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Scientology: A General Description

Scientology Religion

    Scientology is an applied religious philosophy designed to make the able more able. It deals with the study of knowledge, which, through its application, can improve life in a troubled world. It comes from the Latin, "scio", meaning "know" or "knowing" and the Greek word "logos" meaning "the word," or "the way," or "study of."

    Scientology is a path, discipline, and study of how to know. A Scientologist is one who is studying and learning to apply the knowledge and wisdom of life to better his survival, the survival of others and his environment, while gaining an understanding of the Supreme Being and his relationship to it.

    Scientology is based on the fact that man is a spiritual being and that man has a mind and a body through which he, as a spiritual being, operates. A person is not his body or mind – a person has a body and a mind; he is both a spiritual being himself who is aware of the universe around him and one who directs his activities.

L. Ron Hubbard Founder

    The founder of the applied religious philosophy Scientology is L. Ron Hubbard (1911-86). Mr. Hubbard has been widely recognized for his contributions in many fields, but he is best known as one of the most acclaimed and widely read authors of all time.

    From his earliest days, he was a man whose inquisitive nature led him to explore every nook and cranny of existence and to experience every possible part of life. By the time he was nineteen, Hubbard had traveled more than a quarter of a million sea miles and thousands more on land. In a real sense, the world itself was his classroom.

    In 1948 Hubbard's first writings of the nature of life and human mind began to circulate privately, and the word got out that he had made a breakthrough. In 1950 Hubbard released his discoveries in the book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. It became a nationwide best-seller almost overnight.

    Soon after the release of Dianetics Hubbard made his next major discovery. It had become clear to him that there was something much more basic and important to life than the brain, the mind, and the body. After discovering that the basic common denominator of all life was "the urge to survive," Hubbard established conclusively that man was basically a spiritual being, inhabiting a body and using a mind. His first findings on the spirit of man were published in 1951 in his next book, Science of Survival.

    This was the beginning of Hubbard's researches into man and his nature. Between 1951 and 1954 alone, he wrote twenty books and gave over a thousand lectures on Scientology. As Hubbard's research time and time again broke new ground, he wrote millions of words over the next thirty-five years.

    Hubbard wrote in 1965, "I have lived no cloistered life and hold in contempt the wise man who has not lived and the scholar who will not share. There have been many wiser men than I but few have traveled as much road. I have seen life from the top down and the bottom up. I know how it looks both ways. And I know there is wisdom and that there is hope."

Excerpted from
An Encyclopedia of Religions in the United States, edited by
William B. Williamson, 1992
The Crossroad Publishing Company
370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017

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