What Makes Scientology Critics?
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It is a fact that many believe it does work.
If it does work, the workability could account for the increase in size, despite opposition. If Scientology did not work, then it it could be expected to fold up, or at least stop growing. It gets no government funding, is totally self sufficient. But for the past 60 years it has grown and grown, from one man – L. Ron Hubbard, heavily opposed, to maybe 11 million or more, still opposed and growing.
History books are full of examples of groups coming and going. We know the food fads, the educational fads, marketing fads, and small self-help groups that expand a little. But Scientology just appears to grow, get bigger, get hit from somewhere, and then grow again. It is an obvious cycle from 1950 until today. Overall it is has experienced unstoppable unprecedented growth.
So if it does work, what is it that works?
Scientologists maintain that man is a life-force animating the body, not the body itself, but separate to it. Scientologists also maintain that the body is itself composed of life within its cells. Per Scientologists, the life force animating the body (which is you) has memory banks. However, the body is made up of life too, and this life has its own mind, a recording that permeates every cell within the body. These recordings within the body interfere with the memory of the spiritual being – you. In Scientology the body’s recordings are stored in what is termed the reactive mind. The mind of the spiritual being is called the analytical mind.
There are times when the body’s reactive mind’s recordings interfere with the memories of the spiritual being. And there will be times, presumably, where the body’s mind is actually running the spiritual being, and not the other way around.
It is claimed by Scientologists that the reactive mind is a small stimulus response mind, whereas the analytical mind is large, featuring reason.
An example of the body’s reactive mind taking control over a spiritual being would be where a person loses his temper. That is, he loses the objective analytical awareness to control the events around him with reason and gets angry. He loses control – and the body reacts with anger and does what it does in an effort to defend itself. Who has not seen someone act angrily, and not be in control? Here you may find a person even hurting someone whom he or she loves. It is obviously irrational to hurt someone you love, for you later feel guilt and regret. And yet, some people obviously cannot stop reacting. Here is the reactive mind running the person, not the other way around. Scientologists have a therapy for alleviating this phenomena. It is called auditing – which comes from Latin, meaning to listen. Through this auditing a person is said to regain control over the reactive mind.
The Scientologists say that a person, with help from the auditor who listens, can penetrate the body’s reactive mind with his own larger analytical-mind, lift out the recordings of the smaller reactive mind, and refile them as memories in his analytical mind, thus severing the unknown affect the body’s reactive mind has upon him. What makes this therapy special is that the recordings the Scientologist is truly seeking to pull out from the body’s reactive-mind are those times of unconsciousness. Yes, he is accessing unconscious recordings otherwise unknown to him, that Scientologists claim are make life a misery.
The subject above is called Dianetics, which apparently means, through-mind, and is a sub-study of Scientology.
Scientologists however say that the subject of Scientology is bigger than just the mental therapy of Dianetics. They maintain that Scientology is about life itself, and that life follows sets of laws separate to physical universe laws. These laws they call axioms. There are hundreds of these.
With these laws and axioms as the base of all else, Scientologists are then taught how to live and live well, being spiritual masters of life, not the adverse affect of it.
And if that seems a high goal, there are states they refer to as exterior, where supposedly the life force is exteriorized from within the body to outside of the body, with part or full perception of the experience.
SO WHY TO PEOPLE LEAVE?
1. Counter survival activities
3. Mental computations to be right.
5. Missed Withholds causing upsets
7. The Criminal Mind
1. The Counter Survival Activities
Per the founder of Scientology, Mr. Hubbard, the major reasons why a person makes little or no gains are counter survival activities, prior to or during the course of counseling. There comes a point where counter survival activities interfere with spiritual gains. This has been outlined in many lectures and writings by Mr. Hubbard.
Those who leave, regardless of what they say, leave because of their counter survival activities. For some it is hard. They were involved in drugs, prostitution, and making mayhem before they came into Scientology. Scientology appears to be a very open group. But a person, once joined, is expected to curb counter survival activities so he can make spiritual gain in counseling. Curbing these destructive impulses, for some, are hard, and they leave.
