William S. Burroughs
Ali's Smile
Naked Scientology
Expanded Media Editions
Copyright 1972, 1973 und 1978 by William S. Burroughs
Translation and edition: Carl Weissner
Coverdesign: Walter Hartmann
Printed by MaroCruck, Augsburg
2. Auflage 1985
Expanded Media Editions
Postfach 190 136
5300 Bonn 1
ISBN 3-88030-011-9
Scanning and proofreading: Martin Hunt
Proofreading and HTMLization: Cornelius Krasel
CONTENTS
Burroughs on Scientology
(L.A. FREE PRESS, 6.3.1970)
William Burroughs:
Open Letter to Mr. Garden Mustain
(EAST VILLAGE OTHER, 7.7.1970)
William Burroughs on
"Inside Scientology" by Robert Kaufman
(ROLLING STONE, 9.11.1972)
R. Sorrell (Church of Scientology):
Letter to ROLLING STONE, 5.12.1972
William Burroughs:
Answer to R. Sorrell's Letter
William Burroughs:
Ali's Smile
Naked Scientology
An expose of this weird cult
BURROUGHS ON SCIENTOLOGY
Los Angeles Free Press March 6, 1970
In view of the fact that my articles and statements on Scientology may have influenced young people to associate themselves with the so called Church of Scientology, I feel an obligation to make my present views on the subject quite clear.
Some of the techniques are highly valuable and warrant further study and experimentation. The E
Meter is a useful device... (many variations of this instrument are possible). On the other hand I am in flat disagreement with the organizational policy. No body of knowledge needs an organizational policy. Organizational policy can only impede the advancement of knowledge. There is a basic incompatibility between any organization and freedom of thought. Suppose Newton had founded a Church of Newtonian Physics and refused to show his formula to anyone who doubted the tenets of Newtonian Physics? All organizations create organizational necessities. It is precisely organizational necessities that have prevented Scientology from obtaining the serious consideration merited by the importance of Mr. Hubbard's discoveries. Scientologists are not prepared to accept intelligent and sometimes critical evaluation. They demand unquestioning acceptance.
Mr. Hubbard's overtly fascist utterances (China is the real threat to world peace, Scientology is protecting the home, the church, the family, decent morals...positively no wife swapping. It's a dirty Communist trick...national boundaries, the concepts of RIGHT and WRONG against evil free thinking psychiatrist) can hardly recommend him to the militant students. Certainly it is time for the Scientologists to come out in plain English on one side or the other, if they expect the trust and support of young people. Which side are you on Hubbard, which side are you on?
This statement which appears in my forthcoming book The Job needs considerable amplification. I quote from Freedom Scientology number 11... (no date) PSYCHIATRY No. 1 -- beliefs and aims.
Psychiatry: n. a medical specialty dealing with the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care of mental Illness and defect and, by extension, of many personal problems of personal adjustment.
Historically, psychiatry grew up within the framework of medicine and dealt with the medical care of the mentally ill. As the Science and art developed, much of its treatment was not specifically medical, and many of those treated were not (in, any ordinary sense of the word) ill, either somatically or mentally. The practice of psychiatry is thus often indistinguishable from that of other specialties that deal with problems of psychological adjustment. The term medical psychology Is fairly descriptive of the practice of psychiatry but not of the curriculum for training in that field, which seldom includes any background in psychology of normal people - adj. psychiatric.
'Mental Health' began promoting and organizing itself after the Second World War. Various mental health groups, societies and committees were set up throughout the world, and pronouncements made as to the future of civilization.
Dr. Brock Chisholm was at that time a prime mover in these organizations. His own pronouncements are of interest - even if they sound unbelievable.
1945 - 'Let us accept our own responsibility to remodel the world' and the remodelling plan is basically very simple. The way to prevent future wars is world government - established by developing world citizens with a 'state of emotional maturity' achieved, as Chisholm put it, by 'the re-interpretation and eventual eradication of the concept of right and wrong which has been the basis of child training...'
Chisholm knew this couldn't be done overnight. People tend to cling to their old 'prejudices about national patriotism, individualism, loyalty to family and friends and their devotion to 'narrow'
religious dogmas. 'There is something to be said for...gently putting aside the mistaken old ways of our elders...If it cannot be done gently, it may have to be done roughly or even violently.'
'We have swallowed all manner of poisonous certainties fed us by our parents, our Sunday and day school teachers...'
'If the race is to be freed from its crippling burden of good and evil it must be the psychiatrists who take the original responsibility.'
'We should begin to teach psychology in the first year in school, at about 5 or 6 years of age, before their ability to think has been entirely spoiled.'
'...to root out and destroy the oldest and most flourishing parasitical growth in the world, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.'
Ten years later Dr. Chisholm was still talking... 'A man who fathers six children is an indifferent fellow who has ignored his responsibilities as a citizen of the world. There is nothing admirable in competing with rabbits...'
These are the views of one of the world leaders in the weird cult of psychiatry. Chisholm is not alone - read Julian Huxley's views on God. 'The advance of natural science...has brought us to a stage at which God is no longer a useful hypothesis. A faint trace of a cosmic Cheshire cat. But the growth of...knowledge will rub even that from the universe - I do not believe in the existence of a god or gods.'
These are not just isolated views. The Kinsey report reached a conclusion on homosexual molesters of children that such molesting may have contributed favourably to later socio-sexual development, and further states that pre-marital sex relations of women help females to adjust emotionally to various types of males - and in hospitals, psychiatric courses have included these teachings:
'Pre-marital and extra-marital relations may be quite useful in establishing good 'mental hygiene', and that masturbation is all right in adolescents, but is 'wrongfully' frowned on in later life.'
The psychiatrist does not stop there. There is one other piece de resistance tucked away that he has been trying to get introduced for years. It is the 'Alaska Mental Health Bill.' It is the most authoritative, undemocratic suggestion to appear so far from the cult of psychiatry. This is what it sets out to do.
A large area in Alaska should be set aside for the 'treatment' of 'mental' prisoners from other states in the U.S.A. Commitment of 'patients' may be upon 'written application of an interested party', or may be by 'any health, welfare or police officer...' Proceeding for commitment may be held in private without event the 'prisoner' being notified of such hearings, RULES OF EVIDENCE DO NOT APPLY
AT SUCH HEARINGS.
This means that you could be lying in bed at night, be awoken by the 'authorities' and be sent straight to Alaska, whether you object or not. Your 'case' has already been heard, without your knowing anything about it, and a decision taken that Alaska is the place for you. And what works in the U.S.A. will work in other countries.
It is a matter of historical record that Scientology Organizations have fought this Bill in every country since it was first announced. They will continue to do so, because the freedom of human rights for each and every individual is at stake. There are already several cases of people who have
'disappeared' because of political controversy - and they can be removed because of their so called
'irrational' behavior, or their sanity discredited or being 'mentally unbalanced.' Doctor H.A. Overstreet has listed the new style 'symptoms' of mental illness in his book 'The Great Enterprise - Relating Ourselves to Our World.' He writes:
'A man...may be angrily against racial equality, public housing, financial and technical aid to backward countries, organized labor and the preaching of social rather than salvational religion...
such people may appear 'normal' in the sense that they are able to hold a job and otherwise maintain their status as members of society: but they are, we now recognize, well along the road toward mental illness.'
There we have it. Modern 'psychiatry' and 'mental health', as promoted by the Chisholms, the Overstreets and the Huxleys is completely anti-Christ and subversive. No wonder ex-Detective Superintendent Fabian of the Yard has described it as 'the biggest hoax of the century.' Summing up the views of this cult, as expressed by its own leaders, it can be clearly seen -
•
Psychiatry denies God.
•
Psychiatry ridicules the Bible and its teachings.
•
Psychiatry advocates promiscuous sexual behavior and perversion.
•
Psychiatry attracts national sovereignty and personal loyalties.
•
Psychiatry wants to commit 'patients' without a fair hearing.
There are, however, many sincere, dedicated and public-spirited people who work for 'mental health' on the public level, and are not aware of the weird cult they are actually involved with. That is why this series will appear - responsibility is being accepted for publicizing the facts.
(Next edition: Psychiatry No. 2 Murder by 'Treatment.') Note: Not all psychiatrists are bad. Many would like to reform the practices inflicted by the few on the many. We shall publish their views.
