Flunk. Start.

by Sands Hall

  Almost overnight, language became a teeming garden of possibilities, the bouquets one can put together when one understands that chron has to do with time, philo with love, bio with life, hydro with water, cardio with heart, tele with distance . . . and the suffixes! –logy with study. –graphy with drawing or writing. –metry with measuring. –sophy (Sophia!) with wisdom. Like one of those children’s books whose laminated pages are split in half, with the top of one animal above and the bottom of another below, which you can flip separately, creating a hybrid rabbit/tiger or cat/snake, the simplest words pulsed: telegraph telegram telephone gramophone hydrometer pentameter hydrology philosophy sophistry sophisticated. I took to using a dictionary everywhere. Driving past a sign advertising dermatologist was a galvanizing experience.

  Etymology! The study of the true sense of the word. To me, this was the “bridge” Scientology offered, and as I stepped onto it, I found a glimmering, sacred world. Clearing a word became like the best kind of daily Christmas. I’d “save” the etymology for last: examining the root often made the whole word shimmer. Words became almost three-dimensional. I felt smarter, brighter; as if I could actually feel my mind expanding, or as if water were pushing its way through silted-up riverbeds, beginning to run, well, clear.

  one day, i decided to clear the name of the religion itself. It actually frightened me a little. What would I find?

  Scientology is a coined word, of course. Hubbard’s Tech Dictionary had fourteen definitions (quotes from various HCOBs and HCOPLs). But now that I understood that there were parts to words, I was interested in examining those.

  I understood that its suffix meant the study of.

  And the first part must have something to with science.

  But it wasn’t science I was studying in that course room!

  Or was it?

  What is science, anyway?

  I flipped through the American Heritage: “the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation and theoretical explanation of phenomena.”

  I chewed on that. Yes, that’s indeed what Hubbard appeared to be doing, with his close analysis of life’s basic principles, his codification of everything from ethics to scales of emotions to the barriers to study, not to mention the formulas he provided to work one’s way out of problems and into success.

  I examined other definitions, including methodological, discipline, and even study, just to be sure I understood them.

  And then, with the same sense of terror and awe and excitement that Eve might have had biting into that apple, I took in the root of the word—

  —and looked up, blinking.

  I hadn’t known science descended from Latin roots that mean knowledge.

  Learning.

  To know.

  The beakers full of dripping liquids, the experiments with mice, the white lab coats suddenly made complete sense.

  Science is about finding, gaining, proving what can be known!

  The result of clearing Scientology was eye- and heart-opening. The fraught word was disassembled into a (slightly) less scary meaning. Hubbard had named his religion “the study of knowledge.” Even, perhaps, “the knowledge of knowledge.”

  Knowing how to know.

  Who wouldn’t want that?

  sunny

  In Scientology, when you complete an “action”—a course, auditing, an Ethics Handling—you head immediately to the Examiner, a person whose job is to check how well or poorly these things have gone. The Examiner sits in a small room with an e-meter. You sit in the chair opposite and pick up the waiting cans. You look at the Examiner, and the Examiner looks at you, taking in what are called your “indicators.”52 These include your eyes and face, your sense of yourself, whether you’re pleased (usually the case) or unhappy (rare, because it’s unlikely that you’d be considered “through” with a given action until you’re happy). At the same time, the Examiner keeps an eye on the meter. He’s looking for a broad sweep of the needle, called a Floating Needle, or F/N.

  A Floating Needle is an excellent thing. It means the current of electricity passing from the meter through your body, from the palm of one hand to the palm of the other, is, at this moment, encountering no barrier: “the charge on a subject being audited has dissipated, and is one of the indications of a process being complete.”53 The world is clean and orderly, even wonderful. (Like many of Hubbard’s words and phrases, this one is also used as a verb, as in “I just F/Ned the whole evening.”)

  The Examiner sits with pen poised, taking you in.

  You might offer up a realization: “I can do anything I set my mind to!” “I love Study Tech!” “I know how to recognize when I’m a Potential Trouble Source!”

  The Examiner jots it down, notes your indicators, and tells you, “Your needle is floating.” He signs and dates the sheet of paper and sends it along to whoever’s overseeing the Org’s folders, including yours, in which info about you is accumulating: courses you’re taking, any auditing, the results of Ethics Handlings (e.g., that meeting with Marty about my parents).

  I don’t remember what “win” I may have offered up when I completed that first course, PTS/SP, nor do I remember picking up those cans. I’m sure my heart pounded. I’m also sure I smiled broadly, willing the meter to do whatever it was supposed to do.

  When I went to the Examiner after finishing the Student Hat, however, there was no doubt about that F/N. I was thrilled. Having completed it just an hour into that day’s three-hour stint, I headed directly to the Reg’s office. I wanted to keep right on studying, and I knew which course I’d buy next: the Hubbard Qualified Scientologist course: HQS.

  As I wrote that check, I thought of the moment a few months before, when I’d stared at the student who’d asked Tim to check her clay demo, wondering how anyone could possibly sign up for something called “Hubbard Qualified Scientologist.” Yet here I was, noting the amount in my check register, intent on becoming a “qualified” Scientologist myself. On HQS, I’d learn to audit and be audited through various drills, including those called the “Upper TRs.” With a “twin,” I’d also do something called Self Analysis, using Book One processing—that is, Dianetics. We wouldn’t use an e-meter, but we’d be on our way.

