Well, years and years ago, based on some random thinking and no empirical data a science fiction writer wrote a book on a system he called "Dianetics"... It was more or less a self-help system he thought up at random based upon various influences (more or less combining some eastern and pagan religious practices with some psychological methods)... This was all well and good, then Hubbard saw that for whatever reason, this book sold particularly well, and the man saw he could make a good deal of money off of this... So he wrote another book, and another. With all this writing, he needs some additional information to include in these books, so, he found a device called the "E-meter" which functions as a particularly crude lie detector by measuring the electrical resistance in one's skin, and he founded the Church of Scientology as a way of gaining perpetual profit off of the same material. Hubbard has stated at many times over the years that he founded the church for profit, as have his children.
Time when on, and Scientology began to gain practices that helped it grow as a religion, like forcing members to break all contact with anyone who questions it, gathering a group to launch a legal attack, whether there was basis for it or not, on anyone who publicly criticized it, "auditing" techniques quite similar to those used in re-education camps, and promises of super powers upon reaching the religion's highest levels. It is unclear whether these techniques, the brainwashing ones or otherwise, were designed, or merely stumbled upon by luck.
Anyway, so after a while, Hubbard, a SCIENCE FICTION WRITER, has a core of devout followers, and this is when things start going particularly screwy, as those around him ate up his every word, no matter how strange it may have seemed. The religion had already introduced a concept of past lives. so Hubbard began weaving strange stories about a man named Xenu who came to earth and destroyed all life millions of years ago, leaving all of our reincarnated forms traumatized, his critics became agents of Xenu and this story became something only the enlightened who had endured long portions of time within scientology could understand because the enlightenment it has brought them, again helping the highest levels feel like they were an elite in some way. He also retreated to the ocean, gather a small fleet of scientologist-owned vessels and deaming himself "the commodor". He gathered together young girls dressed in white hotpants while at sea to serve his every whim, and taking up punishments such as throwing people in tiny dirty lockers for days to weeks at a time and blindfolding people and throwing them overboard (a 40 foot drop)...
More recently, after his death, there have been other wonderful occurances within the religion, like the death of Lisa McPherson, whom they prevented from receiving treatment for a mental illness and who was found dehydrated covered in cockroach bites in a scientologist facility.... Scientology isn't recognized as a religion in may nation yet and actually has public service warning leaflets, like those on organized crime and islamic extremism in Germany.