Actually I'm not a scientologist but I visited the Scientology building in Berlin a couple of weeks ago. I don't know if that is of any value to your research but it's better than nothing, eh?
To be honest I didn't go there to let them recruit me but to gather information as well. I have an examination coming up in which I have to do a presentation about Scientology. For that presentation I needed information on the recruiting methods of Scientology so I just went there.
I have to admit that the building looks pretty damn good inside (ground floor). There was some female scientologist who asked me what I wanted and I told her that I'm interested in Scientology (well, I wasn't lying, right?). She told me to go into one of 4 video rooms to watch an interview (the only one?) of LRH. Quite frankly, it sucked. And I would have left the room after 10 minutes if I hadn't been there for certain reasons.
In my point of view the man who interviewed LRH supported him with his questions the whole time so Hubbard was able to show of his "great religion". Anyway, it clearly showed to me that Hubbard didn't value human beings very highly. It was more like he categorized them into people who are able make money (he liked those more, obviously) and those who are not (mentally disabled and so on).
About the mentally disabled people he said, they can be taken care of by the psychatrists. I guess for a scientologist that means they can pretty much go to hell, right?
Anyway, I finished the boring Interview (well, I laughed on the part were the man who interviewed him accused him of not caring about people) and watched some video footage about dianetics which only consisted of people telling me one after another how great dianetics is. I read some magazine when the scientology lady came around and offered me to do a personality test. I agreed and had to fill out some long sheets, answering questions on how I would deal with certain social situations.
That's pretty much social capabilities, right? Well I suck at these ... but I filled the sheets out anyway and handed them to some male scientologist who typed them into a pc and printed some diagram out. well, my line was pretty much on the bottom, but since i didn't watch him creating the diagram I didn't know if it was just my fault.
Anyway, he was shocked (which amused me) about my results and told me how much I could improve with the help of Scientology. Well, he praised Scientology over and over again but whenever I asked him some deep question he just mentioned some book of Hubbard. To me it was at that moment quite obvious that he liked the thought of me buying the book (I didn't like it though).
About 10 minutes later the female member joined our nice little conversation so it was 2 against 1. She was also shocked about my personality results and showed me some results of another recruit (they were average) and how he had advanced after some auditing (I just thought "go to hell" at that point). I highly doubt that I will just become a more social guy with the help of scientology.
In the end I was "a little" pissed off and mentioned some accusations againt Scientology. She asked me to be more specific and as I told her some things (not even all) she just smiled and said they weren't true. Now it was my part to be shocked about so much ignorance, even though it matched my expectations really good.
After they became a little bit too aggressive while trying to convince me of living a happier life with Scientology I politely managed to get the hell out of there. In the end I just managed to get a bad headache and I felt bad for wasting my time (even though the experience was useful for the presentation).
Many people asked me why I didn't tell the two scientologists in the end for which reasons I really came. Well, I don't think it was because of a lack of courage, I was just in such a bad mood that I wouldn't have enjoyed it anyway.
In the end I have to say that I would never ask anyone to go there (just for the experience) because it really puts a lot of stress on the mind.
(I'm german, so the grammatical mistakes are purposely for your amusement.
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