Trouble In A Bubble.

The Scientology Experiment

This video was shown at a Scientology convention. It was only ever intended for initiates to see. A lot of people watch it and think Tom Cruise is crazy, but to me, it made a lot of sense.

It does sound kind of wacky, because he talks using Church jargon. He talks about individuals taking responsibility for helping others… not being satisfied with being okay and not helping others… rehabilitating criminals through Criminon. I’ve thought of that too – but I wouldn’t have given it such a lame name.

There was a lot of criticism of the Church at the time. News stories about Anonymous, telling people that the Church is evil and ruins lives… So I figured I’d find out for myself.

On the south side of Russell Street, there’s a Church of Scientology, a building that was probably built around 1920. It has a big vertical sign out the front, as if it were advertising a car dealership. I walked in.

I wandered around near the entrance for a bit. There were bookshelves and posters on the left so I had a poke around. Across the room there were two or three paintings of L. Ron Hubbard, and also a bust. Eventually a fat woman in her 50s came over to talk to me.

She said in a friendly tone “Hello.”

“Uh hi.”

“What brings you here?”

I think I’d just woken up an hour before “Yes… well… there’s been a lot of criticism about uh it so… I thought I’d come in and find out for myself.”

“Sounds like a good attitude.”

“What’s all this I hear about Xemu?”

“I have never heard of that,” she said in a confident, pre-rehearsed fashion.

She introduced herself and we talked for a minute. She said I could do a personality test to find out how Scientology could help me.

The test was marked at the top “OCA: Oxford Capacity Analysis”. I said “Oh, is that Oxford as in Oxford University?”

“Oh… Gee, I’m really not sure…”

According to other sources… It has nothing to do with Oxford University. It’s not even created by a guy called Billy-Joe Oxford. Just put on there to give it the air of prestige. But I guess it’s made to just give the implication, and not actually be asked about.

The test was filled with yes/no/maybe questions like “Do you read bus and train timetables for fun?” I thought, I do that all the time, but that’s got to be some sort of nervous habit. I put yes.

Later I read on the ‘Net that I’d answered “correctly”. Reading train timetables is a sign of emotional health.

They evaluated the test and came back with a nice fancy printed graph showing how fucked up I am. According to this graph, I was an extremely nervous person. I said calmly “Hm… interesting.”

Then they organised the place into a seminar room and a charismatic elderly man gave an inspirational speech about philosophy, with the end point being the importance of hounding all your friends that say they’re too busy to go to Scientology seminars.

When the fat lady asked me questions about my life, and I talked about how awesome I am… I got the feeling she didn’t really know what to do with me. She referred me onto the head recruiter or whatever.

The head recruiter was Darla, in her 40s, a redhead, and fake as hell. Sounding all condescending. You know how a person sounds when they actually don’t like you but they’re pretending to because of their job or whatever. That was how she sounded. Maybe she hated me.

I’m sure a lot of you have heard about the controversy where Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes decided to have a silent birth, where she wasn’t allowed to make a sound at all. At least that was how the media portrayed it. For reasons I can’t fathom, Darla actually brought up the subject.

“One thing that Scientologists believe is that when a child is born, the room should be quiet – we’d prefer the doctors and nurses to be quiet – that way there can’t be any subconscious impressions on the child’s unconscious mind.”

“Ah… well that makes sense… But wait, does that mean that the mother has to be quiet during the birth?”

She dodged my question, “Ah, well, I would say that we would just ask the doctors and nurses to be quiet during the birth,” and then changed the subject so quickly I wouldn’t notice “But as for this …”

She must have done it really smoothly because I didn’t even pick it up at the time. But what kind of short-term strategy is that, that they’d just dodge my question and start talking about something irrelevant. Do they really think I’d be that stupid that I wouldn’t notice later? Why did she even bring it up in the first place? Weird.

She sold me a copy of Dianetics. She went to go print me a receipt… The computer was running some text mode software, like it was running MS DOS 6.2. The printer looked about fifteen, twenty years old. It was the next model up from a dot matrix. It looked like it had to run the carriage across every line to print, and it would take about a minute to print a page. But it didn’t work. The computer didn’t work properly, and the printer didn’t work properly.

She said “ah… well… uhh… it looks like I can’t print you a receipt.”

I said impatiently “Well, can you write me one?”

I thought, I’m paying about $26 for this copy of Dianetics. I’m sure I’m not the only one that’s bought it from here. They’re trying to sell me seminars to the tune of hundreds or thousands of dollars. Where does the money go? Certainly not here.

I started reading the book. Reading Dianetics is like wading through a swamp, and every now and then you find solid ground to stand on, and say “hey, that kinda makes sense!” and then you go back to wading. It reminds me of the stuff that I wrote when I was out of my mind. Some deep profound knowledge, and some complete nonsensical abstract beliefs with no founding in reality, masked as deep profound knowledge.

I watched this documentary and wondered how anyone could follow a man that creepy. I guess there must be something to his teachings.

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