Incident (Scientology)

Incident (Scientology)

L. Ron Hubbard used the term Incident in a specific context for auditing in Scientology and Dianetics: the description of space opera events in our Universe's distant past, involving alien interventions in our past lives. It is a basic belief of Scientology that a human being is actually an immortal spiritual being, termed a thetan, that is presently trapped on planet Earth in a "meat body". The thetan has had innumerable past lives and it is accepted in Scientology that lives antedating the thetan's arrival on Earth lived in extraterrestrial cultures.

Although Incidents can literally be any incident that occurs anywhere on the Whole Track, Hubbard's writings dwelled almost exclusively on fanciful ones from Earth's prehistory, because these "key incidents" are crucial to auditing. Many of them first appeared in Hubbard's book What to Audit (later retitled A History of Man).

In his writings and lectures, Hubbard describes many key Incidents said to have occurred to thetans during the past few trillion years. Generally speaking, these followed a consistent pattern. A hostile alien civilization would capture free thetans and brainwash them with implants designed to confuse them or otherwise render them more amenable to control. Often, instances of implantation are termed Incidents, while the subject of the implants are often termed Goals, although these are not set-in-stone rules. Not all Incidents deal with implants; some are simply unusual and traumatic events said to have happened to thetans millions of years ago. This trauma is said to linger for trillions of years and causes unresolved psychological problems in the present day. According to Hubbard, only Scientology methods can resolve the burdens left by such traumas.