Now what is all this flap about psychiatrists? At worst psychiatrists are the defenders of the establishment 'adjusting' or coercing 'deviants' back into socially accepted norms. At best they urge a more liberal and humane approach to human problems and may even clash with the establishment. The Mental Health psychiatrists for example put a block into Nixon's stiffer drug laws. Doctor Chisholm seems to me to be making very good sense. The concept of national boundaries, of NATIONS is of course the war formula. Dogmatic RIGHT and WRONG is the tool of psychological enslavement used by all establishments. I did not know that Julian Huxley had taken up the study of medicine and obtained a licence to practice psychiatry. When I last visited his home he was a 19th Century Darwinian biologist and not at all subversive. I am quite sure the Special Branch does not keep a man on him. Kinsey, when I knew him, was a statistical psychologist with no pretensions to psychiatric qualifications. 'A man may be angrily against racial equality, financial and technical aid to backward countries, organized labor ETC.' Translate: 'A man can be a decent church going cop loving creep doesn't want any Niggers in his union...Why are we giving away good American dollars to a lot of immoral foreigners?.. As for Hippies, dope freaks and long hairs I say shoot them so who cares? Well a decent-Wallace folk like that could suddenly be kidnapped off to Alaska brain washed castrated by international Communistic psychiatrists.'
"Most of them psychiatrist fellers is Jews ain't they Clem?"
"Sure are. The Jews don't believe in Christ, Luke. I read about it in my Masonic home work."
All this is uneasily reminiscent of the Protocols of Zion and the Volkisher Beobachter. (The Protocols of Zion is an anti-Semitic forgery first published in St. Petersburg in 1903. In 1921 the Protocols were established as a forgery. The Nazis insisted that the Protocols were genuine and produced this document in support of their anti-Semitic measures. Anti-Semitic propaganda poured out of the Der Stormer and Der Volkishes Beobachter daily cartoons of hideous Jews raping Christian girls and eating Christian babies as they plot world conquest. The Protocols outline the following steps in the master plan...Fomenting world wide subversion and undermining authority by fostering liberal ideas, breaking down the family by encouraging every sort of license, permissiveness and immorality, undermining and discrediting religion. Gentiles are to be encouraged to be atheists. Gentiles are to be encouraged to be atheists.) We can read and appreciate Ezra Pound's poetry without sharing his political views. Can we make a similar distinction between Mr. Hubbard's publicly expressed opinions and the technology and practice of Scientology? No, we cannot.
A separation between Mr. Hubbard's work and his opinions is ruled out by Mr. Hubbard's grandiose claims...'Galaxy upon galaxy billions of light years away have no bridge no route to freedom...
Scientology is the one and only road to total freedom and total power...Scientology has the answers to all the problems of the universe including the method of solution'...When the Founder, Controller and Guardian of the 'road to total freedom' starts spouting John Birch talk, his road is called in question and we have every right to ask precisely what his 'method of solution' is. If Mr. Hubbard were content to be a technician who has made some important discoveries we could afford to ignore his personal opinions. When he sets himself up as the savior of all possible universes we cannot. The shoddy presentation, the reactionary opinions, the preposterous claims, the atrocious writing are so immediately repellent that few intelligent people can be persuaded that Scientology is worth a second glance. And should anyone wish to make an objective evaluation, he would find it difficult to do so owing to the structure of the Scientology Organization. To begin with, the techniques actually in use are not described in Mr. Hubbard's books. To learn these techniques one must take courses at a Scientology Center. And one does not simply pay the tuition, obtain the materials and study. Oh no. One must JOIN. One must 'sign up for the duration of the universe'...(Sea Org members are required to sign a billion year contract)...The advanced courses are not only unpublished but 'confidential', and any student revealing this material is subject to expulsion and exclusion from further training. These materials can only be obtained by undergoing the training and the conditions for training laid down by Mr. Hubbard. In order to gain access to the materials of the Clearing Course, I had to undergo a series of Security Checks (at my own expense of course) carried out on a lie detector...('Do you have any doubts about Scientology? Do you have any unkind thoughts about L. Ron Hubbard? Do you know any Communists personally? - No one asked whether I knew any CIA men personally - Are you connected to a Suppressive Person?...A Suppressive Person is anyone in disagreement with Scientology...Are you here for any other reason than what you say you are? Do you consider these security measures unnecessary? ETC.
for twenty three hours)...You have to swear and believe on some level that the organizational policy is correct and that the materials are as Mr. Hubbard says they are before you can see them. It's like a physicist saying 'you can't see my formula unless you first agree that they are correct sight unseen.' The practice of Security Checks has been discontinued. However, anyone expressing doubts about Scientology would find himself excluded from the advanced courses. And the practice of assigning 'Conditions' is still in effect. These conditions, 'Non-existence', 'Liability', 'Treason',
'Doubt', are assigned for misdemeanors and crimes against Scientology. A student assigned to an advanced condition must wear a dirty grey rag around his arm, may not bathe, shave or change his clothes, must remain on the premises, must perform manual work, deliver a 'paralyzing blow to the enemy', admit his errors and petition every member of the center for forgiveness. Does Mr. Hubbard seriously expect mature scientists, artists, and professional men who have distinguished themselves in their respective fields to submit to this prep school nonsense?
Furthermore, whole categories of people are automatically excluded from training and processing and may never see Mr. Hubbard's confidential materials: Suppressive Persons, that is anyone who has ever publicly attacked Scientology together with all their families and connections. Anyone
'sitting in judgment on Scientology.' Anyone who has come to find out 'if Scientology works.' No one who has used cannabis within the last six weeks or LSD within the last 3 months may be processed. Such are the unique difficulties encountered by anyone who wishes to inform himself on the subject of Scientology.
As to my personal evaluation, after six months of study: I would not be writing this article unless I was convinced that Scientology is worth serious consideration. I feel that I have benefited greatly from Scientology processing. In an earlier article in Mayfair I said that Scientology can do more in ten hours than psychoanalysis can do in ten years. For what this is worth I still think so. Scientology is incomparably more precise and efficient than any method of psychotherapy now in use. But unfortunately, Scientology has duplicated some of the basic errors of conventional psychotherapy.
Any aberration that effects the human mind must have a three dimensional coordinate point in the human nervous system. Otherwise it could not producer an effect anymore than a television or radio broadcast could be seen or heard without a receiving set. When Western psychiatrists turned away from Pavlov's lead and postulated Super Egos, Ids and Complexes without locating these entities in the human nervous system they foundered in mystical abstractions. And where, for that matter, is Mr. Hubbard's Reactive Mind? (When I suggested that the Reactive Mind must be located in the hypothalamus my suggestion fell on unresponsive ears. Mr. Hubbard is not interested in suggestions. He states flatly that he has never known any suggestion from a student to contain the slightest value.)
The Reactive Mind, as set forth by Mr. Hubbard in the Clearing Course, is a model control instrument well worth the attention of anyone who is looking for inner freedom. Familiarity with this artifact gives one a considerable emancipation from crippling automatic reactions. Mr. Hubbard places the Reactive Mind in unimaginable antiquity, thus making any examination of its origin impossible. In view of a dim rusty label 'Made in USA September 17, 1889,' I cannot go along with this. My guess is that this control artifact was set up around the turn of the century. That is was largely the work of one man. That its purpose was and is to keep people enslaved on this planet, to block the exploration of space and to ensure a parasitic ersatz immortality for the founder andhis confederates. As long as anyone reacts to the Reactive Mind, HE is there. I have, in fact, an identical picture of this man. He was neither very famous nor completely obscure. He was neither very rich nor poor. He was probably a mathematician, perhaps a composer of music, almost certainly a Mayan scholar. The tip off came from the Mayan codices. To summarize my personal impression: I feel that Scientology has scratched some surfaces and turned up some leads. Experimentation and research carried out by workers in the fields of electronics, virology, cybernetics, biology, and operant conditioning could result in revolutionary advances.
Mr. Hubbard says that the mere sight of his confidential materials would make any WOG - (His revealing term to designate those unversed in Scientology) - violently sick. I can claim some experience and skill in the scrivener's trade, but I could not undertake to write a few words guaranteed to make any appreciable number of readers physically sick. So, if this claim is justified, it is certainly a matter for investigation. I am sure that volunteers in abundance would step forward.
Who would pass up an opportunity to read such potent prose? A head ache or a cold or the loss of the last supper is a small price to pay. This is not a frivolous suggestion. If words can make people vomit how are these particular words effecting the vomiting centers in the hypothalamus? Or is this claim put forward to give his followers a feeling of importance and to justify rather substantial fees?
Only an actual test can give us the answer.
If the Scientologists persist in a self-imposed isolation and in withholding their materials from those best qualified to evaluate and use them, they may well find themselves bypassed. Mr.
