Leela:
I’ve been struggling with trying to figure out the charisma of a currently existing culture with a set of beliefs that fits your wished-for model. The culture I am speaking of started some 60 years ago. It was founded by a man: a “scientist/materialist”. For this founder, there was nothing but matter, energy, space, and time (MEST). His “science” was started on this premise as well as, shortly thereafter, his “culture” of believers.
As he studied MEST, for several years, he recognized a set of dynamics for existing things that he enumerated. The primary and most basic dynamic was the “Dynamic of Survival”; an extraordinarily provable "dynamic” to say the least. Just look at nature.
Then, one day, in the early 1950’s I believe, he had been invited to give a speech on what he thought the universe was all about, to some group. As he pondered what he might say in his speech, he walked past a coffee shop, or sandwich shop, or something, and saw two people sitting at a table, enjoying their consumables and in “communication” with each other. As he walked, he thought that he really didn’t have much to say to the group about a universe that merely consisted of matter, energy, space, and time. What struck him, at the moment he observed the coffee-shop pair, was that these two had somehow, before his eyes, possessed an amazing “one-ness”. There was a “supra-physical one-ness” between them: a "unity-reality” that was outside of the actuality-reality that we are immersed in and work with every day, in other words, the MEST reality.
It dawned on him that MEST, however immense, was unstable even if it was going to be around for a fairly long time to come. He also realized that the instability of MEST did not account for this categorical, ordered, supra-natural, “static” phenomenon before his eyes (as well as a number of other phenomena MEST could not explain - such as, how MEST came to be). He recognized that there existed a "static force”, a “static” something, separate from MEST, that it exists and must as well be, “cause” . He called this static the “Thetan”, from the Greek. He defined “Thetans” to be “us”. He thought that “Thetan” had less baggage and was, therefore, a more understandable word than “soul”, but, that both were largely synonymous. He further said that the phrase, “this person’s Thetan,” is an incorrect manner of understanding it, because we actually are the “Thetans”.
This science of nature posed, for its founder, the inevitable problems one might think it would: for the Thetan to be understood, in all of its ramifications and aspects, or, at all, it had to have “god-like” attributes. The Thetan, he “discovered”, is “self-caused”. We, each and every one of us, “postulated” ourselves into being. As Thetans we are “ethereal” things. As Thetans we “float” about in search of something physical to control. When we find a female that looks like she could be a “breeder” soon, we hang around and wait for the chance to inhabit her newly formed embryo. When the moment happens, we enter the physical embryo, take control of it, and, soon become a “human”. When we die, we are released from that old, worn out embryo—>body and go in search of new embryo—>body. Reincarnation is a must when you posit a soul but have no belief in God.
Interestingly, this “religion” originally rejected “abortion” just as do Catholics . The original rationale was that abortion was a violation of the primary dynamic of life, the Dynamic of Survival. If a Thetan violated this dynamic it would cause unbelievable psychological, psychosomatic, and possibly physical harm to the Thetan and her body. Therefore, the Dynamic was considered to be pretty much inviolable. Furthermore, the destruction of an embryo impeded the imperative of other Thetans from getting on with their attainment of the “me-directive”, or “goal”.
Ultimately, the rest of this religious-philosophy began to unravel soon after it began to be applied. It was thought that since the Thetan did not “die”, there wasn’t any moral imperative any more to continue to promote anti-abortion. If having a baby was relatively inconvenient, destroy the unborn piece of matter. The Thetan will be released, float around, and ultimately find a new body - so that its journey could begin again and it might ultimately become a higher level “Thetan". And many hundreds of abortions were energetically encouraged, and, in some cases, outrightly forced, in several key parts of the organization, over many years, precisely because of the “inconvenience” newborns posed to the culture.
This religious-philosophy culture does speak to an “ethics” and has its own “code” of morality. In fact, if a member violates some ethic, some act that affects his/her forward progress (thereby deterring the Thetan from getting on to the higher state of Being), that Thetan would be sent to severely rigorous counseling session(s) to get him/her corrected. It appears that, lacking a “quality” that is "of” God, the goals of their ethics counseling are humanistic and self-motivated. “Morality”, within such a system is really the whim of the founder, or the higher-ups, or, a vote of the herd. If it is not written about, do what you wish. A violation of ethics is nothing more than a violation against the culture - period. This is not a demonstration of “right morality”. Can anyone who believes that God is not necessary for “right morality” point to a god-void (or godless) culture of decency that has persisted – without murdering hundreds of thousands, or millions, of its own people to enforce its “code”?
continued . . .
