http://mindhack.blogspot.com/2005/03/how-i-was-handled-by-scientology.html Friday, March 18, 2005

How I Was "Handled" by Scientology

This occurred March 17th, 2005. All of this is written by me from memory, no recording devices were used.

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Today I finally got the guts to do something I had been planning on doing a long time ago, actually visit a Church of Scientology(Don't worry, I have no intention of joining their "cult"). What triggered this was that I talked to a friend briefly about it after class, and he brought up the topic of the source of Xenu.net. I told him that the person who writes it doesn't claim to be any official source on the subject nor any educational credentials. I wanted to find out if Xenu.net was legit. I figured, well if Scientology has nothing to hide, then what could hurt by going and asking questions? I already knew that there was a location near me, but needed to check the exact address.

I got home around 12:45, had a quick snack, and went to Scientology.com to look at their store locator. Sure enough the location says Upland, an address, and a phone number. I call the phone number and get an answering machine for A Woman from the Church of Scientology, but I decided not to leave a message. I printed out the address and directions from MapQuest.com and headed out armed with nothing but a pencil in case I wanted to write down anything interesting.

It took about 15 minutes to get there by the freeway. Once I was on the street I started looking around for a big church-like building.

The building number was 299, so I was also paying attention for that.

A few minutes later I had seen no church-like building and was in the 100's. I must have passed it. Did a u-turn and this time I found it, well, there is no sign on the street, I found it by the building number 299. The first thing I noticed about this office building was H&R Block and Charles Schwabb were the apparently the largest offices there, as well as numerous smaller law offices. Hmm what is a tax-exempt church doing amongst all these business'?

I scribble down a few names of companies for future reference and go inside looking for the building directory. The directory was located next to an elevator and sure enough there it was: Church of Scientoloy Suite 201. By now I am nervous but I hop in the elevator and take it to level 2. I am expecting something along the lines of when Agent J(Will Smith) first enters the Men in Black building. As if the elevator door opens with tons of hustling and bustling people wearing suits were waiting, hidden from the public, inside. Ding. The elevator door opens, and to my surprise, there is nothing. The room before me is a grey, bland, lobby with a two restrooms to the left, and two hallways. I see another directory, this one has arrows pointing towards the location of each suite. There it is, Church of Scientology, Suite 201. I walk down the corridor to the right wondering what a church is doing next to People's Discount Mortgage and the Law Offices of Fernando Vargas. Guess what? There IS no suite 201, nothing. I walk up and down the entire second floor several times, nada. However, there are a few doors with blank, black name tags that look like the sign has been removed recently. I'd almost given up and left when a few women came out of another office.

I asked them, "Uh excuse me, do you know where suite 201 is?"

One woman replied, "What is it?"

I was a bit confused by her response and said "Suite 201" again.

She replied back ," What is in it?"

I said, "Oh, Church of Scientology."

She smiles says,"Oh, I think they moved out about 3 months ago.

There's a lawyer in there now moving in."

I get on the elevator going back down with them. She either works there or was a client, but she had obviously been here frequently enough to have this information.

"Oh...yea...I found it kind of odd a Church was in amongst all these business's."

"Ya." She says back smiling. I didn't say anything else, nor did she.

Well clearly the Scientology website does not update their location information very often. Or was there something else to this? My curiosity was only fueled further, I HAD to go to a Church of Scientology today, if anything but to know that they EXIST. I got back home and again went to their website. I located one in Pasadena. I called in advance again, and I told the woman I had tried to go to the location in upland. She said, "Oh..I think they moved. I'm sure where they moved to though." A long drive, and I knew traffic would be bad on the way back, but it would be worth it.

I passed the building this time as well, and was disapointed again in what it looked like. The building is very small and is nestled between two other business' whose names I didn't notice. I entered and was greeted by a young man who looked to be about 20-23 and was wearing a blue dress shirt and tie. He got up from working on some what looked like envelopes to be mailed out and shook my hand. I told him I had heard of Scientology from a friend and was interested in it. His first question was "What have you heard about scientology?" In which I replied, lying, "Oh just some stuff on TV and from some friends." He was happy to answer all my questions. I also mentioned the Upland location, and he said, "Hmm...I think they moved..somewhere, I don't remember where." I played dumb mostly and appeared to be the perfect customer, acting interested in everything as I would be getting to the more interesting questions later.

Soon enough he asked me if I wanted to watch an introductory video to Dianetics (the origin of Scientology) and I said sure, but then he asked if I wanted to see the intro to Scientology video. I said sure because in truth I was more interested in the background of Scientology, not Dianetics which is only a portion of Scientology. He said the video was only 30 mins but it turned out to be 50, of which I was only mildly annoyed by.