Hubbard says he wants recognition for his discoveries. Well, let him then show his confidential materials free of charge and without any restrictions to qualified workers in other fields. He says he has the road to freedom. Others have been a long time on that road. At the Edinburgh Writer's Conference in 1952 Alex Troochi coined the phrase 'astronauts of inner space.' Let him show his confidential materials to the astronauts of inner space: Alex Troochi, Brion Ysin, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, to anthropologists like Castaneda and shamans like Don Juan. Let him show his material to mathematicians, computer programmers, biologists and virologists, to students of language like Marshall McLuhan and Noam Chomsky. Let him show his material to those who have fought for freedom in the streets, Eldridge Cleaver, Stokely Carmichael, Abbie Hoffman, Dick Gregory, to the veterans of Chicago and Paris and Mexico City.
Above all, young people nave a right to see his materials. So let him set up a center and give his processing and materials free of charge and without restrictions of any kind to anyone under the age of 35. If he has what he says he has, the results should be cataclysmic. And the mass application of other techniques now available should produce even more interesting results. In my forthcoming book, The Job, I describe the experiments of doctor Neal E. Miller who has taught rats to lower blood pressure, reduce rate of heart beats, control digestion and breathing and brain waves. He has taught rats in one hour to do what yogis take 20 years to learn. Anything a rat can do you can do better, as subsequent experiments with human subjects have demonstrated.
Quote from TIME, July 18, 1969, page 59...'Through the cerebrospinal nervous system, the mind is able to dominate much of the body, how a man walks, talks, etc. But the body's glandular and visceral processes, run by what the scientists call the automatic nervous system, have long been considered beyond the reach of conscious control. Now though, experimental psychologists have proved that the body's automatic nervous system can be taught.
The results of such experiments tend to support the theory of mind over matter so long ridiculed by modern science. "People are reexamining old concepts like mind/body dualism" says Dr. Bernard Engel of the National Institute of Child Health in Baltimore. Engel's work in "automatic shaping" has enabled him to alter heart rates, and rhythms to alleviate irregular heart beats and high blood pressure. Other researchers have proved that man can learn to control even such functions as sweating, blood pressure, intestinal contractions and brain waves.
The vistas are staggering. Dr. Joe Kamiya of the Langley Porter Neurological Institute in San Francisco, who has experimented with conscious regulation of brain waves, looks forward to the day when men will have "an internal vocabulary, a language he can use to explain more effectively and completely how he feels inside. In time we should be able to talk fluently about feelings such as brain wave production, blood pressure and so on."
In one test eight of ten subjects were able to control the tone, emitting or suppressing brain waves as requested. Dr. Peter Lang has applied automatic learning to control the human heart rate.
Thesubject becomes able, as Lang puts it, "to drive his own heart."
"Man may be able to control his internal processes, to relieve insomnia, regulate digestion and improve sexual response."
But, warns Dr. Neal Miller of the Rockefeller Institute..."The question now is whether automatic learning can be effective enough. We don't know yet."
Well, why not find out? Let's condition people on an assembly line to control brain waves and bodily processes. This could lead to complete mood control. Any trip you want without drugs. Both psychiatric and Scientology processing are based on the assumption that a conflict brought into conscious focus loses power. Undoubtedly it does lose power temporarily. This method is rather like mending an interminable fence that keeps falling down behind you. So, instead of directing attention to the brain waves that accompany conflict, why not direct attention towards the brain waves that accompany calm and relaxation? Millions of people emitting alpha brain waves could cool the whole scene. Instead of going where the trouble is, why not go where the trouble isn't? It is time to get down to the bio electronics of the actual brain mechanism and tune conflict out.
In his book, The Teachings of Don Juan, Castaneda described hallucinogenic drugs of devastating potency, drugs unknown to modern science. These drugs should be investigated and made available.
Unimaginable extensions of awareness are now possible in terms of existing techniques. Let's set up a center where all these techniques are pooled and interchanged. Let's explore and chart inner space. Your inner space belongs to you. It is time to demand what is yours and to challenge anyone who claims to have knowledge of inner space to come out and show what he has.
This brain wave control is not property. Alpha waves are the waves of sleep and dream, a relaxed calm state of mind. So we hold Alpha Festivals where 400,000 brains get together and emit alpha waves. Many other brain waves can be isolated and subjects trained to emit them. Any kind of wave you want. Find a wave you like and emit it. Epileptic fit waves if your thing is fits. And the ever popular sex waves. Emit pot waves and put the narcs out of business.
The Woodstock Festival portends a new mass consciousness. This consciousness with the mass emission of brain waves can produce far reaching effects. Everywhere people pool their funds and buy an encephalographic unit. Tinkers make their own. Whole cities are dreamy and somnolent with alpha waves. Sex wave orgies sweep the world. You can feel the aura of an epilepsy fit for miles; horses paw the ground, and dogs howl. There are pop festivals to rock and roll brain waves.
Peace, love, and beauty waves engulf the cops. They are throwing away their guns. A blizzard of sugary benevolence about to blow. The president calls for a nationwide alpha day. The ESP waves have been isolated. Mass telepathy breaks out. Any waves you like.
THE EAST VILLAGE OTHER
Vol. 5, No. 31 - July 7,1970
INTRODUCTION:
Three months ago, William Burroughs (noted author of NAKED LUNCH, THE TICKET THAT
EXPLODED and his recent THE JOB) started a controversy going by publishing an attack on the psychiatry profession and related fields such as Scientology.
The fire raged from the pages of Rat to The L.A. FREE PRESS. The EAST VILLAGE OTHER is proud to publish a third in a series of attacks on the birchite mentality which rules the American medical profession.
It is Mr. Burroughs' contention that what is wrong with America's political system is directly reflected in the mental priests who regulate and adjust the mental illness of millions of Americans back into a system which is already crawling with enough disease.
This article is Mr. Burroughs' final answer to his critics and to Mister Gorden Mustain who attacked him for his position on Scientology in the pages of the L.A. FREE PRESS. In it he asks the inevitable question to be faced by us all, whether we be in a professional status or not:
"We would like to know where Scientology and Mr. Hubbard stand on the Vietnam war, on sexual freedom, militant students, Black Power, pot, Red China, the politics of the American Narcotics department and the CIA. If it comes to a revolution: which side would you fight on?"
OPEN LETTER TO MISTER GORDEN MUSTAIN
First I would like to remind Mr. Mustain that we are not yet on a first name basis and will he kindly refrain from addressing me as Bill while quoting axioms of stupidity with regard to my article...
Mr. Mustain goes on to quote this stupidity axiom as applicable when I attribute to Mr. Hubbard political opinions which appear in FREEDOM SCIENTOLOGY...Mr. Hubbard founded Scientology.
Mr. Hubbard made Scientology. Mr. Hubbard coined the word Scientology. I'd have a job squirming out from under something called THE BURROUGHS INSTITUTE...
Certainly Mr. Mustain will admit that Mr. Hubbard's prestige in the Scientology Organization is considerable? Is it then an axiom of stupidity to attribute to Mr. Hubbard at least tacit approval of what was being said in FREEDOM SCIENTOLOGY? Would Mr. Mustain have us believe that these articles and cartoons would have continued in issue after issue over the vigorous protests of Mr.
Hubbard? That Mr. Hubbard was entirely ignorant of what was being said in a paper published at St. Hill, the world wide center of Scientology?...And what was being said was John Birch talk.
Now here is a psychiatrist in a goatee swinging his scythe which is labelled 'From Russia with Love.' John Birch rode that line in The Minuteman: psychiatrists as Communist agents. I don't buy it.
I think American psychiatrists will support the American establishment like any other reactionary group. In England they will support the English establishment and in Russia the Russian. They are servants of the establishments where they have found traction.
But does FREEDOM SCIENTOLOGY attack the American establishment? No. They talk about decency, morality, the church the home the family and the evil and Godless practices of subversion.
Nothing here a Wallace folk could object to, but quite a bit that the radical left might question rather sharply. Such questions passed along to me by readers prompted the article referred to.
If Mr. Hubbard is not responsible for anything in FREEDOM SCIENTOLOGY he cannot avoid responsibility for statements in his published writing. In 'Science of Survival' he speaks darkly of the perfidious and twisted practices of subversion and of those Godless people who would undermine the church the home and the family with free love and atheism. He speaks highly of the home the church and the family. The police, Mr. Hubbard tells us, are 'ordinarily rational men...' (I wonder if Mr.
Hubbard has observed 8 of these rational men guns drawn busting in on one Zen Hippie preparing his macrobiotic meal). He speaks warmly of the rich... 'A goodly number of them are the very pivots on which society is turning'... (I'll go along with that, Mr. Hubbard)... 'Industrial giants of America well deserve to be at the top. Here are the men on whom God smiles...'
The message of my article is clear: Find out who your friends are and who your friends are not.
