Scientology, the downfall of an idealised spirituality

Scientology, to some, one of the most talked about religious organizations that traces its roots to the New Age spiritual awakening, to even more, an organization which became in the last years synonymous with controversy and speculations that regard some of unorthodox practices that are carried out within the organization. To make it clear from the start, this article doesn’t intend to bash the Church of Scientology, it aims at showing how an religious organization can turn against its fundamental values, slowly paving the road to its own grave. In its very beginnings, Scientology intended to bring a new light, view, perspective, call it as you want, over the corrupted condition of modern man, it intended to correlate the healing of humanity with personal development of its believers. The rejuvenation of the human race, both physically and spiritually, was not a subject of interest only for the early scientologists, back in the ‘50s, all of humanity was recovering from the horrors of WWII, the antiwar ideology was impregnated in to the minds of most Americans which no longer wanted to inhabit a planet that was corrupted by hate, violence and authoritarianism.  

The New Age Movement was seeking to give an alternative to the traditionalist religious organizations that lost their interest in the condition of human race, in the natural balance that man had with nature and with the universe, which corrupted themselves through self centrism and lack of a pragmatic involvement in the issues that society faced back in those days. As I mentioned above, Scientology was determined to become the advocate of humanity’s reconciliation with itself and the universe. If so, how do we explain the downfall and slaughtering of values that early scientologists held in the modern organization? The answer is nor surprising or complex, it is related to Church’s unethical methods of obtaining money, most of the scandals that it was involved in related in one way or the other to absorption of financial resources from the believers.

This New Age Church started slowly to construct its own iron cage which will lock it away from the realms of ethical thoughts and actions, becoming more and more self segregated in an world of bipolarity, characterized by a strong and evident disconnection between actions and the values that were held at the level of the Church. The corruptive effect of money on churches isn’t something that we didn’t stumbled across until this moment in history, we can make a long list of religious organizations that trace their corruption and ethical fall to the policies  that made a primary goal of collecting financial resources then that of getting seriously involved in the spiritual wellbeing of their members.

From the second half of the ‘50s to the present day, Scientology made the huge achievement of breaking all of its early reconstructive policies for mankind, the way in which the church is involved in humanitarian project is put under a question mark by many. Some say that scientologists don’t have an authentic interest in helping our society, I will personally would admit that this is a generalization and it is not applicable to every scientologist.  What I am truly sure of is the fact that many of the church’s leaders have a hard time nowadays on concentrating their efforts on healing humanity then on taking money away from the pockets, many scientologists have indeed an authentic interest in healing humanity of its sicknesses, the problem comes from the prioritization of money laundering and manipulation. Back in the days when hippies made waves of controversy with their scandalous approach to life, as many saw it, back in the days when people became self conscious of their destructive actions that lead to unbalances in both society and nature, back in those days scientologists were untied by moral and ethical values and not by coins and banknotes, back in those days Scientology was born only to be killed later.

And now, what do we see? A church that corrupts people, selling them false promise that they don’t have the capacity of fulfilling?  If so, Scientology needs to go a few steps down back in the days in which it was a sect of geeks that wanted to help the world detach from pain and misery, a sect of dreamers that were willing to give up their personal time to benefit others, a sect, not in with a negative connotation, with the connotation of a solid moral-ethical nucleus. Wouldn’t it be great for Scientology to go back to its hippy days and to demolish the money hungry obscure cult that it turned in to? Well, sure think so!

 

                 All the love and to those who suffered abuses and mistreatment!

All the respect and support for those who want to be founding stone for a new democratic and   spiritual oriented Church!