Spiritual Immortality
The Church of Scientology describes achieving the state of Operating Thetan as "complete spiritual freedom from the endless cycle of birth and death" and literally promises immortality:
"Some of the miracles of life have been exposed to full view for the first time ever on the OT levels. Not the least of these miracles is knowing immortality and freedom from the cycle of birth and death."
The "immortality" referred to is not immortality of the body, but of the thetan, and Scientology does not claim that it causes the thetan's immortality, but makes a Scientologist aware of that immortality and alleviates the distress that might otherwise be felt at the prospect of death:
"The subject of death is never a very serious one to a Scientologist beyond the fact that he feels kind of sorry for himself sometimes. ... was thoughtless enough to dispose of his body and go out of communication. A person sometimes feels pretty unhappy about it and thinks it's a thoughtless thing for a friend to do."
Read more about this topic: Supernatural Abilities In Scientology Doctrine
Famous quotes containing the words spiritual and/or immortality:
“There is an inner world; and a spiritual faculty of discerning it with absolute clearness, nay, with the most minute and brilliant distinctness. But it is part of our earthly lot that it is the outer world, in which we are encased, which is the lever that brings that spiritual faculty into play.”
—E.T.A.W. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus Wilhelm)
“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist’s way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)