Ali's Smile: Naked Scientology

by William S. Burroughs

  People had to answer questions like that in Germany and Russia. Scientologists say they have no committments to any political group or party. They are just trying to make a better world... What makes them think anybody would be allowed to do this under a Fascist government? I have made my own political committments quite clear in THE JOB and other writings. In the article to which Mr.

  Mustain refers I call on Scientology to do the same.

  Inside Scientology

  by Robert Kaufman

  Olympia Press, 279 pp.

  BY WILLIAM BURROUGHS

  ROLLING STONE

  NOVEMBER 9, 1972

  The upper levels of Scientology processing are classified as "confidential," which means that only those who have - completed the lower grades, passed security checks, and paid the large fees in advance are allowed to see and run this material. The most drastic penalties are invoked against those who reveal these materials. Mr. Kaufman has shown real courage in publishing Hubbard's so-called confidential materials for the first time in Inside Scientology. Step right up, here it is. This is what Scientologists pay $10,000 to see.

  In Mayfair magazine I challenged Hubbard to come out with his secret materials and show them to qualified workers in other fields and circulate them among university students. I was put in a Condition of Treason and the challenge was, of course, ignored. Obviously it is very much to his financial advantage to keep this material secret. Otherwise who would pay to see it? Hubbard says that the mere sight of these dangerous materials could make a "Wog" sick or drive him insane.

  (Wog is his revealing designation for non-Scientologists. A Wog, he tells us, is a worthy Oriental gentleman: In other words, a stupid humanoid, and how wrong can you be? Human. He himself is not from this planet, but he assures us he is here with the best intentions.) Now, some Wogs have suggested that there might be financial considerations involved here...but he just doesn't want to make people sick. Why, if a Wog were to catch even a glimpse of the confidentials he could come down with galloping appendicitis.

  We will see how many Wogs come down with anything as a result of reading the material now published in this book. And I am sure Hubbard himself will be delighted to see that no ill effects result, so he can publish his materials as widely as possible and get on with the great task of Clearing the planet. And how can this ever be done except by getting the Clearing and O.T. course out to millions? Demonstrate it on TV, publish it in The News of the World. The road to total dissemination is now open.

  Hubbard says that Scientology works. Well, it does produce certain effects, as this book bears witness...Here is what can happen while running an Engram:

  "You can almost break a pre-clear's spine by asking him to contact his own tractor around his body and yet withhold the pressor against his spine."

  "I was in a prison cell. A noose was being placed around my neck. I got down on the floor still holding the cans and started choking. My head jerked in spasms until I thought it would rip itself from my neck."

  Any procedure that produces such drastic effects merits serious study. But the whole subject of Scientology has been made virtually inaccessible by the conditions to which one must submit in order to study it. To give you an idea as to what life at St. Hill was like, I shared a cottage with seven Scientologists and the young female members at breakfast come on with cognitions and thinly disguised sexual dreams about L. RON HUBBARD like young nuns dreaming about Christ, and this one girl who always held us up and one car to pile seven Scientologists into it, five minutes to make St. Hill five miles away or we will be late for our classes and you know what that means, if it happens twice children a dirty gray rag around a tidy little arm - barreling down a narrow road 65

  miles per hour they are too stupid to be scared. RON will take care of us they think just made it on time the rack with coats stacked four deep keeps falling down shabby rooms with charts and bulletins and pictures of RON on the wall like some dreary public school. My "twin" as they call them the one who works with you on the E-Meter drills is a nice middle-aged woman from California, I would judge she's buried three husbands $250,000 per coffin. She's got a high tone arm and I can't get it down can't get reads on the Dating Drill. Fear stirs in my stomach. This could mean Review and some horrible Condition. The supervisor paces around. He stops behind a young girl.

  "I am putting you in a Condition of Liability for Out Tech," he tells her.

  She goes out weeping to Ethics.

  Now he is standing behind my chair.

  "You're in a Condition of Danger", he tells me.

  " That's it! " barks a sulky Sea Org lieutenant standing in the doorway with the Public Ethics Officer.

  The one I call the Pig Woman.

  "Everybody line up for a See Check."

  When my turn comes I pick up the cans.

  "Do you consider St. Hill a safe environment?"

  "Yes, of course I do."

  "There's a read here. What do you consider this could mean?"

  "Well we are surrounded by suppressives. It frightens me to think of those devils all around us."

  I was learning.

  I remember someone named Polly Stathis who, with eight other high criminals, showed the clearing course to a psychiatrist. RON put out a Fair Game order on them in The Auditor newspaper.

  No amnesty may ever cover them.

  Any Sea Org member contacting them is to run R-2-45.

  If they ever appear in any Org they are to be run on reverse processes. (Reverse processes according to RON can drive someone insane.)

  They may be tricked, lied to or destroyed.

  They are fair game.

  I remember a young Zen Hippie thrown out of the cottage in the middle of the night for saying he preferred Zen to Scientology.

