was my only hope for happiness were at odds with the frightening things I observed
around me. After just two weeks in England, a violent struggle ensued within me that I kept
submerged out of my awareness, causing me sleepless nights, bad nerves, and a touch of
paranoia (which runs strongly in Scientology and I suspect other cults as well). When my better
senses, or guardian angel, warned me I was wasting away, I managed to break from the group
and return to New York ("escape" would not be inappropriate, since my return flight ticket was being
held as "security" and I had to pass through a gauntlet to get away).
I did not recover once away from the group; my symptoms persisted unabated. My New York
Scientology friends tried to help me, but their efforts, consisting largely of more auditing, only had
the effect of keeping me stuck to Scientology concepts -- like using a poison as an antidote to itself.
After a few weeks back in New York, I became so scared, depressed and suicidal that I presented
at a psychiatric ward, where I stayed for five more weeks.
Out of the ward, I took up with the same nonsense once again, letting my friends audit me on the
latest techniques they'd picked up while I was institutionalized. Just when I was about ready for
more incarceration, I visited an M.D., a regular internist, who I hoped would give me a sleeping
potion. Unbeknownst to me, he happened to be a "Doctor Feelgood," who solved all of his patients'
problems with injections of methamphetamine (liquid speed) and vitamins, a highly addictive and
dangerous concoction. The doctor stayed open seven days a week, and had a nurse on duty most
of the time to administer the shots. He would never inform me what precisely he was giving me.
When I did find out about a year later, from a magazine article about "fashionable doctors," it took
me no great leap of reasoning to conclude that my doctor was about as wicked as L. Ron Hubbard
himself. However, my drug addiction did pull me away from Scientology. With the relief from the
injections, I lost interest in auditing, and my mind was free to scrutinize it.
My big jump towards a measure of freedom occurred when two friends, not in any group, convinced
me to write up my Scientology story from beginning to end. I embarked on this task with fervor,
since it seemed a way to exorcise the demons that were lurking just below my drug-induced feeling
of security. As my friends put it, "There's a lot there hiding beneath the surface and you've got to get
it out of your system." At first I didn't think I had enough material for more than an article; once I'd
made an outline, however, I knew I had the makings of a book. I was soon carried away with the
compulsion to speak my mind, for I felt that my right to free speech and thought had been denied
me for the three months I had spent at Scientology headquarters in Britain.
I barely started the text, using a kind of speedwriting system, when it was announced that the ballet
company I played piano for was going on their summer tour. Terrified, I pleaded with the doctor to
give me a syringe and injection ingredients to take with me on my travels. He steadfastly lied,
insisting there was nothing wrong with the injections, and that I didn't need them.
I'd discovered that if I went without a shot for one day I had withdrawal symptoms that probably
made heroin seem like cottage-cheese. As the ballet company flight descended to the Vienna
airport, demons sprang in my mind and body. I spent the next ten days in that lovely town with
nothing on my mind so much as getting a flight back to the States and visiting the doctor's. What
kept me going was my job and writing my book. I'd awaken each morning unable to go back to
sleep, so I'd take my manuscript to a coffeehouse and work on it. Several times I fell asleep during
the day; our orchestra conductor told me later he'd been quite worried about me, though somehow I
was able to get through the performances. At night the withdrawal generally lessened, allowingme
fond memories of the Viennese cuisine and the amazing roller-coaster at the amusement park.
The last day of that stay, I started feeling human again, both because the drug was wearing off and,
conflictingly, because I knew I'd soon be back in New York for more shots!
In retrospect I believe that my tribulations were no more due to the dosage I was receiving than to
the unresolved Scientology-induced conflicts that the drug masked.
I went to the doctor's four times before the troupe was to leave for their major stint out West. The
handwriting was on the wall then, because we would be out of New York for ten weeks. I went
through another withdrawal, this time mostly at a summer rehearsal facility near Tacoma,
Washington. Performances began for fair in Seattle. I will never forget waking up in my hotel room
with the symptoms -- fear, depression, and a great gaping urge throughout my whole body for the
injections -- gone.
