$cientology Truth or Dare!

Tom Cruise wasn’t always so cool. In fact, it’s taken him years (and tens of millions of dollars, we hear) to achieve the special brand of inner bliss that allows him to shrug off getting squirted in the face with water on the red carpet. How’d Cruise do it?

With help from the Church of Scientology’s “SEC WHOLE TRACK” questionnaire, that’s how. The internal church document was developed by Scientology founder and onetime science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard for use during "auditing" sessions—you know, the ones designed to identify your trapped "thetans."

The "thetans," or alien ghosts, were implanted in earth’s volcanoes 75 million years ago by the evil intergalactic ruler Xenu, until the nasty buggers escaped and invaded the bodies of each and every one of us. New recruits like Katie Holmes, or "preclears," answer the questions while hooked up to an E-meter—a crude, polygraph-like contraption—as a Church-sanctioned auditor records the subject’s responses for further expensive inquiry. We excerpted 20 of the list’s 343 questions in the premier issue of Radar, on newsstands now. For those playing along at home, here’s another verbatim sampling.

• Have you driven anyone insane?
• Have you ever killed the wrong person?
• Is anybody looking for you?
• Have you ever set a poor example?
• Did you come to Earth for evil purposes?
• Are you in hiding?
• Have you systematically set up mysteries?
• Have you ever made a practice of confusing people?
• Have you ever philosophized when you should have acted instead?
• Have you ever gone crazy?
• Have you ever sought to persuade someone of your insanity?
• Have you ever deserted, or betrayed, a great leader?
• Have you ever smothered a baby?
• Do you deserve to have any friends?
• Have you ever castrated anyone?
• Do you deserve to be enslaved?
• Is there any question on this list I had better not ask you again?
• Have you ever tried to make the physical universe less real?
• Have you ever zapped anyone?
• Have you ever had a body with a venereal disease? If so,
did you spread it?

Previously: Cruise Encounters of the Third Kind
Katie Holmes' Magical 'Best Friend'
Reader's Digest on Cruise Control
Ground Control to Major Tom

Photo: PMC