THE MAN MOST LIKELY TO FILL A SPIRITUAL VOID WITH SPACESHIPS AND HOLLYWOOD GLITZ

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood & the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright - Vintage Books (2013)

Another alum of the Portland Arts & Lectures series, Lawrence Wright is a prolific religious scholar with an intimidating résumé. A frequent contributor to The New Yorker, Wright is also a screenwriter and a Pulitzer Prize winning long-form journalist. Although the subjects of his investigations range from Al-Qaeda to Satanic cults, the unifying element is an acute understanding of what draws people to organized religion. Wright understands that the most alluring (and dangerous) religious groups appeal to the seeker’s subconscious need for a structured ideological existence. Membership within a strict, codified organization excuses the individual from making decisions and considering difficult questions of morality and purpose. All the answers can be found within the pages of a book—or distilled from the cloying voice of a charismatic prophet. The world is a large and scary place and there is considerable comfort to be gained from following orders and serving the ‘greater good.’ It is especially easy to recline in the subservient position once you accept that the man giving orders possesses the key to salvation—along with an understanding of the universe that your puny mortal mind simply cannot fathom. For Scientologists, such is the figure of L. Ron Hubbard. 

Wright’s 2013 exposé Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief is a fascinatingly weird look into a religion that could only have emerged in twentieth-century America. Adapted into an HBO documentary in 2015, Wright’s thorough examination of the elusive history of Scientology reflects our fundamental obsession with celebrity culture, conspiracy theories, science fiction, and psychotherapy. And yet, despite the incredible amount of information contained within its pages, despite the inclusion of over two hundred interviews with current and former Scientologists, Wright’s book is equally intriguing for its ominous silences and omissions. Journalists who have approached Scientology have been subjected to harassment, blackmail, and defamation. Historical records—like those documenting Hubbard’s military career—have been falsified. Government agencies have been infiltrated, and information has been altered or destroyed. Former scientologists who have dared to sue the church for human rights violations have been drowned in countersuits. Any journalist who attempts to write about Scientology accepts the inevitable consequences and turns to face the coming storm with wary determination. Wright’s footnotes confirm his own experiences with harassment and set up a strange dialectic between the journalist’s meticulous investigation and the church’s unequivocal denial of the facts. When faced with substantial evidence and eyewitness accounts, the church’s go-to response is ‘that never happened,’ or ‘that is evidence of a government conspiracy.’ And if legal documentation is absolutely required, creepy gunpoint affidavits conveniently appear to confirm the unassailable moral integrity of the accused leaders. 

Wright’s book is not a biography of L. Ron Hubbard, but rather a biography of the living organism he perpetuated. Scientology’s strict adherence to Hubbard’s writing and his ‘technology’ leaves little room for interpretation or revision. Says Wright:

One must not stray from the path he has laid down or question his methods. Scientology is exact. Scientology is certain. Step by step one can ascend toward clarity and power, becoming more oneself—but, paradoxically, also more like Hubbard. Perhaps no individual in history has taken such copious internal soundings and described with so much logic and minute detail the inner workings of his own mentality…Hubbard’s habits, his imagination, his goals and wishes—his character, in other words—became both the basis and the destination of Scientology.

Everything that comprises Scientology ‘course work’ comes directly from the mind of its founder, who also holds the Guinness World Record for ‘Most published works by one author.’ In a way, Wright’s detailed depiction of Scientology also serves as a biography for its mysterious messiah—a kind of extrapolated mapping of his singular mind. Hubbard’s eccentric personality and varied interests are reflected in the schizophrenic development of his religion. Before he founded the church, Hubbard was an amateur explorer, a well-known writer of science fiction, and a (somewhat cowardly) naval officer. After the incredible success of his self-help guide Dianetics, Hubbard gathered his followers and sailed around the world, avoiding the IRS and seeking a spiritual haven for his fledgling religion. He searched for hidden treasure, surrounded himself with beautiful young ‘messengers,’ and participated in a military coup in Morocco. When he finally returned to the United States he began to advertise Scientology as a celebrity religion and actively courted some of the biggest names in Hollywood, including John Travolta, Isaac Hayes, and famed acting coach Milton Katselas. Hubbard fashioned Scientology in his own image. He wanted the new religion to be secretive, yet radiate glamour and wealth. He wanted beautiful women and dashing men as spokespeople for his revolutionary techniques. He wanted to seduce potential converts into prostrating themselves before a religion that promised results—results that would require a lifetime of spiritual and financial investments. 

The history of Scientology is coloured by its current condition. Since the death of L. Ron Hubbard, the church under David Miscavige has taken a sinister, militant tone when dealing with outsiders. Hubbard’s original teachings were certainly controversial and extreme, but it is unclear whether human rights violations have become more prevalent since the transition in leadership. Wright certainly seems to think so. While he portrays Miscavige and Tommy Davis as looming, well-dressed mobsters, he retains a certain amount of cautious respect for Hubbard. The difference between the messiah and the thugs seems to be the presence of independent thought. Hubbard might have been crazy. He might have been mentally ill. But there is no denying that he was an incredibly creative and productive individual who knew how to put a positive spin on even the most dire situations. To appeal to the Hollywood elite, Hubbard cleverly identified the most powerful components of the human psyche and severed them from their negative counterparts. Greed without guilt. Narcissism without shame. In this way he pardoned urges that traditional religions condemned. The loyal Scientologist can indulge in promiscuity, intoxication, and material extravagance because his physical body is nothing more than a vessel. He buys absolution with cold hard cash. And he is granted access to an exclusive club of chosen people who dazzle with showbiz glamor. If little else can be said for the Father of Scientology, he at least possessed a shrewd understanding of human desire. This relaxed interpretation of moral integrity does not, of course, apply to women or those lowly Scientologists who lack a claim to fame. 

To fill in the gaps left by a secretive, withholding subject, Lawrence Wright embarks upon several intellectual detours. He compares Scientology to other persecuted religious movements including Mormonism and Puritanism. In one fantastically grotesque section, he provides examples of similar messiahs who drove their followers to commit murder, terrorism, and mass-suicide. He also quotes numerous scholars in an effort to distinguish a ‘religion’ from a ‘cult’— emphasizing the murky boundary between the two. He touches briefly upon the history of psychiatry and Scientology’s bizarre crusade against psychotropic drugs. He wrestles with the existence of ‘brainwashing’ as a confirmable phenomenon. 

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief is a biography of a man who is also an organization. The chaotic, contradictory nature of Scientology is reflected in the life of L. Ron Hubbard. Effortlessly migrating from mansions to mobile homes as his fortunes waxed and waned, Hubbard understood the fragility of the outside world and the mercurial tendencies of Hollywood. He was paranoid, outrageous, and indomitable. He was an unfaithful husband and an absent father. He saw himself as a performer—slipping into the roles of high-seas adventurer, amateur filmmaker, and religious messiah whenever he saw money to be made. He was, in many ways, the physical manifestation of all the uglier aspects of American pop-culture. Perhaps this is why it’s so easy to dismiss him and his followers as an annoying mob of wealthy, delusional zealots. Lawrence Wright is as fair as he can possibly be without abandoning the truth. If Scientologists wish to read a less damning portrait of themselves, perhaps they should unlock the compound, dismiss the armed guard, and let the world in a little. 

Going Clear: HBO Documentary Films

Lawrence Wright Speaking on NPR's Think Out Loud