Throughout these drug ramifications I kept plugging away at Inside Scientology. I must have
decided at the start to tell my story as a straightforward narrative, that the strength of the story lay in
an unadorned account with very little interpretive elaboration. I also realized that I was paranoid
about the manuscript itself. (Of course, Scientology taught us to be paranoid about their
"confidential materials" and in Great Britain ordered members to carry them around in locked
briefcases.) It seemed inevitable, integral to my project, that I divulge these "secrets" for the first
time. Whenever I would leave a hotel room on tour, to eat or perform or whatever, I hid my notebook
behind the drapery or a chair. I had no reason to believe that the Scientology organization knew
anything about my book; nor did I have any inkling of what they might do to critical authors. (Had I
known about the latter, I would never have applied the pejorative "paranoid" to myself, since the
risks were real, not imaginary.) Paranoia was engendered by the organization; fear was a
significant element of the atmosphere. At that time it was still too early for me to stop holding the
cult in awe. It wouldn't have occurred to me that Scientology wasn't capable of achieving its goal of
world conquest. The group was to loom for a further period of my life like a ubiquitous voodoo
threat.
I typed up a manuscript from my speedwriting notes, and hired professional typists to clean up the
job (you can imagine the terror of carrying that stuff around on the subway). It was now fall of '69.
The whole writing project had taken only a few months.
Now I needed a publisher, since I felt that revealing what I knew about Scientology was vital to the
world at large. A friend of mine brought me into contact with a big person in publishing, who told me
he liked the book and thought it important, but couldn't get his sales department to accept it.
However, his wife, a literary agent, agreed to take the book under her wing.
While she was trying to sell my manuscript, I went directly into rewriting. My instincts told me that
the first time around I'd packed the book with unnecessary detail, including an over-abundance of
Scientology terminology, and I should cut it down and, in particular, dejargonize, since much of the
Hubbard gobbledygook was not directly germane to the story.
Each time I returned to the book my memory sharpened. Allowing what I "knew" inside to come out
on paper was cumulatively a revelation. Seeing my auditing sessions before my very eyes gave me
ever-increasing acquaintance with how I'd gone along with things, accepted flagrantly erroneous
suggestions and got myself pulled in.
My agent failed to sell the book, and after a year and a half returned it to me. I quickly found another
agent. During this rather long period with the agents several authors beat me to the punch
publishing books about Scientology. All of them were negative about the group. None of them
contained much about the "secret materials," so I didn't feel their books and mine were competitive.
In fact, the appearance of these other books was good for me, and I was happy to see their
publication. That more than one person was willing to take on a powerful organization (powerful, if
not omnipotent, to a recent defector such as myself) had a very supporting effect, and took some of
the pressure, real or imagined, off myself.
The first book I saw was George Malko's Scientology: The Now Religion (Delacorte, New York,
1970), an outsider's journalistic account of Scientology. Next came Cyril Vosper's The Mind-
Benders (published in England around 1970). Vosper had been a member for many years. His
account includes friction within his own family caused by Scientology.
I corresponded with Vosper, and he told me that something was "out to get him," and since he
knew of no alternative, apparently Scientology was making reprisal against him for publishing his
book. The incident I recall -- by all odds the most memorable one -- occurred when Vosper was
vacationing in Spain. Person or persons sent the local police a trick photograph purportedly made
by Vosper showing Generalissimo Franco sitting on the toilet. Vosper had some trouble staying out
of a Spanish jail.
This was perhaps the first time I heard of the real possibility of Scientology's committing vengeful
acts against critics. This, and the similar stories I was to hear later, proved to be a favor from the
organization to me: physical acts in the real world whittled down the voodoo threat and fear of
paranoia, and put the matter on a simple physical level. If the organization had to resort to dirty
tricks "in the real world," its members surely possessed no special, or occult powers.
