Article 22161 of alt.religion.scientology: Path: news.cybercom.net!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!gatech!news.sprintlink.net!EU.net!sun4nl!xs4all!utopia.hacktic.nl!not-for-mail From: anon-remailer@utopia.hacktic.nl (Anonymous) Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology Subject: The Class of '65 (short excerpt) Date: 23 Aug 1995 22:37:40 +0200 Organization: Hack-Tic International, Inc. Lines: 113 Sender: remailer@utopia.hacktic.nl Message-ID: <41g3ik$7iv@utopia.hacktic.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: utopia.hacktic.nl Comments: Hack-Tic may or may not approve of the content of this posting Comments: Please report misuse of this automated remailing service to from "What Really Happened To The Class Of '65?", by Michael Medved & David Wallechinsky (New York: Random House, 1976) Jamie Kelso: The Idealist We had seen Jamie only once in the years since high school. During a brief visit to Los Angeles in the winter of 1971 we called his parents and learned that Jamie had joined the Church of Scientology. He was living communally with fifty other scientologists in a ramshackle house in downtown L.A. When we paid him a visit one cold night, we waited in the seedy entrance hall while Jamie's "commanding officer" summoned him from upstairs. The entire house seemed to be administered along military lines. Many of the young people who came bustling in and out the various doorways were dressed in freshly pressed sailor suits. Along the walls were numerous framed pictures of "the Commodore" -- L. Ron Hubbard, scientology's founder. Finally Jamie marched down the stairs, wearing thick rimless glasses and a confident smile. He led us into the dining hall, where we sat alone at a long table and talked for ten minutes. We learned that Jamie was part of the Sea Organization, or Sea Org, the elite corps of the scientology movement. Those lucky enough to qualify spent all their waking hours in missionary activity, in return for which room and board were provided by the movement. As part of his commitment, Jamie told us he had signed a "billion-year contract," binding himself in this and all future incarnations. He spoke quickly and nervously, but the smile never left his face and the intense green eyes smoked and glittered behind his glasses. He toyed with the sugar bowl, spilling some of the sugar onto the table and forming it into little mounds between his fingers. He told us he was very happy, and that he wanted to share his happiness with his friends. He wanted us to leave him an address so that scientology literature could be sent to us in the mail, but we declined the offer. Our conversation had just about run out of steam when one of Jamie's superiors came into the dining hall and called our old friend back to "work detail" upstairs. We said goodbye and wished him well. Four years later we tried to contact him again in the course of preparing this book. We assumed that the best way to do that was to call the Sea Org, since Jamie still had some time left to serve on his contract. But when we placed the call, the operator at the scientology switchboard had to transfer us to four different officers before we found one who admitted any knowledge of Jamie. "That's a name we're not supposed to talk about," said the brisk, efficient voice at the other end of the line. "He ran away two years ago. He deceived us, won our confidence, and then he blew. If you succeed in locating him, I hope you'll give us his address." We had no intention of reporting Jamie's whereabouts to the Church of Scientology, and we began our own quiet investigation. [...] Once while I was out there looking for converts [to Nichiren Shoshu], I ran into a scientologist who was busy proselytizing for *his* religion. We had a confrontation. I was trying to get him to come to a chanting session, and he was trying to get me to come to a scientology lecture. He prevailed. I ended up going to the lecture, and it turned out that it appealed to me. It was a much more sophisticated practice than Nichiren Shoshu. So I went directly into scientology, and I gave it three and a half years of my life. Scientology, of course, is ultimately a joke. It is based upon the "enlightened teachings" of L. Ron Hubbard. Its public presentation is very low-key, seemingly reasonable. Who could object to a group that says, "We're for understanding, affinity and communication." It's only when you get to the core of these religions that you find out what they are all about. The scientologists believe that Ron is from outer space. He's come here to save the world. His secret identity is Gautama Buddha. He has researched in detail the full "facts" on the history of man for the last four hundred trillion years. Advanced scientologists, through their application of Hubbard's stuff, gain a full ability to recall their past lives. Ron explains everything. He has an answer for everything. Once you get into it, scientology is very expensive. They charge astronomical prices for little chunks of training. "Spiritual counseling" costs fifty dollars hour and up. The people who are giving this training get paid almost nothing. I was one of them -- a willing, eager slave laborer. But there is no question that Hubbard himself is a millionaire. [...] In scientology, they rope you in. I know, because I was a roper. By trial and error you learn the weaknesses of people's minds. You learn tricks that are very interesting. When a person is weak and uncertain, and he plugs himself into an organization where the higher-ups seem to have answers, he has the feeling that he has now joined the "in crowd." He's now on his way up, and his function is to emulate the guys at the top. The big shots. The advanced beings. Eventually I became part of the Sea Organization, which is the elite of scientology. There were only about two thousand of us throughout the world. We operated rehabilitated mothballed Navy ships. We had a mine sweeper and a subchaser -- Hubbard's private navy in the Pacific. But most of the time we were on dry land, working for scientology. We would work at least twelve hours every day for no pay. We ate substandard food, lived in substandard houses. People slept in basements, attics, porches enclosed with sheets. There was no personal property. It's all for one, one for all. You are a cog in a machine. The upper-degree people in scientology are called O.T.'s -- which stands for Operating Thetans. What happened to me was that after several years I finally got to the point where *I* was one of the advanced people. I would say that I was among the top hundred people in the world. I was set to go right to the top in scientology. I was in the upper reaches of possibility, and I was supposed to have achieved enlightenment. But I realized that I had nothing. I had no answers to anything. I had been *had* in a shell game, and now I was actively engaged in conning other people. There came a day when I woke up and said, "Hey, I'm not a scientologist. This is a joke. What the hell am I doing here?" Normally, if you try to leave they make it very uncomfortable. They go after you and use all sorts of mental arm twisting to intimidate you back into the fold. So I engineered what they call a "blow" to get myself physically out of the organization. With their blessings I got a leave of absence for some kind of super project that I concocted. It was a total phony. When my leave was over, I simply remained out. What I felt at first was tremendous relief. I stayed in Los Angeles for a while, and it was a pleasure just to wake up in the morning and look at the world. To ask my own questions, and formulate my own answers.