Academic Paper - The Eternal Commitment: Scientology's Billion-Year Contract

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Academic Paper - The Eternal Commitment: Scientology's Billion-Year Contract.

By Phil Lord, JD. McGill University | McGill · Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism


https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329600246_The_Eternal_Commitment_Scientology's_Billion-Year_Contract


* * * * * BEGIN ABSTRACT * * * *

This paper analyses the billion-year contract, a fundamental instrument in the Scientology religion. This contract is signed solely by members of Scientology’s most senior order, the Sea Organisation, after they have proven their unqualified allegiance to the Organisation. This paper provides an overview of the Sea Organisation and of the onerous process which leads to it. It, then, undertakes an analysis of the billion-year contract and its fundamental role in defining and strengthening the commitment which binds the members to their organisation. It concludes that the billion-year contract is, contrary to what the Church suggests, far more than a “symbolic” commitment – it is, at once, a rebellious, visionary, and constitutive act
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* * * * * E3 ABSTRACT * * * *

PDF Download:


https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Phil_Lord/publication/329600246_The_Eternal_Commitment_Scientology's_Billion-Year_Contract/links/5f5e5f60299bf1d43c01b893/The-Eternal-Commitment-Scientologys-Billion-Year-Contract.pdf


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lotus

Gone away from madness!
Great news thanks 👌
Hopefully it can be of help in any litigation involving ex So members, as well as proving the blatant exploitation of human right (Slave work) and labour laws.
 

La La Lou Lou

Well-known member
It's hardly the cream of the cult that get's recruited, it's anyone who'll sign. People have signed off the streets, thinking they were going to get a paid job.

This paper keeps saying it's a religion. It's a cult, and they're not fussy who they sign up.
 

Barile

Well-known member
It's hardly the cream of the cult that get's recruited, it's anyone who'll sign. People have signed off the streets, thinking they were going to get a paid job.

This paper keeps saying it's a religion. It's a cult, and they're not fussy who they sign up.
>> it's a religion. It's a cult
potato... potato
 

La La Lou Lou

Well-known member
>> it's a religion. It's a cult
potato... potato
As far as I'm concerned you can call it a potato, the point though about calling it a religion is that it gives it rights to tax free status, cults don't have that benefit.

Personally I don't see any difference between the two things.
 

Harold#1

A VERY STABLE SUPER GENIUS!!
As far as I'm concerned you can call it a potato, the point though about calling it a religion is that it gives it rights to tax free status, cults don't have that benefit.

Personally I don't see any difference between the two things.
Yes, governments shouldn't give "rights to tax free status" to something because it's called a religion.
 

programmer_guy

True ex-Scientologist
Scientology is a religion.

However, for U.S. tax exempt status, I think the CofS should be required to fulfill all items in 501(c)3.

That's my 2 cents opinion.
 
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Veda

Well-known member
Scientology is a business and a system of psychology that operates on the Destructive Cult model. In places, and at times, where it's expedient, it masquerades as a religion.

Where it is not expedient, it does not adopt a religious patina.

There are political cults, multi-level marketing cults, personality cults, psychological cults - all kind of cults.

There are also churches that are not cults.

Ironically, people - such as atheists and materialists - who generally don't like religion, tend to have a blind spot with regard to Scientology's "religion angle" - as its founder called it. They usually don't like Scientology and think they're insulting it by calling it a "religion." If they care about the people - and especially the children - harmed by Scientology, they'll seek to clarify their thinking on the topic.


There are many variations, shades, and nuances.

In the New Age movement of the 1960s, there was, commonly, spirituality without religion. Religion was rejected, and spirituality was sometimes also rejected and replaced with a study of consciousness.

Rosicrucianism is not a religion. The Monroe Institute, known for its study of Out Of Body Experience, is not a religion. Therapists who do past life regression are not religious. The British Association of Spiritualists, the British Society for Psychical Research, and the American Society for Psychical Research, are not religious. Even Aleister Crowley's Thelema did not attempt to pose as a religion, with Crowley warning that, to do so, "would create a rather stupid kind of mischief."

In recent times, some persons and groups, seeing Scientology cynically using a religious cloak and getting away with it, have sought to do the same. Yet, it is just as much a devious "angle" for them as it was for the scheming L. Ron Hubbard in December 1953.


(As an aside, it's interesting that three of the signatures, on the incorporation document, are L. Ron Hubbard Jr., Henrietta Hubbard, and Barbara Bryan, who were also witnesses to the creation of Hubbard Sr.'s fraudulent "Russian" Manual, with the latter two having transcribed it from Hubbard Sr.'s tape recorded dictation. )

After the activation of the "religion angle," Hubbard's editor (and self described "fan"), John Sanborn, created an outline that Hubbard would use in his presentation during the 1954 lectures in Phoenix, Arizona, which would seek to connect Scientology to Buddhism. As with the vanity lists of great thinkers in the opening pages of the books, Science of Survival and Scientology 8-8008, it would seek to give Hubbard, and Scientology, respectability and gravitas.

Link to the Hubbard, Buddha, Crowley et al. thread.

Buddhism was not a religion, nor Taoism. They were Wisdom Schools. Only when they became degraded did they adopt propitiation to spirits - which the common people at the time could understand.

There are all sorts of circumstances and twists - the ancient Chinese Book of Changes (also known as the I Ching) is a mathematically based philosophical system, that has survived for thousands of years, not because it is a beautiful source of wisdom, but because it is used as a fortune telling device.

Similarly, the less exact philosophical system of the Tarot survives as a card game.

Life is strange.

It's good to notice detail and nuance.



From Van Morrison's Inarticulate Speech of the Heart album of 1983:

Background: During the early 1980s Van Morrison was briefly "on lines,"
and received "Life Repair" auditing.
Was he shown a copy of the Celebrity Center magazine
that featured a poem by John Donne prominently on its first page?
In any event, Morrison apparently liked the auditing,
but did not wish to become further involved.


Three years later he released another album titled
No Guru, No Method, No Teacher.
 

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