Scientology teachings do not implore Scientologists to be moralists. Scientologists, per their founder, are meant to understand moral frailties of people. However, left unchecked, these counter survival activities can well hinder the individual and the group so they do need to be addressed. If the individual cannot curb such activities, he or she is unlikely to stay.
Per Mr. Hubbard, man does not want to hurt others. He is basically good. When he harms another he leaves, withdraws so as to protect those whom he has hurt.
2. Cycle of Action
It has been observed by L. Ron Hubbard, and by some earlier than he, that there is a cycle of action for all activities. This cycle is most easily observable in life. There is birth, or creation. Then there is survive, and growth and continued existence. Lastly there is decay, death and destruction.
When a person comes into any organization he will, without realizing it, be in some part of this Cycle of Action.
The cycle can be seen as Create Survive and Destroy – although this is strictly an apparency per L. Ron Hubbard in Scientology: Fundamentals of Thought.
Ex-Scientologists, per some Scientologists, appear to still be Scientologists. They use the Scientology terminology on the Internet and in emails. They use Scientology terminology to explain why they left, why those who remained inside Scientology are wrong for doing so, and they even attack Scientology with the terminology they state they deplore. So it may make sense if they are still considered Scientologists, but involved in the destroy part of their cycle of activity.
3. The Mental Computation – BE RIGHT!
There is a mechanism in the human mind to make a person right per Scientologists. Being right is survival. But if it is a compulsion it can cloud judgment and make a person unbearable to be around in a group. Here can reside extreme stubbornness and computations to make others wrong.
Sometimes this computation is very obvious and a person can be known as stubborn. Sometimes it makes a person so argumentative he is a social bore. When a person manifests this, after he has left a group or relationship, this mechanism exists to make him very right for doing so.
An example – you may have heard of an ex—husband complain about his ex-wife so much that you feel uncomfortable listening. It can be too much. The venom is boring. It is as though the person is fixed on the subject of being right over the break up. The same can apply to ex-religious members – apostates.
4. Justifications
When a person has done something wrong he will justify what he has done to a varying degree. Some people have this justifying desire very strongly within themselves. For some it can be a compulsion.
5. Missed Withholds
There is one phenomena that stands out above all others. It is the missed withhold. This is simply where a person has done something wrong, and was almost found out about. The end result is upset. All upset stems from this phenomena. There is no one who is not upset with someone else at some time in their life. This is not to make people wrong for being subject to this natural phenomena. It just is what it is. People who are generally upset at something have this phenomena playing in their mind, and apostates more than most.
6. Third Party Law.
There is a law, per Scientologists, that when a person is in conflict with another, there must exist a third party (or person) who is behind the two parties being in conflict. This is a fascinating law, appears to be true, and would explain why some apostates want to attack their former religions.
7. The Criminal Mind
There is another datum that Scientologists say can explain some of the things they get accused of. A criminal will accuse others of that which he sees himself as being capable of doing. There are many Scientologists who claim to bear witness of this. This datum is a key datum for Scientologists, for per them, they are able to look into what a person is accusing them of, and run that accusation, with a little investigative skill, back to the accuser, and find out what that accuser is doing himself.
“THE CRIMINAL ACCUSES OTHERS OF THINGS WHICH HE HIMSELF IS DOING.
“THE CRIMINAL MIND RELENTLESSLY SEEKS TO DESTROY ANYONE IT IMAGINES MIGHT EXPOSE IT.
“THE CRIMINAL ONLY SEES OTHERS AS HE HIMSELF IS.”
L. Ron Hubbard, 15 Sept 1981
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Enjoy the rest of the site. Thank you.
Find more data in the following references:
Anonymous by John Brown, CESNUR Conference, Salt Lake City, 2009
Scientology:”Weird, Sure. A Cult, No.” By mark Oppenheimer (Washington Post, August 5, 2007)
Italy: After Twenty Years Scientology Wins Mother of All Court Cases
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