Scientology: A History of Man

Scientology: A History of Man is a book by L. Ron Hubbard, first published in 1952 under the title What to Audit by the Scientific Press of Phoenix. According to the author, it provides "a coldblooded and factual account of your last sixty trillion years." It has gone through many editions since its first publication and is a key text of the Church of Scientology. The book has been ridiculed by critics of Scientology for its unusual writing style and pseudoscientific claims; it has been described as "a slim pretense at scientific method ... blended with a strange amalgam of psychotherapy, mysticism and pure science fiction; mainly the latter."
According to Christopher Evans (citing auditor Perry Chapdelaine), the book originated in Scientology auditing sessions held in Wichita, Kansas in early 1952. Chapdelaine said that Hubbard would "settle himself on a couch with a tape recorder handy and an 'auditor' who would be expected to provide appropriate feedback. In no time a flow of introspection - like the free association characteristic of a psychoanalytic session - would begin."
In a different account, Hubbard's son, L. Ron Hubbard Jr. (otherwise known as "Nibs," or Ronald DeWolf) and Hubbard senior's medical officer, Jim Dincalci, have both stated that the book's content originated when Hubbard fed his son amphetamines:
This material was first released as four lectures which Hubbard delivered to Scientologists on March 10, 1952. Further lectures followed in Phoenix, Arizona in April, and in July 1952 the book What to audit; a list and description of the principal incidents to be found in a human being was published by the Phoenix-based "Scientific Press" - an imprint established by Hubbard. The same book was published under the title A History of Man by the London-based Hubbard Association of Scientologists. It was reissued in two substantially modified editions, in 1968 (minus chapter 11 of the original book and under the current title of Scientology: A History of Man), in 1988, and again in 2007, this time with a set of lectures expanding on the content.
Since 1968, the book's jacket has displayed a picture of a hirsute, unkempt "caveman" dressed in a fur, eating the raw meat from a thigh bone of an animal. This appears to refer to one of the past-life incidents described by Hubbard in the book. Many Scientology books have similar curious pictures on their jackets; according to former Scientologist Bent Corydon, their purpose is to restimulate past-life memories and make the book irresistible to purchasers. Corydon states,
As the original title suggests, What to Audit / A History of Man was written as a guide for Scientologist auditors, pointing out various Space opera incidents said to occur in all past lives.
The book proposes that the human body houses two separate entities. The most important is a thetan, said by Hubbard to be the true self of a person, accompanied by a genetic entity, or 'GE': "a sort of low-grade soul" located more or less in the centre of the body, and which passes to another body when the current body dies.
The book describes numerous incidents that, according to Hubbard, occurred to the thetan or the genetic entity in past lives. Although commonly misinterpreted as an alternative theory of evolution, the purpose of the incidents list is that individuals have subconscious memories of past lives as clams, sloths, and cavemen, and that those memories result in neuroses, known as 'engrams'. These stages of biological history, some typified by an animal and others typified by other items, were marked by traumatic incidents which have to be "run out" using an E-meter.
Hubbard emphasized that these incidents are not limited to the list below: for example, he notes "there are many steps and incidents between the Birds and the Sloth". The list arbitrarily names some incidents that Hubbard found particularly worth commenting on:
Hubbard also described numerous incidents of "implanting" by hostile alien races, which caused traumatic memories in the thetan. This formed part of an elaborate cosmology of alien civilizations, interstellar dictators, and brainwashing implants - collectively described as "Space opera". In any incident, the thetan might be either protagonist, or victim.
As Hubbard himself said in the book, A History of Man was written as a technical aid for experienced Scientologists. According to ex-Scientologist Jon Atack, "The material in the book is hardly encountered in contemporary auditing, but is still required reading for the second secret "OT" level of Scientology." However, Scientology: A History of Man is part of The Basics Books and Lectures Collection of materials, and as such, is required reading for the current Scientology Class VI Auditor Course. It has apparently been required reading for Level A of the Saint Hill Special Briefing Course (another name for Class VI) at least since 1981, as shown by the course curriculum of that date.
Christopher Evans notes that the book "marks a transition point at which the technically oriented Dianetics became the philosophically oriented Scientology."
A History of Man has attracted a good deal of comment from critical reviewers and analysts of Scientology. As Marco Frenschkowski notes, it is a "very strange book easily ridiculed". Ex-Scientologist Jon Atack describes it as "among the most bizarre of Hubbard's works, [which] deserves the cult status that some truly dreadful science fiction movies have achieved". The Anderson Report of 1965 comments that "To say it is an astonishing document does not adequately convey the peculiar qualities or contents of "The History of Man ... For compressed nonsense and fantasy it must surpass anything theretofore written." Hubbard's unofficial biographer Russell Miller describes it in similar terms as "one of Hubbard's most bizarre works and possibly the most absurd book ever written", which "invited the derision which was inevitably forthcoming." Bent Corydon, a former Scientologist, criticises A History of Man on Scientological grounds, pointing out that Hubbard's "imaginings, opinions, or observations" are presented as established facts - in effect, instructing the Scientologist in what he should remember, rather than letting him find out for himself.
Apart from the unusual style of narration, which Miller describes as having "wobbled uncertainly between schoolboy fiction and a pseudo-scientific medical paper", many of Hubbard's claims in A History of Man are incompatible with established scientific knowledge.