Scientology Revealed & Lessons on the Hard Sell

In the time I've spent crafting this latest post, about three hours, I've been called by the Church of Scientology (COS) twice: right around the daily average since stepping foot in the building. I hope that you will learn from my experience and knowing it as a firsthand account, use its authenticity and lessons in your lives. Here's the game, broken down, step by step.

Day 1- I was sitting at a cafe right near the Scientology Church. A young, beautiful woman sat down next me, and during our conversation, we hit it off. This might be because I was sitting there playing my newly chorded version of Karma Chameleon on guitar, and she seemed to know all the words. Maybe it was that we had good conversation chemistry. Maybe, though, it was something else entirely. She was a member of the Church, and during the course of our conversation, she said a number of things that piqued my interest in it, and she encouraged and easily convinced me to take a walk on over with her. Actually, since at this moment, just one week or so later I can't remember a single one of those talking points, it might just be that she was hot. One never really knows...

She introduced me to several people from the Church, and stayed with me all the time while I met with several people, all of whom were more than willing to spend LOTS of time with me and answer any questions I might have. They shuttled me back and forth from place to place to meet with the various people. It took up a lot of time. They were VERY nice. The two gentlemen I met with seemed like cool, normal guys to me. One was a Jew who went to an Ivy League college and sang in it's a cappella group, the other a gentile who was very bright and extraordinarily... present.

While they were talking to me, they were engaging, nice, respectful, and interesting. At one point in the conversation, I dropped an F Bomb, and I don’t mean the self-coined “dead leg” I used to inflict on the other kids at my camp. I mean I said FUCK. They didn’t flinch. Or react really. The a cappella singer continued talking as he had been talking the whole time, because he was a Jewish Ivy league singer just like me so there was already a basis for rapport. The other guy, though, said the word “fuck” in his very next sentence, and I quickly noticed that he started dropping F bombs left and right. This was one of my early misgivings. The reason he started cursing so much is that he was trained to mirror, and novices in mirroring will often over compensate for whatever behavioral mannerism they catch on to. In this case, it was the F Bomb, and in future conversations with him I was able to adjust the frequency of his cursing by modifying my own. Some mirroring is the natural inclination of most people with good social skills. But this was not at all what was going on…
I met with them, casually asking about the Church, and what little I know about it. They both dispelled any questions of aliens. Regarding their generally dubious reputation, they argued that the Church has been besmirched in the media by pharmaceutical companies, with whom they are presumably at war due to the Church's stance on psychotropic medication, and medication in general. They sit you in a theater where you watch a ridiculous, absurdly acted movie about the Church and about L Ron Hubbard. The movie is full of happy people in the form of second rate, cheese-dick actors playing the parts of happy Scientologists, who show awe and reverence to their founder, L Ron Hubbard. The movie was laughable actually, evidenced by the fact that I actually laughed throughout most of it. This was one of those times when my general tendency to be a poor, irreverent student may actually have paid off...

They tell me all about Scientology, give me numerous bound books on Dianetics and the Church in general, and provide a DVD or two to watch in my spare time. Fortunately, since this friggin tour took up so much time, I had no time left to spare on the DvD. It made a fine coaster though. I signed up for some course at his recommendation that I took the next day. It cost 60 bucks and was taught by a guy not qualified to engage in five minutes of discourse with me--a moronic, knuckle dragging Neanderthal with abnormal bicuspid. I’ll call him Lucy.

The course was supposed to take seven hours start to finish. I spent two hours there that day, and abandoned the course. It was a self help system that basically amounted to "try harder, communicate your efforts, measure your results". I had no interest in it. I told Lucy that I had no interest in it, and that my desire was for a physical cleanse, and he recommended I talk with someone about the Purification.

As you know from my previous posts, I've wanted to do a cleanse for while. Many of my friends have done cleanses, like the master cleanse, just drinking the lemonade cocktail for ten days or so, and all report good experiences. This "Purification" sounded better to me. Exercise, diet, vitamins, sauna, water, and "detox" in the form of Niacin would guarantee to clean me out good, and with lots of support along the way. So, since I wanted a cleanse, I signed up for one, thinking I could start right away. That's what I thought was happening when I signed up--that I'd hit the road running and get my system fresh and clean. Here's what followed from that point:

The next day, I had to take a battery of tests. I took an IQ test, which showed that I am some sort of gigantic walking brain, and a mood test that showed that emotionally, I am deeply troubled—more nervous and depressed and anxious than I "ought" to be. They administer these tests, presumably/allegedly, to provide a quantitative benchmark to show the results of their programs. Really, they use this as a sales tool. Everyone shows up deeply troubled in one way or another. They are administering the test, grading the test, crafting the questions, and in all other ways controlling the outcome, and they act is if this is scientific. Actually, it's not scientific at all. A group of researchers examined the Chruch's IQ tests by each taking it and filling out dramatically different answers. And, despite the fact that their answers were all over the map, all yielded similar profile outcomes. So, though the test may be reliable, in that it reliably creates the results the Church wants, it is not VALID because it does not measure what it claims to be measuring (for a fascinating read on the subject, see "ESSAY: THE FALLACY OF THE OXFORD CAPACITY TEST", http://www.holysmoke.org/cos/essay-free-personality-test-fallacies.htm) I put no stock in the results of these tests and hope that you won't either. Talk about throwing out the baby with the bathwater. My IQ score validated my entire existence, and now I’m the one telling you to dismiss it. The truth is, these tests are lures; whatever your shortcomings are, Scientology can help you improve in those dimensions.