Ok here's the summary of the video. L. Ron Hubbard (Or "LRH" as the guy accidentally mispook to me in Scientologese) created scientology because he figured out the "common denominator" between all religions, philosophies, and cultures. Attending scientology "training" (aka.

brainwashing) can increase ones IQ, reaction times, and allow one to realize ones full potential as a spiritual being(thetan). We don't want weak, sick, dumb, or insane people. We only want capable members of society(ie. Tom Cruise) so that we can make them MORE capable.

Well after the video ended I was ready for some real questions. I started asking about the organization, and he was happy to share about that. He even told me his rank. He was a No Class Auditor taking the "Student Hat" course, which is essentially reading a lot of books to get to advance in levels. The ranking system is extremely complex.

I started to ask him about Scientology as a religion.

"Was there a creation story?"

He didn't really answer. He didn't seem to know.

"Like, how the humans came to Earth?"

"Oh, I think we have a book on that. I've only read the beginning so far."

He grabs a book off the shelf. It is titled "History of Man" and has a cave man tearing the flesh off of a fresh drum stick of some animal pictured on the cover.

He flips through it then looks at the back.

"Yea it says here 60 trillion years."

"Wow thats a long time."

"Uh huh" Here is where it gets creepy. We chatted a bit more until I brought up Xenu.

"Uhh whats this thing I heard about, its called Xenu er named Xenu."

"What? I never heard about that before." He looked confused.

I was shocked, since Xenu is supposedly the supreme being regarding Scientology.

"X-e-n-u." I pronounced it slowly. " Never heard of it? Does someone else know?"

"No....Let me go ask someone."

I realized what I'd just asked him much to late. He either didn't know who Xenu was because he hadn't been taught yet, or he had been taught to deny who Xenu was. Most likely he did not yet know who Xenu was. He was still very new in the organisation.

He walked into the office of an older woman and they came back together. Immidiately she got into my face.

"What's this? What are you asking about? What?" All said in rapid succession My face went flush and I started to sweat a bit.

"Uhh xenu...I heard about it and was wondering about it..." I said, not very loud.

"What?" She said again.

"X-e-n-u." I said it slowly this time. Is this word hard to be understood around here or what? "I heard it was the god of scientology or something."

"No I've never heard of that before." She said sternly.

I shrugged and conceded. OK maybe they've never heard of xenu...I wasn't going to push it. But I just had the sinking feeling, staring both of them in the eyes, that at least one of them was blatantly lying to me. At this point I was really nervous and my stomach decided to produce some extra acid. Probably because of the triggered fight-or-flight response by some woman I didn't know getting in my face.

"Ohh..ok ...I see." Is what I said, and the woman walked away. I talked to the guy a little bit longer, then asked again 5 minutes later.

"So you've never heard of Xenu, at all? Xenu.net?"

"No...hold on let me go ask someone."

What the...? Ask someone again? This time he went to what appeared to be the highest ranking person there. Her office was set aside from the rest, and seemed to have a bigger desk.

Meanwhile, I stood there by myself contemplating just walking out, but I didn't want to act like I was flustered (which I was) so I just stood there waiting. Again, the first, older woman approaches me while i'm standing alone.

"Where did you hear this information?" She said, close to me, the type of close you want to just shove someone away from you. She looked and sounded pissed off. Why does she have to be so close?

"Uhh I heard from a friend."

"Well, when you hear information like that, you need to check your source." She said in a very serious tone. But somehow maintaining a half-fake smile. It just creeped me out. Then she walked away again.

The guy came back and said, "Oh..she says it was something made up from a magazine."

At that point he asked me if I wanted to take the personality test. I said no thanks, and left.

This whole event creeped me out even more when I got home and read on xenu.net "How to talk to a scientologist." The first thing she says in that section is not to mention the weird stuff (ie. Xenu) because most scientologists probably haven't been trained in that yet, but are trained to believe that if they learn about it to early they will die.

Whoa... now I think by just saying the word "Xenu" around that guy I may have caused a serious problem in his life. He asked two of his superiors, so they know, and a "report" with RTC (rtc.org) will most likely be filed. Will he have to talk about this next time he is audited? I didn't expect there to be such a big reaction just by mentioning one word, Xenu.

Heres a question. Why did all three people I asked about the Church of Scientology location in Upland all reply exactly the same way, including the woman I saw in the hallway(I did not see what door she came from)? "I think they moved." Hmm...

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