Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief(6)

HAGGIS SPENT much of his time and money taking advanced courses and being “audited,” a kind of Scientology psychotherapy that involves the use of an electropsychometer, or E-Meter. The device measures bodily changes in electrical resistance that occur when a person answers questions posed by an auditor. Hubbard compared it to a lie detector. The E-Meter bolstered the church’s claim to being a scientific path to spiritual discovery. “It gives Man his first keen look into the heads and hearts of his fellows,” Hubbard claimed, adding that Scientology boosted some people’s IQ one point for every hour of auditing. “Our most spectacular feat was raising a boy from 83 IQ to 212,” he once boasted to the Saturday Evening Post.

The theory of auditing is that it locates and discharges mental “masses” that are blocking the free flow of energy. Ideas and fantasies are not immaterial; they have weight and solidity. They can root themselves in the mind as phobias and obsessions. Auditing breaks up the masses that occupy what Hubbard terms the “reactive mind,” which is where the fears and phobias reside. The E-Meter is presumed to measure changes in those masses. If the needle on the meter moves to the right, resistance is rising; to the left, it is falling. The auditor asks systematic questions aimed at detecting sources of “spiritual distress”—problems at work or in a relationship, for instance. Whenever the client, or “preclear,” gives an answer that prompts the meter needle to jump, that subject becomes an area of concentration until the auditor is satisfied that emotional consequences of the troubling experience have drained away. Certain patterns of needle movement, such as sudden jumps or darts, long versus short falls, et cetera, have meaning as well. The auditor tries to guide the preclear to a “cognition” about the subject under examination, which leads to a “floating” needle. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the needle is frozen. “The needle just idles around and yawns at your questions,” Hubbard explains. The individual should experience a corresponding feeling of release. Eventually, the reactive mind is cleansed of its obsessions, fears, and irrational urges, and the preclear becomes Clear.2

Haggis found the E-Meter impressively responsive. He would grasp a cylindrical electrode in each hand. (When he first joined Scientology, the electrodes were empty Campbell’s soup cans with the labels stripped off.) An imperceptible electrical charge would run from the meter through his body. The meter seemed able to gauge the kinds of thoughts he was having—whether they were scary or happy, or when he was hiding something. It was a little spooky. The auditor often probed for what Scientologists call “earlier similars.” If Paul was having another fight with Diane, for instance, the auditor would ask him, “Can you remember an earlier time when something like this happened?” Each new memory led further and further back in time. The goal was to uncover and neutralize the emotional memories that were plaguing Paul’s behavior.

Often, the process led participants to recall past lives. Although that never happened to Haggis, he envied others who professed to have vivid recollections of ancient times or distant civilizations. Wouldn’t it be cool if you had many lifetimes before? he thought. Wouldn’t it be easier to face death?

Scientology is not just a matter of belief, the recruits were constantly told; it is a step-by-step scientific process that will help you overcome your limitations and realize your full potential for greatness. Only Scientology can awaken individuals to the joyful truth of their immortal state. Only Scientology can rescue humanity from its inevitable doom. The recruits were infused with a sense of mystery, purpose, and intrigue. Life inside Scientology was just so much more compelling than life outside.

Preclears sometimes experience mystical states characterized by feelings of bliss or a sense of blending into the universe. They come to expect such phenomena, and they yearn for them if they don’t occur. “Exteriorization”—the sense that one has actually left his physical being behind—is a commonly reported occurrence for Scientologists. If one’s consciousness can actually uproot itself from the physical body and move about at will—what does that say about mortality? We must be something more than, something other than, a mere physical incarnation; we actually are thetans, to use Hubbard’s term, immortal spiritual beings that are incarnated in innumerable lifetimes. Hubbard said that exteriorization could be accomplished in about half the preclears by having the auditor simply command, “Be three feet back of your head.” Free of the limitations of his body, the thetan can roam the universe, circling stars, strolling on Mars, or even creating entirely new universes. Reality expands far beyond what the individual had originally perceived it to be. The ultimate goal of auditing is not just to liberate a person from destructive mental phenomena; it is to emancipate him from the laws of matter, energy, space, and time—or MEST, as Hubbard termed them. These are just artifacts of the thetan’s imagination, in any case. Bored thetans had created MEST universes where they could frolic and play games; eventually, they became so absorbed in their distractions they forgot their true immortal natures. They identified with the bodies that they were temporarily inhabiting, in a universe they had invented for their own amusement. The goal of Scientology is to recall to the thetan his immortality and help him relinquish his self-imposed limitations.

Once, Haggis had what he thought was an out-of-body experience. He was lying on a couch, and then he found himself across the room, observing himself lying there. The experience of being out of his body wasn’t that grand, and later he wondered if he had simply been visualizing the scene. He didn’t have the certainty his colleagues reported when they talked about seeing objects behind them or in distant places and times.