From Scientology in Wikipedia
"Scientology is a system of beliefs, teachings and rituals, originally established as a secular philosophy in 1952 by science-fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, then recharacterized by him in 1953 as an "applied religious philosophy.""
"Scientology is officially represented by the controversial Church of Scientology. The Church presents itself as a non-profit religious organization dedicated to encouraging development of the human spirit. Providing counseling and rehabilitation programs, the Church offers itself as an alternative to psychiatry, which Scientologists believe to be a barbaric and corrupt profession. Church spokespeople attest that Hubbard's teaching (called "technology" or "tech") has freed them from drug and alcohol addictions, depression, learning disabilities, mental disorders and other problems. Scientology, however, has been the object of many allegations that sharply contradict the Church's self-description. Criticsincluding officials of several governmentshave characterized the Church of Scientology as an unscrupulous commercial organization; it has often been described as a cult that harasses its critics and exploits its members. Many of the Church's most controversial actions are, critics argue, a direct reflection of Hubbard's Scientology teachings."
"The central beliefs of Scientology are that:
- a person is an immortal spiritual being (termed a thetan) who possesses a mind and a body, accompanied by a lesser "genetic entity";
- that the thetan has lived through many past lives, stored memories of which can cause problems in the present day;
- and that a person is basically good, but is "aberrated" by the memories of past traumas.
The Church states that the goal of Scientology is a world without war, criminals, and insanity, where good decent people have the freedom to reach their goals."
"Most famously, all of those who reach OT level III will learn about Xenu, the galactic tyrant who stacked hundreds of billions of his frozen victims around Earth's volcanoes 75 million years ago before blowing them up with hydrogen bombs and brainwashing them with a "three-D, super colossal motion picture" for 36 days. The traumatised thetans subsequently clustered around human bodies, in effect acting as invisible spiritual parasites that can only be removed using advanced Scientology techniques. Reportedly, the cost of reaching OT III approaches $360,000.
Scientologists argue that mentions of Xenu by non-Scientologists are "misleading characterizations made of these writings, with altered pieces of it taken out of context putting them up to ridicule." Critics of Scientology reject this, pointing out that Xenu is part of a much wider Scientology belief in alien past lives, some of which has been public knowledge for decades. For instance, the 1958 book
Have You Lived Before This Life documents past lives as described by individual Scientologists during auditing sessions. These included incidents such as being "deceived into a love affair with a robot decked out as a beautiful red-haired girl", being run over by a Martian bishop driving a steamroller, being transformed into an intergalactic walrus which perished after falling out of a flying saucer and being "a very happy being who strayed to the planet Nostra 23,064,000,000 years ago"."