Around that time, '71, I met Paulette Cooper, a New York writer, who was also the victim of dirty
tricks, including nuisance lawsuits, because of a magazine article she'd published unfavorable
toScientology. She was working on a book, Scandal of Scientology, and we gave each other our
manuscripts to look at. Hers was more direct and hard-hitting in its criticism than the previously
published books, and she also got my permission to insert one of the most chilling incidents from
my own book. So caustic was Cooper's book to the organization that for years she suffered more of
their enmity than just about anyone else.
When my second agent told me she'd done her best, I decided to sell the manuscript myself.
Within a few months I found a publisher, Olympia Press. This firm had a long and thorny history in
the business. Its head was Maurice Girodias, a man of Greek, Jewish and French background.
Olympia had its beginnings in France, where it was first known as Basilisk Press. Those readers
who go back to the age of censorship may remember books with olive-green covers, by literary
forces such as Henry Miller, Vladimir Nabakov, Samuel Beckett, W.S. Burroughs and the dual
authors of Candy, Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg, being smuggled into the U.S., where one
couldn't publish a dirty word at that time. Maurice Girodias/Olympia Press was reputed to have
been sued by most of these great figures, presumably for non-payment of advances and royalties.
Girodias was a neat, not very large man of great Continental charm and persuasion. It didn't take a
stretch of my imagination to view him as a person who could get people into deals they regretted
later. Girodias had had to leave France, perhaps for the controversial-at-the-time works he
published, and by the time we met maintained Olympia offices in London as well as New York. He
was then publishing high-toned erotic literature -- I read some of the stuff, and what I saw was
written by talented people, and too good to be called "smut" or "pornography." Girodias confided in
me that he was making a comeback from erotica by publishing two new books, mine, and the
memoirs of a speed-freak. I always enjoyed visiting his offices, because he peopled it with
engagingly bohemian-type characters just at the time when bohemianism was becoming scarcely
a faded memory.
I was living in one of the large residence hotels that used to flourish on the West Side of Manhattan
-- several corridors, or "units," to a floor, with eight or ten roomers on each sharing kitchens and
bathrooms. One afternoon the hall phone rang, and I found myself talking to a James Meisler, who
called himself a "Reverend in the Church of Scientology." The organization had apparently spotted
an announcement of my forthcoming book in a trade paper such as Publishers' Weekly. Meisler
demanded a copy of my manuscript so that "corrections" could be sent to my publisher by his
"Church." When I replied that I refused to hand over my manuscript, he said, "It's your neck," and,
"We've got you covered on all fronts."
This was my first encounter of that sort; afterwards, I felt shocked and lame, and wished I'd just told
him to go fuck himself.
One evening around that time, I was nursing a pina at a Broadway taco place when I was
approached by a short, chunky blue-eyed fellow with a mustache who introduced himself as Larry
Tepper, and told me he somehow knew who I was and that he, Tepper, was going through a rough
period trying to decide whether to stay in Scientology or not, a phenomenon known in Scientology
as "Condition of Doubt." I learned eventually to suspect anyone who approached me of being a
Scientology agent, or spy, but at the time was so freshly out of the group, and also single-minded
about getting my book out, as well as preparing to give a piano recital at Carnegie Recital Hall (now
called Weill Hall) that dangers facing me, such as agents, weren't on my mind, and I was
shamefully defenseless against them. As another demonstration of this, I played my recital for
Tepper, naively supposing the performance might impress on him that a dissident who could
create something artistic was not "evil," and thereby ingratiate him into leaving the group once and
for all.
Tepper said he needed to know something about Scientology from an "outsider's" point of view,
and if I had written anything on the subject it would help him a lot. I was unwilling to give him my
entire manuscript, but I did lend him a copy of the first hundred pages or so, which related the
beginnings of my involvement in Scientology, stopping short of any "secrets."
I had dinner with Tepper one night at a Spanish restaurant, a meal that I wound up paying for, in
keeping with my obfuscated state of mind. As we were eating, a salamander-like individual
dressed in clerical garb confronted me at the table and ranted for several minutes. It was the
"Reverend" James Meisler. Typically, it was only later that I wished I had called the police on him for
harassment.
