Tuesday, April the 11th, 2006

Obnosis

Here is an extract from a Scientology Handbook:

There is a word “obnosis” which has been put together from the phrase, “observing the obvious.” The art of observing the obvious is strenuously neglected in our society at this time. Pity. It's the only way you ever see anything; you observe the obvious. You look at the isness of something, at what is actually there. Fortunately for us, the ability to obnose is not in any sense “inborn” or mystical. But it is being taught that way by people outside of Scientology. How do you teach somebody to see what is there? Well, you put up something for him to look at, and have him tell you what he sees. An individual can practice this on his own or in a group situation, such as a class.

And here is an extract from Janet Reitman's Rolling Stone article “Inside Scientology”:

[Scientologists] assert that 75 million years ago, an evil galactic warlord named Xenu controlled seventy-six planets in this corner of the galaxy, each of which was severely overpopulated. To solve this problem, Xenu rounded up 13.5 trillion beings and then flew them to Earth, where they were dumped into volcanoes around the globe and vaporized with bombs. This scattered their radioactive souls, or thetans, until they were caught in electronic traps set up around the atmosphere and “implanted” with a number of false ideas -- including the concepts of God, Christ and organized religion. Scientologists later learn that many of these entities attached themselves to human beings, where they remain to this day, creating not just the root of all of our emotional and physical problems but the root of all problems of the modern world.

Oh, and one more extract from Reitman:

Unique among religious faiths, Scientology charges for virtually all of its religious services.

I think it can be a useful exercise to obnose those three paragraphs, and draw the obnostic conclusion.