I knew I'd seen something before about the Santa Barbara Org; just had to dig it out of Google. This was anon-posted back in 1998. Sounds like the Org has shrunk a bit since then.

-- Dave

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Anonymous Aug 12 1998, 3:00 am hide options
From: Anonymous <nob...@replay.com> - Find messages by this author
Date: 1998/08/12
Subject: CoS Santa Barbara: church in the shadows

Santa Barbara is a small, wealthy community about 90 minutes up the coast from Los Angeles. Its pleasant weather is attributed to a quirk of local geography: a beach that runs east-west instead of the usual north-south. The town is situated between the beach and the foothills. The Coronado islands lie 20-50 miles offshore.

The main drag is State Street, which starts at the wharf and runs right through town. It is filled with restaurants, bars, clothing stores, antique shops, and tanned, smiling people. It's the "heart" of the city, and is crowded even on weekdays. But in the middle of this brilliant rainbow of activity there is a peculiar dead spot: 524 State Street, home of the Church of Scientology of Santa Barbara.

The building is parchment colored with blue trim: blue doors, blue awnings, blue shutters and railings. Large blue letters on the face say "Dianetics"; in smaller letters, "Church of Scientology". The front is two stories; the back three stories. At ground level there is a row of display windows facing State Street, interspersed with three doors. On one side of the building there is a news stand: a long row of wooden magazine racks bolted to the exterior wall, protected by an overhead awning. Additional free-standing racks for magazines and newspapers are set up on the pavement next to the big wall rack. The magazine stand appears entirely ordinary; no Scientology materials were in evidence. Separating the building from its next door neighbor is a paved area and tiled walkway leading to the parking lot in back that is shared by several nearby businesses.

There's nothing odd about Scientology building itself, yet it stands in distinct contrast with the rest of the street, where brightly lit shops with large windows are full of people moving in and out. No one enters or leaves the Scientology building. The downstairs interior is dark, and the display windows seem to be arranged as much to block views of the inside from the street as to lure in new customers. The displays consist of a few framed Hubbard quotations and two cardboard display cases of paperback books: one with Fundamentals of Thought, the other with A New Slant on Life, both recently reissued by Bridge Publications. A large sign advertises a "Personal Efficiency Course"; this has replaced the comm course as the one-course-fits-all intro to Scientology for raw meat. There is also the obligatory sign found in the window of every Org: "Now Hiring -- See the Director of Personnel". This is, of course, a ruse to get bodies in the shop; anyone inquiring about a job will find themselves taking the same personality test as any other prospective customer/parishioner.

Our first venture into the Org occurred on a Monday afternoon, just after lunch. We wandered in, expecting to be set upon by an eager registrar, but found no one. The front "parlor" had some book and poster displays, and two long tables at which were set out about 10 red folders containing instructions for the famed personality test. Next to this parlor was a stairway leading upward. A few tentative hello's yielded nothing, so we ascended, cautiously. At the top of the stairs we found a small bookcase displaying some books and a yellow E-meter. The second floor was organized as an open area with offices around the perimeter, and a staircase leading up to the third floor. Visible off to the left was a room with full sets of red, green, and blue volumes, and down the hall from that room, a bust of L. Ron Hubbard with his mouth open stood outside a small, very modest "office for Ron". There was a desk, a globe, an E-meter and some books, but no pack of Kools; perhaps someone had stolen Ron's ciggies. Other offices were visible but we did not explore them. On the third floor, the offices are again arranged around the sides, but instead of a central open area, the doors open onto a balcony that runs around the entire interior, looking down onto the second floor area. These are the auditing rooms and courseroom.

As we explored the second floor we heard a woman's voice overhead. This turned out to be Wanda, the ED (Executive Director), a late fortyish woman with gray hair who was giving instructions to a younger woman as they exited a third floor office and stood on the balcony. "Hello" we said, doing our best imitation of innocent raw meat. "Are you open for business?" They were.

We explained that we had been walking by and were intrigued by the material in the display window, so we had come in to learn more. We didn't have time to take a personality test right then, but we would be interested in a tour of the facility. Wanda kindly obliged, showing us all around the place, including the sauna for the Purif, located in the back of the building at ground level, and a storage area containing piles of books, with a large black satellite antenna tucked away in a corner. (We had earlier spotted a more recent model antenna installed on the building's roof.) One of us spotted a pile of folders with names on them. Could these be PC folders stored so carelessly? Probably not; perhaps they were personnel files.

