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Published on February 12, 2001
Brainwashing at the Bookstore
Dan Laidman
Columbia Daily Spectator

The Columbia Bookstore is hosting a most unusual event next week. On Feb. 20, representatives of the L. Ron Hubbard Institute will be on campus to sign copies of Dianetics and to conduct "stress tests." The L. Ron Hubbard Institute is a central part of the matrix of Scientology, an organization that bills itself as a church devoted to self-improvement, but that has come under fire by critics and legal authorities the world over as being a manipulative cult.

Why would the Bookstore bring Scientologists to campus? They don't know. One supervisor said the event was booked by a manager who no longer works at the store, and that no one at the bookstore was aware the group was controversial. It's not a Barnes and Noble event--according to their College Bookstore division, each individual college plans its own events.

Bridge Publications, the Church of Scientology's publishing wing, contacted the Columbia Bookstore about the event, the supervisor said.

Scientology is always looking to broaden its base of followers, and college is ripe territory, full of potential converts at precarious moments in their lives. The church even has a Foundation for Advancements in Science and Education. As for the "stress test,"

Scientologists usually begin their recruitment procedure with tests, which they then analyze to recommend further consultation.

The group's critics have called it everything from a money-making scheme to a brainwashing cult. The Lisa McPherson Trust, an anti-Scientology group, states the following on its website: "We are opposed to all of Scientology's policies that promote abuse, deception, secrecy, and fraud, as well as those that encourage hatred of any criticism."

The institutional paranoia has its roots in the organization's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, who was a Navy officer, a science fiction writer, and an occult ritual practitioner before entering the self-help field. Scientology had its genesis in a piece Hubbard wrote for the magazine Astounding Science Fiction that he later expanded into his bestseller Dianetics. Hubbard's theology is complex, and it is dispersed throughout many writings and speeches he gave.

Scientologist devotees come to it piecemeal, working their way up to become "clear" by ridding the body of painful memories, or "engrams,"

which implant themselves on the "thetan," or immortal soul, and cause numerous psychological and physical disorders.

When Dianetics came out in 1950, the Nation anticipated Scientology's cultish future in its review: "The real and inexcusable danger in Dianetics lies in its conception of the amoral, detached, 100 percent mechanical man. This is the authoritarian dream, a population of zombies, free to be manipulated by the great brains of the founder, the leader of an inner manipulative clique."

Each stage of enlightenment, of course, comes at a cost. It can take thousands of dollars or more to rise to the upper levels of knowledge and be fully purged of "implants." Some former members have said that the top levels include a description of a space opera-esque cosmology.

Their descriptions match speeches Hubbard gave in the 1950s that describe the earth's enslavement to galactic warlord Xenu 75 million years ago. Many of our problems can be traced to the warping of our ancestors' thetans by Xenu's forces.

In a 1984 lawsuit against a former member, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge wrote of Hubbard, "The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background, and achievements" At the same time it appears that he is charismatic and highly capable of motivating, organizing, controlling, manipulating, and inspiring his adherents."

In the 1970s, Hubbard's paranoia drove the sect to acts of burglary and vandalism, carried out by the elite "Guardian Office," the Scientology branch devoted to combating church enemies. The Guardian Office carried out a smear campaign against its enemies. The targets included government agencies, the media, and psychotherapists.

The FBI responded to the conspiracy with one of the biggest raids in its history and the arrest of 11 top members. Hubbard escaped prosecution but eventually went into seclusion. The IRS claimed that Hubbard had been skimming off the top from Scientology funds for years, taking millions of dollars. Hubbard died in 1986, however, before they could complete their investigation.

Today's Scientologists distance themselves from the criminal conspiracies of the '70s, saying it was the work of renegades responding to government persecution. The organization has not escaped bad publicity in recent years, though, and it still has vehement critics.

The above-mentioned Lisa McPherson Trust draws its name from a woman who died in the care of Scientologists in 1995. After 13 years of devotion to the organization, McPherson was unraveling psychologically. After a traffic accident seemed to push her over the edge, a group of Scientology staffers kept her in a room for 17 days, never once bringing in a physician, according to Hubbard's teachings.

A full account of the gruesome case and the ensuing legal wranglings is available at the Trust's website, www.lisatrust.net.

The case of Lisa McPherson is a worst case scenario that shows the dark side of a group like this. It is an extreme case, to be sure, but many other people have poured plenty of money and good years of their life down Scientology's deceptive drain. Are the people running the Bookstore really so out of touch that they are letting the place become a conduit for cult recruiting? Will the University continue to give this bizarre and disturbing event its tacit approval by staying silent?

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