L. RON HUBBARD AND SCIENTOLOGY

Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (1911-1986) was an American pulp science fiction writer who, in 1950, created a new psychotherapy called Dianetics. But Dianetics imploded by the end of its first year. By transforming it two years later into the entry-point to an influential new religion -- Scientology -- and by organizing Scientology into a formidable and aggressive Church and series of feeder organizations, Hubbard eventually created a lucrative financial empire that netted him hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of followers.

In its early years Scientology added more and more new, encompassing (and sometimes secret) doctrines. The religion gradually prospered. Hubbard established Churches of Scientology in many cities and countries. Associated organizations and companies controlled by Hubbard ("orgs", in Hubbard's parlance), were established to suck in new followers, relieve them of their money, and distribute the profits. Scientology came up against critics, dropouts, and government investigations. Additional branches (like the so-called "Ethics" branch) were created to safeguard the religion and its "tech" (doctrines) from "squirrels" (traitors, renegades, critics). At Hubbard's death in 1986 the Church of Scientology passed to new leadership under David Miscavige, a believer who had gotten involved with the religion as a child. At this writing (August 2001) it appears to have an uncertain future. Scientology claims three million members worldwide. It may have 100,000 (a friend estimates 50,000). As it leaves further behind its charismatic founder, will it thrive or disappear?

The major reason that the Church of Scientology has grown is widespread ignorance. Specifically, the public is ignorant about the true story of Scientology's founder L. Ron Hubbard. It is ignorant about the doctrines (some utterly ridiculous) and history of the Church. And in this atmosphere of ignorance the Church continues.

In recent years the spread of the Internet has caused the critics of Scientology to get in touch with each other and to spread their ideas. Many have published hitherto secret Church "scriptures," often on many sites. The Church of Scientology has attempted to use law enforcement in various countries to shut down such sites and to stifle its critics. At the same time, it attempts to use the Internet to tell its own side of the story.

Throughout his life L. Ron Hubbard spread an absolutely enormous numbers of tall stories -- well, lies -- about his life. His Church, by uncritically continuing to publish Hubbard's writings, full of these lies, further spreads them.

Those who believe in Scientology tend to read only the approved scriptures of the religion, entirely written by Hubbard; like the believers of many faiths, they read no criticism of it by anyone. (Hubbard encouraged this. He discouraged criticism of him or his religion through spreading libels about his critics and hitting them with massive nuisance lawsuits. The Church continues the lawsuit policy.) The official scriptures of the religion often have a suitably high and moral tone. Believers usually get involved with Scientology after being approached on the street by earnest, clean-cut, happy- and confident-seeming young people who try to get them to fill out a personality test. Or newcomers discover Hubbard's first book, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (1950), still a bestseller after 50 years. (The Church helps get Hubbard's books on the bestseller lists.) Or newcomers come across another entry-point, the book Scientology: What Is It? This latter book, apparently by Hubbard (it is in his -- ahem -- distinctive neologistic and globally ungrammatical style) is full of Hubbard's characteristic colorful whoppers about his life. (Check out the hilariously naïve illustrations of the "testing moments" in Ron's life!) Other newcomers discover the religion through its many front organizations: Narconon, for instance, a supposed drug-abuse-combatting organization, gives its clients Hubbard's Purification Regimen (heavy on niacin) and introduces them to Dianetics.

Thus many of the gullible believers do not appreciate the well-documented fact that the founder of their religion was an egregious con-man and, in the words of a distinguished judge, a "charlatan."

Hubbard's real life has been explored in several biographies. For a long time the best was easily Bare-Faced Messiah by Russell Miller, a journalist and author of biographies of Hugh Hefner and J. Paul Getty. Miller demonstrates how Hubbard began telling tall stories about his life story as a teenager. Telling the Big Lie about his life, infinitely amplifying his accomplishments, became Hubbard's standard practice. It enabled him to win credibility and privileges, wealth, and entré to whatever or whomever he wanted.

Hubbard invented a grander childhood for himself in Nebraska than his true one. He invented a university career as a pioneering nuclear scientist (actually he failed the only course he took, and dropped out of his university after two years). He invented a mature career as a fearless explorer of Caribbean geography and seeker of gold and treasure (his ship reached only three of 16 ports for which it sailed; he ran out of money and was forced to return to Baltimore). He invented a supposed career as a philosopher exploring Chinese thought (he was really more of a tourist; he did not go to most of the places he claimed to have visited; he disliked China and the Chinese). Hubbard invented a career as a distinguished sailor and barnstorming aviator (actually, he was poor in both fields; he seems to have ridden along with a friend who was the pilot; he was never licensed for anything but gliders).

