2. What's the difference between Dianetics and Scientology?
Description
This article is from the New Readers Scientology FAQ, by rkeller@netaxs.com (Rod Keller) with numerous contributions by others.
2. What's the difference between Dianetics and Scientology?
Answer By: Jeff Jacobsen <cultxpt@PrimeNet.Com>
Dianetics came first, in 1950. Dianetics deals with the mind. The mind
has a problem area known as the Reactive mind, where memories are
incorrectly stored. The goal of Dianetics is to clear out the memories
stored in the Reactive mind and transfer them to the Analytical, or
good, mind. Once this is done you are called a Clear, and Dianetics is
basically through with you. Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental
Health, explains the processes and theories of Dianetics.
Scientology continues the process of fixing up a person by turning
attention to the spiritual side. Once you have your Reactive mind taken
care of, you must now undertake a house cleaning of the soul. Your soul,
called a thetan, has a problem. It has several (perhaps millions) of
unwanted house guests stuck to it. These other souls, called Body
Thetans (or Clusters if they are in a bunch), are stuck to your soul and
must be removed to enable your own thetan to function properly. But you
don't really catch this story until you have gone Clear and have taken
the first 2 upper level (OT) courses. Once on OTIII you discover how
this soul-fusing happened, and how to reverse the process.
Dianetics, then, is psychotherapy, while Scientology is spiritual
cleansing.
Answer By: Dennis L. Erlich <dennis.l.erlich@support.com>
The idea of dianetics was part of a science/fiction presentation in
Astounding Science Fiction, a 1940s pulp magazine. At that time the line
between science fiction and fact was blurred in such periodicals.
Hubbard's premise was that Freud's subconscious mind had additional
properties never before discovered. What Hubbard dubbed the "Reactive
Mind" recorded every item of sensory input a person received while in pain
or unconscious. These memory recordings he called "engrams". In the
sensory content of these "mental image pictures" are commands which recoil
against the conscious mind when "stimulated" by similarities in the
current environment and cause all irrational behavior and all
psychosomatic ills, he said. Since Hubbard considered most illness,
including cancer, to be caused by engrams, his new "science" could cure
most anything.
In the early 50s, prior to the Food and Drug Administration raid on
scientology organizations which confiscated e-meter and books being used
in bogus "healing", Hubbard had decided he could get more protection for
his therapy by bringing the spirit (thetan, he called it) into the
picture and calling it a church. He needed a new name: scientology - the
study of knowing.
Where dianetics purportedly addresses the mind and the engram recordings
in it, scientology addresses the spirit and decisions embedded in the
engrams. The spiritual triggers, if you will.
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