[Today’s guest post is by Pete Griffiths]
It is September 1987 and I have just spent the past few months at Saint Hill Manor near East Grinstead in West Sussex, former home of noted conman L. Ron Hubbard, studying his Organization Executive Course.
As a graduate of this course I can now go to the International Training Org (“Org” is Scientologese for organization), in Los Angeles, as I am qualified after completing the OEC and also, as I am not on post, in that I do not really have a job or position within my local org, except for Deputy Public Executive Secretary, or Deputy Pes (pronounced Pez). I mention this, as to remove a person from their post in a Scientology org without a proper, hatted (trained), replacement is a big no-no.
My wife is due to have our first child in early November and so I insist that I be back in time to witness the birth, who would want to miss that? I get told by the Executive Director, “That should be OK.”
The org is paying for the course and the airfare, and I will stay at the Manor Hotel and eat at the Big Blue canteen while away. I don’t feel too bad about this as I have received about £30 in pay since I started on staff back in April. I had been promised £200 a week.
At least I will be getting something out of it and a trip to LA too! I don’t know if it was because Scientology involvement or not but I went through a phase of buying shoes a size too small. I have no idea why I did this. On the plane my feet were so uncomfortable in my size 8s that I had to remove them. What was I thinking?
I get to LAX and hang around the airport wondering what will happen next when a young lad aged about 14 or 15 comes up and asks if I am “Peeder.” He gives a brief smile as a greeting and indicates that I follow him. This I do, dragging my case, to a shabby old van with an older beardy guy in the driving seat and we climb aboard and head for LA. Busy roads, nodding donkeys, not much conversation, it is late at night, I think, jetlag?
My suite on the fourth floor of the Manor Hotel consists of a fairly large room with a half dozen bunk beds and a shower room. I grab what looks like an unowned bed and crash out. Even though it is nearly midnight nobody else is in the beds. Next day I get a ride to the Big Blue and I grab breakfast in the huge canteen, consisting of sausages, rashers, eggs, toast, cereal, standard stuff. Then when leaving get accosted by a Mexcican guy demanding, “Votes, Señor!” Everybody attending the meal has to vote from zero to 5. This is his statistic. He is apparently head chef. It feels like hundreds of people milling around the place all looking busy and preoccupied. Sea Org members appear to eat in shifts. Some of them seem to be cleaning the place up as well as eating. Next I check in, promise to bring my passport later in the day and get routed onto course. But first we muster in the car park for a “locational.”. This consists of one person telling the rest of us to look at or touch various objects around the place.
“Look at the cross,” indicating the cross on the roof. “Look at that red car.” Then we form a circle and rub the shoulders of the person in front as the one behind gives you a neck rub. Everybody is in a good mood after this. In the course room the usual stuff. Reading L. Ron Hubbard policy letters. Chinese School which is chanting lines over and over like, “Number of times over materials equals certainty and results!”
The supervisor asks me if if I have filled in a Life History. I have no idea what he’s talking about but soon enough I am filling it in. The section that stands out is the one demanding details of every sexual partner, ever, what was done, and when, how often, and so on and so forth.
The day goes pretty quickly. Evening meal is in an area a bit like a cloister with seats and tables, a buffet, Mexican, tortillas, fillings, yogurt. Lots of people. Back at the hotel I have no sheets for my bed and ask at reception for some. I am given an armful. No blankets however and I am too nervous to ask for any as everyone seems too busy and reluctant to get involved helping some greenhorn English guy.
That night I get eaten alive by some insects that I can’t see. The window is open and it needs to be, it is so hot. The next night I drape sheets from the bunk above so that they dangle and tuck them under my mattress, thereby creating a kind of mosquito net and the biting stops. I also bought a crappy polyester blanket from the supermarket using what little money I had. Nights are a little more bearable.
I borrowed a bicycle and went riding down Sunset looking for a place to get a haircut when a guy started chasing and yelling at me so I just pedaled madly and escaped. He was a kind of drunken, druggy lunatic. Another time I was followed back to the Manor. Am I being followed? Is he following me? I made the decision to confront the guy and turned and stopped.
“Do you want something?”
“Have you got any money?”
I had absolutely nothing and I was able to turn both my trouser pockets inside out. The guy cursed and turned away muttering, “Are they all as broke as you where you come from?”
Yes, especially when you never get paid. I was never sent any wages the entire six weeks I was in LA. Could I have enjoyed Hollywood if I had more time off and money at my disposal? I don’t think so. The place was pretty bad to be honest. Derelicts, drunks, drugs, down-and-outs, and off in the distance the white painted Hollywood sign on the hillside.
