The Purification Rundown is a fundamental feature of Scientology’s drug rehabilitation program, Narconon, which operates nearly two hundred residential centers around the world. Celebrity Scientologists conspicuously promote Narconon, citing the church’s claims that Narconon is “the most effective rehabilitation program there is.” Kirstie Alley, who served as the national spokesperson for Narconon for a number of years, describes herself as “the heart and soul of the project,” because it had helped break her dependency on cocaine. A year after 9/11, Tom Cruise set up a program for over a thousand rescue workers in New York to go through a similar procedure, which was paid for in part by using city money. Many participants reported positive results, saying that they had sweated a kind of black paste through their pores while in the sauna. The Borough of Manhattan gratefully declared March 13 (Hubbard’s birthday), 2004, as “Hubbard Detoxification Day.”
Kelly Preston has promoted Narconon in her native Hawaii. “Starting in the schools, we’ve delivered to over ten thousand different kids,” she said. Preston and Travolta’s sixteen-year-old son, Jett, who was autistic, died of a seizure in January 2009. His parents had taken him off of Depakote, an anti-seizure medication, saying it was ineffective. (The church claims that it does not oppose the use of such drugs when prescribed by a doctor; however, Hubbard himself denounced the use of anti-seizure medications.) Previously, Preston asserted on the Montel Williams Show that Jett suffered from Kawasaki syndrome, a rare disorder that she thought was brought on by his exposure to pesticides and household chemicals.
“With Jett, you started him on a program that I think is talked about in this book by L. Ron Hubbard,” Williams said, holding up Clear Body, Clear Mind, which outlines the principles of the Purification Rundown.
“Exactly,” Preston replied.1 She then talked about her own profound experience on the program. Novocaine from previous dental work began to surface. “I had my entire mouth get numb again for an hour and a half,” she said. Other drugs were purged as well, along with radiation exposure from the sun. “I had a bathing suit when I was seven years old—this is completely true. I had a bathing suit that I thought was so cool with holes in the side and a hole in the center,” she said. “And I got a sunburn in it. And twenty years later, I had this same sunburn come out in my skin, the entire sunburn.” Preston brought copies of Hubbard’s book for the entire studio audience.
DESPITE HIS EXUBERANT TESTIMONIAL, Haggis was increasingly troubled by the contradictions in the church. Scientology had begun to seem like two different things: a systematic approach to self-knowledge, which he found useful and insightful; and a religion that he simply couldn’t grasp. He liked and admired his auditor, and the confessions were helpful, and he continued to advance on the Bridge, even after his unsettling encounter with OT III. He saw so many intelligent people on the path, and he always expected that his concerns would be addressed at the next level. They never were. After OT III, it was all “intergalactic spirituality,” in his opinion. On the other hand, he had already paid for the complete package, so why not continue and see what happened? “Maybe there is something, and I’m missing it,” he told himself.
When Haggis reached OT VII, which was the peak at the time, he still felt confused and unsatisfied. At the top of the OT pyramid, the thetan was promised the ability to control “thought, life, form, matter, energy, space and time, subjective and objective.” The final exercise (according to documents obtained by WikiLeaks—Haggis refused to talk about it) was “Go out to a park, train station or other busy area. Practice placing an intention into individuals until you can successfully and easily place an intention into or on a Being and/or a body.” But even if you could do that, how would you know if you succeeded? If you were transmitting the intention “Scratch your head” and a person did so, was he responding to your psychic order or was it simply coincidental? It was difficult to evaluate.
Haggis thought that Hubbard was such a brilliant intellect that the failure to grasp these concepts and abilities must be his alone. He finally confided to a counselor at the Celebrity Centre that he didn’t think he was a very good Scientologist because he couldn’t bring himself to believe. He said he felt like a fraud and thought he might have to leave the church. She told him, “There are all sorts of Scientologists,” just as there are many varieties of Jews and Christians with varying levels of belief. The implication was that Haggis could believe whatever he wanted, to “pick and choose,” as he says.