More than 1,000 lost pieces of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's work were unveiled in a New Year's celebration at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles that was broadcast to churches around the world last week.
"This is breakthrough - it would be like Christianity finding lost Gospels on the teachings of Jesus Christ," said Bill Orozco, a Los Angeles consultant who has worked with Scientology's Celebrity Centre in Hollywood.
In its five-plus decades of existence, Scientology has grown to include millions of members worldwide, including high-profile celebrities such as actors John Travolta and Tom Cruise.
But it remains a controversial
In this photo taken on Thursday, Jan. 7, 2010, The Bridge Publications, Inc., Mikkel Bossen applies LAbels to CD boxes in Los Angeles. Thousands of previously unreleased recordings of lectures and writings by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, are being released in digital format. ((AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes))
practice, one that critics liken to a cult that takes financial advantage of its members. The church strongly objects to such accusations. But its status as an official religion remains disputed in many countries throughout the world.
The newly released materials include 1,020 lectures and hundreds of corresponding booklets from courses and other sessions with Scientology ministers from 1953 to 1961.
They include discussions of how Hubbard, who started the religion in California in the 1950s, arrived at the principles of Dianetics and his research on everything from decision-making to personal responsibility.
Some of the materials were believed to have been lost.
Church leaders said the documents are the culmination of a 25-year project to locate, restore and transcribe lost pieces of the Scientology founder's work.
Scientology official Pamela Lancaster, whose late husband was involved in tracking down Hubbard's lost works, said there are no doubts the materials are genuine.
"They are hand-written notes and day diaries in Mr. Hubbard's own handwriting and lectures in his own voice," said Lancaster, public affairs director of the Celebrity Centre.
"This means so much to us. We can finally train people as if Mr. Hubbard were here himself."
Lee Holzinger, a spokesman for the Scientology church missions in Ventura and Santa Barbara, said the discoveries will add important new writings and lectures by Hubbard to the church's literature.
"Our church is still relatively young, but so much has happened in half a century, and now with this, it is finally approaching full development," said Holzinger. "It's taken such a long project to make all this knowledge that he developed and documented made available to everyone."
The discovery of lost Hubbard works, however, could open an unexpected Pandora's box for Scientologists, according to Jody Myers, professor of religious studies at California State University, Northridge.
"It is not an unknown phenomenon in religions to find early documents written by the church's founders," said Myers. "The issue is: Are they authentic early documents or have they been created by people who want a change in the direction of the church? This is true of all religions.
"As a religious scholar, what I can say is that sometimes people want their church to go in a different direction and what follows is the discovery of ancient texts."
But leaders of the Church of Scientology maintain the recovered works of their leader are significant.
Tommy Davis, the head of the church's Celebrity Centre in Hollywood and son of actress and Scientologist Anne Archer, compared the findings to "discovering that Buddha, unbeknownst to anybody, had sat down and wrote down the entirety of his discoveries and it could be verified that he wrote it."
Lancaster, a member for four decades, likened the findings to "if someone in Jesus' time had recorded all the wonderful lectures Jesus had with his disciples."
Jane Dockery, executive director of the Simi Valley Scientology mission in Moorpark, said she has already ordered copies of all the materials - contained on 970 compact discs and corresponding booklets in 57 binders costing $7,500.
"Scientology is the study of wisdom, and it's good to know we now have all the wisdom and all it's missing pieces," she said.
"For us, it feels like we're securing our spiritual future."
According to officials, the papers were recovered through a painstaking hunt included finding tapes and documents in a Wichita, Kan., basement, a storage trailer in Phoenix, and a garage in Oakland, Calif.
The release of the documents marks the third and final batch of Hubbard works to be distributed as part of the decades-long project initiated by Hubbard himself but carried out after his 1986 death by the church's current leader, David Miscavige.
Releases in 2005 and 2007 included updated versions of 18 basic Scientology books to correct transcriptional errors, as well as hundreds of other lectures given by Hubbard.
"It's so huge for our religion having these materials. It's really a renaissance," said Davis. "It's as if it's a rediscovery of our own scriptures and what they hold and what they mean."
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