The press is all abuzz about Scientology as its poster boy Tom Cruise promotes his new movie and his new engagement (and his attacks on Brooke Shields). Here's a bit about Scientology's practices:
At first blush, Scientology resembles other New Age spiritual practices. The initiate starts with a process of "auditing," which is cross between an interview and confession employing a rudimentary lie detector. The idea is to learn about, target, and shed negative forces — the reactive mind — said to blunt potential. For a regular person, the first step might be a free stress test administered at a public booth in a shopping mall or Grand Central Station.
A Scientologist who is in the beginning stages of auditing — the stage Katie Holmes is reportedly in at this point — would be considered a "pre-clear." If she persists through these lower levels, which address career and other earthly struggles, she will reach the state of “clear.”
Once “clear,” Scientologists work on more otherworldly concerns through a series of levels starting with "Operating Thetan 1." It is only at this point that Scientologists can begin receiving knowledge of confidential teachings of Scientology. Cruise, said to be an OT6, and Travolta — reportedly OT7 — are well into this realm.
Among the secrets revealed to adherents who reach the OT3 level is the incident that led to the current evils of the Earth. In leaked documents now posted on the Internet, this incident started with a galactic shake-up 75 million years ago, when an alien ruler sent billions of subjects to this planet to solve an overpopulation problem. These "thetan" souls dispersed and invaded humans. Scientology is the means through which one's Body Thetans (BTs) are purged.
Ooookaaay.
For some interesting--well, as long as "interesting" means freako scary--insight into Tom Cruise using Scientology as a dating service, see what happened to Scarlett Johanssen. And just where was Katie Holmes for those two weeks?
Yeah, all that's normal...
6 comments:
Alan, you do have to consider that Scientology was conceived by third-rate sci-fi hack L. Ron Hubbard as a money-making scheme. It sounds like exactly what it is.
Yeah, everyone knows if you want to have a legitimate religion, all of the nutty beliefs have to be enshrined so far back in an unreliably recorded history that no one can prove you wrong. ;)
Hmm. Genesis' creation story is typically placed 6000 to 10000 years ago. The Big Bang theory had been placed at 4 billion years ago, but is now somewhere around 10-12 billion years ago and is still receding. By Andy's measure, Genesis is orders of magnitude more reliable than some nutty belief in a Big Bang.
Unreliably recorded history ... andy, your standards of historical inquiry are pretty spectacular! So, I guess you don't buy into the scientific analyses that from a chip of bone tell the story of a 40-foot long battering-ram-headed biped that had a thick, reddish hide, ate ferns for breakfast, carefully tended its young until they reached maturity, made a call that sounded kind of like a foghorn, and whose females frequently had depression issues. Because, that would, y'know, be kind of a double standard.
In Scientology's therapy, the use of an electric metering device, an E-meter, in association with repetitive manipulative questioning, the "preclear" is put into a hypnotic state and tells the auditor everything, every dark dirty secret, and is written down and filed away in the "church's" folders...for later use. Now you know why Tom Cruise, John Travolta and others, though they seem like intelligent people in other areas of their lives, seem like blathering drones when they talk about Scientology.
How a person can believe what Scientology tells them when they get up to OT III levels, with its space opera story of Zenu and convincing people that they are infested with invisible alien souls that they will remove for $100 per session, one Thetan at a time...they would have to have been brain-washed. There is no other answer. Either that, or they are so embarrased they gave the cult so much money they are in denial.
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