For heaven's sake, tell them I'm not God.

-- L. Ron Hubbard, quoted by Eric Barnes, Public Relations Chief of New York Church of Scientology

Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, born in 1911 in Tilden, Nebraska, is a man of many talents and accomplishments, although not quite as many as he claims. In a number of biographies and autobiographies, both types of which were said to have been written by him, he claims to have been descended from Count de Loup, to be part French and Scotch and to have part of his family come from Little Clacton, Essex. He claims to have been a blood brother of the Pikuni Indians, "fast friends" with Calvin Coolidge Jr., and to be the real life model for the book, play, and movie, Mister Roberts.

He also claims to have graduated in mathematics and engineering from Columbian University (a part of George Washington University), sometimes claims to have graduated in civil engineering from George Washington University, to have attended Princeton University (sometimes the Princeton School of Government) and to have gotten a Ph.D. from Sequoia University. He was a prolific writer, a singer, an explorer (and claims to have been a member of the Explorers Club since 1936), a seaman, a Lieutenant in the navy, who was severely injured in the war.

Many of these things are true; for example, his family does come from Little Clacton, Essex, he was a writer, he was an explorer (and a member of the Explorers Club, but since 1940, not 1936 as he claimed), he was severely injured in the war (and in fact was in a lifeboat for many days, badly injuring his body and his eyes in the hot Pacific sun). But there are a number of small unimportant things in his Brief Biography of L. Ron Hubbard (which his son claims his father really wrote) that were exposed by the Daily Mail in England as false. Because of these errors, it tends to cast suspicion, perhaps unjustly, on the rest.

Actually, most of the "errors" in that biography and others, with the exception of his academic background, were simply sins by omission. Although Hubbard admits he wrote screenplays and westerns, it was in science fiction that he made his mark, a fact he conveniently omitted in his Brief Biography and frequently underplayed elsewhere. This is important because a science fiction background is not considered good preparation for the understanding of true scientific phenomena and also because Hubbard wrote so much science fiction at one time that it would seem almost impossible that he could have carried on the careful research he claimed he did to formulate Dianetics upon which Scientology is based.

Nonetheless, Hubbard says Dianetics was based on his exhaustive research with 270 subjects, and this research formed the basis of his engram and other theories. A recent article in Freedom stated that Hubbard spent thirty-five years researching the mind before Dianetics came out. If this is true, it means that he started researching at the age of three. Generally, Hubbard is content to have people believe he spent twelve years researching Dianetics before coming out with his basic book, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.

He says that the research began with his 1938 book, Excalibur, which appears to have been the manuscript he claims was stolen by the Russians. During these twelve years, especially in the last three or four before Dianetics came out, he wrote at least seventy-eight science fiction stories alone (under his name, or the pseudonyms of Rene Lafayette and Kurt Van Strachen) not to mention writing in other fields. With all this writing, it's hard to believe he had the time to research those 270 subjects properly (to research them properly would require 540 people; a control group that has not been given the Dianetic treatment should have been included in the sample).

With the exception of his one article on Dianetics published in a science fiction magazine, a cursory examination of Hubbard's other stories shows no indication that his imagination was being applied to the science rather than the fiction. (The one exception is a story written in 1938 called "Her Majesty's Aberration" but it appears that only the title presaged anything that was to come later.)

Another thing that Hubbard was doing at the time -- also apparently not conducive to Dianetics research, and also an item he failed to mention in his "autobiographies" -- was that he was possibly practicing black magic.  Alexander Mitchell, who writes for the Sunday Times in England, claimed that Hubbard was once practicing witchcraft with John Parsons, who joined the American branch of the cult of Aleister Crowley, the reknowned sorcerer and mystic.

Parsons got Hubbard to act as a high priest during a number of rituals, during which time Parsons had sexual relations with his girl friend, Betty, who was also allegedly having relations with Hubbard. Hubbard seemed unconcerned about the competition, though, since Mitchell wrote that in the "climax" of the ritual, he allegedly "worked" his two subjects into a "sexual frenzy."

