Scientology

Scientology, international movement that emerged in the 1950s in response to the thought of L. Ron Hubbard, a writer who introduced his ideas to the general public in Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (1950). Hubbard’s stated goal was to analyze humankind’s mental aberrations and to offer a means for overcoming them. He eventually moved away from Dianetics’ focus on the mind to a more religious approach to the human condition, which he called Scientology. The Church of Scientology was founded in 1954.

Hubbard’s early life and beliefs

Hubbard attended George Washington University, Washington, D.C. (1930–32), but left to pursue other interests without completing his degree. He married in 1933 and settled down to a career as a writer. His writing spanned various genres—from westerns to horror and science fiction—and he was a popular contributor to pulp magazines. Hubbard had also developed an interest in exploring. In 1940 he was elected to the Explorer’s Club and during the winter of 1940–41 was awarded his licenses as a Master of Steam and Motor Vessels and Master of Sail Vessels; ships would later play a critical role in the operation of the Scientology church.

During World War II Hubbard served in naval intelligence in Australia and aboard several vessels off the U.S. coast. Hubbard ended the war as a patient at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California, apparently suffering from several war-related ailments, and it was during his hospital stay that he gave systematic consideration to his earlier ruminations on the human problem. After the war he began a personal quest for a “science of the mind.” His initial conclusions appeared in The Original Thesis (1948), prior to a more mature presentation in Dianetics. These and Hubbard’s other Scientology writings, both published and unpublished, are considered scriptures by the church.

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Like many thinkers before him, Hubbard believed that the basic principle of human existence is survival. Even before the publication of Dianetics, Hubbard wrote, “I suddenly realized that survival was the pin on which you could hang the rest of this with adequate and ample proof…[and] that life, all life, is trying to survive.” Actions that support survival are good and yield pleasure, he argued; countersurvival actions are destructive and perpetuate negative states. Each individual, he believed, possesses a mind that under normal conditions operates analytically to make survival-oriented judgments. However, when the mind is not fully functioning, a part of it, the reactive mind, takes over. It stores images of experiences, called engrams, which contain not only strong negative emotional content but also unrelated elements of the experience. A later encounter with these unrelated elements may bring forth negative emotional reactions from the stored engram and lead to countersurvival actions.

To help people bring engrams to their consciousness, confront them, and thereby eliminate them, Hubbard developed auditing, a one-on-one counseling process in which a counselor, or auditor, facilitates individuals’ handling of their engrams. A key aspect of this process is use of an E-meter, an instrument that measures the strength of a small electrical current that passes through the body of the person undergoing auditing. According to church teachings, E-meter readings indicate changes in emotional states that allow the identification of stored engrams. In Dianetics the goal was to rid the mind of engrams, and individuals were said to have reached a major goal when they became “clear.”

What pushed Hubbard from Dianetics to Scientology was his understanding, among other things, of the experience of “exteriorization,” the separation of individual consciousness from the body. This experience allowed him to see the spiritual self, the thetan, as the true self that can exist apart from the body. He also came to believe that thetans had inhabited other bodies before their present one, a concept not unlike that of reincarnation in Eastern religions. The new focus on the thetan led Hubbard to postulate a comprehensive vision of the cosmos that had much in common with Eastern faiths and closely resembled the western Gnostic tradition.

Hubbard suggested that thetans had originated billions of years ago with the original Cause, whose entire purpose was the creation of effect. Thetans emerged early in the process of creation, and their interaction led to the creation of MEST (matter, energy, space, and time), thus making the visible universe possible. Over time, the thetans fell into MEST and were trapped. Eventually, the thetans experienced events that stripped them of both their creative abilities and the memories of who they were. Their movements through the MEST universe eventually brought them to earth.

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The church asserts that, through Scientology training, its members come to understand both themselves as spiritual beings and engrams as energy clusters that inhibit the thetan from functioning freely. For Hubbard, the process of freeing the individual is the fundamental purpose of religion. “For countless ages,” he wrote, “a goal of religion has been the salvage of the human spirit. Man has tried by many practices to find the pathway to salvation. He has held the imperishable hope that someday in some way he would be free.” Consequently, the most sacred teachings of Scientology (the operating thetan, or OT, levels) are concerned with assisting the individual to operate as a fully conscious and functioning thetan.

The individual Scientologist is also encouraged to develop a more inclusive worldview by identifying with ever larger realities, or “dynamics.” At the earliest stage, the individual experiences the urge to survive as an individual first but then learns to identify with three other dynamics—the family, the tribe or nation, and all humankind. These first four realms of survival were expanded in Scientology to include four greater units—the entire animal kingdom, the physical universe of MEST, the spiritual universe, and finally infinity or God. These eight dynamics of survival are symbolized in the eight-pointed cross of the Scientology movement.

According to the church, as individual Scientologists become aware of the four higher dynamics and experience God, they are free to reach their own conclusions as to God’s nature. But this freedom does not mean that belief in God is irrelevant or unimportant. As Hubbard argued, “No culture in the history of the world, save the thoroughly depraved ones, has failed to affirm the existence of a Supreme Being. It is an empirical observation that men without a strong and lasting faith in a Supreme Being are less capable, less ethical and less valuable to themselves and society.” Nonetheless, the church does not prescribe specific teachings about God but instead concentrates on helping its members to realize their inherent spiritual essence and abilities.