Purification Rundown was developed by Hubbard allegedly after studying all the latest literature on vitamins and callisthenics. There is nothing revolutionary about using vitamins, exercise and healthy pursuits to improve health, but it casts doubt on the bona fide of Scien- tology, whose proclaimed purpose is to help the unhealthy and the addict achieve a better life, that it only spreads such knowledge at a cost. Critics point out that the programme has not been shown to be any more efficacious than simple diet and exercise and its claims are bogus. In some cases (like that of diabetic Alyson), it can lead to actual harm because it makes the patient conform to the system, not the other way round.

There is also the system of 'assists': touch assist; contact assist; and Dianetic assist. These are used on 'somatics' or illness in the body which can be affected by treating the mind. Pain can be diverted by using the touch assist. A finger is placed on the spot where pain is felt and repeated questions: 'Can you feel my finger? Thank you' are made until the pain is lessened. It is an imaginative process. Contact assist means taking the person physically back to the spot where an injury occurred. An electric-shock victim is asked to grasp the spot where he received the shock (current now switched off, of course) and this results in a discharge of the 'engram' which he received from the incident. Dianetic assist is running the person through the incident on an E-Meter. I do not doubt that these psychosomatic processes often result in a placebo effect. In other words, if the patients think they are getting better, they do improve - and I would not wish to quarrel with that. But in the 1974 HCOB on the subject, there are pieces of nonsense such as this: 'There is a balance of the nerve energy on the body of 12 nerve channels going up and down the spine. The type of energy in the body travels at 10ft. a second. The energy from a shock will make a standing wave in the body. The brain is a shock cushion, that is all. It absorbs the shock from large amount of energy. The neuron-synapse is a disconnection.' It is redolent of the quackery and the pseudo-science which gurus perpetrate on gullible followers. One 45 RELIGION INC.

cannot help feeling that Hubbard's megalomania was such that he could not humble himself to accept the advances in science achieved by others more competent than himself. The science-fiction writer had to invent his own system in which he always carried off the Nobel Prize.

By far the most sinister of Scientology exercises are given to those further up the Bridge, who are asked to devise tactics to use in response to enemies of the church. The basic theories and TRs of the 'Student Hat' have been turned into a bond between the individual and the Church of Scientology which demands that they respond to attacks on Scientology with ruthless counter-attacks. The infamous 'Fair Game' doctrine, which declared that enemies of Scientology could be 'tricked, cheated, lied to, sued or destroyed', was but one manifestation of this. Typical of the Church of Scientology's attitude to outside criticism was the HCO Policy Letter of 25 February 1966 which described how to react to attacks on Scientology by feeding counter 'black propaganda' about the attackers to the Press.

There is also the HCO *Manual of justice* written by Hubbard which outlines procedures to be used in dealing with the media or enemies and includes the spine-chilling phrase: 'There are men dead because they attacked us - for instance, Dr Joe Winter. He simply realized what he did and died. There are men bankrupt because they attacked Us...' The same booklet outlines the procedure to be followed for the 'entheta' Press who write hostile articles. 'Hire a private detective of a national-type firm to investigate the *writer*, not the magazine, and get any criminal or Communist background the man has....Have your lawyers or solicitors write the magazine threatening a suit. (Hardly ever permit a real suit - they're more of a nuisance to you than they are worth)...Use the data you got from the detective at long last to write the author of the article a very tantalizing letter. Don't give him your data...Just tell him you know something very interesting about him and wouldn't he like to come in and talk about it. (If he comes ask him to sign a confession of collusion and slander - people at that level often will, just to commit suicide - and publish it in a paid ad in a paper if you get it.) Chances are he won't arrive, but he'll sure shudder into silence.' This version of 'an eye for an eye' written by Hubbard has the distinction of incorporating a malevolent mixture of blackmail and vindictiveness. No wonder that someone from the Church of Scientology has written 'Confidential - for HCO personnel only' on my copy of the manual. It is hardly a work to which a religious organization might normally wish to lay claim.

* * * 46 A RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY Far from the imposing manor of Saint Hill, in the midst of the Grampian Mountains in Scotland lies an equally, if not more, striking country house set in acres of woodland with walled gardens and exten- sive lawns stretching out in front of the imposing spired facade of the main building, which is nothing less than a castle in the Scottish baronian style. This is Candacraig House, Strathdon, built and furn- ished with riches from the Far East. Until recently it was the head- quarters of a counter movement within Scientology. Its main purpose was to attract students who would study the upper levels of Scien- tology outside the church organization. The charges were cheaper and although those running the Advanced Ability Center, as they called it, believed in Hubbard's technology, they had broken with the Church of Scientology. They were 'squirrels' - people who had chosen to follow modified 'tech'.

