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 Melton suggests that these elements of the OT levels may never

have been intended as descriptions of historical events and that, like

other religious mythology, they may have their truth in the realities of the

body and mind which they symbolize. He adds that on whatever level

Scientologists might have received this mythology, they seem to have

found it useful in their spiritual quest.

 

Excerpts and descriptions of OT materials were published online by a

former member in 1995 and then circulated in mainstream media. This

occurred after the teachings were submitted as evidence in court cases

involving Scientology, thus becoming a matter of public record.  There are 

 eight publicly known OT levels,  OT I to VIII. The highest level, OT VIII, is

disclosed only at sea on the Scientology cruise ship Freewinds. It has

been rumored that additional OT levels, said to be based on material

written by Hubbard long ago, will be released at some appropriate point in

the future.

 

A large  Church of Spiritual Technology symbol  carved into the ground at

Scientology's Trementina Base is visible from the air. Washington Post

reporter Richard Leiby wrote, "Former Scientologists familiar with

Hubbard’s teachings on reincarnation say the symbol marks a 'return

point' so loyal staff members know where they can find the founder’s

works when they travel here in the future from other places in the

universe."

 

Scientology has an internal justice system ( the Ethics system ) designed

to deal with unethical or antisocial behaviour. Ethics officers are present in

every org; they are tasked with ensuring correct application of Scientology technology and deal with violations such as non-compliance with standard procedures or any other behaviour adversely affecting an org's performance, ranging from errors and misdemeanours to crimes and suppressive acts, as defined by internal documents. Scientology teaches that spiritual progress requires and enables the attainment of high "ethical" standards. In Scientology, rationality is stressed over morality. Actions are considered ethical if they promote survival across all eight dynamics, thus benefiting the greatest number of people or things possible while harming the fewest.

 

While Scientology states that many social problems are the unintentional results of people's imperfections, it asserts that there are also truly malevolent individuals. Hubbard believed that approximately 80 percent of all people are what he called social personalities – people who welcome and contribute to the welfare of others. The remaining 20 percent of the population, Hubbard thought, were suppressive persons. According to Hubbard, only about 2.5 percent of this 20 percent are hopelessly antisocial personalities; these make up the small proportion of truly dangerous individuals in humanity:

                                                                                                                                                                                    "the Adolf Hitlers and the Genghis Khans, the unrepentant murderers and the drug lords." Scientologists believe that any contact with suppressive or antisocial individuals has an adverse effect on one's spiritual condition, necessitating disconnection.

 

In Scientology, defectors who turn into critics of the movement are declared suppressive persons, and the Church of Scientology has a reputation for moving aggressively against such detractors. A Scientologist who is actively in

communication with a suppressive person and as a result shows signs of antisocial behaviour, is referred to as a Potential Trouble Source.

 

The term Fair Game is used to describe policies and practices carried out by the people the Church perceives as its

enemies. Hubbard established the policy in the 1950s, in response to criticism both from within and outside his organization. Individuals or groups who are "Fair Game" are judged to be a threat to the Church and, according to the policy, can be punished and harassed using any and all means possible.

 

Hubbard and his followers targeted many individuals as well as government officials and agencies, including a program of covert and illegal infiltration of the IRS and other U.S. government agencies during the 1970s. They also conducted private investigations, character assassination and legal action against the Church's critics in the media. The policy remains in effect and has been defended by the Church of Scientology as a core religious practice.

 

In Scientology, ceremonies for events such as weddings, child naming, and funerals are observed. Friday services are held

to commemorate the completion of a person's religious services during the prior week. Ordained Scientology ministers may perform such rites. However, these services and the clergy who perform them play only a minor role in Scientologists' religious lives.

 

The general orientation of Hubbard's philosophy owes much to Will Durant, author of the popular 1926 classic The Story of Philosophy; Dianetics is dedicated to Durant. Hubbard's view of a mechanically functioning mind in particular finds close parallels in Durant's work on Spinoza. According to Hubbard himself, Scientology is "the Western anglicized continuance of many early forms of wisdom."

​

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." In Dianetics, Hubbard cites Hegel as an influence, but a negative one due to his being "confusing."

