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Concept
Scientology
Summary
Scientology is a set of beliefs and practices invented by the American author L. Ron Hubbard, and an associated movement. It is variously defined as a cult, a business, or a new religious movement. Hubbard initially developed a set of ideas that he called Dianetics, which he represented as a form of therapy. An organization that he established in 1950 to promote it went bankrupt, and Hubbard lost the rights to his book Dianetics in 1952. He then recharacterized his ideas as a religion, likely for tax purposes, and renamed them Scientology. By 1954 he had regained the rights to Dianetics and founded the Church of Scientology, which remains the largest organization promoting Scientology. There are practitioners independent of the Church, in what is called the Free Zone. Estimates put the number of Scientologists at under 40,000 worldwide.
Scientology beliefs include reincarnation, and that traumatic events cause problematic "engrams" in the mind. They claim that an activity called "auditing" can remove the "engrams". A fee is charged for each session of "auditing". Once an "auditor" deems an individual free of "engrams", typically after several years, they are given the status of "clear". Scholarship differs on the interpretation of these beliefs: some academics regard them as religious in nature; other scholars regard them as merely a means of extracting money from Scientology recruits. After attaining "clear" status, adherents can take part in the Operating Thetan levels, which require further payments. The Operating Thetan texts are kept secret from most followers; they are revealed only after adherents have typically given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Scientology organization. Despite its efforts to maintain the secrecy of the texts, they are freely available online on sites such as the publisher WikiLeaks. These texts say past lives took place in extraterrestrial cultures. They involve an alien called Xenu, described as a planetary ruler 70 million years ago who brought billions of aliens to Earth and killed them with thermonuclear weapons.
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