THE THETAN

	A man is composed of three parts: A body, a mind and the individual himself—the spiritual being or thetan.

For all that Dianetics resolved, the actual nature of the spiritual being was still unknown, even though it was apparent from the beginning that this was a question which would one day need resolution. The breakthrough from Dianetics to Scientology came in the autumn of 1951, after Mr. Hubbard observed many people practicing Dianetics and found a commonality of experience and phenomena which were of a profoundly spiritual nature—contact with past-life experiences. After carefully reviewing all relevant research data, Mr. Hubbard isolated the answer: Man had been misled by the idea that he had a soul. In fact, man is a spiritual being, who has a mind and a body. The spirit is the source of all that is good, decent and creative in the world: it is the individual being himself. With this discovery, Mr. Hubbard founded the religion of Scientology, for he had moved firmly into the field traditionally belonging to religion—the realm of the human spirit.

Awareness of the human spirit has existed as a universal ingredient of almost every religion in every culture. However, each defined the spiritual essence of man differently. Terms such as “spirit” and “soul” were encumbered by centuries of various meanings. A new word was needed. Mr. Hubbard adopted the Greek letter theta ( * ), which he had assigned in 1950 to represent the transcendent “life force.” By adding an “n,” the word “thetan” thus described the individual unit of “life force"—the spiritual being—which is the person.