The transformation of Eastern religious and philosophical ideas in new religious movements
New religious movements in modern society, both in the West and in Russia, are firmly consolidated as a special component. Interest is in the spreading and transformation of views of Eastern religious and philosophical ideas in the public consciousness in the West and in Russia under the influence of the new non-traditional religious movements. One of these movements, scientology, is created by Ron Hubbard. In his teaching he tried to combine Eastern religious and philosophical ideas with the outlook of a western man. The adaptation for a westerner had rationalistic nature, and in Russia it was the substitution of the spiritual futility in the 1990s. Ron Hubbard's anthropology is built on the idea of the multi-composition of a person: the first and most important part is the spirit or tetan; the second part is the genetic essence; the third part is the mind. As a result, R. Hubbard gets the idea about a person, where tetan plays the role of the individual, the genetic nature of the person is responsible for the ability to survive and adapt in the environment, and mind performs the functions of an information store. The idea of karma plays a key role in this anthropological scheme. In Buddhism, karma is understood as ''an activity that characterizes the human uniqueness in the aspect of a conscious will display which depends on the results of the actions of consciousness in the past births, but in the present life, they are free to elect good ways of activity''. In scientology, L. Ron Hubbard transforms the concept of karma. He promises his followers to erase all the negative karma which is accumulated in person during all their existing rebirths, saving the person from the influence of the karma of contemporary life. In the end, if we can get rid of all the negative karma, a person becomes a free spirit - tetan. Thus, it is offered not to change oneself as a person, but one's karma, one's reactive mind to achieve complete freedom of the human spirit in the first place. The easiness with which the Eastern religious and philosophical ideas are spreading in modern society has received the name ''karma-cola''. This phenomenon is inseparably linked with the features of the modern society's mass culture.
Keywords
R. Hubbard, Buddhism, Scientology, karma, буддизм, new religious movements, саентология, Р. Хаббард, карма, новые религиозные движенияAuthors
| Name | Organization | |
| Zudov Evgeniy V. | Russian State Vocational Pedagogical University | gluc2@mail.ru |
References
The transformation of Eastern religious and philosophical ideas in new religious movements | Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta – Tomsk State University Journal. 2014. № 384. DOI: 10.17223/15617793/384/8