 

 Sigmund Freud's psychology,  popularized in the 1930s and 1940s, was a key contributor to the Dianetics therapy model, and was acknowledged unreservedly as such by Hubbard in his early works. Hubbard never forgot, when he was 12 years old, meeting Cmdr. Joseph Cheesman Thompson, a U.S. Navy officer who had studied with Freud and when writing to the American Psychological Association in 1949, he stated that he was conducting research based on the "early work of Freud".

​

Another major influence was  Alfred Korzybski's  General Semantics. Hubbard was friends with fellow science fiction writer A. E. van Vogt, who explored the implications of Korzybski's non-Aristotelian logic in works such as The World of Null-A, and Hubbard's view of there active mind has clear and acknowledged parallels with Korzybski's thought; in fact, Korzybski's "anthropometer" may have been what inspired Hubbard's invention of the E-meter. Beyond that, Hubbard himself named a great many other influences in his own writing – in Scientology 8-8008, for example, these include philosophers from Anaxagoras and Aristotle to Herbert Spencer and  Voltaire,  physicists and mathematicians like Euclid and Isaac Newton, as well as founders of religions such as Buddha, Confucius, Jesus and Mohammed – but there is little evidence in Hubbard's writings that he studied these figures to any great depth.

 

As noted, there are elements of the Eastern religions evident in Scientology, in particular the concepts of karma, as present

in Hinduism and in  Jainism.  In addition to the links to Hindu texts, Hubbard tried to connect Scientology with Taoism and Buddhism. According to the Encyclopedia of Community, Scientology "shows affinities with Buddhism and a remarkable similarity to first-century Gnosticism."

 

In the 1940s, Hubbard was in contact with Jack Parsons, a rocket scientist and member of the  Ordo Templi Orientis  then

led by Aleister Crowley, and there have been suggestions that this connection influenced some of the ideas and symbols of Scientology. Religious scholars Gerald Willms and J. Gordon Melton have stated that Crowley's teachings bear little if any resemblance to Scientology doctrine.

 

According to  James R. Lewis,  Scientology is in the same lineage of supernatural religious movements such as New Thought. Scientology goes beyond this and refers to their religio-therapeutic practices as religious technology. Lewis wrote, "Scientology sees their psycho-spiritual technology as supplying the missing ingredient in existing technologies—namely, the therapeutic engineering of the human psyche."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are a considerable number of Scientology organizations (or orgs) which generally support one of the following three

aims:

        enabling Scientology practice and training, promoting the wider application of Scientology technology, or campaigning for social change. The internal structure of Scientology organizations is strongly bureaucratic, with detailed coordination of activities and collection of stats – or statistics, to measure organizational and individual performance. Organizational operating budgets are performance-related and subject to frequent reviews.

 

In 2005, the Church of Scientology stated its worldwide membership to be eight million, although that number included

people who took only the introductory course. In 2007, a church official claimed 3.5 million members in the United States, but a 2001 survey conducted by the City University of New York found only 55,000 people in the United States who claimed to

be Scientologists. Worldwide, some observers believe a reasonable estimate of Scientology's core practicing membership ranges between 100,000 and 200,000, mostly in the U.S., Europe, South Africa and Australia. In 2008, the American Religious Identification Survey found that the number of American Scientologists had dropped to 25,000.

 

Scientologists tend to disparage general religious surveys on the grounds that many members maintaining cultural and

social ties to other religious groups will, when asked their religion, answer with their traditional and more socially acceptable affiliation. The Church of Scientology claims to be the fastest growing religious movement on earth. On the other hand, religious scholar  J. Gordon Melton  has said that the church's estimates of its membership numbers are significantly exaggerated. In the UK, Scientology is declining.

 

These organizations are supported by a three-tiered hierarchical structure comprising lay practitioners, staff and at the top of the hierarchy, members of the so-called Sea Organization or Sea Org.  The Sea Org,  comprising over 5,000 members, has been compared to the monastic orders found in other religions; it is composed of the most dedicated adherents, who work for nominal compensation and symbolically express their religious commitment by signing a billion-year contract.

