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... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.
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Scientology...huh
Quote:
Scientology's doctrines were established by Hubbard over a period of about 33 years, from 1952 until his death in January 1986. Most of its basic principles were set out during the 1950s and 1960s.
Scientology was expanded and reworked from Dianetics [2], an earlier system of self-improvement techniques set out by Hubbard in his 1950 book, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. By the mid-1950s, Hubbard had relegated Dianetics to a sub-study of Scientology. The chief difference between Dianetics and Scientology is that Dianetics focuses on the individual's present life and dealing with physical, mental or emotional problems, and teaches that most problems in a person's life are caused by reactions to past trauma. Scientology adopts a more overtly religious approach, dealing with spiritual issues such as past lives in addition to present-day issues.[3] Scientology also covers topics such as ethics and morality (The Way to Happiness), physical health as it relates to spiritual wellbeing (Purification Rundown), communication, marriage, raising children, dealing with work-related problems, study technology, and the very nature of life (The Dynamics).
Scientology beliefs are structured in a series of levels leading to the more advanced strata of esoteric knowledge. This is described as the passage up "the Bridge to Total Freedom", or simply "the Bridge".
The central beliefs of Scientology are:
A person is an immortal spiritual being (termed a thetan) who possesses a mind and a body.
The thetan has lived through many past lives and will continue to live beyond the death of the body.
A person is basically good, but becomes "aberrated" by moments of pain and unconsciousness in his life.
What is true is what is true for you. No beliefs should be enforced as "true" on anyone. Rather, the tenets of Scientology are expected to be tested and seen to be true, or not, by its practitioners.
Scientology can help the world on a large scale with problems such as drugs, crime, illiteracy, human rights, etc.
Scientology claims to offer an exact methodology to help a person achieve improved spiritual and ethical education, so that he or she may achieve a greater level of spiritual awareness and effectiveness in the physical world. Exact methods of spiritual counseling are proposed to enable this change. The ultimate goal of Scientology is to rehabilitate the thetan soul back to its native state of total freedom, thus gaining control over matter, energy, space, time, thoughts, form, and life. This state is called Operating Thetan, or OT for short.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology
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This sounds like an interesting combination of alternate psychology with loose religious ties. I must admit, this looks interesting. Reading on.
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The "Hidden Truth" about the nature of the universe is taught to the most advanced Scientologists in a series of courses known as the Advanced Levels. These are the levels above "Clear", and their contents are held in strict confidence within Scientology. The most advanced of all are the eight Operating Thetan levels, for which the initiate needs to be thoroughly prepared. The highest level, OT VIII, is only disclosed at sea, on the Scientology cruise ship Freewinds. Since being entered into evidence in several court cases beginning in the 1980s, synopses and excerpts of these secret teachings have appeared in numerous publications.
In the OT levels, Hubbard describes a variety of traumas commonly experienced in past lives. He explains how to reverse the effects of such traumas by "running" various Scientology processes. Among these advanced teachings, one episode that is revealed to those who reach OT level III has been widely remarked upon in the press: the story of Xenu, the galactic tyrant who first kidnapped certain individuals who were deemed "excess population" and loaded these individuals into space planes for transport to the site of extermination, the planet of Teegeeack (Earth). These space planes were supposedly exact copies of Douglas DC-8s. He then stacked hundreds of billions of these frozen victims around Earth's volcanoes 75 million years ago before blowing them up with hydrogen bombs and brainwashing them with a "three-D, super colossal motion picture" for 36 days. The traumatized thetans subsequently clustered around human bodies, in effect acting as invisible spiritual parasites known as "body thetans" that can only be removed using advanced Scientology techniques. Xenu is allegedly imprisoned in a mountain by a force field powered by an eternal battery.
Scientologists argue that published accounts of the Xenu story and other colorful teachings are pulled out of context for the purpose of ridiculing their religion. Journalists and critics of Scientology counter that Xenu is part of a much wider Scientology belief in past lives on other planets, some of which has been public knowledge for decades. For instance, Hubbard's 1958 book Have You Lived Before This Life documents past lives described by individual Scientologists during auditing sessions. These included memories of being "deceived into a love affair with a robot decked out as a beautiful red-haired girl", being run over by a Martian bishop driving a steamroller, being transformed into an intergalactic walrus that perished after falling out of a flying saucer, and recalling life as "a very happy being who strayed to the planet Nostra 23,064,000,000 years ago".
Although reliable statistics are not available, it is fair to say that most Scientologists are not at a sufficiently high level on "the bridge" to learn about Xenu. Therefore, while knowledge of Xenu and Body Thetans is crucial to the highest level church teachings, it cannot be regarded as a core belief of rank and file Scientologists. On the other hand, Scientology literature does include many references to extraterrestrial past lives, and internal Scientology publications are often illustrated with pictures of spaceships and oblique references to catastrophic events that happened "75 million years ago" (i.e. the Xenu incident).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology(from Wikipedia)
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When I watched todays episode of South Park, I figured that it was simply a joke ridiculing a religion. I was mistaken in that assumption.
So....now that we have a ballpark idea of what Scientology is, do you have any thoughts? I know my first thought is wondering how people can listen to this story and be spiritually inspired. Of course, I know that my belief in a 2000 year old carpenter/living God really doesn't make a whole lot of sense, too. Can you compare thefesability of these two stories, really? Boy, this is an intersting religion. |