Going Clear

I watched most of the HBO documentary “Going Clear” last night and then watched the last bit on my lunch hour. For those who aren’t familiar with it, the film talks with former high-ranking Scientologists about their experiences in Scientology. It has really affected me in ways I hadn’t expected. Most of all, it helped me understand perhaps a little better how controlling organizations work and why we allow them to exert control over ourselves. I wrote down some of the quotes that resonated with me, probably because I see how these things have applied in my own life.

You get this phobia inducement that if I leave, it’s all going to go down the tubes. When you’re in the organization, all the good that happens to you is because of Scientology, and everything that isn’t good is your fault.

How many times have I heard that, if I was having problems, they were a result of me not trying hard enough or not having enough faith or not being humble enough?

You begin to believe that you need the organization to survive, to have any hope of a decent life.

Your future, your eternity, all depends on you going up the Bridge. It’s scary. It’s kinda like Christianity with hell. If they don’t have the Bridge, they can’t go free. They don’t believe they can get it anywhere else.

What happens is that you no longer trust yourself to live your life authentically. You adopt someone else’s script for your life. “You take on a kind of a matrix of thought that is not your own.”

A lot of controlling organizations have a sort of “milk before meat” approach, where you have to prove your worthiness over time before you can be trusted with the deeper truths, the bigger covenants and commitments.

I finally get to OT 3, and they give me the secret materials, which I’ve been hearing about all this time. They’re hand-written by [L. Ron] Hubbard. You have to keep them in a locked briefcase, be very cautious, because if this gets out, it’s dangerous to people. It could actually do them harm if they are not adequately prepared. And I read it, and it doesn’t make any sense. … This garbled story that didn’t make sense. I remember for one fleeting second thinking maybe it’s an insanity test–maybe if you believe this, they kick you out. Maybe that’s it. That, of course, is not the case. They talk about the fact, you know, that the earth was at such-and-such trillions of years ago, and this guy, this space guy … galactic overlord, this was a prison planet, and people being caught and captured and being brought to planet Earth … and then put them in volcanoes and then blow them up with A-bombs … Whoa! I studied geography in school. Those volcanoes didn’t exist 75 million years ago. … And we have these lost souls all over us, and we have to get rid of them, and I’m going, What the f*** are you talking about? I’m down for the self-help stuff, I’m down for, OK, I can be clear, I can get rid of the negative emotions, but what the f*** is this?

And for many people, when the big reveal comes, it’s not only a bit underwhelming but a little, well, silly. But by that point, you’re in, and it doesn’t really matter. You’re willing even to take physical and emotional abuse:

Initially , you’re like, “This is absurd. This is nuts.” And then you kinda settle in and go, “Well, obviously, I need to deal with something that I’m not facing. So perhaps this is–they’re doing this to make me better.”

After all, everyone else seems to be happy, and you don’t want to seem like the one loser who doesn’t get it. So you tell everyone else you’re happy, too, even if you’re miserable.

All Scientologists are full of shit. You know, they lie. “Aw, I’m doing great! You gotta get on seven.” You know, and they’re f***ing–“I’ve got a f***ing migraine right now, and I’ve never felt so shitty!” You know, that’s the f***ing life.

You become quite adept at rationalizing even the worst things, and you blame yourself for not “getting it,” for not seeing the good and the blessings everyone else sees.

Those years of introspection eventually led me to sincerely considering that I was so bad that I couldn’t confront how bad I was. I didn’t know it at the time, but a depression set in that was with me for years, and the worst thing that was LRH kept ordering me to more auditing. I had to find swords that were stuck in me–hypothetical swords, imaginary swords that were causing all this pain. This auditing went on and on. It wasn’t doing any good. I should have been left alone. But everything that I took offense with, I rationalized almost immediately. I had to. I could not continue in this game of Scientology without explaining away what he was doing. It got to be a way of believing, and every one of us got into that. [L. Ron Hubbard] was the master who did it to us, and we took it on and then we did it to ourselves. And I learned from it, that I would never ever again, you know, go–do the bidding of a tyrant.

“We took it on and we did it to ourselves.” That made my stomach hurt and had me close to tears.

Some people even rationalize dishonesty (or “theocratic ethics,” in another context):

Because Scientology is perceived and conceived by Scientologists as being the salvation for mankind, you can have people that lie with a very straight face if they believe that what they are doing is protecting the Church of Scientology.

And the pain and shame of coming out are devastating.

It’s such a hard thing when you do wake up. You go, “Oh, my God.” Because you have this wave of regrets. I just started to think that maybe my entire life has been a lie. … You just don’t see it happening to you. You justify so much. [T]hey prey on people, suggesting that, you know, you should be able to think for yourself and then tell you exactly how you have to think, or get out. And if you get out, there will be consequences.

In the end, however, we are the ones who do it to ourselves, and that’s what is most devastating to me.

We lock up a portion of our own mind. We willingly put cuffs on. We willingly avoid things that could cause us pain, if we just looked. If we can just believe something, then we don’t have to really think for ourselves, do we? And so I can’t damn these people who aren’t coming out, or who are hiding once they come out because they’re ashamed. You know, I feel the same shame.