Sunday, May 11, 2008
Melton, however, said that he did not believe public outspokenness about the church necessarily indicates a particular rank. The eight OT levels form the last and highest order in the intricate hierarchy Hubbard developed beginning in 1950, when his "Dianetics" was published. He named the hierarchy "the Bridge to Total Freedom." Scientologists can only enter OT once they've gone "Clear," meaning they have passed through the lower orders of the church and been shown that their personal inhibitions and flaws are the result of innumerable traumatic experiences built up over trillions of years of reincarnation.
A Scientologist becomes "Clear" by taking multiple courses and through copious "auditing," a process in which they are counseled and encouraged by a more advanced church member to relive past traumas, with the help of an E-Meter, a device that Scientologists claim monitors brain activity. Before they're allowed to continue on to OT, a rigorous screening process and background check are conducted, according to Melton and others. Reaching the highest OT levels usually takes from a decade to three decades, the current and former Scientologists say. Lower estimates for the total cost of this are around $30,000, but some people claim to have spent several hundred thousand dollars. The current Scientology member tells Salon he pays several thousand dollars a year for the services.
That's a small investment if you're Tom Cruise, who now demands $20 million per movie, or some of the other marquee names affiliated with the church, including actors John Travolta and his wife, Kelly Preston, Kirstie Alley and Jason Lee, musicians Beck, Lisa Marie Presley and Chick Corea, and Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren. Celebrity Scientologists, like other Scientologists, do not publicly reveal their rank. But despite their vagueness on the subject, celebrities play a crucial role in the church's image and its marketing of itself. According to Kent, beginning in the 1960s L. Ron Hubbard issued explicit directives for the church to recruit celebrities.
"There was a whole series of policies that talked about celebrities as opinion-makers," Kent said. "He suggested to get celebrities on their way up or their way down. To get them on the way up meant, if they became famous, they might attribute their success to Scientology. On the way down meant if their careers get saved they could do the same."
Also, said S. Scott Bartchy, director of the Center for the Study of Religion at UCLA, "They're looking for high-profile people to say positive things about them, because they are so eager to be considered a legitimate religion, and because of all the problems they're having abroad." Germany, for example. And academics apparently have their own appeal: Bartchy said that high-ranking Scientologists had approached him and sent him materials in an attempt to "woo" him. (When asked about this, Parkin wrote Salon: "Professor Bartchy has told us that he gets many questions from students about Scientology and that he was happy to receive the information we have provided to help him answer them. I think you are mischaracterizing what, if anything, he may have told you to put your own spin on it. Professor Bartchy has always been very cordial with the people from the Church with whom he has spoken.")
Cruise, who is 42, has been a member of the church since around the time of Hubbard's death in 1986. (His first marriage, from 1987 to 1990, was to actress Mimi Rogers, also a Scientologist. His second marriage, from 1990 to 2001, was to Nicole Kidman, who is not a Scientologist.) Until recently, however, he almost never discussed his membership publicly.
That started to change a few years ago, when Cruise co-sponsored a Scientology detoxification center near ground zero in Manhattan. Last year, he had a Scientology tent set up on the set of "War of the Worlds." He began openly boosting Narconon, the church's drug rehabilitation program. And then last December, he was presented with the Freedom Medal of Honor by David Miscavige, chairman of the board of the Religious Technology Center, one of the church's elite committees and, according to Melton and others, Hubbard's hand-chosen successor.
This spring, Cruise kicked things into high gear. He Zorba-ed Oprah's couch, and then he worried about his "Endless Love" costar Brooke Shields' mental health, criticizing her publicized use of antidepressants to battle postpartum depression and implying they might have caused her career to decline (Scientologists strongly oppose the use of antidepressants and other behavior-modifying drugs). He plopped a Details reporter on the back of his futuristic new motorcycle and sped her to three different Scientology facilities, where he extolled the faith -- for six hours. In an interview he and Steven Spielberg gave to the German paper Der Spiegel in April, Cruise defended Scientology, saying: "I'm a helper. For instance, I myself have helped hundreds of people get off drugs. In Scientology, we have the only successful drug rehabilitation program in the world."
Then he burst into full Tom Joad mode: "If someone wants to get off drugs, I can help them," he declared to the interviewer. "If someone wants to learn how to read, I can help them. If someone doesn't want to be a criminal anymore, I can give them tools that can better their life. You have no idea how many people want to know what Scientology is."
When he was asked by Entertainment Weekly this month why he'd suddenly become so vocal, he insisted: "What choice do I have?" Then he declared: "People are being electric-shocked. Kids are being drugged. People are dying." In the same interview he supported the Scientology claim that psychiatry is a "Nazi science" and advanced several erroneous myths, which the E.W. editors helpfully pointed out in brackets:
"Jung was an editor for the Nazi papers during World War II. [According to Aryeh Maidenbaum, the director of the New York Center for Jungian Studies, this is not true.] Look at the experimentation the Nazis did with electric shock and drugging. Look at the drug methadone. That was originally called Adolophine. It was named after Adolf Hitler. [According to the Dictionary of Drugs and Medications, among other sources, this is an urban legend.]"
Cruise may now feel free to counsel others with a rare degree of authority. But sadly, Holmes may not be able to benefit much: The church forbids its OTs, even celebrities like Cruise, to discuss what they're learning with lower members. Indeed, OTs are not allowed to discuss their secret knowledge even with each other.
Asked why he couldn't discuss the details of OT teachings with anyone, including his peers, the current Scientologist said: "It's confidential. And that's the way that Mr. Hubbard wanted it. They're not ready for it."
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