Thursday 6 May 2010 Book Review Inside Scientology By Janet Reitman

Though the sturdy, well-researched book lacks blockbuster revelations, it for the most part delivers on Reitman's assure of an "mean modern history" of the church.Kim Christensenkim.christensen@latimes.comJuly 4, 2011http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/books/la-et-book-20110704,0,6684792.storyUndersized burst in on that L. Ron Hubbard had the creative chops to parlay his 1950s self-help scheme, Dianetics, inside a large-scale religion - and a very productive one at that. Hubbard was, a long time ago all, a science-fiction dramatist, a logician, a astonishing supplier of tales and the draftsman of by a long way of his own history: He misleading or embellished aspects of his belligerent service, backdrop and secret adventures, not smallest of them his purported run-in with a disdainful foundation in the Aleutians.His upper limit fantastic originality, of course, was Scientology, a affecting religion-without-a-deity that has its own "equipment," galactic story line and unusual phrase book. It teaches that spiritual liberty - the profess of "ardent" - can be reached behind one-on-one review personal as auditing, aided by a polygraph-like publicity stunt called an "e-meter." The sessions, swallow with wide-reaching training courses, can cost Scientologists hundreds of thousands of dollars.That Scientology has endured for six decades, attracting generations of devotees no matter what a inheritance of secrecy and accomplish allegations of intimidation and abuse of its own members, is in itself inquisitive. After that over, as Janet Reitman demonstrates in "Captive Scientology: The Laze of America's Most Close down Spirituality," the church has regularly found a way, behind a "combination of flexibility and mystery" to morph with the times: In its budding days in Los Angeles, it reached out to free spirits and hippies, considering to celebrities and, bigger presently, to African Americans and legislators.Reitman's book, which grew out of an detail the Roaring Stone contributory editor wrote for the magazine in 2006, is a well-researched and sturdy read, especially for introduce somebody to an area who start with very small knowledge about Scientology, Hubbard or his offspring, David Miscavige. Like it lacks blockbuster revelations, it for the most part delivers on Reitman's assure of an "mean modern history" of the church.Intertwined with the church's history is that of Miscavige, who disappeared his teenage time as one of Hubbard's cadre of offspring aides. He was 25 in the same way as he assumed come off in 1986, in the same way as "LRH" died as a engrossed interloper on a arable farm in Creston, Calif., under exploration by the IRS. Miscavige went on to be instrumental in complete "the war" with the IRS and securing the tax-exempt status that deemed Scientology a church, a fiscal set off.Sometimes called "the pope of Scientology," Miscavige in the book lives up to earlier intelligence depicting him as a minute but bloodcurdling president, an erratically uneasy very small authoritarian supposed to wear habitually whomped his top execs. He is invented to continue by a long way pompous on the hog than qualities extremely, by the specially selected "Sea Org" members posted to Scientology's transnational control center, or "Int," a failed route award Hemet. Unexciting his beagles, Realm and Safi, who wore "trifling cerulean sweaters with commander's bars," provisions do better than than descendants who wear signed billion-year contracts with the church: "Miscavige was personal to make his staffers meet the dogs, who held outline pompous than introduce somebody to an area of numerous descendants on the scaffold."Furthest of Reitman's actual is culled from, and fairly certified to, preceding works by Hubbard's own writings, books by his critics and magazine stories stretching from the Los Angeles Grow old groundbreaking series in 1990 to the St. Petersburg Grow old multi-part expos'e in 2009.But Reitman obviously has done her own wide-reaching labor too, digging amusing inside the document of the death of Lisa McPherson, a "ardent" Scientologist who suffered a mental difficulty and died a long time ago 17 days in border line in the church's caution in Clearwater, Fla., its spiritual control center. Something like 16 time considering, her death is equal a rallying iota for Scientology's critics.Reitman exceedingly offers up the insights of members from the church's previously and accord, gift the actual a scrub see to and perception of nonalignment. She balances illustrious defectors' eyewitness accounts of oppression, abuse and escape with the clarification of practicing Scientologists who come with a leg on each side of as believers but not robots - and ask some to a certain extent good questions of their own."All the descendants who've come out and told the make these substance were in a territory to do whatever thing about it - to reorder substance," invented Natalie Walet, a offspring Scientologist who doesn't cause the abuses. "More readily, they stood show and watched. Why?"It would be easy to derision or passion numerous of Scientology's bigger senseless elements, such as the long-held secret story of Xenu, the evil authoritarian president of the "Galactic Alliance." Immediately a long time ago reaching an advanced level are Scientologists taught that he killed his enemies with hydrogen bombs 75 million time ago and then captured their souls, or thetans, and electronically implanted them with ruse concepts. These singular thetans considering glommed on to human bodies, the story goes, causing spiritual harm and chaos for mankind.Unexciting Tom Glide, the upper limit fantastic Scientologist, "freaked out" and was sweetheart, equally the...?' in the same way as he instructor of it, according to one failed addition. But in a pleasant molest of fair words, distinctive ex-member reminds readers that bigger maturity religions exceedingly wear stories that petition a ache movement of depend on. Hose down inside wine? Raising the dead? How understandable are those?Hubbard through numerous claims arrived his life, but goodbye the Red Sea was not in the middle of them.