The moving spirit behind the Center was a businessman in his mid- thirties, Robin Scott, a history graduate of Oxford University who had come across Scientology as an undergraduate and joined the staff of the Church of Scientology in 1973. He met his attractive wife Adrienne in the Sea Organization and they have three vivacious children. But in 1978 he protested about the way some things were being done at Saint Hill. He was summoned for a 'Sec-Check', a com- pulsory session on an E-Meter to check his 'security' rating. The needle showed 'rock slam' and proved to his interrogators that he was harbouring hostile thoughts. The 'Sec-Check' involves a long list of questions including 'Do you harbour any hostile thoughts towards the Church of Scientology? L. Ron Hubbard? Your org?' A needle reaction on these questions is tantamount to a confession of guilt, Robin Scott was required to sign a confession of his 'crimes'. He became a travel courier and was presented with a 'freeloader bill' of L40,000 for the auditing he had received while a staff member.

However, Robin Scott requested a 'Comm Ev' or Committee of Evidence, which is like a court martial conducted by the Church of Scientology to review discipline cases, and he was reinstated. Three years later he left for good and together with his wife was declared a 'Suppressive Person' or one who seeks to damage Scientology.

The Scotts decided that they wanted to fulfil the ideals of Scien- tology as they still saw them and bought Candacraig. Robin Scott had several business interests and even if Candacraig was only charging a fraction of official Church of Scientology rates he thought that the books would balance. He found, however, that the confession he had made after the Sec-Check was being used against him. This was one 47 RELIGION INC.

of the reasons which had made Adrienne Scott want to leave when she worked in the personnel department at Saint Hill. She had been asked then to go through files which might contain admissions of drug offences, homosexuality or even felonies and to 'get the dirt' on other members of the church. When she refused, she had been labelled a 'non-compliant junior'.

A lawsuit was taken out by the Church of Scientology against Robin Scott in an attempt to shut down Candacraig as an Advanced Ability Center. One factor stopped Candacraig taking off. It lacked the written materials of the highest levels of the OT courses. This was when Robin Scott made what in retrospect he now considers was a big mistake. He resolved along with others to steal them. Knowing that he and his group would be well-known at Saint Hill and instantly recognized as SPs, they planned their coup at a high-ranking Church of Scientology establishment in Europe, in Copenhagen.

Early on the morning of 9 December 1983, Robin Scott picked up Morag Bellmaine and Ron Lawley in East Grinstead and set off for Copenhagen in his Volvo. They drove to the Scientology Advanced Organization for Europe and Africa (designated AOSH EU & AF in the paramilitary terminology of the Church of Scientology) at number 6 Jernbanegade. Lawley and Bellmaine emerged from the car dressed in the Sea Organization Class A uniform, wearing the insignia of senior officials of the Church of Scientology. (They left Robin Scott in the car with its engine running.) They presented themselves as missionaires from the Religious Technology Center (RTC) and told the Copenhagen officials that they had come to check on standards of technical delivery of Scientology counselling at the org. They were given a private room where, upon request, the 'New Era Dianetics for OTs' materials were delivered to them. Morag Bellmaine put these in her handbag and they hurried out of the org and drove off in Robin Scott's Volvo.

Back at Candacraig, in the converted stables block, the Scotts con- structed the classrooms which they hoped would become a purified Saint Hill to replace Hubbard's HQ. But in March the following year, the Church of Scientology played a cunning card. A man telephoned Robin Scott saying that he was wealthy and interested in pursuing upper levels of counselling. He was en route through Europe. Could they perhaps meet at Coperhagen airport? Robin Scott agreed. But when his plane touched down on Danish soil, the police, together with the officials from AOSH EU & AF, were waiting. They identified him and he was arrested and taken to the cells accused of theft. It had 48 A RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY been a clever set-up and the Danish police had co-operated because theft was involved, although subsequently the Danish court took a different view of the value of the materials which the Church of Scien- tology had claimed were worth over a quarter of a million dollars.

Robin Scott served a short jail sentence of one month and returned, much chastened, to Candacraig.

Candacraig attracted clients who were accommodated in the sump- tuous state rooms with four-poster beds installed by the Wallace family from whom Scott bought the house for L110,000. It was more luxurious than the rice-and-beans regime at Saint Hill, but the Scotts were specializing in up-market clientele. Scott continued to run his business in Aberdeen, which specialized in drilling concrete. The locals were suspicious and in August 1984 the Lonach Highlanders, in celebrating one of the colourful festivals of Deeside, gave Candacraig a wide berth, refusing to stop there for a traditional Wallace dram (or toast) because of the Scientology connection. But it was not being misunderstood by the locals which worried Scott most. The flow of clients was diminishing, as was his fervour for the tech of Ron Hubbard. He resolved to sell Candacraig and close down the centre.

