Scientology and the Church of Scientology

What is Scientology?

Scientology is a set of beliefs and practices created by American author L. Ron Hubbard, originally published as a self-help system called Dianetics in 1950 and later repackaged as a religion. The Church of Scientology was formally incorporated in 1953. It claims approximately ten million members worldwide, though independent estimates consistently place the number far lower — likely in the tens of thousands of active practitioners. The organization is headquartered in Clearwater, Florida, with a significant presence in Los Angeles.

At its core, Scientology teaches that human beings are immortal spiritual entities called thetans who have lived through countless past lives and accumulated traumatic memories that block their full potential. Through a process called auditing — a form of one-on-one counseling using a device called an E-meter — members work to clear these blockages and progress through a hierarchy of spiritual levels. The upper levels, which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to reach, reveal a cosmology involving an intergalactic dictator named Xenu who, 75 million years ago, brought billions of beings to Earth and killed them with hydrogen bombs near volcanoes. This is not a caricature. It is what the church teaches at OT III, its most closely guarded secret level.

Scientology occupies a unique position among world religions. It is the only major religion founded in the twentieth century by a single identifiable author whose prior career was writing fiction. It is also among the most litigious, secretive, and aggressive religious organizations in history — facts that are documented not by critics alone but by court records, government investigations, and the testimony of thousands of former members.

Who was L. Ron Hubbard?

Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (1911–1986) was an American writer who published prolifically in the pulp fiction magazines of the 1930s and 1940s, producing westerns, adventure stories, and science fiction. He served briefly in the United States Navy during World War II, though the church’s hagiographic accounts of his military service have been contradicted by Navy records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. He did not see the combat he later claimed, and was relieved of two commands.

In 1950, Hubbard published Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, which proposed that all human psychological problems stem from traumatic memories stored in the “reactive mind.” The book became a bestseller. The American Psychological Association and the American Medical Association both rejected Dianetics as pseudoscience, but Hubbard had found his audience. When the Dianetics craze faded and his organizations faced financial trouble, he reframed the system as a religion — a move that brought tax benefits and legal protections.

Multiple people who knew Hubbard have reported that he openly discussed the financial advantages of starting a religion. Hubbard’s former literary agent, Forrest J Ackerman, and fellow science fiction writer Lloyd Eshbach both recounted Hubbard saying words to the effect of “the way to make a million dollars is to start a religion.” Harlan Ellison, another contemporary, reported similar remarks. The Church of Scientology disputes all such accounts.

Hubbard spent the last years of his life in seclusion on a ranch in California, communicating with the church only through a small circle of aides. He died in January 1986. His successor, David Miscavige, has led the organization ever since.

Core beliefs: thetans, engrams, and the reactive mind

Scientology teaches that each person is a thetan — an immortal spiritual being that has existed for trillions of years, cycling through countless bodies across multiple lifetimes. The thetan is not the mind or the body; it is the person themselves. In Scientology’s framework, the problems of human existence stem not from sin, karma, or neurochemistry, but from engrams — recordings of painful experiences stored in the reactive mind.

The reactive mind operates below conscious awareness and causes irrational behavior, illness, and emotional suffering. The goal of Scientology’s practices is to erase these engrams and eventually eliminate the reactive mind entirely, producing a state called Clear. A person who has gone Clear is said to be free of psychosomatic illness and irrational fears, with perfect recall and heightened ability. These claims have never been independently verified.

Beyond Clear, the Operating Thetan (OT) levels reveal Scientology’s deeper cosmology. At OT III, members learn the story of Xenu (sometimes written Xemu), a galactic ruler who 75 million years ago gathered billions of beings, transported them to Earth (then called Teegeeack), stacked them around volcanoes, and killed them with hydrogen bombs. The disembodied spirits of these beings — called body thetans — are said to cluster around living humans, causing further spiritual harm. The upper OT levels focus on locating and removing these body thetans through a process of solo auditing.

