Are there any Scientologist in this site?

not me.

If I had to label myself with some religious/philosophical label, I would call myself a Scientologist. But I wouldn't call myself a "member of the Church of Scientology" if a distinction can be made there. Somewhat like a person who calls themself a Christian, but who doesn't attend or contribute to, and is not a member of, a church.

I'm sure someone will explain this scientology thing to me someday. The only person I knew into that claimed that it was a pyramid marketing scam. Since then I try not to get too close.

And so it is.

The lower you are in the food chain the less you know what's going on.
They tried to get at my son when he was only 17, and they demanded money for this, that, and other.
That's when I looked into it a little deeper, and put my foot down fast on it.

Yea! there are good and bad sides to everything. Positive and negative, Ups and downs, Some things are for some people and some things are left un-discovered.

I am an outsider from the Church. This is actually the best place to be. I am sorry for the trouble that the church caused you and your son.

The good side of this "science" or "technology" is that it is even more effective outside of and not connected by the church but, right down in peoples homes. If intereseted ask me more. You have shown enough interest by clicking on this thread.

I wouldn't call myself a Scientogolist, but I seem to have some similar theories with their beliefs about people. Mostly about the energy mind parasite things. I'm interested in learning more about their belief system, but have no money, let alone thousands to give the church.

Regrding "belief systems"...

It should be noted that Scientology does not involve “belief”.

"Belief" is actually anathema to Scientology. One of the things Hubbard says over and over again about the technology of Scientology is that one must not take some else’s word for it. One must actually do it and observe it for oneself.

Of course any Scientologist is free to believe whatever they want, just as any physicist is free to believe whatever they want. But the beliefs of a Scientologist are not Scientology, just as the beliefs of a physicist are not physics. Scientology is about knowing, not “believing”. The very word Scientology itself means “knowing how to know”.

A good introductory book about Scientology is “Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought.”

Some more advanced books are “Scientology: 8-80” and Scientology: 8-8008”.

All of the books are available online.

look, any religion founded by a pedophile based on a fictional story is not a religion. It is a bunch of screwed up people trying to find purpose in their life that religion failed them on.
I personally compare it to the same fiction as the Book of Mormon. If it makes a positive difference in their lives fine but don't be offended when others do not see the same light in the story behind anyone's chosen faith.

Well as far as "fictional stories" go, that phrase fills the bill as well as anything I would say. And I understand there are a lot of people who actually believe it in spite of any facts. Just be careful of the formum rules. You might want to take the heated debate to the General Religion forum. The Other Religion forum is more for amicable discussion.

I have not read the Book of Mormon. But I'm always interested in other people's viewpoints. What are some of the similarities you see to the Book of Mormon? Can you give a some examples of ideas that are comparable between the two?

I clear my aura of all body thetans on a regular basis.

Scientology seems to be the only religion aside from the Toltecs that actually realizes what is going on. (as far as alien brain parasites controlling mankind.)

In the interests of clear communication…

1) “Body Thetan” is a direct contradiction in terms. As far as Scientology is concerned, it is a nonsensical phrase. It’s kinda like saying “dry water”. The two words are mutually exclusive.

Of course you may have your own philosophy that uses that phrase differently. Which is perfectly fine. I know you’ve used it many times Mirror. So you probably have a good concept of what it means to you. I just don’t want anyone confused into thinking that it has anything to do with Scientology.

2) “alien brain organisms” is not a phrase that would be used in Scientology either. However, that may just be a semantic difference. If, by that phrase, you are referring to “mental mechanisms that operate on a stimulus-response basis below the conscious awareness of the individual”, then the meaning aligns with much of what Hubbard discovered. It’s just that the terminology is not something that any Scientologist would use or easily understand.

^^^^^That's Galactic Overlord Xenu^^^^^

It must be. I mean, how could anyone possibly doubt the reliability of South Park as a true and accurate source of information?

What exactly do scientologists believe?

The idea of clearing body auras from connections to other spirits is pretty mainstream in all shamanic traditions that I've studied thus far. This would be true of the Eastern Mystics, the European Celtics, the indigenous tribes of Australia, Africa, North and South America. In short there is hardly a religion in the world that doesn't recognize this concept. Even the Mediterranean-based mythologies recognize this concept. Even in the New Testatment the Bible has Jesus casting "spirits" out of people's bodies, which is truly the same concept really. They just use different terminology and view the process a bit differently.

Also, where did L. Ron Hubbard get his ideas? Does he say? I've never read the book. I probably should have read it way back in the 70's I seem to remember it being popular back then, but in truth I never took it seriously at that time. It just looked like a crackpot idea to sell books at that time. But in those days I was blinded by the idea that only the most popular religions could have any value. I had been born and raised as a Christian, but I did recognize that other popular religions did exist, including Buddhism, Hinduism. I must confess that even at that time I viewed most ideas of witchcraft and shamanism as being total fairytales. That's because Christianity had brainwashed me to believe that those things were totally false ideas.

I can't believe how utterly naive I was. I mean, in hindsight it's crystal clear that Christianity itself is a hodgepodge of confused demoninations and most of those are "Protestatant" which means that the protested against the main body of Christinaity which is Catholicism. And it truly wasn't until much later in my life that I fully understood that Judaism and Islam are the very same fragmented confused religion. Judaism, Catholicism, Islam, and the many confused denominations of Protestantism are all based on the very same folklore.

I think it was that realization that convinced me that the religion had no more merit than any other religion. So now I view any and all human thoughts on spirituality to be equally valid, or invalid.

