[Today’s guest post is by Pete Griffiths]
My first ever Dianetics session had a bizarre twist which at the time meant nothing to me. Years later it made me go, wow! Really? Did that really happen? Am I making this up? How accurate are memories anyway?
Here’s how it unfolded. Like an idiot I follow this girl into the org to do the personality test and spend the next 45 minutes answering 200 questions as honestly as I can with a YES, NO or MAYBE. Scientology calls this test the Oxford Capacity Analysis, but it has nothing to do with Oxford University. Your answers to its 200 questions are supposed to produce some meaningful inspection of your character.
“Do you make thoughtless remarks or accusations that you later regret?” Er… maybe… OK, YES! Sometimes…
Next I am led into an office by the same girl who now has a graph in her hand. That wiggly line is my personality displayed for all to see.
Firstly, I disagreed with everything the OCA test evaluator said about me, but I did agree that I could improve. The evaluator was claiming that Dianetics would help me to do that. Would it? I had no idea but she was insistent that it would help me to remove the barriers and unleash my true potential. That I wasn’t being the real me. The real me was hampered by my reactive mind. Get rid of that and feel the power. Well, she was right when she told me I wasn’t happy, if I’m honest with myself, I’m not really happy as I know I could be a lot happier. Oh yeah. Bring it on.
So I bought into that idea. And then I bought five hours of introductory auditing, using the money set aside to pay the mortgage for that month. I was persuaded that once I realized my true potential that a single mortgage payment would be chickenfeed. I would be making money hand over fist. I would be a real powerhouse. I could live with that.
I go into the session not knowing what to expect but I had read the book — Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health — and found it interesting and I had always had a fascination with the idea of self-betterment and even past lives (although they don’t get a mention in the book) if I could only find out how to do it. I really had nothing to lose. Except £34.50p. This was in 1987. It would be about £90 today.
The auditor asks me to close my eyes and there sit I, teetering on the edge of a great adventure. He asks me what I had to eat the previous day. I had good old fish and chips, a British staple. He asks me if I can taste them again, and as I take a breath in, I get the reaction that you get when you smell vinegar and I am amazed as my mouth begins to water in anticipation. I grin. Maybe this does work. Now I know what to expect and so find myself rolling down the time track at the auditor’s command, looking for some incident that was upsetting to me. Oh there is one, right there.
He was my friend, with a verve for life and living that made him drink too much, steal cars and have far too much fun. Sadly, one night he was chased by the police in a stolen car and crashed it, killing himself instantly. That was pretty tough to take.
The auditor had me go to the moment of finding out about the tragedy and I found that easy to do. We went over it again and again and then again until I found myself sighing with the boredom of it. My feelings about his death seemed to have undergone a change in that they were no longer heavy and sodden with grief. He asked me to go back to the beginning and go over it again. “Do I have to?”
At that point he ended the session and we took a break. I did feel pretty amazing to be honest. Something that had upset me for years, no longer did. I felt lighter somehow, almost floating. This seems to be working. Bloody hell.
The next day we continued and like a pro I went gliding down the time track looking for something to audit. The only thing that I could find was a minor incident from when I was just a few weeks old and living at my granny’s house, where someone jostled the pram in which I was fast asleep and startled me awake. Is this for real? Am I making this up? From there I tried to find prenatal memories but nothing came up so I just kept on going back and back and back and finding nothing. A nothing that became empty space.
Floating in space. Real space. There was nothing in the space at all. It was neither warm nor cold, just there. And dark. No arms or legs or a body, just a being, in space, drifting somewhat aimlessly. I became aware of a light source off in one corner which began to get closer and closer until I could identify it as a huge orb of energy pulsating as it floated around without any obvious purpose.
The auditor asked me what was going on and so I told him, I have no idea but I’m looking at something, maybe it’s a god, just floating and pulsing. The auditor asked if this “god” had a name. I had recently been studying Norse mythology. The word Odin came to mind instantly. Then Wotan, Wodin, Otan, Odin, I told him. This was insane, Odin had hung on a tree for 9 days and nights, not drifted around in space disguised as a glowing orb and I told the auditor this.
“It’s like some galactic energy source or a god or something.”
He ended the session saying that he was going upstairs to get advice from the Case Supervisor. When he returned and we got back into session he insisted on my naming this thing. I had already lost interest but tried to find a name for him. All I could come up with was Odin, but I was pronouncing it as “W-dan.”
He went back to the Case Supervisor three more times, and then again we went back into session, each time trying to get a name from me, until finally we went into session one final time. I was getting frustrated with this meaningless looking for a name for a bright shiny orb which I no longer cared about. Why couldn’t it be Odin? Why is he insisting that I find some other name?
By this time the auditor had stopped making notes of the session. I was getting thoroughly bored with this. He leaned forward and in a conspiratorial whisper asked, “Is his name Xenu?”
He appeared to be slightly embarrassed asking this question and it clearly meant nothing to him. He was simply following instructions from the CS. Knowing what I now know you would think I was making this up. I had never heard of Xenu and so casually said, “No, it’s Odin or W-dan.” A part of me was thinking, “What the heck is Xenu?”
The full significance of this didn’t occur to me until many years later because I had never heard of Xenu. I mean who had? Oh yeah, OTs had. (Scientologists encounter the Xenu tale when they start on OT 3.) The Case Supervisor was only Clear and not started on his OT Levels. How could he have possibly known about Xenu? Nobody else in the org was above Clear except for the Case Supervisor’s wife, who was OT 3. Nobody except her could have known or should have known about this. I draw my own conclusions from that. There must have been some interesting bedtime chats in that household. This couple are now very prominent UK Scientologists, utterly devoted to the cause.
A person from the technical division next interviewed me and told me that the Dianetics Book One type auditing was no longer done and that there were much more modern techniques that were faster and better and that I was deemed ready for that. I was disappointed as I had found the whole process to be kind of fun.
There ended my Book One auditing. Overall I felt much better and concluded that it actually did work. From there I went onto the HQS (Hubbard Qualified Scientologist), then the Student Hat and full-time executive training. It was only years later when I was remembering these sessions that the “Xenu” question came back to me. You can imagine what that was like, now that I know all about Xenu. It should have been a “wow” moment all right.
As it was, it was all quite bizarre. It’s no wonder you are not allowed to talk about your sessions!
— Pete Griffiths
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“I was persuaded that once I realized my true potential that a single mortgage payment would be chickenfeed. I would be making money hand over fist.” Ah Pete, there is true irony in that statement on several levels.
First, the person who persuaded you probably didn’t have a mortgage payment because they were living hand to mouth with several other people in a rundown rental, not sure if they were going to be able to afford to be there next month.
Secondly, the “ruin” that hooked you in is what opened your eyes and started your journey out when you realized that no one was making money, they were all struggling.
Imagine if you had said "Yes, Xenu; it's Xenu". The scientist in me wants to put this to the test to see what would happen but in this instance..... I think I won't