Los
Angeles Times October 10, 1970
Ex-Scientologist Tells of ‘Fear’
Atmosphere
McMaster Accuses
Hubbard of Fostering Spiritual Tyranny Within Organization
By John Dart
One year ago an
articulate but soft-spoken man named John McMaster was extolling the
virtues of Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the worldwide
quasi-scientific "religion."
Appearing on
television talk shows and giving lectures as Hubbard’s personal
representative, McMaster was eminently qualified. He was the first
person to achieve Scientology’s state of "clear," which
purportedly give a person full control of his mental processes.
Now McMaster
describes the Church of Scientology and other organizations run by
Hubbard as engaging in "spiritual tyranny."
"Ron was
always busy getting everybody looking beyond the mulberry bush for a
nonexistent enemy," said McMaster in a recent interview.
Discipline Group
The 43-year old
South African was in Los Angeles for the first time since he resigned
last November from Scientology’s Sea Organization.
Scientology was an
outgrowth of a book, "Dianetics," published in 1950 and
written by Hubbard, a onetime science-fiction writer and Hollywood
screenwriter.
For more than a
decade, working from a yacht in the Mediterranean, Hubbard has
elaborated on psychoanalytic techniques with the "E-meter,"
similar to a lie detector, and the course offering "the road to
total freedom."
The Scientology
organizations have had run-ins with the Food and Drug Administration and
Internal Revenue Service in this country and with some government
agencies in other countries. However, Scientology officials claim that
they have been falsely misrepresented by some disenchanted followers,
government officials and the news media.
London Suburb
World headquarters
is in a London suburb, but a large following exists in the United
States, particularly in Los Angeles where the American Saint Hill
Organization, 2723 W. Temple St., represents the only advance-course
center for Scientology in this country.
McMaster said he
resigned because of "unnecessary harshness" in the
organization "that kept people in a kind of electronic
jitter." He said he also opposed his reassignment from a public
relations mission to the United Nations to service aboard one of the Sea
Organization’s yachts.
McMaster, still
convinced of the value of Scientology’s teachings and analytic
techniques, recently gave some lectures in Phoenix and the Los Angeles
area on behalf of a Dianology organization in Westwood run by Jack
Horner, another ex-Scientologist.
Lecture sponsors
in Phoenix, McMaster said, were told by Scientologists that "a
different spirit was occupying the body of John McMaster." McMaster
said he had heard that explanation used before in Scientology to explain
the changed attitudes of some persons.
A spokesman from
the Church of Scientology, 2005 W. 9th St., denied that the
church has said that of McMaster.
Regarding the
circumstances of McMaster’s resignation, the spokesman said reports
had been made by Scientologists last year that McMaster was
"holding the founder in contempt in public," was becoming
money-motivated and was accused of conduct unbecoming a minister of the
church.
"We started
making every attempt to get him to undergo spiritual rehabilitation, but
these attempts were thwarted," said the spokesman. A telegram was
sent recalling McMaster for rest and spiritual counseling, but no reply
was made, said the official.
Later Expelled
"At that
point he left and went into hiding and tendered his resignation, but not
through proper authorities," said the spokesman. For McMaster’s
"betrayal of trust" and other acts, he was later expelled from
the church, the spokesman said.
McMaster left New
York by freighter to his home in Durban, South Africa, but only after
expressing the hope for some rapprochement with Hubbard.
While in Durban
McMaster said he was approached by Scientologists who offered to give
him some "Class A auditing (interviewing)" free of charge.
"I accepted it as a peace offereing but I asked my mother to come
with me," said McMaster.
"It wasn’t
auditing. It was a security check – they were trying to find some
crime I’d committed," McMaster said.
‘Closed
Book"
"At this
stage, they left me and I realized that Scientology was a closed book
for me," he said.
McMaster said he
has not denounced the techniques of Dianetics and Scientology "and
never will." But the organization in charge has "built a
structure and called it God," he said.
McMaster in
February, 1966 became the first of thousands to achieve
"clear" status.
If McMaster
disagreed with the practices of Scientology, why didn’t he quit
sooner? "I felt that as long as I could get out and deliver the
sane truth, this would show that all this ethics stuff (internal
security) was perfectly unnecessary," he said. "It didn’t
work," he said.
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