Scientology in the ‘good’ old days: Prison of belief just as confining as today

[Heber Jentzsch at a protest over the 1977 FBI raid of Scientology]

[Today’s guest post is by Valerie Ross]

People talk about how the old timers say it was fun in the “good old days,” back when L. Ron Hubbard ran Scientology. And it did seem like it was more fun than it would be these days.

But fun is a relative thing, and looking back, that was part of the con. We were to an extent allowed more freedom than people who are on staff these days, but that didn’t mean we were free. What a dichotomy. I’ll try to explain.

Here I am in LA. I have a place to lay my head at night, and I am struggling to find a way to get to my (basically unpaid) job every day, and hoping to make it before the meager breakfast spread disappears. But I’m still doing what I love most, which is studying. That meant I had freedom, at least in my mind. But wow, what freedom was it really?

The letters I sent to my family thank them for their gifts of stuffed animals, decorations for the walls of my room, a poncho (which was stolen within a week), and warm socks for when the boiler was broken (which was usually). In reality, most of the stuff they sent disappeared within hours. They sent me food sometimes, and I would share it with people because I knew it would be stolen if I didn’t share it, so I just went proactive and picked who got it.

I had sold my car before I moved to Albuquerque, which means I arrived in LA with a bit of savings. That gave me a few hundred dollars more than a lot of people in Sea Org ever had. A few hundred dollars is a fortune when you’re getting $5 a week (if you’re lucky). What it meant for me is that I could buy deodorant, toothpaste, shampoo, and laundry detergent when I ran out, without having to decide what was the most important item. It also meant that I had to decide whether it was worth buying the basic toiletries (considered luxuries to Sea Org staff) because the people I was living with would suspect I had money, or they would just figure out where I hid my toiletries and steal them.

I quickly learned to do my shopping at the beginning of “libs” day, around 6 am, while most staff slept in, then hide my bare minimum purchases creatively. That usually meant I got to keep most of what I bought. I had to change hiding places often, and then remember where I had hidden things. Under the mattress was out, it had to be places like nooks and crannies outside the room, sometimes at the Org. A purse was not something any of us even considered. If we had cash, we kept it on our person. When I did laundry, I would do laundry with a group of guys I knew from my division, not my female roommates who worked at different places at ASHO or AOLA. This meant that I got my own socks and underwear back when I finished doing my laundry.

And I was subjected to a whole new language once I entered Scientology, even if it sounded so much like English. I got to the point where I would say in the back of my mind “oh, here’s more Non-English English” and then, because everything in Scientology is either abbreviated or is an acronym, I would just think “NEE.” That was my word for Scientologese. The NEE intensified once I got in Sea Org.

Then you are taught early on (in NEE) that there will be “no case on post.” In English that means that you are not allowed to let anyone know how you are feeling while you are working. They don’t bother to tell you that you are going to be working around the clock so don’t expect to ever feel another feeling again. Or get to eat a meal where you just sit down and enjoy the company or even taste the mostly tasteless food, or get a full uninterrupted night’s sleep.

And studying was just tedious. Never had I endured so much repetition in studying. The constant repetition, the drills on subjects I knew but they were repeated over and over, the clay demos and the demo kits for things that I got, but the checklist said you had to do it that way. And none more so than the ever-present KSW.

The KSWhat? Keeping Scientology Working. Every single course you take in Scientology after the Comm Course starts with the Keeping Scientology Working Policy. And don’t you dare rush through it. You must be checked out on it by your supervisor before you can even read any other HCOPL (Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter) or HCOB (Hubbard Communications Office Bulletin) in the course pack.

This means I had to get checked out on KSW for my Basic Staff Hat, Staff Status, I and II, OEC 0-7 and the FEBC. That’s 12 times I had to be checked out on it just while studying to become a Briefing Course Supervisor. And yes, in case you are wondering, the Briefing Course students had to be checked out on it too in order to become auditors as well. On each level of the course, I had the “privilege” of making sure that my students fully understood KSW. I’m going to subject you to just a portion of what was thrown in our face every time: The HCOPL, written on 7 February 1965 and reissued 15 June 1970, starts out by saying (emphasis in the original):

Note: Neglect of this Pol Ltr has caused great hardship on staffs, has cost countless millions and made it necessary in 1970 to engage in an all out International effort to restore basic Scientology over the world. Within 5 years after the issue of this PL with me off the lines, violation had almost destroyed orgs. “Quickie grades” entered in and denied gain to tens of thousands of cases. Therefore actions which neglect or violate this Policy Letter are HIGH CRIMES resulting in Comm Evs on ADMINISTRATORS and EXECUTIVES. It is not “entirely a tech matter” as its neglect destroys orgs and caused a 2 year slump. IT IS THE BUSINESS OF EVERY STAFF MEMBER to enforce it.”