You say you believe in total freedom. Are the industrial giants of America and the Wallace folk the friends of total freedom? Who are the friends of freedom? Those who are fighting for freedom. The militant left.
Now Mr. Mustain launches into a denunciation of psychiatrists. Every Scientologist who answers my article goes on and on about psychiatry as if the article were an impassioned defense of this dubious profession. I have said frequently that nine out of every ten psychiatrists should be broken down to veterinarians and shave off that goatee if you want to be popular with folks hereabouts.
Yes I know about the use of psychiatric committments as a means of political control. We have seen that happen in Russia and Germany. I am violently opposed to shock treatment or lobotomy.
Most so-called mental institutions are simply death camps with not much pretense of being anything else. So we don't have to bat that around.
Point is psychiatrists are servants of the establishment. Who is behind your Death Psychiatrist with his scythe? Who gives the orders around this shit house? The industrial giants of America, the very pivot on which it is turning. They own the place. They give the pigs and narcs, politicians, psychiatrists and newspapers their orders. And some of them keep themselves well out of sight. It is easy to be invisible if you are rich. And their control is always tighter.
They are now able to block any writer off the market if they don't like what he is saying, by no reviews in the Sunday papers and news magazines. If the mass media won't give review space the writer's only recourse is to the underground press. And how long would the underground press last under Wallace or his equivalent?
Writers should be alerted as to just where this no review treatment could lead. I have seen it in operation. My latest book THE JOB has just been published in England. No reviews in any Sunday paper, no reviews anywhere. And remember chain book stores can refuse to stock a book if they don't like what it says. THE PROCESS by Brion Gysin got this no review treatment. The fact that thousands of people would enjoy reading this book makes no difference if they never hear of it and can't find it in the book stores.
There is quite a lot about Scientology in THE JOB and most of it is favorable. I say this is something every well-informed person should know about. Now if someone said every well-informed person should read my books I'd take that as a plug - wouldn't you? Find out who your friends are. Are the people who are blocking THE JOB off the English market your friends? Are the industrial giants of America your friends? I don't think an uglier crew of monsters was ever dumped on any planet than the industrial giants of America...convulsed by hideous mineral hungers the unappeasible fires of monopoly burning in their eyes.
You can talk about suppressive persons...That's how they got there and stay there: by suppressing others...
The axiom of stupidity that Mr. Mustain quotes is the unkowingness of time place form and event...He goes on to say 'and as such more worthy of the head bureaucrat in charge of the Pure Food and Drug Administration than to a writer and thinker of your caliber...' Does Mr. Mustain seriously think that I support the actions of the Pure Food and Drug Pigs in seizing the E-Meters and orgone accumulators? In burning Reich's books and in suppressing his discoveries?
Now I don't believe in what the Maharishi is saying but I will defend, if not to the death at least to the extent of signing a petition, his right to say it. I would even allow Freudian analysis between consenting adults. Everybody has a right to do his thing. That's the stand of the Liberal Left. The other side doesn't think so. They might use the tech of Scientology for purposes of control and suppression. Would they then permit anyone to teach the use of these techniques for purposes of liberation? You're not that naive, Mr. Mustain.
Liberation is not what these people are about. Find out who your friends are and tell us where you stand...
Yes you believe in freedom and sane enlightened men will make a sane enlightened world... It's too vague.
We would like to know where Scientology and Mr. Hubbard stand on the Vietnam war, on sexual freedom, militant students, Black Power, pot, Red China, the policies of the American Narcotics department and the CIA.
If it comes to a revolution: which side would you fight on?
In THE JOB I make my own position clear on all of these points.
We are now seeing a world-wide rebellion and reaction similar to the reaction that crushed the liberal movements of 1848. Present-day revolutionaries would do well to avoid the mistakes of Garibaldi and Bolivar....(Here's a plug for you, Mr. Mustain...Mr. Hubbard has written a very acute analysis of Bolivar's mistakes in one of his bulletins. It should be reprinted in the underground press. And here's a plug for the E-Meter: In trained hands it - is an infallible lie detector and could be used to detect and screen out undercover agents...There's the CIA man holding the cans in the jungle camp...He is sweating slightly. Two guerillas with tommy guns standing by... "Are you connected with the CIA?" ...That reads...What do you consider that could mean?...) This is a revolution and the middle will get the squeeze until there are no neutrals there. How can I be neutral when Wallace says he is going to take care of "Hippies Anarchists and guide line writers"...? It's a matter of survival for me and I think for many other writers as well... Actually no one can be neutral at this point and no one actually is. It is a question of survival. Everyone must ask himself who or what he wants to survive with. Who are his allies.
And if Wallace or his equivalent comes to power or the army takes over he will have to ask himself what are my survival terms? What will I do in order to survive? Become a fink, a narc, a collaborator? Dance a Russian folk dance in front of Stalin? (Krushev did). Seek asylum in England as the Henry James or perhaps only the Michael Arlen of the Queen Margaret set? Go on TV in America with an impassioned plea to all young people who have ever been stirred or inspired by my books to shun the blandishments of Moscow and Peking and the twisted doctrines of kooks and misfits and act like decent Americans?
People had to answer questions like that in Germany and Russia. Scientologists say they have no committments to any political group or party. They are just trying to make a better world... What makes them think anybody would be allowed to do this under a Fascist government? I have made my own political committments quite clear in THE JOB and other writings. In the article to which Mr.
Mustain refers I call on Scientology to do the same.
Inside Scientology
by Robert Kaufman
Olympia Press, 279 pp.
BY WILLIAM BURROUGHS
ROLLING STONE
NOVEMBER 9, 1972
The upper levels of Scientology processing are classified as "confidential," which means that only those who have - completed the lower grades, passed security checks, and paid the large fees in advance are allowed to see and run this material. The most drastic penalties are invoked against those who reveal these materials. Mr. Kaufman has shown real courage in publishing Hubbard's so-called confidential materials for the first time in Inside Scientology. Step right up, here it is. This is what Scientologists pay $10,000 to see.
In Mayfair magazine I challenged Hubbard to come out with his secret materials and show them to qualified workers in other fields and circulate them among university students. I was put in a Condition of Treason and the challenge was, of course, ignored. Obviously it is very much to his financial advantage to keep this material secret. Otherwise who would pay to see it? Hubbard says that the mere sight of these dangerous materials could make a "Wog" sick or drive him insane.
(Wog is his revealing designation for non-Scientologists. A Wog, he tells us, is a worthy Oriental gentleman: In other words, a stupid humanoid, and how wrong can you be? Human. He himself is not from this planet, but he assures us he is here with the best intentions.) Now, some Wogs have suggested that there might be financial considerations involved here...but he just doesn't want to make people sick. Why, if a Wog were to catch even a glimpse of the confidentials he could come down with galloping appendicitis.
We will see how many Wogs come down with anything as a result of reading the material now published in this book. And I am sure Hubbard himself will be delighted to see that no ill effects result, so he can publish his materials as widely as possible and get on with the great task of Clearing the planet. And how can this ever be done except by getting the Clearing and O.T. course out to millions? Demonstrate it on TV, publish it in The News of the World. The road to total dissemination is now open.
Hubbard says that Scientology works. Well, it does produce certain effects, as this book bears witness...Here is what can happen while running an Engram:
"You can almost break a pre-clear's spine by asking him to contact his own tractor around his body and yet withhold the pressor against his spine."
"I was in a prison cell. A noose was being placed around my neck. I got down on the floor still holding the cans and started choking. My head jerked in spasms until I thought it would rip itself from my neck."
Any procedure that produces such drastic effects merits serious study. But the whole subject of Scientology has been made virtually inaccessible by the conditions to which one must submit in order to study it. To give you an idea as to what life at St. Hill was like, I shared a cottage with seven Scientologists and the young female members at breakfast come on with cognitions and thinly disguised sexual dreams about L. RON HUBBARD like young nuns dreaming about Christ, and this one girl who always held us up and one car to pile seven Scientologists into it, five minutes to make St. Hill five miles away or we will be late for our classes and you know what that means, if it happens twice children a dirty gray rag around a tidy little arm - barreling down a narrow road 65
miles per hour they are too stupid to be scared. RON will take care of us they think just made it on time the rack with coats stacked four deep keeps falling down shabby rooms with charts and bulletins and pictures of RON on the wall like some dreary public school. My "twin" as they call them the one who works with you on the E-Meter drills is a nice middle-aged woman from California, I would judge she's buried three husbands $250,000 per coffin. She's got a high tone arm and I can't get it down can't get reads on the Dating Drill. Fear stirs in my stomach. This could mean Review and some horrible Condition. The supervisor paces around. He stops behind a young girl.
