I started this idea briefly on facebook with a quote from a forum, some guy claimed one point of similarity between the Mormon Church and Scientology. Here's the quote again pasted from http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2661622/posts
"To: All
Also, L. Ron Hubbard could have easily substituted Kolob for Venus in his religion. According to Scientology, when a person dies — or, in Scientology terms, when a thetan abandons its physical body — they go to a "landing station" on the planet Venus,
where the thetan is re-implanted and told lies about its past life and
its next life. The Venusians take the thetan, "capsule" it, and send it
back to Earth to be dumped into the ocean off the coast of California.
Source: Thetan (Wikipedia
Seems to me that, per the Mormon myth narrative, when when an earthling is becoming "encapsuled" they leave from a "launching station" on the planet Kolob, where the Mormon spirit is implanted inside a human body, and once born with a Mormon family, the Mormon is told lies about its past life and its next life. The Mormon gods take the Mormon, "capsule" it in that body, and send it to Earth to be dumped at age 8 into the Mormon baptismal founts off of many international coasts.
Source: Thetan (Wikipedia
Seems to me that, per the Mormon myth narrative, when when an earthling is becoming "encapsuled" they leave from a "launching station" on the planet Kolob, where the Mormon spirit is implanted inside a human body, and once born with a Mormon family, the Mormon is told lies about its past life and its next life. The Mormon gods take the Mormon, "capsule" it in that body, and send it to Earth to be dumped at age 8 into the Mormon baptismal founts off of many international coasts.
It may be true because the part about Scientology above is taken from Wikipedia and the one about Mormonism and especially Kolob i read about somewhere else.
But i remember the times when Mormon missionaries came to my place and gave me a different preview of their version of the afterlife: They were three types of eternal dwellings, in which deceased humans where classified as celestials, terrestrials and telestials and yes, it's in Wikipedia too "According to this section of LDS scripture, the afterlife consists of three degrees or kingdoms of glory, called the Celehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolobstial Kingdom, the Terrestrial Kingdom, and the Telestial Kingdom." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrees_of_glory
How about the Kolob planet written about on the other side of the comparison? Yes there is a Wikipedia entry about this one but the story from the forum it's not in there.
But that story is a different thing than the three degrees of kingdoms of glory as described above.
Anyways. Until i hear otherwise i tend to believe the story above. Especially because it refers to the age of 8 when Mormons receive baptism. (All the deceased children under the age of 8 are going automatically to the Celestial Kingdom).
Another thing i can be sure of because i remember the missionaries telling me, when i asked them what i possibly could have done to deserve the suffering i was going through, that it must be something i have done in a previous life, but i cannot remember because of the "veil of forgetfulnesses" - as they said.
Another thing i can be sure of because i remember the missionaries telling me, when i asked them what i possibly could have done to deserve the suffering i was going through, that it must be something i have done in a previous life, but i cannot remember because of the "veil of forgetfulnesses" - as they said.
So what about is all this above? Some Mormons and all Scientologists believe that are reincarnated. But in Mormonisms they also talk about the degrees of glory which seems to be the ultimate destination for the soul, and that is somewhat similar to Hinduism.
Some, as i myself did in the past, when i first hear about, think reincarnation might be a good thing, since you get to live again and again and again. Even by Scientology's ideas, were one is told lies about his past before being reincarnated , or by Mormonism, where the veil of forgetfulness is thrown upon you before coming back, doesn't look like a good deal. Cause we are only what we remember we are. Thus thinking again, one realizes that reincarnation, at least as Hinduism and Buddhism teaches, is not (a good thing), and they probably came to understand this after a number of them (reincarnations). With Heart Sutra in mind, seems that the final preferred destination is nirvANa, where there is "na rUpa na vedanA na saMjJA saMskAra na vijJAna" which by the way reminds me of the Romanian orthodox saying "no pain, no sorrow, no sighing but only eternal life" or the Shakespearian verse "sans teeth sans eyes sans taste sans everything".
What else when talking about Scientology?
Dianetics. The most interesting part is the clearing of engrams through auditing. Striking similarity with psychoanalysis by which Hubbard was not satisfied.
Honestly i do not intend to read neither Dianetics nor the works of Freud to make a documented comparison. But from what i've heard so far, both have in common the re-memorization of one's past events in the presence of a qualified person and extracting the suppressed, not dealt with "traumatic memories" and trying to deal with them and liberating the subject's mind of them. But let's not forget here one more similar practice, though much more ancient, that of confession to a priest or confidant.
