Inside Scientology - Janet Reitman [39]
Finding a job designing posters and other promotional material for an organization in Los Angeles, Jeff moved to the Sierra Madre Canyon, an eclectic artists' refuge nestled in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. Just a half-hour drive northeast from downtown L.A., the Canyon was home to hundreds of longhaired kids who'd migrated there during the mid-1960s—Jeff believed it to be one of the largest hippie outposts in the country after Haight-Ashbury. With its quirky bungalows and wooden footbridges, it was a rustic idyll and sanctuary for the drifters and dropouts of the greater Los Angeles area, and many more who'd come to party with their friends on the weekends.
But Jeff was bored. He was searching for something; he didn't know what. The Summer of Love had come and gone, along with its haze of promise. The war in Vietnam continued to kill thousands of young Americans. Many who made it back alive wore the dead-eyed stares of the walking wounded. Active in the anti-war movement, Jeff was haunted by the memory of one large demonstration outside the Los Angeles Convention Center, where he'd seen a twelve-year-old girl beaten up by the Los Angeles police. Drugs, Jeff knew, weren't the answer—a bad acid trip a few months earlier had cured him of that interest. He spent most of his spare time poring over books on meditation, yoga, cybernetics, hypnosis.
One Sunday afternoon in the fall of 1967, Jeff's roommate, Jerry Day, arrived home in a state of high fluster. "Wait until you hear about this," Jerry said, breathlessly.
Jeff yawned. "Hear about what?" he said.
"Scientology!" Jerry said.
"What's Scientology?"
Jerry took a deep breath and began to explain that he'd just met some guys, Scientologists from L.A., who'd been talking about a new "scientific form of spiritual enlightenment." They all seemed really into it—like really, Jerry said. They talked of Scientology as if it was a magical science that could help you—somehow—somehow—become a superman. Plus, there was some kind of past-life component that sounded really cool. "Don't you want to check it out?" Jerry asked.
Science, spiritual enlightenment, past lives—they all fit into Jeff's intellectual purview. "Sure, bring it on," he said. Later he would laugh at the memory. "We were all pretty crazy hippies back then," Jeff, now living in Portland, Oregon, told me not long ago. "We were pretty much up for anything."
The next night, Jeff and Jerry drove out of the Canyon and went down to Scientology's Los Angeles headquarters, the "Scientology Place," as they called it, which was located in a rambling Spanish-style house on Ninth Street, near MacArthur Park. A crowd of maybe one hundred or more had gathered around a fountain on the front lawn; others were packed into the lobby. They were of different ages and, to Jeff's great surprise, they were talking to one another—graying, middle-aged parents standing side by side with longhaired hippies, laughing, discussing philosophy, trading jokes, as if the generation gap had been closed.
A few minutes later, everyone filed into a lecture hall. Jerry and Jeff found seats near the back. At the front, a handsome young man with dark hair walked up to the lectern. A hush fell over the room. The young man could have been a movie star; he was that good-looking, Jeff thought. He also had an intense, unwavering stare that seemed to penetrate right through a person. And he was an electrifying speaker, presenting Scientology as a lifesaving new philosophy that freed the mind and the spirit. Even war, he said, could be prevented with the correct application of Scientology's principles.
About halfway through the lecture, the young man stopped to show a film that featured an interview with Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard.