Scientology
Key Scientology beliefs include reincarnation, and that traumatic events cause subconscious command-like recordings in the mind (termed "engrams") that can be removed only through an activity called "auditing".
In the 1970s, Hubbard's followers engaged in a program of criminal infiltration of the U.S. government, resulting in several executives of the organization being convicted and imprisoned for multiple offenses by a U.S. federal court.
[22] The Church of Scientology has been described by government inquiries, international parliamentary bodies, scholars, law lords, and numerous superior court judgments as both a dangerous cult and a manipulative profit-making business.
[30] Following extensive litigation in numerous countries,[31][32] the organization has managed to attain a legal recognition as a religious institution in some jurisdictions, including Australia,[33][34] Italy,[32] and the United States.
[41] Government inquiries, international parliamentary bodies, scholars, law lords, and numerous superior court judgments describe Scientology both as a dangerous cult and as a manipulative profit-making business.
[46] Urban describes Scientology as representing a "rich syncretistic blend" of sources, including elements from Hinduism and Buddhism, Thelema, new scientific ideas, science-fiction, and from psychology and popular self-help literature available by the mid-20th century.
[6][54] In many countries, the Church of Scientology has engaged in extensive litigation to secure recognition as a tax-exempt religious organization,[55] and it has managed to obtain such a status in a few jurisdictions, including the United States, Italy, and Australia.
[78] Government bodies and other institutions maintain that the Scientology organization is a commercial business that falsely claims to be religious,[79] or alternatively a form of therapy masquerading as religion.
The thetan has been deceived into worshipping such a God by mainstream religion and so forgotten its own godlike power to create and destroy universes.The prices to undertake a full course of auditing with the Church of Scientology are not often advertised publicly.
[151] Reflecting a strong science-fiction theme within its theology,[72] Scientology's teachings make reference to "space opera", a term denoting events in the distant past in which "spaceships, spacemen, [and] intergalactic travel" all feature.
[16] To gain the OT levels of training, a member must go to one of the Advanced Organisations or Orgs, which are based in Los Angeles, Clearwater, East Grinstead, Copenhagen, Sydney, and Johannesburg.
[187] Though Hubbard had stated psychosis was not something Scientology dealt with, after noticing many Scientologists were suffering breakdowns after using his techniques he created the Introspection Rundown, a brutal and inhumane method to allegedly solve psychotic episodes.
[188]: 208–9 The rundown came under public scrutiny when in 1995 Scientologist Lisa McPherson suffered a mental breakdown and was removed from the hospital and held in isolation at a Church of Scientology for 17 days before she died.
[190] They regard him as the preeminent Operating Thetan who remained on Earth in order to show others the way to spiritual liberation,[116] the man who discovered the source of human misery and a technology allowing everyone to achieve their true potential.
[221] Kent described that for adult Sea Org members with minor children, their work obligations took priority, damaged parent-child relations, and has led to cases of severe child neglect and endangerment.
[271] Hubbard maintained that 20 percent of the population would be classed as "suppressive persons" because they were truly malevolent or dangerous: "the Adolf Hitlers and the Genghis Khans, the unrepentant murderers and the drug lords".
[271] Following strong criticism, the organization said that it formally ended Fair Game a month later, with Hubbard stating that he had never intended "to authorize illegal or harassment type acts against anyone.
[292] Reports and allegations have been made, by journalists, courts, and governmental bodies of several countries, that the Church of Scientology is an unscrupulous commercial enterprise that harasses its critics and brutally exploits its members.
[290][293] The controversies involving the Church of Scientology, some of them ongoing, include: Stephen A. Kent, a professor of sociology, has said that "Scientologists see themselves as possessors of doctrines and skills that can save the world, if not the galaxy.
In 1988, Scientology president Heber Jentzsch and ten other members of the organization were arrested in Spain on various charges including illicit association, coercion, fraud, and labor law violations.
[233] Journalist John Sweeney reported that "While making our BBC Panorama film Scientology and Me I have been shouted at, spied on, had my hotel invaded at midnight, denounced as a 'bigot' by star Scientologists, brain-washed – that is how it felt to me – in a mock up of a Nazi-style torture chamber and chased round the streets of Los Angeles by sinister strangers".
[339] In March 2009, Maureen Bolstad reported that women who worked at Scientology's headquarters were forced to have abortions, or faced being declared a "suppressive person" by the organization's management.
[359] In January 1995, Church of Scientology lawyer Helena Kobrin attempted to shut down the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology by sending a control message instructing Usenet servers to delete the group.
Beginning in the middle of 1996 and ensuing for several years, the newsgroup was attacked by anonymous parties using a tactic dubbed sporgery by some, in the form of hundreds of thousands of forged spam messages posted on the group.
[385] The Arbitration Committee of the Wikipedia internet encyclopedia decided in May 2009 to restrict access to its site from Church of Scientology IP addresses, to prevent self-serving edits by Scientologists.
There is also a big collection of alternative beliefs and religions at the University of Alberta Library in Canada, where scholar Stephen A. Kent "makes material available on a restricted bases to undergraduate and graduate students.
"[409] The material contained in the OT levels has been characterized as bad science fiction by critics, while others claim it bears structural similarities to gnostic thought and ancient Hindu beliefs of creation and cosmic struggle.
[413] Ankerberg and Weldon mention the sources of Scientology to include "the Vedas, Buddhism, Judaism, Gnosticism, Taoism, early Greek civilization and the teachings of Jesus, Nietzsche and Freud".
W. Vaughn Mccall, Professor and Chairman of the Georgia Regents University writes, "Both Freudian theory and Hubbard assume that there are unconscious mental processes that may be shaped by early life experiences, and that these influence later behavior and thought."
[427] The organization also maintained that it was the world's fastest growing religion,[428] a title also claimed by several religious groups, including Mormons, modern Pagans, and Baháʼí,[429] but which is demonstrably incorrect.
