"Knowledge, Truth, Secrets -- the are the guts and anatomy of life. They must not then be owned. They must not then be hidden or bent. They must be permitted to stand out in the bold sunlight for all to see. For only when they are to be seen are they safe things to have, to hold, to know. This is the Second Book of Dianetics. It could mean a new Earth. It could mean a new Freedom. But whatever it means, it cannot mean nothing in the sense Man uses that word. For you cannot unveil the SECRET and have it ever be quite so secret ever agian."--Leaf Ron Hubbard.

Provides a full description of the "reactive mind" and explains how to achieve the "state of clear".

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD AND NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower comes “an utterly necessary story” (The Wall Street Journal) that pulls back the curtain on the church of Scientology: one of the most secretive organizations at work today. • The Basis for the HBO Documentary. Scientology presents itself as a scientific approach to spiritual enlightenment, but its practices have long been shrouded in mystery. Now Lawrence Wright—armed with his investigative talents, years of archival research, and more than two hundred personal interviews with current and former Scientologists—uncovers the inner workings of the church. We meet founder L. Ron Hubbard, the highly imaginative but mentally troubled science-fiction writer, and his tough, driven successor, David Miscavige. We go inside their specialized cosmology and language. We learn about the church’s legal attacks on the IRS, its vindictive treatment of critics, and its phenomenal wealth. We see the church court celebrities such as Tom Cruise while consigning its clergy to hard labor under billion-year contracts. Through it all, Wright asks what fundamentally comprises a religion, and if Scientology in fact merits this Constitutionally-protected label.

The Handbook of Scientology brings together a collection of fresh studies of the most persistently controversial of all contemporary New Religions. In recent years, increasing scholarly attention has been directed at the Church of Scientology, resulting in a small tsunami of new scholarship. We have finally reached a point in time where a book on Scientology need not restrict itself to basics. Thus, for example, the historical chapters in the present volume are not really aimed at providing elementary facts on Scientology’s background, but, rather, focus on understanding how the Church of Scientology developed over the years. In short, the Handbook of Scientology will provide a wealth of new information on a topic that one might otherwise have thought exhausted. Contributors are Matthew Charet, Dorthe Refslund Christensen, Carole M. Cusack, Bernard Doherty, Marco Frenschkowski, Liselotte Frisk, Kjersti Hellesøy, Don Jolly, James R. Lewis, Renee Lockwood, András Máté-Tóth, Gábor Dániel Nagy, Johanna Petsche, Erin Prophet, Susan Raine, David G. Robertson, Mikael Rothstein, Lisbeth Tuxin Rubin, Nicole S. Ruskell, Shannon Trosper Schorey, Michelle Swainson, Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen, Hugh G. Urban, Donald A. Westbrook, and Benjamin Zeller.

Scientology is arguably the most persistently controversial of all contemporary New Religious Movements. James R. Lewis has assembled an unusually comprehensive anthology, incorporating a wide range of different approaches. In this book, a group of well-known scholars of New Religious Movements offers an extensive and evenhanded overview and analysis of all of these aspects of Scientology, including the controversies to which it continues to give rise.