Lots of words later, you get to the part we also had the privilege of doing Chinese school (everyone in a group reading loudly in unison) at musters. This is the part any person who was in Scientology for more than a few months can probably still repeat in their sleep:

Getting the correct technology applied consists of:
One: Having the correct technology.
Two: Knowing the technology.
Three: Knowing it is correct.
Four: Teaching correctly the correct technology.
Five: Applying the technology.
Six: Seeing that the technology is correctly applied.
Seven: Hammering out of existence incorrect technology.
Eight: Knocking out incorrect applications.
Nine: Closing the door on any possibility of incorrect technology.
Ten: Closing the door on incorrect application.

While in I had been drilled so thoroughly on the steps of KSW that almost 30 years later, in 2011, when I got called by someone in an attempt to “recover” me in and the person on the other end of the line started spouting KSW to me and asked me in NEE if that “indicated,” I said it’s KSW, so what? My first call from Scientology almost 30 years after I left was in NEE.

More than anything, we were all trained to Keep Scientology working. Note step 2. Knowing it is correct. If you read those steps over and over, you are scared to color outside the lines even a little bit. But even while I was being trained, I also knew that once my studies were over, I would be supervising the Briefing Course. That was frightening to me! I voiced my concerns to my senior: How could I, someone who had only done co-auditing to that point, who had barely started their Class IV internship, be the lead supervisor of the Saint Hill Special Briefing Course and help train auditors who would be training on things I had never trained on?

Don’t worry, I was told, you’re just the supervisor. You don’t need to know the material. You just need to make sure that these people know their study tech and apply it while taking the courses. How fake I felt, being in charge of a whole group of people who had so much more knowledge of the supposedly vaunted tech than me, and yet it was my job to ensure that they learned and applied it correctly. But by then, I felt like half my world was fake anyway. I got up exhausted and hungry every morning. At least 10 percent of the time I didn’t get breakfast due to transportation issues, so I was hungry until noon. I had a headache by then. My back hurt horribly from my car wreck and I was standing for hours (we had to walk the floor the entire time the Course was in session) so I just started figuring out how to fake it.

Fake enthusiasm, a Scientology hallmark.

But, even through all this, I was one of the luckier ones. I met Heber Jentzsch one night while I was coming back from dinner the first week I was there when I was still studying. He was sitting in the lobby. Since I was not scheduled to be on the evening course, I could stay and talk without getting in trouble. I didn’t know, at the time, that he was the president of the Church (although, that was really only an honorary title).

He started a conversation with me, and we had background in common. He came from a polygamist family. My grandparents on both sides of the family were raised in polygamist families. I know he had a bad rap in the later years, but back before Miscavige turned him into a caricature of himself, he was quite an entertainer and very loquacious. He invited me to go to Celebrity Centre with him to meet Yvonne. At the time CC was still located at 1809 West 8th Street, just under two miles from ASHO. So he wanted me to go with him to CC to have dinner with Yvonne and him occasionally.

Occasionally turned into at least once a week. Heber would pick me up (Yvonne was always busy) and we would eat in Yvonne’s office with people rushing in and out while she worked. It was a nice break from ASHO and an interesting view at the difference between how celebrities and other people in Scientology were treated. It was kind of an oasis in the insanity.

But in the meantime, I continued to study and then I was thrown onto being the head supervisor of the vaunted Saint Hill Briefing Course ASHO Day.

As a course supervisor, I was trained to say a few specific phrases when I was asked a question. “What do your materials state?” “What word don’t you understand?” “What were you reading just before you got confused?” “Please refer to source.” I was not trained on how to thread a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Thank goodness I not only knew how to do that but also how to splice a broken tape.

