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To: null and void

What exactly do Scientologists believe??

Do they have a theology? Searches of the Internet reveal little or nothing about what they have to say for themselves - only what others say about them.


22 posted on 11/01/2005 7:43:57 AM PST by ZULU (Fear the government which fears your guns. God, guts, and guns made America great.)
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To: ZULU
Wow! That's a big question!

I can't give a very concise answer to that, but:

Scientologists believe that you *are* 'your' soul. They use the word 'thetan' do distinguish their concept of an eternal spirit that you are from the more traditional concept of a soul as something you have.

So the spirit is eternal, and can't be killed or destroyed, but can get into a great deal of trouble.

The suppressed memories of these bad experiences are stored in a part of the mind called the reactive mind. Unlike the other portion of the mind - the analytical mind - this part is not capable of reason, but reacts to stimulus that matches parts of traumatic previous experience. These unreasoned reactions can create their own troubles.

Dianetics, the practice that scientology evolved from, was designed to root out these memories, have the analytical mind evaluate their content, and refile the experiences in the analytical mind.

According to dianetic theory the painful memories, called engrams, build upon each other. Later events are chained to earlier events, and further obscure them. Dianetics starts with a recent trauma, reviews it into the ground, and seeks earlier similar incidents to be run in their turn. The goal is to find the earliest incident, called 'basic', related to a particular problem and 'erase' it. At this point the client experiences relief of the condition.

When the incident that all incidents are ultimately tied to 'basic-basic' is run the person is free of the effects of the reactive mind and has achieved the state of 'Clear'.

Early on it became clear that people running a chain of incidents would go to incidents that occurred before the clients present lifetime. That lead to the development of scientology.

In very broad terms, dianetics concerns itself with the reduction of disability, scientology concerns itself with the enhancement of abilities.

As for theology, scientologists have a construct called 'the 8 dynamics' a dynamic is an urge to survival. They divide survival into areas:

1st dynamic = Survival of self
2nd dynamic = Survival through sex/family/children
3rd dynamic = Survival through clan/tribe/group
4th dynamic = Survival of your species
5th dynamic = Survival of all living things
6th dynamic = Survival of the physical universe
7th dynamic = Survival of spiritual beings
8th dynamic = Survival of "everything else" AKA the God dynamic.

That's just about the only mention of God in Scientology. (Unless you count the 'Ron is God' club!)

The belief system is an eclectic mix of workable practices from other spiritual and psychological endeavors. All of the practices were 'discovered' (independently or 'originally') by LRH himself, the only 'source' for all that is scientology.

That's a start, I guess. I need to head out to work, I can answer any further questions later...
27 posted on 11/01/2005 8:21:09 AM PST by null and void (The only thing that wakes you up faster than coffee is spilled coffee...)
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To: ZULU

you need to google "operation clambake"


28 posted on 11/01/2005 8:21:14 AM PST by job ("God is not dead nor doth He sleep")
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