[Today’s guest post is by Ron Kasman.]
I first heard about Scientology from a cousin at my mother’s kitchen table. From that introduction, I entered the Church of Scientology on Sunday, December 27, 1970 to attend a Sunday service. I wrote about that experience here previously. That story was written fifty years to the day after that first visit.
It’s now a few days past the 50th anniversary of my leaving, which took place on Thursday, August 30, 1973.
That’s 977 days I spent in Scientology. I was seventeen when I entered; nineteen when I left.
Scientology was on Toronto’s cult row, between the Krishna Temple and the grey-robed Process Church members who worked the subway. Within a short walk there were Moonies, Children of God, Jesus Freaks and a wide array of Eastern Mystics. There were lots of cults and each of them sure seemed to have lots of members. Katie Lye, the Toronto Scientology executive involved in hiring, claimed 120 staff and that they were planning for 100,000 staff in the future. I believed her at the time, though I now think there were likely about half that number on staff.
When I first walked through Scientology’s doors, I was a kid about to finish high school. Scientology’s founder L. Ron Hubbard and I had two things in common: Our given names, and that we both liked science fiction, I as a reader, he as a creator. The earliest Scientologists were SF fans familiar with Hubbard’s writings. The precursor to Scientology, Dianetics, was first promoted through the magazine Astounding Science Fiction after the brilliant though gullible editor John W. Campbell became an adherent. By 1970, the Scientologists were mostly hippies who were seeking something meaningful in life. I resided in both camps.
Over those 977 days I took two courses, finishing only the first. I also read almost every book Hubbard wrote about Scientology or Dianetics. They included Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, Dianetics 55, Science of Survival, A New Slant on Life, Scientology 0-8, Scientology 8-80-08, The Creation of Human Ability, Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought, Self Analysis, The Problems of Work and Scientology: A History of Man.
I found the books to be bizarre and confusing but also intriguing. I did not find them to be helpful. Though my coursework was minimal and I had had almost no auditing, every time I was with my extended family Scientology was the topic of discussion. During those 977 days an aunt, an uncle and four cousins were also involved in Scientology. And it wasn’t hard to understand what so many of us saw in it. Many of us were engaged in seemingly insoluble problems not of our own making. There had been a suicide in our family. There were also gays and lesbians in our family who grew up when homosexuality was illegal and believed to be a psychological disorder. Added to that, one cousin was a registrar and he was very good at his job. All eventually left.
Scientology made me special but in a way that did me absolutely no good. My mentioning it was almost always met with quiet antagonism. Scientology was just too weird. A few friends tried to help me. One close friend said, “I wish it was true, but it isn’t.” Another said, “You used to talk about everything. Now you talk about Scientology and not doing drugs.”
In early August 1973 I quit my summer job and signed up for the HQS course. Each morning I would bicycle to the cult offices from my parent’s home in the north end of the city — 15.2 miles round trip. I found out for myself. And I found out that the tech was crazy. I expected that the whole “science” would be proven or negated in the HQS course. The litmus test, I thought, would be “Opening Procedure by Duplication” a/k/a “Op Pro by Dup,” “The Book and the Bottle,” and “Getting Duped.” But, in the end, the outcome of Op Pro by Dup was cryptic, confusing and vague.
Op Pro by Dup went something like this — As instructed by a partner I looked at a bottle, walked over to it, described it, then repeated those steps with a book. I would continue, back and forth between the book and the bottle until I supposedly exteriorized. Here’s the trick. Only two things could happen — 1. I could decide that I had exteriorized. 2. I could walk away, leaving the Scientologists to claim that had I only stayed on longer, I would have exteriorized.
Before doing it I asked a trusted cousin who had finished the HQS course what it felt like to exteriorize. He said that it differed from person to person and then told me what it felt like for him. The feeling of exteriorization he described lacked substance and sounded delusory.
I did Op Pro by Dup for 23 hours (a few hours at a time) at which point I felt disoriented. I initially decided that this was the feeling of me leaving my body. The Scientologists congratulated me for reaching that exalted state. But I didn’t feel good about it. I should have walked out the door and never come back.
Aside from The Book and the Bottle we engaged in other Scientology processes that for most people took about a month. Here are the memorable parts. I did the Self-Analysis lists. The SA lists, instructed me to remember, to ‘return’ to moments in my past. There may have been some benefit though none of it was lasting or in any way profound. I also did a strange process that involved reacting to statements like, “Touch the table.” and then, “Touch your nose” said alternately and in repetition. Eventually, I was supposed to have a cognition. Through a series of cognitions I invented the rocket fuel currently being used by NASA. Just kidding. Actually, the only cognition I remember was, “the wood is not my nose.” It could have as easily been “the wood is my nose.” The important thing to Scientology was that the cognition occurred. Again, either you have a cognition or you walk away with the Scientologists claiming that had you only done it longer you would have had a cognition.
While on course, I invited a friend down to the cult offices. As we were walking in, an ambulance with its characteristic siren drove by. One of the “parishioners” began imitating the ambulance sound at the top of his lungs. The nearby Scientologists laughed at this droll wit. But I saw the action through my friend’s eyes. The Scientologist wasn’t funny at all. He was obnoxious. The people laughing at his mimicry were foolish. They were becoming crazy.
