Independent Scientologists Jim Logan and Sinar Parman recently took a trip to David Miscavige’s Scientology Inc Headquarters near Hemet California. Here is Jim’s report.
I went back to Gold. I was last there in October 1992. It appeared bigger in memory than it was yesterday. Yesterday it seemed like the buildings had actually shrunk. There was “more” of the place, with the Castle, the Berthing buildings (I couldn’t see theRTCBuildingor the grotesque Bonnyview from the roadside), but even these seemed to physically be withdrawn, actually shrinking back. Not there. It was just something I noticed even in the real excitement I felt at returning to this place. It was a palpable perception of even the building structures themselves pulling back and getting a smaller space. Of course, I’ve had a lot of auditing in the past few years too, plus some really extensive study so maybe my viewpoint has shifted a bit J
I had the intention of returning there for the salutary act of Confront, Reach and Withdraw on the spaces that I was forbidden to be in, but, prior to that prohibition, had put so much of my own life and free theta, and my literal blood, sweat and tears, into creating.
I also wanted to bring a simple bouquet of flowers for the memory of my wife Annie and our life we created there, and in honor of the dedication and devotion of her own to a purpose we both embrace.
As I drove from LA toHemet, on the way to meet Sinar Parman, a fellow former Int Base staff member, and someone who I feel a special relationship with as he too worked personally with L. Ron Hubbard and knew and loved Annie, I was envisioning what it would be like to drive up to the gate, get out of the vehicle and approach the Main Booth. I saw in this, Danny Dunnigan, coming out of the guard booth, in his black uniform. He didn’t recognize me at first, as I saw myself approaching with the small bundle of flowers, handpicked from the garden at Scott Campbell’s house by his wonderful wife Karry, for me, for that day and for Annie.
But then he responded, with hostility and refused to accept the token and went back in the booth, picking up the phone and spreading the word – Jim Logan is here.
So there I was, in fact, driving up to the Main Booth at Golden Era Productions, with Sinar in the passenger seat, instant hatted on the little Canon digital camera, and both of us coming back.
I stopped and looked through the darkened glass and there was Danny, pretty much as I had viewed him earlier on my drive in. I picked up the bouquet of fresh garden flowers, and stepped outside.
I noticed that Danny didn’t get up, there seemed to be a communication lag of reaction there, and I made several steps toward the little structure, hoping someone would emerge so I could ask if I could leave the token in memory of my recently passed wife. One of their fellow staff.
The door on the side opened part way, and Kevin Caetano put his head out. I said something on the order of “I’ve come with these flowers for Annie, would it be possible for me to leave them?”
Without answering me Kevin Caetano in a sort of fearful hostility, and without looking directly at me, or Sinar for that matter, said “You’re trespassing, get off the property”.
I repeated my request, as I wasn’t sure he’d actually heard me since it didn’t appear to me he was actually looking at me and he certainly wasn’t communicating TO me. He was kind of oddly, angrily growling at someone, something else, looking askance and growling this little tiny, hostile growl at his imagined enemy, out to destroy all that is good, to destroy him.
If it weren’t for the randomity of the moment, I think I would have guffawed at the circumstances, in complete reflexive rejection.
Here I was, offering a bouquet of flowers in memory of a loved one – to a Church of Scientology – and I was greeted with a terrified hate and barely moving to even open the door of the darkened little room these men lived and worked in, all they could manage to expel was a weakly bilious croak “You’re trespassing, you’re trespassing” and then shrink back into this tiny cave, closing the window and hunkering down again.
As some sort of “buffer” against the evil Sinar, me and the flowers I offered, presented to them, they had a non-Scientologist it appeared, ask us to leave directly. Kevin wouldn’t talk to us, only this presumed Private Investigator, who relayed the orders.
We got back in the car, turned around, and went to the west end of the property, just past the “NO TRESPASSING” sign, at the edge of the orchard that Sinar himself had helped to plant.
We parked and got out, to complete the process of Confront, Reach and Withdraw, and for me to place somewhere on the side of the property line, the flowers.
As we walked up theGilman Springs Roadtoward the Castle, Danny raced by in the Security truck, blackened windows and all, and went to park behind where I’d left our car on the side of the road. We started to walk back, me wondering whether I’d parked on public property and not wanting to have them tow the vehicle in some puerile bit of nonsense. I approached while they peered in the empty SUV and walked about it, writing down the license plate, and as I did they got back in their truck and when I got within about 20 feet, they pulled out, and parked again in front. Some silly cat and mouse game. I realized I was parked freely and left them to do whatever it was they thought they were doing.
