Where's the Science in Scientology?
Carl Kozlowski
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For nearly 20 years, Tom Cruise has been Hollywood's Golden Boy. The star of Top Gun, Risky Business and, most recently, The War of the Worlds, Cruise has attributed his vast success to being a follower of Scientology, a self-help movement-turned-religion which claims the ability to "clear" its followers from all their problems. It seemed like the perfect match: the man with the perfect smile advocating for a group that offers perfection.

But in May, Cruise seemingly went, well, a little crazy. He suddenly announced his engagement to Katie Holmes, an actress whom no one had ever seen him with before late April. He leapt on Oprah's couch like a 5-year-old on a sugar kick. And just when you thought Tom could use a good dose of Ritalin, he was embarrassing himself on the Today Show by arguing that he knew more about psychiatry and its alleged evils than his interviewer, Matt Lauer. 

Suddenly, people were wondering what was wrong with Mr. Perfect. And his attempts to pump up his church amidst all the publicity provoked widespread media coverage of Scientology that is reopening a 50-year history of claims alleging overarching greed, fraud, judicial chicanery, near-terroristic threatening of the church's critics, and the fact that the heart of the church's beliefs center around the claim that every human's stresses are, in reality, the souls of aliens attaching themselves to their bodies.

Throw in claims of mysterious deaths, an affidavit claiming that the church attempts to coerce abortions from its staff members, and a host of Web sites exposing some of Scientology's dirtier little secrets, and suddenly the perfect church doesn't seem all that perfect.

The endless loop
In Pasadena in the late 1940s, eventual Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard -- then a middling science-fiction author -- fell into the warped social circle of famed JPL rocket engineer Jack Parsons, who proudly considered himself to be the Antichrist and frequently conducted orgies and other debauched events amid the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods. According to the book, Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons, by John Carter and Robert Anton Wilson, both Hubbard and Parsons shared a fascination with occultism and infamous black magic practitioner Aleister Crowley.

"While there's quite a bit of indications that he was involved in Parsons' magic movement, Scientology claims that Hubbard was really an opposing undercover agent trying to expose them," said Timothy Miller, a professor of religious studies at the University of Kansas who specializes in "new religious movements."

"Hubbard met lots of people everywhere he went," countered Chel Stith, a 34-year member and President of the Los Angeles Church of Scientology. "But if you look at everything Hubbard devoted his life and writings to, helping elevate mankind to their best nature, it doesn't match in any way with the idea of living a life filled with random sex and drugs."

Miller points out that Scientology has been riddled with inconsistencies, mixing positive and negative qualities, since its very founding in 1950. Hubbard created the church as a self-help movement after publishing a "modern guide to mental health" called Dianetics.

For instance, Scientology has proven to be one of the most litigious groups in America, barraging their critics and opponents with countless lawsuits and often outspending their way to victory. Miller, along with many other authorities on the church and ex-members, also takes issue with church leaders' membership figures, in which they estimate eight million members in more than 150 nations. (Stith claims an L.A. County membership of 40,000.)

Scientology consists of an extensive series of highly invasive personal tests called "audits" and classes that a member must take to climb the church's "Bridge," a series of levels that offer members greater and greater insights into their allegedly "true" nature and a clearing of all the issues that vex their mental and emotional lives. 

The problem is that the big final lesson is basically a riddle: now that you know what you are not, begin to find out what you are. Basically, the church offers a never-ending trip into the subconscious, only one that's far less enjoyable than dropping out of college and following the Grateful Dead.

And most members never even get to that official final level of OT VIII (Operating Thetan at the eighth level) -- the biggest reward, at which they're also told they have the power to control time and space, is creating universes and never getting sick again. So the level everyone really strives for is OT III, where the first lessons about aliens and immortality come in.

"They have beliefs in reincarnation and past lives," explained Miller. "And they believe that they are basically immortal, because the more dedicated members in an elite level called Sea Org sign billion-year contracts to work for the church. Imagine making it to the highest level and learning that it's basically an endless loop of lessons and auditing that you'll never really get out of."

Along the way, members learn that their lifelong beef with their dad or their bad luck at finding well-paying employment doesn't just stem from internal hurdles. Nope, those forces that are holding them back are really "thetans," alien spirits that have been clinging to human bodies by the thousands ever since an evil intergalactic alien overlord named Xenu tried to imprison them on earth 75 million years ago.

By the time a member gets to hear these "truths" and feel stupid about them (many are rumored to endure psychological breakdowns upon realizing their years in the group have been all for naught), they've already typically been sucked in financially to the tune of $30,000 to $500,000, are considered by many critics to be brainwashed and likely have been "disconnected" from the lesser beings known as their families.

Not surprisingly, Stith takes issue with many of these claims as well.

"We have brochures when you tour our facilities that make the costs clear, and we charge from nominal amounts like $65 to higher-level amounts like $2,000 depending on whether you want to keep learning more, but the more expensive ones are four-month courses," said Stith. "We don't ask people to tithe 10 percent of their incomes, as in Christianity. And you can take or leave any aspect of our church at any time if it doesn't work for you."

"What inspired me to join was I was looking for answers and solutions. I read Dianetics and thought it was a solution for helping other people," said Tory Christman, a former member who spent 31 years in Scientology between 1969 and 2000. "But I got near the top and realized it was a scam. I was OT VII for seven years and they wound up saying we weren't trained right and needed to retrain from scratch. A bunch of us finally went, 'forget it.'"

Christman offered a sarcastic, no-nonsense assessment of Scientology and what she flat out terms its "evil" qualities. Christman's duties within Scientology had consisted of working for the Office of Special Affairs, a notorious "security"-oriented faction within Scientology that critics claim is responsible for the church's frequent stream of lawsuits targeting their enemies, and even more unsavory tricks such as character defamation designed to scare opponents into submission under what is known as "Fair Game" tactics.

"I don't think any of us say you should or should not have beliefs, but I speak out because of Fair Game, where you can lie, cheat and attack those who differ with you," explained Christman. "I was in charge of setting up phony accounts on the Internet that were designed to shut down free speech by blocking out opponents' sites or trick-routing people to pro-Scientology sites when they were looking for opposing information."