---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote :
I nearly became a Scientologist once. I was young and easily led so I won't beat myself up about it. It just happened that their's was the first practical sounding belief system that I'd come across that promised all the things that everybody wants, perfect relationships, more success at work, better health, eventually reaching a state of perfection etc. It's possible that list might sound a bit familiar. No one can blame anyone for wanting these things. But they certainly are promises made by so many cults and even those selling self help books (and, of course, TM). They have a good way of piquing your interest once you've been hooked by your first encounter with the sales pitch. My intitial contact came from a book a guy at work lent me called Self Analysis by Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard. We thought it a well reasoned and plausible account and he had decided to go to the book shop advertised in the back and find out some more. This is their place in Tottenham court road and it's where you get reeled as soon as you step through the door. He'd purchased a copy of Dianetics, Hubbard's masterwork of modern mental health (or not) and got really interested. We even talked about going to their stately home in Kent to study and become perfect humans as had been promised him. Luckily for us Ron Hubbard died before we could act on our impulse to get involved and when all the stories of him being an abusive coke head with a uniform fetish and who treated his disciples like shit we thanked our lucky stars that we hadn't yet gone along for our free personality test. And that's where I left it but I bumped into my old friend the other day and as we were chatting the subject of what I had been doing in the intervening years came up and I told him about the TMO and how weird it was and how cultish but not as bad as the Scientologists that we'd almost gotten ensnared by. But then he told me he had taken it further after we'd stopped working together and had gone along for the personality test which, surprise surprise, highlighted a lot of flaws that, also surprisingly, they had the cure for. It's the difference in approach to newbies between the TMO and the Co$ that amazed me. His next step was to have a go on an e-meter to work out which areas to work on which seemed reasonable. An e-meter is a basic lie detector that measures subconscious impulses collected via two tin cans attached to a big box with an old style volt meter on the front. But the first thing he was asked was "Are you a journalist or writer?" or any of his family even. Satisfied that he wasn't a potential mole or spy they went on to quiz him about sexual fantasies, violent episodes he'd witnessed. It's all hardcore cult stuff, making you feel uneasy by making you reveal personal secrets and then you become dependent on the nice guy with the cure you meet next day. And it was all taped. After the "personality test" he was taken to another room and given a high pressure sales talk by two well drilled suits about going to live with them in their mansion. He said it was like they weren't going to give up until they'd agreed and so he did but rang up and changed his mind later. But they'd got to him with wild promises and he went back to the shop to see if there was anything else he could do to work off the credits needed for his first auditing, or therapy, session. They offered to take all his unemployment money from him in return for a session but he declined, and they offered him the chance to walk around London in costume trying to get other people interested. Luckily he didn't fancy that either. We'd always figured that cults naturally attract the sort of people best suited to the intellectual and social environment inside and his conclusion here is that you'd have to be pretty down on yourself or easily manipulated or just a plain masochist to want to get further involved with Hubbard's cronies. Textbook material. I told him he had to see the new "Going Clear" movie to see what he'd just missed getting into, he could have be one of the menacing suits that follow you around trying to put the frighteners on you if they think you might be an enemy. Or worse.. It's time to thank your lucky stars if you get away from that lot unscathed... Fascinating account! Scientology was never tempting to me as was the same situation for any of the bigger, well known systems and cults. I seemed to have chosen the very personal and small cult prototype to follow for a few years. LOL But I don't beat myself up about that either. It was fascinating and character building and I met some wonderful people. Plus, it was three and a half years of my life - I just can't regret having lived.