  As I started in on the check sheet, a tall woman with a huge smile and a shining presence entered the course room. Sunny was also starting HQS. Tim suggested we twin.

  Twinning is another aspect of Study Tech I found sensible. Instead of an entire group of people working on the same course, in the same room, on the same schedule, students studying Scientology work independently, each on their own course, at their own speed. It ensures that different levels of students, or students who can’t commit to the same timeframe, can nevertheless move forward.

  When you are officially twinned with someone, however, it means you’re on the same course, studying in the same time slot, reading the same bulletins, helping each other through the steps on the check sheet. Until Sunny and I were twinned up, I hadn’t realized how swiftly and easily this allows one to move along a course of study. And intrigued though I was with what I was learning, I’m sure that Scientology would not have carried the same weight nor provided the same joy, and I doubt I’d have stayed as long as I did, had Sunny and I not had each other as friends, models, examples. Sunny, quick and smart, with an infectious chortle of a laugh, was an extraordinary singer and musician with a burgeoning career. If someone as organized and sane and wonderful as she was doing this stuff, then this stuff was okay to do. More than once we assured each other of that shared perspective.

  Among the first steps on the HQS check sheet were the Training Routines. Sunny and I sat in silence opposite each other with our eyes closed, with our eyes open, while trying to make each other laugh. We cleared words and watched each other’s demos and rotated spot-checks. We had a lot of fun. We laughed a lot. We learned a lot.

&nb
sp; one of the essential jobs of the auditor is, of course, to listen (audire). But equally important is that they acknowledge: any statement and, particularly, any realization (cognition). The importance of the Cycle of Communication became ever more clear, as did the reasons for those drills. Knowing that an acknowledgment awaits allows the person being audited (the preclear, or pc) to articulate anything, no matter how obvious or silly or profound. This is especially true if you have an auditor, a twin, you love and trust.

  After we’d finished reviewing the Lower TRs, Sunny and I began to study and drill the Upper TRs. These routines are mobile; you no longer sit opposite another, as auditor and preclear do when “in session.” I imagined these drills were designed to train one to be a Scientologist “in life,” that is, not just during an auditing session or in the course room.

  In these Training Routines, as with the lower ones, students take turns being coach and preclear. However, while the coach is still training to be an auditor, the student being the preclear is no longer “acting” like the one getting auditing. She is, in fact, being audited. In the process—it took me a long time to understand this—she is indoctrinated, little by little, into the whole idea of what auditing “should” accomplish. This gradual shift of intention never occurred to me. Realizing it now makes me shudder.

  When you’re being an auditor, even a student one, a Case Supervisor checks your sessions, to make sure they’ve gone well, to make sure your pc is “winning.” I realized that the hours a CS devotes to overseeing student training is part of what you pay for when you purchase a course. As I began to perceive how many trained people were on call and in service to those on course and those being audited, the cost of these actions appeared far more reasonable. That’s because I assumed all those people were being paid in some commensurate way.

  They were not, but it would take me years to understand (or to face) that. Most of those with whom we came in contact, from Registrar to Ethics Officer, from Course Supervisor to Examiner to Case Supervisor, were Sea Org: They’d signed on for those billion years. I understood that what Sea Org members got in exchange for working for the Church included meals and housing and a small salary that was based on the overall stats of their Org, and, supposedly, courses and auditing. But Sea Org members worked long hours and I often wondered when they found the time to move along the Bridge. (I thought this was too bad, considering that billion-year commitment, but wondered if the thinking was that they could get to the Bridge next lifetime.)

  Members of the Sea Org are allowed to marry (there is to be no extramarital sex), but for years, if they wanted to have children (or if they got pregnant), the Church required them to temporarily leave the Sea Org and work in other staff positions until the children were six years old. At that point children were usually placed in Cadet Orgs—a sort of Sea Org for youngsters—and their parents returned to work. If the parents’ post was at a distance from where their child was housed, it meant they might not see him for months, even years.54

  If Tim, our Course Supervisor, was married and/or had children, he had an hour a day of “family time” to spend with them, as well as, in theory, one full day a month. This was in the early eighties; by 1988, the Church had canceled even this minimal amount of time spent with family, saying that, “to have such breaks . . . in the middle of production has been found to be detrimental to production.”55 In 1991, the Church went further: A Flag Order (orders that are issued by top management and not intended for the larger public) stated that “the Sea Org is not set up to handle or take care of children” and “Therefore, Sea Org members that have new children will not be allowed to remain on duty . . .”56 Those married couples that did “beget a child” [sic] would be sent to Orgs that were not doing well, known as Class V Orgs.57 There are many reports of women in the Sea Org being forced to get abortions, or deciding they had to, if they wanted to remain in their posts, even though the Church itself is anti-abortion.58 At six years of age, children—who are considered full-blown thetans in small bodies, capable of making such decisions—can also sign up for those billion years (supposedly they are considered minors, and under the supervision of their parents), and they often do.59

  Sea Org members work an average of a hundred hours a week. Usually, their weekly pay is dependent on the Org’s stats. The Church, as a religious organization, is tax-exempt, so there is no social security. There are no benefits, and certainly no insurance. Nor does the Church have a system in place for those who get old or sick. If you get old or sick or an accident causes you to be hospitalized, you must have “pulled it in.”