When I called in the summer of 1985 the course-rooms were empty and the Scott family were preparing to leave. Robin Scott was by now deeply disillusioned with even the upper-level materials which had caused him so much hassle. He now regarded them as 'mainly fraudulent and harmful'. They were surrounded by hype and mystique within Scientology. They were supposed to contain the secrets of the universe, and to be so explosive that anyone reading them without being properly prepared could die! This shroud of mystery served several purposes. It was a superb marketing gimmick.

The OT aspirant felt he was getting something really special.

Secondly, the build-up to these revelations created an atmosphere of credulity and conspiratorial secrecy which was a disincentive to anyone who might want to cry that they were simply hokum and that 'Emperor Ron' had no clothes. Third, even if after going OT the students had doubts about the validity of the material, the vows of secrecy ensured that an objective analysis of the material was not possible. Robin Scott decided to lift the veil of secrecy and to go public. 'It is high time the whole fraud perpetrated by Ron Hubbard and the Church of Scientology was more fully and clearly exposed.

Although I don't welcome the personal attacks on me that will un- doubtedly follow, I consider it well worthwhile if we can get this 49 RELIGION INC.

whole sordid affair out in the public knowledge, so that vulnerable people will no longer be exploited by the vicious and unpleasant monster that Ron Hubbard created with his organization - little wonder he ended up in hiding,' Scott now says.

I was delighted that he chose me to be one of the first to see behind the curtain and felt no sense of impending doom as I descended from my baronial bedroom with its four-poster bed to the study where I was to be shown the infamous OT documents. Indeed, when I read the first page of OT III in Hubbard's own writing, the overwhelming temp- tation was to giggle.

OT I and OT II are regarded as preparatory actions for OT III (the 'Wall of Fire', a past trauma so horrendous that anyone trying to absorb it without Ron's guiding light would die of pneumonia). Robin Scott calls OT II 'about a hundred pages of gobbeldy gook', so I started with OT III. It reads like science-fiction cosmology. Seventy-five million years ago there was a galactic confederation consisting of seventy-six planets which had an over-population problem. The head of the confederation was named Xenu and he resolved that he would entice the entire population of the confederacy to Earth (called Teegeeach) and blow them up. He did this by popping nuclear bombs into twenty volcanoes and wiped them out. The individual spirits or thetans were thus deprived of their bodies and were collected, frozen in a substance like antifreeze, and packaged in boxes known as clusters. Thus there are billions of disembodied thetans and clusters hanging around earth, too severely shaken up by this incident to control a physical body by themselves, so they cling to life by parasiting on human beings. However, these Body Thetans (BTs) and clusters cause undesirable mental and physical conditions in the human being to which they cling and the route to well-being and happiness lies in removing them. This is achieved by auditing a person back down the 'time-track' to the moment these psychic limpets attached themselves, and then discharging them. This can be a lengthy process and Robin Scott told me of one wealthy man he knew who had worked his way through a million dollars in buying 600 hours of auditing. Contacting the BTs is done telepathically and they are then guided back down the time-track to the moment seventy-five million years ago when Xenu vaporized them, which is known as Incident 2.

The principle is the same as in auditing an 'engram' out of a preclear.

The auditor commands the person to 'recall that incident' and leads him through it, supposedly discharging the trauma associated with it.

Once through Incident 2 the BT can roam off and pick up a body 50 A RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY to resume the karmic cycle of reincarnations like the rest of us. The idea was that the OT and the BT mutually benefited and it was whispered that OTs derived all kinds of psychic powers once they had shaken off the BTs. They could levitate, have out-of-body experiences at will and were free from any manner of ailment, including vulnerability to atomic radiation. I say whisper because when ques- tioned about these claims, Church of Scientology officials will politely tell you that this might have happened to some as a by-product but it is not the aim, nor a necessary by-product, of going OT.

Of course, Incident 2 raises the question of what constituted Incident 1. This is the very beginning of the Universe itself which had been vouchsafed to Ron in a revelation. It, too, created trauma and the reason offered for the lack of total success with BTs was that they needed to be taken further back down the time-track to Incident 1, which is dated four quadrillion years ago. Here in Hubbard's words is Incident 1: 'Loud snap. Waves of light. Chariot comes out, blows horn, comes close. Shattering series of snaps, Cherub fades back (retreats). Blackness dumped on thetan.' This is the creation of the world according to Hubbard, the Big Bang which ended for me not with a whimper but with a giggle that anyone could sit down and buy this sci-fi fantasy for thousands of dollars.

Scott explains the gullibility of intelligent people like himself as being due to success in using the earlier parts of the technology ('wins' or 'gains', as they are known), so that the critical faculty is dimmed as one gets higher up the Bridge. But there were many who were paying through the nose for this counselling and who were not getting 'wins'.

