This book - Scientology: The Fundamentals Of Thought is excellent for
beginners.
WHAT IS SCIENTOLOGY -
BRIEFLY?
Let us first ask, what is religion, as that answers what is
Scientology. Really.
The answer is easy. Religion can best be described as that which
answers the aged old question of what are we, where am I going, is
there more to me than my physical body? These questions are ancient.
Scientology is an answer to that ancient question.
Historically there have been two major divisions of how these question
have been answered. The first is that you are a spirit -- something
possibly still to be defined, and the other is that you are just
nothing more than the clay you were said to arise from.
Getting back to the spiritual world, we find that there are two further
subcategories in religion. The first is that man is a spirit, and that
he is answerable to those who speak from God. These are revealed
religions. The other subcategory is the natural religion. This is
whereby a man or men have tried to fathom and get answers to what is
the universal law that governs man as a spirit -- that is, what is man,
what is this spirit, what is this life force that we all answer to as
"I", and how do we relate to the allness of all, or creator of
creations.
L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, wrote that Scientology
would be a close cousin to orthodox Buddhism.
But over the centuries, the definition of religion has broadened to
include all Christian groups, then Judaism, Islam and finally it has
generally been accepted that the eastern religions are indeed great
religions of this world too.
The Scientology belief is that you are indeed spiritual. You are life
and that life is something separate and outside of the physical
universe. Furthermore, there is such a thing as a creator, an infinite
beingness behind all creation. Scientology is an attempt to understand
what we are and how we came to be here. However it is a natural
religion, not a revealed religion. That is the difference Scientology
and other Western religions.
In the East people there understand Scientology better than they
understand Christianity for example. But that is only because
Scientology more closely parallels their own cultural beliefs. That
unfortunately is not so in the West.
But to understand Scientology one should read a Scientology book, and I
recommend Scientology: The Fundamentals Of Thought. It can be found in
most libraries today, or gotten from one of our churches. It is an
excellent beginning book on the subject of Scientology. It not only has
the theory but it has some practical counseling to help you further get
interested.
Good luck!
Nick Broadhurst
|
|
|
