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Secular philosophies and other belief systems
Published in Peter Hutton, Ravi Mahajan, Allan Kellehear, Death, Religion and Law, 2019
Peter Hutton, Ravi Mahajan, Allan Kellehear
Scientology teaches that man’s true spiritual nature is constantly reborn as an eternal spirit called a Thetan, which separates from the body on death.29 There is a process of counselling known as ‘auditing’ to assist adherents to free the unconscious mind and return to a true spiritual identity, the effectiveness of which is measured using an E-meter to detect the body’s electrical currents. Progressing through various levels of auditing they eventually reach the level of ‘Operating Thetan’, and re-discover their original potential.30
Brain research on Nazi “euthanasia” victims: Legal conflicts surrounding Scientology’s instrumentalization of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society’s history against the Max Planck Society
Published in Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 2023
The incriminating articles marked the beginning of a longer campaign by Scientologists against the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry (MPIP), in which Nazi medical war crimes were instrumentalized to delegitimize current psychiatric treatments as a violation of human rights and as criminal in general. Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986), and his followers aimed to replace psychiatric treatments with their so-called “auditing” process. Scientology advertises its auditing methods as the only treatments with the potential to cure psychological problems and disorders. Using interrogating techniques and “E-meters”—primitive forms of polygraphs that measure electric skin resistance—Scientology auditors confront their test persons or patients with traumatic events in order to identify “engrams” and “clear” them (Harley and Kieffer 2009; Thomas 2019; Whitehead 1975).