What exactly is scientology? The quick answer, culled from the organization’s own website, is that “Scientology is a religion that offers a precise path leading to a complete and certain understanding of one’s true spiritual nature and one’s relationship to self, family, groups, Mankind, all life forms, the material universe, the spiritual universe and the Supreme Being.”

The reality is far more disturbing. Established in 1955 by science fiction writer and bigamist L. Ron Hubbard as a way to peddle his self-help books, classes, and “auditing” services, Scientology is the only Western religion that requires participants to pay to play: every book, course, auditing session, and move from one level to the next requires cash, and reaching higher levels of enlightenment can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. While most religions promise eternal rewards to the meek and humble, only the very wealthy have access to enlightenment in the world of Scientology.

Also unique among religions, Scientologists refuse to tell you what they believe; church leader David Miscavige and spokesperson Tommy Davis have both stormed out of prime time interviews when pressed whether they believe the church’s teaching that we are all products of aliens who were tossed into a volcano off Hawaii and hit with a hydrogen bomb by an evil intergalactic tyrant named Xenu 75 million years ago. While Christians are eager to talk about Jesus and Buddhists are happy to tell you about Buddha, Scientologists are mum on Xenu, as well as many other aspects of their secretive, spacey religion.

Scientology borrows pages from communism and fascism, encouraging group think, requiring children to report on and “disconnect” from parents, and adults to divorce their spouses. Disconnection is a total exile of anyone who dares speak up against Scientology, even if that person is your own family member. Listen to Karen de la Carriere talk about her son’s disconnection from her before his mysterious death at the age of 27 here.

For in-depth reporting on Scientology, read Janet Reitman’s excellent book, Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion.  Based on  interviews with numerous current members of the church, as well as church defectors, Reitman offers a history of the religion as well as a detailed look at daily life inside Scientology. She looks into David Miscavige’s violent takeover of the church upon the death of L Ron Hubbard in the eighties (while Hubbard died of a stroke in a trailer in California–a paranoid, overweight, isolated man who was taking psychotropic drugs– the church holds that he willingly chose to leave his earthly body to move on to the next phase of his research). Another excellent resource is A Piece of Blue Sky: Scientology, Dianetics, and L. Ron Hubbard Exposed, by John Atack.

Madman at the helm: David Miscavige and the culture of fear

Following Hubbard’s stroke, Miscavige launched a vicious and extremely effective campaign to systematically get rid of anyone who had ever been close to Hubbard, including Hubbard’s own wife. Many persons who held high positions in the church were either forced out or left of their own accord after Miscavige’s takeover, which, according to many, changed the culture of the church to one of fear and physical abuse, while stepping up efforts to spy on members and on anyone outside of the organization who dared to criticize it.

Another terrific resource of life inside the cult is My Billion Year Contract: Memoir of a Former Scientologist.

Where it all began

Of course, it all began with L. Ron Hubbard’s 1950 book, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. While you won’t find any actual science here, you will find the building blocks for Scientology, the text that Scientologists look to as their own personal Bible. Skeptics question Hubbard’s qualifications to write a book about mental health. For one thing, Hubbard held no advanced degree. He  attended George Washington University for a short time in the 1930s. After dropping out of college, he started writing pulp fiction, and found success as a science fiction writer before penning Dianetics. After a paper on Dianetics was rejected by the Journal of the American Medical Association and the American Journal of Psychiatry (the rejection by the psychiatric community reportedly led to Hubbard’s vilification of psychiatry),  “Hubbard and his collaborators decided to announce Dianetics in Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction instead” (Wikipedia). Indeed, while Scientologists consider Dianetics to be an infallible compendium of truths, many consider it to be just another science fiction.

Scientology Beliefs & Terminology

Some of the basic tents of Scientology seem rather harmless, even in keeping with the widely held beliefs of individuals of more established faiths. According to the official Scientology website, “Scientology believes Man to be basically good, not evil. It is Man’s experiences that have led him to commit evil deeds, not his nature. Often, he mistakenly seeks to solve his problems by considering only his own interests, which then causes trouble for both himself and others.”

You can see how one might easily be drawn into a philosophy which sounds both sensible and kind. But when you dig a bit deeper, things start getting a bit weird. Scientologists believe that humans are immortal. Of course, the notions of reincarnation and eternal life are widely accepted among faithful Buddhists and Christians, so there’s nothing groundbreaking about this belief. But Scientologists also believe that humans have super powers that we haven’t yet realized. On the church’s website, I was unable to discern whether that means that really devoted Scientologists can fly and leap over tall buildings.

In 1985, the litigants in a lawsuit against the Church of Scientology filed documents including “scripture” that was required reading for members who had moved up through the ranks and were attempting to reach Operating Thetan Level 3. Here’s some of what the scriptures had to say, as quoted in Business Insider.

