For many people who only read the media, they will have caught the cosmic speculation in some of Scientolgy’s 100,000 pages of text.
Most religions have some kind of speculative belief that man is not alone in this universe. To the common man, such a thought that the only life in this universe is in this world could be considered very insular. According to some scientists, this universe is teeming with life.
Mohammad said that all Muslims must understand all religions, even religions from other planets. Buddhists also have similar concepts about the life that exists. The Veda has it. Hindus definitely have it. As far as Egyptian history has it. Even the Bible has it. Maybe we are not alone and maybe we never have been. But honestly, who really knows?
You’ve heard the Scientology controversy. So what is it really? I mean, not just the silly babble of uneducated outsiders who have never read a book on the subject. What is Scientology to an initiate?
First, what is religion? There are two kinds of religions. The first is Revealed Religion. This is where someone says that God revealed the answers to them. That someone can be a prophet or messiah. These religions dominate the West today. The other type of religion is a Natural Religion. This is where a person or a group of people have tried to find out what life is, what are the laws of nature, how life affects us and, finally, can life evolve to a higher state of being. These are more oriental in concept. They are Buddhism, Hinduism and includes Scientology.
Scientology means a study of knowledge, or knowing how to know. It is a study of how to know life. I will give an example. You are life. The chair you sit on is not. Life can be seen as exhibiting emotion. Not your meat. Emotions are symptoms that life is present. For example, your chair doesn’t get angry or grumpy. But life can. You see life in your dog, and he follows these same phenomena as you. You can communicate, sulk, be happy, sad, fearful, etc.
Scientology is a study of the laws of life and how they impact you. That is all Scientology is. A Scientologist has knowledge of life. It is assumed that if you knew all the laws of life, then maybe you could run life, instead of life running you.
What laws am I talking about?
If you were studying physics you might ask, what is gravity? If we knew the absolute answer, I think we could send a man beyond Mars. But we don’t really know what gravity is. We see the symptoms of him. We certainly see the effects of it: planes crashing, bridges being built for cars to straddle a chasm, a grazed knee when we fall. But what really is gravity? Are they small particles of gravity pulling on each other? If so, how do they shoot? Where does the force actually come from within gravity? How does that force really work? If it comes from atoms, where? No one has these answers yet. But even if they don’t have all the answers, it’s obvious that gravity does exist.
Scientology is a study similar to this, but it is a study of life, not the physical universe. Physics studies the physical universe in search of its answers. Scientology studies life in search of life’s answers.
Here is an example. A really simple law of life, and you will see that it is true: life likes another life to be at a distance that it tolerates from that other life. In other words, life likes to have a tolerable distance from what you like, and that distance is inversely proportional to how much you think you like. If you like your wife, you will want to be close to her. If you don’t like her, you will put distance between you. And the opposite is also true, if you put distance between yourself and someone you like, you will like them less. Time plays apart too.
Well you say. What good is this knowledge? Well, suppose you like a person and she likes you. But you had to be separated for a while by a great distance. Then after this, he started to dislike that person as much. Well what would you do? You could get angry with this other person. Most people use discomfort as a coping mechanism for this, but honestly, it doesn’t help. Some might get jealous and think that that other person you liked had found someone else. But if you knew this law, you would know the real problem. So what could you do? You could somehow reduce the distance between you and this person so that you like him more again. This is a simplistic example, but it demonstrates what I’m saying.
With Scientology I can easily help marriages, increase a person’s IQ, and can regain personal respect.
Scientology is thousands of these little observances, laws, and speculations about life. That’s all it is. There are tens of thousands of pages on the subject. It covers you as life, families, groups, humanity, all living things, basically all living things. When you start to learn what life is and start to really know who you yourself are, life becomes very easy to live. You enjoy life.
There is a book on the laws and phenomena of life easier to understand. The book is called Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought. If you read this book, life becomes an adventure. Sure, if you know what life is and how it works, you have an advantage over your opponents in the game of life. But that is life. The life is a game. It has rules and if you don’t know those rules and therefore can’t win, you won’t enjoy the game.
Now, there is also the issue of counseling, called auditing, which simply means listening. This is an effort to improve your memory, and while you’re at it, you’re learning about yourself, about your life. Once again, it’s about learning, but this time specifically about you. The more you do this advice, the better and better your memory will be. It first advises recent events, then earlier and earlier, improving memory as it goes. Eventually you haven’t lived to deal with it, and your memory fades. It is very exciting to advise another and also receive it. There is a book on this called Have You Lived Before This Life?
There is what is called para-scientology. It is only a small part. This is speculation about things that have not yet been proven. That would include ghosts, intelligence lives, extra sensory abilities, and even past lives. All religions have this unproven speculative part, not just Scientology. Focus on the mainstream of Scientology and not on the side eddies. Then Scientology starts to make sense and you can see why people do it.