Chapter one
My Beginnings
“All I have is a voice/To undo the folded lie”
—WH Auden
It was 1974 and I was nineteen. I had just returned to England after a disastrous tour of the South of France only to find that my girlfriend, with whom I had been living for over a year, had been sleeping with one of my friends and was going to live with him in New Zealand. A few weeks later while alone at a friend’s house, I found a copy of Hubbard’s book Science of Survival. After reading 200 pages, I was hooked.
I was impressed by Hubbard’s insistence that his “Dianetics” was not dependent on faith, but was completely scientific. The book began with an impressive array of graphs purportedly depicting increases in IQ and betterment of personality through Dianetics, which appeared to have undergone extensive testing.
Dianetics claimed to be an extension of Freudian therapy. By re-experiencing unconfronted traumas it was allegedly possible to unravel the deep-seated stimulus-response patterns which ruin people’s lives. Hubbard departed from Freud by denying that sexual repressions were basic to human aberration. He promised a new and balanced emotional outlook through the application of Dianetics.
It seemed that Dianetics had been absorbed by Scientology. Science of Survivalcontained an outdated list of Scientology Churches. Eventually I found a phone number for the “Birmingham Mission of the Church of Scientology.” After a few minutes of conversation, the receptionist insisted that I take a train immediately. About three hours later, after a complicated journey, I arrived at the “Mission.” It was over a launderette in Moseley Village, at that time the dowdy home of the Birmingham hippy community.
The receptionist sat behind an old desk at the head of the steep stairs. It was just after six in the evening, and the rest of the Mission staff had gone home to take a break before returning for the evening session. The receptionist was in her early twenties, and had abandoned a career in teaching to become a full-time Scientologist. She was cheerful and self-assured, and she looked me straight in the eye. She exuded confidence that Scientology was the stuff of miracles. I mentioned my interest in Buddhism, so she gave me a Scientology magazine called “Advance!,” which claimed that Scientology was its modern successor. I was passionately interested, but she would not trust me to take a copy of Hubbard’s Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, and pay the next day.
Perhaps to her surprise, I did return the next day and bought the book. I spent the Christmas season locked away with my misery and “Dianetics.” The 400 pages took 10 days to read. The book was turgid and difficult, but I was not interested in Hubbard’s style, I was interested in Dianetic therapy.
Hubbard claimed to have found the source of all human unhappiness. Dianetics would eradicate depression, and the seventy percent of all ailments which Hubbard claimed are mentally generated, or “psychosomatic.” According to Hubbard’s book, each of us has a stimulus-response mind which records all trauma. This “Reactive Mind” is hidden from the conscious or “Analytical Mind.” When elements of an environment resemble those of an earlier traumatic incident, the Reactive Mind cuts in and enforces irrational behavior upon the individual. The Reactive Mind is idiotic, and tries to resolve present situations by regurgitating a jumble of responses from its recording of the traumatic incident. Failing to see the cause of this irrational behavior, the Analytical
Mind justifies it, in exactly the way a hypnotized subject justifies his enactment of implanted suggestions.
According to Hubbard, the deepest personal traumas were moments of unconsciousness or pain, which he called “engrams.” By relieving engrams an individual could erase the Reactive Mind and become well-balanced, happy and completely rational. The earliest engram would have occurred before birth, and would be the “basic” of all subsequent engrams. Those who had relieved this original engram, and consequently erased their Reactive Mind, Hubbard called “Clears.” People receiving Dianetics were “Preclears.” I began to absorb this elaborate and complex new language.
More recent incidents would have to be relieved before the Preclear would be capable of reliving his birth and his experiences in the womb. I was wary of Hubbard’s constant assertion that most parents try to abort their children, but glossed over it, thinking his initial research must have been done on rather strange people.
What severe “engrams” had I received? Because so much emphasis was put on birth and the prenatal period, I asked my mother about her pregnancy. Her answers horrified me. After an emergency operation to treat a twisted ovary, the doctor had told her she was pregnant. The doctor said he had held the evidence (me) in his hand.