by Sands Hall
The women who were so good to my brother: Dana Ivers in his younger years, and, following the accident, Robin Campbell, Molly Fisk, and Hadiya Wilborn. Thank you for the sustaining love and help you offered, not just to him, but to the family.
For many reasons, which they will each know: Cat C. H. Bill H. Amy T. Jennifer E. Sarah S. Paul E. Mitchell K. Marjorie M. C. Kabi H. Marci N. George C. Kim C. Alison P. Lynne C. Clare H. Philip S. Nancy C. Frances S. Elizabeth S. Katie B. Amy M. Peggy H. Lisa S. Amy M. Matthew B. Monica C.
And the cherished women who have taken such good care of our mother: Pabby, Jacquie, Judy, Genna, Alika, and Viki.
The artists and friends who helped create the Lexington Conservatory Theatre: for your support of Oak and of his vision, and for your loving efforts to care for him when he fell.
Special thanks in this regard to Steven Patterson and John Sowle, who were so deeply supportive during Oak’s final years in Albany; who hosted his Lexington Memorial, on the grounds of the theater and in their beautiful home; and who honored his memory by producing Grinder’s Stand at their Bridge Street Theatre, in Catskill. No one could ask for better friends than these two wonderful men.
Bill Rose: for his excellent documentary, The Loss of Nameless Things, and for the questions he asked during our interview, which were so unexpectedly helpful in getting the wheels rolling on what became this book.
The man I call Skye: One could not ask for a sweeter sweetheart. The wrench of leaving him caused a deep and peculiar anguish. For the first time I understood what up to then had been merely a literary trope: that religion can stand in the way of love. I thank him for his efforts to understand the troubled woman who landed in his life.
Jamie’s wonderful family: I’m glad I got to see them again at his memorial service, and that Jamie’s piano has found the perfect home.
My beloved sisters, Tracy and Brett: For years, they had a rather erratic older sister. I am deeply grateful for their love and support and faith that I’d sort it out. Also their partners: the extraordinary writer and thinker Louis B. Jones and the warm and wise Jim Chumbley.
My parents: For the extraordinary childhood they offered, and for the life they led and gave us. My heart twists, now, imagining their heartache and wrenching sorrow at the choices I was making. I’m deeply glad we came to a peace about that. A few years ago, I told my mother I was feeling sad that I’d devoted so many years to the Church, and she said, “Well, it’s part of what made you who you are, and that seems pretty good to me.” Yes.
The Community of Writers at Squaw Valley: Founded by my parents and friends, this conference has nurtured writers for five decades. Brett Hall Jones, Louis B. Jones, Lisa Alvarez, and Andrew Tonkovich sustain and strengthen that original vision. I am deeply grateful for all the Community has given me over its many years.
Spirit guides: My wise therapist: Ginger Konvalin, who’s helped me toward many vital comprehensions. Eileen Jorgenson, who so often offers the perfect insight and instruction exactly when needed. MaryAnn McDonnell, Elena Rayo, and Tynowyn for their sagacity. Two Yoga studios: Wild Mountain in Nevada City and West End in Lancaster, as well as just a few of the yogis and teachers who offer so much inspiration, physically, mentally, and spiritually: Graham Hayes (who also designed my website), Amanda Dozal, Seren Rubens, Rachael McGrath, and Cynthia Kilbourn.
Tom Taylor: who lived with me during a number of the years when I was trying to pretend the previous ten had never happened. His love and support meant the world to me then, and still do.
Dear friend and fellow writer Christine Hemp: Our exchanges regarding writing and spirituality and relations and friendship are utterly sustaining. I cannot sufficiently express the vital nature of this comradeship, and how grateful for it I am.
My marvelous agent, the brilliant and generous Michael Carlisle, who is also my steadfast friend. My gratitude for his belief in me and in my work is beyond words.
Finally, my brother, Tad/Oak, who for so long held the lantern in the forest, lighting the way.
bibliography
books
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New World Library. Novato, CA. 2008.
Campbell, Joseph. Pathways to Bliss. New World Library. Novato, CA. 2008.
Headley, Mark. Blown for Good: Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology. BFG Books. New York, NY. 2009.
