Is Scientology a Cult?

The thetan reference stems from Scientology’s genesis story that is only revealed after parishioners (a.k.a. customers) pay tens of thousands of dollars to reach Operating Thetan Level III. This science fiction UFO fantasy story is now so widely known that it was even featured in a 2005 episode of the animated sitcom television series South Park. Around 75 million years ago Xenu, the story begins, the ruler of a Galactic Confederation of 76 planets, transported billions of his charges in spaceships similar to DC-8 jets to a planet called Teegeeack (Earth). He then vaporized them with Hydrogen bombs, scattering to the winds their souls, called thetans, which were then rounded up in electronic traps and implanted with false ideas. These corrupted thetans are still around and can attach themselves to people today, leading to drug and alcohol abuse, addiction, depression, and other psychologicaland social ailments that only Scientology “auditing” employing Electropsychometers (E-meters) and numerous associated classes can cure.

As a student of religion, curious about the genesis of such genesis stories, I tracked down the origin of the Xenu tale through the acclaimed author Harlan Ellison, who told me he was there at the birth of Scientology. At a late 1940s meeting in New York of  a science fiction writer’s group called the Hydra Club, Then science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard was complaining to L. Sprague de Camp and the other club menbers about writing for a penny a word. “Lester del Rey then said half jokingly, ‘What you really ought to do is create a religion because it will be tax free,’ and at that point everyone in the room started chiming in with ideas for this new religion. So the idea was a Gestalt that Ron caught on to and assimilated the details. He then wrote it up as ‘Dianetics: A New Science of the Mind’ and sold it to John W. Campbell, Jr., who published it in  Astounding Scicnce Fiction in 1950.”