Refund and Reparation

In some aspects, Scientology appears not unlike Buddhism, Jainism and the Sankhya tradition in Hinduism, but the premise on which its soteriology rests is that of practical and systematic therapeutic techniques. It offers adherents a graduated path of spiritual enlightenment. It claims to disencumber adherents of the untoward effects of past traumas, whether experienced in the present or in past lives. It is free from dogmas, and whilst, in abstract terms, as the “eighth dynamic”, Scientology acknowledges a supreme being, it draws short of attempting to describe his attributes. Nor is that being the object of supplication or devotion. Man is held to be a spiritual entity, a thetan, which occupies material human bodies in successive lives. Although not part of the physical universe, the thetan is said to have become entangled with it, and in the process to have acquired a reactive mind which responds irrationally and emotionally to anything that recalls painful and traumatic experiences. Salvation is the process by which that reactive mind is reduced and finally eliminated, allowing the individual to live to his full potential. Thus, whilst in the Buddhist karmic scheme of things, unrecalled past deeds are said irrevocably to determine present life experiences, the techniques of Scientology are held to enable the individual to recall, confront, and overcome the baleful effects of untoward events of the past. The ultimate goal is for the thetan to exist outside the physical realm and so outside the body -- a condition which has analogies with the Christian conception of the saved soul, albeit a condition achieved by very different procedures and expressed in very different terms.

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Scientology differs radically from both Christian and Buddhism soteriological schemes, in that it claims to standardize and rationalize the techniques leading to salvation.