Hill, Jenna Miscavige, with Lisa Presley. Beyond Belief: My Secret Life in Scientology and My Harrowing Escape. HarperCollins. New York, NY. 2013.
Hubbard, L. Ron. Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. Bridge Publications, Inc. Los Angeles, CA. 2007.
Hubbard, L. Ron. Introduction to Scientology Ethics. Bridge Publications, Inc. Los Angeles, CA. 2007.
Hubbard, L. Ron. Dianetics and Scientology Technical Dictionary. Bridge Publications. Los Angeles, CA. 1982.
Note: The citations within parentheses, which I include with any definitions taken from the Tech Dictionary, indicate where one may find the source of the quoted definition, e.g. policy letters or other documents written by Hubbard, or recordings of his tapes and lectures.
Ortega, Tony. The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology Tried to Destroy Paulette Cooper. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. 2015.
Remini, Leah. Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology. Ballantine Books. New York, NY. 2015.
Wright, Lawrence. Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief. Knopf. New York, NY. 2013.
selected websites and blogs
Glossary of Scientology & Dianetics Terms (Scientology Glossary): www.whatisscientology.org
Hill, Jenna Miscavige, and Astra Woodcraft. www.exscientologykids.com
Official website for Hubbard’s Study Technology: www.studytechnology.org/index.html
Official website for Scientology Courses: www.scientologycourses.org
Official website for Scientology’s Religious Technology Center: www.rtc.org
Official website for the Church of Scientology: www.scientology.org
Ortega, Tony. The Underground Bunker. www.tonyortega.org
Rathbun, Mark. Moving On Up a Little Higher. www.markrathbun.blog
Rinder, Mike. Something Can Be Done About It. www.mikerindersblog.org
Scientology Handbook: www.scientologyhandbook.org
endnotes
Foreword: Knowledge Report
1.Knowledge Report: Hubbard, L. Ron. Introduction to Scientology Ethics. “Knowledge Reports.”
Also HCOPL (Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter), 22 Jul 1982, revised 9 Aug 2000: “Keeping Scientology Working.”
2.Ibid.
3.A link to the current online form for Knowledge Reports is available at Scientology’s Religious Technology Center’s website, www.rtc.org/matters/intro.html (accessed July 31, 2017).
4.reasonable/unreasonable: Hubbard, L. Ron. Modern Management Technology Defined. Bridge Publications, Inc. Los Angeles, CA. 1976. Reprinted 1986.
See also the discussion on Mike Rinder’s blog: “Scientology and Reason.” Something Can Be Done About It. March 25, 2017. www.mikerindersblog.org/scientology-and-reason (accessed July 31, 2017).
When I first encountered these usages, I reacted quite strongly to what I saw as the most blatant kind of Orwellian “newspeak.” But a friend explained it to me thus: “It makes sense when you break down the word ‘reasonable,’” she said. “‘Reason’ plus the suffix ‘able.’ One of the definitions of ‘reason’ as a noun is ‘a cause, or an explanation, or a justification for an action or event.’ And ‘able’ means things like ‘capable of, or having a tendency to, or given to.’ So if you look at the word in that light, to be reasonable is, indeed, ‘being capable of justification.’” This degree of engagement with words impressed me and assisted me in coming around to this point of view. And I have si
nce been struck by the value of the perspective when, for example, someone clearly inebriated, with a baby in her car, tries to assure you that she is not too to drunk to drive.
5.Such reports can be found in, respectively: Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief; Jenna Miscavige Hill’s Beyond Belief: My Secret Life in Scientology and My Harrowing Escape; and Mark Headley’s memoir, Blown for Good: Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology.
6.The edition of the Dianetics and Scientology Technical Dictionary, from which I provide sources for a number of the definitions and quotations used in this book, was published in 1982—the latest edition I was able to find. The Tech Dictionary, as it was casually called, appears to be no longer in print, and its exhaustive contents appear to have been replaced, under Miscavige, by a far less comprehensive Glossary of Scientology and Dianetics Terms (a title I’ve shortened to Scientology Glossary), available at www.whatisscientology.org. Where appropriate, I quote that glossary and/or provide a link to it, or to other Scientology websites where, at the time of this book’s publication, such information could be located.
