I’m not sure who started this or why, but pretty frequently, I’ll come across items which try to equate Scientology with Gnosticism. This article from the Philadelphia Inquirer is a good example (try here for a login). But even the best examples of this always fail to really understand what gnosticism really is. Or rather, what I think it really is (which admittedly may not be what it is for anybody else).

Here’s the article’s key argument:

The notion that we are pure, divine and all-powerful spirits trapped in mortal bodies was the central teaching of gnosticism. Early Christians argued that gnostics were idolators who worshiped the human self instead of God.

“Read through all the talk about aliens and spaceships, and Scientology is the presentation of the old gnostic myth,” Melton said. The idea of being guiltless, pure, and with transcendent potential, he said, has an intoxicating draw.

Frankly, I’ve never understood the “spirit trapped in matter” thing as being the central point of gnosticism. But maybe it’s just cause I don’t so much jive with it. My leanings are much more of the anarcho-gnostic bent, which means that if we are manifestations of God, then we ought to cultivate that and forge our own individual creative spiritual path to do so. And I don’t know that I would really characterize that as having an “intoxicating draw.” I mean, it’s not like I run around acting like I am God (although some might disagree). It’s actually more like a constant fucking struggle. There’s really nothing intoxicating about it. It’s quite sobering to constantly have to move and change and grow and get beat down and rise up again.

From this perspective, Scientology shares at least this idea of “cultivating your essence” or whatever the hell you want to call it. But it’s certain not anarcho-gnostic, if it’s gnostic at all. Since you have the god-spark-whatever inside of you, you have all the tools and equipment you need from jump to bring it out. Scientology however is an authoritarian system which trains you in a certain method of mental re-patterning for a cost. In other words, it doesn’t freely teach you how to save yourself. It restricts you to a particular system.

If I had to go out on a limb and call anything about Scientology “gnostic” I might suggest the Free Zoners. They are a splinter group of Scientologists who believe the Church itself was corrupted and perverted the original teachings of L. Ron Hubbard. This is of course rather similar to what some gnostics might say about the Catholic Church and Jesus. Likewise, the Church of Scientology has waged a war of suppression and litigation against the Free Zoners, disguised as a battle over intellectual property rights. They don’t like that the Free Zoners are trying to give out the Hubbard “technology” (ie, teachings) for free to anybody interested so they can better themselves.

This is a struggle that I see in the historical traditions of many many religions the world over. It could be explained using a diagram I put together on different types of religions:

Basically we’re seeing two different struggles being played out here. One is by the Church of Scientology, which I would put in the “orthodox” corner of the triangle. They are trying to maintain strict control over their story-system and keep it from being “polluted” or changed. This helps them maintain a group identity through shared context and ritual. On the other hand, the Free Zoners might be somewhere on the right hand side of the triangle. They are interested in the individual’s right to control their destiny spiritually. While not necessarily syncretic in their practices, they don’t believe that the underlying story-system they are working with will be damaged any by putting it into the hands of regular people.

Interestingly though, I’m sure if you sat down and looked at all the different gnostic groups throughout history, you’d probably be able to map them at many different locations on this triangular chart. It’s anything but a monolithic group of ideas. This leads to a question I’m still sort of puzzling over though: is gnosticism characterized more by it’s beliefs (story-system), or by it’s methodology (how it uses story-systems). I’m inclined to lean towards the methodology, but maybe that’s just me. My own orientation would be basically a band from the right to the top points. And when I want to really delve into something and try to understand it, I will start pushing temporarily towards understanding how the orthodox would interpret it. If I like what they’re doing, I may add it to the syncretic mix, etc.