I’ve watched every episode of the three seasons of Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath (A&E).
This deep dive into Scientology’s history, precepts, abuses, and the personal travails of its adherents is worth your time. It’s an object lesson in gullibility, groupthink, and “you’ve got to be kidding me” supplication.
On the surface, Scientology is a mix of do-good platitudes and self-help therapy that turns out to be intoxicating to some people who seek easy answers to life’s dissatisfactions. Followers are told they will be bettering the world by fixing themselves.
You are promised an immortal soul, which is de rigueur for nearly all religions, but then as added sweetener you are to obtain superhuman powers, and to top it off you are promised the end of most kinds of suffering. It’s a religion focused on “YOU!” Your “engrams,” or your negative remembrances of past experiences (including past lives), are explored through years of expensive auditing sessions that are a combination of confessional and talk therapy.
This would all be just dressed up New Agey spirituality with a limited shelf life if it didn’t have the designation of a religion, which gives all its hokum a special, untouchable perch.
Founded by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard in the 1950s, Scientology won tax exempt status as a church in 1993 after a decades-long battle with the IRS in which Scientologists sued the IRS as well as its leaders personally in a tsunami of nuisance lawsuits. The ceasefire—or, really, surrender—by the IRS, reportedly wiped out a billion-dollar tax bill Scientology owed the government.
The church is notoriously litigious and aggressive toward its apostates and critics. Remini’s show lays bare stories from some ex-Scientologists of withstanding brutal church tactics they describe as aimed at ruining their reputations, relationships, and finances. Their resolve to tell their stories despite the danger is a testament to how much they want to warn others away.
In 2019, CFI West in Los Angeles hosted “HowdyCon,” an annual gathering of ex-Scientologists who celebrate their escape from “the Cult,” as they call Scientology. But the Center for Inquiry’s history with Scientology goes back to the 1970s when it was CSICOP, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. CSICOP became a target after its magazine, The Zetetic (now Skeptical Inquirer) published a well-researched critique of Dianetics, L. Ron Hubbard’s book on mental health.
In internal Church of Scientology documents, it was unearthed that the church designated CSICOP and Zetetic a “Major Target” to be handled “so that they never attack Scientology or Dianetics again.” One way Scientology sought to discredit CSICOP was by sending false claims on CIA letterhead to the New York Times, columnist Jack Anderson, and others that CSICOP was really a CIA front. According to a January 25, 1980, piece in The Globe and Mail, the idea was to sell the media on the notion that the CIA had set up CSICOP as a front group “to discredit any and all psychic phenomena in order to keep this subject under CIA control.”
Wow, a real-life conspiracy against CSICOP, a group that debunks conspiracy theories. Leave it to a science-fiction writer to dream this stuff up.
And speaking of dreaming stuff up, the beliefs of Scientology are about as bizarre as they come.
Scientologists’ creation story involves an elaborate, ancient, intergalactic tale featuring an overlord called Xenu who is responsible for killing multitudes of beings 75 million years ago to address an overpopulation problem. He froze them and brought their bodies to prison planet Earth, dumping them in a volcano where their alien souls, or “thetans,” were released.
Doesn’t this sound like a religion concocted by a science-fiction writer?
And to continue …
These “body thetans” are everywhere; they infiltrate and attach themselves to humans upon birth. They are the cause of psychological distress and trauma in this life and past lives. The process of auditing in Scientology is an effort to clear one’s own immortal thetan and clear the body thetans attached to you.
Once you’ve reached this “Clear” state, you are to become free of all distress. And as an added bonus, you become an uber-human with supernatural powers, such as the ability to move things with your mind.
It comes as no surprise that those ex-Scientologists featured in Remini’s show who reached the top levels described having no supernatural powers and having never seen anyone who did. They were not free of normal human distress either.
But, hey, Scientologists who claim to have supernatural powers should know that easy money awaits. CFI has a quarter-million-dollar prize waiting for them. They just have to prove these powers to our CFI Investigations Group under controlled conditions. We’ve proffered this offer for a long time and so far, no takers.
Wonder why?
Scientology is a very rich church, with assets reportedly well over a billion dollars. As Remini’s show points out, its wealth is partly due to the fact that to get to hear the religion’s fantastical foundational story, you typically first have to fork over about a quarter-million dollars in book purchases and auditing fees and spend years spilling your guts to some Scientologist auditor.
Xenu and his evil reign are the denouement of that arduous and expensive process. A Penny Dreadful story that costs $250,000 to read. Quite a business model.
But wait, thanks to the internet and the uproarious animated series South Park, there is a spoiler available for free. Just take a look at the 2005 “Trapped in the Closet” episode, which helpfully lays out the entire L. Ron Hubbard Xenu tale, with an accompanying caption, “This is what Scientologists actually believe,” so you don’t think it’s all made up for laughs. Also recommended is Alex Gibney’s terrific documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief.
When Scientology believers are asked about this bonkers story, they can rather easily turn the tables by pointing to the implausibility of other religious beliefs. After all, belief in the devil, angels, miracles, flying horses, seer stones, reaching Nirvana after many lifetimes, resurrections, or, of course, an all-powerful, all-knowing, immortal god is no more bizarre when examined objectively.
Score one for Scientology.
The thing that most stands out about the Remini series is the utter normalcy of the people who are ex-Scientologists. They seem intelligent, sensible, rational, and not particularly credulous. Yet the people featured often gave decades of their life to the church, turned over major financial resources, worked for the church for slave wages, and brought in spouses, family, and raised their children in the church.
But at least for some, it seems that reading that super-secret, answer-to-life’s-mysteries story of Xenu and the body thetans was a wake-up call. When they finally snapped out of it, it was pretty devastating. Imagine realizing that your life had been de- voted to a set of claims about the universe and the world that turn out to be complete and utter nonsense.
No one should have to go through it—not in Scientology or, frankly, in any other religion—which is why CFI and Free lnquiry exist.