Scientology

Scientology is a body of religious beliefs and practices created in 1954 by American author L. Ron Hubbard (1911–86). After he developed Dianetics, the Dianetics Foundation entered bankruptcy and Hubbard lost the rights to his seminal publication Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health in 1952. He then recharacterized the subject as a religion and renamed it Scientology, retaining the terminology, doctrines, the E-meter, and the practice of auditing. Within a year, he regained the rights to Dianetics and retained both subjects under the umbrella of the Church of Scientology. Hubbard's groups have encountered considerable opposition and controversy. In January 1951, the New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners brought proceedings against Hubbard's Dianetics Foundation on the charge of teaching medicine without a license. Hubbard's followers engaged in a program of covert and illegal infiltration of the U.S. government. Hubbard-inspired organizations and their classification are often a point of contention. Germany classifies Scientology groups as an "anti-constitutional sect" (verfassungsfeindliche Sekte). In France, Scientology groups have been classified as a cult by some public authorities. Beliefs and practices: According to Scientology, its beliefs and practices are based on rigorous research, and its doctrines are accorded a significance equivalent to scientific laws. Scientology cosmology is, however, at odds with modern science, with claims of memories going back "76 trillion years": much longer than the age of the universe. Blind belief is held to be of lesser significance than the practical application of Scientologist methods. Adherents are encouraged to validate the practices through their personal experience. Hubbard put it this way: "For a Scientologist, the final test of any knowledge he has gained is, 'did the data and the use of it in life actually improve conditions or didn't it?'" Hubbard defined Scientology’s aims as: “A civilization without insanity, without criminals and without war; where the world can prosper and honest beings can have rights, and where man is free to rise to greater heights, are the aims of Scientology." Theological doctrine: Scientology does not preach or impose a particular idea of God on Scientologists. Rather, people are expected to discover the truth through their own observations as their awareness advances.... the Church of Scientology has no set dogma concerning God that it imposes on its members. As with all its tenets, Scientology does not ask individuals to accept anything on faith alone. Rather, as one’s level of spiritual awareness increases through participation in Scientology auditing and training, one attains his own certainty of every dynamic. Accordingly, only when the Seventh Dynamic (spiritual) is reached in its entirety will one discover and come to a full understanding of the Eighth Dynamic (infinity) and one’s relationship to the Supreme Being. Reactive mind, traumatic memories, and auditing: Scientology presents two major divisions of the mind. The reactive mind is thought to record all pain and emotional trauma, while the analytical mind is a rational mechanism that serves consciousness. The reactive mind stores mental images which are not readily available to the analytical (conscious) mind; these are referred to as engrams. Engrams are painful and debilitating; as they accumulate, people move further away from their true identity. To avoid this fate is Scientology's basic goal. Some engrams are taught by Hubbard to happen by accident while others are inflicted by “thetans who have gone bad and want power,” as described by the Los Angeles Times. These engrams are named Implants in the doctrine of Scientology. Hubbard said, “Implants result in all varieties of illness, apathy, degradation, neurosis and insanity and are the principal cause of these in man.” Dianetic auditing is one way by which the Scientologist may progress toward the Clear state, winning gradual freedom from the reactive mind's engrams and acquiring certainty of his or her reality as a thetan. David V. Barrett, a sociologist of religion who has written widely about the subject, says that according to Scientology, the “first major goal is to go Clear.” Clearing was described to represent “the attainment of Man’s dreams through the ages of attaining a new and higher state of existence and freedom from the endless cycle of birth, death, birth … Clear is the total erasure of the reactive mind from which stems all the anxieties and problems the individual has.” Scientology asserts that people have hidden abilities which have not yet been fully realized. It teaches that increased spiritual awareness and physical benefits are accomplished through counseling sessions referred to as auditing. Through auditing, people can solve their problems and free themselves of engrams. This restores them to their natural condition as thetans and enables them to be at cause in their daily lives, responding rationally and creatively to life events rather than reacting to them under the direction of stored engrams. Accordingly, those who study Scientology materials and receive auditing sessions advance from a status of Preclear to Clear and Operating Thetan. Scientology's utopian aim is to "clear the planet", that is, clear all people in the world of their engrams. Auditing is a one-on-one session with a Scientology counselor