They sometimes had to worry about money with which to continue auditing and such worries were not supposed to afflict OTs. Before doubts about OT III and above began to spread, in 1978 Hubbard issued 'New Era Dianetics for OTs' which was like many a brand of washing-powder - the 'new improved' version was launched amid much hype and trumpeting (no cherubs presumably). Like the launch of a commercial product, the effect was to re-stimulate sales. These new levels were known as NOTs and were nothing, admits Robin Scott, but a revamped version of OT III'. There were apparently more subtle layers of BTs and of clusters and these new procedures were designed to cope with them. A Solo NOTs level was introduced for several thousand more dollars, which enabled the person to work away at his clusters (with a case supervisor in the background to check whether he ought to be doing more). By 1985 only one person had reached OT VIII.

51 RELIGION INC.

If the levels up to 'Clear' are easier to understand as a form of psychotherapy rather than as a religion, the OT levels reveal Scien- tology as a religion with a cosmology, albeit a strange one which sounds like the product of a science-fiction writer, which is, of course, what Ron Hubbard was. But there are other more sinister elements.

There is the appeal to the age-old gnostic heresy: i.e. you make spiritual progress by working (or, in the case of the Church of Scien- tology, buying) your way up a ladder and can look down on those beneath. There is the occultist element. What can BTs and clusters be but demons? Imperfection in the individual is ascribed to the influence of these psychic forces, which then require to be 'exorcized'. This lays the basis of dissociation of personality and occult practices which are the very opposite of religion, which works for a whole, integrated per- sonality. Just as Scientology's doctrines of 'Fair Game' and 'Suppressive Persons' sprang out of the paranoia of Ron Hubbard, so we must look to his schizoid personality for the creation of such a theology.

The top-secret materials have also been the subject of controversy since I got my peep into Creation according to Hubbard. In November 1985, the OT materials were introduced into court as part of a civil case brought by former Church of Scientologist Larry Wollersheim against the church. Although Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Alfred Margolis allowed the evidence, 1,500 Scientologists crammed the court buildings, the *Los Angeles Times* reported, to ensure that the materials were not subject to public scrutiny. The Scientologists' attorney argued that unsealing the documents 'amounts to the biggest threat to this religion so far'. Although the court resealed the documents after the evidence had been heard, the *Los Angeles Times* published a similar account to the one I have given (although, perhaps because of differences in reading Hubbard's spidery writing, they call the Confederation ruler Xemu, not Xenu). So far, none of the dire con- sequences of catching pneumonia have befallen those who were exposed 'illicitly' to the OT materials. I hope after reading this chapter, you will remain just as exempt from the curse.

52 3 Life on the Ocean Wave I PUSHED open the door of the decaying block of flats not far from Waterloo Station. The narrow hallway opened onto a room littered with papers and letters and ashtrays filled with cigarette ends. The summer afternoon air was stale and sour and the room was filthy. In the corner stood a single bed with a grubby white quilt. Sitting on it, clutching a large vodka and orange juice, was Scientology's very first 'Clear'.

'This place is just a dump,' said John McMaster. His voice had a theatrical ring about it. His hair was white and his face blotchy around the bright eyes which studied me intently. His hand swept to a chair where he bade me be seated. The man who had once been called 'the magician of the E-Meter' and the first 'Pope of Scientology' by Hubbard himself, is now a frail and emaciated figure. Clutching the vodka and orange, he sipped as he talked, travelling back down the time-track to the days as a young medical student in South Africa when his stepmother first introduced him to Scientology. 'It wasn't a religion then,' he said with some distaste. 'My stepmother used it as a weapon. I told her it was just a tool. That's what it is, a tool.' The tensions grew with his stepmother as John McMaster quit medical school and learned more about how to work the E-Meter. His father reluctantly bought him a one-way ticket to Saint Hill where John excelled as an auditor without ever meeting Hubbard. Then in March 1965 Hubbard offered him a key post.

The next two years were boom ones for Saint Hill. With only six staff in early 1965 and a turnover of L1,490 per week, McMaster helped boost this sevenfold within a year. On St Valentine's Day 1966 Hubbard issued a promulgation that the world's first Scientology 'Clear' had been achieved. McMaster was in Los Angeles at the time 53 RELIGION INC.

and was recalled to Saint Hill to undergo checks to ascertain if he really had passed the test. Hubbard's previous announcements of Dianetics 'Clears' had proved to be somewhat premature and did not stand up to scrutiny. But McMaster passed. On 9 March 1966 Anton James wrote to Hubbard, 'Dear Ron, It's with the greatest joy and happiness that I have to report to you that John McMaster has passed the "Clear" check and no doubt exists that he has erased his bank completely and it's gone. There is no meter reaction at all ...his presence in the environment brings about a calmness and safety .' McMaster became a legend among the devoted followers of the 'tech'. The incarnate Clear's speaking style charmed thousands and his touch on the E-Meter brought people like author William Burroughs to be audited by him. Hubbard charged L2,500 for pro- cessing, with L50 for fifty hours with McMaster, who was receiving L4 per week. Then he upped it to L250 as McMaster's prowess grew.