Oh, and I left out his supposed eight-year career as a United States Marine, as told by Hubbard to a skeptical pulp writer of Westerns, Frank Gruber, in the 1930s.

When the United States was desperate for naval commanders in World War II, it put Hubbard in command of a patrol vessel; Hubbard proceeded to attack submarines only he could detect. Off the coast of Oregon he called in other sub chasers to attack a vessel: they dropped thirty-five depth charges. (His commander decided that Hubbard had attacked an underwater metal deposit.) A little later Hubbard shelled a Mexican island for no reason with his three-inch guns, nearly creating an international incident. These were the only "battles" in which he engaged during World War II.

In later tall stories Hubbard invented battles in which he had heroically fought, and had "both legs broken." And after World War II he further elaborated on this, inventing terrible battle injuries to his body to justify his obtaining a veteran's pension. By dint of persistence he was eventually successful, and got $165 a month -- for bursitis.

Well, I've left out many, many of the best parts. (I hope to flesh out these incidents: there are too many to let go to waste!)

Actually, before World War II Hubbard had been, beginning in 1934, an imaginative, colourful, prolific, and hyper-fast writer of pulp science-fiction stories. (Check out his "Doc Methuselah" stories, Fear, and Typewriter in the Sky.) He was a valuable contributor; his work was perfectly adequate and acceptable to science-fiction magazines like Astounding Stories. After the war science fiction writer L. Sprague de Camp (died 2001) and numerous others heard Hubbard say at a fan convention that the real money was not in writing science fiction; it was in creating a new religion. This Hubbard proceeded to do.

One of Hubbard's admirers, his science fiction editor John Campbell, was a talented but erratic eccentric. Campbell edited the science fiction magazine Astounding Stories (later Analog Science Fiction, Science Fact -- it still exists). Campbell believed in psychic phenomena, and was open to unlikely mind-stretching concepts and implausible inventions (e.g., psi powers and the "Deane drive." Don't ask.). In May 1950 Campbell opened the pages of Astounding to Hubbard for an article on Hubbard's new science-cum-psychotherapy Dianetics. The article was called "Dianetics: the Evolution of a Science."

The article was a great success. Hubbard then published a longer version the same year as Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health. The book was a smash.

Hubbard proceeded to establish his new "science." Unfortunately for Hubbard, he had claimed that his new science enabled one to have a perfect memory. After a subject (the "pre-clear") had successfully undergone therapy to remove his "engrams" (traumatic early experiences -- sometimes fetal -- supposedly etched onto the brain) through use of a question-and-answer technique involving an "auditor" and a lie-detector called an "E-meter", the pre-clear would become a "clear" with a faultless memory.

At a Los Angeles gathering in late 1950, Hubbard announced the new therapy. He produced on stage the first clear. A questioner in a suit rose from the crowd and faced the clear. The questioner looked at him for a moment, then turned his back. "What color is my tie?" he asked.

The clear could not remember!

The audience walked out in disgust.

His movement falling apart, Hubbard went on an odyssey across the United States, looking for financial supporters (i.e., "suckers"). He went on claiming that Dianetics worked. He claimed it might cure cancer and protect one from fatal atomic radiation. (The book he wrote on this subject is a hoot, and its cover illustration is priceless.) Hubbard dabbled in black magic of the Aleister Crowley kind, became a bigamist, found some supporters by his usual means, i. e., telling tall tales about his accomplishments. He invented Scientology. The religion grew.

Scientology was a 1952 extension of Dianetics. Human beings, said Hubbard, have a kind of soul called a "thetan" within them. It isn't enough to be a "clear". Clears must go on to free the thetan within (through a series of expensive courses, naturally). Hubbard announced a whole raft of courses: Operating Thetan I, Operating Thetan (OT) II, and so on. Over time more and more expensive courses were added in an apparently never-ending series.

Within a few years Hubbard organized a church, the Church of Scientology, to shelter his earnings. He organized a vast number of front companies and organizations (Narconon, for example) to give himself and the Church awards and prestige (they also pulled in suckers and turned them over to Dianetics). The rest is history. The best single account is here.

In later years, Hubbard launched a number of auxiliary organizations like Narconon. Officially to counter the spread of drug abuse, Narconon actually serves Scientology by bringing in a stream of young people to be introduced to the religion. Dianetics' galvanic-response-detector machine, the E-meter, is used to give a quasi-scientific atmosphere to Dianetics "testing" (no reputable scientist thinks the E-meter works except as a lie-detector).