The Xenu narrative is not presented to new members. It is revealed only after years of participation and hundreds of thousands of dollars in auditing fees. Former members report being shocked by the material. The church has gone to extraordinary legal lengths to keep it secret, suing individuals and publications that have disclosed it. It is now widely available thanks to court documents, media coverage, and the internet.

Auditing and the E-meter

Auditing is the central practice of Scientology. It is a one-on-one session in which an auditor asks the subject (called a “preclear”) a series of questions while the preclear holds the electrodes of an E-meter — a device that measures galvanic skin response, similar in principle to a polygraph. The auditor watches the needle for reactions that supposedly indicate the presence of engrams or emotional charge on a topic.

A single auditing session can cost between $500 and $800 per hour at major Scientology organizations. Members are expected to progress through dozens or hundreds of hours of auditing. The church also sells extensive training courses, materials, and mandatory prerequisites. The total cost to reach the upper OT levels is routinely estimated at $300,000 to $500,000, though some former members report spending over a million dollars during their time in the organization.

The E-meter itself has been the subject of regulatory action. In 1971, a United States federal court ruled that the E-meter had no proven medical or scientific value and ordered the church to label it as a religious artifact. The church complied with the labeling requirement while continuing to present auditing as effective at treating a wide range of conditions.

The Bridge to Total Freedom

Scientology organizes its spiritual path as a linear progression called the Bridge to Total Freedom. On one side is training (learning to audit others); on the other is processing (receiving auditing oneself). Members advance through numbered levels, each with specific requirements, fees, and expected outcomes. The lower levels address communication skills and past traumas. The upper levels deal with the cosmological material described above.

The estimated cost to complete the full Bridge varies, but former members and journalists consistently cite figures between $300,000 and $500,000. Some members take out loans, drain retirement savings, or go into significant debt to continue their progress. The organization employs high-pressure sales techniques — called “regging” (short for registrar) — to push members to purchase their next level.

Organizational structure

The Church of Scientology is not a single entity but a network of interlocking organizations, all ultimately controlled by the Religious Technology Center (RTC), which holds the trademarks and copyrights to Hubbard’s works. David Miscavige has led the RTC since 1987. Key organizational bodies include:

The Sea Organization (Sea Org)is Scientology’s elite religious order. Members sign a billion-year contract — literally, a contract pledging service for one billion years across future lifetimes. Sea Org members live in communal housing, earn stipends of roughly $50 per week, work long hours (often 80 to 100 per week), and are subject to strict discipline. Former members describe conditions that meet the legal definition of forced labor in multiple jurisdictions.

The Office of Special Affairs (OSA)handles the church’s legal, intelligence, and public relations operations. It is the successor to the Guardian’s Office, which was dismantled after the Operation Snow White scandal (see below). OSA has been accused by numerous former members of conducting surveillance on critics, infiltrating anti-Scientology organizations, and coordinating harassment campaigns.

Celebrity Centre International, headquartered in Hollywood, is dedicated to recruiting and servicing celebrity members. Hubbard identified celebrities as high-priority recruitment targets as early as the 1950s, creating “Project Celebrity” with a list of prominent figures to pursue.

The Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF)is an internal disciplinary program for Sea Org members who have fallen out of favor. Former RPF members describe being confined to restricted areas, performing manual labor for 12 to 16 hours per day, eating separately from other staff, and being denied outside communication — sometimes for years. The church describes it as a voluntary religious retreat. Multiple governments and human rights organizations have characterized it as coercive confinement.

Celebrity Scientologists

Scientology’s celebrity strategy is not incidental — it is doctrinal. Hubbard explicitly identified celebrities as essential to the organization’s growth and social legitimacy. Tom Cruise, the organization’s most prominent member, has been described by former church officials as receiving extraordinary treatment: personal staff, renovated facilities, and access to Sea Org labor for personal projects. John Travolta has been a member since the 1970s. Other current or former celebrity members include Elisabeth Moss, Beck (who left in 2019), and Laura Prepon.

