Travels in Scientology - Part One

By Aaron Fleming & Duke De Mondo

Duke De MondoBy way of wrasslin’ the afternoon to the pavings, of wringing from the bronchus of the day a couple umber-hued globs of experience and enlightenment, myself and Sir Fleming - being too skint for to hire thon prostitute from down the road for twenty minutes - decided that the very thing to do was to wander in the direction of the Church of Scientology on Tottenham Court Road and maybe get rid of that ol’ bastard of a reactive mind plaguing the bejeesus out the both of us morning till night.To have the thetans wrenched the fuck from off our brains and off our ball-bags, to have the buggers chased the divil off our backs, to have them bid shoo out the doors of that white-walled hub, to watch them take off screaming and cursing up the street in phantasmal, miasmic streaks - worth an hour of anyone’s time, that. To learn of L. Ron and of Johnny Goodboy Tyler and of the wily whys and wherefores of the dianetics, yes. ‘I had a friend of a time who was dianetic’ says I to Sir Fleming, stepping out the way of a fella coming out the door of a blue-lit sex-shop. ‘Insulin and a mouthful of Mars Bar every so often - proved the very boys for that.’ Considering this… ‘Probably the thetans are allergic to Mars Bars, would you say?’ Sir Fleming nods. ‘I’d imagine that’s the way of it. Toffee Crisp too, probably. And God help them should a Yorkie cross their paths.’I give a hoot and a wag of a finger. ‘Ho, now! By fuck. Woe betide the thetan when the Yorkie gets a hold o’ the hoor.’Tending a stall set up outside Ray’s Jazz Café, a couple lads hand out tracts with “Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha - Peace Be With Them All” written on the front. In passing, I reflect upon the story of Jesus chasing the thetans out the brains of the centurion’s daughter, and also upon His temptation in the desert by the Psychlos. Of Johnny Goodboy Tyler and his coat of many colours. Of Moses bringing the Knowledge Machine down from Mount Sinai, and of the auditing of the Israelites in Canaan. Aaron FlemingWith the lusty scent of Foyles wafting off into the distance we stroll ever closer, the Duke and I, to Scientology’s temple. The iridescent display of electronics shops, disjointed by the rhythmic flow of workers freed from the day’s labour, propels us up Tottenham Court Road, shoving and shuffling and bursting with repressed salacious flair. Flailing his arms, motioning with dramatic importance, the Duke catches sight of the church: another cranny cut out London’s commercial byways, stealing space between a swollen burger eatery and a discount clothes emporium. It comes towards us as if escorted on wheels, as if our own movement had stopped further down the road, legs frozen mid-pace. Sudden cancerous, juddering powerlessness melts our faces; we edge closer.Questions come upon our eyes shone on by robust logos – ornate and brooding, they flank the enclave, staring out at terrace blasphemies, dynamic corners stabbing heathen shards of psychiatry, psychoanalysis and who knows what else. How might two idlers from up North London infiltrate such a compound? How might we possibly feign a sincere interest in the dogma that spawned Battlefield Earth? To what grand enthusiastic gestures must we yield to obtain entrance? Barely had the above taken form when we were abruptly thrust into the bowels of Scientology land. “Would you like to take a stress test, gentlemen?” enquires a short woman, treading the pavement in one almighty sweep of the legs. A rapid glance exchanges between us.“Ah…yes – fucking right we do,” says I with all too eager zeal in the eyes. “Take a seat right here.” She beckons me to a little stool tipped with red leather, obviously sat upon many times. The stool resides at a table, an outcropping of the church, a scintilla of doctrine come tumbling onto the street, secreted by L. Ron Hubbard’s rapid-fire bell-end in times past. Stacked editions of Dianetics adorn the table, creating a fort-like shape around the stress detector. “Take those tins in your mitts; your friend can go watch a video while we do the test.”At once she leads the Duke into the glistening interior, where bodies swarm – reactive minds pulsating in the glow, lighted from above and below. His steps fade, voided by unknown corners, leaving me in wait of my impending stress test.Duke De MondoFrom out a telly screen embedded in the wall, a series of monochrome images flick’r and fizzle and flash - flames lick the bends of a rusted tablespoon, adolescent