CityBeat - Te Waha Nui Online

by Daniel Satherley

Anyone who’s been following CityBeat closely will know I’m no fan of organised religion.

This doesn’t mean I don’t like to find out more about each faith - on the contrary.

The more I learn, the less each makes sense, and the closer I feel to achieving some kind of agnostic nirvana.

Luckily, most religions are happy to tell you more about what they believe, with one glaring exception: new kid on the block, Scientology.

As a result, few people have any real idea of what Scientology actually is.

When I was a kid I thought it was believing in science, which to an outer-space obsessed child-geek sounded reasonable.

But in fact, as many of us now know, Scientology’s core beliefs have as little to do with science as any of the major religions - but a lot to do with outer space!

Ask any South Park fan, and they’ll tell you exactly what Scientologists apparently believe: that 75 million years ago, Xenu, dictator of the Galactic Confederacy (consisting of 76 planets) was about to be deposed from power.

With the assistance of psychiatrists Xenu summoned over 13,000 billion of his citizens together, under the pretense of an income tax audit, got them drunk and loaded them onto spacecraft that looked identical to DC-8s (a plane manufactured in the late 1950s and ’60s). The craft flew to Earth, then known as Teegeeack, and unloaded the citizens around volcanoes. Hydrogen bombs were then lowered into the volcanoes and detonated, killing all but a few, who were the proto-humans.

And then things started to get weird.

The souls of these killed were unhurt by the explosions and thrown into the air. Hundreds of billions were captured and forced to watch propoganda movies for 36 days, robbing them of their will and personal identities. After release, the souls, known as “thetans”, gathered into groups of a few thousand, each cluster attaching itself to a survivor.

To this day, these thetans are attached to our bodies, adversely affecting humanity. They can be blamed for all manner of ills, including asthma, poor eyesight, color blindness, hearing deficiencies, stuttering, allergies, sinusitis, arthritis, high blood pressure, coronary trouble, dermatitis, ulcers, migraine, conjunctivitis, morning sickness, alcoholism, tuberculosis, the common cold… and even homosexuality.

Woah.

Knowing this, how do people get sucked into what would, minus the poisoned orange juice, appear to be the textbook definition of a cult? Because everything I just told you is copyrighted by the “Religious Technology Centre”, a sister organisation to the “Church Of Scientology”.

When you meet a Scientologist on the street doing free “stress tests”, they’re not going to tell you about Xenu until you’ve paid your way up through the church’s many levels, some of which can only be studied while at sea.

Yes, I did just say “paid your way up” and “while at sea”. Scientology’s a religion that doesn’t take its wacky stuff lightly.

Wanting to sort the wheat from the chaff, I decided to go along to our local church of Scientology in Panmure and check it out for myself.

The first thing you notice upon entering is that everyone is smiling, all the time. It’s a bit like walking into a Tony Robbins infomercial, except rather than pumping you with enthusiasm and slogans, they make you watch cheesy instructional videos and try to sell you books.

Oh wait, that’s exactly like a Tony Robbins informercial.

Anyway, the Scientologists must know potential recruits are more familiar with the traditional, monotheistic religions, so they try to make the transition as smooth as possible. Yes, it’s okay to be a Christian and a Scientologist; yes, they have Sunday morning congregations; and yes, they have a basic text, Dianetics - the Modern Science of Mental Health.

Except unlike the Gideons and most other Abrahamic offshoots, they won’t just give you the book. It costs $20. And if you need someone to talk to or some religious guidance, that’ll cost you as well. I was offered a special super-duper package that included DVDs, charts, extra reading material and Xenu knows what else… for “only” $200 or so.

Gees, even The Secret would make a better investment, and that’s the biggest scam since my long-lost Nigerian uncle died.

Come to think of it, Scientology is just so bizarre, it doesn’t really need me to mock it to make it look stupid.

Christianity, Islam and the rest may be bonkers in their own ways, but at the end of the day, it wasn’t Jesus, Muhammad, Abraham or Jehovah who said: “I’m going to invent a religion that’s going to make me a fortune. I’m tired of writing for a penny a word.”

It was Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.