Authors: Jenna Miscavige Hill
We got calluses and blisters. We had cuts and bruises. Our hands lost feeling when we plunged them into the frigid water of the creek bed for rocks. When we pulled weeds from the scorched summer earth, our hands burned from the friction and stung from the nettle. The conditions we worked under would have been tough for a grown man, and yet any complaints, backflashing, any kind of questioning was instantly met with disciplinary action.
However hardened the adults who demanded the labor were, the bottom line was that the beliefs in Scientology itself enabled it. In the eyes of Scientology, we weren’t kids; we were Thetans, just the same as adults and capable of the same responsibilities. The only difference was that our bodies were younger.
We
were not necessarily younger, just our bodies were. So, the fact that we were children was irrelevant. I knew this was the thinking, so when I felt like it was just too hard or too much, I figured there was something wrong with me and that I would need to toughen up, however wrong that conclusion was.
My insecurity was only reinforced by the adults and the older kids around me, who would call me a slacker and tell me to toughen up.
When I look back and consider why I didn’t rebel, the reality was that doing so would have just made life harder. If I didn’t follow the rules, I would have been separated from the group, not allowed to talk to my friends, forced to make up for my behavior, not allowed to have libs, or attend special ceremonies and events. The only place to go from not following rules was back to following rules. Insubordination would only make it harder for me to graduate and leave the Ranch.
I
F OUR MORNINGS AS
C
ADETS WERE ABOUT WORK AND LABOR,
then our afternoons were about schooling.
When decks ended, we had lunch and cleanup, followed by schooling, which began around one-forty-five. Our academic education encompassed the usual subjects: math, geography, reading, spelling, and history, but we were expected to learn the subjects on our own, using textbooks and checksheets that were assigned to us, not from a formal lesson given by a teacher. In fact we didn’t even use the word “teacher” because it had been replaced by “course supervisor.” Similarly, the name “classroom” had been replaced with the name “course room,” based on an L. Ron Hubbard policy letter aptly titled, “What Is a Course?”
During our course period, we were now required to get a daily meter check, to be administered by a supervisor. The supervisor would use an LRH invention technically called an electro-psychometer, but everybody called it the E-Meter. The person being assessed held two soup cans. Then, a tiny electrical current was passed through the cans into his body as he was asked questions. The E-Meter had a needle, and after each question, the needle would fluctuate; those movements were then interpreted by the person operating the machine. By carefully watching the motions of the needle, the operator supposedly could figure out whether someone was telling the truth. The idea was that the E-Meter could locate moments in your subconscious that you might not be aware of, but that needed to be discussed. These moments would then have to be addressed with Scientology auditing. In other words, the E-Meter was viewed as a tool that helped the auditing process.
The daily meter checks were used to see if we had come across any words in our studies that we didn’t fully understand. In Scientology, there was the belief that if you encountered a word in the text that you didn’t understand and you continued to study past that word, it would cause you to fail in your studies and in life. LRH said that trying to study past a misunderstood word was the prime factor in stupidity and was at the root of all wrongdoing and misbehavior that might lead to criminality. As LRH wrote, “Reading on past a word that one does not understand gives one a distinctly blank feeling, a washed-out feeling, a not there feeling, and a sort of nervous hysteria can follow that.” This, he said, could produce a “blow,” which could make you give up on your studies or leave the classroom.
Clearing a word consisted of finding the correct definition in the dictionary, then using it in sentences until you were comfortable with it. The process would be repeated with each of the remaining alternate definitions of the word, including any synonyms and idioms. God forbid that, during the process of learning these various definitions and origins of the word, you came across another word inside the definition you didn’t understand. This would cause word chains, which meant there were even more words to clear, and you could be piled high in dictionaries for several hours just so you didn’t fail your meter check. You also had to know etymologies.
If you flunked your meter check, you were required to start at the beginning of your course and write down and clear every word you didn’t know the meaning of. Then, you were required to restart your course from the first misunderstood word you found.
I really disliked meter checks; they made me extremely nervous. They were done in front of the entire course room, and everyone heard if you flunked. The course supervisor would ask:
“In your recent studies, have you encountered any word or symbol that you didn’t fully understand?”
Then, she would expectantly look down at the E-Meter to see whether you had passed or flunked. If you flunked, she’d let the whole class hear it.
Aside from the meter checks, the course supervisor offered little to no guidance. Any time you didn’t understand something in your text, she would ask you what word you didn’t understand, instead of helping you to figure it out. The thinking was that if people couldn’t understand what they were reading and were asking for explanations, this meant that they’d read a misunderstood word. A supervisor explaining it was doing them a huge disservice, because passing by misunderstood words led to failure. Not surprisingly, I started to hate school. Before becoming a Cadet, I had always been a pretty smart kid with a love for reading, but it didn’t take long for these tedious and robotic instruction methods to discourage me. Whatever educational value there may have been in learning the definitions of different words was undermined by the stunted and impractical process of the learning itself. Even though I’d been able to read and write at a very young age, all the focus on individual words caused me to lose interest in both.
The E-Meter checks were particularly nerve-racking for me, and I went to great lengths to avoid them. No one could be meter checked if he was in the middle of clearing a word, so I developed a system to get around meter checks by always having a dictionary open, pretending I was looking up a word and using it in sentences. While my system saved me the embarrassment of flunking meter tests, it didn’t help me get through my studies. It was a complete distraction; I became so tied up in understanding the meaning of words that I actually wasn’t able to understand the bigger text that I was supposed to be reading. I would sometimes ask my friends to explain certain concepts to me, but we were not allowed to talk to other students. If we did, we would often be yelled at in front of everyone across the course room, possibly even sent to the Ethics Officer.
