The Firm

Somewhere Mama's weeping for her blue-eyed boy.
She's holding little white shoes and that little broken toy.
And he's following a star,
the same one three men followed from the East.
But I hear sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace. - Bob Dylan

Everywhere you look, people are talking Scientology. You'd almost think they'd never heard of Xenu before. And you know what? They probably hadn't. And to know another thing, many of them, even rank and file Scientologists, still haven't.

Certainly Scientology's creed says nothing of the meat of L Ron Hubbard's space opera. Typical of occult orders, it shows an exoteric face to the general public and lower initiates, and reserves esoteric teachings for its inner circle. Its supposed creed is nothing but mealy words of "equality" and "inalienable rights" to such things as freedom of thought and "sanity." Who could argue with that? Well, maybe L Ron Hubbard for one, who said a lot of other things, like "If you really want to enslave people, tell them that you're going to give them total freedom," and whose secret creed has driven higher inititates out of their skulls. Reportedly Tom Cruise, and reputedly only temporarily, counted among that number:

Tom Cruise became psychotic during a secret Scientology initiation in which one is told that rather than being one person, one is composed of thousands of aliens from all over the universe fighting for control of your body. After completing this initiation, known as OT III, Tom appeared sickly with black circles under his eyes and pasty skin. He said he wanted to be away from Scientology for good. He just wanted to go back to Hollywood and his home and be left alone by Scientology. This would not happen; David Miscavige ordered Cruise could not be let go. Scientology worked on Cruise day and night until he finally returned to Scientology.

Miscavige is the Black Pope of Scientology, Chairman of the Board of the "Religious Technology Center," and so heads the organization which "holds the ultimate ecclesiastical authority regarding the standard and pure application of L. Ron Hubbard’s religious technologies."

Here's Cruise snapping a crisp salute to Miscavige at a meeting of the International Association of Scientologists:



Besides suggesting just how impossibly short Miscavige must be, the photograph also demonstrates something of the church's bizarre militarism, which is on prominent display in its naval cadet-like "Sea Org" and the church's intelligence wing, the Office of Special Affairs. Bob Minton, Scientology's "Enemy Number One," describes the Sea Org as "totalitarian" and the OSA as "paramilitary organized Mafia" in possession of "rocket launchers, bazookas, countless other weapons," led by a "management that seeks "world domination."

A portion of the OSA's mandate is described in this policy letter of Hubbard's, where he set forth "the vital targets on which we must invest most of our time":

T1. Depopularizing the enemy to a point of total obliteration.

T2. Taking over the control or allegiance of the heads or proprietors of all news media.

T3. Taking over the control or allegiance of key political figures.

T4. Taking over the control or allegiance of those who monitor international finance and shifting them to a less precarious finance standard.

It's fascinating to consider that Hubbard's pastiche of science fiction and Crowleyania, which can count the berserkers of Manson's Family and the Process Church as its stepchildren, can now contend for Middle American respectability just as has Mormonism, which itself was the creature of a ceremonial magician. And as Mormons, who enjoy a disproportionate representation" in the US intelligence community, Scientologists have formed a peculiar cadre of para-military intelligence.

Curiously, there was "disproportionate representation" of Scientologists in the CIA's remote viewing program. The NSA's Major Hal Puthoff was an "Operating Thetan, Level III" when he took on the the program at Stanford Research Institute in 1972, where he remained until 1985. Puthoff's senior colleague was Ingo Swann, who himself had reached OT VII, then the highest initiatory level of Scientology. (That is, before Hubbard felt assured enough to fulfill his longtime fantasy and introduce OTVIII, the gist of which is Surprise - I'm the Antichrist!) Swann, in fact, was a founder of the Scientology Center in Los Angeles. Pat Price, "widely considered to be the best of the remote viewers," was OT IV.

Alex Constantine writes in Virtual Government:

When Swann joined SRI, he stated openly that fourteen "Clears" participated in the experiments, "more than I would suspect."... The projects at SRI were augmented by a parapsychology team at Fort Meade in Maryland under INSCOM and the NSA. Military intelligence personnel were recruited, including Major Ed Dames, the Psi-Tech founder. General Stubblebine ran the project and broadened it to include tarot and the channeling of "spirits."

Well, perhaps the representation is not so disproportionate after all. According to doctrine, a "clear" Scientologist, free of the infestation of thousands of "body thetans," is alleged to have godlike mastery of the material world, including an ability to operate free of the body. A handy talent for a remote viewer, that.

Hubbard, of course, was with Naval Intelligence at the time he was conjuring with Jack Parsons in the "Babalon Working." Scientology would have it that he was operating undercover, to bust up a black magic ring. What remains hidden in plain sight is not only Scientology's occult legacy, but that of US military intelligence.