Inside Scientology/Dianetics, by Robert Kaufman - Next - Previous

The New York Org

India and "join Nirvana" has given us techniques WHICH ARE GUARANTEED TO GLUE A THETAN TO A BODY AS THOUGH RIVETED AND TIED WITH IRON BANDS.

Marty arranged to me to go to the org to get my grades rehabbed or checked, and a certificate attesting to my release on Grade IV. The New York Org had expanded and now occupied most of the second floor of a midtown hotel. The reception room was dominated by a book counter and an enormous godlike portrait of L. Ron Hubbard ("god's" face, raised at a visionary angle toward the horizon, looked rather bloated and truculent). The place seemed a bit mad, with young people dashing about in the cultists' peculiar state of militant ecstasy.

A young auditor came over and escorted me to a cubicle. He started to rehab my Grades, checking out on the meter the moments of release. His machine-tooled mannerisms put me off. He had only one way of acknowledging, a buttery, unctuous "Thank you" in a light, nasal voice, each "Thank you" an insincere-sounding replica of the last.

Facing him in the cramped cubicle, I had difficulty remembering anything about my previous auditing. He seemed to be running into sticky action on the meter. I hadn't wanted to go to the org in the first place, and the machine was probably registering that fact. After twenty unpleasant minutes, the auditor led me to a room not much larger than the cubicle. A sign above the door said ETHICS. A girl with pigtails and a businesslike air sat at her desk fiddling with an E-meter.

"Pick up the cans. I'll have to do a Search and Discovery," she said brusquely. Presumably I had done something wrong.

"Are you connected to a suppressive person?"

"No," I replied. How could I be? I'd already been through that process with Marty.

"Thank you. I'll check that on the meter. You don't have to reply. Are you connected to a suppressive person? That's clean. Are you connected to a suppressive group? There's a read on that. What do you consider it could be?"

I didn't know what was causing the read but had no intention of trying to get by Ethics with the naive hope of fooling the meter. I searched my brain for an answer. "I used to go to a Zen center for meditation."

"Thank you. Is this the suppressive group?"

"I do a little yoga occasionally."

"Okay, put down the cans," she said. "You'll have to stop mixing practices as long as you're being audited."

"Why should I? I don't do that much meditation or yoga anyway. What harm could they possibly be?"

"Look, when you're finished auditing you can stand on your head if you like, but not while you're being processed. I don't want you doing anything that'll confuse you about what you owe your gains to. Meditation is a kind of looking into your mind, isn't it?"

"Maybe when you've done it for a while. But I haven't."

"You're mixing practices. You'll have to promise to give those other ones up if you want your Grades rehabbed."

"What a minute. `Practices' could apply to a lot of other things. We'd have to go over my whole day from morning to night to figure out what I can do and what I can't. But I'm willing if you have the time."

"Say, are you going to stop mixing practices or aren't you?"

"I'm not giving up anything without a better reason than that."

"Okay. Then we'll just have to chuck it."

"Great," I said, getting up to leave.

"It's just too bad you choose to give up Total Freedom," Ethics said vindictively as I went out the door.

 

Marty phoned me to see how things had gone. When I told him of the disaster, he asked me to write it up so he could launch an investigation of Ethics at the org. I sent him an account, concluding with "Certain people within the organization itself are abusing Scientology and using Scientology to abuse others." I never heard further of my visit to the New York Org or of Marty's "investigation."

 

In October of '67, while the Lancias were still away, I gave my Town Hall debut. The attending music critic, as music critics will, wrote some favorable comments, phrased so that my performance came off as rather undistinguished. Next day, a cousin of mine, who had come to New York for the recital, related a strange story. During intermission, a man approached him and his party and said, "That pianist owes this concert to me and the group I represent." My cousin's description of the man fitted Marty Moussorgsky.

Marty himself showed up at the Lancias' apartment a couple nights later. I confronted him with my cousin's story, and Marty -- always ready to whip out his E-meter -- audited me on my "possible ARC break" with himself and my "definite ARC break" with the music critic. He charged me no fee for this.

Several nights later, Marty phoned. "Look, there's still charge on your concert," he said. "Take a cab up to Empress Green's -- Felicia's friend's -- apartment. Be there in twenty minutes. I have to catch a plane." Within half an hour I was seated in the kitchen of an apartment near Columbia University, being run through an impromptu, or "coffee-house," session, again at no cost. Marty decided that my Dianetic levels weren't "flat." I don't recall the engrams I obligingly served up for him except that even at that time I thought they sounded like sheer fantasy. It wouldn't have been a real "Marty session" without some craziness, and by this time I felt like making my own contribution.

 

I enjoyed Marty's free-wheeling spirit, in an unusual sort of way.


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