Who hasn't seen them - the mass mailings with the picture of Albert Einstein and the assertion that we use "only 10% of our mental potential" or posters with the call to "Think for Yourself." Or on the street or squares you run into people wearing yellow t-shirts printed with "Volunteer Minister" of the "Scientology Church" who invite you into a big yellow tent. There's where you are supposed to make your first acquaintance with the mental-spiritual counseling in accordance with the methods of Scientology founder L. Ron HUBBARD. Or while you're stopped in the street for a "survey" from a company and you are offered a "free personality test". This comprehensive pseudo-scientific 200 question test from the "Scientology Organization" (SO) is for many only a first step, and it can have unforeseeable consequences for the individual. After the revelation of supposed personal inadequacies comes the offer of a reasonably priced course, during which more necessities for more expensive courses are "discovered." In the subsequent "auditing" sessions lasting many hours, the subjects turn into "clear" people.
Besides the risk to the individual, though, there's another aspect to take into consideration. The organization does claim to do more than just mentally "free" people individually. That is just the starting point for a political claim to sole representation, which Scientologists dogmatically trace back to Hubbard's writings. The SO primarily promotes the claim that a "new civilization" can be reached by means of its procedures. Based on the goal of making a social order that functions according to Scientology principles, which also includes the requirement for political power, the SO poses a risk to our liberal democratic basic order. Here the duty of the Verfassungsschutz (Office for the Protection of the Constitution) as an early warning system of a defendable democracy begins in the research and analysis of the risk potential of counter-constitutional endeavors.
The SO is continually trying to give the impression that it is a religious community that is "discriminated" against in Germany, for whom surveillance by the Verfassungsschutz is not compatible with Article 4 of Basic Law, which guarantees religious freedom. Actually, the question of whether a certain group is religious or not is incidental to surveillance. The decision for surveillance by the Verfassungsschutz has to do with whether or not an organization pursues counter-constitutional goals.
Observation by the State Office for Protection of the Constitution has brought a part of the "Scientology Organization that operates conspiratorially into the light, unmasked and "demystified" it. Its findings, since the beginning of surveillance in 1997, has contributed to materialization of discussion, which occasionally used to be compromised by previous risk scenarios. During the last six years, however, findings that the organization is deliberately working towards a totalitarian state system have solidified.
This publication by the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution is meant not only for those new to the theme of Scientology, but also for those who want to broaden their knowledge of the topic.
Dr. Helmut Rannacher
President of the State Office for the Protection of
the Constitution