Hi, everyone. And welcome back to Geek Time. 欢迎回来【极客时间】. Hi, Brad.

Hey, lulu, how's it going?

Yeah. Yean. It's going all right. And can I propose a topic today?

All right, what do you think?

You know, we talked about cults before, right? 我们之前谈过邪教这个话题.

Mhm.

I would like for us to talk about one of probably the more notorious, I don't wanna say well-known, I just wanna say infamous modern day cults there is in the US, and it's favored by a lot of Hollywood stars.

Ah. You're talking about Scientology.

Yeah, okay. Before we get into this topic Scientology这个山达基教。I'm pretty sure some of you have read things about this.

Before we start, I just want to say it very categorically. First of all, this is tagged, this is categorized as a cult in China and in many other countries. And we're not here to spread any messages, it’s really more, think of it as a warning, and think of it as just giving you some information, so that you can watch out for.

Yeah, in America like Scientology isn't considered a cult by like the government. But many people see it as a cult like the general outlook of most Americans is that Scientology is a cult.

I see. So in the basic episode, let's do a little bit of background intro. Who started it? It's a modern thing. So it's not, the history isn't even that long, is it?

No, it's actually started by a man named L. Ron Hubbard, ‘which’ is a science or ‘who’, I should say ‘who’ is a science fiction writer.

Okay, all right. Let me guess, he wasn't very successful in writing science fiction stories, so he decided to start his own religion.

Well, he wasn't like that terrible at writing science fiction, his science fiction isn't the best, but he wanted to create religion as a way to kind of make money.

A lot of people look at Scientology as a scam to make money just because of the things that he has said in the past. However, there are a lot of people who say that the whole world is wrong about Scientology. And usually that's just because Scientology gets such a loud voice. And just as you mentioned, we'll talk a little bit about their Hollywood connections later. When you get Hollywood connections, you get a lot of star power. And so that's kind of help them spread the word. Even if so many people look so poorly on it.

I think this is really the danger of cults, especially when it has celebrity endorsement, because obviously they have a lot more impact than average folks, and then when they are there to sort of speak up like Tom Cruise did, well, I'm not saying everyone would tend to believe it more, but there will be some people getting tricked into believing it. But I think you said that Scientology was basically believed to be, by a lot of people, as a scam to make money, but so do a lot of cults.

The cult leaders, they're not necessarily even believing in their message. A lot of them started that so that they can trick people into believing in something and so that they collect the money.

Right.

L. Ron Hubbard said specifically and this is a quote “You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you wanna get rich, you start a religion.”

That's a direct quote.

That's a direct quote from the prophet himself.

Oh, wow, I'm not even feeling sorry for people who fall victim in a way, because seriously this is like I've already warned you I'm starting this religion just to collect money, but then still people get tricked into it.

Okay, so how did this whole thing really start? I mean, some of the cult leaders they will claim to be the savior, they will claim to be the prophet.

Mhm. He never really claimed to be a prophet. So he originally wrote a book called Dianetics, and Dianetics was supposed to be more for like a psychological therapy, kind of being like an alternative to the modern version of psychology, right? When he tried to get the book to be sold, he put a lot of money into it and as a result he went bankrupt.

And so we thought what can I do to get the book out there? What can I do to get people to read the book? So he decided to turn it into a religion and it became the church of Scientology.

So if I cannot convince people with my pseudo science, I'll try to turn it into a spiritual belief. Therefore, people will just believe in me without any scientific evidence. That sounds like the logic here.

Very, very interesting thing.

So now there's a lot of things related to money and finance, but they're not always directly related, right? So in English or in America, when you hear of the word auditing, people will often think taxman, right?

Yeah. Exactly. Auditing就审计的意思. I guess auditing means something else to Scientologists.

Very different, rather than having the tax agent come to check your finances and make sure that everything is in order, the scientologists, you can call them clergy in a sense, I wouldn't call them that, but they use this device called an E-Meter to test you for mental trauma.

What?

They have a machine. It's... some people say it's kind of like a lie detector. It has this little dial that goes back and forth. It's not writing down anything when you speak, but the dial will change depending upon how much electricity is flowing through your body as you're... like connected to the device.

I think this is like this screams pseudo science.

我听上去就非常伪科学的感觉, 它会给你一个电子仪器叫E-Meter. 然后它里面有什么电流通过你的身体, 然后它就有一个事情叫auditing, 叫什么解析and this is supposed to cure you of your mental trauma.