“A major cause of mankind’s problems began 75 million years ago,” the [Los Angeles] Times wrote, when the planet Earth, then called Teegeeack, was part of a confederation of ninety planets under the leadership of a despotic ruler named Xenu. “Then, as now, the materials state, the chief problem was overpopulation.” Xenu decided “to take radical measures.” The documents explained that surplus beings were transported to volcanoes on Earth. “The documents state that H-bombs far more powerful than any in existence today were dropped on these volcanoes, destroying the people but freeing their spirits—called thetans—which attached themselves to one another in clusters.” Those spirits were “trapped in a compound of frozen alcohol and glycol,” then “implanted” with “the seed of aberrant behavior.” The Timesaccount concluded, “When people die, these clusters attach to other humans and keep perpetuating themselves.”

Read more about documents that the church has long attempted to keep secret in Lawrence Wright’s fascinating New Yorker expose on Scientology.

Scientology, Sea Org, & slave labor

In this heartbreaking Dateline video, David Miscavige’s niece, Jenna Miscavige Hill, describes life as a six-year-old at the Scientology ranch in California. Separated from her parents, she was required to get up every morning at 6:30 and do intense manual labor, including hauling rocks, and saw her mother only once a week. At the age of 12, she was forced into Sea Org, where she often would go days without sleep. From the age of 12 to 16, she saw her mother only once, for a period of half an hour. The Church of Scientology is under federal investigation for slave labor, due to its practice of having children and adults perform what amounts to forced manual labor, often fifteen hours per day with only a couple of days off per year. The pay, at most, is $50 per week. Pay is docked for minor infractions. Those who attempt to escape Sea Org are presented with an enormous “freeloader” bill, ostensibly to pay for the courses they were forced to take. Spokespersons for Scientology claim that no one is held at Sea Org against their will, that anyone can leave at any time, and that the freeloader bill is “an ecclesiastical matter” that the church does not enforce. Read more about Sea Org at the Washington Post.

Is Scientology really compatible with other faiths?

Famous Scientologists say there’s no reason you can’t hold on to your religion when you join the Church of Scientology, because Scientology lets you practice whatever religion or denomination you like–Christianity, Judaism, Islam, whatever. While Scientology may square with one’s own religion up to a point, there comes a moment, as a person rises up the ranks, when one has no choice but to either reject one’s own faith, or reject Scientology.

It takes serious cash to advance to the level of Operating Thetan III, or OTIII. Once there, you discover something called the Wall of Fire. Scientology claims that these “materials” are so powerful and secret, if you are exposed to them without being prepared, you will die. The OTIII documents state that all religions were implanted in alien beings in a huge 3-D movie theater tens of millions of years ago. No, I’m not making this up. These religious ideas, symbols, and deities–those on which all major world religions are based, including Jesus, Buddha, and Mohammed–were, according to Hubbard, simply lies created by Xenu to keep everyone under his control. But wait! Before the alien spirits got to the great big movie theater in the sky, lots of other weird stuff happened to them.

Xenu sent out tax audit demands to all these trillions of people. As each one
entered the audit centers for the income tax inspections, the people were
seized, held down and injected with a mixture of alcohol and glycol, and
frozen. Then, all 13.5 trillion of these frozen people were put into
spaceships that looked exactly like DC8 airplanes

Read all about the wild and wacky history of Xenu here. Here’s another excellent OT3 source out of Carnegie Mellon University. Of course, they don’t tell you this when you first start Scientology. In the beginning, it’s all about realizing your fullest potential, becoming your best version of yourself, freeing yourself from negativity (or engrams, which you soaked up in the womb while your parents were having sex or arguing with one another). Many practitioners of the religion say that auditing, a kind of therapy session that involves being hooked up to a electro-psychometer, which supposedly measures mental mass and energy, has helped them kick cocaine habits and other destructive behaviors.

Auditing is expensive, and it’s also mandatory. It’s worth noting that everything you say during an auditing session is recorded; records of these millions of confessions are kept indefinitely. The church claims that these records are strictly confidential. However, one can see how leaving the organization would become particularly tricky once you have confessed to things that you’d rather not be made public.

You have to drop major money and invest a lot of time before they throw Xenu’s 3D Intergalactic Movie Theatre at you. And once you’ve reached OTIII, you have to either accept that you’ve been had, or believe all of the stuff about Xenu and the frozen spirits and the volcanoes–literally–in order to proceed on up the ranks. We all know that Scientology has strong Hollywood ties, and maybe it isn’t surprising for John Travolta and Tom Cruise to fall for a religion that’s based on a kind of universal, pre-history indoctrination through movies. But where it gets really weird is when you realize that news personality Greta Van Susteren is a Scientologist. It’s one thing when John Travolta thinks little alien spirits who got dumped into a volcano 75 million years ago are now invading our bodies–but when someone who’s supposedly delivering some form of news believes this stuff, you have to wonder about her degree of intellectual curiosity. Let’s say she didn’t know about Xenu when she had her first auditing session; a two-second Google search would have provided all the answers about just what she was getting herself into.