Back at the Big Blue I get introduced to False Data Stripping or FDSing. This is simply having somebody who is in some difficulty with the subject at hand and asking, “Have you been given any False Data regarding this?” The girl I am doing this with says that she has indeed been given false data. I ask her when was this?
Growing up, she says. Who gave the false data? It was her dad, says she. Finally when I ask her for the false data she says, “He told me that Jesus Christ was the first communist.” We look at each other for a second before bursting out laughing.
The days go by. Breakfast. Muster. Locational. Study. Chinese School. Lunch. More Study. Evening meal. More study. Cleaning stations. If we do not pass the inspection, a guy wearing a white glove runs his finger all over the place and if any dust or dirt shows, we have to clean the entire place again. Very often we miss the bus to the Manor. Back to bed and sleep. Wake up.
There is never anyone else in the room when I go to bed but in the morning the place is jam packed. At 7:50 one morning the Whittier Narrows earthquake strikes. I am already showered and dressed and on my way down to the lobby using the service elevator. I didn’t like using the main one since I shared it once with Jeff Pomeranz who just grinned at me, ultra cheesily with a maximum smearing of smarm.
I step out of the elevator as the building lurches from side to side. I found out later that the Manor Hotel was built on rollers to cope with such earthquakes. I just race to the stairwell and leap down the flights, clearing each of them in two bounds. The sleeping guys from my room are ahead of me, amazingly. Hiya Chris! And into the lobby as a plaster bust on a plinth crashes in slow motion, leap over it, and then into the car park. Sigh of relief as the quake stops. It lasted 8 seconds. The dust settles and normal service resumes.
I am having trouble assimilating some the dense L. Ron Hubbard policy and the supervisor asks me if I have done my Purification Rundown, the sauna-and-vitamins regimen. I say, no. I get routed off course and interviewed by a couple from the org who try to get me to pay for my Purif. No can do. I am broke. Outer Org staff in training, after all. They come up with a solution. I can do the Purif and work for them in exchange. Scientology is big on the subject of exchange. Fair exchange, partial exchange, exchange in abundance and rip-off are the four conditions of exchange. One scheme is to fly me to Kansas and do my Purif there with a Kansas doctor who has paid for his Purif but not done it yet. The idea being that I report back on a daily basis on what is going on. Sort of a remote Purif. This idea is scrapped as an unusual solution. So I find myself driving around LA going from one Scientology school to another, carrying boxes of leaflets.
As we are leaving one school, the guy I am with says, “Did you recognize that girl on reception?” I was carrying boxes and saw nothing. He tells me to go have a look. I peep round the corner and know instantly that I am looking at Lisa Marie Presley. She couldn’t be anyone else. So Elvine. Wow. She didn’t look up and I just left the premises feeling kind of starstruck.
Eventually it is decided that I have got my exchange in and I start my Purif in LA and it takes three weeks to complete.
By now it is getting very close to my wife giving birth and I need to find a way to leave. I have a return air ticket. Nobody wants me to leave. Surprise, surprise. I am supposed to do the Staff Leaving Routing Form but can’t find any help getting started. I promised my wife I would be there and nobody here seems to care. Nobody wants me to leave. What would Ron do? What would he do? At least I still have my passport. Hmmm…
I dare not tell anyone that I am planning on just going as they would be obliged to write a Knowledge Report and I would find myself a virtual prisoner, perhaps never to get away again. We had already had a student who had blown twice and each time brought back to further disciplinary actions. The airline was very helpful in allowing me to reschedule my flight. It was fine and would cost $100. I just said, yes, OK. I didn’t have $100.
Luckily enough I bumped into the lad who had met me when I first landed and he was going to the airport that very morning. “I need a ride to the airport!” He said OK and I got in the van, and hid, hoping that nobody would see me as I was blowing the org, after all.
At the airport I didn’t mention the $100 and neither did the airline. I just waited until my plane was due to leave, anxiously scanning the doors, and it was with some relief that I took my seat.
Back to the UK. A hurricane had just destroyed half the trees in southern England. One had flattened the Saint Hill canteen, an old ramshackle prefabricated shack. Somebody must have had overts on storms, or canteens, or trees. Back to the birth of my first child. Happy days.
Back to a further six years of Scientology. Not so bloody happy.
— Pete Griffiths
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Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history
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Nicely written Pete. Your LA experiences are witty and informative. And it wouldn't be LA without an earthquake. How many visitors get that E ticket experience? Your experiences are more organized than others who have gone through the Big Blue experience. And you only had to sneak away to be with your wife as she gave birth. So much for a '$cientology promise'. That is much like an 'acceptable truth'. Truth without any truth.
This is a great piece of history.
Outer Org trainees have routinely been treated like 3rd class citizens in the hierarchcal structure of Scientology.
I just loved reading the BLOW. Great escape story !