The other day I was watching a 20/20 piece, which focused on the Church of Scientology. The Church defends their practices, while people who have left it are speaking out against it quite vehemently. Of the people that have left the Church and are speaking out against it many once held a rather high position in the Church.
So, what is Scientology?
It was first introduced in 1954, by L. Ron Hubbard, an American author, which prescribes to the idea of Dianetics – ultimately this is the relationship between mind and body. The goal of Dianetics within Scientology is to eliminate the subconscious or “reactive mind,” which according to Scientologists interferes with a person’s conscious and somatic minds. “Auditing” is done then, where a series of controlled questions are asked the person being audited will answer these questions.
The main issue this 20/20 segment seemed to raise was that “auditing” was done in a damaging way to the psyche and inappropriate questions asked to children growing up in the religion because children are not really children in the sense that they are old souls reincarnated – a process Scientologists call “assumption.”
That is to say that the soul continually finds a new body as their current vessel dies and an individual is affected by not only the experiences of their present life, but of each rebirth. This is where many of those who were speaking out about Scientology took issue as they inferred it almost plants that memory within them.
Within Scientology there are then different levels, which people are able to achieve. These levels hold different secrets and material that members have to prepare themselves for... this apparently includes a story about Xenu, who brought billions of people to Earth 75 million years ago, stacked those people in volcanoes and detonated hydrogen bombs; the souls clustered together and became stuck in the body of the living.
Everyone is welcome to their freedom of religion and I do respect that; however, after reading more about the religion and about L. Ron Hubbard, I found that prior to his founding of Scientology that he was best known for writing science fiction and fantasy stories. It was after he wrote these that he developed his ideas into a wide-range of doctrines and practices that would become Scientology.
So, was he a science fiction writer who developed a religion based on this or was he a prophet whose past lives were encouraging him to explain his truth?
Religion is one of those things, I think, that was developed as stories. People argue all of the time about religion. People go to war over religion. However, do the ends justify the means? For people who believe, they will believe until they either die or look within asking themselves if they truly believe. What is really right?
The more people are exposed to the more their beliefs are challenged making the ties of that person to their religion either stronger or weaker.
I’ve studied a few different religions when I was at school, and what I found was that despite the different beliefs, at the core they are all relatively similar. There’s typically a creator/god/gods, a set of moral standards, and the giving over of yourself to something bigger than you. This last part, I think, is the most important aspect of religion.
In life everyone has struggles, whether they’re First World Problems, Third World Problems, or concerns regarding the environment, etc… everyone is faced with challenges and problems. But, to be able to take that problem and give it over to someone else, if even for a moment, to God or to simply go out into nature and be reminded of how small we are in the grand scheme of life, religion acts as a way to let go of those issues. It’s a way to feel relief in giving yourself over to something else. It’s why I don’t think we can judge anyone for what they believe; but if it’s seen as harmful that’s where I think questions arise and answers are sought.
