Scientology???!!!!?

Question

Ok, we have all heard that Tom Cruise and John Travolta are scientologists....what exactly is it??!!! The beliefs?? Practices??? etc....
I am not interested enough to buy the book I admit. I would love some honest, no dumb answers please.

Thanks!!!

Answer 1

Personally I think scientology is a destructive cult. I think that while some minor benefits can be found on the lower levels, just from the social aspect of belonging to a group and having your days more or less worked out for you. Additionally the starting auditing sessions is just talking about your problems, no biggy that will likely help. However this is mainly an illusion (delusion) and it soon takes a turn as you progress in scientology, the starting levels are merely the trap.

Scientology tends to take over a person's life, devoting all their time, effort and money to it, and normally to the expense of their families, friends, work or education, etc. My main bug with scientology comes from the following things.

They lie to people, they use bait and switch. This means that what they begin telling you is not the final story, and you are expected to pay a lot of money for this without knowing what you are buying. Scientology presents itself as scientifically tested and researched, and in LRH's writings you will see grandeous claim after another, about how something is fact, or beyond doubt, or scientifically proved, or demonstrable, etc, etc, etc. The truth is that this is all lies, there was no research, testing, facts, doubt, proof or demonstrations. Hubbard on the whole plagarised almost every 'idea' he had. He was a prolific writer and a very intelligent and charismatic man. He was not as he and scientology claim a scientist, a graduate, an explorer or a war hero, he did not study extensively into the human condition, nor did he travel learning of wise men in the east. He did not heal himself of war wounds, and he did not create dianetics and scientology to help mankind. Hubbard was a constant liar, an amoral man & only ever seeked to entrap people for money, control & his ego. And yes scientology he died of natural causes, while having vistaril, a pyschiatric drug in his system - he did not leave the body for the next level of training, duh.

Hubbard taught that we have a reactive mind where some traumatic memories normally when unconscious, pre-natel, or past lives present themselves as a jumble of sounds, visions, smells, feelings, etc. When you see something that is similar to one of the memories it restimulates that particular memory, or as scientology calls it, Engram. This can lead to distressing feelings, or incorrect behaviour, or even your illnesses and disabilities, etc. Once you have cleared all your ‘Engrams’ by ‘auditing’, you are then told that you are clear… So what does this mean? Well most scientologists will struggle to tell you. Hubbard first claimed that a clear would be without illness, have a perfect memory, have a higher IQ, and do massive computations. These have never, ever been demonstrated. In fact Hubbard’s first clear showed quite the opposite, when she couldn’t remember what she had to eat on a particular morning, or then even the colour of Hubbard’s tie that he was wearing. She wasn’t any smarter, or better adjusted than before she spent all that money on scientology, Hubbard, a hypnotist, had just told her she was. His methods induce very suggestible states, unnoticed or explained away, and I don’t think this is any coincidence. His claims are not true, it doesn’t do what he says it does.

It prepares one for the latter levels, where you are led to believe the absurd, and pay lots & lots of money for it. This is the infamous Xenu story, and how the reactive mind is really generated by Body Thetans, of which you still have them all… (so why do you pay to become clear again?) These thetans were implanted with all sorts of images, and effectively brainwashed, thus they cause their host, you the thetan & your body the whole host of problems and more that becoming clear was meant to solve. Thus you then spend time, effort and money solo-auditing (talking to oneself) the ancient alien souls out of your body. To pay for this humiliation is bizarre, but something happens in learning scientology where you accept everything LRH said as source, that he couldn’t possibly be wrong, after all he researched it right? (well no…) To make matters worse the current leader has been butchering the ‘tech’, teachings and policies of Hubbard ever since he died – so people aren’t even getting what they paid for, being conned on a con.

Sources or Links for above
Wiki Entries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/scientology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/xenu
Scientology & Xenu South Park Style:
http://www.xenutv.com/cruise/sp-closet.htm
Proof of OTIII Story, Xenu and the Body Thetans:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/OTIII/index.html
http://www.spaink.net/fishman/ot3.html
Coroner Report
http://www.clambake.org/archive/hubbardcoroner/
Biography
http://www.clambake.org/archive/books/bfm/bfmconte.htm
Stolen Ideas
http://www.clambake.org/archive/lrhbare/
His war record
http://www.xs4all.nl/~kspaink/cos/warhero/
All evidenced documents concerning LRH's life.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~kspaink/cos/LRH-bio/
Secrets of Scientology:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Secrets/
http://www.clambake.org/archive/secret.html
Ex-member Testimonials/Stories:
http://www.whyaretheydead.net/krasel/
http://ocmb.xenu.net/ocmb/index.php?f=3&sid=62c9287e6962fbbb53c51af3e1f3c730
Ex-Member videos:
http://www.xenutv.com/interviews/index.html

So IMO Scientology is a collection of denounced or poorly re-written set of stolen ideas and theories created by LRH, that is not only a waste of time, and a happy delusion in the very best of circumstances (freezone), but can be physically, mentally and fiscally damaging to people even to the point of death. http://www.whyaretheydead.net

