MYTHS, MISBELIEFS AND MISTRUTHS
John H. Williams
(Investigator 85, 2002 July)
When I heard
"The more you know, the more you realise you don't know", I understood
the futility of 'knowledge accumulation'. I became better at impressing
my examiners into thinking that I knew and understood more than I did,
such as by starting essays with long quotations by the 'heavies' in the
field. I settled into knowing more about less as I exchanged three
subjects in my first university year for one in my second and third.
In the early
1960s, non-computerised libraries were struggling with the dizzying
knowledge explosion, but it took me until 1997 before I had my first
computer, by which time, given their increasing use in class, I was a
dinosaur, playing the same futile catch-up game I play today.
Gradually,
although the drive to learn more has remained strong, I’ve become more
interested in what people believe, an interest that has grown since
meeting Bern Stett at a TAFE course in 1996, when he introduced me to
Investigator (#51, Nov '96). I'm sure that I'm not alone in finding
messianic conmen such as David Koresh (Vernon Howell), Jim Jones and L
Ron Hubbard fascinating. I took Werner Erhard (Jack Rosenburg)'s Forum
(formerly EST) in '86/'87,as well as attending Physical Immortality
classes (in the interests of research).
I became
increasingly interested in cults and joined a group called CultAware
which, less than a year later (1996), was 'closed down' by the
legal/financial muscle of Scientology.
How could people
be so taken in, and what lay behind the minds who took them? How could
so many unbelievably tall tales, about a nasty galactic ruler, Xenu,
nuclear explosions in volcanoes releasing 'thetans' (requiring a
ruinously expensive 'auditing' process) be the foundation story of a
successful cult? How could it continue its business? In an
information-rich society, why is it a secret to adherents that their
guru, who, in 1986, "went to another level" (died) after years of being
on the run from the FBI, was a chain-smoking, drug-taking con man?
Hubbard revealed
that it was his "lust for greed and power" which led him to the
quickest and smartest way to become rich: start a religion! (This is
from The Barefaced Messiah by Russell Miller, a book hard to obtain, and it has disappeared from the Mitcham Council library system...)
But why aren't
cult victims more skeptical, and what creates the
naive/trusting/suggestible state required to, for example, believe that
a comet's tail hides a space ship which is going to call and collect
one's (dead) 'vehicle' (body)?
Billions have
beliefs which are not that far removed from Heaven's Gate thinking,
except that Heaven requires no space ship, nor is suicide 'the go',
unless you're off to Paradise via blowing up yourself and others. Many
aren't content just to die, and believe that what remains must 'go
somewhere' 'up there' or 'down below'. In a Time
Magazine survey (24/3/97) for a cover article, only 1% thought they
would go to hell, 61% believed they'd have a fast track to heaven, 15%
fancied some purgatory, 5% embraced reincarnation, while only 4%
thought that pegging-out was one's final adventure. The cover picture
of a bloke staring into the distance with his feet in a white fluffy
cumulus defies satire.
There are about
280 million Americans and 93% believe that angels live in heaven (Oprah
has been doing great PR for them), while 43% and 36% respectively
believed that they carry harps and wear halos!
Believers don't
take kindly to having someone question their cherished beliefs,
preferring the "ignorance of certainty". They often develop a
fundamentalist 'carapace', using projection, rationalisation and other
sustaining psychological processes—as did the man who believed he was
dead. His doctor asked him if dead men bleed. He disagreed, but when a
pin was stuck in his arm he observed the blood, saying, "Well, what do
you know, dead men DO bleed!" (Investigator #61, in a review of Vital
Lies, Simple Truths, D Goleman, Bloomsbury, 1997).
A few years ago I saw a job ad in The Advertiser,
offering "low pay and free training" and recognised the number as
Scientology's Weymouth St base. I rang, and was immediately given a 4pm
appointment for that afternoon.
I kept asking
questions the receptionist couldn't answer, so was referred to a
manager who quickly became wary, repeatedly asking if I was "Francois",
or was I a journalist, even though I'd told him my first name and that
I was unemployed. The low pay was in fact a commission, depending on
"group sales" which were for "self-improvement courses". Gradually I
gave detail critical of Scientology and Hubbard to which his replies
were "false data!" He did acknowledge that LRH's wife Mary and other
high-ranking scientologists had gone to prison for trying to infiltrate
and burglarise the American IRS. Naturally, this crime was done without
LRH's approval!