  I remember a bulletin that anybody who is discovered through auditing to be smoking pot will be turned over to the authorities...("What kind of fink outfit is this?"... I hastily suppressed the thought.) I remember one weekend atter a few drinks confiding certain doubts about Scientology to a supposed friend.

  "They'll wring it out of me on the next See Check," he sobbed..."Why don't you go straight to Ethics and make a clean breast of it?"

  I remember some grim old biddy dragging me into a broom closet (all the auditing rooms were full, as usual) and asking me on the E-Meter: "Do you have any unkind thoughts about L. RON

  HUBBARD...That reads...What do you consider this could mean?"

  "He's so beautiful he dazzles me. I can't help resenting it sometimes..."

  In the words of Celine... "All this time I felt my self-respect slipping away from me and finally completely gone. As it were, officially removed..." Like an anthropologist who has, after unspeakable indignities, penetrated a savage tribe I was determined to hang on and get the big medicine if I had to fuck the sacred crocodile. I was lining up what allies I could muster and even had mv boy in Ethics. I had, as they say, unmocked the Pig Woman. But I was ordered for a Joberg because I rockslammed on the question, "What would have to happen before Scientology worked on everybody?" (I could not confront it.)

  The Joberg which is published for the first time in Inside Scientology consists of 104 questions about every criminal activity you could conceive of.

  "Have you ever kept a baby farm?"

  Each question has to be cleaned and this Joberg took three weeks because there were so many students up for a Joberg and so few review auditors. Three weeks sitting in a small waiting room on straight-back chairs reading science fiction vou learn to be wary of the link with a big smile who sidles up to you and asks,

  "What do you think of the new attestation order?"

  "I'm sure RON knows what he is doing."

  And it's a good thing to scream out as if you just couldn't contain yourself, " Thank you Ron! "

  whenever you pass an Ethics Officer or a Sea Org member.

  We who considered ourselves politicals kept apart from common criminals and fuckups. That one is guilty of
drunken auditing besides which she is the worst old bore this side of California.

  The Public Ethics Officer prowls in and out.

  "I hear some of you guys have been discussing your cases and nattering."

  One of the politicals, who has been in the movement since 1945 and seen all the old comrades get the axe, tells me he is there to prove that RON has betrayed the revolution. This dangerous confidence unnerves me completely. Even to hear such a statement compromises one beyond redemption.

  Lunch break. The canteen is filthy the sandwiches soggy. The soft drink machine is in a Condition of Liability for being broken. Cart it off to Ethics. Several violators, dirty and unshaven with gray rags around their arms, petition for signatures so they can get back in and spend some more money.

  "William Burroughs, report to Ethics."

  They want me to disconnect from Mr. Bradly Mr. Martin, a character in my own writing. Well, he was getting old in any case.

  So back to the Joberg...

  "Have you ever hidden a body?"

  "Of course not."

  "There's a read here, what do you consider this could mean?"

  Sharp and clear on screen I see myself hiding a body in some ancient Near Eastern alley the smell of the alley and the feel of another time.

  "I think it's Whole Track."

  "In this life have you ever hidden a body?"

  "No."

  "That is clean."

  These film glimpses will occur in auditing. I don't say you are remembering another life but you are remembering something. A writer always gets his pound of flesh and a number of scenes later used in The Wild Boys were remembered on the E-Meter. Later I was able to obtain the same results through self-auditing.

  After the Joberg and two more reviews, all of which were obligatory, and carried out at my expense, I finally arrived at the Advanced Org in Edinburgh for the clearing course. A hulking CIA type gave me a final See Check.

  "Have you ever known any Communists personally?"

  "Oh yes, lots of them and CIA men too..."

  "Are you withholding anything?"

  "I don't think so."

  " That reads."

  Finally I had to confess the truth.

  "I have made magic against RON."

  "What made you do it?"

  "Suppressives, of course. They wanted to keep me from RON."

  "Your needle is floating."

  The Clearing Course consists of a series of contradictory propositions and running this material does give a certain immunity to contradictory commands. So when some one says...

  "Creating me to be a spirit to be a God destroying you to be a body to be an animal..."

  You just look at him and say... "I'm floating."

  Scientology is a model control system, a state in fact with its own courts, police, rewards and penalties. It is based on a tight ingroup like the CIA, Islam, the Mormons, etc. Inside are the Rights with the Truth. Outside are the Commies, the Infidels, the Unfaithful, the Suppressives. Rarely has this formula been expressed with such consummate effrontery, like you go into a store to buy a suit the clerk puts you in a Condition of Doubt, you work all night in the stock room and go around with a gray rag around your arm and petition the entire store to let you back in so you can buy something.

  How does Hubbard do it? With the E-Meter of course. The E-Meter is among other things a reliable lie detector in expert hands. The CIA also uses lie detectors and runs Security Checks on all personnel. With this simple device any organization can become a God from whom no thought or action can be hidden.

  The E-Meter is also a biofeedback device, and since it passes a small voltage through the brain and the repetitive commands of auditing direct attention to certain brain areas, it is a form of electric brain stimulation. This may account for the valid pictures and films that do sometimes occur in auditing.