They even lie about its membership, there are 8 nor 10 million scientologists, that claim is absolute rubbish.
http://www.clambake.org/archive/COS_members.html

I think its practices, theories, and design uses mind and social control techniques, along with suggestion and trance like states as do many others, ex-members and experts alike.
http://www.freedomofmind.com/resourcecenter/groups/documents/scientology/pignotti
http://www.clambake.org/archive/infopack/7.htm
http://www.clambake.org/archive/1984/

Basic techniques looked at:
http://www.clambake.org/archive/techniques/
How someone can be trapped into scientology:
http://www.clambake.org/archive/personal_story/funkydonny.html

Hubbard wrote some terrifying policies and made lots of claims that are quite frankly dangerous to a person's wellbeing and possibly their life. Firstly is his claim that dianetics and scientology can cure illnesses and correct disabilities, let's see it from the man himself:

"Leukaemia is evidently psychosomatic in origin and at least eight cases of leukaemia had been treated successfully by Dianetics after medicine had traditionally given up. The source of leukaemia has been reported to be an engram containing the phrase ‘It turns my blood to water.’"
- L. Ron Hubbard, "Journal of Scientology," Issue 15-G, 1953
"Arthritis vanishes, myopia gets better, heart illness decreases, asthma disappears, stomachs function properly and the whole catalogue of illnesses goes away and stays away."
L. Ron Hubbard, DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH, 1987 Ed., p. 72

"Scientology is the only specific (cure) for radiation (atomic bomb) burns."
- L. Ron Hubbard, ALL ABOUT RADIATION, p. 109

"You are only three or four hours from taking your glasses off for keeps."
- L. Ron Hubbard, "Eyesight and glasses," "Dianetic Auditor’s Bulletin," Vol. 2, No. 7, January 1952

"The alleviation of the condition of insanity has also been accomplished now…"
-L. Ron Hubbard, Hubbard Communications Office Bulletin, November 1970, "Psychosis"

Of course, Scientology does none of these, and because people believe everything Hubbard said, and it must be them not doing the ‘tech’ right, rather than it not working, they sometimes don’t seek assistance and pay the price as the website, http://www.whyaretheydead.net clearly shows.

Some more choice quotes:
"Somebody some day will say ‘this is illegal.’ By then be sure the orgs [Scientology organizations] say what is legal or not."
- L. Ron Hubbard, Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter, 4 January 1966, "LRH Relationship to Orgs"

"MAKE MONEY. MAKE MORE MONEY. MAKE OTHER PEOPLE PRODUCE SO AS TO MAKE MORE MONEY."
- L. Ron Hubbard, Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter, 9 March 1972, MS OEC 384

"ENEMY SP Order. Fair game. May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed."
-L. Ron Hubbard, Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter, 18 October 1967

http://www.clambake.org/archive/infopack/5.htm

Here look at what some judges thought of scientology:
http://www.clambake.org/archive/judge_quotes.html

This is but the tip of the iceberg, I could start talking about Hubbard’s prosecution for fraud, the way they hound and harass critics, govt. investigations, crimes, the hard sell recruitment tactics, the 11 scientologists jailed for stealing documents, information, bugging, etc, numerous amounts of government agencies at all levels, the horrible conditions and pay for staff, or their ethics system, or their slave labour/punishment camp called the RPF. So No I don’t like scientology one little bit, but I hope I showed you why. Did I mention it costs a lot of money, it breaks up families, hurts lives and even kills people? Oh I did, good.

Oh what the hell here are some of the links:
http://www.suppressiveperson.org/
http://www.clambake.org/archive/go/gohist.htm#go_ops
http://www.lermanet2.com/cos/brainwashing.html
http://theunfunnytruth.ytmnd.com/

Some Main Sites to look at critical of scientology:
http://www.clambake.org
http://www.lermanet.com
http://www.xenutv.com

And this for fun:
http://www.zipperfish.com/free/yaafm11.php

Answer 2

I have to be honest: I tried reading the book back in the 80's when I was trying to "find" something in my life. I didn't make it halfway through the book and tossed it in the trash. It made absolutely NO sense: obtaining a state of "clear" and using some kind of device that actually is able to tell if you have parasitic demons inside of you or not. It takes a lot of money over several visits to drive these demons out. I'm not kidding.
People have the free will to worship as they wish but this is nothing more than pure garbage. I'm not interested in who might be offended.
PS If you ever make it to a dianetics center and watch their movies you would be stunned. All they do is praise the founder, L. Ron Hubbard, for his earth shattering progress in helping people with mental disorders while trying to make psychology, as we know it, to be a total sham.
Of course the films don't divulge in that information or offer proof but does take quite a bit of time making L. Ron Hubbub look like a matryr by going up against the establishment that wants to keep him quiet.

Answer 3

You may think this is a dumb answer...

but Scientologist believe that alien souls are within in a persons body even when born. Long ago they believe an Alien lord sent all the "bad Alien souls" to earth. They excaped and took home in human bodies.

In a nut shell this is it...the religon was created by a science fiction writer and taken as fact by scientologies. They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to rid their bodies of these alien souls....

