Article: Scientology Doctrine – Rational Means for Salvation
May 28, 2010 by admin
Filed under Other Material
Author: Wilson, Bryan
Document date: n.d.
Document title: Scientology: An Analysis and Comparison of its Religious Systems and Doctrines.
Document type: web page
Retrieved on: 29 May 2010
Retrieved from: http://www.bonafidescientology.org/Append/02/page27.htm
Description: Dr. Bryan Wilson writes that Scientology is committed to conquering chaos and negativity; talks about Scientology's salvation plan.
iii.xii. Scientology Doctrine – Rational Means for Salvation
The religious philosophy outlined above lies behind the practice of Scientology. Hubbard has himself regarded it as in some ways similar to the philosophy of Eastern religions. In particular, he has cited the Vedas, the hymns of creation which form part of the Hindu tradition, as containing a concept very similar to Scientology’s “Cycle of Action”. The Cycle of Action is the apparent order of life from birth, through growth, to decay and death, but through the knowledge which Scientology makes available, the baleful effects of the operation of this cycle might be avoided. The cycle can be amended from one of creation, survival and destruction, to one in which all elements can be creative acts: Scientology is committed to promoting and increasing creativity and conquering chaos and negativity. It recognizes a continuing “track” or line of descent of wisdom from the Vedas and Gautama Buddha to the Christian message, and claims some affinity with the teachings of all of these. But whereas the wisdom presented, for example in Buddhism, perhaps allowed occasional individuals to attain salvation in one lifetime, there was, then, no set of precise practices which ensured that result; there was little possibility of replication. The attainment of salvation remained subject to random or uncontrolled factors. Salvation was attained by a few, here and there, now and then, if at all. What Hubbard claimed to do was to standardize, almost to routinize, religious practice, and to increase the predictability of soteriological results. Such application of technical methods to spiritual goals indicates the extent to which Scientology adopts modern techniques for the realisation of goals that were once reached only spasmodically and occasionally, if at all. This, then, is the attempt to introduce certainty and order into spiritual exercises and attainments. Scientology seeks to discipline and order the religious quest by the employment of rational procedures. In this sense, it has done in the technological age much of what Methodism sought to do at an earlier stage of social development, by trying to persuade people that the goal of salvation was to be sought in a controlled, disciplined, methodical way. Whilst the actual methods of the Methodists were still couched in the relatively conventional language of current Christianity, the methods advocated by Scientology bear the strong imprint of a society more fully committed to rational and technological procedures. The means which Scientology employs have been likened to the upaya (“right method”) of the seventh stage of the Bodhisattva Way to salvation in Mahayana Buddhism. According to this version of Buddhism, at the seventh stage, the believer becomes a transcendental Bodhisattva who (like the Operating Thetan in Scientology) is no longer tied to a physical body. [...]
Wilson, B. R., (n.d.). Scientology: An Analysis and Comparison of its Religious Systems and Doctrines. bonafidescientology.org. Retrieved on 29 May 2010 from http://www.bonafidescientology.org/Append/02/page27.htm.