Scientology

by Dora Craven, Junior

Fall 2016

One of the most recent religions to be developed in our modern society, and one of the more ludicrous religions to ever be created, scientology was fabricated by L. Ron Hubbard, who is viewed similarly to a saint by his followers. Before he developed the religion, he had created Dianics, which is a system he created that attempted to relieve psychosomatic disorder by cleansing the mind of detrimental images. He erected the Dianetics Foundation, but lost the rights to his seminal publication once the place became bankrupt. He recharacterized the subject into a religion and named it Scientology.

Scientology is an unusual religion, and “offers a precise path leading to a complete and certain understanding of one’s true spiritual nature and one’s relationship to self, family, groups, Mankind, all life forms, the material universe, the spiritual universe and the Supreme Being” according to the official scientology cite, www.scientology.org. There are a numerous variety of aspects and sections of the religion, but I want to start foremost, with the scientologist idea of the construction of the universe, Earth, and humans themselves.

According to The Church of Scientology: A History of a New Religion., a being called Xenu was the “dictator of the ‘Galactic Confederacy” who brought his people, whose appearance were very similar to the society in the 1950s and 60s, to Earth in spacecraft, 75 million years ago. The planet xenu and his people originated from was extremely overpopulated, as were the surrounding planets, Xenu gathered billions of his people under the pretense of an income tax inspection, but paralyzed and froze them in a mixture of alcohol and glycol to “capture their souls” according to wikipedia.com. These frozen beings were then loaded on a craft similar to the DC-8 commercial airplane of 1958 and transported to the site of termination, the planet of Teegeeack, or, in our case, Earth. Xenu’s people were unloaded around the base of all mast volcanoes around the world, and large hydrogen bombs (yes, hydrogen bombs) were lowered into the volcanoes and detonated simultaneously, and killed all but a handful of aliens. Hubbard described the scene in his film script,” Revolt in the Stars”, as followed:

“Simultaneously, the planted charges erupted. Atomic blasts ballooned from the craters of Loa, Vesuvius, Shasta, Washington, Fujiyama, Etna, and many, many others. Arching higher and higher, up and outwards, towering clouds mushroomed, shot through with flashes of flame, waste and fission. Great winds raced tumultuously across the face of Earth, spreading tales of destruction …”

According to wikipedia.com, the beings’ immortal souls, or thetans, were expelled from the alien corpses, then captured by Xenu and forced into a cinema, where they watched a “3-D super colossal motion picture” for a total of 36 days. This was known as the “R6 implant”or the “Wall of Fire” and were bore into the thetans’ memories, which included religion, God, the Devil, space opera, and similar “misleading” information. Supposedly, the “implant stations” were located in Hawaii and Las Palmas in the canary Islands, according to scientology.com. According to Hubbard’s own writings, this procedure “deprived them of their sense of personal identity". Eventually, Xenu was overthrown by a government called the Loyal Officers and “locked him in an electronic mountain trap from which he has not escaped” (wikipedia.com) and was commonly thought to be located the Pyrenees, however, Hubbard did not support this concept.

Xenu story is part of the church's secret "Advanced Technology", considered to be a sacred and esoteric teaching, which is normally only revealed to members who have completed a lengthy sequence of courses costing large amounts of money. The scientology church tends to avoid mentioning Xenu in public statements and has gone to considerable effort to maintain the story's confidentiality, including legal action on the grounds of copyright and trade secrecy.

Before Xenu, there were disembodied energies floating throughout a universe of emptiness. In a work called The Factors (1953), Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard describes the inception of “theta” or the energy that creates life itself, according to Scientology’s scriptures. “In the beginning was a decision, and the decision was to be,” he says. From that point this life energy came into existence with nothing else around. Eventually it wanted something to look at, so it extended a viewpoint, thereby creating dimension. Somehow there were other lifeforms, which also started extending their viewpoints. Once they discovered each other they decided to collaborate as a committee and create a universe called the “Theta Universe.” Out of boredom they created the “MEST Universe,” with MEST standing for Matter, Energy, Space, and Time. The MEST universe is the universe we live in today, according to the teachings of Scientology.