Academic studies went from one-forty-five until six, with one fifteen-minute break. We were allowed to grab a snack, either something we bought at the canteen, or an orange or apple, which was free. We could also play in the playground that we had built. After break, there was another roll call before classes resumed. Some days, we had a forty-five-minute physical education class, which was probably the least structured thing we did. Once a week, a fitness trainer would come to the Ranch and give us a physical fitness test. Since we were all in good shape from the deck work, though, passing was not a problem. On the days that the fitness trainer wasn’t there, we did whatever came to mind. Some people played soccer or volleyball, but there were no set teams, no coaches, and, usually, the sixteen-year-old boys were playing sports. It was impossible for a young girl to play on the same team without getting trampled, which I learned from experience. So like many others my age, I just gave up and would go to a room where we would all do so-called gymnastics or aerobics.
D
INNER AND CLEANUP WERE BETWEEN SIX AND SIX FORTY-FIVE,
after which point our Scientology studies would begin. While our academic studies focused on subjects meant to supplement our Scientology studies, these evening sessions were tied to the actual introductory courses of Scientology. Of course, by that point in the day, exhaustion often set in. By the time we began these studies, we’d already been going for more than twelve hours.
Like our academic studies, these course periods were crowded with forty or so people per room. Students were on different levels, so some kids would be working on drills, while others were listening to audiotapes of LRH lectures, making models in clay, or reading LRH books and policies. We worked at our own pace, using a checksheet to show what we’d accomplished.
The courses that we took covered many different aspects of Scientology, from learning about the Thetan, mind, body relationship to understanding the importance of misunderstood words. We also took what was called the Children’s Communications Course. It had been adapted from an adult course designed to teach older Scientologists how to audit, although a lot of it had been lost in the adaptation. The communications courses had various Training Routines or TRs, which were supposed to perfect communication. They were done in succession, from TR-0 through TR-4. The goal of the TRs was to help us isolate and practice various communication skills. Some were long practical drills to help us confront adversity and distraction.
For all the TRs, we were paired with a person assigned to be our drill mate, called our twin. In TR-0, we were instructed to sit in chairs facing each other pretty much knee to knee. One of us was the coach and the other was the student. We had to look at each other until we were comfortable, not moving, not blinking excessively, not smiling, not looking away, just staring. The stated aim was to learn how to face another person without anxiety but, in actuality, it felt more like a mindless staring contest. In time, the stare would morph into a hypnotic trance, as the person across from me always blurred into a gauzy haze of lines and colors.
Next was TR-0 Bullbait, by far the hardest one to pass. We again sat facing each other, only this time, instead of silent stares, we had to endure our coach making fun of us, saying joking or insulting things. No matter what was said, we were supposed to stay stone-faced. The other kids in the course room could hear the bull-baiting, so of course they’d laugh, too, making it almost impossible to stay focused. The objective of TR-Bullbait was to learn how not to react, but it was never clear to me why it was so important not to laugh at things that were funny. At times, it was hard to maintain composure, let alone not break out into loud laughter.
Oddly enough,
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
was an integral part of TR-1 and TR-2. In TR-1, called “Dear Alice,” we read passages from Lewis Carroll’s
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
out loud in order to practice making ourselves heard without over- or under-projecting. It was our twin’s job to flunk us, literally announcing the word “flunk” at every mistake. TR-2 was the extension of “Dear Alice.” In this exercise, one person would read random quotes from
Alice in Wonderland,
and the other would acknowledge that he had, indeed, heard him by saying “thank-you,” or “good” every time. This acknowledgement was important, because that was how Auditors were supposed to let pre-Clears know that they have been heard during an auditing session.
At the time, the exercises didn’t feel strange. In retrospect, these TRs were bizarre. TR-3 was an exercise focused on the technique of getting a typical question answered. The student would ask questions, “Do birds fly?” or “Do fish swim?” and the coach was supposed to try to distract the student by deliberately saying unrelated things like “Well, dogs fly,” or “I’m cold,” thereby forcing the student to repeat the question. The whole exercise was a cycle looping over and over again—until the coach decided to give the correct response.
TR-4, Handling Originations, had us practice keeping our twin on topic. For example, we would still ask, “Do birds fly?” But our twin was not supposed to answer the question, instead saying something off topic, such as “I need a tissue.” We would then say, “Okay, here you go,” and hand over a tissue. We’d immediately return to our original question, “I will repeat the question. Do birds fly?” and so forth.
All the TRs were grounded in repetition and were supposedly meant to teach us about how to control communication. I truly believed the goal was to improve our communication skills, but the monotonous, repetitive nature of them in many ways had the opposite effect. I began to feel the need to look right at someone when I talked to them or to make sure I acknowledged everything he said. In reality, the TRs made me feel like it was wrong to react or express my emotions. In our everyday life, if we started to get upset by something someone said or did, we were told “Get your TRs in.” I was supposed to be in control of my emotions at all times, and the courses helped me to do that, even if that meant burying those emotions inside me.
Although the TRs seemed to encourage uniformity in our interactions, it was apparent that the adults at the Ranch believed taking these courses at such a young age would make us better Sea Org members in the future. We were people who grew up with the technology of Scientology, so our parents and other adults were excited and even a little envious that we were being exposed to this stuff so young. It was almost like a privilege they never had.
At nine, our Scientology study period would end. We then had to fill out Student Point Slips, which were essentially point-based progress reports for each day. For example, reading one page of an LRH policy was worth ten points and each definition we cleared in the dictionary was three points. We would then total our points and mark our number on a daily graph to see whether we were up or down from the previous day. If we were down, we would be first in line the following day for our daily meter check.