Sorry you can't describe their religon without having it be a dumb answer

Answer 4

This is what Scientology is based on. They do not give this "information" to members until they have paid a fortune to advance high enough in the ranks. This is really what Scientologists believe!

from http://www.xenu.net/archive/leaflet/xenuleaf.htm :

Once upon a time (75 million years ago to be more precise) there was an alien galactic ruler named Xenu. Xenu was in charge of all the planets in this part of the galaxy including our own planet Earth, except in those days it was called Teegeeack.

Xenu the alien ruler Now Xenu had a problem. All of the 76 planets he controlled were overpopulated. Each planet had on average 178 billion people. He wanted to get rid of all the overpopulation so he had a plan.

Xenu took over complete control with the help of renegades to defeat the good people and the Loyal Officers. Then with the help of psychiatrists he called in billions of people for income tax inspections where they were instead given injections of alcohol and glycol mixed to paralyse them. Then they were put into space planes that looked exactly like DC8s (except they had rocket motors instead of propellers).

These DC8 space planes then flew to planet Earth where the paralysed people were stacked around the bases of volcanoes in their hundreds of billions. When they had finished stacking them around then H-bombs were lowered into the volcanoes. Xenu then detonated all the H-bombs at the same time and everyone was killed.

The story doesn't end there though. Since everyone has a soul (called a "thetan" in this story) then you have to trick souls into not coming back again. So while the hundreds of billions of souls were being blown around by the nuclear winds he had special electronic traps that caught all the souls in electronic beams (the electronic beams were sticky like fly-paper).

After he had captured all these souls he had them packed into boxes and taken to a few huge cinemas. There all the souls had to spend days watching special 3D motion pictures that told them what life should be like and many confusing things. In this film they were shown false pictures and told they were God, The Devil and Christ. In the story this process is called "implanting".

When the films ended and the souls left the cinema these souls started to stick together because since they had all seen the same film they thought they were the same people. They clustered in groups of a few thousand. Now because there were only a few living bodies left they stayed as clusters and inhabited these bodies.

As for Xenu, the Loyal Officers finally overthrew him and they locked him away in a mountain on one of the planets. He is kept in by a force-field powered by an eternal battery and Xenu is still alive today.

Answer 5

L Ron Hubbard came up with a get-rich-quick scheme called Scientology. At it's core, it's predicated on aliens living in us, and a master alien called 'xenu'.
The GRQ part is the sales of books and courses to learn all about this. You can learn more about from former members and other researchers.
http://www.lermanet.com/

Answer 6

The word Scientology literally means "the study of truth." It comes from the Latin word "scio" meaning "knowing in the fullest sense of the word" and the Greek word "logos" meaning "study of."

Scientology is the study and handling of the spirit in relationship to itself, others and all of life. The religion comprises a body of knowledge extending from certain fundamental truths. Prime among these:

Man is an immortal, spiritual being. His experience extends well beyond a single lifetime. His capabilities are unlimited, even if not presently realized — and those capabilities can be realized. He is able to not only solve his own problems, accomplish his goals and gain lasting happiness, but also achieve new, higher states of awareness and ability.

In Scientology no one is asked to accept anything as belief or on faith. That which is true for you is what you have observed to be true. An individual discovers for himself that Scientology works by personally applying its principles and observing or experiencing results.

Through Scientology, people all over the world are achieving the long-sought goal of true spiritual release and freedom.

It is a religin with cult-like followers.

The real answer to the question, “What is Scientology” is best answered by reading a basic book on the subject by L. Ron Hubbard. Scientology: Fundamentals of Thought is an introduction to the subject, and the basic principles of Scientology.

Answer 7

I have heard of it...I think the religion is based around the scientific creation of the world and all the lifeforms within. It is not a religion that worships a god...I think. Anyway, I need to brsh up on my John Travolta. They are at a point in their lives where no one is their equal, and no one is their superior. That always leads to madness. They cannot stand to worship. They must be worshipped.

Answer 8

It is a dangerous cult. It enjoys tax exempt status in the US because it is saying it is a religion. It is really a huge money making corporation. The IRS is working on changing its tax exempt status.

http://www.xenu.net is a site that will give you a great deal of information about this organization.

Answer 9

started by L. Ron Hubbard as 'self help technique' referred to as Dianetics (he began writing SiFi books and then wrote self help books) ...it right into a grew to become "faith".....many human beings (Christians, atheist, agnostics, former individuals, ect) say that's the perfect 'textual content textile-e book' occasion of a non-violent Cult (theory some individuals have reported actual and emotional abuse) the uncomplicated theory is: for the duration of your and previous lives you have had adverse reports which you will no longer remember, those repressed reports 'carry you decrease back'.... by particular counseling referred to as "Dianetics" (presented by the CoS. for a nominal cost) you are able to 'technique/manage' those undesirable reports....as quickly as there all dealt with, you are able to go beyond to a "extreme user-friendly of existence" ....the top....

Answer 10

the common Greek word logos in its basis translation mean "word" and it may also mean "thing",the term is also used as the pattern of man where he live "according to nature"

Answer 11

only short men who need to wear heels in there shoes to reach there women believe in it... they think if they believe hard enuf then they might grow taller!