Yesterday I went to the Riccarton Market. Alongside stalls selling everything you could possibly think of, was a display with one man on his own, surrounded by books and DVDs and a sign that read "Free Stress Test".
At first I didn’t pay much attention to it, but when I walked back past again later I looked more closely and saw the name "L. Ron Hubbard" on all of the books. Oh good grief. It’s Scientology.
At this point my brain immediately went "HAHA! Excellent! I have some spare time, I shall do their test, speak to the guy, and then blog about it!"
Unfortunately I couldn’t do this straight away, since there was already another, older lady engaged in conversation with the guy. She walked away having bought a book. Oh dear!
Anyway! When she had left, I casually wandered up and looked at the stand, knowing that the man would soon enough approach me and ask me if I wanted to take the test.
Sure enough, he did. I asked how long it would take, and he said "Only about two minutes", and that it would involve him asking me a few questions. I agreed to do it and sat down.
Then he asked me to hold the E-meter. Before I did so, he put a small piece of plain paper between my ring and the metal cylinder. He didn’t explain why he did this, and in hindsight I’m kicking myself for not asking.
It was at this point that I remembered something a friend of mine (a former Scientologist!) told me about the E-meter. She used to work as an "auditor" and told me that after she left she had figured out that if you very lightly squeeze each hand alternately, you can affect the reading on the screen. Sure enough, she was right. HAHAH! I was greatly amused by this, but realised that I couldn’t laugh, lest the guy work out that I knew a great deal more about Scientology than I let on, and was not in fact there for a "stress test" at all, but instead to gain some further insight into what I already believe to be a completely loopy cult.
After I had done his "stress test"1 he brought out a book entitled The Problems of Work and informed me that this would help me to build better interpersonal relationships with people I meet. Perhaps unsurprisingly I declined to purchase it (for $20) and instead jumped in to ask him what Scientology actually was, claiming that I didn’t really know.
He did not say that it was a religion, and he didn’t mention anything about aliens (Apologies to those of you who were hoping to read about him being a little more wacky!) but he did start telling me about the ARC Triangle, which, basically, is a way of explaining how one ought to live one’s life in order to best communicate and build relationships with people. He then tried to sell me a DVD which would further explain Scientology to me. Of course, I did not purchase this either.
I left after this, and went away actually feeling somewhat disappointed that it wasn’t more exciting. Even though my purpose wasn’t really to go there and bait him, I had hoped he might tell me a bit more about what Scientologists actually believed, rather than just fob me off when I asked and try to sell me something instead. Boo.
Anyone else even done one of these tests? What was your experience like?
- Which, oddly, never led to me finding out just how stressed I really am!? [↩]
