This is from the chapter called "Religion" in Christopher Reeve's book Nothing Is Impossible published in 2002. In it is his experience with Scientology.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the fall of 1975, I was living in my own apartment on the Upper West Side and in rehearsal for A Matter of Gravity, a Broadway-bound play with Katharine Hepburn. I had just turned twenty-two and was rather proud of myself. And why not? I had earned a B.A. from Cornell, been a graduate student at Juilliard, appeared in several off-Broadway productions, and gained notoriety as a likeable bad guy on a daytime TV series. In my spare time I was taking flying lessons and fully enjoying my life as a young bachelor in the Big Apple.
One afternoon on my way to the grocery store, I came across a young man standing next to a sign on a sidewalk that read, FREE PERSONALITY TEST, NO OBLIGATION. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I followed his directions to the sixth floor of the prewar apartment building behind him. The door was unlocked, so I opened it and found myself in the New York headquarters of the Church of Scientology.
The whole place was buzzing with energy and activity. In the main office area about thirty people were working at their desks or gathered in small groups, engaged in quiet but intense conversation. They all appeared to be in their late twenties or early thirties, ethnically diverse, clean-cut, and neat. The men wore shirts and ties and the women were dressed in modest skirts or slacks. In a far corner, six Scientologists sat facing each other in two rowst of three. None of them spoke; everyone stared intently into the eyes of the person opposite. They were clearly not distracted by the ebb and flow of workers in the office behind them. I was amazed by the apparent depth of their concentration, even as I wondered what the purpose of staring at each other was.
A young man much like the one I'd met on the sidewalk, of medium height and build, wearing a crisp white shirt and a conservative pinstriped tie, came forward to greet me. He gave his name, shook my hand warmly, and never broke direct eye contact as he asked how he could help. I told him I was interested in the free personality test, to which he replied, "Of course. One moment, please." He stepped away briefly into the office area and came back with a form for me to fill out. The next thing I knew, I was seated at a desk in the reception area writing down my name, address, phone number, social security number, profession, date of birth, mother's maiden name, and more. In answer to the question "Are you affiliated with any other church?" I wrote "none."
I handed back the completed form and watied while he looked it over and conferred with several of his colleagues in the office. They must have reached a consensus fairly quickly because in just a few moments he came back with another form, which turned out to be the actual personality test. He invited me to return to my seat and respond to all the questions carefully, thoughtfully, and truthfully, taking as much time as I liked. There were no right or wrong answers.
As I looked over the test, I wished it were multiple choice. I wasn't expecting to have to write twenty short essays about myself. I wondered who would grade the paper: Was there an official tester who was solely responsible for evaluating the personality of every passerby who came in the door? I reminded myself that the test was free and there was no obligation, so why not just fill in the blanks, get the results, and make a quick exit.
It turned out not to be quite so easy. I spent forty-five minutes actually trying to do my very best. When I turned the test in to my host, I thought I had submitted quite an objective assessment of myself. What more could I do, especially considering that there were no right or wrong answers?
I had hoped to get the results that afternoon, but I was told that there wasn't enough time for them to review my test before the office closed for the day; I would have to come back tomorrow, but not before eleven a.m. Luckily my call time for rehearsal the next day wasn't until after lunch, so I was free to return. In hindsight, I wish my rehearsal call had been first thing in the morning.
I appeared at the church at the appropriate time, even though I wasn't sure why. Probably it was my competitive nature coming to the forefront once again: I needed to know the score. I thought I had hit a home run, so I probably just wanted to stop by for congratulations. Wrong. The same host greeted me just as warmly as he had the day before. Then I was invited to follow him. He led me down a hall and into a plush, wall-appointed private office; this was obviously the inner sanctum of the headquarters, suitable for the president or CEO of a major corporation.
Before I had much time to take in my surroundings, in came three apparently heavy hitters of the organization. They shook my hand in turn and introduced themselves with the warmth and direct eye contact that I wa now beginning to recognize as a trademark of Scientology. We settled into comfortable chairs and then one of the senior officials (I've forgotten his title), in a perfectly cheerful tone of voice, gave me the bad news. There was no score, no grade, no quantitiative measurement, just their assessment: I was obviously deeply depressed, suffering from low-self esteem, and carrying heavy "baggage" around with me, not only from emotional damage in this incarnation but from previous lives as well. His strong recommendation--echoed by his associates, and my host as well--was that I should begin "training" immediately.
I've always been very vulnerable to criticism, so what was said at that meeting had a strong effect. Maybe my life was all an illusion and I had no true knowledge about myself--or anything else for that matter. I agreed to come back before rehearsal the next day, and to begin studying Scientology with an open mind.
The basic principles of the religion, described in the works of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, struck me as logical and highly motivating. An engineer by trade, Hubbard viewed the human mind as a complex but manageable computer. Every thought, every emotion, every experience is stored in the memory banks of the computer within us. What stops us from experiencing joy and achieving success is that we are not “Clear” : all the negativity–self-hatred, anger, jealousy, pessimism, feelings of inadequacy, and the like–that remains in the computer brings us down. Unless that negativity is “blown away” we are “stuck,” condemned to repeating the same mistakes, falling into counterproductive patterns of behavior and unable to find fulfillment.
