Re: Tell me about Scientology

James Halliday <jim@redhill.demon.co.uk> writes:

>Could somebody give me a quick idea about the basics of Scientology?
>All I've seen was an article in a magazine which gave a rough overview
>of LRH and aliens, space criminals, volcanos, H-bombs and long films???
>All sounded totally screwy and then went on about the Scientologists
>disconnecting the group, threatening penet.fi and generally throwing their
>weight around and not really giving a very good public image.
In a paragraph: Scientology promotes the concept that we humans are fallible and have numerous weakneses and shortcomings that prevent us from reaching our "best potetial". Scientology also promotes the idea that it's "technology" can help people examine and identify their own weaknesses/shortcomings and then correct them to become better people. Nothing screwy about that is there.

Here's where the going gets weird and the weird get going ;).

75 trillion years ago a super-being called Xenu ruled a group of planets called the Marcab Confederation. Xenu had a population overload problem, so Xenu brought 2 billion inhabitants from the confederation here to earth, dropped them into the craters of active volcanoes and dropped hydrogen bombs on them. He then took the souls ("thetans") of the victims and manipulated them, binding groups of thetans together into "clusters". These thetan clusters have remained here on earth and attach themselves to humans. These clusters are the root of our weaknesses/falabilities. Scientology "tech" promotes the idea of locating these clusters and (for want of a better word) exorcising them from our bodies, freeing ourselves of their influence. The process of doing this is set up as a series of "stages" that have to be performed in a set order. If you have the cash, it costs mega-bucks (a couple of hundred thousand US dollars to do the whole course). If you can't afford it, you can work your way through the course. Successfully performing the steps endows you with "special powers".

Some scientologists will rebuke what I've just said and say it's a pack of lies. Well, I've spoken to practicing scientologists who *really* believe in Xenu and the thetan clusters, etc. If it's false propaganda, then scientology has a problem because it's own people think it's true :).