While he was enjoying the limelight and the success, McMaster didn't look too carefully at Hubbard's flaws. But in the sixties Hubbard was anxious to expand Scientology into Africa. Barred from South Africa, although there were Scientology centres there, he fixed on Rhodesia, and the Boomiehills Hotel.

McMaster remembers a heavy-handed attempt by Hubbard to influence Prime Minister Ian Smith while he was living in Alexander Park in Salisbury. Ron had his chauffeur drive him out in his yellow Pontiac with two bottles of pink champagne, which he had to leave with the butler because Mrs Smith would not receive him. 'There are things like protocol, you know, just general decency,' says McMaster.

'You don't just barge in on somebody like a tramp steamer mis- docking. All these nuances of understanding, I began to realize, he didn't have.' With some distaste John McMaster adds, 'He told me Ian Smith was going to be shot because he was a "Suppressive". I now have no comment. But the real reason that Hubbard was kicked out of Rhodesia was that his cheques bounced.' In the mid-sixties doors started closing in the Scientologists' faces all over the world. Whether it was from accident or design, most of the Church of Scientology target areas were in the old British Commonwealth - Australia, New Zealand, South Africa. The first door to slam was in Victoria where, in 1965, a Board of Inquiry persuaded the State legislature to pass the Psychological Practices Act which effectively outlawed Scientology in Victoria. Within half 54 LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE an hour,1 Australian police had raided the Melbourne org and con- fiscated some 4,000 documents, personal files and books. It was now punishable by a fine of $400 to use an E-Meter unless a trained psychologist and it became a criminal offence to receive or teach Scientology materials.

The newspaper headlines at the time in Australia are a tele- grammatic way of conveying the charges in the report which had been prepared by Mr Kevin Anderson QC.2 Scientology was variously held out as 'perverted', 'a form of blackmail', 'caused delusions', 'exploited anxiety', 'a menace', 'product of an unsound mind'. This last charge referred to the diagnosis of Hubbard from a distance by Dr E.

Cunningham Crax, chairman of Victoria's Mental Health Authority, who gave evidence to the Board of Inquiry that Hubbard was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. One cannot help feeling sympathy for Scientology, which seemed to be condemned without a proper hear- ing, if one reads the account of the episode in Garrison's *The Hidden Story of Scientology*, He tells how Hubbard had volunteered to testify to the Board if they paid his expenses, but it is difficult to accept the bona fide of this when one reads that Garrison congratulated Hubbard on his good sense in failing to turn up in person when the Australian legal profession began discussing whether he could be charged with fraud.

The South African government was considering holding a similar Inquiry into Scientology in 1966 and McMaster was dispatched by Hubbard to trouble-shoot. The Inquiry was not held until 1969, by which time a banning order had been brought in the UK preventing leaders of Scientology from entering Britain. (It remained in force until 1980, although a report by Sir John Foster to Parliament written in 1970 and published in 1971, recommended the ban be lifted.)3 To summarize, the mid-sixties were a turning point for Scientology.

As it expanded into Anglo-Saxon corners of the globe, it met increas- ing hostility from governments and the medical profession. The reaction to this from Hubbard was increased paranoia and a series of poisonous and authoritarian HCOBs poured from his pen:

26 AUGUST 1965: The Ethics E-Meter check allowed the Ethics Officer (whose office and function had been introduced in May and June respectively) 'at any time (to) call in any staff member 1 on 7 December 1965. 2,3 *See pages 63-4* 55 RELIGION INC.

and do an Ethics E-Meter check...no question is asked...the EO records the position of the tone arm and the needle'.

5 AUGUST 1965: The main characteristics of a Suppressive Person (SP) were defined and in December the 'handling' of the PTS and the suppressive group was outlined.

6 MARCH 1966: Rewards and Penalties. How to handle Personnel and ethics matters.

27 SEPTEMBER 1966: The 'anti-social personality', the 'anti- Scientologist'.

On and on they came, Hubbard's pen as prolific in defining, attacking, demanding as it had always been in churning out science-fiction. By September 1967 he had even defined a state of 'non-existence' for those who ran foul of his tyrannical paranoia. 'Must wear old clothes. May not bathe. Women must not wear make-up or have hair-dos. Men may not shave. No lunch-hour is given and such persons are not ex- pected to leave the premises. Lowest pay with no bonuses.' On 1 October 1967 'Uses of Orgs' declared, 'There are two uses to which an org can be put: (1) To forward the advance of self and all dynamics towards total survival. (2) To use the great power and control of an org to defend oneself.' This was followed on 16 October by 'How to Detect SPs as an Administrator' and on 18 October by 'Penalties for Lower Conditions'. These included 'Suspension of pay and a dirty grey rag on left arm, and day and night confinement to org premises.