nostrils quiver with the white-line flu, bared teeth grind and gnash spasmodically, methamphetamine tremors ripple the flesh of purpling gums.Round about me, various men and women sit clutching aluminium tubes of some sort, grimacing and wincing about errant fathers and lacklustre lovers to folks in red shirts who nod and cluck their tongues and jab at buttons on red-metal stress detector doohickeys and squint at needles erratically lunging. Craning to see past an Asian lad stood by a mound of CD-ROMS, I inspect the sundry leaflets and tracts stacked here and there about the glass tabletops. DRUGS KILL says one. DRUGS DESTROY says another. A third has some quotes from Chick Corea and John Travlota. DRUGS KILL AND DESTROY says the text at the top. Posters advertising Dianetics bear the legend - “Buy It. Read It. Live It.” Hoping for a flick-through but finding that all of the innumerable hardback copies are sealed in plastic, I make do with an A5 sheet festooned with the anguished faces of various folks twisted and splintered and bent under the influence of this or that psychological terror. On the reverse side, those same faces shimmer and shine, smiling and laughing, exuding a happiness more than happiness, a serenity transcending serenity. From what wonder this transformation may have been wrought, a fella is left to his own assumptions - albeit assumptions aided by the presence of a Church Of Scientology logo on the Happy side. Another video-screen pots the wall beside a stairway, itself leading to an area not unlike the Civil Service offices in Donegal Square, Belfast. Folks sit afore massive, black-rimmed clocks, scribbling frantically o’er sheets of A4 paper, headsets straddling the skulls, shoulders tensed and the napes of the necks all knotted. I watch them for a while, then turn for to gawk at the screen, upon which a frozen image hangs, detailing a crowd of men and women stood amongst the still-reeking ruins of the World Trade Centre, each wearing a yellow vest emblazoned with the words Volunteer Minister For The Church Of Scientology. Some grip shovels or hammers. Some hold the backs of hands to sweat-slick foreheads. Some stand hunched by mounds of concrete, their arms perpetually stretching towards some person or persons out of shot. Stood there, I too feel I am grasping for something out of shot. Up to the eyes in information, I’m yet hopelessly removed from any real knowledge about what these people might maybe believe in, what their theology might be, what their philosophy might be, where it comes from, what it does, what their worldview is, where their morals stem from... Whither the aliens and the thetans? That mythology wrenched from the grip of the Gnostics, swaddled in the robes of Madame Blavatsky and the theosophists, spat through the prism of The Outer Limits and Gerry Anderson - Where is it? What are the ideas? Why is this a religion?Christianity - for all the confounding arabesques its texts might weave about the brains of the reader, for all the density of those allegories and parables and proverbs and poems, still has a discernable set of core messages and beliefs, albeit of wildly varying hierarchical rank. Ditto Judaism, Buddhism, Hare Krishna, Islam. Ten minutes in a temple or a mosque or a chapel or a church and a fella has at least some idea of where these people are coming from. The Word - the first and most blessed and Holy of God’s gifts - blazes from the grout in the floor-tiles, it glistens on the walls like dew… Those exposed to The Word wear its marks upon their bodies. The Word clings to their wrists and their ankles. The Word wavers in the whites of their eyes and scintillates upon their breath. Herein, The Word has been blunted, muffled. The many tongues of God - if indeed there is a God in this set-up - have been bound and boxed and buried. They yammer away from the bowels of the earth in a language shorn of inflection, accent and tone, leaving only vague traces of past pronouncements lying flayed and spluttering nonsensical amongst the slogans and the signs. The bearers of this phantom Word seem no more sure of it than I do. Each question is batted away like flies from round a horse’s arse. Each enquiry is met with a shrug and a nod towards thon stack of tomes over yonder, and an outstretched palm pines for the kiss of the Queen’s green mug on its flesh. Through the doorway I see Sir Fleming talking enthusiastically with his tester. Most likely, I assume, she’s filling him in on all there is to know about the whole thetan-throttling shebang.

