Scientology and the need to believe

If you have any kind of common sense at all you're going to ask the obvious question: 'Why?'

Why does Scientology, a religion founded by a Science Fiction writer who, in his own lifetime, had quipped: "You want to make a million dollars? Find a religion." still have the power to attract as many people as it does, willing to believe in its extraterrestrial Thetan message, willing to pay money (up to $200,000 apparently) to discover 'the secret' and willing to work so hard to defend it afterwards?

John Travolta and Tom Cruise excused (they are actors and troubled souls, or at least more troubled than the rest of us - but their belief makes the case funnily enough, should we choose to take them into consideration), the ordinary people who struggle hard across the world to make money only to hand it over to what must be, per-head-count, the world's wealthiest religion must have a reason.

Right?

Yes. They do. And think about it. This morning when you got out of bed and thought that we are facing yet another day in a world that sometimes feels too pressured, too fast, too artificial. A world without real boundaries, where all our idols prove to have feet of clay and where each of our beliefs is tempered by the need to make it at any cost, to survive in an environment which feels driven only by success and only by money.

I know that feeling. And so do you. Let's get real. When things are going great for us we thrive in this environment, we feel it's our playground. Then there are times and days when it feels a struggle. When each compromise we feel forced to make takes away a thin sliver of our soul, when we long for nukes, revolutions and World War III and the need to start over again.

Clean slate.

This is where Scientology comes right in. Each one of our religions and a great many of our cults feels fuzzy, not quite havin gall the answers, demanding more of us than we can give. Have faith but your reward is going to be a heavenly treasure but only if, and there are conditions, and requisites and even worse, our very success and cutthroat instinct that allows us to succeed and survice is then turned against us, becomes something we should be ashamed of.

Have faith...but, it begins and we accept that we need to have faith and not answers. We need to stop asking questions and just need to believe. We need to feel everything important is inside us but unearthing it may never happen this lifetime and even if it does the huge effort it takes will bring about a transformation that may well change us forever.

We know all that. We feel each of these things.

Religions are huge organic affairs which come about as a response to the deep-seated inner urge we feel to exceed the boundary limiting us in this world, to surpass the barrier of our skin and to become something other. Greater. Lesser. To listen to a voice that only then can be clearly heard.

It's the way things are. Real is imprecise. We fight all our lives for a moment of crystal clear clarity when everything we perceive, everything we know and everything we have done makes sense.

Scientology is not like that. In the way of the unreal (or I should say the scripted and artificial) it has ALL the answers. It provides all the questions even. And then gives youthe means to put the two together via the simple conduit of your wallet.

"Pay and join us brother!" - I like that kind of message. It comes with the certainty that decades as a consumer have conditioned me to expect. Scientology gives it to us, more than that, it dresses it up with just the right kind of initiation mystique, sense of bortherhood and feeling of revelation necessary to actually feel that way-hey! This is something cool, the kind of thing I see on TV or the Cinema where moral ambivalence and confusion over issues seems to be non-existent.

Ok, it can do that because it's made up, it's not real, it's a product you buy and it is after your money. But tell me you have not woken up at least one morning in the month craving a sense of mission and duty under an unshakeable umbrella of moral certainty supported by a brotherhood that ats as a shield against the world and I will call you a liar in public without fear of lawsuits for defamation of character.

Scientology exists because of us not despite us. It exists because we do. It exists because one failing science fiction writer was astute enough to take his own advice and start a religion in the only place on Earth where such a religion could start. It continues to exist because we all get up and hope that maybe the answers are really that simple, that complexity does not have to exist, that maybe the questions are even simpler and all we need is verification.

Then again we know, deep down, that there is more to it all than that. We know the same way we know that when we buy a flat screen TV or upgrade to a more powerful computer it is not really going to make us happier, we are just using a sop, spending our money to make us feel good.

Spiritually this may be crass but it is also largely harmless and helps support the economy and progress and jobs and makes the world go round. Consumerism is cool provided we understand its limits. It begins to become something else when we apply it to our need to believe.