The later history of the Church is the story of Hubbard's flight from any jurisdiction where he was in trouble. He lived in England for a while, at East Grinstead in Sussex in the former mansion of an Indian maharajah. Then he moved onto a "yacht" on the high seas, actually a rather decrepit boat (his "sea org"). Over time Hubbard became increasingly irritable, unkempt, and curmudgeonly, like the later Howard Hughes. He eventually returned to the United States, and dabbled in directing a few films for the Church. He also wrote a science-fiction novel called Battlefield Earth (later filmed starring John Travolta, a church member) and a further enormous 12-volume science fiction series of novels.

In Hubbard's later years the Church got in trouble for attempting to steal government records; eight scientologists (including Hubbard's third wife) went to prison. The government began looking for Hubbard. Money had disappeared from the Church and into his pocket, without income taxes having been paid. Hubbard disappeared, and was living in a trailer on a California ranch he had just bought near San Luis Obispo when he died.

The Church of Scientology has so far survived the death of its founder. In the spreading of Scientology Hubbard exerted every effort. Some think that he came at last to believe in Scientology himself. Since we know that Hubbard often attempted to hypnotize himself to believe in his own future, perhaps this is true.

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Books and Web Sites About L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology

Atack, Jon. A Piece of Blue Sky: Scientology, Dianetics & L. Ron Hubbard Exposed. New York: Lyle Stuart, 1990.

The best book on Hubbard and his religion/psychotherapy, by a young Englishman involved with the Church (in the U.K.) from 1974-1983. Gives a complete history of both Hubbard and the Church up to 1990. Detailed, often very funny, unanswerable. Unlikely to be improved upon. Laudatory preface by Russell Miller, the author of the next best book. Out of print, but available from bookstores or free online here.

Cooper, Paulette. The Scandal of Scientology.

Written by a concerned observer, this was the first book to attack Scientology. Alas, I have not seen it. It is rare, because the Church of Scientology effectively suppressed it.

DeWolfe, Ron, and Corydon, Bent. L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman. Barricade Books, 1992.

DeWolfe is a son (or step-son, I forget) of Hubbard's. His book, while containing a few anecdotes about his father's sins and abandonment of his family, is quite poor. It lacks the hilarious detail and scholarly care of Russell Miller's (see below). Further, as Martin Gardner says, it "is carelessly written, poorly organized and documented, with neither bibliography or index."

Evans, Dr. Christopher. Cults of Unreason. London: George G. Harrap & Co Ltd, 1973.

The paperback edition of this book was published in 1974 by Panther Books. Pages 7-135 give an interesting history of Hubbard and Scientology up to the time of publication. Well and good, but Evans (the author of The Micro Millenium) did not know about some facts that have been established since.

Fantasy and Science Fiction, The Magazine of.

An old issue of this magazine (from the 1970s? I'm attempting to get the reference) has some very cutting remarks on Hubbard and Scientology by the science fiction author of Beyond Apollo, Barry Malzberg.

Gardner, Martin. The New Age: Notes of a Fringe-Watcher. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1988.

Martin Gardner long wrote a science column in Scientific American. In his earlier famous Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (Dover Books, about 1953) he had a few hilarious pages on Hubbard. But check out pp. 246-251 of this book! Here Gardner hilariously reviews and summarizes Miller's biography of Hubbard. Ron gets sliced and diced.

Miller, Russell. Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard. New York: Henry Holt, 1988.

This was the best book on Hubbard before Jon Atack's recent work published online. To quote Martin Gardner, it is "admirable, meticulously documented biography." One of the funniest books I have read.

Rolph, C. H. Believe What You Like: What happened betwen the Scientologists and the National Association for Mental Health. London: Andre Deutsch Limited, 1973.

In 1969 scientologists began joining the (British) National Association for Mental Health. The Association, fearing it was being taken over, expelled them. A court case followed. This book is minor, and not very interesting.

Vosper, Cyril. The Mind Benders. London: Neville Spearman Limited, 1971. Published as a paperback by Mayflower Books (Granada), 1973.

Vosper joined the church in the mid-1950s and became "a senior official at Scientology's British H.Q., in Saint Hill, East Grinstead, Sussex." He eventually became disillusioned and wrote this book about the Church's silliness. The Church harassed him, treating him as a Suppressive Person, then an Enemy, and went to court to suppress his book, but lost.

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