Selfosophy

Selfosophy is a religion/self help philosophy formed in the 20th century by a pulp writer named Onan Goopta, who made several attempts at various careers in neuroscience, philosophy, and writing, failing at all until he finally found success by forming his religious group. (It should be noted that much of the public knowledge of the beliefs and history of this group come from author Jose Chung, who is known to exaggerate various details.)
==Founding==
Onan Goopta founded the religion at some point prior to the 1980s, after several failed careers in various fields. His true inspirations are unknown, but Jose Chung once related a story that implied he was indirectly responsible for the core beliefs of Selfosophy, and coined the phrase, "Don't Be Dark." After his failed pulp novel career, Goopta wrote three self-help books that laid the groundwork for his eventual belief system, and finally articulated the basics of it in his fourth book, simply titled Selfosophy.
==Selfosophy beliefs==
Much of what Selfosophists believe is unknown, due to the secrecy and copyright laws surrounding the upper echelons of the belief system, although some details are known about the introductory beliefs and practices, such as their slogan, "Don't be dark." The details of the lowest echelons of the belief system are detailed in a variety of self-help books, written by Goopta over a number of years, culminating in the book titled Selfosophy, which led to the formation of the religion.
The religion seems to be based around controlling and eliminating negative emotions, and Selfosophists often express joy, or at least feigned joy, in the face of adverse circumstances. The organization is highly sensitive to criticism from anyone, and lower level members of the group are not permitted to read material deemed offensive or blasphemous against the religion, going so far as to buy up such material in mass quantities and then destroying it to keep it out of circulation. Selfosophists revere their founder to an extreme degree, seeing him as something of a god, and possibly believing his death was actually a way of passing on to another plane of existence to continue his work. 
Selfosophists are known to use a helmet like apparatus known as an Onan-O-Graph, the appears somewhat similar to a virtual reality headset, and functions as a therapy device, mood sensor, and lie detector. It has a cassette player which is utilized for any number of Selfosophy self-help tapes, that ask a series of questions. Failure to respond honestly about the questions prompts the device to rewind the cassette to repeat the question until the wearer answers honestly. 
In Selfosophy clinics and help centers, the patients are referred to as Doctors, and the appearance and behavior of the actual doctors are based on the U.S. Postal Service, although the precise reasons for this are unclear.
One belief of Selfosophy is that our souls existed long before the human species have, and have thus built up so much negativity that a great deal of wiping away of this negativity will be needed.
==Power==
The organization had managed to accumulate a good deal of wealth and power by the end of the 20th century, so much that their legal standing made even the ancient Millennium group fearful of offending them. They would often threaten writers and publications critical of them with lawsuits.
They were also known for the organized actions of their members, which included both the above-mentioned forceful censorship of offensive ideas, and the practice of buying copies of Goopta novels en masse form stores to keep them high on the bestseller lists.
Selfosophy had apparently become popular among a number of elite individuals in Hollywood as well.
==Appearances==
"Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense"
== Links and ReferencesCategory:Religion ==
Selfosophy is most likely a parody of the real-life Church of Scientology.