Anybody here do the scientology assessment?

I took the week off and I am currently in San Francisco. Nice town, great food, tons of shopping, a bit too much cold and rain, but what the heck. I was in Union square today and I noticed a sign that stated "free stress test." I am a stressful kind of guy and thought what the hell, I will give it a try. As I approached the table I saw L. Ron Hubbard's book dianetics, spotting the e-meter, I realized that the young enthusiastic pitchmen were scientologists.

Has anyone here taken the test? Any experiences with scientology? My wife quickly pushed me through the crowd stating that she would not tolerate a merlot fueled diatribe, arguing religion versus science on a street corner. I am still curious. I will try to swing back tomorrow, hope they are still there, I picked up some literature, seems interesting. Any thoughts...............

:evilgrin:

doing coffee enemas to rid herself of her "sad cells?" Dunno.

:popcorn:

To my own astonishment, I find the thought of Janet giving herself a coffee enema to be erotic. I will promise to seek help if the scientologists don't come through for me. ;)

I bought a book from Bridge Publications (the publishing wing of the Scientology marketting machine). That was about 1 1/2 years ago. Since then, I get slammed with at least 10 emails/week (and I can't seem to get off all their lists) and 5 items of postal mail/week. It's all about selling you more crap. (and the stuff is REALLY expensive-- must be I guess if they can afford to spend all on the money on continuous hounding targets with flashy direct-mail campaigns. Nice racket they have going there.

I want to go back tomorrow and take the test, I suspect they will want some identifying info, my email, home address, etc. I have someone in mind, someone I detest, which might benefit from the scientology info. Or, at the very least, might be annoyed to his dying day by the continuous hounding.

:evilgrin:

George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
1-202-456-1414

Nice...... :rofl:

I hate to say it, but George is just too damn stupid to be a scientologist. You have to be able to at least read and speak in a coherent manner.

Hey, HEY! George, stop sucking on the e-meter, now just sit here and read about "My Pet Goat." Thats it George, maybe later we can can go pet a real goat. Oops, sorry that is no goat, thats your mom, Barbara. Sooooooo Sorrrry......

1000 miles form home and then 2 days later got a letter with our real names at his fathers house whom he had not seen in 20 years, 1000 miles from home.

my friend took the Scientology training and i took the Rebirth America..'Pranagenics' training.

my friend was really stressing about his practice and said he was really going to do it right that nite,... he came back glassy eyed and confused. he said that he astral projected and floated up out of his chair and the trainer was already out, as were the other trainers.. and some of the students.. he said the trainer nodded and they went back into their bodies.. and he was led out and pressured to sign a $5000 dollar contract for the next step of training..he said it was REALLY A HARD SELL.. and he was still confused.. he had to press past them to get out and get some air.

I trained in Pranayama for about a month and had an out of the body experience after some serious hard breathing for about 2 hours in a fetal position in a sleeping bag in a room with 12 others doing the same ..just before i 'left' the trainer touched my shoulder and and whispered 'Affirm'.. my mind was totally expanded and crystal clear and i figured he meant 'Affirmation', a process of stating what one wanted.. my wife had taken our 2 year old son and had run off with a coke/skag dealer and 2 whores 6 months before and i was very angery..'Livid'. i thought..'the only thing i want is to end the conflict between her and i.. she had blamed me for her getting busted with 3 kilos of drugs and going to jail, but her father got her out with his CIA connections, two x heads of the CIA..and past presidential candidates.

just as i thought that i winked into a blazing white light apparently streaming from a single point about 15 or 20 feet away.. the light was pure white crystal Plasma.. i was totally paralyzed by the fluid electricity. there were blue, golden, red.. colored sparks whirling past me in it too.. I wasn't solid, i was like a glass shell.. about the time i figured what was happening and relaxed into it.. it was electrically blissful.. a voice like a BELL said,...'Then Love Her' i habitually reflexed and thought, 'yea, but...' and the voice replied,...'But Nothing..Love her'.

about this time i realized i was standing before the burning bush arguing with it and i had not taken off my shoes.

i developed a system of arising each morning and visualizing her and our son in a golden and blue sphere and prayed for her guidance out of the bad situation she was in, and protection till she got out.. i then blessed her twice every time i missed my son and damned her for it..

in less than a month i got a letter from her saying i could see our son any time i wanted and she gave me her phone number so i could talk to him as i lived 1000 miles away. this is a good example of Indra's Net.

as for Scientology.. It evolved out of a third rate scienfiction paper back book. there are some interesting things that Elron has to say about human nature and behavior.. but the organisation is based on a fantacy.. and i have heard some really strange things from inner circle people.. he said a highest level guy visited the councel in a very tall skyscraper he had a girl take a card and lick it and stick it on the window of a 42nd floor and she stood 15 feet from it and stared at it for a minute then told her to retreeve it and it was stuck to the outside of the window.. and he said he held a card and watched the card change from one card to another again and again.... stay away from them.