"I am putting you in a Condition of Liability for Out Tech," he tells her.
She goes out weeping to Ethics.
Now he is standing behind my chair.
"You're in a Condition of Danger", he tells me.
" That's it! " barks a sulky Sea Org lieutenant standing in the doorway with the Public Ethics Officer.
The one I call the Pig Woman.
"Everybody line up for a See Check."
When my turn comes I pick up the cans.
"Do you consider St. Hill a safe environment?"
"Yes, of course I do."
"There's a read here. What do you consider this could mean?"
"Well we are surrounded by suppressives. It frightens me to think of those devils all around us."
I was learning.
I remember someone named Polly Stathis who, with eight other high criminals, showed the clearing course to a psychiatrist. RON put out a Fair Game order on them in The Auditor newspaper.
No amnesty may ever cover them.
Any Sea Org member contacting them is to run R-2-45.
If they ever appear in any Org they are to be run on reverse processes. (Reverse processes according to RON can drive someone insane.)
They may be tricked, lied to or destroyed.
They are fair game.
I remember a young Zen Hippie thrown out of the cottage in the middle of the night for saying he preferred Zen to Scientology.
I remember a bulletin that anybody who is discovered through auditing to be smoking pot will be turned over to the authorities...("What kind of fink outfit is this?"... I hastily suppressed the thought.) I remember one weekend atter a few drinks confiding certain doubts about Scientology to a supposed friend.
"They'll wring it out of me on the next See Check," he sobbed..."Why don't you go straight to Ethics and make a clean breast of it?"
I remember some grim old biddy dragging me into a broom closet (all the auditing rooms were full, as usual) and asking me on the E-Meter: "Do you have any unkind thoughts about L. RON
HUBBARD...That reads...What do you consider this could mean?"
"He's so beautiful he dazzles me. I can't help resenting it sometimes..."
In the words of Celine... "All this time I felt my self-respect slipping away from me and finally completely gone. As it were, officially removed..." Like an anthropologist who has, after unspeakable indignities, penetrated a savage tribe I was determined to hang on and get the big medicine if I had to fuck the sacred crocodile. I was lining up what allies I could muster and even had mv boy in Ethics. I had, as they say, unmocked the Pig Woman. But I was ordered for a Joberg because I rockslammed on the question, "What would have to happen before Scientology worked on everybody?" (I could not confront it.)
The Joberg which is published for the first time in Inside Scientology consists of 104 questions about every criminal activity you could conceive of.
"Have you ever kept a baby farm?"
Each question has to be cleaned and this Joberg took three weeks because there were so many students up for a Joberg and so few review auditors. Three weeks sitting in a small waiting room on straight-back chairs reading science fiction vou learn to be wary of the link with a big smile who sidles up to you and asks,
"What do you think of the new attestation order?"
"I'm sure RON knows what he is doing."
And it's a good thing to scream out as if you just couldn't contain yourself, " Thank you Ron! "
whenever you pass an Ethics Officer or a Sea Org member.
We who considered ourselves politicals kept apart from common criminals and fuckups. That one is guilty of drunken auditing besides which she is the worst old bore this side of California.
The Public Ethics Officer prowls in and out.
"I hear some of you guys have been discussing your cases and nattering."
One of the politicals, who has been in the movement since 1945 and seen all the old comrades get the axe, tells me he is there to prove that RON has betrayed the revolution. This dangerous confidence unnerves me completely. Even to hear such a statement compromises one beyond redemption.
Lunch break. The canteen is filthy the sandwiches soggy. The soft drink machine is in a Condition of Liability for being broken. Cart it off to Ethics. Several violators, dirty and unshaven with gray rags around their arms, petition for signatures so they can get back in and spend some more money.
"William Burroughs, report to Ethics."
They want me to disconnect from Mr. Bradly Mr. Martin, a character in my own writing. Well, he was getting old in any case.
So back to the Joberg...
"Have you ever hidden a body?"
"Of course not."
"There's a read here, what do you consider this could mean?"
Sharp and clear on screen I see myself hiding a body in some ancient Near Eastern alley the smell of the alley and the feel of another time.
"I think it's Whole Track."
"In this life have you ever hidden a body?"
"No."
"That is clean."
These film glimpses will occur in auditing. I don't say you are remembering another life but you are remembering something. A writer always gets his pound of flesh and a number of scenes later used in The Wild Boys were remembered on the E-Meter. Later I was able to obtain the same results through self-auditing.
After the Joberg and two more reviews, all of which were obligatory, and carried out at my expense, I finally arrived at the Advanced Org in Edinburgh for the clearing course. A hulking CIA type gave me a final See Check.
"Have you ever known any Communists personally?"
"Oh yes, lots of them and CIA men too..."
"Are you withholding anything?"
"I don't think so."
" That reads."
Finally I had to confess the truth.
"I have made magic against RON."
"What made you do it?"
"Suppressives, of course. They wanted to keep me from RON."
"Your needle is floating."
The Clearing Course consists of a series of contradictory propositions and running this material does give a certain immunity to contradictory commands. So when some one says...
"Creating me to be a spirit to be a God destroying you to be a body to be an animal..."
You just look at him and say... "I'm floating."
Scientology is a model control system, a state in fact with its own courts, police, rewards and penalties. It is based on a tight ingroup like the CIA, Islam, the Mormons, etc. Inside are the Rights with the Truth. Outside are the Commies, the Infidels, the Unfaithful, the Suppressives. Rarely has this formula been expressed with such consummate effrontery, like you go into a store to buy a suit the clerk puts you in a Condition of Doubt, you work all night in the stock room and go around with a gray rag around your arm and petition the entire store to let you back in so you can buy something.
How does Hubbard do it? With the E-Meter of course. The E-Meter is among other things a reliable lie detector in expert hands. The CIA also uses lie detectors and runs Security Checks on all personnel. With this simple device any organization can become a God from whom no thought or action can be hidden.
The E-Meter is also a biofeedback device, and since it passes a small voltage through the brain and the repetitive commands of auditing direct attention to certain brain areas, it is a form of electric brain stimulation. This may account for the valid pictures and films that do sometimes occur in auditing.
Recently in America and for some time past in Russia telepathic experiments have been carried out on similar instruments. The Fall Read that characterizes fear, resistance, guilt, shame, can be produced from a distance by a sender who concentrates on persons or situations to which the receiver has a strong negative reaction. In short, auditing can be carried out telepathically from a distance so perhaps RON really audits you all.
It has also been discovered that negative thoughts can be sent from a distance, resulting in confusion and even unconsciousness. These experiments are described in a book called •Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain•. So when RON puts out an Enemy Order on someone, he is directing the hatred of every Scientologist against that person. This may actually cause damage. I will leave the reader to infer whether this magic is strong enough to materialize anonymous letters to the police which recently resulted in the seizure of 30,000 books of Mr. Girodias' Olympia Press edition of a London warehouse, to write other letters cutting off Mr. Girodias' phone supposedly at his request, and the disappearance of manuscripts from burglarized premises. Others who have opposed or deserted Scientology report similar incidents. It is time for Wogs to unite against such tactics. The publication of this book is an important step in this direction.
Mr. Kaufman concludes...
"There are of course no grades or levels except in the mind of the Scientologist; the grades and levels are simply RON'S test of a pre-clear's credulities; they guide him into progressively deeper hypnotic states. What the pre-clear is run on is largely coincidental and is not what moves the needle; rather it is the thinly disguised suggestions which flow from a determined and persuasive auditor making the needle respond like a dog wagging its tail at hearing a kind word."
It must be acknowledged that Hubbard has developed a technique for doing this that warrants the study of non-Scientologists. He has in fact developed a system of biofeedback brain control based on the E-Meter.
THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY
The Hubbard Scientology Organisation
WORLDWIDE
Founder L. Ron Hubbard
Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead
Sussex, England
5 th December, 1972
The Editor,
Rolling Stone,
25 Newman Street,
LONDON WIP 3HA
Dear Sir,
In your issue of November 9th 1972, Issue No. 121 on pages 46 & 47 under your book review section William Burroughs reviews Robert Kaufman's book INSIDE SCIENTOLOGY.
This book has been the subject of contempt proceedings in the High Court. Olympia Press has been found guilty of contempt and the Judge ordered seizure of all copies of the book. Mr.
Burroughs' petulant review is not only tiresome - its false.
I have included here an itemization of these inaccuracies with documentation to show that Mr.
Burroughs may be a writer but cannot always be trusted to be an accurate one.
A copy of this letter is being sent to Mr. Burroughs.
