Press, Australia: Confronting the Clam Cult: Your Friendly Neighbourhood Scientologist Revealed! - Pelican (University of Western Australia student paper), Vol. 71 ed. 2, March 2000, p8
David Gerard
Pelican (University of Western Australia student paper), Vol. 71 ed. 2,
March 2000, p8
Confronting the Clam Cult
Your Friendly Neighbourhood Scientologist Revealed!
William Burroughs was a member, John Travolta still is and Nicole Kidman
would rather not discuss Tom Cruise's invovement. Scientology was founded
by sci-fi hack L. Ron Hubbard not long after he said that, "If a man really
wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own
religion." Its doctrine contains stories about clams and space aliens named
Xenu and the cult's props include funky alfoil hats and mind reading
machines made of tin cans. Whilst there are plenty of cults out there to
ridicule, Scientology is streets ahead because of its patent nuttiness,
trensparent money-grabbing and appallingly aggressive (and generally
ineffectual) attempts at suppressing criticism. For sheer entertainment
value and ever increasing heights of absurdity, Scientology wins every
time.
The Church of Scientology professes a 'religion' which consists of a
bizarre mishmash of dangerously pseudo-scientific psychotherapy, rampant
paranoia, technocratic jargon and third rate science fiction. Their key
beliefs stem from L. Ron Hubbard's book Dianetics, which proposes that
psychological trauma is located within the body in the form of 'engrams'
carried by 'thetans' - little demon things that reside within your body and
carry the pain of past lives. As they feed off trauma, they encourage their
host to undergo traumatic experiences, thus establishing that someone
hosting body thetans (and that's everyone bar the most 'advanced'
Scientologists) cannot be relied upon to accurately judge what's best for
themselves.
My personal favourite example of thetan effects is Hubbard's clam story.
Humans are, in Hubbard's cosmology, directly descended from sand clams that
lived along surf-pounded shore lines and because of the action of waves,
these clams were caught in a constant dilemma - they did not know whether
they should open or close themselves, depending on whether they were under
or out of the water. Body thetans in the clams fed off this trauma and now
reside in human beings where they continue to inflict their painful
memories on their hosts such that someone who mimics the action of the clam
with their hands is able to invoke the body thetans in another person who
will experience a pain in their jaw. Got that? Snap your fingers at someone
and nasty demons give them a sore throat. The same applies to the trauma
your thetans feed off in the lives of their previous human hosts. Chances
are you're bearing the anguish of drug addiction and incest whether you
know it or not. Oh, and did I mention that body thetans are actually the
souls of space aliens that were exiled to earth around 76 million years ago
by galactic overlord Xenu where they were locked in volcanoes and forced to
watch confusing movies for 36 hours before being blasted apart by nuclear
bombs? L. Ron said so, anyway.
The key to Scientology is not their beliefs, though, but rather the system
of induction and conditioning of recruits that propels the 'raw meat' into
total dependence on the Scientology organisation and makes them willing to
devote every skerrick of time and money they command to the service of
Scientology. In order to free oneself from the aforementioned thetan
influence one must undergo 'Clearing Operations' that purge one of body
thetans and their persuasive ways. Like most other Scientology techniques,
this is a justification that encourages subjects to submit to a series of
brainwashing techniques that impede critical thinking and normative
socialistaion (and needless to say, the Chruch of Scienotlogy charges
thousands of dollars for these services). Still, according to Scientology's
doctrines, the pursuit of clearing will allow one to become a 'free thetan'
with superhuman powers that include foreseeing the future, telekinesis and
whatever else Hubbard's drug-addled brain dreamt up. Giving away your time,
money and sanity could sell be worth it after all.
Their initial selling routine isn't as nutty as this, though. If you've
ever come across a Scientologist (their Perth 'org' (office) is on Murray
Street and has a new-agey landscape painting on the front), you'll have
come across the 'free personality test' which - surprise, surprise - will
identify an area of your personality where you'll need to conduct some self
improvement work, which (you guessed it) is offered in the form of courses
conducted by the Church of Scientology (for a fee). During this process
you'll be subjected to a range of interrogation techniques such as being
left in small rooms for long periods of time whilst test results are
processed. Needless to say, the course that's offered is just the start of
a lifetime of courses and psychological 'Operations' that Scientology will
attempt to convince you that you desperately need. Their costs rise
incrementally into the tens of thousands and if you don't have the cash,
you can always dedicate every waking hour of your life to unpaid work for
the organisation in return for these services.
Because it's a cult that thrives on the complete submission of its members
to the organisation's demands, Scientologists live in a strange world of
their own and follow the 'scientifically' determined pronouncements of L.
Ron Hubbard that provide the 'correct' response in any given situation.
Indeed, these responses are conditioned into the subject in 'drills.'
Besides the destruction of rational thought processes this involves, the
conditiones responses are often nonsensical and even contradictory, which
produces people unable to function normally or communicate coherently - the
twisted jargon and confused syntax of the committed Scientologist has to be
experienced to be believed. A quick chat with a Scientology spokesperson is
an exercise in severe weirdness the moment you move away from the topics
they've been prepared to discuss.
There's a wealth of material on Scientology on the web, largely in protest
against the cult's attempt to suppress criticism and control the
circulation of Scientology's 'teachings.' The weird science fiction parts
of Scientology (such as the Xenu story) are regarded as confidential by the
cult, which has attempted to enforce the secrecy of these documents through
copyright law and their classification as trade secrets (and you thought
they were a religion? Well, that's what they tell the tax office). The cult
justifies their secrecy by asserting that exposure to knowledge of these
materials - if not conducted under controlled conditions (and accompanied
by appropriate payment) - will result in a backlash staged by body thetans
that results in incurable insomnia leading to drug addiction and death. If
you read the third paragraph of this article, I guess you're in trouble.
Perhaps more alarmingly, Scientology documents condone the suppression of
dissent by and means necessary and assert that the best means of defense is
attack through smear campaigns and by levelling allegations of criminality
at their critics, who this extremely paranoid organisation says are part of
a conspiracy of psychiatrists, communists, nazis and financiers.
Scientology may well have begun as a cynical money-making exercise on
behalf of Hubbard, but as its number swelled and its devotion to its
founder increased, Hubbard's tenuous grip on reality completely slipped and
he created an organisation that mirrored his seemingly schizoid and
paranoiac persona. The vehemence of its attacks of critics, immense wealth
and effectiveness of its induction techniques has produced an organisation
that survived the death of its founder, held together as it was by distrust
of the outside world which Scientologists are left unable to cope with. The
organisation may be gradually shrinking and has been slowly ossifying since
Hubbard's death, but nonetheless stands as a testament to the power of
social control techniques. The extremity of Scientology's control
strategies may be unusual, but it does provide a case that's perhaps only a
more visible example of the tactics employed by more accepted groups such
as the armed forces who are equally keen to fashion raw recruits into
dedicated cadre. And worst of all, they're not even as amusing as
Scinetology.
By Alistair Duncan
--
http://xenu.netizen.com.au/ http://www.caube.org.au/
"You haven't lived 'til you've performed emergency vibrator repair that
required a welding torch." (Ron Parker)