Like many other people, I knew very little about Scientology. I knew something about Tom Cruise and another something about placentas. Until recently, that was just about all of the time I was willing to dedicate to learning about it. After seeing the hundreds of people who have dedicated their lives to it as I drove through Clearwater, Fla. where the headquarters resides, I decided it was time to dig a little deeper.

Scientology was founded in 1958 by L. Ron Hubbard, who was an American science-fiction writer. The church’s religious texts are from Hubbard who wrote on things like “dianetics.”

Dianetics, according to the Church of Scientology International’s Web site, is a “spiritual healing technology” that can alleviate unwanted feelings or thoughts. The ultimate goal is to obtain the state of “Clear,” which can be obtained by the thetan (spiritual being of a person) going through dianetic auditing (something akin to counseling).

According to the official Church of Scientology Web site, “Scientology is about the individual man or woman. Its goal is to bring an individual to a sufficient understanding of himself and his life and free him to make improvements where he finds them necessary and in the ways he sees fit.” They believe that each person has a different truth, saying “Only those things which one finds true for himself are true.”

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