Aaron FlemingThoughts resound in the head, a curious blend of frightful anticipation and awkward self-consciousness. The wind of the street dashes by, a rogue London Lite fluttering in the bluster. Hands held out, clutching two silver cylinders, single black wires sprout out the back – umbilical cords feeding into a red box, dials and meters cast across its surface. Might she come back and demand I place these ridiculous cans to my head, to my eyes and ears; perhaps some orificial destination is on the cards? Surely the slab of concrete London on which I sit is not the best place to be ramming metallic objects up one’s unassuming anus!I tilt for a closer look at the machine, spotting a possible compartment for the electrodes, when she returns. A quick sit down and we’re ready for business.“Right, this is the stress test, just hold those while I get it set up,” she counsels. Mocking eyes are felt from those wandering past as I try to countenance a fusion of nonchalance and comical awareness. In part I can’t help mirroring their derision onto my new friend. “I got to get the needle just right.”Silence reigns for a moment longer.“Can I get you to think of a moment in your life when you’ve been very upset, maybe something in your life has caused you great distress?”I nod.“Well?”I watch the needle move with lacklustre momentum around the mid-point of the display.“I can’t really think of anything,” says I, disappointed in the wretched banality I’ve been reduced to.“Oh,” she harks, eyeing the needle, “what did you think of just now?”“When?” “Just then.”“A second ago?”Pause.“Yes, a second ago.”“Um,” I stammer, “I was thinking of how I couldn’t think of anything.”“What do you do?” she asks, summoning the banshees of biography to the table, wailing and scrambling for their own go at the stress test. I assent, swabbing her mind in quotidian splashes of professions and former professions, habitats and former habitats. “Think of a time when you’ve been really sick,” she continues. “Like had an accident or something,”“I’m not really one for the old sickness,” I reply. “Never had an accident.”“Nothing?”“I’ve…had the flu.”“Do you get that every year?”“Maybe every few years.”“It’s bad?”“Nah, it’s alright really.”Her face turns gloomy, outraged to be faced with a body untainted by AIDS, a figure not yet ravaged by organ failure, deadly viruses or malicious parasites. Probably should have told her of the time I had the chickenpox.“I’m afraid I’m not a very stressed person,” I comment in a conciliatory whisper. “Worry and anxiety don’t normally plague me.”“Yes…seems the case,” she says, clearly spinning a mental carousel of tactics round her head.“In fact, I think my inability to conjure notable moments of my present and/or history has caused me the most stress I’ve felt in many months. This test is awakening numerous dormant ulcers in me right now as we speak!”But rather than attend to my deteriorating health, she lunges onto the next point.“Have you ever heard of Dianetics?”“Sure have,” I answer.“What do you know of it?” she probes.“It’s like the Scientology bible…essentially.”At that she departs the table, muttering fleeting words, words rudely discarded from their sentence stronghold – something about a book, one unsealed, through which I can browse unobstructed. The moment allows me a brief reflection on the test. Besides the pseudo-scientific instrumentation and the sheer silliness of one’s own interaction with it, the chief objective is clear: identify and isolate weakness, push to the forefront hardship, highlight loss and other catalysts for unhappiness. The technique effectively preys on chinks in the spirit – self-worth and comfort eroded by death, illness, social dispute, financial quandaries. The susceptible are immediately targeted, questions spoken softly dredge up morsels of information on which to pounce.She gallops back to me, Hubbard’s tome in her hand. “Take a look at that.”I receive it as she runs through the sales pitch, a monotone stream of slogans and promises. Even my browsing becomes subject to her dictate, gliding hands impelling me to suffer sight of the ‘Goals of Man’ section. “And what is the goal?” I enquire impudently.“I know, but you’ll need to buy it to find out.”“Can’t you just tell me?” I retort, insolence gaining magnitude. “Would it perhaps have anything to do with self-fulfilment and happiness and other such items?”“Buy it and find out. Look here, even has a glossary.”The glossary was packed with words exorcised of their original meaning, gifted new connotations more compatible with Scientology’s belief system, whatever that may be…The representative stares at me as I look into its folds. Sighting something, my focus unambiguously ensnared in the glossary, she gives me a perplexed expression. I then point out the word ‘loony’, nestling in the deep reaches of the glossary, pausing for a moment’s poignancy. The limelight of mocking ostentation becomes quickly shut off as she now guides me inside to see the Duke and watch a video.Part Two

Article Author: Aaron Fleming

Aaron Fleming is a waster and an idler - prone to pomposity - forever enchanted by the filmic, the sonic, words and the aesthetic - given to the most ludicrous appraisal of Culture's finest icons and compositions. He resides in London.

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