Free Inside Scientology by Janet Reitman Page B

wounds, holding consultations on a park bench. He claimed that in 1949, while spending time in Savannah, Georgia, he had continued this research by volunteering at a psychiatric clinic.
    In Arizona, however, Hubbard also played the role of Everyman. He and Mary Sue rented a small house near Camelback Mountain that maintained an open-door policy. "In those beginning days there was not so much a 'belief' in what Hubbard said and claimed, as there was hope that it was true," said Daniels. "We were more on a journey of discovery than following a belief system."
    Having come up with the idea that thetans could move objects with their minds, Hubbard and some of his acolytes sat around the kitchen table, trying to remove the cellophane from a cigarette package by using their "intention beams." Now in her seventies, Daniels, who left Scientology in 1983, laughed to think of it. "We were not successful," she said. "At another time I was in his car with him and we went out into the desert and practiced pulling clouds from the sky. No dice. Pulling oranges from a tree. Fail." But nonetheless, Hubbard could make you feel as if anything you tried would be a success. "He could zap you with admiration, with affinity, with whatever suited him. He had a way of mesmerizing one with subtle repetitive gestures and repetition of words. I think his motivation was obvious—money," she said. "But there was a great deal of idol worship. Some thought him a god."
    In Philadelphia, meanwhile, Helen O'Brien and her husband, John, had opened a branch of the Hubbard Association of Scientologists. By 1953, similar groups had formed in other cities, including London, where Hubbard began to spend an increasing amount of time. All of these organizations were bleeding money.
    Perhaps it was time to try a different approach. They should create a company, independent of the Hubbard Association of Scientologists, but fed by the HAS, Hubbard suggested in a letter to O'Brien, dated April 10, 1953. This new organization, a "clinic" of sorts, would see clients and pay the HAS a percentage of its proceeds, which would go to cover costs. All they'd need to make "real money," he noted, was ten or fifteen preclears a week, who might easily be convinced to pay upwards of $500 for twenty-four hours of auditing. Shrewdly, Hubbard anticipated that the more they charged, the more popular they might become. Hubbard told O'Brien that he'd seen it happen. "Charge enough and we'd be swamped."
    The failure of Dianetics, as Hubbard saw it, had been its democracy: he'd written a book and sold it to the people, and they had taken the techniques and done with them what they wanted. Even Hubbard's onetime lieutenant, A. E. Van Vogt, now had his own Dianetics practice in Los Angeles.Hubbard received none of the profits from this and other similar ventures; neither did he get any credit for coming up with the ideas. He wanted both. Now he could ensure that he got them by turning Scientology into a business. Perhaps the best way to do that was also to make it into a religion.
    "Perhaps we could call it a Spiritual Guidance Center," he suggested to O'Brien.Hubbard described installing attractive desks, outfitting the staff in uniform, and hanging diplomas on the wall. With that, they could "knock psychotherapy into history," he said. A "religious charter" would be necessary to make it stick. "But I'm sure I could make it stick." After all, they were treating the spirit of a person, he said. "And brother, that's religion, not mental science."
    The more he thought about it, Hubbard told O'Brien in his April 1953 letter, the more "the religion angle," as he put it, seemed to make sense. "It's a matter of practical business."
    This reframing from the "mental science" of Dianetics to the religion of Scientology was a typically canny move by Hubbard, which picked up on the national mood. In 1950, more than half of the American population were members of one or another Christian congregation;