If scientology is like you describe I will join and open a scientology coffee bar in Amsterdam. What a kick.

As for your warning, thank you. But I am well aware of what a cult they are, there is no pressure they can muster to convince me to toss away a life time of rationality for the psychotic ramblings of a third rate science fiction writer.

Freaky stuff!

Stay the hell away. Total disregard is the best in this case. Scientology is very, very bad. Forget about "arguing with them at a street corner". They are GOOD at what they're doing. Just stay away. Curiosity killed the cat, isn't that an American saying?

----------------------

Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

Scientology is a cult and its proponents a bunch of brain washed nutcases. They teach that Hubbard magically brought himself back to life after twice being shot to death. And they're the biggest bunch of tax cheats anywhere.

They control part of Florida and were instrumental in arranging to have Jeb Bush elected in certain counties where they control the vote machinery.

If you join up with those cultists, kiss your money good bye.

:rofl:

They were gone when I went back. Damn, no e-meter, not thetans, no Xeno talk, what a shit. I guess my brain washing will have to wait. Oh, Tom, Katie, where are you when we need you most...............

The liberal, open-minded, but non-stupid and logical Dutch people issued a great legal decision against $cientology some years ago. (The $cientos still have a "center" in Amsterdam. When I visited A-dam a few years ago it was located not far from the Red Light District, which seems fitting.)

You can find the entire hilarious story on one of the Operation Clambake or Xenu websites. Which are also tied into the story...

Old-timers will remember that, back about 1995, the $cientos started an aggressive campaign to Permanently Delete the Usenet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology. They used a variety of tactics, including massive spamming, issuing bogus RM commands, and spouting phony and barratrous legal threats against ISP's carrying the group.

At one point $ciento trolls were even posting to alt.atheism and all the religion newsgroups, trying to drum up support for removing that "bigoted" newsgroup, a.r.s.

The war really started when former $ciento victims, and a few freelance hellraisers, started posting the Copyrighted Sacred Holy Works of $cientology into the group. These being the Copyrighted...Works you only learn after you've spent about $75,000 on a really bad sci-fi yarn. This attracted the attention of even more troublemakers, who were soon hosting the Sacred Works all over the web.

Well, the clams really hit the fan then. At one point a $ciento "lawyer" even threatened the People's Republic of China with a lawsuit because the Sacred Works popped up on a Chinese website. (All of her fulminating, idiotic e-mails were SOMEHOW copied and re-posted all over the world...to the general hilarity of everyone munching their popcorn and watching this little war.)

Eventuallly, the $ciento legal-beagles decided to make an example of the big Dutch ISP, xs4all. And especially a talented and utterly fearless writer with a website hosted by that ISP, Karen Spaink.

Big mistake. After the usual $ciento stalling and obfuscation, designed to bankrupt the opponent, the Dutch court handed down a decision giving the "church" a gigantic upraised middle finger.

The trial ended around dusk. As the $ciento lawyers exited the courtroom, they were treated to the sight of their Sacred Works beaming at them from the sides of buildings, put there by annoyed Dutch citizens armed with slide projectors.

:rofl:

As I said, you should check out the whole story for yourself. That's the gist of it, but there are many more side-splitting parts.

My Amsterdam Scientology Coffee bar suggestion was based on fantasy, my fantasy of leaving the US and the fantastic notions posted by the respondent to my original post. I share your disgust of Scientology, I was aware of most of the info you posted, except the proposed law suit against the Peoples Republic of China. What a joke, the nut balls in scientology really think that they will fare better than the nut balls in Fallon Gong? Good for the Dutch, nice to see some sanity with regard to scientology. I thought Germany was the only country to show that resistance was not futile.

I still want to take the scientology test, as an experience. I have been to christian services, catholic masses, etc. I doubt anything will ever alter my secular humanistic weltanschauung. Looking at the fringe of human thought is like looking at a road side accident, hard to avert ones eyes.

