My introduction to Scientology occurred decades ago when I traveled to Colorado to visit the family of a former high school friend. After my arrival, my friend’s father, Mr. West, offered to take me on a road trip throughout the west where one of our “must do” stops would be a visit to a famous Scientology Clear who would cure me of my stuttering and help me in my struggle to free myself from my Catholic upbringing.
I wrote about this experience in the pages of this newspaper. At that time, I described what it was like to be audited with an E-Meter. An E-meter is a religious artifact called an Electro-psychometer, a calibrated device according to Scientology used for measuring extremely low voltages and psyche, the human soul, spirit or mind.
What I did not know then was the dark side of Scientology although years later Mr. West would tell me about “hiding ex Scientologists who were running from the Church.” These stories seemed incomprehensible to me. Catholics, certainly, didn’t go running after so-called apostates. Members of my Irish German family were not sending committed Catholic uncles to force me back into the fold.
Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, was born in 1911 in Nebraska and died in 1986 in California. He was a prolific science fiction and fantasy writer before writing the book that would change his life and earn him millions of dollars, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. He once said, “You don’t get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, start a religion.”
A Church of Scientology website describes Dianetics as remaining a bestseller for more than fifty years.
Although my auditing session in Las Vegas was free, The New York Times’ 1986 obituary of Hubbard stated that.
“Clients paid Scientology up to $300 an hour for a one-on-one counseling process, known as auditing. To monitor a client’s responses to questions, church staff members use an electrical instrument on the client’s skin.
“The goal of ‘’auditing,’’ which can go on for years and cost clients hundreds of thousands of dollars, is to increase control over thought processes in a portion of the mind where, Scientologists assert, emotional problems and psychosomatic illnesses are born. “
Scientology was founded in 1950 with the publication of Hubbard’s book, Dianetics. The book was written in Bay Head, New Jersey in a house that has since been restored by the Church. In 2014, actor John Travolta and his wife Kelly Preston attended the dedication ceremonies at 666 East Avenue in Bay Head,
Scientology takes many of its metaphysical cues from the occultism of Aleister Crowley. Crowley’s famous black magic line, ‘Do as thou wilt. That is the whole of the law,” might be described as the backbone of Scientology. Crowley and Hubbard were friends.
In a diary entry, Crowley writes:
“My memory is quite clear that I have been taking heroin continuously for many weeks: three or four doses to help me get up, and others practically all day at short intervals. As to Cocaine, I must have had at least two or three prolonged bouts of it every week, plus a few ‘hairs of the dog’ on most of the ‘off-days.’ Most of my mental and moral powers were seriously affected in various ways, while I was almost wholly dependent on them for physical energy, in particular for sexual force, which only appeared after unusual excesses, complicated by abnormal indulgence in alcohol. My creative life had become spasmodic and factitious….I avoided washing, dressing, shaving, as much as possible. I was unable to count money properly, to inspect bills, and so on, everything bored me. I could not even feel alarm at obviously serious symptoms.”
L. Ron Hubbard’s son, L. Ron Hubbard Jr., wrote about his father in 1985. In a piece entitled “Philadelphia,” he recalled:
“We were in Philadelphia. It was November 1952. Dianetics was all but forgotten; Scientology, a new science,’ had become the focus of attention. Every night, in the hotel, in preparation for the next day’s lecture, he’d pace the floor, exhilarated by this or that passage from Aleister Crowley’s writings. Just a month before, he had been in London, where he had finally been able to quench his thirst; to fill his cup with the true, raw, naked power of magic. The lust of centuries at his very fingertips.
“To stroke and taste the environs of the Great Beast, to fondle Crowley’s books, papers, and memorabilia had filled him with pure ecstasy! In London he had acquired, at last, the final keys; enabling him to take his place upon the Throne of the Beast,’ to which he firmly believed himself to be the rightful heir. The tech gushed forth and resulted in the Philadelphia Doctorate Course lectures.”
In 2015, Philadelphia Voice reported on Scientology’s connections to Camden, New Jersey.
On Dec. 18, 1953, the church’s founder, science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard Sr., and four others, met on the second floor of the Smith-Austermuhl Building at 5th and Market streets in Camden’s downtown with lawyer William C. Gotshalk. The two-story brick and marble building, which still exists, housed insurance companies, financial institutions, and several law offices, including Gotshalk’s.
