SCIENTOLOGY

SCIENTOLOGY. The religious movement known as Scientology originated in the United States with the 1950 publication of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. The book's author, L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986), was a popular science fiction writer who envisioned Dianetics as an alternative to traditional therapy. Like other human potential systems, Dianetics promised its followers both enhanced survival mechanisms and new modes of self-expression. Drawing heavily on modern psychology, Hubbard claimed that detailed memory records of past traumatic experiences, called Engrams, are the cause of irrational and aberrant behavior. Subjects could uncover and eliminate their Engrams to become Clear through a process of Auditing, overseen by a practitioner of Dianetics using a device called an E-meter.

The more explicitly religious dimensions of Scientology evolved from Dianetic theory, as Hubbard and his followers began to make wider claims about the nature and meaning of human life. Hubbard posited that in addition to a body and a mind, each person is also an immortal spiritual entity called a Thetan, which spans lifetimes and has the power to create the basic elements of existence: matter, energy, space, and time. With the help of Scientology, church members move along a path to spiritual enlightenment known as the Bridge to Total Freedom. The aim of this spiritual pilgrimage is to attain higher states of consciousness, marked by successive levels of Operating Thetan status.

Since its founding in Los Angeles in 1954, the Church of Scientology has grown steadily, enjoying a high profile

due to its appeal among well-known entertainers. Membership estimates range from fifty thousand to several million. The church operates in more than one hundred countries and maintains an elaborate and well-funded network of institutions dedicated to promoting religious practice, the training of practitioners, and moral and political reform. Scientology has tirelessly sought legal status as a religion and has consistently assumed an aggressive posture toward its critics.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Church of Scientology International. Scientology: Theology and Practice of a Contemporary Religion. Los Angeles, Calif.: Bridge Publications, 1998.

Jenkins, Philip. Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Miller, Russell. Bare-Faced Messiah: A Biography of L. Ron Hubbard. London: Michael Joseph, 1987.