From Mental Health to Spiritual Technology: The Evolution of Religious Practice in Scientology
Scientology’s self-association with technology is visible not only to academics of religions but also to the general public. Even the Church’s 2014 Super Bowl halftime commercial carried the message that Scientology is a “spiritual technology.” Although in the early Dianetics L. Ron Hubbard was deal...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2023
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| In: |
The journal of CESNUR
Year: 2023, Volume: 7, Issue: 6, Pages: 45-60 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | Scientology’s self-association with technology is visible not only to academics of religions but also to the general public. Even the Church’s 2014 Super Bowl halftime commercial carried the message that Scientology is a “spiritual technology.” Although in the early Dianetics L. Ron Hubbard was dealing with the human mind and mental health only, he was already developing a methodological approach and technological attitude that remained when he came up with a new term, Scientology, and started referring to it as a religion. He not only defined the religious practices of Scientology as a “technology” but used engineering terms such as “SOP” (Standard Operating Procedure). Later, he introduced the “Standard Technology” concept, which became a key objective to achieve for Scientology practitioners. The paper is an attempt to trace the “religious” turn from Dianetics to Scientology by following the evolution of the concept of the individual’s consciousness into spiritual being, parallel with the development of the “technological” paradigm, as part of a larger study into the philosophical analysis of the subject. |
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| ISSN: | 2532-2990 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The journal of CESNUR
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.26338/tjoc.2023.7.6.4 |
