Nothing Is Impossible (7 page)

I appeared at the church at the appropriate time, even though I wasn’t sure why. Probably it was my competitive nature coming to the forefront once again: I needed to know the score. I thought I had hit a home run, so I probably just wanted to stop by for congratulations. Wrong. The same host greeted me just as warmly as he had the day before. Then I was invited to follow him. He led me down a hall and into a plush, well-appointed private office; this was obviously the
inner sanctum of the headquarters, suitable for the president or CEO of a major corporation.

Before I had much time to take in my surroundings, in came three apparently heavy hitters of the organization. They shook my hand in turn and introduced themselves with the warmth and direct eye contact that I was now beginning to recognize as a trademark of Scientology. We settled into comfortable chairs and then one of the senior officials (I’ve forgotten his title), in a perfectly cheerful tone of voice, gave me the bad news. There was no score, no grade, no quantitative measurement, just their assessment: I was obviously deeply depressed, suffering from low self-esteem, and carrying heavy “baggage” around with me, not only from emotional damage in this incarnation but from previous lives as well. His strong recommendation—echoed by his associates, and my host as well—was that I should begin “training” immediately.

I’ve always been very vulnerable to criticism, so what was said at that meeting had a strong effect. Maybe my life was all an illusion and I had no true knowledge about myself—or anything else for that matter. I agreed to come back before rehearsal the next day, and to begin studying Scientology with an open mind.

The basic principles of the religion, described in the works of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, struck me as logical
and highly motivating. An engineer by trade, Hubbard viewed the human mind as a complex but manageable computer. Every thought, every emotion, every experience is stored in the memory banks of the computer within us. What stops us from experiencing joy and achieving success is that we are not “Clear”: all the negativity—self-hatred, anger, jealousy, pessimism, feelings of inadequacy, and the like—that remains in the computer brings us down. Unless that negativity is “blown away” we are “stuck,” condemned to repeating the same mistakes, falling into counterproductive patterns of behavior and unable to find fulfillment.

No one at the church was willing to estimate how long it would take for me to “go Clear,” but they implied that it would require quite some time. The first step was joining a group like the one I’d seen when I first entered the headquarters, staring intently into the eyes of another recruit sitting opposite me. The objective was to empty our minds of extraneous thoughts (“clutter”) and focus all our attention on the other person. As we became completely absorbed in this exercise, known as “TR-0” (Training Routine Zero), we were to lose awareness of ourselves. Whenever our own clutter tried to come back in, we were not to be “upset”; we were to acknowledge its return and then command it to go away. At first this was nearly impossible. My head was filled
with nothing but clutter, unwanted thoughts about myself, and judgmental thoughts about my partner. Gradually I learned—much like someone studying Transcendental Meditation—to empty my mind. Then I was able to share the same space with another person, not doing anything, just existing. I have to admit that was quite a high. I left those early sessions, which sometimes lasted over an hour, feeling both relaxed and energized.

The TR-0 experience was relatively inexpensive, costing perhaps a few hundred dollars. But the next step was “auditing,” which was outrageously expensive and would have to continue for an unspecified length of time. The church required a deposit of $3,000 in advance of one-on-one meetings with an “auditor,” which cost $100 an hour. (In 1975, even the best psychoanalysts charged about half that in private practice.)

Having been convinced that I needed auditing, I put down my deposit and began meeting with my assigned auditor twice a week. She turned out to be a very attractive brunette about my age who had recently come to New York from somewhere in the Midwest. She had gone Clear and become a certified auditor in her home state, arriving not only with these credentials but the bright-eyed enthusiasm of a hostess at Disneyland.

We worked together seated on opposite sides of a wide mahogany desk. In front of her was an “E-Meter,” a simple box with a window that contained a fluctuating needle and a card with numbers from one to ten. Two wires running out of the box and across the desk were attached to tin cans that I was asked to hold, one in each hand. As my auditor asked questions my responses would translate into electrical impulses that flowed through the cans and the wires, causing the needle to move. The E-Meter was basically a crude lie detector. Questions touching issues that needed to be “blown away” would peg the needle at ten; anything innocuous hardly registered. I remember feeling a little foolish, but I had already invested a huge amount of money so I had to give it a chance.

One of the reasons that auditing was such a long and expensive process for most people in training was that we had to recall the use of almost every kind of drug. Not just illegal substances, but painkillers, antibiotics, routine vaccinations such as flu shots—anything and everything stronger than aspirin. Hubbard believed that a student could not go Clear without completely deleting drugs from the mind’s computer. Obviously it’s crucial for anyone to kick a drug habit, but why would he object to penicillin or a vaccination against measles?
(Fortunately there was no list of forbidden foods, and we didn’t have to remember every cigarette or sip of beer.)