Back toward the Base we went. I stopped at the first place I wanted to confront, the old golf course, from the first flood way back when, that destroyed it and where on Saturday renovations, in the base “all hands”, I had gone to mark off the area as it was planned to be a large garden to grow self-sufficiently and feed the staff.
We continued up the highway, at one point, and right beside us a giant Dodge 3500 truck blasted their horn sounding like a ship’s foghorn. I thought it might have been Security playing around, but it was actually a public person, expressing their somewhat less than cordial affinity for whom they thought were Gold staff.
I saw the Castle for the first time aside from photos. It came after I left in 92. A nice enough place. Then we came to OGH. Old Gilman House, the home of the former owner of Gilman Hot Springs Spa. I’d spent the last few days I was at Gold at OGH. Along with Jesse Prince and Fred Houck, both “pariah” at the time, and on the line to “route out” of the Sea Org.
My time there was spent in utter turmoil, with no sleep as I was way too enturbulated, and crying at the losses I was experiencing in real time, guarded and unable to speak to my wife, or return to the apartment were we lived. The only communication coming from Jackson who was trying to get me sessionable to be Sec Checked before being removed from the property. I never did get sessionable in the several days I was there, getting only snips of sleep, and unable to even eat, doing nothing more really than literally beg to see Annie and protesting “But you’re supposed to be the good guys”.
I reached for it, I withdrew from it and continued the process. Bing, attention freed up we moved on.
I glanced over the swamp, and up toward the LRH Music Studio where I last worked. I could see “the Hole”, and we stopped across the road, on the south side, to look over the garage. Reached and withdrew and was able to completely have the space, permeating it, and the surrounding grounds.
On we went, this time just east of the garage and viewing the parking lot behind and the rear of MCI.
Here Sinar and I reminisced about the days when we would muster together back of the Massacre Canyon Inn for Saturday Renos, the whole of the base, and all of us looking forward to a day outside in “civies” and “grungies”, able to express some little style in our choice of clothes and enjoy the grounds that we were busy creating.
Sinar’s haunt, MCI, as a chef and his own life spreading through the building, withdrawing, reaching and a return of ownership for spaces he creates.
Up the road a bit and I could see F&E over the roof of the Lodges. LRH Films and Equipment, where Annie worked and where I proposed to her, and why the flowers in the first place. There was a symbolism to this, and a recalling of my happier days.
I had bought them one day in LA. I’d written a note for her “ Say uncle, there’s more where these came from”. I’d dropped them off with Roberta Lantz to give to Annie and went back to my post, just after supper. Later that night Annie called me and asked me to come to F&E; she wanted to talk.
I got there sometime late in the evening, maybe 10:30 p.m., and asked to see her. I was shown to an anteroom of the darkroom where she worked. I waited, leaning up on a counter, with my arms folded across my chest, ready for rejection, hoping for her hand. She came out of the darkroom, in her white uniform but with a powder blue sweater on for the cold temperature of the space. I think it had a little design on it, maybe a teddy bear. I don’t recall exactly as I was so taken by the color and her hair over her shoulders and the figure of this woman I loved so deeply.
She stood across from me, maybe four feet away and looked me straight in the eye and paused.
I stood, as cavalierly as I could mock up, but excited beyond description and held the look and the silence.
She began to speak.. softly saying… “Uncle.”
And our life began with our first real kiss.
Returning to Gold, and looking at that space, I did cry. But this time, it was different than all the tears I’ve shed over these years we’ve been forced apart. This time there was an end to it. She’s not there, she is free again, and we know each other with no space or time to separate us as beings. We won Dave. There is nothing you can do to tear asunder what we alone create.
With R&W complete on this spot, I felt very much awake, very much aware and continued on, east of the Main Booth.
Sinar said he didn’t want to go on, up the road. I urged him forward as I needed to continue and I wanted a suitable spot to place the bouquet. As we went up and came directly across from the Villas, while I was looking at the various places on the other bank of the road, the back of theMainGoldBuilding“36” as it was known, I felt something and my attention went to the Villas.
There it was, Dave’s offices, and as clear as the exhaust from a dump truck, a black roiling mass of hate and frustration.