Well. The auditing process is supposed to help you come to terms with it, right? So you go through the auditing, you're supposed to be able to read yourselves that are causing the bad emotions. So you can be what they call clear, right? Clear of your bad emotions.

OKay. Yeah, I've seen actually, as you're talking about this, I've checked online and saw some pictures. It just looks like people holding two rods in their hands.

Yeah. Rather than having something check to your heart, and the checking for your heartbeat and everything. They're just checking the electrical current from you.

That really just is a lie detector. Isn't it?

Well. The lie detector actually detects stress in your body. This is supposed to check like the electrical current or the resistance of your body.

And so it's not exactly the same, but in a sense, can be a similar kind of concept.

I can see that as you're explaining it, you find what you're saying is rather ridiculous.

Yeah, now something even more ridiculous. What do you think is causing people to have these bad emotions?

Ah, to...what is causing people to have these bad emotions will be childhood trauma? I don't know like psychological issues.就是有创伤嘛，不就是心理创伤，原生家庭这些东西.

But in Scientology, the things that are actually causing this are something called a satan.

Satan? Like the devil?

Not quite.

So in Scientology, once you kind of get up within the ranks, they tell you the story of Xenu.

Hang on. Let’s dial back a little bit. You didn't say satan, s-a-t-a-n?

No, no, no. Thetan, t-h-e-t-a-n.

That just sounds like satan with a lisp.

Maybe that's what you thought originally.

Okay, t-h-e-t-a-n, so this is something that they created, basically he created.

Right. This is part of kind of like his science fiction background. In the story, there's this kind of like evil Galactic Overlord named Xenu. And Xenu was fighting against many different alien species.

So he brought billions of them to Earth as a way to kind of exile them. And when he put them on Earth, he then bombarded them with thermonuclear weapons and then trapped the souls of all these things on Earth.

And so there's all these thetans floating around roaming Earth. And when you have some sort of mental trauma, these thetans are attracted to you and they kind of amplify this mental trauma that you have.

Okay, that just sounds like a science fiction story that he probably wrote at one point.

就这个理论可能大家听得一头雾水, 他说的 thetan不是satan, thetan是thetan. 他说这个是因为最开始有一个相当于星际里面, 比如说哪个星球有这么一个特别evil的一个人, 不是一个人, 反正就这么一个存在, 一个统治者叫Xenu, 然后他就把很多的外星的生物或者说群体, 然后就把他们放逐到地球上, 然后用武器把他们杀掉, 被杀掉的这些 aliens, 他们的魂魄就被困在地球上, 然后每天经受各种磨难, 而他们被困在地球上的 souls, 这些魂魄就叫thetan.

And they are the cause of all of our negative emotions. I'm sorry, and people believe in that right?

There are people that believe that, I don't know why.

And the whole auditing process holding the electrodes using that almost like a lie detector thing is supposed to drive out the thetans?

Well, it's not just holding the device, it's the process of the auditor asking you questions like a therapist and using the device to test whether or not these things have are leaving your body.

So the device is just a tester, but going through the processes is supposed to help you rid you of these thetans.

I see. I see. So obviously they charge you for getting rid of these evil alien souls in you.

Yeah. They don't charge you as a service but they expect donations to the church and of course that's how they make their money and how they get their church status.

Yeah. The cults always call it donations. They don't call it membership fee, they say donations but it's just a membership fee and they will charge you till the day you bankrupt. This is how actually a lot of cults operate.

Okay. I think that's enough to give me... I don't know, I don't know how I feel about this. I don't know I don't generally try... want to sound like I'm making fun of anyone, but this is a bit ridiculous to me.

Maybe you should get an audit just to see if you can get rid of some of those thetans that are attacking you right now.

Yeah. This is basically like going away from modern psychology. It's the opposite direction of modern psychology. Right?

Exactly.

All right. And before we get even more into that, let's wrap up here. Again, we want to be very clear about the fact that we're really just giving you a bit of information so that you can watch out for things like this, we're not spreading their message in any way, shape or form. Okay.

Exactly.

All right. Now let's wrap up here. In the advanced episodes, I think we want to get a bit deeper into the social impact of it. And why so many countries have banned it and thinking and tagging it as a cult? Why is it that even in the US when it's not officially a cult, people, general public is having very negative opinion of it.

And meanwhile, if you want to leave us a comment, don't leave messages that are too sensitive. But if you want to say something, leave us a comment. Thank you, Brad, for coming to the show.

No problem. See you next time.

See you next time.

Bye everyone.