 

A controversial part of the Scientology justice system is the  Rehabilitation Project Force  (RPF). When a Sea Org member is accused of a violation, such as lying, sexual misconduct, dereliction of duty, or failure to comply with Church policy, a Committee of Evidence examines the case. If the charge is substantiated, the individual may accept expulsion from the Sea Org or participate in the RPF to become eligible to re-join the Sea Org. The RPF involves a daily regimen of five hours of auditing or studying, eight hours of work, often physical labour, such as building renovation, and at least seven hours of sleep. Douglas E. Cowan and David G. Bromley state that scholars and observers have come to radically different conclusions about the RPF and whether it is "voluntary or coercive, therapeutic or punitive".

 

The Office of Special Affairs or OSA (formerly the Guardian's Office) is a department of the Church of Scientology. According to the Church, the OSA is responsible for directing legal affairs, public relations, pursuing investigations, publicizing the Church's "social betterment works," and "over seeing its social reform programs". Observers outside the Church have characterized it as an intelligence agency, comparing it variously to the CIA or the  KGB.  The department has drawn criticism for its involvement in targeting critics of the Church for dead agent operations. OSA has mounted character assassination operations against many critics of the Church.

 

Scientology can be seen as a UFO religion in which the existence of extraterrestrial entities operating unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are an element of belief. In this context, it is discussed in UFO Religions by Christopher Partridge, and The Encyclopedic Sourcebook of UFO Religions by James R. Lewis, while Susan Palmer draws several parallels with

Raelianism. Gregory Reece, in his book UFO Religion:

                                                                                       Inside flying saucer cults and culture, writes:

                                                                                                                                                             Scientology is unique within the UFO culture because of this secretiveness, as well as because of the capitalist format under which they operate. Scientology is also difficult to categorize. While it bears strong similarities to the Ashtar Command or the  Aetherius Society,  its emphasis upon the Xenu event as the central message of the group seems to place them within the ancient astronaut tradition. Either way, Scientology is perhaps most different from other UFO groups in their attempt to keep all of the space opera stuff under wraps. They really would have preferred the rest of us not to know about Xenu and the galactic federation. Alas, such secrets are hard to keep.

 

Regardless of such statements by critics, Hubbard wrote and lectured openly about the material he himself called "space opera." In 1952, Hubbard published a book (What to Audit / A History of Man) on space opera and other material that may be encountered when auditing preclears.

 

While NRM scholars have generally accepted the religious nature of Scientology, media reports have tended to express the opinion that "Scientology is a business, often given to criminal acts, and sometimes masquerading as a religion." During his lifetime, Hubbard was accused of using religion as a façade for Scientology to maintain tax-exempt status and avoid prosecution for false medical claims. The IRS cited a statement frequently attributed to Hubbard that the way to get rich was to found a religion. According to Melton, the statement is unsubstantiated, although several of Hubbard's science fiction colleagues do recall Hubbard raising the topic in conversation.

 

Hubbard grew up in a climate that was very critical of organized religion, and frequently quoted anti-religious sentiments in

his early lectures. The scholar  Marco Frenschkowski  (University of Mainz) has stated that it was not easy for Hubbard to come to terms with the spiritual side of his own movement. Hubbard did not want to found a religion:

                                                                                                                                                               he discovered that what he was talking about in fact was religion. This mainly happened when he had to deal with apparent memories from former lives. He had to defend himself about this to his friends. Frenschkowski allows that there naturally were practical considerations about "how to present Scientology to the outside world", but dismisses the notion that presentation as a religion was just an expedient pretence, pointing to many passages in Hubbard's works that document his struggle with this issue.

 

Drawing parallels to similar struggles for identity in other religious movements such as Theosophy and Transcendental Meditation, Frenschkowski sees in Hubbard's lectures "the case of a man whose background was non-religious and who nevertheless discovers that his ideas somehow oscillate between 'science' (in a very popular sense), 'religion' and'

philosophy', and that these ideas some how fascinate so many people that they start to form a separate movement. As in the case of similar movements, it was quite unclear to Hubbard in the beginning what Scientology would become."