I asked Sinar “Do you see that?”
“Yes” he replied. “I’ve seen since the Guard Booth. That’s why I didn’t want to come up here”.
I called across the road to Dave. “Hey, come on out, you pussy”. And in that moment, with ZERO affect on me from this being’s entheta and hatred, I laughed and realized just how pitiful a coward he really is.
I was done. End Phenomena reached and I could have at will any space there, including Dave’s, and penetrated all through it. I owned it. I could let it be.
As we sauntered back Sinar realized it was probably about dinner time for the staff. It was then I noticed that we had seen absolutely no one from the Base, save a brief fearful encounter by the Guards. In fact, the only person that came close to us appeared to be a non-Scientology PI that was in the area of the Main Booth, and had been filming us.
As I thought about the poor staff, kept within their walls, blinds drawn and in the “intruder” drill, hungry, I thought we’d better walk a bit faster and let them at least have their supper.
Walking back we reached a marked curb where a public bus stop had a sign. There beside it was a nice large stone, and I placed the flowers, carefully removing the twist tie so there was no reason to charge me with littering.
Out of the booth came the non-Scientology PI.
“You can’t leave that there.”
“It’s a public bus stop”. I answered as we walked by.
“Are you refusing to remove them?”
“It’s a public bus stop”. I replied again.
He asked twice more, I responded similarly, and couldn’t help but smile. After all, they were a bouquet of flowers for a loved one, and this was the argument he was having, representing a Church?
He walked up to the spot where I’d lain them, and I decided to pull out the Canon and film him taking them away. I don’t know how or why, but as soon as I aimed the camera, he stopped. He didn’t get to the memoriam, but turned around and carried on filming Sinar and me.
I didn’t see him take away the flowers. Perhaps he saw what it was, he realized himself what I had placed, and maybe, that which is good in him, the angels of his better nature, stayed his progress. I’ll say that is true. Even if it isn’t it’s what he would choose were he to be who he really is.
A few seconds of this reciprocal video game, and I was done. It was so silly.
As we walked back, passing Qual on the other side, and MCI on our side, both places we’d worked with fervor and purpose, we came again to “the Hole”.
This time, with my process complete, I could see a different thing over the Hole than I’d seen first time passed, or up at the Villas. This perceivable mass was thinner, with no hate, and more of an apathy, a dark sort of death pall. I’ve seen this at funerals, which is what it reminded.
It was then that I noticed something about the whole place.
It had no life.
Gone was the vigor I’d recalled. Gone was that feeling of excitement, and purpose, and hope and joy that I completely sensed as I lived and worked there from early 86, just after LRH had left.
All that was there, the only visible life energy, was Dave Miscavige’s hateful, angry bluster-mass, and the thin apathetic pall over the Hole, with all else noticeably absent, even the Guards unable to speak and needing a via.
I looked at this once bustling hive of purpose and the postulate of freedom for beings in all places and saw it was bereft of the real life that animated it. The life and creation of beings like Sinar and myself.
As we got to the car, Sinar got up an artistic urge and wanted to take shots of me in the fading sunlight.
I was happy. So I stood where he wanted me and he reeled off some pix.
My happiness is expressed by the awareness that I am free to create anything I want. I created spaces at Gold, building a large majority of the places I saw at one time on the track. Here is a new unit of time, and what lies ahead is the infinity of future.
For those at Gold. There will come a day when you muster in MCI and someone else will speak to you collected there, other than David Miscavige.
You will be told “It is over” once again, only this time it’s the end of the torturous years. The end of the toiling, with nothing to show. The end of the reversal of your goodwill and intention and malignment of your being by this single Suppressive Person. The end of the “ogre” and the return of truth and cause to you.
You will be “shell-shocked” and dazed. You’ll be asked to walk freely among the areas you choose, leave if you want to, as the gates are opened, but just walk and talk to whomever you wish and whatever you please.
You are being given full pay and a fair exchange for you work. Go to the canteen, splurge. Go to town, buy whatever you want. If you come back, it is on your own determinism. We’ll be doing some Group Processing next. I think you’ll like it. But it is your choice to be here for it.
It is time to deal with the past and clear it. To be here in the present. To decide what is the future.
There are those of us who wished, who have come here to help you as we can – to be truly FREE.
Moving On Up a Little Higher 