But maybe this has everything to do with a cult: a paranoid, insular group that refuses to answer further questions from the press because it hopes to wring as much money from the public as possible and doesn't believe in giving away its secrets for free. It's about a hierarchy that hopes to dominate the world with its propaganda and turn us all into robotic supplicants.
In other words, it's about . . . the movie business.
Dwelling Among the Stars
Who doesn't love John Travolta? Who wouldn't want to be Travolta? He earns $20 million a picture, owns four homes and four airplanes; he jets around the world with his beautiful actress-wife, Kelly Preston, whom he is constantly kissing in the vicinity of tabloid photographers. The couple periodically lands to make movies and pose on magazine covers and promote their movies, giving interviews about how much they love each other.
John has given Kelly a bit part in his pet project. Like him, she'll play one of the Psychlos--the horrible monsters in "Battlefield Earth." The Psychlos are pitiless fascists who have turned Earth into a prison planet in which humans are hunted and killed for sport.
"I have a huge head, and I walk on these stiltlike legs," Preston recently told TV Guide's online edition.
She, too, embraces Scientology, saying it has "cleaned away everything that was unwanted in myself." Other celebrities say the church keeps them off drugs and provides balance in the roller-coaster world of show biz. Newly arrived L.A. dreamers sign up for courses, hoping to make connections that will get them out of those bellhop jobs at the Mondrian and onto the big screen.
Church counseling relies on a battery-powered contraption called an "E-meter"--a lie detector-type device invented by Hubbard that supposedly helps members locate sources of mental and spiritual distress. Scientology says its therapies can make people smarter, healthier, more successful.
It seeks, in Hubbard's words, "a civilization without insanity, without criminals and without war"--an ideal also espoused by Travolta.
But there's a reason the church is often called controversial. In France this month Scientology staff members were convicted of fraud. A German court ruled that Scientology used "inhuman and totalitarian practices." A California appeals court branded its treatment of one member "manifestly outrageous." (His award of $2.5 million for "serious emotional injury" was twice upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, but he has never been able to collect.) Scientology believes such findings are the result of religious intolerance.
Church policy letters show that Scientology wants to eradicate psychiatry and psychology, as well as gain control, or the allegiance, of "key political figures" and the proprietors of "all news media." Its avowed goal is to "Clear the Planet"--that is, to turn everyone into a Scientologist who has achieved the level of "Clear" through Hubbard's books, drills and E-meter.
Celebrities are key to the crusade to clear the planet. Hubbard realized in Scientology's early days that the public adores and mimics celebs--not because they're necessarily intelligent or enlightened, but because they're rich and famous. In 1955--five years after publishing his cornerstone text, "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health"--he ordered followers to bring stars into the fold, knowing their magnetism would attract ordinary pew-packers.
