Can a person use Scientology without much study?

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No.

Scientology is Gnostic belief rehashed with a science fiction flair. All religion offers a promise to adherents, this promise is called soteriology. Christianity offers salvation through Christ, and Buddhism offers enlightenment through meditative contemplation. We have to use a special term to describe these promises because while they’re roughly analogous to each other, Christian salvation is not the same thing as Buddhist enlightenment and it does both a disservice to strip their terminology willy-nilly.

The reason Scientology is associated with Gnosticism is how the soteriology is obtained and what is promised. If you obtained it through meditative contemplation and it offered liberation from endless rebirth, we’d call Scientology essentially Buddhist in nature. It doesn’t.

If Scientology focused on a personal relationship with Christ or a Christ-like figure, emphasizing moral purity, faith through adversity, and peace and brotherhood, we’d call Scientology essentially Christian in nature. It doesn’t.

No, Scientology is gnostic because it encourages one to study esoteric topics in order to obtain power, and that power is the promise in and of itself. It’s what is emphasized and promised that defines the religion, because that’s what adherents will be exhorted to do by every other member of the community.

As they say in advertising, the medium is the message. You are always just taking that first step, so that first step has to be something you love to do. Religion is a lifelong endeavor. The American religion of business has you constantly taking that first step of putting off instant gratification to do something boring that nobody else wants to do, to earn money that you’ll spend on making an engine to do more of that boring thing, until eventually the engine doesn’t need more of your time and money. If you think this means you’re done, think again. You’ll be bored out of your mind until you decide to jump back in at the ground floor again with another business.

With Gnostic religion, studying the esoteric is that first step that you never stop taking, that is the promise, in and of itself. It’s estimated that reaching the first level of Scientological salvation costs in the neighborhood of $100k. If you don’t have the money, don’t worry, just keep showing up, studying, learning, and the money will come. If you stop studying, then it all goes away. If you don’t, well, you’ll get to discover the punishing sublimity that the esoteric offers. It’s literal magic, and magic extracts a harsh price.

If you want the easy path, if you want somebody to just hand out salvation like candy, you want the religion where all you have to do is ask. You too can live in the Kingdom of God, where all around are your brothers and sisters, and you share in peace and harmony forever, with an all-powerful, all-loving person at your beck and call, ready to mediate such awesome power at a moment’s notice.

With Christianity, the first step is asking Jesus Christ for salvation. It’s the first step you have to keep taking, forever and ever.

With Buddhism, the first step is contemplation of the inherent ephemerality of all things, including and especially us and mind and ego. You will keep meditating on that, forever and ever.

It’s not that there’s never any room for anything else when you choose a religion. There most certainly is room for anything else you want to do with your life. But religion is the lens you see all of reality through. That lens is the promise, the salvation that the religion offers you. If you choose not to see the world through that lens, then you’re throwing away everything that religion offers you.

And with a gnostically-derived religion like Scientology, esoteric study is what you’re signing up for.