'Man is an immortal spiritual being'

Today I was walking into town to buy some fudge when a large figure loomed into view. His chunky hands grasped a clipboard as he made eye contact and approached. The last encounter I had with one of these people culminated in the charity worker overflowing with happiness and spontaneously hugging me, so I thought I'd spare a moment. My assumption that he was a charity worker turned out to me wrong.

'I'm doing a survey', he bugun, before asking me 4 questions; my least favourite characteristic about myself, my ideal job, my most desired state of life and the most important of the previous three. My suspicions begun to rise as these questions were rather probing and personal. He then asked me if I had an interest in the human mind and self-improvement, my fascination of mentality and the human brain got the better of me as I offered an interested 'yes'.

Now I was trapped, he invited me to take a look at a book, upon my agreement he invited me to then follow him. This, as a student not looking to spend pointless money, was not going to be anything I was interested in, but I had to follow now. He lead me up two flights of stairs to a small room, already with a women who'd trapped a couple of other unsuspecting fools. I now had no idea what was going to happen to me, my overactive mind rolled out the possibility of this being a ruse to mug or kidnap me, but alas, the reality was rather more mundane...

He sat me down infront of a machine that looked like a lie detector, but this contraption was, unfortunately, never address or used during my stay. I was handed a piece of card - the blurb of the infamous book - obviously, I was not trusted to hold the precious book itself. This book was entitled 'Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health', a fairly standard name for a piece of mental health literature - other than the blatently made up word of 'Dianectics', of course.

http://www.bridgepub.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/gcui_product_feature//sites/all/themes/gold_master/product_images/en/dianetics-modern-science-of-mental-health-hardcover.jpg

After a few minutes of discussing the subconscious and its effect on human activity he brought up the elephant in the room. This spiel was all leading up to the crux of the matter; the man I was speaking to was a Scientologist. He broke this to me by asking 'what do you know about Scientology?', I couldn't help my allow a wry smile cross my face at the mention of the 'religion'.

My pitiful knowledge of the topic extended as far as Tom Cruise and other Hollywood celebrities partaking in it, I could not tell him more as I knew no more. So he filled the gaps.

Scientology was developed by a man called L. Ron Hubbard, graduate of George Washington University (they must be proud) and, supposedly, applies science to the idea of religion and spirituality. My friend, whose name was Paul, told me that there is large amounts of scientific data telling him that spirituality and scientology addresses the facts of life and is the correct path. I quickly asserted my certainty of copious amounts of data pointing to the lack of spirituality and poppycock that is Scientology. Here is a picture of the great man. I'm not sure I'd like a religion masterminded by someone who looks like a Bond villain.

http://snarkfood.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/l-ron-hubbard-3.jpg

I have spend the past hour or so looking into this further on their website - http://www.scientology.org/- and I have learnt a little more on the subject. So I now feel far more entitled to attack the rambling of the madman that these people idolise.

I avoided using wikipedia, as people can write their opinions and present them as fact, so I have only referred to the scientology website itself. So I can only assume that every thing I've read there is exactly as these people believe.

First of all, they address the concept of who you are, they have decided to name this 'Thetan' and try to validify this by using a greek letter to represent this; Theta - 'which has long served as a symbol for thought or spirit'. In this section I was told that I could not possibly be my body as 'if you have your appendix removed, does your personality change? Are you any less you? Of course not'. The body is seen as merely a case in which Thetan moves about and resides in. The imagination of an impossible entity that is inherently you, rather than the physical, touchable and very real reality of the human form, is utterly laughable - but this idea is held by most religions, so this seems to be more an attack on spirituality - I'll address Scientology itself now.

The next video I was instructed to watch told me of the '8 Dynamics' - 8 parts of life that one should aim to survive and pass through on the path to enlightenment. I was informed towards the end of the video that Scientoloy has 'workable technology for you to increase your survival across all Dynamics.' How fortunate that they might have developed the perfect technology to aid you in your quest to address every part of live.

http://www.whatisscientology.org/html/Part02/Chp04/img/pg0152_1.jpg

Next, the website described the 'Emotional Tone Scale'; a generic booklet - that Paul tried to flog to me for £3 - that outlines all the different types of people in the world, the way they react to situations and the possibility to predict how they will behave in the future. It, apparently, takes 'the mystery out of human behaviour'. So, it seems, Scientologists fail to recognise the complex web of the human mind - the impossibly convoluted thoughts and actions of humans thanks to every person they've met, experience they've had, or thought they've conceptualised. It generalises its followers, as well as non-believers, and claims to predict the actions that anyone will take.

Another video I watched had the 'lie-detector' I mentioned previously. This exciting machine turns out to be an 'E-Meter'. I presume it works exactly as a lie-detector does, monitoring electrical impulses, sweat glands, temperature, etc. But in this instance, it is used by an 'Auditor' to help you find your memories and blunder your way from spiritual blindness to spiritual enlightenment. The auditor, I was told, does not give any information, all he is required to do is listen and use this machine, but he does needs 'years of training' in order to complete this very complex and important task of sitting and not repsonding.

http://anonymousradioshow.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/scientology_e_meter_blue.jpg

One other video presented to me told me that without love for every single other human on the planet 'there is only sorrow, hatred and despair'. How very mellodramatic, but I have a particualr hatred for certain individuals in this world, and I've managed to escape a world made up of solely sorrow hatred and despair. I must be some kind of superhero or meta-being. How can a mere mortal be happy when he dislikes something that is purely abhorrent? Who knows? Not me, that's for sure.

The overall feeling I get from this belief is that one cannot live one's life alone. It's necessary for us to have Scientology to be constantly probing into our actions and telling us how to react to other people and how to act as a result of other people. I found it deeply patronising to think that these people believe that I need to subscribe to their gibberish in order to act properly around others and to sustain relationships properly.

This has been another fairly lengthy and potentially boring blog. I hope it's been interesting enough for you, and hopefully I'll find something a little more whimsical to talk about soon.