Your sincerly,
R. Sorrell
Church of Scientology
WILLIAM BURROUGHS
In Answer to R. Sorrell's CORRECTION relative to my review in the Rolling Stone of Robert Kaufman's book
INSIDE SCIENTOLOGY
Reading over this disposition it is immediately obvious that Mr. or Mrs. or Miss for all I know R.
Sorrell and your reporter are talking at cross purposes.
This is the language of an official in an organization who must, by the fact of the position he holds in that organization, say certain things and represent at all times a point of view dictated by that organization. An organization with a Sea Org, a Flagship, villas in Tangier, Manors in Sussex, offices in major cities of the world, from South Africa to Tokyo. An organization numbering according to Mr. Sorrell's own statement 5 000 000 members. An organization staffed by thousands. An organization that can afford to lose 80 000 pounds in court costs on a prestige suit which they never had a prayer in a Scientology Chapel of winning. Mr. Sorrell speaks for this organization. I speak as an individual who is not connected to any organization or religion, from a two-room apartment. We speak at cross purposes which is immediately apparent.
1) Item: Security checks
'Fact': Security checks have not been used since 1968.
FACT: As Mr Sorrell well knows, I was at St. Hill in 1968 and this is the period described in the review. Is it innaccurate to write a book about the war in 1944 because the war ended in 1945?
Repeat: When I was at St. Hill Security Checks were used and that is the time in question. I have not been back to St. Hill since 1968. I may add that the fact that something has been discontinued is no excuse for it ever having existed in the first place.
2) Item: Drastic Penalties
'Fact': The most drastic penalty is excommunication - the right of any church or group. Heavier penalties such as imprisonment or the taking of life remain the prerogative of governments.
FACT: I refer to the penalties invoked in 1968 period of the article remember? I remember Polly Stathis and the Fair Game order. The fact that Polly Stathis has been rehabilitated and that Fair Game orders are no longer issued does not constitute an inaccuracy.
3) Item: 10 000 dollars
'Fact': If you are dissatidfied with the service you can get your money back.
FACT: Did I say you couldn't?
4) Item: Show materials to qualified workers
'Fact': Mr. Burroughs must well know that there are no qualified workers in this field. The implanting of "positive", "socially accteptable" commands in the "socially unacceptable" mental patient whilst he is having his brain sliced, probed or shocked is now a reality. Surely these are not his "experts"?
FACT: Surely not, Mr. Sorrell. And why should you assume that they are? Psychiatrists are the ENEMY. 'Mr. Burroughs has criticized us. Therfore he must be a friend of psychiatrists?' I recall that Mrs. Hubbard in her answer to my Mayfair article was on and on about psychiatry as if I were preparing to defend these dubious practicioners with my last breath. I said at that time: 'In my opinion 90 percent of those engaged in the so called profession of psychiatry schould be broken down to veterinarians.' Does it seem likely that I would call these as my experts?
The experts I would call are those working with polygraphs, brain waves, electric brain stimulation, bio feed-back and the feed-back between brain and computer. Experts who could determine precisely what brain waves accompany auditing on the E-Meter. What changes in heart beat, blood pressure, muscle relaxtion accompany auditing. Whether there are brain waves that are not picked up on the E-Meter.
Experts who could define the uses and limitations of this instrument: Dr. Grey Walter of the Neurological Foundation in Bristol.
Dr. Joe Kamiya who is working with bio feed-back at the Langley Porter Institute in San Francisco.
Dr. Barbara Brown, Chief of Experimental Physiology at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Sepulveda, Calif.; also working in bio feed-back.
Professor Delgado working with electric brain stimulation.
5) Item: Condition of Treason
'Fact': Mr. Burroughs fails to say that if he returned to St. Hill the order would be lifted immediately.
FACT: On this point both Mr. Sorrell and your reporter are in error. I was not placed in a condition of treason because of the Mayfair article. The condition was imposed prior to the article, was then lifted and not so far as I know reimposed after the article. When I have made an error I do not mind a dmitting it. I am an individual, not an organization.
6) Item: To his financial advantage
'Fact': The Church fo Scientology is a non profit organization. L. Ron Hubbard does not make any money from it.
FACT: I have listed some of the assets of this church. Mr. Hubbard has boats, villas, manors at his disposal. I submit that he profits from this non profit organization. If he is not a rich man, he certainly lives like one.
7) Item: Wog
'Fact': A term not used by the Church. After all, all Scientologists were once non-Scientologists. I could see it being used to describe a person like Mr. Burroughs whose unwillingness to be honest has led him to spy on a Church.
FACT: I have heard Mr. Hubbard use the term Wog on taped lectures. I have heard him define the term as a 'Worthy Oriental Gentleman'. I have seen bulletins that speak of the Wog World and Wog Law. As is well known, the term Wog has come to mean Non White. Mr. Sorrell could see it being used to describe a person like Mr. Burroughs? Thank you for that, Mr. Sorrell. I should be glad to change a color that has disgraced itself from the Conquistadores to Hiroshima. To spy on a church? I am not religious, Mr. Sorrell. I find it impossible to communicate with any one that is religious. Whether the religion be Communism Catholicism, or Scientology. They have all the answers. Facts are irrelevant. When I found out that Scientology is a religion that has nothing to do with scientific research on a subject that interests me, I withdrew.
8) Item: Getting the clearing course out to millions
'Fact': It would work about as well as giving someone an electric carving knife and then telling them...(watch your grammar, Mr. Sorrell) they are a fully qualified surgeon.
FACT: Except in the event of a power failure, I presume? In any case I fail to see the analogy.
9) Item: The whole subject has been made virtually inaccessible.
'Fact'; Public lectures are given daily around the world. There are some 40 books and 150 taped lectures you can buy - at the bookstore, or by post. The courses are open to anyone not there for criminal purposes.
FACT: I'll give you that one. It was an overstatement on my part.
10) Item: Security Checks
'Fact': Security checks have not been used since 1968.
FACT: We have already batted that around. The article refers to my experience of St. Hill in 1968.
Security Checks were used at that time.
11) Item: Polly Stathis fair game order.
'Fact': Fair game has not been used since 1968. This particular order has been canceled.
FACT: I refer to the particular order issued in 1968. Subsequent cancellation was unknown to me.
12) Item: Smoking pot
'Fact': Auditing does not work if a person is on drugs.
FACT: You would have to define more precisely what you mean by 'on drugs'. What drugs? Does weekend drinking mean being 'on alcohol'?
13) Item: I felt my self-respect slipping away from me and finally completely gone.
'Fact': Mr. Burroughs was degraded by his own self confessed dishonesty.
FACT: I was indeed. Degraded by the dishonesty of being there and condoning with my presence organization practices and policies of which I could not honestly approve. The fact that some of these practices and policies have been discontinued would seem to indicate that these practices and policies are no longer approved by Scientologists.
14) Item: ...been in the movement since 1945.
'Fact': The Church of Scientology was incorporated in 1954.
FACT: The movement antedates the Church.
15) Item: Dirty unshaven, grey rags
'Fact': Grey arm bands, not grey rags. And never dirty or unshaven.
FACT: I saw the bulletin in 1968 which said those in a condition of liability or worse...'may not bathe or shave.'
16) Item: Same results through self-auditing
'Fact': The aim of Scientology is not to discover fresh writing material but to gain spiritual awareness and freedom.
FACT: Here we have the official pronouncement on the arts. Fresh writing material is incompatible with spiritual awareness and freedom. Mr. Sorrell is also violating the Scientology Auditing Code: "
1. I promise not to evaluate for the pre-clear..." Now he will tell me what I should and should not get out of Auditing?
17) Item: I have made magic against Ron.
'Fact': The E-Meter is not a lie detector. Mr. Burroughs has shown that. Counselling demands a degree of honesty from the parishoner. Betrayal by the parishoner of that request for some honesty will make the parishoner feel guilty and he will accuse others of his own misdeeds as Mr.
Burroughs has done.
FACT: ...Hold on there, Reverend. I am not your parishoner. Mr. Hubbard says that the E-Meter is a lie detector. I refer you to "E-Meter essentials". page 21: Security Checking -
"10. If the preclear hasn't told all, the meter won't clear.
12. The E-Meter is right."
I submit that if the E-Meter is not a reaction detector which is a lie detector, that it is nothing.
18) Item: ...Scientology is a model control system.
'Fact': Mr. Burroughs has it arse about face...(Come now, Reverend, don't get coarse)...Scientology reveals the control system; seeing what it is you are then free from it.
FACT: An organized Church is a control system by its hierarchical nature.
19) Item: The clerk puts you in a condition of doubt.
'Fact': Similar to saying: "If you live in England, you are tried for High Treason."
