Dianetics is a set of ideas and practices regarding the metaphysical relationship between the mind and body created by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. Dianetics is practiced by followers of Scientology and the Nation of Islam.
In Scientology, Xenu, also called Xemu, was the dictator of the "Galactic Confederacy" who brought billions of his people to Earth in DC-8-like spacecraft 75 million years ago, stacked them around volcanoes, and killed them with hydrogen bombs. Official Scientology scriptures hold that the thetans of these aliens adhere to humans, causing spiritual harm.
The Church of Scientology maintains a wide variety of beliefs and practices. The core belief holds that a human is an immortal, spiritual being (thetan) that is resident in a physical body. The thetan has had innumerable past lives, some of which, preceding the thetan's arrival on Earth, were lived in extraterrestrial cultures. Based on case studies at advanced levels, it is predicted that any Scientologist undergoing auditing will eventually come across and recount a common series of events.
In Scientology, the concept of the thetan is similar to the concept of self, or the spirit or soul as found in several belief systems. This similarity is not total, though. The term is derived from the Greek letter Θ, theta, which in Scientology beliefs represents "the source of life, or life itself." In Scientology it is believed that it is the thetan, not the central nervous system, which commands the body through communication points.
In Dianetics and Scientology, auditing is a process whereby the 'auditor' takes an individual through times in their current or past lives with the purpose of ridding the individual of negative influences from past events or behaviors. Auditing is meant to bring the individual to "Clear" status, thus an individual being audited is known as a PC or "preclear".
Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health is a book by L. Ron Hubbard about Dianetics, a system that he developed from a combination of personal experience, basic principles of Eastern philosophy, and the work of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. The book is a canonical text of Scientology. It is colloquially referred to as Book One. The book launched the movement, which later defined itself as a religion, in 1950. As of 2013, New Era Publications, the international publishing company of Hubbard's works, sells the book in English and in fifty other languages.
Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard explicitly compared his teachings to the science-fiction subgenre space opera. In his writings, wherein thetans were reincarnated periodically over quadrillions of years, retaining memories of prior lives, to which Hubbard attributed complex narratives about life throughout the universe. The most controversial of these myths is the story of Xenu, to whom Hubbard attributed responsibility for many of the world's problems.
In Dianetics and Scientology, Clear is one of the major ostensible "states" practitioners strive to reach on their way up the Bridge to Total Freedom. The state of Clear is reached when a person supposedly becomes free of the influence of engrams, unwanted emotions or painful traumas not readily available to the conscious mind. Scientologists believe that human beings accumulate anxieties, psychosomatic illnesses, and aberration due to receiving engrams throughout their current or past lives, and that by applying Dianetics, every single person can reach the state of Clear.
An engram, as used in Dianetics and Scientology, is a detailed mental image or memory of a traumatic event from the past that occurred when an individual was partially or fully unconscious. It is considered to be pseudoscientific and is different from the meaning of "engram" in cognitive psychology. According to Dianetics and Scientology, from conception onwards, whenever something painful happens while the "analytic mind" is unconscious, engrams are supposedly being recorded and stored in an area of the mind Scientology calls the "reactive mind".
In Scientology and Dianetics, a "rundown" is "a series of steps which are auditing actions and processes designed to handle a specific aspect of a case and which have a known end phenomena."
According to Church of Scientology doctrine, Helatrobus was an "interplanetary nation", now extinct, which existed trillions of years ago.
Scientology: A History of Man is a book by L. Ron Hubbard, first published in 1952 under the title What to Audit by the Scientific Press of Phoenix. According to the author, it provides "a coldblooded and factual account of your last sixty trillion years." It has gone through many editions since its first publication and is a key text of the Church of Scientology. The book has been ridiculed by critics of Scientology for its unusual writing style and pseudoscientific claims; it has been described as "a slim pretense at scientific method ... blended with a strange amalgam of psychotherapy, mysticism and pure science fiction; mainly the latter."
In the Church of Scientology doctrine, supernatural or superhuman abilities are a recurring subject, appearing throughout Scientology and Dianetics materials, from the most basic introductory texts to the highest-level Operating Thetan information. Virtually all of these concepts were authored by the church's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and have not been subjected to testing outside the Church. The Church of Scientology have never offered any externally accepted, empirical, peer-reviewed evidence that Scientologists possess any of these abilities.
OT VIII or OT 8 is the highest current auditing level in Scientology. OT VIII is known as "The Truth Revealed" and was first released to select high-ranking public Scientologists in 1988, two years after the death of Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard. OT VIII is only delivered to members of the Church of Scientology in one place—aboard the organization's private cruise ship, the Freewinds. OT 8 is also available in the Scientology Independent Field. There are a few advanced auditors that are able to deliver the level to those who meet the prerequisites.
This is an incomplete bibliography of Scientology and Scientology-related books produced within the Church of Scientology and its related organizations, containing all of the Basic Books and some other later works either compiled from other works by or written directly by L. Ron Hubbard.
L. Ron Hubbard used the term Incident in a specific context for auditing in Scientology and Dianetics: the description of space operatic events in the Universe's distant past, involving alien interventions in past lives. It is a basic belief of Scientology that a human being is an immortal spiritual being, termed a thetan, trapped on planet Earth in a "meat body".
According to the beliefs of the Church of Scientology, the Marcab Confederacy is said to be one of the most powerful galactic civilizations still active. Church founder L. Ron Hubbard describes it as:
Various planets united into a very vast civilization which has come forward up through the last 200,000 years, formed out of the fragments of earlier civilizations. In the last 10,000 years they have gone on with a sort of decadent kicked-in-the-head civilization that contains automobiles, business suits, fedora hats, telephones, spaceships — a civilization which looks almost an exact duplicate but is worse off than the current US civilization.
The relationship between Scientology and religious groups is very complex. While Scientology claims that it is fully compatible with all existing major world religions and that it does not conflict with them or their religious practices, there are significant contradictions between Scientology and most religions, especially the major monotheistic religions. Members are not allowed to engage in other similar mental therapies or procedures, religious or otherwise. However, some ministers from other churches have adopted some Scientology secular programs.
Scientology is a set of beliefs and practices invented by American author L. Ron Hubbard, and an associated movement. It has been variously defined as a cult, a business, or a new religious movement. The most recent published census data indicate that in the United States there were about 25,000 followers ; around 2,300 followers in England (2011); and about 1,700 each in both Canada (2011) and Australia (2016). Hubbard initially developed a set of ideas that he called Dianetics, which he represented as a form of therapy. This he promoted through various publications, as well as through the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation that he established in 1950. The foundation soon entered bankruptcy, and Hubbard lost the rights to his book Dianetics in 1952. He then recharacterized the subject as a religion and renamed it Scientology, retaining the terminology, doctrines, and the practice of "auditing". By 1954, he had regained the rights to Dianetics and retained both subjects under the umbrella of the Church of Scientology.