But the whole idea of clearing auras seems to be a thread that ties all spiritual beliefs together. I can't think off hand of any religion that doesn't accept this concept. Even though the Mediterraneans have it pictured as being possessed by evil demons. They make a big deal about it and require "exorcism" by a priest. Although many shamanic traditions also had the tribal shaman assist in aura cleansing.

So that concept certainly wouldn't be anything unique to scientology, (although their view of what causes these things and how to clear them may be unique). I can't know that since I'm truly ignorant of scientology. I never really thought of it as being based on "Science". After all, the scientific community has never embraced it, and thus I can't imgaine it being very credible to scientists. I've studied science my entire life and I don't recall ever meeting a scientist who so much as even mentioned scientology. And I've never seen a scientist mention scientology in a science book either. So based on the total lack of interest that real scientists seem to be placing on the religion called "Scientology" I've always just assumed that it must not be very 'scientific', otherwise you'd think that at least some scientists would be picking up on it. But that doesn't seem to be the case.

So it seems to be to basically be a 'misnomer' for the title of a religion, but again, I never read Hubbards book.

Can someone give me a quick synopis of basically what the main believes are?

Does it recognize a "Creator". Is it some form of "Pantheistic view" (I imagine it must be if Skyhook finds it interesting), or is it some form of "Atheism" and a very pragmatic look at the world based on the laws of physics (science). Again I find that latter part hard to believe since I've never heard scientists speak of it.

Straight from the horses mouth. http://www.scientology.org/#/scn6a_creed

Now for my own opinion…

Asking “what do scientologists believe” is sort of like asking “what do physicists believe”. Well, physicists believe thermodynamics and relativity and quantum mechanics, to name a few. But unfortunately, those word symbols represent a huge amount of other axioms, postulates, corollaries, hypotheses, theories, etc., etc.

Likewise, answering your question in less than a few hundred thousand words, will necessarily leave out a huge amount of data.

But if “E=mc^2” could be thought of as a short summary of relativity, then I think the first three axioms would be an equivalent short summary of Scientology.



That’s not really even close to anything in Scientology. The closest thing to this in Scientology would be something along the lines of “removing unwanted considerations.”


As best I can tell, he got them from experimentation and observation. In the introduction to one of his books (I forget which one) he does give a list of philosophers whose ideas he sifted through for workable data. But from what I’ve seen, Scientology itself is composed of only that data which he examined, tested and observed to be workable. Some of it is recognizable as data that has been generally agreed upon by Philosophers since the beginning of time. Some is completely new and previously undiscovered.


Hubbard has said that the word Scientology means “knowing how to know”. So, considering that “religion” is generally considered to be based on faith as opposed to knowledge, you’re right – it could be seen as a misnomer when comparing the Latin roots of the word with the generally accepted criteria for what constitutes “religion”.

The “pantheistic” view (the “egalitarian spiritual beings” definition, not the “all is one and one is all” definition) is about as close as any traditional label comes. It’s pretty much implied by the first three axioms given above.

Although not based on the laws of physics (because, after all, it’s entire purpose is, in his words, “spiritual freedom”), it is about as pragmatic as it gets. If anything, Hubbard was adamant about “results”. Pragmatism has always been at the core of his research. One of his principles is “A being is only as valuable as he can help.” So basically, if something could not be used to help attain spiritual freedom, it was worthless as far as Scientology is concerned.

So I would say that, to me, Scientology is to the non-physical what Physics is to the physical. But that’s just my own, personal viewpoint. You won’t find that analogy in any of Hubbard’s writings.

For anyone interested in the approach Hubbard used in his research, I’d recommend “Dianetics: The Evolution of a Science” as a starting point. It covers the methods and processes he used to investigate the mind.

This just sounds to me like it could be describing Eastern Mysticism using modern technical jargon.

In other words, it just sounds to me like it's just a modern take off from Buddhism, Taoism, or whatever.

The only real difference based on these postulates appears to be the Hubbard is attempting to actually define spirit, whilst the Eastern Mystics don't bother with that. They just accept that spirit exists and is indefinable and focus more on the actual experience of being spirit.

In the end what does Scientology offer other than a bunch of philosophical explanations.

I mean do the practictioners of Scientology do anything with it?

Does it include meditation?

Does it recognize psychic experiences, such as shamanic journeying?

Does it address things like how to bring about manifestations?

Healings?

What happens after death?

So far it just sounds like Mysticism made complicated.

Not meant to be picking on it. I'm just saying what it sounds like.

I think there are so many ways to look at existence that somewhere along the way we need to draw a line and say, "Hey there's more than one way to skin a cat".

I mean, if it's nothing more than a mordern technical version of pantheism then I'd just as soon use the ancient techniques.

In fact, one thing about the ancient techniques is that they claim that the 'universal mind' (I guess that would be the "static" in Hubbard's model) has all these memories of ancient civilizations and their traditions. Like on another thread, we're talking about the faerie realm. It exists because it has existed in the mind of our ancestors, and therefore it exists in the 'universal mind'.

Does Hubbard recognize the value of these ancient symbols, and folklore?

For me I think this is really a biggie. Some new age idea that dismisses ancient folklore as being irrelevant or useful in matters of spirit seems to be to be lacking.

Of course I don't yet know where Hubbard stands on this. But it seems to me that if he recognizes this as a valuable concept then he too would be pointing at ancient folklores as being useful.

Thanks for the synopsis by the way, saves a lot of reading.