TREASON: Black mark on left cheek.' An enemy of Scientology became by definition a 'Suppressive Person' and thus was 'Fair Game': 'May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologists.' The Church of Scientology points out that Fair Game was cancelled by Hubbard in 1968, but it should be noted that he did this because it was causing adverse public relations, not because it was undesirable, and he added that it did not cancel any policy on the treatment or handling of a SP. In other words, business as before - and the 'business', dirty tricks, spreading false information about critics, blackmail and threats - had been pretty busy and grisly until that point. If someone was in contact with a Suppressive Person they were required to 'disconnect' from them by writing a letter, At one time it was accepted practice to publish letters of disconnection in the *Auditor* magazine, and Wallis quotes one disquieting example of a member of a family writing such a letter:

56 LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE I, Heath Douglas Creer, do swear that I disavow and thoroughly disassociate myself from any covertly or overtly planned association with J. Roscoe Creer and Isabel Hodge Creer or anyone demonstrably guilty of SP acts as described in HC Policy Letters March '65. I understand that any breach of the above pledge will result in me being declared a Suppressive Person.

*Signed*, H.D. Creer.

It was little wonder that Scientology acquired a reputation for being destructive of family bonds. What is probably more accurate is that Scientology is no more destructive of family connections than it is of relationships in general. What is more subtle is that once a person has made his whole life centre round the Church of Scientology, then being 'declared' (which is the verb for becoming a SP), poses a terrible threat of losing friends, job, home and perhaps family all at once. It is a chillingly effective tool for bringing dissenting voices into line.

'Out-ethics' are graded from errors to high crimes. The latter were more concerned with treason against the org itself, but ethics orders were issued holus bolus for the most trivial incidents. Failure to comply escalated the penalties and the non-conformist could soon find himself facing a Sec-Check prior to a Committee of Evidence (Comm Ev).

Among the questions asked on Sec-Checks were: 'Are you a pervert? Are you guilty of any major crimes in this lifetime? Have you been sent here knowingly to injure Scientology? Are you, or have you ever been, a Communist? Those familiar with the McCarthy witch- hunts of the early fifties will recognize the last question. But it should also be remembered that not only was the interviewee in a stressful situation but he or she was on meter and the E-Meter, as we have seen, has been compared in function closely to that of a lie-detector. In other words, a Sec-Check was a form of interrogation.

McMaster, who had been given the role of Scientology's unofficial ambassador to the United Nations, a grandiose gesture in keeping with Hubbard's pretensions, was appointed Pope of Scientology in August 1966, an event he recalls with derision. 'When Hubbard said to me, "I'm declaring you the first Pope", I thought he was joking. For me it was *never* a church. I did wear a ministerial collar at the UN and they'd say to me, "Oh, hello, Father McMaster - who would you like to see today?" and there was no problem. I was completely trusted.' Not by Hubbard, however, Even McMaster was removed from his post 57 RELIGION INC.

in September 1967, put in a state of 'non-existence' and forced to retrain.

In March 1985, McMaster had the satisfaction of returning to the stage where he was once lionized as a 'world-famous spiritual lecturer'.

His audience was a new generation of Scientologists who had broken with the church. But McMaster is unaffected by this revived adula- tion. He returned to his shabby flat in Waterloo just as disenchanted with Scientology as the day in 1969 when he walked out on Hubbard, the man he had come to call Hitler: 'He was savage. He would just turn on people like he was a lion and we were the cubs. I had long since passed his tech but he had to be the greatest. The stuff I developed back then, they're now selling - but I don't want anything to do with being a guru or a prop for their status. I've been asked by these "opinion leaders", who are just another bunch of little Hitlers, to come in and give them credibility. They all want to be more important than anyone else.' He waves his hand dismissively and pours another drink.

The aftertaste of Scientology is bitter.

John McMaster was one of the group who left Saint Hill in the mid- sixties when Scientology took to sea. The official reason given was that Hubbard had relinquished his post as Executive Director and turned over the orgs to his proteges after giving them all those HCOBs which told them everything they would need to run an org, including when to scratch their noses. His reason was that as a 'master mariner' he felt the call to go down to the sea again and had acquired a sailing yacht and also a converted channel ferry (*The Royal Scotsman*), which was renamed the *Apollo*. Another retrospective reason advanced by the Scientologists for the move to ships was that these provided the ideal training environment for the budding 'Clears'.

A more cynical view would discern that things were hotting up for Hubbard, with the possibility of governments moving against him for fraud and tax evasion. A life on the ocean-wave was a life free from restraint. Surrounded by his willing helpers, Hubbard's megalomania grew. The Commodore's Messenger Organization was set up from a corps of nubile young girls who would run errands around the ship for Hubbard. They were treated with great respect - an insult to them was an insult to Hubbard himself. He instituted a special task-force known as the Sea Organization. Its members signed 'billion-year con- tracts' to serve the org and Ron (presumably in this life and those to come) and dressed in naval-style uniforms with berets to match Ron's.

