COST: Acronym for Church of Spiritual Technology, an organization which officially archives the many works of L. Ron Hubbard. Quite appropriate, as joining Scientology, as opposed, to say, the Lutheran Church, will cost you a lot of money in the long run. Also abbreviated as CST. Theoretically the Church of Spiritual Technology is an even higher authority within Scientology than the Religious Technology Center, which is the more publicly powerful CoS entity. COST controls all the copyrights on the writings of Hubbard.