Aaron Smith-Levin

Scientology is a belief system created by L. Ron Hubbard that does fundamentally believe that we are all immortal spiritual beings called thetans, that we have native godlike potential.

That there is nothing more powerful in the universe than a thetan.

So godlike is quite literal here.

And that through various decisions thetans have made, they have fallen away from their native godlike power.

To falling down to a state where most Thetans aren't even aware that they are Thetans, aren't even aware that they ever have lived before or have these powers.

And that Thetans are now in a state where they're trapped in bodies, trapped here on Earth, trapped in this prison of a physical universe, trapped on this prison of a planet.

and that only Scientology can restore a thetan to its native state.

There's one primary thing in animating each body.

Later in Scientology, you learn there's actually tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of sick, unconscious, half-dead thesians stuck to you that are now an additional cause of problems for you.

But fundamentally, at the lower levels, the non-confidential levels, there's just one thetan per body.

That would be correct.

So what can make it challenging to...

adequately and completely describe Scientology in the beginning is what Scientologists believe actually changes as they progress further into or further up in Scientology.

So the explanation as I've given it is pretty consistent with what you would get at the lowest levels, right?

You're a thetan, I'm a thetan, everyone's a thetan, and we have a reactive mind,

L. Ron Hubbard would say the reactive mind is a collection of these recordings, mental recordings of any moments of pain and unconsciousness you've ever had in your life.

It's like the subconscious mind.

it's always recording in moments of pain and unconsciousness.

And that these are called, these recordings, L. Ron Hubbard called them engrams.

Now, when L. Ron Hubbard first wrote Dianetics in 1950, this was before Scientology came along a couple years later, right?