Scientology: The Marks of ReligionFrank K. Flinn, Ph.D.
Adjunct Professor
in Religious Studies
Washington University
Saint Louis, Missouri
U.S.A.
In the many varieties of religious worship the scholar can detect two fundamental orientations: One strand of worship is more celebratory and ritual-centered; the other is more instructional and meditation-centered.
The question of whether auditing and training can be forms of worship may naturally arise in the minds of adherents of the mainline religions of the West, namely, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In those religions, worship is chiefly, but not exclusively, centered on public celebrations, feast days, sermons, hymn singing, Sabbath or Sunday worship, and various devotions. Although one can find this form of worship plentifully represented in Eastern religion, there is a fundamental undertone in many strands of Eastern piety which places greater stress on meditation and instruction. As already noted, in Vedanta Hinduism and Zen Buddhism, worship is centered not on celebration but on meditation and the study of sutras, spiritual textbooks. In Zen this spiritual study is often accompanied by meditation on koans, short, pithy and often contradictory sayings which aid the devotee in cracking the shell of ordinary consciousness so that he or she may attain satori, sudden enlightenment.
While the discovery and codification of the technology of auditing belongs exclusively to L. Ron Hubbard, the Church of Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard himself have always recognized that Scientology has affinities with certain aspects of Hinduism and especially Buddhism. Scientology shares with both religious traditions a common belief that the central process of salvation is the passage from ignorance to enlightenment, from entanglement to freedom, and from obfuscation and confusion to clarity and light. A number of years ago I published an article on Scientology’s relation to Buddhism: Frank K. Flinn, “Scientology as Technological Buddhism” in Joseph H. Fichter, editor, Alternatives to American Mainline Churches, New York: Paragon House, 1983, pages 89-110. In consonance with these Eastern traditions, Scientology quite logically sees worship not so much in the mode of celebration and devotion but in the mode of meditation and instruction, which stresses awareness, enlightenment, or, to use the Scientology term, “Clearing.”
As an important side-note, one would not want to say that the meditational and instructional form of worship is absent in the West. The pious Orthodox Jew believes that the devout study of the Torah or Law is a form, if not the form, of worship. Hence, Orthodox Jews set up yeshivas, which are dedicated to the worshipful study of the Torah and the Talmud. A yeshiva is not simply a place for ordinary education; it is also a place of worship. Likewise, Muslims have set up kuttabs and madrassas for the devout study of the Qur’an. Similarly, many Roman Catholic monastic religious orders, most notably the Cistercians and Trappists, devote the greater part of their worship to silent study and meditation on sacred texts.
On the whole, however, meditation, sacred study and instruction are not perceived as much to be forms of worship in the West as they are in the East. In India, it is a common practice for people in later life to sell all their worldly goods, go to a sacred site, such as Varanasi (Benares) on the Ganges, and spend the rest of their lives, occasionally performing pujas or ritual offerings but mostly meditating on divine things. To the ordinary Hindu, such meditation is the highest form of worship possible.
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