Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

At the end of August, the first students arrived in Corfu from Saint Hill, many of them carrying large
sums of smuggled cash (the British government had recently introduced restrictions on the export
of currency and it was causing some cash-flow problems for the Sea Org, which routinely paid its
bills in cash). 'They gave me about £3000 in high-denomination notes to take out to the ship,' said
Mary Maren. 'I hid it in my boots.'
Smuggling was entirely consistent with the Sea Org's cavalier disregard for the tedious rules of the
'wog' world. Leon Steinberg, for example, supercargo on the Avon River, was the acknowledged
expert at forging documents of authorization to satisfy the voracious appetite of maritime
bureaucracy, using potato-cuts to replicate the essential rubber stamp. They were almost always
accepted, to the huge enjoyment of the Scientologists, who called them 'Steinidocuments'.[8]
The course being offered in Corfu was for advanced Scientologists to train as 'operating thetans' at
Level VIII, the highest that could be attained at that time. To become a Class VIII auditor was the
ambition of every self-respecting Scientologist, although none of them was prepared for the new
autocracy that had developed within the Sea Org. 'The atmosphere was very unfriendly when we
arrived,' said Mary Maren. 'One of our group was a bit drunk and he was grabbed by one of the
officers who really roughed him up, yelling at him, "This is a ship of the Sea Org and it's run by L.
Ron Hubbard . . ." I knew it was not going to be like Valencia and I didn't like it.'
A clarification here: in August 1968, the highest level of Operating Thetan was seven, not eight. A Class VIII auditor
could take Scientologists to this exalted state. O.T. Level VIII was not written until the 1980s. -- Dave Bird
Students were outfitted with a sparse uniform of green overalls, brown belt and brown sandals and
were humiliated at every opportunity. 'We were told we were lower than cockroaches and didn't
even have the right to audit Mary Sue's dog,' said Maren. The working day began at six o'clock every
morning and ended at eleven o'clock at night after a ninety-minute lecture delivered by Hubbard in
the forward dining-room on B Deck. 'We were always terrified of falling asleep. LRH would be
carried away dramatizing different topics and we'd be pinching each other to stay awake. We were
terrorized; it was continuous stress and duress.'
The course had not been going long before Hubbard decided that too many mistakes were being
made during auditing and he announced that in future those responsible for errors would be
thrown overboard. Everyone laughed at Ron's joke.
Next morning, at the regular muster on the aft well deck, two names were called out. As the
students stepped forward, Sea Org officers grabbed them by their arms and legs and threw them
over the side of the ship while the rest of the group looked on in amazement and horror. Hubbard,
Mary Sue and their sixteen-year-old daughter Diana, all in uniform, watched the ceremony from the
promenade deck. The two 'overboards' swam round the ship, climbed stone steps on to the
quayside and squelched back up the ship's gangplank, gasping for breath. At the top, they were
required to salute and ask for permission to return on board.
'Overboarding' was thereafter a daily ritual. The names of those who were to be thrown overboard
were posted on the orders of the day and when the master-at-arms walked through the ship at six
o'clock every morning banging on cabin doors and shouting 'Muster on the well deck, muster on the
well deck!' everyone knew what was going to happen. 'Anyone to be thrown overboard would be
called to the front,' said Ken Urquhart, 'and the chaplain would make some incantation about water
washing away sins and then they would be picked up and tossed over. People accepted it because
we all had a tremendous belief that what Ron was doing would benefit the world. He was our
leader and knew best.'[9]