On Faith and Aging: One Scientologist’s View

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I believe one of Man’s and Woman’s redeeming and more telling qualities is that whenever we begin to discuss aging and its endgame, death, we almost invariably end with a conversation about life.

Sometimes that means we talk about one life, the life of one who has passed. Sometimes it means we talk about life in the large—what it means to be alive or to have lived or what it will mean to new family members not yet born who we are looking forward to welcoming into our families.

On Faith and Aging: One Scientologist’s View[/tweetthis]

A few years ago, my wife lost her best friend Mary to breast cancer. Mary had beaten it some years earlier but it recurred and she chose to keep her battle private, determined to engender as little concern as possible. She spent time with her family, her husband and two sons, and at the appropriate moment she saw her best friends, my wife and two others.

When my wife paid a visit near the end, Mary gave my wife a gift, a glimpse into a positive, continuing future. It wasn’t anything Mary said. Rather, it was one of those interchanges that happens between the closest of friends, an interchange without words but teeming with understanding. It was clear that in Mary’s last days her thoughts had turned to indomitable life, a serene certainty that my wife would do well and that they would meet again.

At Mary’s choice, her life ended in a way intended to cause as little agony to others as possible. The success of that decision pervaded her memorial service. There were tears, of course, but more than anything else, the ceremony was a celebration of life and her life—a common theme in services of many faiths, including Scientology.

Last year, I lost my mother and father. I grieved their loss. I miss them, particularly my father when I’m engaged in something I know he would have enjoyed or would have found funny. At those times, I’m still sometimes surprised, then disappointed that I can’t just pick up the phone and give them a call. In the last several years of their lives, I saw up close and personal the effects of aging. I witnessed their diminishing ability to do the things they loved and, in the case of my mother, of her ability to think and remember.

But now, despite the loss, when I think of them, my thoughts are primarily of life.

Scientologists tend to have both a conceptual and experiential understanding of what aging and death are because Scientology helps to open the doors to personal memory of earlier lives—and deaths. No Scientology dogma mandates a belief in past lives, but as most Scientologists gain greater recall and understanding of their own spiritual past, they also come to know that they will live again.  

As a Scientologist I know there are three parts to Man/Woman: the body, the mind and the spirit. The last, the spirit, bears at least some small explanation for the purposes of this article, though far more could be said.

Although Scientologists use the word “spirit,” they also use a specialized word to describe what it means to them. A new term was introduced for a simple, pragmatic reason: “spirit” means so many things to so many people from so many traditions that using it would run a very high risk of causing confusion. This is not to negate any other uses or traditions, it just recognizes the long value and meaning of that word and in respect of those traditions, Scientologists use a new word, thereby aiming for clarity. The Scientology concept of “spirit” is termed a “thetan”, a word formed from the Greek letter “theta” which has a historical association with “thought.”

In brief, the spirit or thetan is the person himself. It is the “awareness of awareness” unit that is the individual. When you ask someone to look at a sunset and ask them “who is looking at the sunset?” they—the entity, the individuality they identify as themselves that is the answer to that question is the spirit, is the thetan, is the person him or herself. One does not “have a thetan”, he or she is one. Minus the “Scientologese,” one is a spiritual being.

I mentioned the three parts of Man/Woman, the body, mind and spirit, because distinguishing them can bring significant simplicity and welcomed clarity to discussions of aging. Although all three are interdependent and entwined to a greater or lesser degree, they are not the same, and aging means something different for each. Of the three, the person, the thetan, is by far the senior, the most important and the element most deserving of attention and care.

We have all known people who in the face of impending death have maintained their sense of equilibrium, their compassion and “Personhood.” We have also known others who have been stripped of the best parts of their humanity, who were lost as individuals well before their bodies were formally pronounced dead.

Bodies age. They are born, they grow, survive, begin to decay and die. But when death comes to the body, that does not mean the end of the spirit. The person, the thetan, lives on, liberated from the body, ready to begin a new life.

This does not mean that aging is always easy. It does not deny or overlook the hardships that can be involved. But when aging presents challenges to be endured, Scientologists are comforted in the knowledge that aging is a chapter most germane to the body, not the spirit. When the body has completed its tenure, the person, the thetan, lives on. I’d vaguely suspected as much prior to my involvement in Scientology but with Scientology I now have that experiential as well as conceptual knowledge that when my body is done, I will continue.

This belief in the continuation of life is baked into the way Scientologists view the world and is reflected in the words of the Scientology funeral service written by Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard:

Our loss

Is gain in other times….

(He/she)’ll be in some good

Future time

And future place

(His/her) smile

(His/her) touch

(His/her) skill

Invested there to make

A way for life….

Our loss

Is gain

In wisdom and skill

To future dates and other smiles

And so we send into the

Chain of all enduring time

Our heritage

Our hope

Our friend.

So, when I see discussions about aging and even death begin to turn to contemplations about life, I am heartened, seeing in that natural pivot a reflection of the underlying truth that the spirit does not die.

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