The celebrity strategy serves a dual purpose. Externally, famous members provide social proof and media coverage. Internally, they serve as aspirational models for rank-and-file members — proof that the system works. Critics note that celebrity members receive a fundamentally different Scientology experience from ordinary members. They do not work in the RPF. They do not live on $50 a week. They do not face the same consequences for dissent.

Controversies and criticism

The Church of Scientology has been involved in an extraordinary number of legal battles, government investigations, and public controversies. The following represent the most significant and well-documented:

Operation Snow White

In the 1970s, the church conducted the largest known infiltration of the United States government in history. Operatives from the Guardian’s Office — Scientology’s intelligence arm — planted agents in the IRS, the Department of Justice, and other federal agencies. They stole tens of thousands of documents and wiretapped government offices. In 1977, the FBI raided Scientology offices in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Eleven senior Scientology officials, including Hubbard’s wife Mary Sue, were convicted of obstruction of justice, burglary, and theft. Hubbard himself was named as an unindicted co-conspirator.

Fair Game

Hubbard’s policy of “Fair Game” declared that people deemed enemies of Scientology — labeled Suppressive Persons (SPs) — could be “tricked, sued, lied to, or destroyed.” The church officially canceled the use of the term “Fair Game” in 1968, but former members and critics consistently report that the practice continues under other names. Documented tactics include private investigators following critics, frivolous lawsuits designed to drain resources, smear campaigns, and attempts to have critics fired or investigated by government agencies.

Disconnection

Disconnection is Scientology’s policy of severing all contact with Suppressive Persons. In practice, this means that members who leave the church — or who are declared suppressive — are cut off from their families, friends, and business associates who remain in Scientology. Parents lose contact with children. Spouses are pressured to divorce. The church claims disconnection is a personal choice; former members overwhelmingly describe it as mandatory and enforced.

Forced labor and abuse allegations

Numerous former Sea Org members have described conditions including: physical assault by David Miscavige (alleged by multiple former senior executives), forced confinement in “The Hole” — a pair of double-wide trailers at the church’s international headquarters in Hemet, California, where executives were reportedly confined for weeks or months — wages far below minimum wage, denial of medical care, coerced abortions (to avoid the prohibition on Sea Org members having children), and sleep deprivation as punishment. The church denies all such allegations.

Tax-exempt status

The church’s battle with the IRS is one of the most remarkable episodes in American tax law. After losing its tax-exempt status in 1967, the church waged a decades-long campaign to regain it — including filing over 2,000 lawsuits against the IRS and individual IRS employees, and hiring private investigators to dig into the personal lives of IRS officials. In 1993, the IRS granted the church tax-exempt status in a secret closing agreement that has never been fully disclosed. The deal has been criticized by tax scholars, former IRS officials, and members of Congress as capitulation to pressure rather than a legitimate determination of religious status.

Is Scientology a cult?

The question of whether Scientology is a cult depends on definition, but by the most widely used academic frameworks, the answer is straightforward. Steven Hassan’s BITE model (Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotional control) is the most commonly cited framework for identifying high-control groups. Scientology checks nearly every box:

Behavior control:Sea Org members’ lives are regulated down to sleep schedules, diet, relationships, and reproduction. Rank-and-file members are pressured to disconnect from critics and spend escalating amounts on services. Leaving is punished through disconnection.

Information control:Members are forbidden from reading critical material about Scientology. The internet is treated with suspicion. Upper-level materials are kept secret. Members who encounter critical information are sent to “ethics handling.”

Thought control:Scientology has its own extensive vocabulary (over 3,000 defined terms) that reframes ordinary concepts in Scientology-specific ways. Doubt about the organization is treated as a personal failing requiring auditing. Critical thinking about Hubbard’s claims is classified as a “suppressive act.”

Emotional control:Guilt and shame are used extensively. Members who fail to progress are told they have “overts” (transgressions) and “withholds” (secrets) that must be confessed in auditing. These confessions are recorded and, according to former members, sometimes used as leverage against those who later leave or speak out.

