THE SECRET SCIENTOLOGIST

Roy Kerridge answers

an invitation to the home

of L. Ron Hubbard `MR Andrew Milne would like the plea- sure of the company of Charles Moore for a visit to Saint Hill Manor, home of author and philosopher L. Ron Hubbard.'

Author, philosopher and founder of the Church of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, an American, died two years ago according to his church, though according to more conventional records, he died in 1981. His earthly representative, Andrew Milne, evidently believes in the policy of 'meet- the-press' frankness, just like Mr Gor- bachev of Russia or David Divine of Brent Council. Unfortunately Charles Moore, editor of The Spectator, was unable to go to Saint Hill, and so sent his right-hand man instead.

Clutching Charles Moore's invitation, with its gold-embossed picture of a Palla- dian mansion, I rode to East Grinstead in Sussex along a narrow lost-looking railway line that wandered between steep banks overhung by greenery. A taxi took me the last lap to the gates of the Manor.

`If you're not already with this lot, don't join them!' the taxi driver advised. 'They lose all will of their own once they're here, what with hypnosis and electric shock treatment. What's more, they've got their own school now, full of children, all with the same glassy-eyed look. It's supposed to be a college, this place, but the students don't live here. They're four in a room in Scientology houses in town, all kinds of half-daft young riff-raff; very unpopular here. Every morning an old van goes round honking for them, and they come running out with bits of toast in their mouths.'

However, Andrew Milne, who hurried to greet me, looked most un-riff-raff-like, a slim young Scottish executive with a grey suit and sandy eyebrows. He led me away from the entrance hall, which buzzed with life and rattled with typewriters, and un- locked the door of a curious little Gothic summer house, the Pavilion, half-hidden among rhododendrons. I found myself in a sumptuously furnished coffee room. Soon we were sitting pleasantly at a table, eating scones and jam. Pictures of L. Ron Hub- bard, in naval costume, smiled sternly from the walls. My host questioned me nervous- ly, clearly afraid of yet another press attack on Scientology. Instead of telling me about the beliefs and practices of Scientology, he began to condemn doctors in mental hos- pitals for using ECT, or electric shock treatment, on patients. 'We are very active in the field of human rights for mental patients,' Andrew told me earnestly.

He went on to tell me about his church's efforts to rehabilitate drug addicts. It is a fact that Scientologists are very good at rehabilitating both drug addicts and the mentally ill. For some reason, however, the rehabilitated usually end up as Scien- tologists. Indeed these two classes are the raw material from which the Church of Scientology has been formed. This is why the church grew by leaps and bounds in the late Sixties and early Seventies, the LSD years, and has now entered a period of consolidation. For a short time the Home Office banned Scientologists from entering Britain, perhaps noticing the link between the church and mental illness. If so, the Home Office may have put the cart before the horse. It was the threat of a ban from this country and others that made Scien- tologists decide to be a church. At one time it was touch and go whether they were a religion or a science, and they still teach `the science of Dianetics'.

Somewhat encouraged, but still very nervous, Andrew offered to show me around Saint Hill Manor. The busy offices and claskrooms I had seen on arrival had been part of a new complex, an outwardly attractive reconstruction of Tonbridge Cast- le in Kent. These offiices had been en- larged since my previous visit in the early Seventies. I had not been entirely frank with Andrew Milne. Although he had passed the appropriate Operating Thetan Levels and had become a Clear, all- knowing and able to transcend space and time, Andrew was not aware that most of my Sussex art-school and coffee-bar friends had become involved with Scientol- ogy. I had visited Saint Hill out of curiosity 15 years ago, and had enrolled as a Hubbard Apprentice Scientologist. Saint Hill Manor, then the home of L. Ron, had been out of bounds to beginners and amateur spies such as myself, who were then confined to the office buildings. The house door was still locked, even to Andrew, but eventually a stout girl let us in with the standard greeting, 'Hi!' L. Ron's daughter, who lives in the 18th-century mansion, was abroad. Andrew, the 'Hi'- girl and I had the place to ourselves. A few rooms were offices, but otherwise Saint Hill appeared a rather flashy stately home. Rather pointedly, I was steered away from the staircase.

Chief wonder of Saint Hill, on which I gazed with delight, was the Monkey Room. A vivid mural of monkeys acting the part of 18th-century aristocrats against an idyllic classical landscape met my enrap- tured gaze. To Andrew Milne's admira- tion, I scampered round identifying each species of monkey. Guenons, mangabeys, macaques, New World monkeys and a lemur had been accurately depicted down to the last brindled hair. John Spencer Churchill had been commissioned by Mrs Drexel Biddle, the American owner of the Manor in 1946, to paint the monkeys. A grave South American capuchin monkey, seated at an easel, was said to represent John Spencer's uncle, Winston Churchill. L. Ron, when he took over, called John Spencer back again to restore the enor- mous mural.

By now it had begun to pour with rain, and my host graciously held an umbrella over me as we returned to the Pavilion. Leaving me under an archway, he dashed into a door marked 'Office of Special Affairs', his workplace, and returned with a copy of the Creed of the Church of Scientology. Snug in the Pavilion once more, I perused this document.

`We of the Church believe that the laws of God forbid Man to destroy his own kind, to destroy the sanity of another and to destroy or enslave another soul,' I read.

Following these safeguards, the aims of Scientology were listed.

`We seek no revolution. We seek only evolution to higher states of being for the individual and for society,' was a typical aim. Scientology is the spiritual parent of all the self-perfection movements that be- devil our age, as advertised in the window of your local health-food shop.

