Chris Owen on Scientology

Miscellaneous Writings

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Ron's Underpants [part 1]

< Ron's Underpants [part 2]

Ron's Underpants [part 3]

Ron's Underpants: a visit to Saint Hill

by Chris Owen

Fromco@romeo-klive.nvg.unit.no (Chris Owen)
SubjectRon's Underpants: a visit to Saint Hill [part 2]
Date1996/11/05
Msg-ID<55o6o0$qrd@due.unit.no>
Newsgroupsalt.religion.scientology

(In the previous part, I described Saint Hill and its environs; we had got as far as my wait in the reception area for a guided tour. The story continues…)

After about five minutes, a young woman (an orgette?), whom I shall call Alison — she was rather sweet and I don't want to embarrass her unduly — came out from a side door to greet me. Introductions, handshakes, etcetera. After I'd filled in a questionnaire, she asked me if I'd ever read an[y] Hubbard books. I said yes, and reeled off a list. (Looking at my database, I see that I have 145 catalogued, but I obviously didn't go through the whole list at the time: I wanted a tour today!) She was surprised, startled even, but I think it was a good thing to flag up in advance the fact that I'd read up on the subject: it allowed me to short-circuit many of the usual dissemination routines (yes, I know them well) and ask questions about the points which were of the most interest to me.

We set off through the north door towards the wing housing the Hubbard Academy of Scientology, where the Saint Hill Special Briefing Course (TM) is taught, all 400-odd lectures included. At this point I should perhaps do an ASCII doodle to illustrate the internal layout of the Castle. It was a sort of reverse-Tardis, I think: it feels *smaller* on the inside than the outside. The map is purely from memory and reproduces what I saw, so I couldn't describe it as 100% accurate. In some cases I've inferred the existence of rooms from doors which I saw, but didn't pass through, so the internal layout probably lacks some accuracy. I've labelled the chief features in the order in which I saw them. 

====================================================================

              ( )
    E         |-|-------( )
              | |       |
   /|\        | |       |                     ( )________( )
    |         | |-|-----( )                    |\--------/|
    |         | | | 5a |                       |          |
    |         | |-|----|                       |   10     |
              | | | 5b |                       |          |
              | | |    |                       |----------|
              |4|-|----|           1           |          |
              | | |    |                       |    9     |
              | | |    |                       |          |
              | |-|----|                       |   |------|
              | |   |  |                       |  |-      |
              | | 6 |  |     /---\        _    |  |  11   |
              | |___|__|____(_____)______(3)___|  |       |
              |                           |----|  --------|
              |-|--|-|----|---|     2          |          |
                |  | | 7  | 8 |           |    |          |
                |  | |    |   |   |---|   |    |    12    |
                |  | |  |-|---|---|---|---|----|          |
                |  | |  |                      |          |
                |  | |  |                      |----------|
                |  | |  |
                |--| |--|

 1: The Courtyard
 2: The entrance hall, with Reception
 3: L. Ron Hubbard's office
 4: Cloister
 5: SHSBC (TM) rooms - 5a is Practical, 5b is Theory
 6: HGC Auditing Room(s)
 7: Hubbard Guidance Centre (HGC)
 8: Possibly Qual.  Didn't go further than the waiting area.
 9: The Refectory (canteen)
10: The Great Hall
11: Study room of some description
12: "Sales office" (my term).  Div 6?

   Not marked are the outbuildings, such as the sauna, chapel, etc.


====================================================================

I'll try to reconstruct my tour as exactly as I can. It's not quite the same as doing it yourself — I'll come back to that later — but, and this is particularly for the benefit of Our American Cousins, a reasonable description should give a flavour of it.

The Castle is quite plush inside (which is where its medieval antecedants fall down a bit — I didn't see a single rush-strewn floor or stinking garderobe, or even a rat. Most disappointing!) The first destination was the north wing, which my guide said had been built in 1985. A long corridor, called the Cloister, runs almost the whole length. A curious feature along the walls was the row of maybe a dozen or more carved lions' heads, each one standing guard over a stone protrusion filled with sand and a great number of cigarette butts. Either they don't get emptied very often, or there are some very nervy students at Saint Hill…

On the south side of the Cloister is a row of doors — we went through one to enter a small antechamber in front of two more doors. Above these was the word "Practical". It was quite noisy (and busy) inside — there were, at a guess, perhaps 25 people, of all ages from teens up to pensionable age. The door was opened by a girl who appeared to be not much older than her early teens — maybe 12 or 13. At any rate, a wide variety of people of different ages and with both sexes well represented. One curiosity was that I don't recall seeing any non-Caucasians, though there must have been a couple of hundred people in the Castle building.

