Polaris video and written course products have consistently avoided any particular political or religious belief system as a matter of company policy, and will continue to do so in the future.

-Gregory Strom, author of Polaris Global product line

One of the longstanding conundrums of Polaris Global has been the ongoing question over the direction the company is heading in.

Back in September 2009, Liberty League International became Polaris Media Group and a number of the executive branch quit. One of the common reasons cited was that they didn’t agree with the ‘new direction the company was taking’.

To date, this new direction hasn’t been specifically quantified but one thing Polaris Global has remained adamant about is that the company has nothing to do with Scientology.

Back in April this year I wrote a piece on how Polaris Global can restore some of its credibility. In this piece I raised the question that if Polaris Global are in the personal development industry and CEO Shane Krider uses company products, then surely these products must be in line with Scientology’s core beliefs and principles.

Shane Krider of course being a self confessed member of the Church of Scientology.

I haven’t seen this addressed anywhere other than in the Gregory Strom quote above, which clearly states that there is no religious influence on Polaris Global’s product line.

Last week saw the release of a promotional video for Polaris Global’s Beyond Freedom Evolution product line. Within the first few minutes of footage I began to see some nasty parallels that not only perfectly aligned with Scientology doctrine, but actively preached it.

The Church of Scientology maintains that Psychology and Psychiatry are the root cause of all evil in the universe.

L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology’s founder, was critical of both Freudian theory and biopsychiatry.

Referring to psychiatrists as “psychs”, Hubbard regarded psychiatrists as denying human spirituality and peddling fake cures. He was also convinced that psychiatrists were themselves deeply unethical individuals, committing “extortion, mayhem and murder. Our files are full of evidence on them.”

Hubbard came to believe that psychiatrists were behind a worldwide conspiracy to attack Scientology and create a “world government” run by psychiatrists on behalf of the USSR.

Given this belief and the comments from Strom denying any religious influence in Polaris Global’s product line, I was rather amazed to then see the following barrage of criticisms feature in the BFE promotional video;

Talk of course being a primary communicative method utilised by both the psychiatry and psychologist professions.

On the surface it could be argued that believing that talk isn’t an effective tool in one’s personal development isn’t a patented idea held exclusively by Scientology. Given the strong entrenchment of the idea in Scientology however, and the fact that Krider himself has to either agree with his company’s product line or not – is it a co-incidence the video itself displays such a strong anti psychiatry, uh… talk sentiment?

If the promotional video is a reflection of the material contained in Beyond Freedom Evolution, then it’s probably a safe bet to assume that the entire course is about employing the methodology of action over talk.

Or to borrow a Scientology phrase and put it another way; to be at cause rather than effect.

If the CEO and founder of Polaris Global wasn’t a Scientologist I’d have a much easier time brushing this off as co-incidence. The fact of the matter is though that the BFE promotional video perfectly aligns with Scientology doctrine, Polaris Global claim to be in the field of religious personal development and the CEO and founder of Polaris Global is a Scientologist.

That’s one too many co-incidences for my liking.

The rest of the video isn’t as damning of ‘talk’ but you do get the sense it’s an exercise in the futility of psychoanalysing your actions by any means other then direct action.

Update 20th December 2011 – Polaris Global have since removed this promotional video from circulation.

Regardless of whether  Scientology beliefs aligning with Beyond Freedom Evolution is a coincidence or not, one of the bigger ironies that comes about from all this is that Polaris Global’s top end products all revolve around listening to various speakers talk.

If we could take something away from the Beyond Freedom Evolution video it could be that Polaris Global’s conferences are weak, small, unsuccessful, cheap and ineffective, but I digress.

As an aside, one bit of the video I didn’t quite understand was the reference to ‘bleep‘. At 1:27 into the video the following message appears;

I’ve scratched my head for a bit but I’m still at a loss to explain what it means.

Anyone?