After the first couple of weeks, I got lucky, by then I had befriended enough students that I had one of the students, Mark F. (not my ex-husband) who offered to pick me up every morning and bring me in. He was willing to get there early (so he could get to one of the highly coveted tape players) and that worked out for me because then I could have breakfast. No, he didn’t have any other intentions. He had a fiancée back home who he was very much in love with. He just had a motorcycle, which we could ride between the center lane of rush hour traffic on the 101 every morning, and he went by the Hollywood Inn every morning on his way to the same place I was going. I usually got a different ride home.

In that way, it really was looser discipline, although it was just a group of people who would not step over certain lines hanging together all the same. The students did hang around the Sea Org members. Mark F. and a few other students would come over to the Hollywood Inn on libs day. Sometimes, they’d bring some King Taco! One evening, Mark F. and I were leaning on the car, people watching in front of the Hollywood Inn and we were approached by a drunk gay guy who said “I hope you guys aren’t married. I hope you don’t have children.” Then he walked off. We just laughed.

During that time, a group of us from the BC did go to coffee usually once a week on Friday, if we were for sure going to have libs the next day, and a student would bring me a Tommy’s burger at least once a week as well. The students knew we were broke and they always paid.

After I left, I remembered those things because they were mostly light and easy. and it was hard to remember anything else because there are places your mind really doesn’t want you to go. Even sitting down to write about them makes my shoulders tense.

When I was still at the Salt Lake Mission, I got creative with my study. We were supposed to write up a little thing on what each level of the Tone Scale meant – just the basic Tone Scale, not the expanded Tone Scale. I wrote a poem for each level. In going through my papers, here is the one I wrote for 1.1, covert hostility.

I greet all my friends with a smile,
But I’m really plotting all the while.
Unrestrained, I’d do them in,
With friendly handshake and a grin.
1.1 is my name
Covert Hostility is my game.

When reading this poem now, I realized that if you were to analyze the “tone” of the average Scientologist, it would always be 1.1. They are required to pretend to be happy at all times, but they are hiding so much behind that smile.

That’s what my days really were.

The first time I was assaulted was the day Irene Howey called the mid-day muster because CF was behind. We pulled an all-nighter that night. Like a good little Sea Orger, I did what was asked and carried boxes of addresso cards (oh the memories) back and forth, sorting through them. All of a sudden, a senior executive pulled me aside.

The first time wasn’t much, more a show of superiority and “I can have you any time I want,” then sending me back out. He basically jerked off against me then sent me back out to do my stuff. I was so humiliated, but hey “no case on post.” Back to work.

He started pulling me into dark closets and pushing himself into me every chance he got when I was on my way to lunch, and I got in the habit of getting in the middle of a group of people when I was going to lunch. But more often than not, he would be able to cut me off from the herd because of who he was. This meant that not only would I have to go to the nearest bathroom and clean up as best I could and be humiliated when I returned to supervise course for the afternoon, but I also didn’t get lunch at least once a week. But, no case on post. I was cheery and happy…I think. I don’t think any of my students suspected anything.

But then, again, I didn’t think my parents suspected anything either. This went on for about three months before Heber and Yvonne let me know that I was not acting like myself. I spilled the beans, crying my eyes out. They believed me. But, because this man was who he was, they, to an extent, had their hands tied. They told me to go back to work like everything was OK and they would get something worked out.

A couple of days later, I was pulled off at the end of course and pulled into Irene Howey’s office. I was told that I was “beached” for “out 2-D.” Students were still hanging around after course. I walked out of her office and ran into a student who offered to let me stay at her house that night. I did. The next morning, she woke me up and let me know that I couldn’t stay there any longer because she would get kicked off course if I did.

The next morning, the students on the briefing course were being read my “SP Declare” (which I never saw) in which they were told that I had been beached for having sex with students to raise student points. Mark Plummer said it was the weirdest SP declare he had ever read.

In the meantime, I had been told to go to my room the next day to pick up my clothing, etc. after the staff had left for the day. Heber and Yvonne met me there and let me know that the whole out 2-D thing was a ruse and that I was being transferred to the Guardian’s Office, Scientology’s spy wing.

It was all going to be OK.

Riiiiight.

— Valerie Ross

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