Inside Scientology by William S Burroughs

Title: Books / Inside Scientology
Date: Thursday, 26 October 1972
Publisher: Rolling Stone
Author: William S. Burroughs

"I am putting you in a Condition of Liability for Out Tech," he tells her.

She goes out weeping to Ethics.

Now he is standing behind my chair.

"You're in a Condition of Danger," he tells me.

"That's it!" barks a sulky Sea Org lieutenant standing in the doorway with the Public Ethics Officer. The one I call the Pig Woman.

"Everybody line up for a Sec Check."

When my turn comes I pick up the cans.

"Do you consider St. Hill a safe environment?"

"Yes, of course I do."

"There's a read here. What do you consider this could mean?"

"Well we are surrounded by suppressives. It frightens me to think of those devils all around us."

I was learning.

I remember someone named Polly Stathis who, with eight other high criminals, showed the clearing course to a psychiatrist, RON put out a Fair Game Order on them in [?]

No amnesty may ever cover them.

Any Sea Org member contacting them is to run R-2-45.

If they ever appear in any Org they are to be run on reverse processes. (Reverse processes according to RON can drive someone insane.)

They may be tricked, lied to or destroyed.

They are fair game.

I remember a young Zen Hippie thrown out of the cottage in the middle of the night for saying he preferred Zen to Scientology.

I remember a bulletin that anybody who is discovered through auditing to be smoking pot will be turned over to the authorities . . . ("What kind of fink outfit is this?" . . . I hastily suppressed the thought.)

I remember one weekend after a few drinks confiding certain doubts about Scientology to a supposed friend.

"They'll wring it out of me on the next Sec Check," he sobbed . . . "Why don't you go straight to Ethics and make a clean breast of it?"

I remember some grim old biddy dragging me into a broom closet (all the auditing rooms were full, as usual) and asking me on the E-Meter: "Do you have any unkind thoughts about L. RON HUBBARD . . . That reads . . . What do you consider this could mean?"

"He's so beautiful he dazzles me. I can't help resenting it sometimes . . ."

In the words of Celine . . . "All this time I felt my self-respect slipping away from me and finally completely gone. As it were, officially removed . . ." Like an anthropologist who has, after unspeakable indignities penetrated a savage tribe l was determined to hang on and get the big medicine if I had to fuck the sacred crocodile. I was lining up what allies I could muster and even [?] as they say, unmocked the Pig Woman. But I was ordered for a Joberg because I rock-slammed on the question, "What would have to happen before Scientology worked on everybody?" (I could not confront it.)

The Joberg which is published for the first time in Inside Scientology consists of 104 questions about every criminal activity you could conceive of.

"Have you ever kept a baby farm?"

Each question has to be cleaned and this Joberg took three weeks because there were so many students up for a Joberg and so few review auditors. Three weeks sitting in a small waiting room on straight-back chain reading science fiction you learn to be wary of the fink with a big smile who sidles up to you and asks,

"What do you think of the new attestation order?"

"I'm sure RON knows what he is doing."

And it's a good thing to scream out as if you just couldn't contain yourself, "Thank you Ron!" whenever you pass an Ethics Officer or a Sea Org member.

We who considered ourselves politicals kept apart from common criminals and fuckups. That one is guilty of drunken auditing besides which she is the worst old bore this side of California.

The Public Ethics Officer prowls in and out.

"I hear some of you guys have been discussing your cases and nattering."

One of the politicals, who has been in the movement since 1945 and seen all the old comrades get the axe, tells me he is there to prove that RON has betrayed the revolution. This dangerous confidence unnerves me completely. Even to hear such a statement compromises one beyond redemption.

Lunch break. The canteen is filthy the sandwiches soggy. The soft drink machine is in a Condition of Liability for being broken. Cart it off to Ethics. Several violators, dirty and unshaven with gray rags around their arms, petition for signatures so they can get back in and spend some more money.

"William Burroughs, report to Ethics."

They want me to disconnect from Mr. Bradly Mr. Martin, a character in my own writing. Well, he was getting old in any case.

So back to the Joberg . . .

"Have you ever hidden a body?"

"Of course not."

"There's a read here, what do you consider this could mean?"

Sharp and clear on screen I see myself hiding a body in some ancient Near Eastern alley the smell of the alley and the feel of another time.

"I think it's Whole Track."

"In this life have you ever hidden a body?"

"No."

"That is clean."

These film glimpses will occur in auditing. I don't say you are remembering another life but you are remembering something. A writer always gets his pound of flesh and a number of scenes later used in The Wild Boys were remembered on the E-Meter. Later l was able to obtain the same results through self-auditing.

After the Joberg and two more reviews, all of which were obligatory and carried out at my expense, I finally arrived at the Advanced Org in Edinburgh for the clearing course. A hulking CIA type gave me a final Sec Check.

"Have you ever known any Communists personally?"

"Oh yes, lots of them and CIA men too . . ."

"Are you withholding anything?"

"I don't think so."

"That reads."

Finally I had to confess the truth.

"I have made magic against RON."

"What made you do it?"

"Suppressives, of course. They wanted to keep me from RON."

"Your needle is floating."

The Clearing Course consists of a series of contradictory propositions and running this material does give a certain immunity to contradictory commands. So when some one says . . .

"Creating me to be a spirit to be a God destroying you to be a body to be an animal . . ."

You just look at him and say . . . "I'm floating."

Scientology is a model control system, a state in fact with its own courts, police, rewards and penalties. It is based on a tight ingroup like the CIA, Islam, the Mormons, etc. Inside are the Rights with the Truth. Outside are the Commies, the Infidels, the Unfaithful, the Suppressives. Rarely has this formula been expressed with such consummate effrontery, like you go into a store to buy a suit the clerk puts you in a Condition [?] your arm and petition the entire store to let you back in so you can buy something.

How does Hubbard do it? With the E-Meter of course. The E-Meter is among other things a reliable lie detector in expert hands. The CIA also uses lie detectors and runs Security Checks on all personnel. With this simple device any organization can become a God from whom no thought or action can he hidden.

The E-Meter is also a bio-feedback device, and since it passes a small voltage through the brain and the repetitive commands of auditing direct attention to certain brain areas, it is a form of electric brain stimulation. This may account for the valid pictures and films that do sometimes occur in auditing.