They say the creation of man was due to thetans who possessed “meat bodies”, sent them to attack other possessed meat bodies, and would eventually become trapped in these forms and assume the identities of the bodies created. There were four forms a thetan could possess: robot, doll, insect or meat bodies (The “doll bodies” are considered to be the “little grey/green men” or our concept of an extraterrestrial). The thetans discovered that the meat bodies had an advantage of feeling physical pleasure, and fell in love with them.

“No culture in the history of the world, save the thoroughly depraved and expiring ones, has failed to affirm the existence of a Supreme Being. It is an empirical observation that men without a strong and lasting faith in a Supreme Being are less capable, less ethical and less valuable to themselves and society....A man without an abiding faith is, by observation alone, more of a thing than a man.”

A scientologist concept of a God is referred to as a Supreme Being and is expressed as the Eighth Dynamic (the urge toward existence). The other Dynamics illustrate a view of life as a categorization of urges and impulses leading us to certain survival. The First Dynamic is the urge of existence of one’s self, or the expression of individuality, and is called the “Self-Dynamic”. The second is the urge toward existence as a sexual activity, which can be divided into two divisions: (a) the act itself and (b) the family unit, including offspring. This, of course, is known as the “Sex Dynamic”. The 3rd Dynamic is the urge toward existence in groups as individuals, which includes school, society, state and nation, each category is consider its individual Third Dynamic, and is called the “Group Dynamic”. The fourth is focused on the species of man, the urge of survival through all of Mankind as a whole. “ All men and women, because they are men and women, seek to survive as men and women and for men and women.” ~ L. Ron Hubbard

The Fifth Dynamic is life forms; survival based on you as a life forms and other life forms such as animals and vegetation. The Sixth Dynamic addresses the physical universe and has four different components: matter, energy space and time. This dynamic is the urge of the universe itself to survive, with the help of each component. The Seventh Dynamic is the spiritual dynamic, or the urge of life itself to survive. It includes one’s being, the ability to create, the ability to cause survival or to survive, the ability to destroy or pretend to be destroyed. The Seventh Dynamic is considered a generalized life source.

The Eighth Dynamic, as mentioned previously, is commonly called God, the Supreme Being or the Creator, but more accurately defined as infinity. According to L. Ron Hubbard, it “embraces the all-ness of all” and once the Seventh Dynamic is reached in its entirety, “one will only then discover the true Eighth Dynamic.”

Ron Hubbard’s purpose of Scientology was to enable Man to improve his life through understanding. “In this new millennium, most individuals have no real grasp of the factors that govern their existence; if they had a greater understanding of themselves and their fellows, they would be able to improve conditions and help themselves and others to live happier lives” ~ L. Ron Hubbard

Scientology has even gone so far as to develop their own personal religious symbol. The symbol consists of a capital ‘S’ intertwined with two sideways triangles. The ‘S’ stands for, of course, scientology. The lower triangle is the ARC triangle; A for affinity, R for reality and C for communication. The first corner of the triangle is affinity, which is the degree of liking or affection for someone or something. Reality is the second corner and is, fundamentally, agreement. The third corner is communication, defined as the interchange of ideas between two people. The upper triangle is the KRC triangle; knowledge, responsibility and control. This symbol first came into use in 1952.

Scientology shouldn’t have even been developed as a religion. All (true) religions have been form from our ancestors, because they were so terrified of their everyday life, that they needed something to believe in. In 2011, an Ohio State University professor named Hugh Urban came out with a book, in which he extracted various court documents and historical records in order to establish what Scientology was really about. He included many quotes from L. Ron Hubbard, one of which has startled many abroad. Urban says that “ Hubbard had frequently compared life to a game, and he didn’t want to be ‘playing some minor game in Scientology. It isn’t cute or something to do for lack of something better.’ The game hinged on the idea that we can choose what we perceive to be ‘true’, and discard everything else as an illusion.” Hubbard told a group of doctoral students in Philadelphia in 1952 that his followers were more convinced of Scientology’s cosmology than he was. “I’m just kidding you mostly,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe any of these things and I don’t want to be agreed with about them … All I’m asking is that we take a look at this information, and … let’s see if we can’t disagree with this universe, just a little bit.” From my research, I have come to the conclusion that this particular “religion” has developed from some man’s silly metaphor for his own disarrayed past, to a means to extract money from ignorant men and women.