• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1084 0

boys—or, alternately, though less frequently, a handsome young man might take a group of girls—to the local church of Scientology, which in those days was usually housed in a storefront or rundown office building, or, like the Los Angeles Org, in an old house. There, these potential recruits—"raw meat," as they were called—were delivered to someone like Many, who would seat them in a large auditorium with dozens, and at times hundreds, of other people, for an introductory lecture. By then, whoever had brought them in would have vanished back out onto the street to round up more prospects. Some of the new arrivals, detecting the bait and switch, would leave; others, intrigued, stayed.

The lectures could take various directions. Some, like the one Jeff and Jerry attended, were straightforward: an explanation of the reactive mind, a film, an invitation to become Clear. There was also the lecture-confessional. "I used to be a failure," the lecturer might begin. "I was a terrible father, a terrible husband, I was unhappy with my church, I had a dead-end job. And then I discovered Scientology."

"Beautiful," someone in the back of the room would murmur. Frequently it was another pretty girl. She was not, however, an audience member, but rather a Scientologist installed there to set the right tone. The lecturer would go on to describe how incredibly, magically mind-blowing the experience of auditing had been; how he'd discovered a "new reality" based on "affinity" and communication. "Reality is agreement," he might explain, adding that Scientology meant "the study of truth" and that a key principle was to know "what's true for you." He had found his truth, and he was so sure this was the truth that after just a short time in Scientology, he'd left his wife, quit his job, and was now working full-time at the church. And now he wanted everyone in the audience to immediately find a registrar (that is, a church salesperson) and do as he had: join the Church of Scientology and "step into the exciting world of the totally free."

"That was our job," Many, a perky, dark-haired woman in her fifties, told me. She left Scientology in 1997 and now lives with her husband, Chris, in the San Fernando Valley. She had been a girl of nineteen when she joined the church in Boston and was soon charged with delivering some of the lectures to an audience that frequently seemed confused. "There would be all these college kids in there, and they'd look around as if to say, 'Where'd that chick go who brought us here? Where's the chick?'" Many laughed. "She was out doing her job, bringing in tons of people. Our job was to get them interested enough to go to a registrar, who would then sell them. But if we weren't getting them to the registrar, we got in trouble. You had to sell them something—even if it was just a book."

Selling religion was by no means unique to Scientology. The Hare Krishnas sold copies of the Bhagavad Gita; the followers of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon and his Unification Church sold flowers at airports as a way of meeting naive and impressionable young people. More recently, the Kabbalah Centre, which promotes a self-help-inspired form of Jewish mysticism that became popular in the late 1990s, has made handsome profits selling candles and beaded bracelets at such high-end retail establishments as Barneys New York. But Scientology had a cooler, more mainstream appeal. "I never thought I was joining a religion," said Many, who was raised a Catholic. It was like yoga, in terms of its faddish popularity, but it was better than fuzzy Eastern philosophy: less "foreign," more fun. There was no dancing, chanting, or wearing of orange robes. No one was encouraged to abstain from sex, cigarettes, or alcohol, let alone shave their head. There was also no requirement to relinquish worldly possessions (nor to hand anything over to a guru).

Just as Mia Farrow and the Beatles embraced Transcendental Meditation, Scientology gained its own celebrity following: in the 1960s, Leonard Cohen, Cass Elliot, William'S. Burroughs, and even Jim Morrison ("Jim?!?"