My following idea is taken from the speed of American life where people themselves through tradition and i don't know the origin of it although it may be native, simply put out of their mind everything is past and just go on with their life, one day at a time. The philosophy is simple, why bother with things you didn't have time to understand and not treasure the real memories, those of facts, not impressions, that might help you deal with the future? (But one can clearly detect consequentialism in the above paragraph).
Maybe that's why psychoanalysis is not welcome here anymore, for a longtime now.
But for more fussy and fashionable Hollywood minds, and bigger bank accounts, the European tradition might or must be prevalent hence the necessity. (It is well known the need for counseling of all people that arrived in a position of wealth through acting or other related arts and have to deal with a great deal of stress yet want to keep their memories and impressions intact).
So again, my idea is simply about physiology. I told myself for a longtime now that the recording of what later become "suppressed or unconscious memories" or "engrams" must have a physiological basis (kinda stating the obvious here, sorry). They might serve at something, and we should not take them for granted or even treat them as a disease. It could be an evolutionary gain as a result of social live with social feedback. (The next evolutionary step towards becoming fully conscient beings must have been considering self as a thinking partner and "engram" analyzer).
It is true that for a speedy life, when time is money and a person does not have the time or momentous mental capacity or understanding power to deal with events in their complexity, the memory of those unsorted thoughts might be a burden that can be, at a cost, dealt with in the presence of a counselor or, in our case, auditor.
But what can be the positive role of those raw memories? Simply to store what we don't have time to deal with at the present and give us the opportunity to value those experiences later, in silence, and extract the teachings. While the mechanism of recording directly in the subconscious memory might be purely physiological, the afterwards using of a more idle time to sort them out and store the results as it would have happened slowly, so we can simply add them to our experiences, to our advantage, is purely human. Or maybe telling other members of the society problems that must be solved socially. Or maybe using them to teach ourselves about the limitations of or within the social group we belong to.
Maybe not necessary anymore in a more complex, evolved, unparalleled on the scale of history type of society.
Dealing with these memories in the presence of other persons, as qualified as they might claim, i think it's a loss. Cause nobody can understand ourselves better then ourselves, given the time and knowledge.
Enough of this. What else.
The presence of Christian Cross among main symbolics, modified but similar enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scientology_Cross_Logo.png
Dating of a cataclysmic event, slightly before the extinction of dinosaurs and many other species.
"Psychometry". The crude device given as example on the main Wikipedia Scientology page is a joke. Anybody understands that the skin's electric resistance varies enormously with the amount of perspiration due to the numerous salts that can greatly influence the test. The resistance varies with the contact pressure of the hands while holding those metal conductors. But unfortunately, i think they did not stop there and based on those primitive ideas they went much further than some can imagine. Instant measurement of dilation of pupils, wireless remote EEG analysis, voice stress analysis, voice recognition, correlation between these and all of the others measurable "vital signs" with one's activity in a databases might give to an AI software the capacity to guess in real time one's thoughts and predict one's behavior. But again, it is very difficult if not, in the end impossible, due in part to what i described here.
Presence of degrees of initiations and levels of knowledge of the "secrets". I'm not going to say more about this, anybody can get the idea.
And last but not least the then-novel concept of reactive mind the mother of all mental ailments. "Thou shall never react". It is the opposite of the principle from physics, any action is followed by a reaction of similar magnitude. Usually sciences are being careful in breaking each other's major laws. But here we're talking about Scientology.
Go with the flow, roll with punches. Give up your individuality for the greater good. According to this point, the greatest enemy of all is the greatest opposer.
With elements from different religions and thought systems, maybe more than in any other belief system i know of, presented at least at first in an attractive form, it can be an attractive enough community especially for those caught for the rest of their lives in a routine that must ensure their physical existence. It may also be an innate unconscious desire to share or confess thoughts with power, authoritative figures.
The interesting part for us of course is how attractive and how many and what alliances they forged with other thought and/or political systems and what exactly are currently doing, and/or if they affect us on a larger social scale.
To be continued.
What else when talking about Scientology?
Dianetics. The most interesting part is the clearing of engrams through auditing. Striking similarity with psychoanalysis by which Hubbard was not satisfied.