In addition to these sexual unions, there seems to have been some pooling of finances on a business partnership. Parsons was believed to have invested $17,000, Hubbard about $10,000, and Parson's girl friend Betty nothing. But it was said that Hubbard used about $10,000 of this to buy a yacht, while his friend Parsons was "living at rock bottom and I mean rock bottom," according to another cult member. Aleister Crowley cabled his United States office that he "suspected" that Hubbard was playing a "confidence trick" since Parsons had given away his girl friend and his money to Hubbard.

Eventually Parsons did recover the yacht, describing how in a letter to Crowley, reprinted by the Sunday Times.

Hubbard attempted to escape me by sailing at 5 P.M. and performed a full invocation to Bartzabel within the circle at 8 P.M. (a curse). At the same time, however, his ship was struck by a sudden squall off the coast which ripped off his sails and forced him back to port where I took the boat in custody.

All this happened after the war, at approximately the time when Hubbard claimed he had resumed his studies of Dianetics.

In his biographies Hubbard conveniently omitted or altered his educational qualifications. In his Brief Biography, he said he had graduated from Columbian University and in Who's Who in the Southwest (they claim he supplied the data) he said he graduated in Civil Engineering from George Washington University. (He has sometimes used a C.E. after his name.) Hubbard has even dedicated one of his books to his "instructors in atomic and molecular phenomenon, mathematics and the humanities at George Washington University and at Princeton," and in his Brief Biography he said he "excelled in but thoroughly detested his subjects."

Actually his grades were appallingly low. Although he did do well in his engineering and English courses, the man who frequently calls himself a nuclear physicist got a D in one physics course, an E in another, and in the atomic and molecular physics courses that he most often emphasizes (to the degree of thanking his instructors for it), he received an F. With those grades, along with similar ones in mathematics, it is not surprising that Hubbard was placed on probation after his first year in college and didn't return for his second -- and of course never received the degrees that he claims he has.

As for the Princeton School of Government that he says he attended, it was the Princeton School of Military Government, and he went there only three months in what was possibly a war service course.

Hubbard also claims to have a Ph.D. from Sequoia University. Sequoia was originally called the College of Drugless Healing, and might have been called the College of Instant Learning, since it has been traced by the United States government to a residential dwelling in Los Angeles which operated through a post office box and delivered mail order doctorates without the formality of exams, or for that matter, of classroom attendance.

In fact, Hubbard didn't even have to pay for that degree -- it was an Honorary Degree for his work in Dianetics. A Harvard student discovered that Hubbard was also on the staff of the school; might Sequoia be another name for one of Hubbard's own establishments? (Hubbard's establishments have variously been called Hubbard College, Hubbard International School for Children, The Apostolic Church of Theological Scientologists, The Academy of Religious Arts and Sciences, Church of American Science, Church of the New Faith, Scientology Consultants for Industrial Efficiency, National Academy for American Psychology.)

Nonetheless, Hubbard apparently considered this "doctorate" to be significant because he renounced it in a public notice:

I, L. Ron Hubbard of Saint Hill Manor East Grinstead Sussex having reviewed the damage being done in our society with nuclear physics and psychiatry by persons calling themselves "Doctors" do hereby resign in protest my university degree as a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) anticipating an early public outcry against anyone called "Doctor" and although not in any way connected with bombs or "psychiatric treatment" or treatment of such and interested only and always in philosophy and the total freedom of the human spirit, I wish no association of any kind with these persons and so do publicly declare and request my friends and the public not to refer to me in any way with this title.

 Even so, Hubbard is referred to as "doctor," has used the title himself, and he does indeed have a D. Scn., or Doctor of Scientology. But that even this degree is haphazardly awarded became apparent when Hubbard's son, L. Ron Hubbard Jr., who also has a D. Scn, testified at the United States Court of Claims that he didn't have to do anything special to get the degree, and in fact, wasn't certain whether he got his Bachelor of Scientology before or after he got his Doctorate of Scientology.