FACT: I lost you there, Reverend, but it sounds ominous.
20) Item: The E-Meter is a relieable lie detector.
'Fact': Mr. Burroughs by his own action has shown the E-Meter to be a poor lie detector.
FACT: Look here, Sorrell, are you saying that L. Ron Hubbard was wrong? According to his own statement already quoted from E-Meter Essentials (1961) he considered the E-Meter to be a relieable lie detector..."The E-Meter is right." Indeed he must have considered the EMeter a relieable lie detector since crucial decisions involving the lives and futures of his 'parishoners' were based on security checks carried out on the E-Meter. Are you now saying that Security Checks were discontinued because they were found to be ineffective? That for at least 7 years from 1961 to 1968
Security Checks were carried out on an instrument which is, by your own admission, a poor lie detector? That staff members lost their positions, that parishoners were expelled, put in conditions of Treason and Enemy, some with a Fair Game order on them, as a result of Security Checks carried out on a poor lie detector? An instrument you say in item 17 is not a lie detector at all?
Quite an admission, Mr. Sorrell.
21) Item: Repetitive commands.
'Fact': Scientology practices are not hypnotic.
FACT: I quote from Mr. Kaufman's book. I do not answer for the accuracy of his statements.
22) Item: So perhaps he really audits you all.
'Fact': All 5 million at once?
FACT: Don't you know when you're having your leg pulled, Reverend?
23) Item: Magic
'Fact': If this is so then Mr. Burroughs should be directing his message to the press and television media.
FACT: Have done on various occasions.
24) Item: Mr. Girodias
'Fact': Mr. Girodias has been no stranger to police raids for many years.
25) Item: Similar incidents
'Fact': Since the first piece of 'magic' is no more than the normal hazard of Mr. Girodias' particular profession the other un-named pieces of 'magic' remain in doubt.
Item 24 and 25 refer to my old friend and publisher Maurice Girodias. I will invite him to answer.
26) Item: Deeper hypnotic states
'Fact': Scientology is not hypnotic.
27) Item: Mr. Kaufman "...no grades or levels".
'Fact': False. Disproved by the hundreds of thousands of people who have gained exactly what was promised them - and more.
Items 26 and 27 refer to Mr. Kaufman's book. These objections are for Mr. Kaufman to answer.
28) Item: Visfeedback control
'Fact': The parishoner cannot see the meter when he is being audited. Therefore it cannot be a feedback. It is spiritual counselling and does not involve the brain. It is not a control like hypnosis. It is a freedom, a spiritual awareness.
FACT: The word is bio-feedback indicating a feedback between an electronic device and psychophysiological events. It is true that the parishoner cannot see the meter in the early grades of auditing...(Perhaps. auditing would be more effective if he could). However, from the solo auditing course onwards, he audits himself and does see and record the E-Meter reads. He asks himself questions and reads an electronic device that records his reaction to these questions. If that isn't bio-feedback the term will have to be redefined. Mr. Hubbard says the E-Meter reads on THOUGHT. Mr. Sorrell says it does not involve the brain nor presumably any changes in heartbeat or blood pressure. What then does the E-Meter actually register if it has nothing to do with the brain or the body? The E-Meter, Mr. Hubbard tells us, reads on resistance. On resistance to a half volt of electricity passed through the brain and body. Where then does this resistance originate if not in brain and body? One of the mysteries, no doubt.
Ali's Smile
The set is a country house, young man with brief-case at the door. The door is opened by a gray-haired man dressed in a blue dressing gown.
"Yes?"
"I am your local Scientologist...what can I do for you?"
"Drop Dead!"
The door slams. The man, Clinch Smith, totters back to the living room and collapses on the sofa.
The set is a crater-like valley in the suburbs of a middle-sized English city. There are authentic cottages with moss on the roofs. There is "Ye Olde Bramble Tyme Motel", high prices, thin walls.
Over the valley towers a vast gray slag heap, a mine tip. The camera moves at a purposeful trot. A peasant steps placidly in a field. Huntsmen in red coats have stepped from a print in the "Olde Marl Hole Tavern". An eccentric Lesbian attacks them with her umbrella. She is cheered on by hippies.
Now uncouth local youth erupt from "Ye Olde Marl Hole Tavern"; and soon fights are in progress between the hippies and the locals.
Smith re-read the letter. "Your flippant attitude towards Scientology makes you a downstate suppressive person. I disconnect from you. Don't ever get on my comlines again. Harry."
Clinch buried his face in his hands, sobbing. "Ingrates, every one of them ingrates, why I paid for his Scientology courses." He looked up through his histrionic tears and there was Ali's kris on the wall.
It was thirty years ago on Malaya. The first time he saw Ali was in the market. He noticed a crowd, curiously divided, the men sullen and down-cast, the women laughing and radiant. He pushed through the crowd and there in the center of the circle was a slender boy of eighteen dressed in a curtain, his face crudely made-up. In front of him a toothless old hag does a toothless obscene dance. He imitates her every movement. Looking into the boy's eyes Clinch saw that he was helpless in there, watching in agony what his body was doing. He was, in fact, a Latah, that is a condition where the victim must imitate every movement, once his attention has been attracted by a special signal.
'My God', Clinch thought. 'Suppose one has to let a fart in front of the Queen? His body doesn't belong to him.'
"Stop this!", he said firmly in the thundering tones of an English Lesbian preventing some rude tribesman from maltreating a donkey. The old hag shot him a look of such malevolence he felt the air stir on the back of his neck. She spat out the Malay word for "queer" in Betel Nut. Clinch made Ali his houseboy and gave him an amulet to protect him from the market woman.
That morning Clinch woke up with a malarial headache to find he was out of codeine. He sent Ali to the market and arranged to meet him at eleven in the British Chemist. The door of Ali's room was open and there on the table was the amulet. Clinch felt a sudden chill, "Probably malaria", he thought. He slipped the amulet into his pocket and set off for the chemist, his head pounding in the morning sun. He would ask for water and take two pills in the chemist, he decided, looking to the cool shop, the water, the codeine.
Someone laid a hand on his arm. He turned around, annoyed, and looked into blue eyes that twinkled a warning. It was a bearded archeologist who had always been mysteriously friendly. He wasabout to plead an appointment and break away but the man looked at him steadily.
"You're interested in linguistics, thought you might like to have a look at this..."
There was no stopping the fellow and the clipping was interesting, he saw that at a glance. It was relative to a theory Clinch had written to the effect that every language had a particular cadence or rhythm that could be reduced to a neutral musical score. This score, once learned, would literally pull the language into the student's mind.
This thesis was coldly received by his superiors; and Clinch's obtuse persistence in pushing it finally resulted in a penal assignment in La Paz.
An inheritance from an uncle saved him sitting out years of ignominy writing for his pension.
As he read the clipping he heard the clock strike eleven in the market. He finished the clipping and handed it back. As he turned into the market he heard the cry, "Amok! Amok! Amok!". And there was Ali with his kris in front of the drugstore. The shutters fell like a guillotine. The old market women were scampering off with the agility of rats or evil spirits.
Three of them were too slow.
And now Ali was running straight towards him, face blazing like a comet. Clinch Smith stood up. He felt the hair stir on the back of his neck and a shiver spattered his body with goosepimples.
"Ali, Ali, Ali."
He walked over and took the kris from the wall. It seemed to leap into his hand. He opened the door and started for the Scientology Center, moving with a purposeful trot, the kris held in front of him.
And then the shots. Three heavy slugs tore into Ali's body and he kept coming. Three more bullets cut him down and he fell at Clinch's feet. Sun-helmet, shorts, the lean bronze face.
He shoved the Webley. 45 automatic revolver into his holster and buttoned it in. It is, far as I know, the only automatic revolver ever made. There are etchings in the cylinder so that each shot turns the cylinder and recocks the revolver. It was sold as the fastest handgun ever made.
"Come along to the club, old man. You could do with a drink." The officer turned. The policeman had approached reluctantly; and the officer gave him some orders in crisp Malay.
Clinch Smith: "I'd like the kris as a souvenir, you understand. He was my houseboy."
"Oh, yes, of course, old chap. Quite understand. I'll have it sent along to your digs."
The Scientologist, meanwhile, whose name was Reg, walked away in a down-stat condition. He could feel his gains ebbing away in the afternoon streets that were suddenly full of raw menace that seemed to bounce off walls and windows. The arc was flowing out of him and he felt a terrible weakness. He feared the sin of self-invalidation.