 

The Church of Scientology denounces the idea of Hubbard starting a religion for personal gain as an unfounded rumour. The Church also suggests that the origin of the rumour was a quote by George Orwell which had been misattributed to Hubbard. Robert Vaughn Young, who left the Church in 1989 after being its spokesman for twenty years, suggested that reports of Hubbard making such a statement could be explained as a misattribution of Orwell, despite having encountered three of Hubbard's associates from his science fiction days who remembered Hubbard making statements of that sort in person. It was Young who by a stroke of luck came up with the "Orwell quote":

                                                                                                           "but I have always thought there might be a lot of cash in starting a new religion, and we'll talk it over some time" It appears in a letter by  George Orwell  (signed Eric Blair) to a friend Jack Common, dated the 16th of February 1938, and was published in Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, vol. 1. In 2006, Rolling Stone's Janet Reitman writes Hubbard said the same thing to science fiction writer Lloyd Eshbach, a fact quoted in Eshbach's autobiography.

 

Scientology maintains strict control over the use of its symbols, icons, and names. It claims copyright and trademark over its "Scientology cross", and its lawyers have threatened lawsuits against individuals and organizations who have published the image in books and on Web sites. Because of this, it is very difficult for individual groups to attempt to publicly practice Scientology on their own, independent of the official Church of Scientology. Scientology has filed suit against a number of individuals who have attempted to set up their own auditing practices, using copyright and trademark law to shut these groups down.

 

The Church of Scientology and its many related organizations have amassed considerable real estate holdings worldwide, likely in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Scientology encourages existing members to "sell" Scientology to others by paying a commission to those who recruit new members. Scientology franchises, or missions, must pay the Church of Scientology roughly 10% of their gross income. On that basis, it is likened to a pyramid selling scheme. While introductory courses do not cost much, courses at the higher levels may cost several thousand dollars each. As a rule, the great majority of members proceeds up the bridge in a steady rate commensurate with their income. Most recently the Italian Supreme Court agreed with the American IRS that the church's financial system is analogous to the practices of other groups and not out of line with its religious purposes.

 

Of the many new religious movements to appear during the 20th century, the Church of Scientology has, from its inception, been one of the most controversial, coming into conflict with the governments and police forces of several countries (including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France and Germany). It has been one of the most litigious religious movements in history, filing countless lawsuits against governments, organizations and individuals. 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. Time magazine published an article in 1991 which described Scientology as "a hugely profitable global racket that survives by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-like manner."

 

The controversies involving the church and its critics, some of them ongoing, include:

 

•  Scientology's disconnection policy, in which members are encouraged to cut off all contact with friends or family             members who are "antagonistic" to Scientology.,

 

•  The death of a Scientologist Lisa McPherson while in the care of the church. (Robert Minton sponsored the multi-million   dollar lawsuit against Scientology for the death of McPherson. In May 2004, McPherson's estate and the Church of   Scientology reached a confidential settlement.)

 

•  Criminal activities committed on behalf of the church or directed by church officials (Operation Snow White, Operation       Freakout).

 

•  Conflicting statements about L. Ron Hubbard's life, in particular accounts of Hubbard discussing his intent to start a   religion for profit and of his service in the military.

 

•   Scientology's harassment and litigious actions against its critics encouraged by its Fair Game policy.

 

•   Attempts to legally force search engines such as Google and Yahoo! to omit any webpages critical of Scientology from   their search engines (and in Google's case, AdSense), or at least the first few search pages.

 

•  Allegations by a former high-ranking Scientologist that Scientology leader David Miscavige beats and demoralizes staff,   and that physical violence by superiors towards staff working for them is a common occurrence in the church.   Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis denied these claims and provided witnesses to rebut them.

 

•   In October 2009, a French court found the Church of Scientology guilty of organized fraud. Four officers of the   organization were fined and given suspended prison sentences of up to 2 years. Prosecutors had hoped to achieve a   ban of Scientology in France, but due to a temporary change in French law, which "made it impossible to dissolve a

       legal entity on the grounds of fraud", no ban was pronounced. The sentence was confirmed by appeal court in February           2012.

 

•  In November 2009, Australian Senator Nick Xenophon used a speech in Federal Parliament to allege that the Church of   Scientology is a criminal organization. Based on letters from former followers of the religion, he said that there were

       "allegations of forced imprisonment, coerced abortions, and embezzlement of church funds, of physical violence and               intimidation, blackmail and the widespread and deliberate abuse of information obtained by the organization"