Scientology: Beliefs and Practices

By Deepa Ranganathan

Heard of scientology? It is an interesting and different kind of religion that does not talk to your physical self but addresses your spiritual self! It considers human to be immortal from within his spirit. This religion also aims at understanding the relationship one's spirit has with nature, environment, life forms, mankind, materialistic universe, spiritual universe and the Supreme Being. The study of this religion describes man above the whole materialistic universe. It defines a human's spiritualistic being and does not entertain with his physical self, environment or his genes.

The basis for this religion stands in the three fundamental truths that it completely believes in. First is that man is an immortal spiritual being while the second is that his experience lies beyond a single lifetime and the third is that he possesses unlimited capabilities. This religion, you will see, defines all men as good. It believes that for spiritual salvation a man has to attain brotherhood within the universe.

Unlike other religions, you cannot accept this religion based on faith alone. You will need to practice the preachings, explore the religion and discover it for your own self. There are various practices and beliefs which come with this religion. You will need to understand them to accept the religion. Here are a few scientology beliefs and scientology practices that will help you understand the religion better.

Scientology: Beliefs and Practices

Bridge to Complete Freedom
This is one of the several scientology beliefs which allows personal development. There are two sides to this bridge, processing and training. Processing gets rid of the unwanted barriers, sharpens the natural abilities and makes the person more capable and happy for survival. Training on the other hand is the skill needed to deliver auditing.

Moral and Ethics
Like in other religions, this one too has its own moral and ethical beliefs. Ethics is basically your rational self while morals are the set of good conduct that you will perform during your lifetime. In scientology beliefs there are about series of behavioral codes which includes auditor code, supervisor's code, code of honor and code of scientologist.

Theory of Afterlife
This holds high in scientology beliefs. In this religion it is believed that while the human body dies, his soul remains alive. There is a movement of this life and personality set inside the soul. The belief of past life is alive with scientology. For the spirit to move on, as per scientology beliefs, the person has to take care of the aberrations of the past.

Religion of Science
Scientology beliefs conclude that there is an experimentation method to conclude the beliefs of this religion. There is no religion without science is what they claim. Though there is no true science to prove it, it can be proved through experiments for sure.

Auditing
It is the central scientology practice. Auditing or listening is the state of clear freedom, which is against the reactive mind. It is practiced to attain the two sides of the bridge, capabilities and skill. It is important, as per this practice, to ask questions but not answer them of your own. Clear individuals arising from this practice are individuals who no longer possess any false information. They are also cleared from the traumatic experiences of the past lives which inhibit their learning. They are ready to adapt to the new life and have forgotten the aberrant ways of past life.

Story first published: Sunday, March 16, 2014, 23:01 [IST]
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