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Written by: J. Gordon Melton

Hubbard developed his descriptions of the first four dynamics as he pursued his basic observations that led to Dianetics.The remaining dynamics came more fully into view as he created Scientology.While working on Scientology, for example, he gained a greater appreciation of all of life and of the human interdependence with it, and described the fifth dynamic as survival through the survival of all life forms.The fifth dynamic suggests the sixth, namely the environment in which life is found, the physical universe.

With the seventh dynamic, the observation about survival enters what is traditionally the religious realm.Hubbard saw this dynamic as the spiritual dynamic. It would include anything specifically nonmaterial, and include the world of ideas and concepts and consideration of the source of life.Finally, one makes the jump, in the eighth dynamic, to a consideration of the All (Hubbard used the term Infinity).Here is where speculation about a deity (a Supreme Being, Creator, or First Cause) would arise.Scientology has been very clear in allowing a wide spectrum of belief about the nature of ultimate reality and seeing the individual as free to conceive of it as seems best to him or her.Beyond posing the existence of the eighth dynamic, the church has no set teachings describing its nature.

Study Questions:
     1.    What is the role of Dianetics within Scientology? How does it replace notions of a Divine figure?
     2.    What is the thetan? Where does it exist, and what is its purpose?
     3.    What are the eight dynamics Hubbard discovered? Where did religion fit in?