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[NON BLOG] Trying Out Scientology
Sep. 8th, 2004 07:28 pmBack in May, I'd made an appointment ahead of time to have a tarot card reading. Although I hadn't any illusions about the reading of tarot cards as representing anything but a useful tool for free association, I certainly didn't suspect the person reading the cards of committing fraud. This, of course, cannot be said of L. Ron Hubbard--see the oft-threatened Operation Clambake website for more information. The light that this casts on the Church of Scientology, of course, isn't favourable. And so, I submitted to an interview with a volunteer representative of the Church of Scientology, in front of the church's Toronto headquarters on Yonge Street, not out of a passing interest in Scientology and its doctrines, but rather on a whim.
Someone once described Scientology, with a history of the universe that features (among other things) the dropping of the ancestral forms of modern-day Scientologists into volcanoes which then suffered nuclear bombardment, as a religion which only a science-fiction writer could devise. I have to say that my interview confirms that synopsis. Something about the general tenor of the atmosphere reminded me of mid-20th century pulp science fiction. Perhaps it was the combination of a dualistic view of the mind (stress apparently comes not from the body, but from the mind) and the deployment of some sort of electrical machine--a simple greenish box, with a dial and two handgrips at the end of attached cables--faintly reminiscent of the scientific instruments I saw in my cousin D.'s collection of Childcraft magazines from the 1970s, curiously antique. This machine, he told me, would measure my stress levels. It did do that, perhaps by measuring galvanic skin response.
At the end of the session, he tried to sell me a copy of Dianetics for nine dollars. I begged poverty; he relented, and let me pay whatever I could, on the condition that I give it serious consideration. It's an interesting-looking book, and doubtless there are some useful tidbits about stress reduction--the central theme in Scientology, I conclude on the sole basis of the interview, that and the restriction of knowledge to initiates--in Dianetics.
You know, perhaps I should look into becoming a cult leader. Between this, the tarot card reading, the time five years ago when I invited a pair of Mormon missionaries back after a two hour long session because I was bored, and my long-standing interest in phenomena of mass culture, I might be able to piece together a theology convincing enough for some.
Someone once described Scientology, with a history of the universe that features (among other things) the dropping of the ancestral forms of modern-day Scientologists into volcanoes which then suffered nuclear bombardment, as a religion which only a science-fiction writer could devise. I have to say that my interview confirms that synopsis. Something about the general tenor of the atmosphere reminded me of mid-20th century pulp science fiction. Perhaps it was the combination of a dualistic view of the mind (stress apparently comes not from the body, but from the mind) and the deployment of some sort of electrical machine--a simple greenish box, with a dial and two handgrips at the end of attached cables--faintly reminiscent of the scientific instruments I saw in my cousin D.'s collection of Childcraft magazines from the 1970s, curiously antique. This machine, he told me, would measure my stress levels. It did do that, perhaps by measuring galvanic skin response.
At the end of the session, he tried to sell me a copy of Dianetics for nine dollars. I begged poverty; he relented, and let me pay whatever I could, on the condition that I give it serious consideration. It's an interesting-looking book, and doubtless there are some useful tidbits about stress reduction--the central theme in Scientology, I conclude on the sole basis of the interview, that and the restriction of knowledge to initiates--in Dianetics.
You know, perhaps I should look into becoming a cult leader. Between this, the tarot card reading, the time five years ago when I invited a pair of Mormon missionaries back after a two hour long session because I was bored, and my long-standing interest in phenomena of mass culture, I might be able to piece together a theology convincing enough for some.