My drug rundown used up four or five sessions, and then it was on to past lives. I was asked to go back as far as I could to try to remember my earliest incarnation. We all began as souls, or “Thetans,” floating somewhere in space, until we entered a body at some time in history. Sitting across from my auditor and holding the tin cans lightly (I had learned that gripping them too hard caused sweaty palms and false readings on the E-Meter), I searched the back rooms of my mind. Nothing there. Several minutes of agonizing silence went by as my auditor waited patiently.

Then my growing skepticism about Scientology and my training as an actor took over. With my eyes closed, I gradually began to remember details from a devastating past life experience that had happened in ancient Greece. I was the commander of a warship returning victoriously to Athens after a battle in Crete. My father was the king and I was his only son, the sole heir to the throne. Many months before, when my fleet cast off from the port city of Piraeus, he had embraced me and made me promise one thing: on our return we would set white sails for victory, and black sails in memoriam if I had been defeated or lost at sea.

After our glorious triumph we departed the coast of Crete at night, carrying our black sails to slip away unnoticed. As a fair wind pushed us quickly homeward, on board the celebrations began. There was wine, music, dancing, and tributes to the gods. I allowed the men to eat freely; there was no more need for rationing because we would soon be home.

On the morning of the third day we could make out the shores of Greece and the city of Piraeus in the distance. Lookouts on a promontory saw our ships; messengers were sent to fetch the king. He arrived with great fanfare within the hour, hastened to the best vantage point, and eagerly searched the horizon. By now the ships were in plain view, but the sight of them was devastating to the king: they were fast approaching Piraeus, but all were flying black sails. Carried away by the joyous celebration of victory on the voyage home, I had neglected to give the order to change them. The king, my beloved father, in despair over the loss of his son, threw himself off the promontory into the sea and died instantly.

The auditors are trained to listen to the students without emotion; their job is to write down what is said and record the indications of the needle on the E-Meter. But I could tell that my auditor was deeply moved by my story and trying hard to maintain her professional
demeanor. I sensed that she was making a profound connection between guilt over the death of my father when I was a Greek warrior in a past life and my relationship with my father in the present.

And that was the end of my training as a Scientologist. My story was actually a slightly modified account of an ancient Greek myth: Theseus’ return to his homeland after slaying the Minotaur in Crete. According to legend, his father, King Aegeus, was in fact so distraught by the sight of the black sails that he plunged to his death in the waters known ever after as the Aegean Sea. I didn’t expect my auditor to be familiar with Greek mythology; I was simply relying on her ability, assisted by the E-Meter, to discern the truth. The fact that I got away with a blatant fabrication completely devalued my belief in the process.

Of course that was 1975, and my case may have been an exception to the rule. Many well-known and highly respected people credit Scientology for success in their careers, in relationships, and especially in their family lives. I fully support whatever belief systems make us better human beings. My problem has always been with religious dogma intended to manipulate behavior, and a claim by any religion that theirs is the One True Way.

The end of my encounter with Scientology marked the beginning of an ongoing search for the meaning of spirituality in my life. It would take many years, many well-intentioned but misguided detours, and ultimately a near-fatal accident for me to find the answer.

D
uring the summer of 1995, the doctors and staff at the Kessler Institute in New Jersey worked tirelessly to stabilize my physical condition. The leader of the team was Dr. Steven Kirshblum, one of the most dedicated and compassionate physicians I’ve ever met. Every day he was the first to arrive at the rehab center and one of the last to leave. I especially enjoyed his departure routine on Friday nights. An Orthodox Jew, his faith requires him to be home by sundown. By trial and error he had found that if he ran at a certain pace on a dry sidewalk he could reach his front door in seven minutes. Rain, snow, and slippery conditions required a slight adjustment. As far as I know he always made it, even if it meant treating a patient and looking at his watch at the same time. He is very slight, only about five foot nine. And even though he was still in his early
thirties when I was at Kessler, he always stood with his back curved and his shoulders slouched. I told him with mock severity that on behalf of all of us in wheelchairs, the least he could do was stand up straight. When someone told me that he had played on the varsity basketball team in college at Seton Hall, I was shocked. One more example that nothing is impossible.

The medical issues that plagued me throughout that summer—severe anemia, pneumonia, infections, and skin breakdowns—were mostly under control by mid-October. It was time to think about the outside world. That meant modifying our home for accessibility, responding to a barrage of requests by the media, and defining my role as an advocate for research and the quality of life for people with disabilities.

Advocacy soon became my top priority. It began with a visit from a businessman and a scientist. Arthur Ullian, a real estate developer from Boston, had hit a rock and flipped over the handlebars of his bicycle, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down. Still in his early forties, he had already spent four years in a wheelchair and devoted much of his time to roaming the halls of Congress in search of any representative who would listen to him. His mission was “NIH × 2”: he believed that because it was classified as an “orphan condition” the National Institutes of Health would not fund spinal
cord research adequately unless their budget was doubled. He wanted to achieve that goal within the next five years. With his charm and persistence he managed to open some doors, but came away empty-handed.