{"id":317,"date":"2011-08-24T17:35:43","date_gmt":"2011-08-24T17:35:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/scientologybeliefs\/?p=317"},"modified":"2017-10-24T05:17:43","modified_gmt":"2017-10-24T12:17:43","slug":"preserving-the-authenticity-of-my-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scientologybeliefs\/2011\/08\/preserving-the-authenticity-of-my-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"Preserving the Authenticity of my Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I personally have quite a bit of respect for all great religions of the world.\u00a0 I think that by and large, their founders and original proponents were quite enlightened, and had some fairly star-high goals for man \u2013 both in terms of morality and enhancing mankind\u2019s ability to interact with one another, as well as high goals for mankind\u2019s inherent spirituality.<\/p>\n

HEAR-SAY OR HERESY?<\/h3>\n

There\u2019s been an impediment that (I would say) every religion has had to deal with, however, and that is with respect to the communication and preservation of their exact religious beliefs, scriptures and teachings.\u00a0 In the earlier days of man, the primary way that beliefs and customs could be passed on generation to generation was in song, in the spoken word, and in some cases \u2013 someone was bright enough to write down what it was that they heard into book form.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately there is often a\u00a0wide\u00a0variance between what the founder of a religion\u00a0actually said, and what the individual who hears it all verbally takes away from such an experience.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Every religion has this issue to one degree or another.\u00a0 From the\u00a0Bhagavad-Gita<\/a> to the\u00a0King James edition of the bible<\/a>, so many enlightened texts have relied in whole or in part on the interpretation of another (or of committees & parliamentary bodies) on what the founder originally taught.<\/p>\n

Now please understand, I mean positively no disrespect to any enlightened text which forms the scripture of any religion.\u00a0 In all cases, having such beliefs written at all has uplifted hundreds of generations, and that can\u2019t be discounted.<\/p>\n

CASE IN POINT<\/strong><\/h3>\n

My reason for writing this, is I recently finished a study of the\u00a0Dianetics Professional Course lectures<\/a><\/em> at the\u00a0Founding Church of Scientology in Washington, DC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Dianetics Professional Course lectures were originally known for some decades as a book called \u201cNotes on the Lectures\u201d \u2013 a compiled book, taken from the notes of students who were there in the fall of 1950, listening to\u00a0L. Ron Hubbard<\/a> give the lecture.\u00a0 It was assumed for some years that the original taped recordings of the lectures were lost, so this verbal transcription \u2013 amounting to what the students understood from the lectures as they were given \u2013 were all that remained.<\/p>\n

Then, just a few years ago, the original tapes of the lectures were located.\u00a0 However, due to the fact that the tapes had been sitting in suboptimum storage for over 50 years, it was assumed that they were not going to able to be reproduced for public listening.\u00a0 However, after a massive effort by\u00a0Golden Era Productions<\/a>, the tapes were in fact able to be restored so that all could listen to them.<\/p>\n

A fantastic video to watch which gives the details of how much care was put into such, is available to\u00a0watch on the Scientology website<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019ve had the opportunity to read the previously-issued\u00a0Notes on the Lectures<\/em>book nearly-back-to-back with the actual lectures that Mr. Hubbard gave, and the result is pretty horrifying.\u00a0 There are some portions of the book where you can fairly well understand which lecture it is that the student note-takers were talking about, as it seemed they were tracking with the lecture.<\/p>\n

\"51xgn2djL<\/p>\n

In other places, though \u2013 especially with some of the diagrams they came up with, it seems like they either\u00a0missed the point entirely<\/strong>, or were\u00a0making up their own vision<\/strong> of what Mr. Hubbard was talking about.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0actual<\/strong> lectures give the first, best, and most amazing view of the relationship of the properties of affinity, reality (agreement) and communication, and how they relate to a person\u2019s mental health. It\u2019s really quite an amazing study \u2013 even if someone studying it wasn\u2019t planning on giving someone a Dianetics session.\u00a0 I\u2019ll write more of what I got from it on my\u00a0Scientology parenting site<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But my painful realization, in this case, was not only how wildly off-base the\u00a0Notes on the Lectures<\/em> book had been, but it gave me such a respect for entities like Religious Technology Center<\/a><\/em>, and the Chairman of the Board RTC, Mr.\u00a0David Miscavige<\/a>, who have as their mission preserving the purity of the\u00a0Scientology religion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It made me wonder \u2013 how much of what we know of today\u2019s world religions isactually\u00a0how the founder or spiritual leader taught or said?\u00a0 How much of it was faithfully passed on with fidelity, and how much was either altered completely or made up whole cloth?\u00a0 That much, we\u2019ll unfortunately never know.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I personally have quite a bit of respect for all great religions of the world.\u00a0 I think that by and large, their founders and original proponents were quite enlightened, and had some fairly star-high goals for man \u2013 both in terms of morality and enhancing mankind\u2019s ability to interact with one another, as well as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":223,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6,159,7,255,296,301,3,317,339],"class_list":["post-317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-david-miscavige","tag-golden-age-of-knowledge","tag-l-ron-hubbard","tag-orthodoxy","tag-religious-technology-center","tag-sacred-writings","tag-scientology","tag-scripture","tag-spiritual-leaders"],"yoast_head":"\nPreserving the Authenticity of my Religion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I 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