or auditor. It is similar to confession or pastoral counseling, but the auditor records and stores all information received and does not dispense forgiveness or advice as a pastor or priest of another religion might do. Instead, the auditor's task is to help a person discover and understand the universal principles of affinity, reality, and communication (ARC). Most auditing requires an E-meter, a device that measures minute changes in electrical resistance through the body when a person holds electrodes (metal "cans"), and a small current is passed through them. Scientology teaches that the E-meter helps to locate spiritual difficulties. Once an area of concern has been identified, the auditor asks the individual specific questions about it to help him or her eliminate the difficulty, and uses the E-meter to confirm that the "charge" has been dissipated. As the individual progresses up the "Bridge to Total Freedom", the focus of auditing moves from simple engrams to engrams of increasing complexity and other difficulties. At the more advanced OT levels, Scientologists act as their own auditors ("solo auditors"). Emotional Tone Scale and survival: Scientology uses an emotional classification system called the tone scale. The tone scale is a tool used in auditing; Scientologists maintain that knowing a person's place on the scale makes it easier to predict his or her actions and assists in bettering his or her condition. Scientology emphasizes the importance of survival, which it subdivides into eight classifications that are referred to as "dynamics". An individual's desire to survive is considered to be the first dynamic, while the second dynamic relates to procreation and family. The remaining dynamics encompass wider fields of action, involving groups, mankind, all life, the physical universe, the spirit, and infinity, often associated with the Supreme Being. The optimum solution to any problem is held to be the one that brings the greatest benefit to the greatest number of dynamics. Toxins and Purification: The Purification Rundown is a controversial "detoxification" program used by the Church of Scientology as an introductory service. It features high-dose dietary supplements and extended time in a sauna (up to five hours a day for five weeks). Scientology claims it the only effective way to deal with the long-term effects of drug abuse or toxic exposure. Narconon is a "drug education and rehabilitation program" founded on Hubbard's beliefs about "toxins" and "purification". Narconon is offered in the United States, Canada and a number of European countries; its Purification Program also uses high-dose vitamins and extended sauna sessions, combined with auditing and study. Introspection Rundown: The Introspection Rundown is a controversial Church of Scientology auditing process that is intended to handle a psychotic episode or complete mental breakdown. Introspection is defined for the purpose of this rundown as a condition where the person is "looking into one's own mind, feelings, reactions, etc." The Introspection Rundown came under public scrutiny after the death of Lisa McPherson in 1995. Rejection of psychology and psychiatry: Scientology is vehemently opposed to psychiatry and psychology. Psychiatry rejected Hubbard's theories in the early 1950s and in 1951, Hubbard's wife Sara consulted doctors who recommended he "be committed to a private sanatorium for psychiatric observation and treatment of a mental ailment known as paranoid schizophrenia." Thereafter, Hubbard criticized psychiatry as a "barbaric and corrupt profession". Hubbard taught that psychiatrists were responsible for a great many wrongs in the world, saying that psychiatry has at various times offered itself as a tool of political suppression and "that psychiatry spawned the ideology which fired Hitler's mania, turned the Nazis into mass murderers, and created the Holocaust." Hubbard created the anti-psychiatry organization Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), which operates Psychiatry: An Industry of Death, an anti-psychiatry museum. From 1969, CCHR has created campaigns to stand against the psychiatric treatments, electroconvulsive shock, lobotomy, and psychotropic drugs such as Ritalin and Prozac. It has also exposed abuses in the psychiatric profession. Body and thetan: Scientology beliefs revolve around the immortal soul, the thetan. Scientology teaches that the thetan is the true identity of a person – an intrinsically good, omniscient, non-material core capable of unlimited creativity. Hubbard taught that thetans brought the material universe into being largely for their own pleasure. The universe has no independent reality, but derives its apparent reality from the fact that thetans agree it exists. Thetans fell from grace when they began to identify with their creation rather than their original state of spiritual purity. Eventually they lost their memory of their true nature, along with the associated spiritual and creative powers. As a result, thetans came to think of themselves as nothing but embodied beings. Thetans are reborn time and time again in new bodies through a process called "assumption" which is analogous to reincarnation. Scientology posits a causal relationship between the experiences of earlier incarnations and one's present life, and with each rebirth, the effects of the MEST universe (MEST here stands for matter, energy, space, and time) on the thetan become stronger.