"Fairly early on, Dianetics ran into a major problem: going back on a chain of incidents to an earlier similar incident often ended up with events that clearly didn't happen during this lifetime.
Now what? Either they are imaginary incidents, or they are real.
Insisting that they were imaginary caused most clients to relapse, lose any gains they may have derived by talking about these incidents. This clearly isn't in the best interests of either the client or the practitioner.
OK, so they must (!) be real. From accepting this premise it is immediately obvious that something survives this mortal coil. Scientology evolved to address the needs of this spiritual being, which Hubbard and The Church call a 'Thetan' a name derived from the Greek letter theta, an early symbol for life (For a while the Earth Day crowd was using theta for everything- much to the amusement of scientology true believers)"
Maybe. Or maybe Hubbard wanted people to think that they were delving into past lives as part of his attempt to turn Scientology into a religion. After all, I believe that belief in past lives is one of the reasons why Scientology is considered a religion. BTW, is belief in relincarnation compulsory in Scientology? I've heard that it wasn't
Perhaps, but most people run on enough dianetics will find a few past life incidents. Whether this indicates actual past lives is well beyond the scope of my understanding. I've run past life incidents. They seemed real enough to me. The key thing, regardless of their actual reality, is that people feel better after uncovering an explanation for their condition, and experience relief. For me, that suffices.
BTW, is belief in relincarnation compulsory in Scientology? I've heard that it wasn't
It wasn't last time I checked. I suspect that with the "New Era Dianetics", which runs much faster than the previous styles, more people get their problems handled without going to past lives.