Introducing The Scientology Works

by Christine Hall

In 1968 I was a seventeen year old kid still wet behind the years, living near downtown Los Angeles in a seven dollar a week room at The Garland Hotel, a rundown old claptrap that had evidently been associated with the mob during prohibition. I spent my time running up and down 7th Street, mainly visiting the nearby pawnbroker, where I could pawn my portable typewriter when I needed eating money until payday, and the discount store across from MacArthur's Park, where I could find blue jeans for about three bucks a pair. I took my meals at a nearby Greek owned restaurant where meat loaf dinner went for a buck forty.

Not long after moving into the neighborhood, I started hanging-out at the nearby LA Org for The Church of Scientology, after a clean-cut, freshly scrubbed young man gave me an invitation to attend an introductory lecture and take a free personality test. After the lecture, the theme of which seemed to be the mantra "Scientology works," we were herded, one by one, to speak to someone who evaluated our test.

Those who know me now might be surprised to learn that the test indicated there were several areas in my personality that needed improvement. The young woman who evaluated the test's results explained that the best way for me to begin working on my issues was to take their "communication's course." I signed-up, but wasn't allowed to take the course because I was a minor and couldn't get parental consent.

But that's when I began hanging-out at the LA Org.

The workers at the org sort of adopted me and made me feel welcome and comfortable when I would drop by, which was nearly every day. I would pick their brains about the inner workings of Scientology and read everything I could find on the subject. Without taking a single course or receiving any auditing, I was indoctrinated into the world of L. Ron Hubbard's sci-fi version of Shambala.

Science-fiction was the operative word. Hubbard, Scientology's founder and all powerful patriarch, had been a barely successful sci-fi writer for the pulps before he reincarnated as the pseudo high-tech guru of Dianetics and Scientology. In many ways, if someone were to pattern a religion on Star Trek or Star Wars, it would probably turn-out to be something very much like Hubbard's religion. The organization even had their own earth bound version of Star Fleet, Sea Org, whose members had signed a billion year contract, evidently with the intent of fulfilling the terms through successive lifetimes.

Slowly, I came to identify myself as a Scientologist. When I wasn't at my job, taking orders on the speaker phone at Delores' Drive-In, I was at the org volunteering to perform the drudge tasks that nobody had the time to do but which needed to be done, like addressing envelopes for mass mailings.

Every afternoon four or five of the younger staff members and myself would walk over to a small coffee shop on Alvarado Street to watch reruns of Star Trek on a black and white television with rabbit ears. To my Scientologist friends, the tales of the Enterprise weren't a look at a possible future, but a somewhat accurate portrayal of a far distant past, a history of the time before the great galactic war had reduced us to the pitiful beings we've become. They thought they were paving the way for the time when Sea Org would become Space Org and the Starship Hubbard could "boldly go where no man has gone before."

Eventually, I took the night watch job. For the incredible salary of $25 weekly, almost a living wage in those days, I would sit overnight at the receptionist's desk to answer the phones and kept an eye on the place. That gave me time to do a lot of thinking about the enormous amounts of money that people spent to go through the Scientology process. In 1968, it cost something over $2,000 to reach the state of "clear," which was then the end-all and be-all of Scientology processing.

One morning after ending my shift I marched over to the ethics office and spoke with the Ethics Officer, a Scientology cop who had the job of enforcing Ethics Orders, the Scientology version of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I told him that I was quitting my job and ending my association with the organization.

"Scientology's stupid," I told him - or words to that effect. "For what you pay to go clear, you could buy a new car." At seventeen, having a car was about the most important goal in the world.

A few days later I received an envelope in the mail from the local org. Inside was an Ethics Order, stating that I had been declared in the "condition of enemy" and fell under the "fair game act." That meant that any Scientologist could steal from me or otherwise harm me without fearing an ethics reprisal. In other words, I had become a Scientology outlaw.