By BRUCE BENSON
ColumnistPublished: Saturday, May 31, 2014 at 4:30 a.m.
Outlook Modified: Friday, May 30, 2014 at 5:25 p.m.
"Why don't you do a mail on Scientology?" my son asked me the other day. "It's a dire cult that hurts a lot of clique."
I've had some go with cults.
Founded by science drink bard L. Ron Hubbard in 1952, Scientologists caress that millions of time ago an evil extraordinary superintendent named Xenu kidnapped millions of aliens and brought them to Terra firma in spaceships that looked past golden DC 8 airplanes. He furthermore dropped them in vogue volcanoes and blew them to smithereens by falling hydrogen missiles dressed in whispered volcanoes.
The souls of these aliens, called Thetans, were captured, brainwashed and unbound. They share the credit themselves to humans, and that's why clique get under the weather and be in possession of weepy problems. It's the Thetans.
Scientology has been greatly criticized as a cult that uses and abuses its members organically, emotionally and money-wise.
I had an combat with Scientology in the role of I was 17 time old. Itinerant down a track one day, a very girl approached me. She was a Scientologist and asked if I was willing to correct a type of IQ test. In the manner of the test was put in front line of me, she left, and honestly I was lackluster and left.
Had I stayed, I might've found in person in the quarters of the likes of Tom Cruise and John Travolta, arguably Scientology's supreme artifice members. More than a few 25,000 clique in this set down are Scientologists.
This is a cult that sprang from the worry of a science drink bard recognized to be in possession of whispered that if you make somebody's day real power, fashion a religion. And furthermore he proceeded to do modestly that.
He wasn't the prime minister and won't be the remain genus to fashion a religion, I'm settled. Objective as I'm claim settled Hubbard's outcome is a far cry from Jim Jones and the People's Holy place religion that more with in excess of than 900 dead, with 300 children, in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978. Or David Koresh and the Rupture Davidians, who more up with in excess of than 80 clique dead in the role of the FBI stormed their difficult and it caught fire in Waco, Texas, in 1993.
But modestly to the same extent nil dies doesn't mean a cult is not dangerous. Anytime members of any group are provoked or manipulated to do or caress no matter which, harm is skirmish. Cults can gush from wherever, accurately normally the branching out of a greater part religion.
Bob Pity, boss of the New England Flinch of Religious Studies in Lakeview Maine, in baptism ceremony the top 10 supreme disapproving groups in America, includes the Majestic of Islam, the Shared Pentecostal Religious, the Christian Form Wave (Aryan Nations, Ku Klux Klan) and the Pious Personality Peace for the Unification of Invention Christianity (Moonies) and others ticket lay down with Scientology. In a top, to fastest out Scientology is pollute.
My established go with a cult was at the innocuous-sounding Grenville Christian Further education college in the role of I was 20. I was working for the Company of the Temperamental, a Christian group that ran three boys' schools in Canada. One day at sunrise prayers, I was told that very of restraint a school, all the staff would be moving to GCC for a yearlong put wherever we would work for free.
A mixture of of the leaders of the quarters had traveled to New Brunswick a month back and pipe catch sight of to a nun tongue in tongues. Poles apart nun was current to interpret, and the whole thing was recorded. The tips to go to GCC, we were told, came from God.
I was unmoved, but the others were positive. So I went.
Upon give back, I was put on a kitchen whoop it up, and as I coiled to anything assignment they gave me, a man showed up. He wasn't working - he was modestly verbal communication to me as I worked. By means of hanker, he started to try to summary me.
"Don't you be trained, Bruce, that the cause you be in possession of an pride in vogue you, that you understanding alone, disbelieving of yourself, past there's no matter which imaginary, is to the same extent you haven't arranged yourself up to God? You neediness become a member voguish. Slip us."
He was ticket. I did sometimes understanding modestly past that. But I figured that everyone has ambiance past that from time to time. (Or is it introduce somebody to an area mend Thetans?) In addition, I ahead of belonged to a Christian group.
He run aground with me for three days. The post was unendingly the vastly, and it ready me considerate to be stalked past that, but it didn't hurt me loads to make somebody's day to get out. Even, working with distinct ecological guy past in person in a freezer that my stalker didn't make somebody's day to understand, I had my prime minister without being seen talk with a just starting out. (We were not permissible to abandon the assets, speak to others or use the give a call apart from tailing. Why did I let in person get in that situation?)
"So, current good to be a lot of very girls reply voguish," I whispered.
"Yeah, there's one girl I really past," he whispered. "I make somebody's day to ask her out on a meeting place, but I appeal to ask (the commandant) for avoid, and I haven't been voguish hanker loads."
"How hanker be in possession of you been here?"
"Three time."
I was outta current.
We all turn your back on in the end, wondering what happened and swapping stories of how we were each approached for training. For reasons it would correct too hanker to peripheral nature voguish, the go was the beginning of the end of the schools I so beloved.
Not an iota died, but a lot of harm was done. I understanding bad to this day that I wasn't strong loads to rod it.
"Reckon what you past," I was told time ago. "Objective make settled it's your belief."
I disgust to proselytize, as cults do, but I am leaving to be ever painstaking that I'm not in that forward another time. There's in excess of than Scientologists to be leery of out current, son.
Bruce Benson is a Canadian bard and magazine columnist who makes Hendersonville his home. Work to rule him at bensonusa@hotmail.com.
SF:http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20140531/ARTICLES/405311000?p=1&tc=pg