Also on the first floor was a room used for training auditors. It had a table and chairs, and a videocamera setup to tape the proceedings for later review. A sign on the wall, whose wording we can't recall exactly, said something like "Every time you turn away a bad auditor, you create an enemy of the church." The word "enemy" is particularly sharp in our memory. What sort of church worries about enemies? We thought it better not to raise that subject.

Since we were short of time, we decided we would come back the following evening to view the film Orientation. Wanda asked us to come after 6:30, when she would be back from dinner, because some of the other staff members don't know how to set up the projector. We thanked her for the tour and left.

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On Tuesdays, Santa Barbara closes down part of State Street for a farmer's market. People set up stands right down the middle of the street to sell fruit, vegetables, and flowers. When we arrived at 6:30, the Org was looking marginally better. The lights were on downstairs, and one of the three front doors (the leftmost one, opening directly onto the personality testing area) was open. A black man sat at one of the long tables, taking a personality test. Behind the tables, at the reception desk, was a young white woman wearing a kerchief on her head, covering stubble. Her name was Tammy. Wanda was busy upstairs supervising the course room, but since the projector was already set up, Tammy could show us Orientation. She handed us off to a tall blonde woman, Jennifer, who took us into the screening room, located in an area behind the reception desk but in front of where the sauna was. This was a mini-theater. There was a large screen flanked by a couple of free-standing speakers, and six chairs in two rows of three. A film projector was located behind the rear wall. The theater appeared to have good soundproofing; when the door was closed we could hear nothing from outside. The movie is played at high volume for extra effect, so it may be that the soundproofing is necessary to prevent disturbing the test-takers outside.

We won't bother to describe Orientation in detail here, since it's been discussed extensively elsewhere. For those who haven't heard of it before, it's 30-40 minutes of deluded cultists trying to appear as normal as possible while delivering an intense sales pitch. They of course fail miserably, which is what makes the film so entertaining. One can spend hours picking apart the logical contradictions and enumerating the many unstated assumptions in their arguments (e.g., organizations that own a lot of fancy real estate must be legitimate), and spotting the obligatory paranoid fantasy. (Hint: it involves a plot against Ron by evil psychologists.) We give it two thumbs up!

After the film, we spent some time chatting with Tammy. She's about 25 and has been in Scientology since 1992. When she was 19, she was stumbling through college, using drugs, and not getting along with her parents. Then she found Scientology. She dropped out of school to join staff at the Org. We expected someone who's been in for six years to be pretty far up The Bridge, or at least know how to set up a projector, but Tammy has gone nowhere. She's had a bit of Dianetics auditing, and she's taken a bunch of little courses like the comm course and the PTS/SP course. She also had some basic admin training (probably the Student Hat and Staff Status courses.) But she's made no progress up The Bridge. She wasn't even sure what a 12.5 hour block of auditing time cost.

Tammy's job is to answer the phone and give personality tests. That's pretty much all she does. She told us that no matter what the test shows, she always recommends the Personal Efficiency Course, which costs $45. She showed us the book for the course. It's an introduction to some basic Scientology concepts such as "havingness" and the tone scale. We asked how this would increase our efficiency, and Tammy said that by helping us to understand human behavior, it would make us more effective at dealing with people.

Tammy claimed not to know what the upper levels were about, except that they were spiritually advanced. She told us she was on the Internet, though. Her husband was working out of town for a while, and they used ICQ (an internet messaging system) to communicate. She also has one of those "I am a Scientologist" web pages. We're pretty certain that Tammy is one of those parishioners who eagerly adopted the Scieno-sitter web filter. A casual mention of www.xenu.net went right over her head. Her lack of curiosity about the organization she's working for was her most impressive quality.

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Some basic stats on the Org:

There are 14 paid staff, of whom 3 are auditors and 11 are "admin". (This is considered understaffed by the ED.) There are 3-4 unpaid volunteers, and 150-200 public.

The ED, Wanda, is an OT4 and is currently on New OT5. Other high-level staff include Ellen, who is clear, and Allison, an OT5 (or possibly still doing that level.)