Miller's
Preface, "The Revelation of Ron" tells of a long-serving scientologist,
George Armstrong, accompanied by a small group, who find Hubbard's
memorabilia in an abandoned health spa in the Californian desert.
Fearing the FBI, and charged with the destruction of any incriminating
documents, it was essential they protect Hubbard as they believed that
he alone could save the world. It was January, 1980, and Armstrong
browsed 21 cardboard boxes holding all LRH's papers, photos and
records. As he explored them, he became excited, because this material
would prove that his leader (who was then in hiding) was a genius and a
miracle worker thus refuting the lies being spread by his enemies!
As he read, he
kept finding documents and letters which totally contradicted all he
had been told about Hubbard, but he was so well indoctrinated that he
felt sure that that these were aberrations, and that there'd be an
explanation. Eventually he put his proposal to those who had taken over
after Hubbard's death, including the current CEO, David Miscavige, who
happens to be a very close friend of Nicole Kidman's ex.
Having amassed
25,000 pages of documentation on LRH's life Armstrong's admiration and
loyalty were undiminished. All he wanted was to "clear up the
lies...after all, the truth was equally as fascinating as the lies. If
we present inaccuracies, hyperbole or downright lies as fact and truth,
... the man will look, to outsiders at least, like a charlatan..."
Predictably they
accused Armstrong of 18 "crimes and high crimes": he was a potential
traitor, a thief, a "suppressive person", who could be "tricked, lied
to, sued or destroyed" by the 'church'. Despite spending nearly two
years finding lie after lie, including using the FOI Act to obtain US
Navy records, he still believed, and would have probably continued
believing, had he not been 'done over' by those nice guys at
Scientology Central. Such is the power of a fixed idea, constantly
reinforced by mind control, aided by a naïve and idealistic desire
to believe, to make a difference, and be part of something uniquely
special. Sadly, the leader is usually a demagogue who rules the cultic
roost as some kind of mythic, deity.
Hubbard
certainly "did it His Way", and it's refreshing that the truth about
his life is so well documented. Scientology, understandably, goes to
extreme lengths to try to suppress and censor this truth: that their
leader was a bigamist, a pathological liar, an incompetent serviceman
who never saw action, who sent pathetic letters to the US Navy seeking
a larger pension, who bought his doctorate from Sequoia University, who
never explored the Amazon or China, and who let his third wife go to
prison for him when Operation Snow White, the IRS job, was uncovered.
It would make a
great Hollywood movie with Antony Hopkins as Ron, Mel Gibson as
Armstrong. It's a screenwriter's dream because the bizarre reality is
weirder than Hubbard's pulp science fiction. Instead, with much of the
Hollywood culture in thrall of its power, mega-millions and key celebs,
a sci-fi story of Hubbard's was produced by John Travolta, called
Battlestar Galactica, which sank so rapidly at the box office that it's
become one of the biggest 'turkeys' of recent years.
To use a phrase
coined by Walt Disney, history is chock-full of "plausible
impossibility", of failed apocalyptic prophecies. Once, due to
ignorance, there was some excuse (and it seems that even reputable
social scientists have been unreliable, with only a third of their
1950s predictions becoming fact by 2000!). History is littered with
deceptions, great and small, with one of the most popular being the
second coming/the apocalypse, perhaps as the sixth great extinction,
but which will have little to do with how imperfectly Earthlings are
behaving.
"Beware of those
who follow one book", a Roman once wrote, because literalism and
fundamentalism lead to the most nonsensical and irrational beliefs such
as eternal life, miracles, ghosts, the virgin birth, heaven/hell, the
devil, angels, Armageddon, the second coming, gods, sin, purgatory, the
Flood, Adam and Eve, and are as real as body thetans, as believable as
a spaceship copping a 'free ride' on a comet's tail, and as imaginary
as papal infallibility!
Earth has
recently survived yet another dose of 'end times' thinking (Y2K),
and, since adversity and human imperfection (rarely in short supply)
encourages faith, and faith feeds eschatology, it won't be the last!
REFERENCES
Apocalypses, Eugen Weber, Pimlico, London, 2000
Heaven’s Gate Cult Suicide in San Diego, NY Post staff, Harper, 1997
The Barefaced Messiah, Russell Miller, Sphere, London, 1987
Time Mag 24/3/97 (Does Heaven Exist?), 7/4/97 (Inside The Web Of Death)