IV. IS SCIENTOLOGY A RELIGION?(...)

According to Scientology, our humanity is composed of different parts: the body, the mind, and the thetan. The thetan in Scientology is analogous to the soul in Christianity and the spirit in Hinduism. Part of the problem of life is that human beings have lost an awareness of their true nature. In Scientology, this means an awareness of themselves as thetans. Yet awareness and knowledge of oneself as a thetan is essential to well-being and survival. Human beings often confuse their deepest reality with the body or the mind, or see themselves as only body and/or mind. But for Scientology it is essential that human beings recover and recognize their spiritual nature, that, in the language of Scientology, "one is a thetan." As thetans, human beings are "spiritual, immortal, and 'virtually indestructable.'"

Since the awareness of oneself as thetan has been obscured by "engrams" or lost in the confusions of thetan with the body and/or the mind, a chief religious task is to recover one's spirituality. It is essential since "the thetan is the source of all creation and is life itself." This awareness then is the first stage in the practice of a religious way that will lead us to become, in Scientology terms, Clear. As human beings become aware of their true nature, according to Scientology, and of the concentric circles of reality, then, Scientologists believe, they can proceed, freely and creatively, through life's Eight Dynamics. (See What is Scientology?, 1992 edition)