  If a person decides to leave the Sea Org, she is handed what’s known as a “freeloader’s debt.” This is usually hundreds of thousands of dollars: the sum she owes the Church for having been housed and fed; if any courses have been taken, or auditing received, there are charges for those as well.60

  Little of this was clear to me at the time. To know now what the children of Sea Org members went through, and in some cases still do, makes my blood run cold; the website exscientologykids.com is devoted to reaching those who were brought up under these circumstances, and reading story after story of their experiences is excruciating.61

  While it’s possible I convinced myself to see only what I wanted to see—hard-working people devoted to their posts and to the larger goals of the Church—I think that most of those with whom I came in contact felt vital to an essential enterprise, and for the most part, reading and hearing the stories of those who’ve left the Sea Org substantiates that understanding. It’s yet another example of the forethought and ingenuity Hubbard put in to creating his religion: being convinced that you are helping to save humanity gives one a very meaningful rock to roll up the hill. There is no room for existential woe in a Scientology Org.

  sunny and i cheerfully drilled the various routines called for in HQS, then wrote up those sessions for the Case Supervisor. One of the drills involves the coach telling the pc to look at a wall, to walk over and touch the wall, to turn around. She then acknowledges her.

  “Touch that wall,” the coach says, and when the pc has done so, “Turn around,” and then, “Thank you,” and then repeats the command to “touch that wall.” If the pc pauses to talk about something this has made her think about, the auditor’s job is to listen and acknowledge: “Thank you.” The pc might offer an opinion about the wallpaper; this might lead to notions about “walls” in general, which might generate thoughts about a current “wall-like” situation in the pc’s life. The auditor thanks her—and tells her to touch the wall. This can go on for quite some time, sometimes for hours. The sign to end the process is when the pc has a cognition. It’s usually obvious to both people when this occurs: In addition to whatever the pc might say, her “indicators” usually indicate joy or pleasure or even a shift in her sense of self.

  In many blogs now available, ex-Scientologists have written that the TRs create a hypnotic state and that they are used for nefarious purposes. Perhaps because Sunny and I were so compatible, and were such good friends, this was not my experience. If anything, my awareness felt heightened, sharpened. The simplicity of the drills, as well as their repetitive nature, reminded me of the Buddhist exhortation “chop wood, carry water”; in the most mundane task can be found a life perspective. Christian sermons as well as Buddhist dharma talks are often based around this idea: Take a detail of living and turn it into a metaphor. Given this structured opportunity to observe ourselves in relation to various objects and surfaces, Sunny and I formulated intriguing realizations about space, self, relationships, life.

  One day we were drilling on the top floor of Celebrity Center. Before being purchased by the Church, the building had for years suffered as a sort of transient hotel, and in the early eighties there were still entire floors that had yet to be refurbished. We were working in a room where the paint was peeling, the rug worn and stained, the furniture decrepit. It was Sunny’s turn as coach. As s
he told me to touch various walls, I began to offer up thoughts about time and aesthetics and molecules.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Touch that wall.”

  The couch in the room was absolutely ugly. Its upholstery was a dreadful burnt orange, striped with turd-brown plaid, the pillows bunched and misshapen. Even in its glory days it had to have been uncomfortable. Over the years, the spiky fabric had acquired a faintly greasy sheen. I allowed as how it was really ugly. “Thank you,” Sunny said, her eyes alight with laughter. I commented on other of its disgusting attributes, which Sunny acknowledged gravely but with a twinkle in her eye. But suddenly, in a state of wonder, real wonder, I sat down on the couch.

  “In someone’s eyes,” I said, “this was beautiful! Someone actually thought they were creating something beautiful!”

  “Oh!” Sunny was also suddenly and utterly serious. “Yes! Wow! I mean, thank you!”

  This is an obvious thought. It’s one I’d accepted intellectually all my life. But I’d never owned it, and it’s not too much to say that I looked at the world differently after that. The recognition was not just that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it was that there’s no need to force or project one’s own ideas of so-called beauty onto another. Put another way, I understood that just because it wasn’t my taste didn’t mean it wasn’t “good” taste.

  It’s hard to articulate what a shift of consciousness this was. The bohemian world of the artist—the one inhabited by parents and friends—was, I believed, the “best” way to live. By extension, in a kind of cultish response, I’d come to believe it was the only way to live. But polo shirts and Dockers, never part of the Hall world, are considered by many to be good taste. Others’ taste might run to flip-flops and shorts. It depends on context and upbringing and background. To those sliding bare feet into penny loafers, the array of Mexican silver and Tibetan turquoise my mother wove around her neck might seem excessive. And there was Mr. Porter, arriving (and departing) with his bottle of Tanqueray; according to him, where taste in liquor was concerned, my father’s was dreadful.