Scientology’s strangest secrets revealed

A controversial new book reveals stories that Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise would never want you to know.

Many stories have surfaced over the years about Tom Cruise’s bizarre Scientology behaviour – but none are more bewildering than reports in a groundbreaking new book that blows the cover off the controversial religion. In Going Clear: Hollywood, Scientology & The Prison Of Belief, Pultizer Prize-winning journalist and author Lawrence Wright alleges that under Scientology teachings, Tom would spend hours in the parking lot of a Home Depot hardware store in Hollywood, trying to read people’s minds.

In Scientology speak, Tom, 50, allegedly believed he was doing “Tone Scale” drills, which involved “guessing the emotional state of random people coming out of the store”. In an interview with Lawrence, ex-Scientology second-in-command Marty Rathbun also reveals details of Tom’s Scientology audits, or psychological questioning, performed by the religion’s senior members including follower Jason Beghe.

“Jason would think of a hypothetical date, which Cruise had to figure out using the E-Meter, a Scientology device that measures a body’s electrical resistance by gripping two metal rods – a guessing exercise Cruise found really frustrating,” Marty explains in the book. Tom’s attorney denies the audit, but another former Scientologist, Marc Headley, claims that the tables were turned when Tom himself rose up the religion’s ranks and became an auditor.

Marc, who was just 16 when he first met Tom, recalls how the Hollywood A-lister encouraged him to take bee pollen tablets before beginning another bizarre exercise. In it, Tom told Marc to repeatedly look at and touch the walls of the room for hours on end. Marc says Tom also asked him “to make an object – such as a desk – hold still or become more solid”.