Cult Classic

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But some things don’t change: As the half-hour film approached its conclusion, the pitch man went into hard sell mode, offering the same heaven-or-hell choice religions have offered forever. I was “at the threshold of [my] next trillion years,” he said. I could live it “in shivering agonized darkness,” or “triumphantly in the light.”

Naturally, when the credits began to roll, Zonnie burst in carrying three of the books featured in the film. “What did you think of the movie? Do you have any questions?” she asked, arranging the books to display their titles.

“When do I learn about Xenu?” I asked impatiently. First revealed to the public in a 1991 Time cover story on Scientology and featured in a recent episode of “South Park,” the tale of Xenu is a strange one, unless you consider that Hubbard was a pulp sci-fi novelist by trade: 75 million years ago, Xenu, alien ruler of the “Galactic Confederacy,” flew billions of frozen alien spirits, or “thetans,” to earth in planes resembling the DC-8. The “thetans” were then stacked around volcanoes and blown up with hydrogen bombs. Upper level scientologists are taught this doctrine, and told the scattered “thetans” are the source of man’s troubles, as they cluster around us, and cloud our judgment. They are also told not to talk about it. The reason for this secrecy surrounding Scientology’s core mythology isn’t much of a mystery—it’s just so silly that you’d have to already be completely brainwashed to believe it.

For the first time, Zonnie broke her tentative gaze; her eyes shot to the carpet. She flatly denied knowledge of Xenu, but later told me “if it’s true, it’s true for you.” This solipsist adage, twice repeated in the movie I’d just seen, I would discover to be a main tenet of Scientology. Zonnie went to fetch someone who could be of more use, returning with a thin, neatly groomed man-animal wearing designer frames named Neil. Neil addressed my question by bashing “South Park” and ignoring more credible source material. Neil was similarly affected by the word “Xenu,” avoiding eye contact and becoming visibly irritated. I didn’t want to anger them quite yet, so I changed the subject. The conversation grew more casual, and eventually their super-abilities as Scientologists prevailed: I ponied up 7 dollars for “Scientology: The Fundamentals of Human Thought,” and got the hell out of there. I was assured the money would not go to charity. That night I cracked the spine and was blown away by the wisdom of L. Ron:

“Unlike yellow and brown people, the white does not usually believe he can get attention from matter or objects. The yellow and brown believe for the most part (and it is all a matter of consideration) that rocks, trees, walls, etc., can give them attention.”

Through this 183-page treasure, Scientology was beginning to make a whole lot of sense to me. Maybe it wasn’t all about making a buck; maybe it was also about helping people:

“When a man has a problem very thoroughly and can’t solve it, he really has too few problems. He needs more.”

Scientologists are none too shy about helping you find more problems, problems to which they alone have the solutions.

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