7.The documents in which Hubbard outlines his ideas are often policy letters or bulletins issued from the Hubbard Communications Office. Their acronyms are, respectively, HCOPL and HCOB. In this case, it’s a policy letter: HCOPL 7 Feb 1965: “Keeping Scientology Working” series.
8.HCOB, 15 Feb 1979, reissued 12 Apr 1983. “Verbal Tech: Penalties.”
We need you to be a zealot
9.HCOPL 7 Feb 1965: “Keeping Scientology Working” series. Subsequent quotes are from this policy letter.
Note: This PL has been quoted by other authors:
Lewis, James R. Making Sense of Scientology. Oxford University Press. New York, NY. 2009 (p. 92).
Kent, Stephen H. From Slogans to Mantras: Social Protest and Religious Conversion in the Late Vietnam Era. Syracuse University Press. Syracuse, NY. 2001 (pp. 153–4).
Enthusiastic devotion to a cause
10.blow. Tech Dictionary: “v, slang. 1) unauthorized departure from an area, usually caused by misunderstood data or overts” (HCOB 19 Jun 1971 III). Mark Headley uses this term in the title of his memoir, Blown for Good. It was used by Lawrence Wright in his profile of Paul Haggis in the New Yorker: Wright, Lawrence. “The Apostate.” February 14, 2011. www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/14/the-apostate-lawrence-wright (accessed July 31, 2017).
11.See note 4.
12.Hubbard, L. Ron. Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.
13.overt. Tech Dictionary: 1) “An overt act isn’t just injuring someone or something; an overt act is an act of omission or commission which does the least good for the least number of dynamics or the most harm to the greatest number of dynamics.” (HCOPL, 1 Nov 1970 III.)
Scientology Glossary: “a harmful act or a transgression against the moral code of a group. When a person does something that is contrary to the moral code he has agreed to, or when he omits to do something that he should have done per that moral code, he has committed an overt. An overt violates what was agreed upon. An overt can be intentional or unintentional.”
14.overt. Tech Dictionary: 3) SH Spec 44, 6410C27.
15.overt. Tech Dictionary: 4) ISH AAA 10, 6009C14.
Training Routines
16.Training Routines, TRs. Tech Dictionary: HCOB 19 Jun 1971 III.
Scientology Glossary: “practical drills which can greatly increase a student’s ability in essential auditing skills, such as communication.”
17.thetan. Tech Dictionary. The entirety of this definition reads: “the awareness of awareness unit which has all potentialities but no mass, no wave length and no location.” HCOB 3 Jul 1959.
Helping me to understand this term was Definition #3 in the Tech Dictionary: “the being who is the individual and who handles and lives in the body.” (HCOB 23 Apr 1969) And also Definition #9: “the person himself—not his body or his name, the physical universe, his mind, or anything else; that which is aware of being aware; the identity which is the individual. The thetan is most familiar to one and all as you.” (Aud 25 UF)
The definition in the Scientology Glossary includes a discussion of why Hubbard developed his own words for various parts of his religious technology, including that which most religions call the “soul”: “The term soul is not used because it has developed so many other meanings from use in other religions and practices that it doesn’t describe precisely what was discovered in Scientology. We use the term thetan instead, from the Greek letter theta (θ), the traditional symbol for thought or life. One does not have a thetan, something one keeps somewhere apart from oneself; one is a thetan. The thetan is the person himself, not his body or his name or the physical universe, his mind or anything else. It is that which is aware of being aware; the identity which IS the individual.”
See also: “Basic Principles of Scientology.” www.scientology.org/what-is-scientology/basic-principles-of-scientology/the-thetan.html (accessed July 31, 2017).
18.Operating Thetan. Tech Dictionary: 2) SH Spec 80, 6609C08. This is just one of several fascinating definitions of this important term. For instance, #3: “an individual who could operate totally independently of his body whether he had one or didn’t have one.”
The Scientology Glossary makes a further distinction: “a state of being above Clear, in which the Clear has become refamiliarized with his native capabilities.” (SH Spec 66, 6509C09)
19.TR0 Be There. “Communication.” www.scientologycourses.org/courses-view/communication/step/14.html (accessed July 31, 2017).
