Zola ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ Bear Blog

Charles Manson and scientology

Nothing ground-breaking as he used to be a cult leader, and scientology is a cult; from Jeff Guinn's recent biography on Charles Manson, titelled "Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson":

Sometimes Charlie wanted to talk about Scientology instead of music. According to Karpis, Charlie “figured [Scientology] would enable him to do anything or be anything.” Having run with more than his share of cold-blooded killers, Karpis didn’t sense similar tendencies in Charlie. He thought the guy would be the last man on earth “to go into the mass murder business.”

Charlie picked up more than Scientology insights and steel guitar licks at McNeil. He didn’t read books, but he listened as inmates who did talked about what they’d read. One of the most popular novels among the literate cons was Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. Its themes of alienation, government deceit, and redemption for the despised resonated with the incarcerated. Charles was fascinated by the tale of fictional Valentine Michael Smith, born to human parents in a Mars space colony, raised by Martians and returned to Earth as a pawn of scheming politicians. Fascinated by religion, Mike founds his own faith, experiences group sex, uses psychic powers to make enemies disappear, suffers a martyr’s death, and returns in spirit form. As he would with the Bible, Dale Carnegie, and Scientology, Charlie later incorporated elements of Stranger in a Strange Land into a beguiling, hybrid pseudophilosophy

Charlie told Kaufman that he took the Carnegie course to learn how to make strangers open up to him. He also talked sometimes about Scientology but not as though he was a real believer. Charlie would throw Scientology terms around and also quote long passages of the Bible from memory, but the feeling Kaufman got was that he worshipped only at the Church of Charlie.