  Recently in America and for some time past in Russia telepathic experiments have been carried out on similar instruments. The Fall Read that characterizes fear, resistance, guilt, shame, can be produced from a distance by a sender who concentrates on persons or situations to which the receiver has a strong negative reaction. In short, auditing can be carried out telepathically from a distance so perhaps RON really audits you all.

  It has also been discovered that negative thoughts can be sent from a distance, resulting in confusion and even unconsciousness. These experiments are described in a book called •Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain•. So when RON puts out an Enemy Order on someone, he is directing the hatred of every Scientologist against that person. This may actually cause damage. I will leave the reader to infer whether this magic is strong enough to materialize anonymous letters to the police which recently resulted in the seizure of 30,000 books of Mr. Girodias' Olympia Press edition of a London warehouse, to write other letters cutting off Mr. Girodias' phone supposedly at his request, and the disappearance of manuscripts from burglarized premises. Others who have opposed or deserted Scientology report similar incidents. It is time for Wogs to unite against such tactics. The publication of this book is an important step in this direction.

  Mr. Kaufman concludes...

  "There are of course no grades or levels except in the mind of the Scientologist; the grades and levels are simply RON'S test of a pre-clear's credulities; they guide him into progressively deeper hypnotic states. What the pre-clear is run on is largely coincidental and is not what moves the needle; rather it is the thinly disguised suggestions which flow from a determined and persuasive auditor making the needle respond like a dog wagging its tail at hearing a kind word."

  It must be acknowledged that Hubbard has developed a technique for doing this that warrants the study of non-Scientologists. He has in fact developed a system of biofeedback brain control based on the E-Meter.

  THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY

  The Hubbard Scientology Organisation

  WORLDWIDE

  Founder L. Ron Hubbard

  Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead

  Sussex, England

  5 th December, 1972

  The Editor,

  Rolling Stone,

  25 Newman Street,

  LONDON WIP 3HA

  Dear Sir,

  In your issue of November 9th 1972, Issue No. 121 on pages 46 & 47 under your book review section William Burroughs reviews Robert Kaufman's book INSIDE SCIENTOLOGY.

  This book has been the subject of contempt proceedings in the High Court. Olympia Press has been found guilty of contempt and the Judge ordered seizure of all copies of the book. Mr.

  Burroughs' petulant review is not only tiresome - its false.

  I have included here an itemization of these inaccuracies with documentation to show that Mr.

  Burroughs may be a writer but cannot always be trusted to be an accurate one.

  A copy of this letter is being sent to Mr. Burroughs.

  Your sincerly,

  R. Sorrell

  Church of Scientology

  WILLIAM BURROUGHS

  In Answer to R. Sorrell's CORRECTION relative to my review in the Rolling Stone of Robert Kaufman's book

  INSIDE SCIENTOLOGY

  Reading over this disposition it is immediately obvious that Mr. or Mrs. or Miss for all I know R.

  Sorrell and your reporter are talking at cross purposes.

  This is the language of an official in an organization who must, by the fact of the position he holds in that organization, say certain things and represent at all times a point of view dictated by that organization. An organization with a Sea Org, a Flagship, villas in Tangier, Manors in Sussex, offices in major cities of the world, from South Africa to Tokyo. An organization numbering according to Mr. Sorrell's own statement 5 000 000 members. An organization staffed by thousands. An organization that can afford to lose 80 000 pounds in court costs on a prestige suit which they never had a prayer in a Scientology Chapel of winning. Mr. Sorrell speaks for this organization. I speak as an individual who is not conn
ected to any organization or religion, from a two-room apartment. We speak at cross purposes which is immediately apparent.

  1) Item: Security checks

  'Fact': Security checks have not been used since 1968.

  FACT: As Mr Sorrell well knows, I was at St. Hill in 1968 and this is the period described in the review. Is it innaccurate to write a book about the war in 1944 because the war ended in 1945?

  Repeat: When I was at St. Hill Security Checks were used and that is the time in question. I have not been back to St. Hill since 1968. I may add that the fact that something has been discontinued is no excuse for it ever having existed in the first place.

  2) Item: Drastic Penalties

  'Fact': The most drastic penalty is excommunication - the right of any church or group. Heavier penalties such as imprisonment or the taking of life remain the prerogative of governments.

  FACT: I refer to the penalties invoked in 1968 period of the article remember? I remember Polly Stathis and the Fair Game order. The fact that Polly Stathis has been rehabilitated and that Fair Game orders are no longer issued does not constitute an inaccuracy.

  3) Item: 10 000 dollars

  'Fact': If you are dissatidfied with the service you can get your money back.

  FACT: Did I say you couldn't?

  4) Item: Show materials to qualified workers

  'Fact': Mr. Burroughs must well know that there are no qualified workers in this field. The implanting of "positive", "socially accteptable" commands in the "socially unacceptable" mental patient whilst he is having his brain sliced, probed or shocked is now a reality. Surely these are not his "experts"?