Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre International

The Celebrity Centre - or 'CC" - is a 1929 luxury hotel converted to a business and spiritual center by and for the Church of Scientology.

Located in a dense neighborhood in the Hollywood area, the building is a tranquil oasis in the middle of the teeming bustle that is Los Angeles.    It feels much like a Buddhist monastery: There is a lovely garden and fountains on the grounds that allow for tranquil meditation, and all staff and visitors are pleasant and are happy to answer questions but generally allow guests to keep mostly to themselves.  There is an outdoor cafe as well as a full-service restaurant on the ground floor, where all of the church offices are located.  There is a bookstore in the basement and a fitness center for those staying at the hotel.  On the second floor, one can find meditation and waiting rooms as well as a processing center, a Scientology library, and classrooms for the various courses one can take on-site.  Many of the second-floor rooms have been converted into auditing rooms where an individual can work with his auditor to become a Clear.

The upper floors of the hotel continue to be used for out-of-town guests who intend to spend a number of days at the Centre to proceed with their studies.  The rooms are small (as per the standards of the 1920s), but well-adorned.

About the only thing that stood out from this tranquil scene were the numerous pictures and busts of L. Ron Hubbard placed all through the hotel and in almost every room.  It did stike me as a bit of unhealthy idol worship.

The Celebrity Centre - like all Scientology churches and centres - does not start their day until about 10 or 10:30am.  But their activities go well into the night, and staff is usually working until 10pm or later.  During the day, one is pretty much on one's own to seek out and participate in auditing or self-study classes of Scientology and Dianetics materials that you can purchase from the bookstore; or you can meet with a counselor or chaplain on any personal matters.  Group events are held in the evening and can include anything from a lecture or presentation to a concert or art exhibition.

The evening event I went to was a presentation by David Miscavige - or, rather, a video of a presentation by Mr. Miscavige, , the leader of the Church.  In the presentation, he extolled the amazing accomplishments of the church, from making the IRS and psychiatrists back down in their evil ways to the incredible explosion of Scientology around the world and the number of new Clears and OTs (these are levels of accomplishment for church members) that have been accredited over the past year and are now poised to transform the world.  For an outsider like me, it sounded like a lot of fluff with a touch of paranoia; but everyone else at the event seemed to take it all at face value, absolutely gushing at the "wisdom" and proclaimed accomplishments.  The event did not end without a call to rush right out and sign up for every Scientology course and booklet we could grab, and indeed many of the event participants seemed intent to do exactly that when the event ended.  In the few whisps of conversation that I was able to have with other participants, my skeptical questions and probing of further details of some of the claims I heard seemed to be met mostly with either dismissal or scorn; and I was strongly encouraged to "find out for myself" by signing up for a course or buying a Scientology book.

When I went to the bookstore (which had been conveniently opened for all attendees following the event), I found the prices of everything to be exhorbitantly inflated.  Although one could buy a paperback version of the foundational Scientology book, Dianetics, for $20, every other publication started at around $75 and went far up from there.  A 12-hour case of cassettes of recordings of L. Ron Hubbard could be had for $500.  When I inquired about possible courses to take, I learned that those also ran several hundreds of dollars and that didn't include the cost of the course materials that also needed to be purchased - which could easily double the cost of the course.  I seriously began to wonder if they were so serious about spreading all this allegedly great information about the church and their tenets, why they set the bar so high to access it?

It suddenly felt very much like a high-pressure sales presentation.  The focus of the staff and others seemed to be that I buy or sign up for something before I leave; and being empty-handed encouraged the staff to descend on me and begin a conversation of what I thought of the presentation, what personal areas of my life would I like to see improvement, wasn't Mr. Miscavige the most amazing speaker, what was I most impressed with, etc.  I resisted all attempts to sign up or buy anything, but left with a very bad taste in my mouth of being badgered and manipulated.

There was one other aspect to this visit that disturbed me.  It was obvious from the accents that most of the staff - which were mostly very young - were not native Americans.  While everyone there spoke English, many came from Europe, South America, Africa and Asia.  But what distrurbed me was that good portion of the staff that I saw seemed to be heavy smokers - every break they got, they were standing out in the garden area lighting up.  Living in a state with a considerable anti-smoking culture, seeing so many young people in one place addicted to tobacco was a bit sad and repulsive.  Even more disturbing was the answer I got when I asked a couple of them about their habit, how they happened to pick it up: I was told that L. Ron Hubbard and most every other senior Scientology leader smoked, so it was seen as OK, even encouraged.

Clearly, if you have an aversion to smoking, the Church of Scientology is not going to appeal to you.  But the apparency that the staff simply adopted or perpetuating their smoking habits simply because their bosses did the same did not speak well of Scientology being a bastion of any critical thinking.

So, the CC is a beautiful place to spend your day; but there are events there where they seem to count on the herd mentality to further their own goals at individual expense; and there seems to be very little tolerance of critical questions that a visitor might raise, one's exposure to the "faith" is clearly and tightly controlled and is based on up-front commitments from the visitor before any significant information is shared. 

Some might say that behavior is more in line with a cult than with a healthy spiritual community.  In any case, it didn't work well for me, I won't be going back.