Are you back from Egypt? My wife's good friend is getting married in Cairo in July and wants us to attend. How safe is Egypt? Did you venture outside Alexandria? If we avoid Egypt, I have her convinced that Greece/Turkey is our next destination.

Any thoughts, and nice to see your back...............

:hi:

I knew you were just kidding about the Co$ coffee bar.

Egypt is pretty safe, I'd say. There is a government requirement that any tour group with 2 or more Americans in it gets an armed guard from the Tourism Police, free of charge. (You can refuse the guard but have to sign a waiver if you do.)

I stay in Alexandria but work about 50 miles out in the Nile Delta, so I see a variety of places and folks. The people are amazingly hospitable and polite, especially considering that asshole mAdministration we are stuck with right now.

Yesterday I had a bit of a scare. First the unscary part. I went wandering around and got lost in Alexandria. I do that a lot, because I will walk down any old street or alley if it looks interesting. I ended up in a local street market.

Man, people were just shoving free food at me and wanting to yak with the furriner. One lady brought me some falafel right out of the pan shoved into fresh pita-type bread. Another vendor served up a glass of hot tea. Somebody else gave me a tangerine. Etc. As mentioned above, just incredibly generous people. This sort of thing happens to me all the time here.

A few minutes later I got un-lost and found what I was looking for, the Nasr Station on the tram line. (Ironically, most Alexandrians still use its original White-Devil-Colonialist name--Victoria Station. The citizens here are stubborn that way.)

It was time for the noon prayer call, and suddenly a loud rant started booming out from the loudspeakers at one little mosque. Now I don't know much Arabic, but a lot the ranting was about Ameriki (America).

Suddenly I had uncomfortable memories of what happened here in October, just after I arrived. These kinds of rants during a Friday prayer call sparked several weeks of rioting and Muslim attacks on the Coptic Xian minority in Alexandria. (Generally one of the most liberal cities in the Middle East, so it was a real shock.) That ended with churches and apartment buildings in flames, and several people killed.

I was the only American in the area and suddenly felt very, very conspicuous.

However, nothing at all happened. The Egyptians didn't seem to be paying much attention to the ranting. Didn't even get any Hate Stares, which I used to get when I worked in Saudi Arabia...generally from Jerry Falwell's Wet Dream, the Religious Police.

Most people who come here want to see the sights in Cairo and Aswan (which is quite a long ways to the South). If you do come and it's at all possible, I'd highly recommend a few days in Alexandria. My job has taken me all over the world, but this is one incredible city.

I have had similar experiences, however in a much safer(?) local. I wondered aimlessly in China last year, my wife is Asian, and we ended up in the Hutong, the old part of Beijing where the poorer class resides. The Chinese are very hospitable people, but I did get a few nasty stares from the locals. I found out later that a white guy with a young Asian female is assumed to be with his prostitute. Lots of muttering about 'La Wei' or foreigner in chinese, but I felt safe for the most part. Wandering around in a foreign country is the best way to get a greater understanding of another culture.

I will try to convince my wife to go to Egypt, her friend who is getting married, speaks Arabic but is Coptic. Very interesting the armed guard business. She may veto the whole thing when I tell her, if I tell her. I have been playing up Turkey, another place I have been yearning to visit, but she is still resistant.

It is a sad fact that the majority of people are just like you and I, just trying to live out their lives without causing any pain or anguish in the world. Atheist, Christian, Muslim or Jew, we are all the same, and I find immersion into other cultures to be a fascinating experience. Gives one a better understanding of the world.

I told my wife that if she agrees to go to Egypt I would grow a beard and she should wear a vail, a copy of 'Islam for Dummies' as a pre-travel primer. But, I suspect I would stand out no matter what I do...........

PM me, I'll send you an address so you can send a check. :evilgrin:

and while we were walking through the city, one of those dudes stopped us to talk us into taking their test. The guy I was with wanted to do it, and I didn't want to be the wet blanket, so I went along.

Basically it was like taking a combination Cosmo/employment quiz. He was told afterwards he was a great person, blah blah blah. I was told I was belligerent and suspicious. NO SHIT.

Scientology helped me have a clearer vision that the guy I was with wasn't for me, so I dumped him. So I'd have to say it was a productive experience.

See? The clams provide a public service.

I think they call it an "e-meter", and charge a couple thousand dollars for it.

For an inside look at Scientology weirdness, see the book (available online as html or pdf) "The Road to Xenu"

The Road to Xenu
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/xenu/

For great material on Scientology, see the site "Clam Bake"

Clam Bake
http://www.xenu.net