Robert Jay Lifton’s eight criteria for thought reform — milieu control, loaded language, demand for purity, confession, sacred science, doctrine over person, mystical manipulation, and dispensing of existence — are also broadly applicable. Germany has classified Scientology as an “anti-constitutional sect.” France has prosecuted it for fraud. Belgium, Russia, and several other countries have taken legal or regulatory action against it.

Leaving Scientology

Leaving Scientology is not like leaving most religions. The disconnection policy means that departing members face the loss of every relationship they have within the organization — and for people who have spent years or decades inside, that can mean everyone they know. Former members describe a process that involves grief, identity crisis, financial ruin, and systematic harassment.

Several high-profile departures have brought sustained public attention. Leah Remini, a television actress and lifelong Scientologist, left in 2013 after raising questions about the disappearance of Shelly Miscavige (David Miscavige’s wife, who has not been seen in public since 2007). Her book Troublemaker(2015) and her A&E documentary series Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath(2016–2019) provided a platform for dozens of former members to tell their stories on camera.

Mike Rinder, who served as the head of the Office of Special Affairs for over twenty years, left in 2007 and became one of the church’s most prominent critics. His memoir A Billion Years(2022) describes, from an insider’s perspective, the surveillance, harassment, and intimidation campaigns he once directed against the very people he now stands alongside.

Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief (2013), later adapted into an HBO documentary, remains the most comprehensive journalistic account of the organization. It drew on over two hundred interviews and years of research.

The experience of leaving Scientology frequently involves symptoms consistent with religious trauma: anxiety, depression, difficulty trusting institutions, and a prolonged process of rebuilding identity outside the group. For many former members, the deconversion process takes years.

Scientology and the law

Scientology’s legal history is unlike that of any other religious organization. The church has filed thousands of lawsuits against critics, journalists, former members, and governments. It has been sued, investigated, raided, and banned in various jurisdictions. Key legal facts:

In the United States, Scientology is recognized as a tax-exempt religious organization since 1993, though the circumstances of that recognition remain controversial. In Germany, the organization is not recognized as a religion and is monitored by the domestic intelligence agency (the Verfassungsschutz) as a potential threat to democratic order. In France, the church was convicted of organized fraud in 2009. In Russia, multiple Scientology organizations have been banned. In Australia, it is recognized as a religion following a 1983 High Court decision that broadly defined religious belief.

The legal patchwork reflects a genuine ambiguity: Scientology operates simultaneously as a religion, a business, and — according to its critics and several courts — a coercive organization. Its tax-exempt status in the United States continues to shield it from financial scrutiny that might otherwise reveal the scope of its operations and the treatment of its workforce.

Key takeaways

Scientology was created by a science fiction writer who had publicly discussed the financial advantages of founding a religion. Its core practices revolve around a paid counseling system that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to complete. Its upper-level cosmology involves an intergalactic dictator, hydrogen bombs, and alien spirits. Its organizational structure includes a labor force working for approximately $50 per week under contracts pledging a billion years of service. Its documented history includes the largest infiltration of the U.S. government, systematic harassment of critics, and the severing of families through disconnection.

The factual record is not in dispute. Court documents, government investigations, and the testimony of thousands of former members — including senior officials who ran the organization for decades — are publicly available and broadly consistent. Scientology is not merely controversial. It is one of the most thoroughly documented cases of institutional abuse operating under the protection of religious freedom.

None of this means that individual Scientologists are bad people. Many join seeking self-improvement, community, or answers to genuine questions about the human condition. The critique is not of them. It is of the institution that exploits those motivations for profit and power, and of the legal frameworks that allow it to continue doing so. Understanding how Scientology operates is valuable not only for its own sake but as a case study in how high-control groups recruit, retain, and silence their members — patterns that recur across movements, centuries, and cultures. The path from skepticism to freedom often begins with recognizing these patterns in real time.