Then the other day, I spotted an article on his articles of faith, the whole Dianetics business, titled Super Power, where, it says, you can attain a certain level of wildly enhanced capabilities in the sensational end of things, after either donating the requisite amount of long money or completing a lengthy, costly and draining Dianetics program, which will lead to the acquisition of an immense fortune or to a lasting relationship or some such inflated ability you never had before.
You seem to acquire these supra-normal extra-sensory powers, according to a recent St. Petersburg Times Tampa Bay online article, by looking at chairs of different sizes, viewing screens with subliminal images, donating more money, being spun around while blind folded, tinkering with an anti-gravity machine--which I'll bet you NaSa'd love to get their mitts on--working on your inner compass, and similar folderol, all designed to enlarge the cerebrum and lighten the wallet.
I mean, sure, if I had a billion dollars in play money, and my wife was out of town for three or four months, the dogs were in hibernation and the cats were on an extended safari in Rhodentia, I might consider Super Power as the next stop on my slide for life.
Maybe, but I doubt it. I'd rather sit on the deck and read a good book rather than thrash around in a Scientology high rise in steamy Florida.
But as I read the article and tracked the manic life of the protagonist, who is able to read Super Power into every ordinary success, it suddenly occurred to me that all the balderdash being shoveled my way by this interesting window on the Dianetics confab was nothing more than what every community is paying every cop in town to do every day.
I mean, really.
Rather than my paying the good folks at Scientology, to receive similar, but lesser, skills, I was paid to go the police academy, where we began to receive our enhanced powers of observation and deduction.
While Super Power uses all manner of devices and gizmos, big and little chairs and other optical illusions, with, no doubt, some allusions thrown in for good measure, we were taught to read people right off the bat.
You see, it's people, after all, who are both the problem and the wealth in every community and in each business.
We never looked at screens for subliminal messages, nor spun ourselves around to find our inner compasses, we had to identify these hidden messages in those we stopped and chased and match them to our moral compasses in a flash.
after awhile, while driving along a busy street, with a few years under your belt, having survived the streets, the crooks would stand out in the crowds of regular folk as clearly as sharks are visible in schools of fish. and your primary job as a training officer was to pass knowledge of this vision on to your younger partner so that he could use these heightened powers to survive and protect.
When you stopped someone, you used additional super powers--again gleaned from the academy, from the veterans, and from your time on the beat--to check the detainee's pulse and breathing, to watch his eyes, his body movements, to feel his clammy hands, to note any appreciable chance for his escape, and to carefully craft your questions. In essence, you'd administer a quick on the street Los angeles audit.
The ability to read trust, truthfulness, honor--the opposites of the readings taken from the street--are so important, for success and for friendship, and the foundation of every business success.
Yet I am haunted by the science of Dianetics, which places such great value on so many impersonal facets of achievement, on tests, on video screens, on funny chairs, audits and money, money, money.
Isn't it reasonable to assume, perhaps, that many of those who are successful and Scientologists might have been successful anyway?
and if Tom Cruise, after all of his puerile muddling around, couch bouncing, threats of placenta eating, L Ron Hubbard and all, can fail, it appears that he is all too human, after all.
We are men, only men, after all, not supermen, whether we complete Super Power training or not.
Some of us pay and others get paid for getting a leg up.
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