No one at the church was willing to estimate how long it would take for me to “go Clear,” but they implied that it would require quite some time. The first step was joining a group like the one I'd seen when I first entered the headquarters, staring intently into the eyes of another recruit sitting opposite me. The objective was to empty our minds of extraneous thoughts (“clutter') and focus all our attention on the other person. As we became completky absorbed in this exercise, known as “TR-0” (Training Routine Zero), we were to lose awareness of ourselves. Whenever our own clutter tried to come back in, we were not to be “upset” ; we were to acknowledge its return and then command it to go away. At first this was nearly impossible. My head was filled with nothing but clutter, unwanted thoughts about myself, and judgmental thoughts about my partner. Gradually I learned–much like someone studying Transcendental Meditation–to empty my mind. Then I was able to share the same space with another person, not doing anything, just existing. I have to admit that was quite a high. I left those early sessions, which sometimes laster over an hour, feeling both relaxed and energized.
The TR-0 experience was relatively inexpensive, costing perhaps a few hundred dollars. But the next step was “auditing,” which was outrageously expensive and would have to continue for an unspecified length of time. The church required a deposit of $3,000 in advance of one-on-one meetings with an “auditor,” which cost $100 an hour. (In 1975, even the best psychoanalysts charged about half that in private practice.)
Having been convinced that I needed auditing, I put down my deposit and began meeting with my assigned auditor twice a week. She turned out to be a very attractive brunette about my age who had recently come to New York from somewhere in the Midwest. She had gone Clear and become a certified auditor in her home state, arriving not only with these credentials but the bright-eyed enthusiasm of a hostess at Disneyland.
We worked together seated on opposite sides of a wide mahogany desk. In front of her was an “E-Meter,” a simiple box with a window that contained a fluctuating needle and a card with numbers form one to ten. Two wires running out of the box and across the desk were attached to tin cans that I was asked to hold, one in each hand. As my auditor asked questions my responses would translate into electrical impulses that flowed through the cans and the wires, causing the needle to move. The E-Meter was basically a crude lie detector. Questions touching issues that needed to be “blown away” would peg the needle at ten; anything innocuous hardly registered. I remember feeling a little foolish, but I had already invested a huge amount of money so I had to give it a chance.
One of the reasons that auditing was such a long and expensive process for most people in training was that we had to recall the use of almost every kind of drug. Not just illegal substances, but painkillers, antiobiotics, routine vaccinations such as flu shots--anything and everything stronger than aspirin. Hubbard believed that a student could not go Clear without completely deleting drugs from the mind's computer. Obviously it's crucial for anyone to kick a drug habit, but why would he object to penicillin or a vaccination against measles? (Fortunately there was not list of forbiggen foods, and we didn't have to remember every cigarette or sip of beer.)
My drug rundown used up four or five sessions, and then it was on to past lives. I was asked to go back as far as I could to try to remember my earliest incarnation. We all began as souls, or “Thetans,” floating somewhere in space, until we entered a body at some time in history. Sitting across from my auditor and holding the tin cans lightly (I had learned that gripping them too hard caused sweaty palms and false readings on the E-Meter), I searched the back rooms of my mind. Nothing there. Several minutes of agonizing silence went by as my auditor waited patiently.
Then my growing skepticism about Scientology and my training as an actor took over. With my eyes closed, I gradually began to remember details from a devastating past life experience that had happened in ancient Greece. I was the commander of a warship returning victoriously to Athens after a battle in Crete. My father was the king and I was his only son, the sole heir to the throne. Many months before, when my fleet cast off from the port city of Piraeus, he had embraced me and made me promise one thing: on our return we would set white sails for victory, and black sails in memoriam if I had been defeated or lost at sea.
After our glorious triumph we departed the coast of Crete at night, carrying our black sails to slip away unnoticed. As a fair wind pushed us quickly homeward, on board the celebrations began. There was wine, music, dancing, and tributes to the gods. I allowed the men to eat freely; there was no more need for rationing because we would soon be home.
On the morning of the third day we could make out the shores of Greece and the city of Piraeus in the distance. Lookouts on a promontory saw our ships; messengers were sent to fetch the king. He arrived with great fanfare within the hour, hastened to the best vantage point, and eagerly searched the horizon. By now the ships were in plain view, but the sight of them was devasting ot the king: they were fast approaching Piraeus, but all were flying black sails. Carried away by the joyous celebration of victory on the voyage home, I had neglected to give the order to change them. The king, my beloved father, in despair over the loss of his son, threw himself off the promontory into the sea and died instantly.
The auditors are trained to listen to the studens without emotion; their job is to write down what is said and record the indications of the needle on the E-Meter. But I could tell that my auditor was deeply moved by my story and trying hard to maintain her professional demeanor. I sensed that was was making a profound connection between the guilt over the death of my father when I was a Greek warrior in a past life and my relationship with my father in the present.
And that was the end of my training as a Scientologist. My story was actually a slightly modified account of an ancient Greek myth: Theseus' return to his homeland after slaying the Minotaur in Crete. According to legend, his father, King Aegeus, was in fact so distraught by the sight of the black sails that he plunged to his death in the waters known ever after as the Aegean Sea. I didn't expect my auditor to be familiar with Greek mythology; I was simply relying on her ability, assisted by the E-Meter, to discern the truth. The fact that I got away with a blatant fabrication completely devalued my belief in the process.
Of course that was 1975, and my case may have been an exception to the rule. Many well-known and highly respected people credit Scientology for success in their careers, in relationships, and especially in their family lives. I fully support whatever belief systems make us better human beings. My problem has always been with religiouis dogma intended to manipulate behavior, and a claim by any religion that theirs is the One True Way.
The end of my encounter with Scientology marked the beginning of an ongoing search for the meaning of spirituality in my life. It would take many years, many well-intentioned but misguided detours, and ultimately a near-fatal accident for me to find the answer.
###