A photocopy of the section I'd given Tepper arrived at Olympia Press a few days later from
Scientology's Los Angeles headquarters, making proposed "corrections" to my text. Again, I never
got around to telling off Tepper, or worse; I was still too much in a fog.
Shortly afterward, Maurice Girodias called me excitedly to tell me that proofs of the sections I had
withheld from Tepper had been stolen from Girodias' printer in Connecticut. A man had come to the
plant late at night, told the watchman that he was an Olympia editor from New York, and got away
with the juicy part of the book. These pages also came back shortly with "corrections."
During the warm spring of '72, as my piano recital drew near I began to consider the possibility that
Scientology might try to abort it. For no logical reason, I focused mainly on the possibility that an
agent would do something to the hall's sound system, creating enough temporary disturbance to
ruin the concert. I asked several friends to keep their eye out for this type of dirty trick.
The night of the concert, I walked down Broadway to Little Carnegie, stopping on the way to enjoy
an expresso. The scene when I arrived at the hall was mad. Dozens of people milled about on the
sidewalk in front of the hall, many of them frantically rushing over to me when I appeared. My father
was among them, weeping because he thought I'd been kidnapped when the hall doors were
found to be locked, with no one at the ticket window.
I got the night manager of the large Carnegie Hall next door to open the doors, and I gave the
recital. The next day I got the story from Little Carnegie staff. The afternoon before the recital, a man
had telephoned the hall, identified himself as "Robert Kaufman," and canceled the concert
because he "had to leave town to attend a relative's funeral." When my audience found the hall
locked, many left. The New York Times review of the recital had it right, noting objectively that the
performer had played the first half of his program somewhat aggressively.
(Several years later the FBI raided Scientology centers on both coasts and confiscated thousands
of documents allegedly stolen by agents of the Guardian's Office -- Scientology's "enforcing arm" --
from government and law enforcement offices around the country. Two of my anti-cult friends spent
several hours in a Washington, DC office xeroxing documents under the Freedom of Information
Act. In one of the cartons was an empty folder labeled "Carnegie Hall Incident." I'll have more to say
later about some of the other documents.)
It was reasonable to me and my publisher that the organization would seek to enjoin my book in
court. Girodias' aide-de-camp for this contingency was a Brooklyn attorney named Lawrence
Cohen. One may think of Brooklyn's "Court Street lawyers" in connection with slip-and-fall, or
negligence, litigations -- not your super-smooth corporate Wall Street lawyer type; but Lawrence
Cohen was competent and knowledgeable about literary matters, and I felt confident having our
cause in his hands. Cohen asked me intelligent questions, for example how to deal with the
Scientology allegation that I had stolen their confidential materials. After a little thought, I wrote him
a few paragraphs about these materials: "Secrets" that I had paid the organization for were
essentially contained in Hubbard's early Scientology writings, such as History of Man, and later
renamed, repackaged and sold at astronomical prices as "OT Levels."
I visited Cohen's office on Joralemon Street, near the Brooklyn courthouses, to give the lawyer what
additional help I could. Cohen flipped through the proofs and said, "Some of this is pretty far out.
What exactly are these `GUPPEMS'?"
"For crissake, Larry, it's not `GUPPEMS,' it's `GPMs.'"
"Well, what's that?
"`GPMs' stands for `Goals-Problems-Mass,' which is part of Ron Hubbard's old line-plots for the
construction of the `reactive mind,' which he claimed is the ruination of anyone who hasn't attained
Scientology `clear.' But really, now that you brought it up, I don't have the goddamnedest idea what it
means!"
Scientology did in fact attempt to enjoin my book, in New York, Boston and London. All these
attempts were dismissed, Cohen handling the U.S. part of the motions, and we were ready to
publish.
Girodias and I were also alert to stories of Scientology stealing critical books and articles from
stores and libraries; but we didn't think we could do much about that.
Once the book was published I set about trying to collect money Girodias owed me for my advance.