going-clear-scientology-hollywood-and-the-prison-of-belief-by-lawrence-wright-2

understand the meaning of words, Hubbard writes, “is a sweepingly fantastic discovery
in the field of education and don’t neglect it.”
These last two principles are fundamental to the induction of Scientology itself.
Because the church asserts that everything Hubbard wrote or spoke is inarguably true,
whatever you don’t understand or accept is your fault. The solution is to go back and
study the words and approach the material in a more deliberate fashion. Eventually,
you’ll get it. Then you can move on.
Lauren loved her teacher at Delphi, but the Hubbard method placed the responsibility
of learning almost entirely on the student. For Lauren, her parents’ tumultuous divorce
was a crushing distraction. It seemed to her that no one was paying attention to her,
either at home or at school. She was illiterate until she was eleven. She couldn’t read or
write her own name.
Second-generation Scientologists are typically far more at home with the language
and culture of the church than their parents are. And yet they may nd themselves a
little lost when trying to deal with an uncomprehending society. The rst time Alissa
noticed that she was doing something dierent from most people was when she
performed a Contact Assist. Scientology preaches that if you repeatedly touch a fresh
wound to the object that caused the injury and silently concentrate, the pain lessens and
the sense of trauma fades. If a Scientologist sees a person close his hand in a door, for
instance, a church manual instructs the Scientologist to “have him go back and, with his
injured hand, touch the exact spot on the same door, duplicating the same motions that
occurred at the time of the injury.” There are other kinds of assists that will awaken an
unconscious person, eliminate boils, reduce earaches and back pain, and make a drunk
sober. Instead of crying when she hurt herself, Alissa would quietly redo the action over
and over, until she had drained it of its sting. She noticed that non-Scientologists had no
idea what she was doing. She was also surprised when she went to a friend’s house for
dinner and the family said grace before the meal. It took her a second to realize what
they were doing. In her opinion, God plays a negligible role in Scientology. “I mean,
there’s a spot for it, but it’s sort of a blank spot.” So whenever her friends began to
pray, “I would bow my head and let them have their ceremony.”
Paul was also scarred by the divorce—although, as would often be the case for him, he
would mine the experience for his work. He created a television series, Family Law, that
was based to some extent on his divorce from Diane. He always found more solace and
meaning in his work than he did in his family. Each year he grew more successful, but
the gap between him and his daughters grew wider. They knew him better as a writer
than as a father, and they would puzzle over the fact that he was so cool to them, when
his scripts were often full of emotion. Paul felt guilty about not spending time with the
girls, so he would arrange to bring them to the set and assign them some small task.
Alissa got to do nearly every job in the industry, from wardrobe to production assistant;
she received a Directors Guild card in Canada by the time she was fifteen.
In 1991, Haggis went to a Fourth of July party at the home of some Scientologist
friends. He met a striking actress there named Deborah Rennard. She had grown up in
Scientology. In her early twenties she had studied acting at the Beverly Hills Playhouse