NEW YORKER LOOKS INSIDE SCIENTOLOGY

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

NEW YORKER - From the outset, the conversion of celebrities was
important to Scientology. An internal newsletter produced by the Hubbard
Communications Office, probably in the mid-fifties, asserts, "There are
many to whom America and the world listens. On the backs of these are
carried most of the enthusiasms on which the society runs." . . .  The
piece concludes with a list of the day's stars  -  Orson Welles, Howard
Hughes, Walt Disney, and Greta Garbo among them  - referring to them as
"game" and "quarry" for Scientologists to "hunt." Though Scientology is
not known to have had success with this early group, the movement now
counts Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, and many other
celebrities as members.

Celebrity Centre is used for Scientology courses and for "auditing," a
mainstay of the religion, in which a person undergoes a guided
talk-therapy session, usually while holding a device known as an
E-Meter, which is supposed to measure one's spiritual state. The goal is
to eliminate "mental image pictures" associated with traumatic events;
when a person is "Clear" - freed of all such associations - he can
advance to the mystical and esoteric levels of Scientology. The path to
becoming an "Operating Thetan," or pure spiritual being ("thetan" being
Hubbard's word for the soul), is laid out in a table called "The Bridge
to Total Freedom: Scientology Classification Gradation and Awareness
Chart of Levels and Certificates." Scientology is a technological
religion and claims to have developed "exact, precise methods to
increase man's spiritual awareness and capability." Completion of the
Bridge takes years, and each stage requires a cash investment. An
initial twelve-and-a-half-hour auditing session costs between six and
seven hundred dollars, Greg LaClaire, a vice-president of Celebrity
Centre, says. (Aspiring Scientologists can mitigate the expense by
choosing to be audited by a fellow initiate rather than by a staff
member.) In the Holiday 2007 Dianetics and Scientology catalogue, a
deluxe Planetary Dissemination Edition E-Meter - billed as a "tool for
Golden Age of Tech certainty," to assist in "faster progress up The
Bridge" - was offered, in "Diamond Blue," for five thousand five hundred
dollars.

On Celebrity Centre's upper floors, there are thirty-nine hotel rooms to
accommodate visiting Scientologists. An undated leaflet advertising "a
safe environment for Celebrities and Scientologists" contains a plug
from Travolta: "Good rest, good food, good service but most of all I
felt very safe in this space"; Celebrity, a magazine produced by
Celebrity Centre, which features a Scientology celebrity on the cover of
every issue, urges readers to stay at the hotel for five to six weeks
"to complete your Basics books & lectures courses faster!"

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/01/14/080114fa_fact_goodyear

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||