They smoked cigarettes incessantly, just as Ron did. They talked 58 LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE org-speak as Ron wrote it down. And they policed one another for 'out- ethics'. Packed into the *Apollo* were five hundred of these shock troops, under the command of the 'Commodore'. If Hubbard had never tasted action during the war, he was surely determined to see some in the seaborne years that lay ahead.

Life on board the *Apollo* was a bizarre mixture of an educational cruise, being on the *Bounty* with Captain Bligh, and a version of the movie farce 'Carry on Cruising'. An inexperienced crew on a large ship can wreak havoc and the *Apollo* was no exception. Bungled navi- gation, incompetent and ill-trained youngsters cooped up together, it was potentially a recipe for disaster.

Ron solved the problem by making his crew into slaves. Crews mutiny, but not slaves. Penalties were draconian. 'Chain-lockering' was introduced by Hubbard as a punishment. McMaster remembers once being asked by the Master at Arms to come and help her, He pulled up the wedge from the chain-locker, a dank and unhealthy part of the ship into which offenders were flung without food as a punish- ment. Out crawled a little girl who turned out to be a deaf-mute who had been unable to write her name and had incurred the Commodore's wrath. The bilges were another favourite punishment cell (known as 'in the tanking'). Another penalty was being made to climb the dizzy heights to the crow's nest and stay there for a whole watch. But by far the most used (and abused) of the bully-boy tactics was 'overboarding' - Captain Hubbard's version of walking the plank. It originated in Melila when Dutchman Otto Roos, then Senior Auditor, had let a line slip as the *Apollo* was making a botched berthing. Roos is now a rich businessman. His macho manner and tough-guy approach meant that he was rarely on the side of those who were bullied. He discovered the traumatic effects of overboarding on some and declares that he ordered it stopped forthwith. But it didn't prevent McMaster being put over- board four times. The fifth and last time was on 5 November 1969. It was the last straw and when he went ashore he vowed to quit. A young lady chaplain had come to fetch McMaster from the hold because Hubbard wanted to present him with something on the poop deck to 'honour all he had done'. He says he knew right away it was a Judas kiss and Hubbard accused him of betrayal. His daughter Diana 1 (who occupied a senior position on *Apollo*) read out a list of 'high crimes' which McMaster says were all lies, and then eight burly Scientologists flung him overboard. He broke his shoulder in the fall.

1 One of Hubbard's seven children by his three marriages. (The daughter of Mary Sue.)

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Otto Roos has written a diary of those years on board ship. It is peppered with org-speak, but it is a fascinating insight into the period which is now idealized by Scientologists as a golden period when Ron was developing his higher tech and sailing around the Mediterranean discovering archaeological sites where he had lived in his past lives.

Extracts from Roos' diary have been widely circulated among the independent movement, since he is now among the Suppressive Persons and 'squirrels'. Here are some extracts from the Flying Dutchman's log:

'I was not all innocent and sweetness and light. Far from it. I had decided there were only two kinds of people there: those who got into the tanks and those who put them in, and that I was not going to get in, no way!...Having myself as a child experienced the atrocities of war, when many of my friends hadn't, I wasn't going down into those tanks. Rusty old tanks, way below in the ship, filthy bilge water, no air except via oxygen tubes, and hardly sitting height, in which sinners were put from 24 hours to a week, day and night, to hammer rust off the insides with Masters of Arms checking outside to hear if the hammering con- tinued, and occasional food out of a bucket. This was like the concentration camps of my childhood days....

'I would also have refused the crow's nest, which meant spend- ing 4 hours in the nest and 4 hours on deck, alternating for some 84 hours. The nest, a tiny bucket at the top of the mast, too small to sit or lie in, gets cold at night. One of our SPs (named O'Keefe) had a fear of heights and virtually had to be winched up there and down again every 4 hours.

'The severe "unreasonability" started in earnest in September '67 when Non-Existence included no right to food, and Ray Thacker, huddled in a corner, would be avoided by all and occasionally thrown a crust of bread....

'The Flag Orders at the time (instructions from HQ) usually dealt in "smashing THEM" (our "enemies") and smashing them we did, if not our enemies at least ourselves and most of our port relations.

'To say that LRH could not have known about this, can only be answered by "How could he not have?" on a little ship and holding all the comm. lines, after *originating* the policies. One walks around on a ship and looks. LRH has never been renowned for an inability to look.

60 LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE '...There was continued data about SMERSH (from James Bond books), the "Enemy", bankers, psychiatrists, newspapers, port officials, etc. Port flaps were all "their" doing. Our unreasonable (and very often unseamanlike and very unpro- fessional) methods had "nothing to do with it"....