Scientology & divorce

While Tom and Katie’s divorce is the most recent and most tabloid-worthy, other celebrity marriages that reportedly broke up because of Scientology include Elizabeth Moss (Peggy Olson on Mad Men) and Fred Armisen (Moss was into Scientology, Armisen wasn’t), as well as Jason Lee and Carmen Llywelyn ( in this video, Llywelyn says Lee dumped her because she wasn’t into Scientology, and therefore, according to the church, she “didn’t exist”). Scientology, like most cults, requires its members to distance themselves from those who don’t believe.

The cult leader L. Ron Hubbard: not exactly a family man

Scientologists refer to the late science fiction writer and founder of Scientology as LRH or Ron. Within Scientology, he is a godlike figure, much beloved by those who absorb his books as great truths handed down by an unquestionable source. But the question naturally arises: if Scientology leads to happiness, spiritual enlightenment, and personal growth, why did L. Ron Hubbard cheat on his wives? Why was he a bigamist? Why did he attempt to disown one of his children? Why did two of his marriages end in divorce? More importantly, why did L. Ron Hubbard’s own son, Quentin Hubbard, commit suicide?  In this video, a former Scientologist talks about how L. Ron Hubbard drove his own son, Quentin, to suicide. Ironically, the proponents of Scientology say it helps them be better parents and spouses.

Reitman (Inside Scientology) offers a fascinating history of life aboard the Apollo, the ship where L. Ron Hubbard was waited on hand and foot by Messengers— teenaged girls as young as 13 in white hot pants, midriff-baring tops, and platform shoes–subjected to absurd punishments and confinement any time they were perceived to have disobeyed an order.

Scientology and Homosexuality

L Ron Hubbard thought gay persons should be incarcerated. On the “tonal scale,” he rated them, along with other “sexual perverts,” at a 1.1–one of the most dangerous to humanity. From LRH’s own writings:

“Such people should be taken from the society as rapidly as possible and uniformly institutionalized…One of the most effective measures of security that a nation threatened by war could take would be rounding up and placing in a cantonment, away from society, any 1.1 individual who might be connected with government, the military, or essential industry; since here are people who, regardless of any record of their family’s loyalty, are potential traitors, the very mode of operation of their insanity being betrayal. In this level is the slime of society, the sex criminals, the political subversives, the people whose apparently rational activities are yet but the devious writhings of secret hate.”

Hubbard, Science of Survival, pp. 88–90. Church of Scientology of California, 1975 edition. ISBN 0-88404-001-1

Scientology & Money

The church has loads of money, thanks in part to its list of celebrity followers. Scientology has tax-exempt status. Read Peter Reilly’s article for Forbes on why this tax-exempt status, awarded in a bizarre “thirty year treaty with the IRS,”  is unconstitutional. In case you’ve forgotten. Scientology did not begin as a religion. It was a self-help program called Dianetics. Reilly notes that L. Ron Hubbard decided to call it a religion only in 1966, for financial purposes:

The advantages in labeling it a religion dawned on him when he was confronted with the problem of transferring assets from one non-exempt corporation to an exempt but inactive one.

Church of Scientology Official Website 

The Church of Scientology website has a quiet, blue-hued video, featuring music that sounds a lot like the Chariots of Fire theme song, to lure you in. The website makes it look like a kinder, gentler religion. Of course, they don’t mention allegations of forced labor in the desert. Watch former Scientology couple Tanja and Stefan Castle talk about forced labor before their escape from Scientology here. Nor does the website mention Scientology leader David Miscavige’s violent tendencies, or the church’s practice of isolating members from “suppressive persons,” even their own spouses and parents. (See Astra Woodcraft’s story below).

How many Scientologists are there?

Not many, according to this well-researched article by Tony Ortega in the Village Voice, which puts the number of Scientologists in the U.S. at about 25,000. Ortega interviewed former Scientologist PR frontman Jeff Hawkins, who used to work for the organization’s Central Marketing unit. Hawkins says Scientology would be really stretching it to say that there are 40,000 members worldwide, and that reports of “millions” of members are outrageously inflated. Ortega notes a deposition in which former president of the Church of Scientology International Heber Jentzsch explained how the church came up with the phrase “millions of members:”

When Scientology says it has millions of “members,” Jentzsch admitted under oath, it is actually talking about the total number of people, since L. Ron Hubbard first came up withDianetics in 1950, who have ever picked up a Hubbard book, or filled out a “personality test,” or taken a course, or otherwise had any interaction with the organization in any way.

