From http://www.chaser.com.au/content/view/2996/2/

Battle Of The Cashed-Up Cults Part 2: Scientology Friday, 03 February 2006

My interest in Scientology was piqued a few months ago when my five flatmates and I were loading groceries into my car at Sydney's Broadway shopping centre. We could hear military drilling wafting over from the adjacent building - a Scientology 'Center', "About face, Half face, Full turn!" We peered over the side into their loading dock and it was full of people spinning and turning in unison, faster and faster. When someone got it wrong, their name was yelled and everyone had to do push-ups - puffing and grumbling at the guilty person.

We did what any normal Aussie would do in such a situation. We heckled, shouting "It's a cult, it's a cult!", before running away giggling.

But this peek at brainwashing and ritualised humiliation had me hooked, so it was fortuitous I was handed a flyer in Chinatown soon after offering me a free Personality and IQ test...

First things first - Google

Scientology was invented by a famous science fiction writer, L. Ron Hubbard - and why this fact doesn't alarm bells ringing for adherents, I don't know. He wrote the book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health in 1950, a sort of pop-psychology Bible. After a huge response, he developed the ideas into a more spiritual vision - Scientology.

Followers believe humans are in a state of 'pre-clear' which they must work through with an 'auditor' to become 'clear' and then ultimately an 'operating thetan'. Once an 'OT', there are further numbered levels, although most don't get this far.

And you thought Dianetics couldn't get any scarier 'Auditing', or one-on-one Scientology therapy, is done with a electronic machine called an e-meter, which the 'pre-clear' holds while talking about intimate details of their life. It's part pop psychoanalysis, part confessional. Auditing allows Scientologists to rid themselves of the damaging effects of past traumas - even those in past lives. It is even claimed the process can heal mental and physical ailments, and increase IQ.

The biggest trauma in everyone's past, though, is only revealed to Level III operating thetans. It costs over $40,000 to get that far in Scientology. In 'OT III', it's revealed that 75 million years ago, an intergalactic warlord called Xenu tried to solve overpopulation problems by drugging and freezing millions of people, stacking them around Earth's volcanoes and then dropping nuclear bombs in them.

After this, Xenu collected all the souls flying around in the air using special flypaper, and screened massive 3D movies to which gave the 'thetans' (the released souls) false ideas like Christianity etc. He was eventually imprisoned, and is still imprisoned somewhere in a force field powered by an eternal battery.

Scientology has spent millions trying to stop these teachings being published elsewhere, but they are readily available on the internet, most notably at the anti-Scientology site Operation Clambake.

Hubbard believed he was the reincarnation of Buddha, and had previously been Cecil Rhodes, a Medici and Robespierre. After setting up the "church" in the 1950s, Hubbard eventually moved the upper echelon of his operation onto a huge ship which to this day cruises around the Mediterranean, stateless. He apparently wanted to find a country he could use his vast resources - from massively successful science fiction novels, as well as Dianetics - to control. He also believed his philosophies were as important as the invention of the wheel and the harnessing of fire.

Which would all be well and good for people to believe if it didn't cost thousands of dollars to reach 'clear' and 'operating thetan' levels. And also if the "church" was free from accusations of brainwashing, sleep deprivation, occult rituals, abuse, encouraging members to cut family ties, homophobia and a belief that psychiatry is a conspiracy to control the world.

Scientology is banned in Germany, and many others like Canada and the UK refuse to recognise them as a "religion" or a charity. But in the USA and Australia, Scientology is recognised as a "religion" and given tax-exempt status.

Into The L. Ron's Den

Who says it's hard to find a job after Big Brother?I booked in for the tests at the front desk with Carol, a vacant-looking Kiwi, and am led to a table. The building's decor is horribly dated and everyone is old and frumpily dressed - aesthetically they're miles behind Hillsong. I'm led past officious-looking Scientologists sitting behind computers in one corner, leading punters to the 'results lounge' and getting them settled a the test tables. Washing over the whole scene is tranquil instrumental music piped from unseen speakers. Kitsch wooden panelling lines the room, with very dated displays on how drugs are bad and with testimonials from 'celebrities' like Kate Ceberano.

I sit down at a rickety desk and am given a well-thumbed folder with plastic sleeves containing a personality test copyrighted to "The "Religious" Technology Center,1960." The 200 questions are hilarious: "Do you browse railway timetables for fun? Do you get unexplained muscle spasms? Do you ever turn up the volume on emotion to create effect? Are you a slow eater?" Deep stuff.