'The billion-year contract was signed of our "free will' (and some Swedes, who objected, were immediately "beached" [sent away], "never to be given upper-level materials", and "declared"). "Beaching" I have seen many times and it did not im- prove port relations. A beachee, put ashore with his passport and no money (except his Sea Org "pay" sometimes) to make his way home, would go to his Consulate for help and have some explaining to do. Another way to bring on the "enemy".

'Nobody ever *dared* say anything about these things and risk losing his OT levels for "making the Commodore wrong".

'Our lives were completely mapped out 24 hours a day, *per- sonal* lives exactly prescribed, especially 2D [relations with the opposite sex]...The day started with "Musters", sing-songing KSW, followed by a mantra of "LRH, LRH, LRH", after which work, work, work, for little or no pay...' Roos was by now a Class XII auditor, the top rank, and was auditing Hubbard himself, a dangerous task which proved his undoing.1 The Commodore had some bad readings on the meter which were duly noted by Roos, but Hubbard would not accept these. The relationship which had flourished with LRH calling Otto up to his cabin to bounce ideas off him, deteriorated rapidly. Hubbard yelled and screamed to see his folders (which is not allowed). When Roos refused, Hubbard sent some 'hefty guys' to collect them and became even more agitated when he saw some meter-reads which did not fit in with either his 'tech' or his self-image. When Mary Sue Hubbard declared that LRH did not 'have such reads', Roos knew his number was up. MSH had previously been an ally and had ripped up the results of several 'Comm Evs' called on Roos for his sexual activities. He had been astute in avoiding super- vision up to this point. Apart from LRH/MSH he had no seniors and only once had fallen foul of Hubbard when he refused a posting to run the new advanced org in Scotland and was put on pot-scrubbing duties as a penance. McMaster was the great 'tech man' and was not a senior post holder. He therefore had no hold over Roos either. Indeed, 1 The auditing of members of LRH's family was case supervised by Ron himself.

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the two men could not have been more different - the fey and thespian McMaster and the tough, macho Dutch ex-merchant seaman. There was no love lost between the two and McMaster even alleges that at one time Hubbard ordered Roos to kill McMaster. But they both paint a picture of the voyages of the *Apollo* which make it sound like a concentration camp afloat.

Roos left with only $100 in his pocket and made a fortune in business. His verdict on Hubbard: 'His great tragedy is that he finally penalized himself horribly by denying himself the only thing that could have saved him: his own creation - auditing.' McMaster is more jaundiced. When he left Scientology he was forcibly subjected to a Sec-Check before he threatened to call the police. He told his interro- gaters: You will never see me again. The World's First Real Clear has a right to think, doesn't he?' Indeed he does, but as McMaster finished his tale of those early years, I could not resist the conclusion that he was also the World's First Victim of Scientology.

The roll of honour of the fleet of the Church of Scientology is a glossy magazine, *High Winds*, the journal of the Sea Organization. It has a running series of 'tales from the early days of the Sea Org'. These are exploits in which the Commodore features largely. In one, he grabs the wheel and steers the *Apollo* through a jagged reef off Sicily onto which pirates are trying to lure passing ships. In another, the yacht *Enchanter* (later renamed *Diana*) is being blown in a shrieking storm onto rocks when Hubbard barks at a young sailor to climb the top- mast and rig the sail while he guides the yacht clear.

I heard another story fresh from the lips of an old salt, Frank Macall, in Clearwater. He was a carpenter and second mate on the *Apollo* but served on the two other yachts - *Diana* and *Athena* (originally called *The Avon River*). Frank Macall had been in the Royal Navy when he came across Hubbard in 1966 when LRH had quit Rhodesia and was advertising in London for volunteers 'to go on an adventure'. 'He didn't tell me it was for life,' laughs Macall behind twinkling sea-blue eyes that are the acceptable face of the Sea Org.

Now he works on models in the workshop at the Flag HQ in Clear- water which will adorn an exhibition celebrating the org's former life on the ocean wave.

His first voyage was to discover former lives of a different kind.

*Enchanter* set off in 1966 on what Hubbard called 'Mission into Time', an attempt to trace his own past lives. 'We went to one volcanic island,' says Frank Macall, 'and LRH told me what to expect up the 62 LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE end of a volcanic track, but I found nothing where he said. Then on the other side I saw a little blockhouse and he reminded me how we were both there in 1682 when I was gunner's mate on his ship and he was Captain of a Portuguese man of war. Suddenly I found I had *deja vu* and could point out all the landmarks and knew every nook and cranny of the place.' Macall remembers Hubbard as a man of many moods. 'He could dramatize them: pound the desk in fury or anoint my eyes as he did once when they were sore after welding. I'm not a worshipper or a handclapper but if there's anyone in this base with respect for LRH, it's me. Once I had spent twenty-four hours working on an engine. LRH was standing drumming his fingers, then he pushed me aside and in three or four minutes he had it working and we upped anchor. He called it "Bypass-handle" and afterwards he explained it to us.' As Macall talked, surrounded by all the mementoes of the voyages

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