Come to Scientology, pick up the cans
German_Scn_News <german_scn_news@hotmail.com>
Thu, 20 Apr 2000 16:18:23 -0400

Come to Scientology . . .

. . . because through the glasses of L. Ron Hubbard the world scintillates like gasoline in water puddles. A report on the rocky road in the presence of a veteran used car dealer

Berlin, Germany
April 20, 2000
taz

There are glasses which are meant to be more than simple glasses: Scientology glasses. They can wind their way about on the noses of the Scientologists into shapes resembling musical clefs, they can zigzag like stock prices and they can have tinted lenses which shimmer like gasoline in water puddles. Glasses so loud that they draw all attention to themselves until the faces behind them fade like a television screen in sunlight. That is a shame. Because the people who look at the world through these types of glasses have existential questions written on their foreheads: Where do I come from? Where am I going? Will I earn more money there? And what, really, is Scientology?

"What is Scientology?" This question rolls like a billiard ball through the head of Hansjuergen, our used car dealer. The 45 year old man wears a hawthorn colored jack, white loafers with tassles, and is one of the victims of the metaphysical homelessness of our "complicated times" (L. Ron Hubbard). He is a veteran (of Heidegg), a being with experience on the paved parking lots of a used car dealer, "Hyundai, Daewoo, holds the whole Korean," says the car salesman, his hands perched skeptically on his hips. Bound and determined to play dumb - if he thinks it will pay off. On which account he is here, too, at the "What is Scientology?" exhibition, which is taking place in Berlin from 18-20 April as part of a new information campaign of the Scientology Church Germany, Inc.

The hotel the Scientologists had originally booked threw them out; they shipped their movable partitions to a nearby office building in short order. Barely a dozen Scientologists were tending to barely a dozen visitors who pressed toward a table with cookies and orange juice. Marble colored paper walls suggested an ambience of wealth. Here is where one could "visually re-live" the life of sect founder L. Ron Hubbard in gilded letters. In black and white photographs we see Lafayette Ron Hubbard: taking a nap, in a Navy uniform, with mountain scenery, as a bronze bust on the high seas, with one arm outstretched to point the way. It is "the Way to Happiness" which is based "in all points upon sound human understanding."

"Sound human understanding" - as maybe Sigmund Freud or Constitutional Security would think of it - has nothing to do with the faithful of Scientology. They depend solely upon "practical, proven results," like they get, for instance, from the electrometer, a lie detector in the visually attractive shape of an oval with little lights and a numerical dial like you would find on an Italian motor scooter. "Would you like to see a thought?," a woman auditor slyly asked and pushed two tin cans with wires to the e-meter into Hansjuergen's hands. "I am an atheist!" protested Hansjuergen. "All the much better!" responded the thought-washing machine incarnate.

The road to awareness and happiness is rocky, but "technically do-able," as L. Ron Hubbard reassured us in a videotape. L. Ron Hubbard is the one "who found the formula upon which all human existence is predicated, and this formula is: Survive!" When asked whether he made money on Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard broke out into quite strange, gruesome laughter. His eyes narrowed into coin slots, the edges of his mouth strained upward, his whole body shook like a cyclist riding over cobblestones - no sound passed through his lips.

No, it was not the money he wanted to earn, responded Hubbard. Instead, the all-powerful savior of mankind said he wanted to help people "to recognize their immortal being." In order to cure any form of illness. Cancer and drug addiction. And blindness, too. With the special Scientology glasses.

Arno Frank

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