Inside the $cientology Compound

Although we didn't get into much of a confrontation inside the $cientology compound, the people there were undeniably creepy. They were all too-much-eye-contact and helpful-on-the-verge-of-intrusive. Our maid was Beatrice from Hungary; most of the low-level staff seemed eastern-European. They were very eager to please. We had Beatrice's pager number in case we needed anything - it seemed like she was on call 24/7 for our every need. She showed us laboriously how to use everything in the room including the TV and explained that since it was cable we might see things we wouldn't normally expect to see in a church (LRH propaganda perhaps?)

What was extra creepy was that we were asked by three different sets of people on the way in to confirm that it was just the two of us staying in our room - Susan thought this was suspicious too - like they wanted to be sure that if they killed us both then they'd be done.

When we mistakenly got out of the elevator on the second floor there was a room full of identically uniformed people fussing over papers and a large sign saying 'Shhh!, Auditing In Progress'.

Downstairs there were placards offering courses on 'How to talk to your friends about $cientology', 'How to spot a ruin', as well as 'Take the Purification Rundown!'

Anytime we strayed from the straight and narrow there always seemed to be a crisp-shirted attendant on hand 'Can I help you with anything?' We also couldn't help noticing the cameras watching each elevator door.

Inside our room there was no Gideon Bible - only two weighty tomes of $cientology. The first expounded the miraculous life of L Ron Hubbard himself, and his exploration of the mind, and the second was a book of services including 'Group Training Sessions'. I was dispppointed to find that the wedding service came straight from this book, with the normal legal service tacked on the end. In situ this service wasn't as unusual as the rest of the group services included, which mostly seemed to be endless repetitions of questions laid out over and over again in different permutations. Largely, they consisted of simple repetitive instructions from the minister repeated over and over for pages at a time along the lines of:

Visualise the left wall of the room

Visualise the right wall of the room

Visualise the left wall of the room

Visuallise the right wall of the room

Visualise the left wall of the room

Visuallise the right wall of the room

Are we in a room?

Are we in a room?

Are we in a room?

Are we in a room?

Can you see the room?

Grasp the left had side of your chair

Grasp the right hand side of your chair

Do you have a left foot?

Do you have a right foot?

Have a head

Have a head

Have a head

Have a head

Have a head

Be

Be

Be

Be

...except each item was repeated much, much more. It was certainly good enough to send me straight to sleep.

Posted by ashleyniblock at January 04, 2003 11:21 PM