can someone explain what scientology people believe in, i just dont get the whole religion!?

Answer 1

Scientology, which questionably calls itself a new "religion", is the brainchild of science fiction writer & occult enthusiast L. Ron Hubbard. The organization, by means of Hubbard’s self created psychotherapy technique called “Dianetics”, claims to be able to help rid members of any & all mental constraints including but not limited to emotional scarring (from this & "past" lives) due to "engrams" (past negative experiences stored in our unconscious mind), psychological disorders & chemical imbalances (the solution is to convince members that these things don't actually exist) & drug dependence (including legally prescribed psychopharmaceuticals which counteract the effects of psychological disorders Scientologists believe to be nonexistent).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dianetics#Scientific_evaluation_and_criticisms
Dianetics review: http://dir.salon.com/story/books/review/2005/06/28/dianetics/index.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,812852,00.html

The official Scientology organization is composed of a number of “levels”. One begins as a “preclear” & works their way up. One must purchase virtually every service crucial to advancement directly from the "church" & at staggering prices. "Auditing", for example, is purchased in 12½ hour blocks, costing anywhere from $750 for introductory sessions to between $8,000 & $9,000 for advanced sessions. Visit this link to see how $380,000 is a conservative estimate for the total cost of moving all the way up the Scientology hierarchal ladder: http://www.xenu.net/archive/prices.html
These are the total costs for auditing alone: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_as_a_business#Costs
Here’s an explanation of what “auditing” is: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061224182319AA2nnd6

At level OT III (Operating Thetan 3), some very strange & fiercely guarded secrets are imparted upon worthy members who have paid enough money to advance to such a level (and no, this isn't a joke): The evil alien ruler Xenu killed millions of aliens (Thetans) from around the universe by kidnapping them, bringing them to earth in golden DC-8 “space-planes”, stacking them around volcanoes & blowing them up by dropping “h-bombs” into the volcanoes. Scientologists believe the souls of these aliens (these souls are "Body Thetans") were captured, brainwashed & released; they then attached themselves to our ancestors (and according to Scientology’s belief in Thetan immortality, they also attached to us during “past lives”) & cause many of our mental & physical ills to this day. Auditing is said to “clear” us of these Body Thetans as well as the “mental implants” they supposedly impose on our minds.
http://sf.irk.ru/www/ot3/spaink-ot3.html
http://www.spaink.net/cos/essays/atack_ot3.html
http://xenu.net/archive/leaflet/Xenu-Letter.pdf

Scientology has taken a very hostile stance towards psychiatry & psychiatric drugs irrespective of the fact that some people require medication to remain adequately functional during everyday life. They don’t recognize legitimate conditions like autism, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, etc, and the “church” has been known to withhold prescription pharmaceuticals from members (often with harmful & deadly results). Suspiciously, it was discovered upon Hubbard’s death that the anti-anxiety drug hydroxyzine (Vistaril™) was present in his body, which several of his assistants would later attest was only one of many psychiatric & pain medications Hubbard ingested over the years. It had also been said by many who knew Hubbard personally that at the end of his life he was “a psychopathic insane person screaming about BT's [Body Thetans]….”
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/07/01/sci_psy/index_np.html?pn=1
http://www.anti-scientologie.ch/usa-scientology.htm
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/Bare%20Faced%20Messiah.pdf
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/atack/contents.htm

To be blunt, Scientology is a cult. It employs semi-legitimate psychotherapy & self-help methods to keep people loyal & convinced of its merit while it simultaneously sucks them dry financially & attempts to keep them far away from ANYONE, even friends & family, who would dissuade them from remaining in such a harmful situation. It’s a particularly greedy as well as manipulative & dangerous cult that takes its anti-psychiatry fanaticism to deadly limits. See these links for more information: http://www.lisamcpherson.org/
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/06/24/Tampabay/The_unperson.shtml
http://www.factnet.org/Books/SocialControl/scs.html#toc http://www.xenu.net/archive/personal_story/funkydonny.html

Answer 2

1. This universe, the physical universe, is made up of matter, energy, space and time. Call it MEST, for short; Matter, Energy, Space, Time.

2. We, humanity, are spiritual beings, not bodies made of flesh and bones. We have bodies, but we are not those bodies. We are spirit, not matter. We create energy, but we are not energy. We seem to occupy space, but we are not space. We exist throughout time, but we are not time.

3. Spirit is the source of life. MEST has no life except what spirit breathes into it. Life, as we know it on this planet, in this universe, is a creation of spirit acting on MEST.

4. MEST and spirit operate on different laws.

5. Because spirit and MEST operate on very different laws, they often collide. When that happens, both become disrupted and confused.