`Don't you think the aim of evolving into a Perfect Being is rather a selfish one?' I queried.

`Not at all,' Andrew replied. 'Our gifts can be used to help mankind. But first of all, the individual has to be cleared of all hang-ups acquired in the past, whether in this life or in previous lives. This is done by a counselling process known as Auditing. Auditing is the cornerstone of our beliefs.'

`Yes, but as it's done by means of an E-meter or electric shock machine, can you afford to criticise psychiatrists who give electric shocks?'

`What, half a volt?' he cried passionate- ly. 'That's all an E-meter gives you! I'll show you how safe it is.' On the window- sill, behind the settee on which I had been sitting, a grey E-meter reposed. Andrew switched it on and invited me to try it. I declined, so he seized the two tins himself, one in each hand. These tins, attached to cables, resembled a home-made tele- phone. A dial with a flickering needle stood between the tins.

`As I understand it,' I observed to Andrew, fighting down an impulse to switch on full power and frizzle him, 'I am supposed to shout shocking remarks at you and see which one agitates you and causes the needle to flicker.'

`Yes, but if I pinch myself, the pain will cause the same effect.'

`No, I prefer surprising remarks. What would you think if I told you that I've been here before and know quite a lot about Scientology? Andy Gray, one of your staff, used to be an acquaintance of mine, back in the days when he played in a rock group and attended the University of Surrey.'

At once Mr Milne unplugged himself and telephoned for Andy Gray to appear.

`So you know Andy! Well, well! Er have some more coffee.'

`Thank you. Back in the Seventies, your courses seemed ever so expensive. Each course led on to another, and the whole process cost thousands of pounds.'

`Some people prefer to spend money on cars, others on things that are more worth- while,' he replied with a touch of asperity. `Ah, here's Andy.'

• I sprang to shake the hand of my former companion, who seemed utterly trans- formed from his days as an unshaven rock fan with drug-slurred accent and rheumy eyes. His shock of hair had turned grey, and he wore expensive tweeds. My shock of hair had fallen out, and we goggled at each other over the years. Andy had not exactly been a friend of mine, more a friend of my friends, the man who had converted them all to Scientology. At once we began to gossip about old times and our circle of scholarship boys and girls, the hopes of their families, who had become enmeshed in the world of rock music, LSD and Scientology.

`Yeah, ole So-and-So's a heroin addict now. So's So-and-So, even though I beg- ged her to do the Purification Course while she was here. She's on the game now. Her son worked here for a time, before he got done for housebreaking and finished up in Lewes. That geezer who went to old Tom's Auditing sessions has turned out a violent paedophile. I told him I'd knock his block off if I saw him hanging round the flats after kids again. No, he never used the E-meter, you remembered wrong.'

Andrew Milne looked quite bewildered as I picked up on the news.

`If this is Charles Moore's right-hand man,' he seemed to be thinking, 'then what must Charles Moore himself be like?'

`Remember Lin who used to come up here?' Andy continued. 'Her daughter Lee is grown up now, and works here full time. Come up and meet her.'

Followed by Andrew Milne, we hurried to the modern castle headquarters, where training courses took place. I had a quick look around a hall where hundreds of self-possessed young people, mostly girls, were plugging and unplugging one another into E-meters. They looked American, a hazard of joining an American cult. Andy Gray had his own office (I think he said he was a Dissemination Officer) where I waited while he fetched young Lee. Slim and dynamic, 20-year-old Lee told me that she had just got married to a fellow Scientologist in the banking department. She stared at me in surprise, perhaps remembering the days when I had told her fairy stories.

`I'm sure that the electric treatment I got from Scientologists harmed my brain,' her mother Lin had told me at our last meet- ing. However, I am more inclined to blame her problems on drugs taken before she came in contact with Scientologists.

Andrew Milne's day of surprises was not yet over. 'You're a Scientologist yourself, aren't you, Roy?' Andy Gray blurted out. `I remember you saying you'd done the HAS course.'

`Yes, you'll find on your records that I'm a Hubbard Apprentice Scientologist,' I said.

`Here's your taxi,' Andrew Milne butted in eagerly.

And so, waving aside a waif-like child who was trying to sell me a medal, I rode away into the rain, leaving the two Andrews open-mouthed. Andrew Milne in particular seemed somewhat apprehensive.

He has no need to worry. Why should I denounce Scientology, forlorn relic of the hippy era, when modern cults are crying out for exposure? I refer, of course, to the New Age health industry and its offshoots: courses in self-esteem therapy, life train- ing, positive living, alternative medicine, acupuncture and countless other health therapies. All over the Anglo-Saxon • world, rich young people are taking such courses, eager for self-perfection, self esteem, vegetarian health, and positive immortality. We shall be as gods – selfish gods, that is – as long as we can pay.

Scientology pioneered the process whereby a person who signs up for a self-perfecting course with an immortality organisation becomes a member of that organisation, teaching others and signing them up for more courses. Endless courses in homoeopathic self-perfection are very expensive, paid for by working at the Self- Perfection Homeopathic College.

Long ago, I was told by Scientologists that if I paid them I could get a new personality. I paid up and enrolled at Saint Hill. Having had a good look round, I went away without attending a single lec- ture. Much later I received my certificate through the post, and I am now, apparent- ly, a Hubbard Apprentice Scientologist. Can I interest you in a new lifestyle?