20.OT TR0. Tech Dictionary: “A drill to train students to confront a preclear with auditing only or with nothing. The whole idea is to get the student able to be there comfortably in a position three feet in front of a preclear, to be there and not do anything else but be there. Student and coach sit facing each other with their eyes closed.” (HCOB 16 Aug 1971 II).
See previous note: Scientology Online Courses: Communication: TR0 Be There.
21.Beckett, Samuel. Worstword Ho: The Complete Short Prose of Samuel Beckett. Ed. S. E. Gontarski. Grove/Atlantic. New York, NY. 1995. Excerpts from “Nohow On,” copyright © 1983 by Samuel Beckett. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic. Inc. Any third-party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited.
This is so weird!
22.The name by which I knew this drill, TR 0, has been changed to TR 0 Confronting. www.scientologycourses.org/courses-view/communication/step/15.html (accessed July 31, 2017).
He was kind of a nutcase
23.ethics. Tech Dictionary: 5) “ethics is a personal thing. By definition, the word means ‘the study of the general nature of morals and the specific moral choices to be made by the individual in his relationship to others’. When one is ethical, or ‘has his ethics in,’ it is by his own determinism and is done by himself.” (HCOB 15 Nov 1972 II)
See also: The Scientology Handbook. “Improving Conditions in Life.” www.scientologyhandbook.org/conditions/sh10.htm (accessed July 31, 2017).
See also the entirety of Hubbard, L. Ron. Introduction to Scientology Ethics.
She went Clear last lifetime!
24.Dianetics.
Imagine a plane
25.theta. Tech Dictionary: 4) SOS 2, p. 12.
Guilt is good
26.natter: Tech Dictionary: “sometimes pcs who have big overts become highly critical of the auditor and get in a lot of snide comments about the auditor. Such natter indicates a real overt.” (HCOB 7 Sept 1964 II)
27.motivator. Tech Dictionary: 1) HCOB 20 May 1968.
See also “Integrity and Honesty.” www.scientologyhandbook.org/integrity/sh9_4.htm (accessed July 31, 2017).
Hope springs eternal
28.The following conversation was my first introduction to Hubbard’s view
of the mind, and I have done my best to replicate it as I remember it. For more information regarding the Reactive Mind, see Dianetics, and/or “What Is the Mind?” www.scientology.org/faq/background-and-basic-principles/what-is-the-mind.html (accessed July 31, 2017).
29.dynamics: See: “The Dynamics of Existence.” www.scientologyhandbook.org/dynamics/sh2_2.htm (accessed July 31, 2017).
That’s Source!
30.squirrel. Tech Dictionary: 2) ISE p. 40.
31.withhold. Tech Dictionary: 1) SH Spec 62, 6110C04.
See also the Scientology Glossary: “an unspoken, unannounced transgression against a moral code by which a person was bound. Any withhold comes after an overt.”
How much electricity?
32.e-meter. Scientology Glossary: “short for Electropsychometer, a specially designed instrument which helps the auditor and preclear locate areas of spiritual distress or travail. The E-Meter is a religious artifact and can only be used by Scientology ministers or ministers-in-training. It does not diagnose or cure anything. It measures the mental state or change of state of a person and thus is of benefit to the auditor in helping the preclear locate areas to be handled.”
33.charge. Scientology Glossary: “harmful energy or force contained in mental image pictures or experiences painful or upsetting to the person, which is handled in auditing.”
34.black pr (black propaganda). “Public Relations.” www.scientologycourses.org/courses-view/public-relations/step/handling-rumors-and-whispering-campaigns.html (accessed July 31, 2017).
35.Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Macmillan & Co. London, UK. 1865.
“The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo: she succeeded in getting its body tucked away, comfortably enough, under her arm, with its legs hanging down, but generally, just as she had got its neck nicely straightened out, and was going to give the hedgehog a blow with its head, it would twist itself round and look up in her face, with such a puzzled expression that she could not help bursting out laughing: and when she had got its head down, and was going to begin again, it was very provoking to find that the hedgehog had unrolled itself, and was in the act of crawling away: besides all this, there was generally a ridge or furrow in the way wherever she wanted to send the hedgehog to, and, as the doubled-up soldiers were always getting up and walking off to other parts of the ground, Alice soon came to the conclusion that it was a very difficult game indeed.”