Hours are Mon-Fri 1pm-10pm, and Sat/Sun 9am-6pm. Unlike some of the larger orgs, there is no regularly scheduled Sunday service. Such services are a sham anyway, but it appears this org is in such poor shape they can't be bothered keeping up the fiction.

The building at 524 State Street, Santa Barbara 93101, was acquired by the Church of Scientology of Santa Barbara on 5/17/85. It is parcel number 037-173-039, and has an assessed value of $1,628,321. All but $152,647 of that is free from property taxes due to a religious exemption. We're guessing the taxable sliver is the magazine stand. The church paid just $1535.76 in property taxes in 1997. We could find no liens on the property, but our search may have been incomplete.

================

Our final visit to the Org was Wednesday evening, after a nice dinner at a Japanese restaurant diagonally across the street. We greeted Tammy downstairs, and proceeded upstairs to chat with Wanda in her office. We mentioned that we had seen Orientation the night before, and done some reading about Scientology on the web. She asked us if we had any questions.

Indeed we did. We wanted to know what we could expect at the end of the training, when we had reached the OT levels at the top of the grade chart. Wanda pulled out a tech dictionary and read us the definition of "OT", about half a page long. One of the attributes that stood out was that OT's have the ability to operate without a body. That sounded good to us. "What OT level do we need to reach to operate without a body?" Wanda paused a bit and said, well, probably around OT15, but only the levels up to OT8 had been released so far. The rest will come eventually; Ron had left all the materials for the higher levels. This puzzled us. If there are no OT15's walking around, then who would train us to operate without a body when that level is finally released? According to Wanda, she believes some of the people at the top of the church hierarchy have already been exposed to these levels, and they will supervise their delivery. But she didn't know any details. Wanda also said that she herself had experienced being outside her body, but only in occasional brief flashes.

Okay, we said. So what was it like being an OT4? What abilities are gained at that level? The tech dictionary said one would be "at cause over matter, energy, space, and time", but what did that mean? Wanda explained it as: things go easier for her. She is more effective, able to accomplish more with less effort. (Sounded to us like what the personal efficiency course promised.) She also indicated that her childhood was not all that happy, but she is more peaceful inside now.

During our discussion of the OT levels, Wanda told us about OT3, the "Wall of Fire", and pointed out that it was confidential. People could become ill if they read it before they were ready. "Then why is it on the web?" we asked. Wanda said that it was put there by squirrels and SPs, people who were seeking to harm Scientology. Anyone who denigrates the OT levels is an SP.

Wanda wanted to know what we had seen about Scientology on the Internet; we avoided the question. She knows there is a lot of negative information, and she seemed troubled every time we mentioned the net. She also said she hasn't been on the net herself yet. (This we found hard to believe.) We guess if we had mentioned something specific, like Lisa McPherson, Wanda would either profess ignorance or give the prescribed cult response: Lisa died of a sudden illness; she was never mistreated; etc. We'd heard it all before.

We left with personality tests in hand, promising to fill them out and return the next day. But our schedule didn't permit it.

================================

Overall, our impression is that the Church of Scientology of Santa Barbara is a seriously downstat org. The building is well-kept, but there's just not much interest among the public in joining a group that is regularly vilified as a cult in the media. Moreover, Scientology's dark underbelly is constantly exposed on the web, and any upstat Santa Barbaran will eventually discover that. How does the Org stay in business? It's probably due to two factors: the building is paid for and exempt from taxes, and Santa Barbara is a wealthy town. As in Philadelphia, a few well-heeled publics who can be hit up for monthly operating expenses is probably all it takes to keep the doors open.

We didn't bother trying to confront Wanda or Tammy with entheta about Xenu, Lisa McPherson, the Swedish NOTs, or any of the other bad news hitting the church lately. It was clear to us that they were committed to living in their weird little world, and that any attempt to shake their faith in Scientology would only result in our being shown the door. That doesn't mean we consider the Santa Barbara Org to be harmless. Tammy, with no job skills and no curiosity, and Wanda with her imaginary OT "wins", clearly demonstrate that Santa Barbara Scientologists are not the masters of matter, energy, space and time, but rather, pathetic victims of a cult in decline.

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