After Jett Travolta died, many questions arose about Scientology. An article on belief.net answers some of these questions. Following my reading, I now understand what some of the Scientologists’ beliefs are about. Their afterlife beliefs were covered throughout the article.

Scientologists believe that people are immortal spiritual “thetans” that use their bodies to get around. They believe that we have lived before and will live again. With that being said, we are not our bodies. When we die we just depart our bodies but everything that makes us, the person, is intact. The person will just simply carry on to the next lifetime and inhabit a new body. This new body has no relation to how one acted during the previous lifetime. When a thetan’s body dies, it forgets the details of the former life; but “engrams”, painful and traumatic images, remain in a person’s unconscious (Roan 1). In order to move up the Bridge to Total Freedom, path of spiritual progression, one must erase these scars. Once a Scientologist has purged them through auditing, he or she is clear. At the very end of the process, thetans are said to gain power over their physical world and they feel no need for bodies any longer becoming pure souls. Some Scientologists believe that a thetan is carried to Venus, programmed with lies, put into a capsule, taken back to Earth, and left to wander in search of a baby to inhabit (Roan 1).

The last part of this really just puzzles me. I do not understand why someone would choose to believe that we are all programmed with lies. Also, since the religion is so young, I do not understand how so many people lived life without ever becoming pure souls or “clear”.

Roan, Ansley. "Scientology and the Travolta Tragedy." Beliefnet.com. 2009. 3 Apr 2009.