If you wanted to make a lot of money what would you do? First, come up with a product or service that everyone wants. Second, find a way to be the only company that can market the product or service. Third, find a way that you can legally pay no taxes on the money you make.
Scientology, the creation of L. Ron Hubbard, has figured out how to do all three. And it's a very old business plan he put into action.
The product is enlightenment. Who wouldn't want that? Inner peace, right? Joy? No fear of death? Scientologists call enlightenment "clear."
Scientology is for the most part simply Buddhism repackaged, a fact freely admitted by Scientology.org, the official website of the Church of Scientology:
While the Scientology religion owes a spiritual debt to the Eastern faiths, it was born in the West and its religious beliefs are expressed in the technological language of the mid-twentieth century. Scientology adds a precise and workable technology for applying spiritual concepts to every aspect of life.
In other words, Scientology has reduced the path to enlightenment to a science. (I would suggest that this can't be done, in that the process must be initiated from the Unmanifested; as Eckhart Tolle puts it, "The first awakening, the first glimpse of consciousness without thought, happens by grace.")
The technology spoken of is a piece of unproven 1950s-era technology called the e-meter (pictured). The Electro-psycho-meter is called a religious artifact by scientology.org. It's used during auditing sessions, the main product sold by the Church of Scientology. Reportedly, the entire package of auditing sessions required to make it to the highest level of Scientology is in the neighborhood of $300,000.
The purpose of the auditing sessions is to free the audited practitioner of his or her "reactive mind." The Scientologist's "reactive mind" concept is the same concept as Eckhart Tolle's "pain-body" and of Christianity's "original sin" (see The Pain-Body: What is it?).
The auditing session is a series of scientifically developed questions designed to draw the pain-body or reactive mind out of dormancy and into consciousness. This process might very well cause a change in the body's electrical field, detectable even to a gadget like the emeter.
By making the pain-body or reactive mind conscious, it is (in my experience) burned up, incinerated by our awareness of it. And I can certainly envision how a set of well-developed questions could help that process along.
But once awakening begins, burning away of the pain-body happens naturally through triggers in our everyday lives (see Another Swing at Inner Peace and From Russian Without Love: A Textbook Example of a Pain-body Attack).
Why the sale of this perhaps legitimate and effective procedure (I have no idea, I've never sat for an audit) should be shrouded in religiosity seems pretty clear: for the tax benefits.
From a scientology.org webpage called "What are the religious tenets of Scientology?":
Scientology is a world religion that has been recognized as a religion by courts and government administrative bodies throughout the world. In addition, the foremost international experts in the field of religion have analyzed the religion and have confirmed that Scientology is a religion.Scientology goes to great lengths to prove that it is a religion instead of something else because of the tax-free status from which religious organizations benefit in most developed countries.
The exclusivity of religion also adds the power of monopoly to the auditing service. Along with monopoly come monopoly profits.
The problem with tagging the procedure with the religion label is that it feeds the ego's need for identification, thereby hindering the enlightenment process, something Scientology does indeed have in common with other religions.
It gives rise to "religion in service to the ego" as Eckhart Tolle calls it (see Lessons Learned from Franklin Graham and the Pentagon's National Day of Prayer and Eckhart Tolle for Christians).
You might also like: The Joy of Being, Explained
Photo credit: Religion Compass Exchange
I'm trying to open an honest discussion, sticking to the facts without judgment. Let me know if I've hit my mark. Your comments are welcome and important.
No comments:
Post a Comment