Scientology

L. Ron Hubbard 

(1911-1986)  

 

"I'd like to start a religion. That's where the money is." 

 

L. Ron Hubbard was born in Tilden, Nebraska to a naval officer and a high school teacher. His father's naval career caused him to move many times as a child. Accounts of his education are contradictory; one account claims failing grades while others claim he became a nuclear physicist. Writings of his naval career are also contradictory. He held multiple roles in the Navy, although government records complain of his lack of judgment, leadership, and cooperation and do not agree with his claims. At the end of World War II, he claimed to suffer from war-related illnesses and began a quest for a "science of the mind.” His goal was to study human delusions and to offer a way to overcome them. He wrote Dianetics and was rejected by mainstream publishers but later was published by the editor who, for years, had published his science fiction novels. Though it was claimed that Dianetics was "a lunatic revision of Freudian psychology," it sold 150,000 copies within its first year. Dianetics is now the written authority in the church of Scientology. Later in life, Hubbard returned to writing science fiction and died of a stroke at his ranch in Creston, California.

 

SCIENTOLOGY: a new religion founded by L. Ron Hubbard in 1955 and characterized by a belief in the power of a person’s spirit to clear itself of past painful experiences through self-knowledge and spiritual fulfillment.

 

Followers of Scientology: Less than 1% of the world's population (note).

 

Authoritative Text: Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health contains:

L. Ron Hubbard's technological procedures for erasing the harmful recordings in a person's unconscious memory.

 

Author: L. Ron Hubbard