Meantime, I'm bored out of my mind answering these third grade mind teasers, but I finish it off and like any good student, eagerly await my scores. It takes friggin forever. And, while I wait, they take me for another test. This time, with the E-Meter.

The E-Meter is a device that the Church uses during "auditing", which administers an electrical current directly to the testicles. Okay that’s not true, but it’s getting late. The truth is that you hold these two cylinders, one in each hand, that connect with wire to the E-Meter, and a light current is passed through your body. And as you are asked questions, the person administering the test is looking at the E-Meter. Having just come from a battery of tests that were presumably about me and my brain and my emotional problems, I expected this test to be some sort of emotional test: just another benchmarking tool. But it wasn't. The questions were more like, "have you ever had a negative encounter with the Church? Has anyone you know ever been involved with a lawsuit against the Church?" And each time I answered "no", the nice young woman administering the test would declare, "great", and she wrote down almost every word I said with her free hand. I asked her what the E-Meter did. She said it helps them gauge emotional disturbance with electrical current, and I responded, "sounds a lot like a lie detector."

My guess is that she only knew a limited amount about it herself, and that like any good terrorist cell, the various people working at the Church only know their own role in the scheme, forced to dogmatically report the results of their findings to higher-ups whose intentions are far more nefarious. That's conjecture, but I think it's correct. But regarding the E-Meter, I'm nearly sure, and since I'm generally a google-icious individual, I just typed this conjecture into a Google Search and the first result that popped up supports my position that E-Meter is a crude lie detector. (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Secrets/E-Meter/) Since I've never had any interest in Scientology and didn’t know anyone with firsthand experience, I passed the test easily. Too bad. Every since Sharon Stone's character in Basic Instinct claimed that it wouldn't be hard to beat a lie detector, I've always wanted to try.

I just spent five minutes day dreaming about Basic Instinct, but just because I digress doesn't mean you have to…so…

The next day I was sent to a clinic to be given a physical by a doctor. Basic stuff: little urinalysis, little stethoscoping, a blood pressure test, and a little ball juggling. Okay, that last part isn't true. I passed the physical, and was ready for the cleanse the next day...

The story of the cleanse—to be continued…

Afterthoughts:
In retrospect all these manipulations are obvious to me--I've seen them all before. Have you? You know doubt have, as this story will illustrate:

Two years ago I was traveling in Cappadocia, Turkey. I went for a guided tour, given by a really learned gentleman who taught me all about the area. At the end of the tour, we went to a rug factory. It was your typical tourist attraction, where women were working on looms and the process of Turkey's excellent rug-making was on display to the public.
A gentleman walked over to me to offer assistance buying a rug. I told him I was just looking, and he said that was fine, that he was still happy to show me around, and that's what he did. After five minutes, he brought me into a room filled with rugs and a few men organizing them into piles. He had two men hold up a rug each and casually asked me which I liked better. I pointed to the one on the right. "Me too he said." The man on the left put down his rug, and picked up a new one.

"Would you like some tea?" he asked?

"Sure...tea would be great", I said. Someone got up from the room and left to go fetch some tea. Meanwhile, the gentleman and I chatted. And when the man returned with the tea, we continued talking about rugs. He asked me again, "Which of these two do you like better?" I told him again that I really wasn't looking for a rug, but he insisted, Michael, it's fine, just look at the rugs and get a sense of your own taste. You are under no obligation to buy anything, just look and enjoy. Sounded fair enough to me…

The process continued for 20 minutes, going through nearly all the rugs in the room, voting on one and discarding the other--a process which he explained helped hone in on one's personal taste. And, by the end of the exercise, of 35 minutes of nice conversation, of refreshments, of men doing manual labor on my behalf, one rug stood standing. He said, Michael, I can make you a great deal on this...but you have to buy it now so I can save you on shipping charges…I kept telling him no, but the fact that I was still sitting there was, in his mind, game on. He layered on discount after discount, and continued to insist that this was the best deal one could ever get on a rug because it’s direct from the tap.

The time he spent with me created a feeling of reciprocity, a lethal weapon of influence. The Scientologists did the exact same thing. The time I spent with The Rug Doctor was a form of commitment, just like at the COS. The good conversation created rapport, just like with the young woman at the Coffee Shop and the two gentlemen that told me about the Church, who either were just like me or attempted to mirror me. Liking, liking itself--another dangerous weapon of influence. We tend to be more influenced by people we like. The exercise with the rugs created a need to be consistent with my own tastes, because presumably the process had optimized my choice. This was similar to the tests I took--if I'm really anxious and nervous about whatever, presumably it’s logical and consistent to buy the product to ameliorate those conditions. The fact that I needed to buy the rug then and there created the illusion of scarcity, another weapon of influence. The Church does not have scarcity as an option, and so their tactic I is accountability and follow up. They make appointments with you, and if you don’t show up, they call….and call….and call…never letting you out.

A final technique they use—information asymmetry. If you get into a conversation with them, they will parry you into the ground because they are so rehearsed for anything you might say. You on the other hand, are new to the game. If a reasoned debate is to determine the outcome, you will lose. The only way out is to stick to your inner gut and just say, “I just don’t want it.” Try cancelling your gym membership at Equinox. You’re in for the fight of your life, if you’re not prepared to be an asshole. You can call me if you need me.

Needless to say, I made it out of the Church of Scientology largely unscathed. And now, three hours later, I’m going to sign off and go lay down on my beautiful, perfectly tasteful... Turkish rug.