"I must up-stat myself," he told himself, firmly. "I'll make a report to Ethics". He swayed and steadied himself on a tree. Silver spots boiled in front of his eyes. He turned a corner, and there, just ahead, a knot of people. Accident, fight perhaps, here was a chance to prove himself. Perhaps he could save a little girl from dying of burns with a brilliant touch-assist. The words of Ron came back to him: "in any kind of emergency, just be there, saying firmly, 'You are standing in my space.'" And while the Wogs think that over he is past them and right up to the front where he sees some hippies fighting with local youths and landed gentry. He looked up and caught his breath. Five members of the Sea Org resplendent in blue uniforms shoved their way through the crowd.
"Hey, you're not proper boogies." A gang of boys from Glasgow were closing in, slow hands caressing switchblades in their pockets.
Lord Westfield had been born intelligent, at the same time very rich. This unusual occurence of retrograde planetary juxtapositions, all agree it was a radioactive day, when everything is ugly and menacing street boys scream insults. Mules foaled and the hooded deal did gibber in the streets in Clayton, Missouri. Four schoolboys caught jacking-off by MacIntosh the druggist who is a self-styled sodomy fighter and goes around looking for the bastards, screaming, "I will D R A A A A G you to the police!" Got five years for sodomy.
In Mississippi they strung a nigger up under a railroad bridge, burning his genitals off with a blowtorch. The face of the man with the torch? "Well, we dressed him up in Esquire clothes, it became the new look, the bold look. And he was a pretty hot property. Now, we had an exclusive on this good thing; and I happened to remember the day was one thing like that after the other."
"A woman bit the cock off her husband because he was queer; and her copper loving brother stomped him to death."
Now, had Lord Westfield been born under any other circumstances, he would undoubtedly have been successful. From an early age he observed the deference paid him by the townspeople. He was not stupid enough to think this was his by some mysterious right. Lord Westfield disliked mysteries. A mystery is an unknown factor and therefore dangerous. He could see these people were cowed and broken; but he wanted to know exactly how this had been done so he could make sure such a desirable state of affairs would continue.
As a child and adolescent he amused himself by seeing how many insults humiliations he could inflict on the local villagers. "Always," he told himself, "inflict as much damage as you possibly can on anyone you encounter. If you leave him feeling worse than when you saw him, something of value has been accomplished."
To this end he betook himself to secret studies and employed a firm of private investigators who were glad to do anything for his Lordship, who never forgot them on Christmas and no questions asked.
"Go look into this and that. See what Doctor Miller has to say. You have journalistic credentials...Scientists are very absentminded, thank God. Get me the data on Scientology."
The agent dumps a pile of books and pamphlets on Lord Westfield's desk. Lord Westfield leafs through a book. Wearily he sweeps the pile of books to the floor.
"This isn't what I want....this illiterate drivel...I want the course material, I want all of it, on the market or in preparation. You understand me?"
"You mean I have to go and take courses, Sir? Why not just lift the lot?"
The firm of Jenkins and Coldbourne were experts in gaining access to premises, photographing and replacing documents. They had done a number of these jobs for Lord Westfield with exemplary efficiency.
"No, I want you to go and take the courses. Then I want you to come back here and run 'em through it with me, day by day, you understand?"
"They'll smell me out on the E-meter, if you'll pardon the expression, Sir; they have this lie-detector, Sir. You can't beat it, Sir. You see, I did a job for them once...my wife took a personal efficiency course at the London Center and that's how I got into it. Well, I padded my expense account a bit; and this grim old biddy drags me into a broomcloset, puts me on the cans, and says should I have told her anything I didn't."
"That reads, what do you think this could mean. She bloody dragged it out of me, Sir, and said I would have to wear a gray rag, Sir, and go around and ask every decent Scientologist if I could rejoin the group. I quit, Sir."
"Don't worry about Sec-Checks, all you need to do is take one of these." Lord Westfield shoves a bottle of pills across the table. "Sit down, Jenkins, and stop pretending to be stupider than you are.
Now this drug lowers the electrical resistance of the brain."
Now Jenkins has dropped his obsequious Cockney voice. "Yes, Sir, of course. The E-meter works on resistance."
"I believe that electronics is a hobby of yours, Jenkins?"
"Yes, Sir, in fact I've been working on an E-meter that'll work on non-resistance."
"Have you really? When you get it finished, bring it along, perhaps the Technical Department will be interested. Now, on this assignment you have to watch every word and every move. There isn't a man or woman in the org won't turn you in if you so much as nip into a bar for half a pint on course, so for Christ's sake, don't get caught out taking a pill."
"I used to give sleight-of-hand shows in the Council Hall, Sir. I was on the junk in New York. I know ten different ways of getting a pill into my mouth under closed-circuit TV."
Of course, Lord Westfield knew all this and a lot more about Jenkins. Intelligence during the war, electronics and demolitions expert, expert at gaining access to premises, photographing and returning documents, & expert in electronic spying devices.
"And remember this, Jenkins, you're going to have to study. It's a tough course, they tell me."
Jenkins went pale..."You don't mean I have to take the special briefing course, Sir?"
"No, Jenkins, just what you need to get the clearing course, then you can lift the rest."
Two weeks later when Jenkins showed up for the daily lesson, he looked worried... "Lord Westfield, it's them pills, Sir."
"Yes, Jenkins?"
"Well, if you'll pardon the expression, Sir, they loosen my rectum, Sir. I've had, er, several accidents, Sir. You see, there's been a scandal about the confidental material; and they've gone Sec-Check mad, Sir. It's a side-effect."
"Well, Jenkins, you can lift the rest."
Scientology was one of the many subjects that interested Lord Westfield. On the surface he was a highly-placed but obscure civil servant at the Home Office. There were select dinners for highly-placed officials...Lord Westfield, who was on his way to a Top Secret meeting with Olga Hardcastle, looked out the one-way window of his Bentley and saw that fight was in progress. He stopped the car, got out and sat on his cane seat to watch the fight.
Two middle-aged women were the first to notice Clinch Smith. They looked at the kris in disapproval..."He's not allowed to carry that." She didn't have time to scream. He ripped her stomach open, striking from near the ground. The other looked at him, her face flapping in silent terror. He swung his arm and cut her throat.
He turned to face the crowd. Electric menace blazing from his kris, which vibrated with a life of its own, pulling him down a funnel of screaming, running figures. And there, at the end of the funnel, is the Sea Org, Lord Westfield, and Olga.
The Sea Org has something eccentric and puritanical in their dress, like MRA personnel. They placed themselves in ineffectual karate stance.
When Lord Westfield saw Clinch Smith's face, he knew he was a dead man. He had studied karate, Chinese boxing, judo, aikido. He was giving the orders to his hand, but a numbing paralysis clutched him. Suddenly he broke through, his limbs stiff with panic, brought the cane seat up in a clumsy stab to the groin.
Clinch seemed to undulate aside, as if the ground had moved under his feet, straightened his bent arm, rippling the kris along the side of Lord Westfield's throat. He straightened his arm and shoved the kris right into Olga's open mouth and out the back of her neck. He placed his left hand on her face and shoved, snapping the kris in an arc that nearly decapitated a Sea Org member.
Whirling, dancing, shifting...he slashed and stabbed.
Crack.
Colonel Wentworth stood there with a sporting rifle. Born Marvin Weinstein he sported a dubious military title from World War II. His first shot killed Lord Westfield's chauffeur. He moved closer.
Crack.
Clinch Smith fell under a pile of dead Sea Org uniforms. Meanwhile, a rumor has flashed through the town that the Home Secretary has ordered a massacre of hippies and militants. Now they come out in droves, all marching towards the scene of battle just ahead. This is it. They glimpse a slender, young Malay boy, a Negro, a Mexican, a Chinese, perhaps, crushed under a pile of cops.
Pulling baseball bats and bicycle chains, they charge. Many of the opposition fainted at the sight; and the weaker ones had heart attacks.
What remained summoned something so ugly that several hippies with Zen leanings faltered and said, "Let's talk this over." But the stronger hippies were strengthened and their eyes blazed while the embattled police and landed gentry flung themselves forward.
"You filthy bastards are asking for it!"
And now the two hosts are approaching each other. Then a sound like falling mountains...
"The Tip! The Tip! The Tip!"
A wall of gray mud, twenty feet tall, is sweeping into the valley. Next shot shows a lunar landscape of fluid slag.
Against the icy blackness of space, the ghost face of Ali smiles.
Document Outline
Cover
Title Page
Copyrights
Contents
Burroughs On Scientology
The East Village Other - Introduction
Open Letter to Mr. Gorden Mustain
Inside Scientology by Robert Kaufman
Church of Scientology Letter to rolling Stone
William Burroughs Answer to R.Sorrell's Letter
Ali's Smile