In the legal papers signed that day, Hubbard is identified as a resident of Medford Lakes, a secluded borough about 20 miles east of Camden. Hubbard lived in a rented home there for about four months, an odd location for a man whose homes tended toward grandiose. All of the homes in Medford Lakes look as if they are part of a summer camp, with small log cabins ringing shallow lakes. Records show the community had just 434 homes and 1,704 resident in 1953.
From his Medford Lakes base, Hubbard gave lectures in Philadelphia in September, notes Runyon. The Camden talks began in October 1953.
The Philadelphia region continues to have strong ties to the religion through the church’s current leader, David Miscavige, who was born in Bucks County, but grew up in South Jersey’s Willingboro, and then Broomall, Delaware County.
In 2018, Philadelphia Magazine reported that the Church of Scientology planned to build an ideal church in Center City Philadelphia.
The Church bought two properties: the early 20th-century headquarters of Cunningham Piano Company and an adjacent building on the 1300 block of Chestnut Street in order to create a skyscraper church. Yet there has been no progress on the building to date. The current Philadelphia headquarters of the Church is 1515 Race Street, where in 2008, 200 protesters from the group Anonymous protested the Church’s alleged abuse of members and ex-members. The mostly circus like protest occurred on L. Ron Hubbard’s birthday and included dancing, protesters dressed in Guy Fawkes masks, horn blowing and the waving of signs that read, Ron is Gone but the Con goes on. The Church ignored the protests but labeled the Anonymous group “terrorists” and “desperados.”
In a 2013 new story, The Philadelphia Inquirer (reprinted on gizmado.com) reported that the Cunningham Piano building was far from the church’s only major real estate holding that had been left abandoned in recent years. Scientologists call these structures that are allowed to sit and “rot” “ideal orgs,” or prominent urban buildings that bring attention to the church’s mission. The newspaper reported that “They are purchased with donations aggressively wrung from members, and they are often left empty for years pending more cash to complete interior renovations.”
In 2004, Russell Miller’s “Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard,” was published to Scientology’s consternation. The New York Post reported that the Church attempted to ban the book.
Miller reported that Hubbard had made two trips to Asia as a teenager. In Beijing in 1928, Hubbard noted that the Chinese could make millions if they transformed the Great Wall into a roller coaster. Hubbard did not like China and wrote in his journal, “The trouble with China is, there are too many ‘chinks’ here.”
Miller adds:
“By 1967, Hubbard had even created his own private navy and ran Scientology from a small armada of ships that plied the Mediterranean, crewed with young believers who had been bestowed quasi-naval ranks in Hubbard’s “Sea Organization.” They even meted out serious punishment, throwing crew members overboard while they were docked, sometimes for very minor infractions such as making mistakes during their course work.”
Miller also writes about Hubbard’s arrest in Philadelphia.
“The only small hiccup in the smooth running of the Philadelphia Doctorate Course occurred on the afternoon of 16 December, when US marshals thundered up the stairs of the Hubbard Dianetics Foundation at 237 North 16th Street, Philadelphia, waving a warrant for the arrest of L. Ron Hubbard.” Miller quotes one source who insists that there were “two hundred Scientologists battling on the stairs against FBI agents, US marshals and Philadelphia police.”
The number of Scientology adherents in Philadelphia remains unclear but some estimates have the number between 100 and 200,000. Unlike the first (physical) Scientology church building in Los Angeles which is a vast Universal Studios like amphitheater with a visitor’s information center, reading rooms, classrooms and a state of the art gym, the Philadelphia center is fairly low key enterprise. Years ago, L. Ron Hubbard’s books were displayed front and center in the front windows of the building but the practice is not always followed. Today you are more likely to see closed blinds or curtains where the books used to be. Years ago it was also common to see Scientology auditors offering free E-Meter auditing sessions to passerby in City Hall Courtyard and elsewhere.
A Time cover story in 1991 summed up its view of the Church of Scientology in no uncertain terms.
“The Church of Scientology, started by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard to “clear” people of unhappiness, portrays itself as a religion. In reality, the church is a hugely profitable global racket that survives by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-like manner. At times during the past decade, prosecutions against Scientology seemed to be curbing its menace. Eleven top Scientologists, including Hubbard’s wife, were sent to prison in the early 1980s for infiltrating, burglarizing and wiretapping more than 100 private and government agencies in attempts to block their investigations. In recent years hundreds of longtime Scientology adherents -- many charging that they were mentally or physically abused -- have quit the church and criticized it at their own risk. Some have sued the church and won; others have settled for amounts in excess of $500,000. In various cases, judges have labeled the church “schizophrenic and paranoid” and “corrupt, sinister and dangerous.””
Thom Nickels