By reading this blog post, you have just added yourself to the Scientology brag books: even you could be counted as a member by these standards!

Scientology and Child Abuse
Many children who grew up in Scientology have come out as adults to talk about the abuse they suffered at Scientology’s prison camps for children. Read the transcript of one child’s ordeal here.
What exactly is Sea Org?

The Daily Mail reports that members of Sea Organization, the militaristic arm of Scientology reserved for its most devoted followers, are required to make a one-billion year pledge to Sea Org. Additionally, they “are paid just $50 a week and banned from leaving their base or they are tracked down by a special team who use emotional pressure or physical force to make them come back.” Astra Woodcraft, who grew up as little more than a slave in Sea Org, tells how she finally left the organization at 19. As a child and adolescent, she was forced to clean toilets, polish boots, and even reprimand adult Scientologists who had broken rules. At 15, she married a 22-year-old Scientologist, and a few years later she intentionally got pregnant, because that was the only way she could see of getting out of the cult. Most heartbreaking of all is the fact that, as soon as her family joined the Sea Org commune when Astra was 7, her mother ceased to be a mother to her; she claims that Scientology parents are encouraged to ignore their children, as Hubbard taught that the individual’s spiritual growth was more important than parenting. In order to leave the church, Astra had to separate from her family entirely; her mother refuses to see her. Read Astra Woodcraft’s story here. Woodcraft blogs about her experiences at Ex Scientology Kids.

What is auditing?

In her excellent Faith column for the Washington Post, Sally Quinn explains the odd practice of hooking oneself up to a tin can for a process called auditing. Sounds like a children’s game, but the Scientologists apparently take it very seriously:

In auditing, something called an electropsychometer, or e-meter, may be used more or less like a lie detector. It uses a current running through two can-like devices (originally they used Campbell’s soup cans, I’m told) to measure electromagnetic reactions in the body, which Scientologists claim represent a shift in the subject’s thinking.  The devices are only administered through trained Scientologists and carry a disclaimer saying that they are a purely religious artifact to avoid government scrutiny.

In the case that one half of a married couple did something, or even thought something, wrong,

Both would be compelled to tell the auditor and they could both be put on an e-meter where any inconsistencies supposedly would surface. The person found at fault could then be sent to an ethics officer who would decide on a penalty.

Auditing and “sec-checks” on children
Many have postulated that Katie Holmes’s divorce from Tom Cruise may have had a lot to do with the fact that Suri Cruise, now 6, would have been increasingly indoctrinated into church beliefs. While the Scientology spokespersons have stated publicly that children are not subjected to auditing, Tony Ortega found evidence on the website of The Mace-Kingsley Family Center in Clearwater, Florida a school run by the Church of Scientology, that even infants are indeed subjected to auditing and children as young as 6 go through “sec-checks”–security checks that, among other things, require children to report on their own parents and family members who might be talking negatively about the church. Read Ortega’s disturbing article about the auditing of children in Scientology-run schools.

As Ortega points out, the school’s website specifically talks about auditing babies:

So what then can you possibly audit with an infant, baby or child? There are many, many processes that help a being get oriented to the physical universe and become in better control of his body and environment. The results of this have been a happier child, who grows well with little illness and accidents.

The Scientology school’s website is incredibly creepy. The website has a whole section on auditing babies, who, if forced to lie down in their cribs long enough, the website says, might experience a “win.” Here’s what they have to say about babies, taken from LRH’s own writings:

“After all, you must remember what this being has just been through,… a child is somebody that’s just trying to get over a death which might have been easy and might have been violent. He’s just trying to recover from having shed all of his responsibilities. He’s trying desperately to reorient himself in existence.” (LRH Lecture 23 from The State of Man Congress)

The site features a number of disturbing testimonials from parents who have put their babies and toddlers through auditing, including this one from a parent who seems singularly ill-qualified to be caring for children:

“Last week my son went from being completely a dread to have around into a sweet little guy. He is all happy and sweet to have around now. This has helped me to do all the things I need to without being upset. It is great to have him around and his communication is higher. That’s a big difference: he communicates now!”

Suri Cruise is certainly at the age where there would have been immense pressure from the church for her to undergo auditing. One of the primary goals of auditing is to weed out anyone in the subject’s life who may have expressed any doubts about Scientology. Once such “suppressive persons” have been identified, there is an all-out campaign to get the auditing subject to distance herself as much as possible from the “suppressive person.” Katie Holmes could have seen where this was going; Nicole Kidman, who never believed in Scientology, publicly stated that her own adopted children with Tom Cruise did not call her “mommy,;” the children, now grown, were encouraged to distance themselves from Kidman.

Just how expensive is Scientology?

Scientology bills itself as a “50,000 year long search,” and claims that it’s a religion for everyman, but what you won’t find on the front page of the website is the price tag, which, according to this article at About.com, is about $250,000.