Having read L. Ron's oh so enlightening treatise just for kicks on a red eye cross country flight a few years back, here's the deal as I recall it:
Ok, we all have these "engrams" you see? And these engrams are nasty beasties, and are responsible for all unhappiness and limitations to the human existence. Eating disorder? Engram. Depressed? Engram. Just stupid? Well why else would you be taking this seriously? So engram.
Now these engrams are nasty little buggers that get imprinted on you at all points of life (the pseudo-science portion -- i.e. you burn your hand on the stove, and that leaves an impression or engram). But see, they are REAL nasty, because not only do you pick them up in life, heck you even pick them up in the womb and are born all engrammed up. And you think that sucks? Well get this -- you ALSO have engrams left over from past lives that you just haven't been able to kick. You're just a big ole body full of lovely engrams. And these nasty little things alter your perceptioons, cause fear and doubt, and prevent you from finding truth, peace and enlightenement. And of course the key to all happiness is to doante large sums of money to the Church so they will tell you how to erase your engrams and let you a achieve true engram free happiness.
My favorite part -- one of the better religion defense mechanisms -- if you deny scientology, deny that you are riddled with engrams, its a sign that...guess what? You HAVE an engram that is preventing you from admitting you have engrams! Beautiful stuff. The denial of scientology proves scientology is true. L. Ron must have been proud of that one.
Ok, and that's the
normal stuff. Because you see, later on the "religion" progressed onto the wonderful point where it was revealed to the true beleivers that the engram problem itself was some sort of facade to cover up the existence of "BodyThetans", which are some sort of invisible brainless alien race that cohabits with us in our bodies and causes all of the engram problems. And if you, you guessed it, pay the church even MORE money they'll teach you how to un-BodyThetan yourself, and thus presumably unengram yourself, until of course you see the bill for all this bull****, become depressed,a nd therefore have obviously become re-BodyThetaned and re-Engramed and in need of another round of donations to the Church to help you cleanse yourself.
In case anybody is interested, I will soon be forming my own religion centered arouond the existence of tiny telepathic mites from a heretofore undiscovered moon above Venus who infest our private parts and prevent each of us from obtaining unfettered bliss by urinating on our chakras and thus spoiling the purity of our psychic energy flows. Anybody who would like to know how this works, and how to free yourself from the little pissants can merely wire me $79.95. A month.
