Inside Scientology - Janet Reitman [40]
After the film, the lecturer picked up where he had left off, explaining some core principles of Scientology. Society's reactive mind, he said, was to blame for all that was wrong in the world: the H-bomb, the Vietnam War, the plague of overpopulation and disease. When humans become free of the reactive mind and reach the state of Clear, they become smarter, saner, more dynamic, more alive. Surely, Jeff thought, this young speaker possessed those traits himself. And indeed, he said, "I'm Clear," and fixed every member of the audience with his magnetic gaze. "You can be too."
"I was hooked," said Jeff.
And so Jeff Hawkins, a shy, somewhat awkward young man usually dressed in jeans, sandals, a blue work shirt, and tinted granny glasses, got into Scientology, as did his friend Jerry and thousands of other young people all across the United States. For those like Jeff, who were smart, curious, and searching, Scientology provided its own form of rebellion, which was perfectly timed, as it turned out.
Had the sixties never happened—which is to say, had a tremendous number of young people not become convinced of the moral and spiritual bankruptcy of their parents, the church, the Republican Party, and other people and institutions collectively known as the establishment—Scientology might have gone the way of other fringe movements and died a quiet death. Instead, repositioned as a mystical quest rather than an alternative mental health therapy or religious movement, Scientology rode the countercultural wave, and by the late 1960s, a whole new generation of spiritual seekers had caught on to the renegade vision of L. Ron Hubbard.
"Wherever you go," wrote the journalist George Malko in his 1970 book Scientology: The Now Religion, "the Scientology word is being shouted at you from Day-Glo posters showing an exultantly leaping man, his very vibrancy dividing his body into a discord of parallel striations." STEP INTO THE WORLD OF THE TOTALLY FREE, declared the posters, tacked to the walls of New York City subway stations. On campuses, Scientology was marketed as a movement for Flower Children. One church official in New York, Bob Thomas, described Scientology to Malko as a "drugless psychedelic" that offered young people a community and a new brand of hope.
"After drugs comes Scientology," said one series of church fliers posted in public urinals around the University of California, Berkeley. Other leaflets, handed out widely on street corners, urged young people to "be a member of Scientology. The world has waited thousands of years for a technology to change conditions for the better. Scientology is the answer."
In Kenmore Square or Washington Square, on Shattuck Avenue or Sunset Boulevard, in the Haight or Golden Gate Park, pretty young girls dressed in hot pants or mini-skirts, smiling radiantly as if they'd discovered a secret they were bursting to share, would approach young, mostly male college students or hippies and invite them to come with them. And, like lemmings, men would follow, said Nancy Many, who worked for the Scientology organization in Boston. It was unwritten policy that the church would deploy its most attractive staff to recruit people off the street. "No one had any idea where they were being taken," she said, chuckling, "but these girls were gorgeous and so the guys would go."
The girls would take the