Another time I invited my brother down and he brought along a friend. The three of us stood on the sidewalk just outside the cult offices with two Scientologist cousins. Then a staffer joined us. The staffer held keys in his hand, joined together with a metal ring. He said to my brother, “I am going to let go of these keys. What’s going to happen?” My brother replied sharply, “I don’t know.” The Scientologist responded by opening his hand, dropping the keys to the sidewalk and saying, “You knew what would happen! You have had a lifetime of experience to tell you what would happen! But you wouldn’t admit it to yourself just as you won’t admit the truth that is Scientology!” I am doing my best to paraphrase closely.
My brother then brought out his own keys, also joined with a ring. He held the keys in both hands, so they were difficult to see. My brother said, “I am going to let go of these keys. What’s going to happen?” The Scientologist responded, “They will fall to the ground.” My brother, however, had slipped the key ring over a finger and when he opened his hands the keys just hung there. My brother said, “You’ve been fooled, just as you have been fooled by the Church of Scientology.” My brother and his friend then horse-laughed at the poor sap, doing their best to make him feel like a pile of dirt. After my brother, his friend, and the staffer left, my two cousins said, ‘Yes, the man is a fool, but he is improving.” More likely he was getting worse.
My post-Scientology cognition : The poor sap and the droll mimic were much more enlightening than the HQS course.
Much of the course was done with a partner. But suddenly my partner was assigned to something else and he was gone. Curiously, like me, he was a student at York University so I looked forward to connecting with him at York when school began next month. However, I didn’t run into him until January. At that point I asked him how things had gone with Scientology. He didn’t want to talk about it. I have to conclude that he got in over his head but broke away, only after losing a semester of school. I found him on Facebook recently but he did not respond to my message.
Anyway, that fellow whose Scientology assignment was changed late that summer, left me without a partner. Instead of doing HQS I was doing mail room sorting and doing L. Ron reading. And the month that I reserved for the course was rapidly coming to an end. I had something else important coming up on August 31. As I said, I had loved science-fiction. I had already acquired a membership in the World Science Fiction Convention, a festival that was to attract 5,000 SF fans to Toronto over the Labor Day weekend. My plan was to go off to the World Con, then continue my studies at York University and, if necessary, finish the HQS course on weekends or as time would allow. However that was not what Scientology wanted of me.
After a few days of cooling my heals, my course supervisor, who I know today as the wonderful Willie Jones, said to me, “It looks like we’ll have a twin for you tomorrow.” I replied, “Thank you. I’ll be going off to the World Science Fiction convention on Friday, regardless.” This innocent comment was interpreted as a threat to blow. I was sent to see Earl Smith in the ethics office. I cooled my heels there for a couple of days waiting for Earl. Once he found the time, what we did together took about ten minutes. Earl asked me who was saying bad things about Scientology. I thought about it. I soon told Earl that my friend Mike didn’t think well of Scientology. He told me to call Mike and ask him to “grant me beingness as a Scientologist.” And I am pretty sure that those were his exact words. So I called Mike and did as I was told. Mike had no idea what to make of it but replied that he would “grant me beingness.” Pretty weird, eh?
So, I returned to the course room. I had an afternoon left to complete the course though I would have had a good chance of finishing it off had I not been waiting for Ethical Earl. I brought that to the attention of course supervisor Willie, and she responded, “Well if you go Tone 40 on it, you’ll be able to finish.” A couple of hours later I was out the door for good. One cousin told me to return, telling me that without Scientology I could interiorize into a rock for a trillion years. I took my chances. A registrar called me a few times but gave up soon. After all, I had no money and no property. My parents were not well-to-do. I had nothing on the Scientologists that I could spill to the press or the police. There was simply no reason for them to chase me anymore. Honestly, a few years later a Toronto Toyota dealership pressed me more a when I walked off their lot not having purchased a car.
Scientology remained a mystery to me but one which was too risky to further explore. I did not speak of them poorly for another seven years. Then, in 1980, I walked through their doors for the very last time. In a phone conversation, a staffer led me to believe that I could put up an ad on their bulletin board to sell all my Scientology books. But once he had me in the building, he reneged. He told me that each book I sold would stop the Scientology bookstore from selling one. I countered that my books would give a Scientologist a good deal, further disseminate Scientology and make me some money. Wins all around. But instead he had decided to be deceptive and waste my time. At that point I better understood just what had been going on all along. Then, I began sharing my experiences.
— Ron Kasman
Addendum: Ethical Earl stayed on and became the president of the Toronto organization. My friend Mike became a journalist. We remain close friends. My uncle and aunt and all my cousins either walked out the door or were thrown out the door. I don’t know what happened to the poor fellow with the keys or the loon who tried to sound like a siren. Willie Jones lives about a hundred miles down the road and I am fortunate to see her every once in a while.
Chris Shelton is going Straight Up and Vertical
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"All eventually left." I like it when a story has a happy ending. Well written Ron, your experiences seem to be very normal for every body that gets in the door and then gets out that door.
I want to comment on the HQS course(Hubbard Qualified Scientologist) course. It’s got the right title. This is a training course where you willingly allow yourself to be physically controlled by another. Usually a stranger. This then “qualifies” you to accept the ensuing brainwashing that you will receive from future courses and books.
David Miscavige cleverly expand this small course to a huge, long course called The Survival Rundown that could be taken by new people coming into Scientology. It thoroughly beats you down to obey the dogma and rules of the cult. After my son completed the Survival Rundown he was committed to being in Scientology. Sad.
If any of you reading this saw the film The Master there is a sequence where Joaquin Phoenix is run through an HQS drill. It’s grueling.
Hubbard knew hypnotism and understood mind and body control. There is nothing positive about that course.