Remember when you were a little kid? Unless you had one of those really messed up childhoods, you probably experienced life much more intensely then than you do now. You played more playfully, food tasted more tasty, and the world was full of wonder and magic. Now life sucks. Well, the difference between then and now is those collisions. They are what turns enthusiastic and idealistic youth into bitter and negative old age. You did what seemed natural to you, to make things better, and far too often they got worse instead. You applied the laws that were natural to you, a spirit, only to find again and again that this universe couldn't care less what you think, it's got its own laws and it ain't changin' for you, kid. This universe is a rough, tough place and it takes no prisoners. It can chew you up and spit you out and it does that to millions of people every single day. It can make you mean, and it can beat you down, and for all but a few of us it takes more than it ever gives and you lose a little bit more every day.

Scientology is a way of making sense of those collisions, and dealing with the beatdowns, and preventing them from happening again or controlling the damage if they do. It is a way of getting back the magic and joy that is your birthright, and winning in life instead of just getting along.

It is an applied philosophy, meaning it is intended to be used, not just read about or known about or familiar with. It is in the Eastern tradition of religion more than the Western, and it doesn't really involve beliefs as Christianity, Judaism and Islam do. Scientologists don't believe in L. Ron Hubbard like Christians believe in Jesus, but they follow his teachings to the degree that those teachings make sense, and produce positive results when applied.

Because Scientology isn't about belief, there are Scientologists who are Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Atheist and others. It is not a religion that tells you what to believe in, but it can help you to be happier and more successful in life as whatever you choose to call yourself, no matter what your belief, and no matter what area of life you want to improve.

People become Scientologists because they tried some piece of L. Ron Hubbard's philosophy and found it worked and made things better. So they try another. After thirty years, I still haven't found anything that didn't work when fully understood and correctly applied.

Answer 3

Scientology was invented by L. Ron Hubbard in the 1950s so he could make more money than by selling science fiction. Much of it sounds like sci fi, with aliens replacing souls in the other religions, mystical powers you can develop (if you pay enough), etc.

Funniest claim is that fetuses can hear & understand in the womb, and lives are messed up because of "ingrams" created by things you hear there, including mishear (like hearing "as*burn" instead of aspirin and developing hemhorroids later...the original Dianetics included lots of puns like this, later issues have removed them).

It's no more silly than any other religion, of course, the others are just older.

Answer 4

it's not a religion.

In Scientology doctrine, Xenu (also Xemu), pronounced ['zi.nu:], was the dictator of the "Galactic Confederacy" who, 75 million years ago, brought billions [1] of his people to Earth in DC-8-like spacecraft, stacked them around volcanoes and killed them using hydrogen bombs. Scientology holds that their essences remained, and that they form around people in modern times, causing them spiritual harm. [2][3]

These events are known to Scientologists as "Incident II", and the traumatic memories associated with them as The Wall of Fire or the R6 implant. The story of Xenu is part of Scientology beliefs in extraterrestrial civilizations and alien interventions in Earthly events, collectively described as space opera by L. Ron Hubbard, science fiction writer and founder of Scientology.

Hubbard detailed the story in Operating Thetan level III (OT III) in 1967, warning that R6 was "calculated to kill (by pneumonia etc) anyone who attempts to solve it." The Xenu story was the start of the use of the volcano as a common symbol of Scientology and Dianetics from 1968 to the present day.[citation needed]

Answer 5

http://www.xenu.net/
contains all the information you need.

It's an evil cult designed to make money and nothing else . Its effects on believers are destructive - Check out http://www.lisamcpherson.org/ , a victim of the cult who was starved to death.

Read "the road to xenu" - http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/xenu/ - an account of a girl who escaped scientology after 12 years!

The cult's core belief - no, I am not kidding here! - in the words of the founder:

"The head of the Galactic Federation (76 planets around larger stars visible from here) (founded 5,000,000 years ago, very space opera) solved overpopulation (250 billion or so per planet, 178 billion on average) by mass implanting. He caused people to be brought to Teegeeack (Earth) and put an H-Bomb on the principal volcanos (Incident II) and then the Pacific area ones were taken in boxes to Hawaii and the Atlantic area ones to Las Palmas and there "packaged".

His name was Xenu. He used renegades. Various misleading data by means of circuits etc. was placed in the implants.

When through with his crime loyal officers (to the people) captured him after six years of battle and put him in an electronic mountain trap where he still is. "They" are gone. The place (Confederation) has since been a desert. The length and brutality of it all was such that this Confederation never recovered. The implant is calculated to kill (by pneumonia etc) anyone who attempts to solve it. This liability has been dispensed with by my tech development.