The people inside the Practical room were doing a variety of things. My attention was immediately drawn to a man, a few yards from the entrance door, who was sitting in a chair with a book in his lap, having an impassioned debate with a wall. "What's that?", I whispered to Alison. "He's applying LRH Study Tech," she replied; "LRH found that by giving information to a wall you can learn how to communicate better." (Something like that; I'm paraphrasing.) Other people were practicing the use of the E-Meter or were performing the TRs (Training Routines).

After a couple of minutes observing the scene we left and went next door to "Theory". Not surprisingly, this was the closest thing I saw to a library. Students were reading manuals and course materials, with racks on the walls holding what I presume were commonly-referenced bulletins and papers. Like any library anywhere, the students glared at the unwelcome intruders and we beat a quick retreat.

On the way back to the central area, we looked in at an auditing room. Two people (a man and a woman, I think) were setting up shop for a session: the man disentangling the E-Meter leads, with a case folder on the desk next to him, the woman composing herself for the coming session. We left quietly.

At the back of the north end of the Castle are some long, thin blocks housing small auditing rooms off a surprisingly narrow corridor. Alison took me into an empty one, to show me an E-Meter. She didn't actually demonstrate it — I'd already seen a demonstration back in London — but I was able to ask a few questions, in particular how dependent the meter was upon how strongly the cans were being gripped. Very little, apparently: varying one's grip produces a characteristic read which a trained auditor can recognise and discount.

Thereafter we went out of the back side of the castle and down a very muddy path to a sauna, with the word "Purification" above the doorway. It was a small, one-storey building divided into male and female halves. No men were in the sauna, but a couple of sweating women waved at me through the steamed-up porthole in the door. I waved back, feeling a little silly. Alison was thoughtful enough to show me a genuine Scientology Toilet (TM) — not, for once, an invention of L. Ron Hubbard but created by Thomas Crapper, Esq. Not even Hubbard had his destiny spelt out quite that clearly…

Back in the castle, we walked up the south wing (the first to be built) to the Great Hall and Refectory. The Great Hall is a large, pillared hall with a stage at one end. It looks and feels rather like an up-market school hall, which probably isn't too far off the mark considering its purpose. On the day I was there, several people were rolling up dust sheets and packing away projection screens and lighting equipment. Alison told me that on the previous Friday, over 3,000 people had been at the Manor to attend the annual gathering of the International Association of Scientologists.

By this time, it was lunchtime — I could not resist the possibility of having a Scientology Lunch (TM) at The Refectory. Before anyone asks, no, I did not see any rice and beans. In fact, I saw no hot food at all — instead, lots of chocolate bars, fizzy drinks and bottles of vitamins and GUK. The service wasn't up to much either, but then again, it's a rare canteen where the service is good.

Alison had been away preparing a video for me — a 45-minute interview with L. Ron Hubbard which had been filmed in 1966. It was the first time I had ever seen Hubbard as he would have appeared in the flesh and one could not help but note his bullishness and good humour (though his body language was distinctly nervous). Other than that, what he said was pretty much his standard line in the mid-1960s and there were no real eyebrow-raisers (other than his claims to have slept with Mongolian bandits and to have been preparing a trip to Greece just before Dianetics took off, both of which were news to me).

After the interview, Alison took me downstairs ("is this the castle dungeon?", I asked) to "reg" me — that is, to persuade me to sign up for a course. I explained that Tottenham Court Road's efforts to reg me had bounced off, that I was for now interested primarily in the phenomenon of Scientology rather than in becoming part of it, and that there was in any case no point in my signing up for a Saint Hill course as the transport would be too difficult. She accepted this with a good grace and handed me a brochure detailing the various courses available, asking me to contact them if I had any queries. This was a marked contrast to the almost desperate insistence of the "regger" at TCR and left me with a far better taste in my mouth — there are few things worse than a bad salesman.

That concluded my tour of the Castle. I'll try to sum up my impressions.

The place has a curious atmosphere. It feels rather like an Oxbridge college (even the architecture gives that vague impression) — an earnest group of students hard at work (in this case, saving the planet, by their own lights) but nonetheless with a genuine community spirit. The English are an anally polite people in ordinary circumstances, but the people at Saint Hill were polite beyond belief. A little anecdote will serve to illustrate this. At one point on my tour, I went through a door and held it open for a passing Scientologist. He said, "Thank you!" (in a condition of Enthusiasm, evidently…). I was somewhat taken aback and said "Thank you!". To which he replied: "Thank you!". It got somewhat repetitive after that point and I was left wondering whose social conditioning was the stronger…

As this will be of interest to people on this newsgroup, I'd better also say something about the alleged unpleasant aspects of Saint Hill. I saw most of the castle (as my plan indicates) and I saw nothing out of the ordinary, unless you count the man talking to a wall — and millions of Jews head to Jerusalem every year to do just that. I saw one fellow in blue overalls who was shuffling around cleaning and looking glum. He may have been in the RPF, I don't know — there was no visible indication of his position — but I have yet to see a cleaner who doesn't look glum. Neither incident was beyond reasonable explanation.