As I'm doing the test, I can overhear those on the lounge getting their results. One teenage Aussie guy who is getting his results read back jocularly remarks to his mate "Now I find out how much of a freak I am" - quite, I silently think. Another guy who's clearly been prescribed an expensive course to fix up his personality is wavering, but quickly comes up with an exit strategy "I haven't got any money, I'll have to go to an ATM". But the Scientologist had obviously been to sales school and wasn't going to let him off that easily, "Oh yes, there's a Westpac on the corner, I'll come with you." The young man's shoulders slump. Meanwhile the teenage fella is refusing to believe he had a previous trauma in his life and is arguing with his Scientologist. He wasn't getting marched to an ATM.

I get bored with the test, so I try choosing responses that will make me appear more malleable. Maybe they'll take me into the inner sanctum? So yes, I would "prefer to be in a position where I didn't have the responsibilities of making decisions".

I finish the first test. More people have arrived on the 'results suite'. And as they chat away, I notice how much they're enjoying talking about themselves while their Scientologist nods and encourages. And I realise how that in many was, it's a kind of horoscope service with a dash of quasi-science that no-one can understand. People get to talk about their favourite subject and probably the only one they can talk on with complete authority - themselves. Plus someone pretends to be interested - it's a genius method of recruitment!

Fortunately for Tim, choice of hair dye was not factored into the IQ test As my IQ test is prepared, and I notice people wandering past in what look like naval uniforms, I ask Carol if she can take a picture of me. "My Mum's been telling me to come down here for ages, can you take a picture." Amazingly, she buys it and obliges.

The IQ test is more fun - all sequential number riddles, finding odd words out and matching shapes and patterns.

A Scientologist stops me after 30 minutes, then it's my turn to hit the 'results suite'.

My personal Scientologist is Peter, a man of post retirement age. He hands me a graph with my results (Click here to see it) and reads from an A4 printout, which he won't allow me to see. Peter tells me that we are given all this knowledge in school, but no-one ever tells us how to live. And that's where Scientology comes in.

Here's some of the conversation. This transcript is very accurate, and not because I clandestinely recorded my consultation but can't post it because it's illegal to do that, and litigation is Scientologists' favourite hobby. Rather, I have a great memory. Peter: Your IQ is 126 or so, which is well above average.

Tim: Oh good.

Peter: Each of these columns - they're the personalty traits.

Tim: Why are personality traits being put on a scale showing what is above and below average next to a scale showing where you are in terms of IQ? Surely that is equating high IQ to happiness, stability etc?

Peter: Because each of these traits are marked out of 100, so you can like see if a person is stable or unstable, happy or unhappy.

Tim: So you're measuring IQ against personality traits as well, how can you measure two things at the same time? That's not very scientific, measuring two variables at once.

Peter: Everything's out of 100, it could be a bit arbitrary couldn't it, but ah...

Tim: Well it would be, because how can you measure IQ and an emotional response? I mean, I could be corrected of course.

Peter: So you go up and down, in fact your graph does show that you would be quite changeable. One day you'd be one way, another day you'd be another way.

Tim: Ah.

Peter: You'd be quite varied in how you'd feel, is that right?

Tim: Oh sometimes, yes of course you have different reactions to things, feel different things.

Peter: So yeah, OK, so that's your certainty about yourself, and shows that you can be somewhat realistic about yourself, but not as much as you'd like to be. Because you're not too certain of what your abilities and disabilities are, you've got a tendency to waver in your subjective realities.

Tim: What is a subjective reality?

Peter: And so you feel one way and then could waver a bit, it's not always rock solid.

Tim: OK, yep.

Peter: Do you agree?

Tim: That I waver in my subjectivity? Well, that's the nature of subjectivity, don't you think?

A big problem with the test, of course, is that if you score 'in the average zone' on one trait, it is sure to tip you into the negative in another. And the obvious question is - has anyone ever sat the test and been told they are fine and need no improvement? Anyway, Peter recommends I take a short course for $130, or read L. Ron's book Dianetics. I agree to read the book and take it home. Disappointingly, I see an e-meter and ask if I can have a go, but I'm not allowed.

Conclusion

I find Scientology hilarious. If it was a kind of self-help course on how to get your life in order it might be OK. And anything that keeps Tom Cruise from making crap movies like Vanilla Sky is a blessing. But the sinister pursuit of enemies and the transparent aim of fleecing anyone they can find - coupled with hideous garishness of their brochures which look like 1970's copies of the Reader's Digest - means they get a definite thumbs down.

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