One can freewheel through the implant and die unless it is approached as precisely outlined. The "freewheel" (auto-running on and on) lasts too long, denies sleep etc and one dies. So be careful to do only Incidents I and II as given and not plow around and fail to complete one thetan at a time.

In December 1967 I knew someone had to take the plunge. I did and emerged very knocked out, but alive. Probably the only one ever to do so in 75,000,000 years. I have all the data now, but only that given here is needful.

One's body is a mass of individual thetans stuck to oneself or to the body.

One has to clean them off by running incident II and Incident I. It is a long job, requiring care, patience and good auditing. You are running beings. They respond like any preclear. Some large, some small.

Thetans believed they were one. This is the primary error. Good luck."

Answer 6

Watch Aliens.

Answer 7

A giant magic space monkey is going to come save them in his interstellar banana. Then they will populate the cosmos and their only waste will be tiny gumdrops.

Answer 8

Scientology is comprised exclusively of the teachings of one man: L. Ron Hubbard. Hubbard's theories, assumptions, and techniques for practical applications that make up the rituals of Scientology, are sometimes called the "Spiritual Technology," or simply "the Tech."



Hubbard claimed to have discovered certain "natural laws" of the spiritual universe, which he claimed can be used to predict and control behavior and phenomena in a manner similar to the way in which the natural laws codified in the physical sciences can be used to predict and control phenomena in the physical world.



Scientology assumes that spirituality and thought (called "theta") is an energy existing in its own universe, separate and distinct from the physical universe of Matter, Energy, Space and Time (MEST), and that spirit (theta) is senior to, and indeed created, the physical universe (MEST).



Each individual person (called a "thetan") is considered to be a "thought unit" of the spiritual universe which interacts with the physical universe (MEST), usually by inhabiting a human body. The Scientology term "thetan" is what has commonly been known as the "spirit" and it is defined in Scientology as the source of life; in the individual, it is recognized as the core of personality or essence of oneself, quite distinct and separate from the physical body or the brain.



Scientology proposes that in its "native state" the spirit/thetan is immortal and god-like and possesses the potentiality of knowing everything, but that in present time its true capabilities have been lost and forgotten. As an immortal entity, the spirit/thetan lives on after body death and is born into a new physical body, again and again, lifetime after lifetime, in an endless cycle of birth and death. As a result of traumatic incidents extending back from the present life through a long series of "past lifetimes" hidden from conscious memory, the spirit/thetan has become trapped in the physical body and the physical/MEST universe.



Content of these traumatic incidents may influence a person's current life, causing physical and mental illnesses, irrational thoughts and acting-out behavior, and limiting one's creativity and other abilities. Scientology claims that these traumatic incidents, along with each spirit/thetan's personal history, are recorded in complete detail on the "time track," sometimes called the "whole track," which for each person is many trillions of years in length. Scientology proposes that through a process called "auditing" that uses techniques developed by Hubbard (often assisted by a device called the E-Meter), an individual can be guided to find and "discharge" these hidden traumas, thus escaping the suffering and limitations imposed by the past.



Further, as one progresses through a series of auditing "levels," one can eventually be restored to native state and can attain the status of "operating thetan," wherein one is free of attachments to the body and, even while "exterior" to (outside) the body, one can consciously control matter, energy, space, time, thought, and life. Hubbard's writings and lectures include many tantalizing details of the god-like abilities that may be gained through auditing.



For most individual Scientologists, recovering these god-like abilities (and encouraging and assisting others to do so as well) is the primary goal of participation in Scientology. The "levels" through which a participant progresses make up what is called "The Bridge to Total Freedom." Progress through all the levels of the "Bridge" often takes many years of dedicated study and practice, and the cost in fees for services for the Bridge is currently estimated at approximately $300,000 - $500,000 in US dollars.



According to examples given in Scientology, the content of "whole track" incidents can include (but is not limited to) attempted abortions and other fetal traumas, acts of torture and violence experienced both as victim and as perpetrator, encounters with the Marcab Confederacy and various Invader Forces from spacefaring Galactic civilizations, life on earth as a clam, "implants" of ideas and artificial purposes sometimes administered with a pain-drug-hypnosis combination, and other experiences that almost always include pain and/or confusion and/or unconsciousness.



While many of the traumatic incidents addressed in auditing are unique to the individual, some key incidents are thought to be common to all humans on planet earth. One very important such incident supposedly occurred some 75 million years ago. Scientology warns that until one has completed a series of preparatory steps, exposure to the details of this particular incident can cause severe illness or even death.* Thus, these details are carefully guarded and kept secret until, at the level called "Operating Thetan III" the member is deemed properly prepared and is granted permission to view and "audit" this information.

Answer 9

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology

Answer 10

It's ludicrously complex. Pretty sure it's mostly about money.