ANSWERS TO COMMON QUESTIONS
How did Scientology start?
L. Ron Hubbard began his studies of the mind and spirit in 1923, resulting in a manuscript entitled “Excalibur” in 1938. It was in this unpublished work that the word “Scientology” first appeared to describe what Mr. Hubbard termed “the study of knowing how to know.” He decided against publishing the book, saying, “Excalibur did not contain any therapy of any kind but was simply a discussion of the composition of life.” And he added, “I decided to go further.”
The “going further” resulted in Dianetics, a subject which was, in fact, introduced into the much broader field of Scientology to provide some kind of “therapy” that could be easily utilized by the man in the street. Thus, in 1947, he wrote a manuscript detailing some of these discoveries.
It was not published at that time, but circulated among friends, who copied it and passed it on to others. (This manuscript was ultimately formally published in 1951 as Dianetics: The Original Thesis and later republished as The Dynamics of Life.)
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