Honestly i do not intend to read neither Dianetics nor the works of Freud to make a documented comparison. But from what i've heard so far, both have in common the re-memorization of one's past events in the presence of a qualified person and extracting the suppressed, not dealt with "traumatic memories" and trying to deal with them and liberating the subject's mind of them. But let's not forget here one more similar practice, though much more ancient, that of confession to a priest or confidant.
My following idea is taken from the speed of American life where people themselves through tradition and i don't know the origin of it although it may be native, simply put out of their mind everything is past and just go on with their life, one day at a time. The philosophy is simple, why bother with things you didn't have time to understand and not treasure the real memories, those of facts, not impressions, that might help you deal with the future? (But one can clearly detect consequentialism in the above paragraph).
Maybe that's why psychoanalysis is not welcome here anymore, for a longtime now.
But for more fussy and fashionable Hollywood minds, and bigger bank accounts, the European tradition might or must be prevalent hence the necessity. (It is well known the need for counseling of all people that arrived in a position of wealth through acting or other related arts and have to deal with a great deal of stress yet want to keep their memories and impressions intact).
So again, my idea is simply about physiology. I told myself for a longtime now that the recording of what later become "suppressed or unconscious memories" or "engrams" must have a physiological basis (kinda stating the obvious here, sorry). They might serve at something, and we should not take them for granted or even treat them as a disease. It could be an evolutionary gain as a result of social live with social feedback. (The next evolutionary step towards becoming fully conscient beings must have been considering self as a thinking partner and "engram" analyzer).
It is true that for a speedy life, when time is money and a person does not have the time or momentous mental capacity or understanding power to deal with events in their complexity, the memory of those unsorted thoughts might be a burden that can be, at a cost, dealt with in the presence of a counselor or, in our case, auditor.
But what can be the positive role of those raw memories? Simply to store what we don't have time to deal with at the present and give us the opportunity to value those experiences later, in silence, and extract the teachings. While the mechanism of recording directly in the subconscious memory might be purely physiological, the afterwards using of a more idle time to sort them out and store the results as it would have happened slowly, so we can simply add them to our experiences, to our advantage, is purely human. Or maybe telling other members of the society problems that must be solved socially. Or maybe using them to teach ourselves about the limitations of or within the social group we belong to.
Maybe not necessary anymore in a more complex, evolved, unparalleled on the scale of history type of society.
Dealing with these memories in the presence of other persons, as qualified as they might claim, i think it's a loss. Cause nobody can understand ourselves better then ourselves, given the time and knowledge.
Enough of this. What else.
The presence of Christian Cross among main symbolics, modified but similar enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scientology_Cross_Logo.png
Dating of a cataclysmic event, slightly before the extinction of dinosaurs and many other species.
"Psychometry". The crude device given as example on the main Wikipedia Scientology page is a joke. Anybody understands that the skin's electric resistance varies enormously with the amount of perspiration due to the numerous salts that can greatly influence the test. The resistance varies with the contact pressure of the hands while holding those metal conductors. But unfortunately, i think they did not stop there and based on those primitive ideas they went much further than some can imagine. Instant measurement of dilation of pupils, wireless remote EEG analysis, voice stress analysis, voice recognition, correlation between these and all of the others measurable "vital signs" with one's activity in a databases might give to an AI software the capacity to guess in real time one's thoughts and predict one's behavior. But again, it is very difficult if not, in the end impossible, due in part to what i described here.
Presence of degrees of initiations and levels of knowledge of the "secrets". I'm not going to say more about this, anybody can get the idea.
And last but not least the then-novel concept of reactive mind the mother of all mental ailments. "Thou shall never react". It is the opposite of the principle from physics, any action is followed by a reaction of similar magnitude. Usually sciences are being careful in breaking each other's major laws. But here we're talking about Scientology.
Go with the flow, roll with punches. Give up your individuality for the greater good. According to this point, the greatest enemy of all is the greatest opposer.
With elements from different religions and thought systems, maybe more than in any other belief system i know of, presented at least at first in an attractive form, it can be an attractive enough community especially for those caught for the rest of their lives in a routine that must ensure their physical existence. It may also be an innate unconscious desire to share or confess thoughts with power, authoritative figures.
The interesting part for us of course is how attractive and how many and what alliances they forged with other thought and/or political systems and what exactly are currently doing, and/or if they affect us on a larger social scale.
To be continued.
