Wednesday, March 15, 2006

You've got an Ology!

Many years ago, when I was a callow and innocent young recent graduate working in London, a pleasant young Irish lady accosted me as I walked along Tottenham Court Road towards the tube. "We're doing free personality tests. Would you be interested?"

At this stage of my life I was still determined to be nice to salespeople, my memories as a Kleeneze door-to-doorer and steam cleaning salesman still uncomfortably fresh in my mind. So I said yes thanks, and was ushered in to a pleasant little office, and sat down with a multiple choice questionnaire with posers like "you are walking along and see a dropped five pound note, what do you do?" sort of thing. I got busy ticking the answers ...

... and, as time passed by, my peripheral vision kept being snagged by the catchy yellow-orange spines of the books on the shelf next to me. They were all copies of Dianetics, by L. Ron Hubbard.

I had fallen into the hands of the Scientologists.

Mr Hubbard's disciples had, unusually for them, made one fatal error. The space on the questionnaire where you put your name and address was at the end, not at the beginning. So when I got to the end, finally clued up as to my situation, I put down the impenetrable pseudonym "J. Benn" and left out the flat number of my address.

I was assessed, and I still have the results somewhere. I recall that it was headed "The Oxford Personality Test". Oxford what? University? Stadium? Apollo? It didn't say, but it was a "big" word, designed to impress without too much thought. Anyway, the results came back on a graph, divided into zones of "basically okay" and "dodgy" and "needs urgent attention". Unsurprisingly, my assessment indicated a screamingly urgent need to become a Scientologist right now and spend lots of money on a weekend away so as to facilitate the process.

I managed to duck that. I did buy a copy of Dianetics, which I also still have somewhere. I had to spend my last fiver on it since, obviously, I didn't have any cheques or a card with the right name on ...

I said I was innocent and callow. Well, I was 22 and not so innocent or callow that I hadn't read Russell Miller's fascinating and entirely unauthorised biography of L. Ron, Bare-Faced Messiah. The book the Scientologists tried and failed to ban - failed because he could inconveniently prove every single one of his assertions, and they could prove not one of theirs. The book that tells entertaining tales of how LRH dabbled in black magic with a disciple of Aleister Crowley, just long enough to steal all the guy's money and run off with his woman and his yacht. That's my favourite, anyway, but there's much, much more. It's also interesting to count how many witnesses, independently interviewed, all heard the man say something along the lines of "if you want to make lots of money, start a religion."

In short, the book that shows his one unmistakable talent lay in making lots of money by spinning tall yarns.

On the way out, I saw that on the way in I had passed a massive bronze bust of the same gent, without noticing. From then on, I walked to the tube on the other side of the road.

All this reminiscing is sparked off by a friend sending me a news link - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4804334.stm. Thanks, Alex. Scientologist Isaac Hayes, the voice of Chef in South Park, has quit the show because of a story line poking fun at his religion's founder. Apparently Stan does so well in a Scientology test that church followers hail him as the next L Ron Hubbard.

"There is a place in this world for satire but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry toward religious beliefs begins," says Mr Hayes, laying down his apron after 10 years of working on a show that has lampooned Christians, Muslims, Mormons, Jews and - um, I suppose, to be balanced - Satan. Indeed.

Believe it or not, I concede from the evidence that elements of Scientology do actually work. The nice Irish lady who failed to convert me told me how it had helped her reconcile with her mother. Her face shone, I had no reason to doubt it, and was very happy for her. No doubt Isaac has found it equally so. A whole raft of Hollywood celebrities seem to have genuinely found it useful in keeping afloat. How many of the above have also been able to get emotive readings off tomatoes, or recall past lives in galaxies far, far away, I do not know, but the elements of Scientology that work seem to be the ones that strangely resemble basic counselling skills in the real world. In other words, the bits that anyone with a bit of gumption can do without having to buy an e-meter, or read Dianetics, or even worse buy and read Battlefield Earth.

A "clear" in Scientology is allegedly able to overcome all the little quirks that go with having a reactive mind. Operating Thetans, the next stage up, can do clever things with matter, energy, space and time. (Don't take my words for it - take theirs.) But the one thing they can't apparently do is take it as well as dish it out.

Interesting.

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