Another omission in his biographies -- and one can hardly blame him for it -- are the dates of his various marriages and divorces. In the Scientology Security Check, a preclear is asked whether he has ever committed bigamy. Perhaps Hubbard should have put himself on the meter.

On April 13, 1933, he married Louise Grubb at Elkton, Maryland, and had two children by her. In December of 1945, she claimed he abandoned her and the children, and she filed suit for divorce on April 14, 1947. The divorce was granted on December 24, 1947, in Port Orchard, Washington. The only problem is that on August 10, 1946, in Chestertown, Maryland, Hubbard married Sara Northrup 8 months before the divorce suit was filed, and a year and a half before it was finalized.

Also omitted, obviously, are the speculations that have been made about his sanity. The Australian Report said that "expert psychiatric witnesses" were of the opinion that Hubbard's writings indicated "symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia of long standing with delusions of grandeur." There have been rumors for years about Hubbard's sanity, and he has acknowledged these rumors:

Two million traceable dollars were spent to halt this work [Dianetics and Scientology].... All that has survived of this attack by the two A.P.A.'s, the A.M.A. and several universities is a clutter of rumors concerning your sanity and mine -- and rumors no longer financed will some day die.

The Australian Inquiry finally came to the conclusion that Hubbard's "sanity was to be gravely doubted." Certainly some of Hubbard's statements, even coming from a former science fiction writer, do sound rather strange. Hubbard claims to have visited Venus, the Van Allen Radiation belt, and heaven -- twice. The first time in heaven, he said, was from "the moment of the implant to forget ... 43,891,832,611,177 years 344 days, 10 hours, 20 minutes and 40 seconds from 10:02 to 2 P.M. Daylight Greenwich Time, May 9, 1963." The second time was about a trillion years later. Lest anyone doubt he was there, or think that he might have ended up in the wrong place, he described Heaven as follows:

The gates of the first series are well done, well built. An Avenue of statues of saints leads up to them. The gate pillars are surmounted by marble angels. The entering grounds are very well kept, laid out like Bush Gardens in Pasadena, so often seen in the movies.

The second series ... is shabby. The vegetation is gone. The pillars are scruffy. The saints have vanished. So have the angels. A sign on one (the left as you enter) says "This is Heaven." The right one says "Hell."

In addition to having visited Heaven, Hubbard has also rewritten Genesis. "Before the Beginning was a Cause and the entire purpose of the Cause was the creation of effect," etc. He has also rewritten the calendar to read "A.D. 1, A.D. 10," etc., (to stand for "After Dianetics 1951," "After Dianetics 1960"), as if his discoveries were as important as the birth of Christ. When Hubbard first came out with Dianetics he wrote that it was a "milestone for Man comparable to his discovery of fire and superior to his invention of the wheel and arch." Now he sees Scientology as purer than Buddhism, Taoism and Christianity.

Hubbard's "case studies" contain a constant repetition of torture themes in which people are held in bondage, inflicted with pain or violently killed. He often attributes (or projects) the cause of neurosis or engrams to the father's committing violent physical acts against the mother while she was pregnant or in the act of conceiving, as in the following "case study" Hubbard presented.

Fight between mother and father shortly after conception. Father strikes mother in the stomach. She screams ... and he says "Goddamn you, I hate you! You are no good. I'm going to kill you." Mother says, "Please don't hit me again. Please don't. I'm hurt. I'm frantic with pain." Father says, "Lie there and rot, damn you, good-bye."

An even more violent example which one of his research subjects allegedly remembered, occurred when the child in the womb got an engram when her father knelt on her mother and started choking her before raping her.

FATHER: Stay here! Stay down, damn you, you bitch! I'm going to kill you this time. I said I would and I will. Take that! (his knee grinds into the mother's abdomen) You better start screaming. Go on, Scream for mercy! Why don't you break down? Don't worry, you will. You'll be blubbering around here, screaming for mercy! The louder you scream the worse you'll get. That's what I want to hear! I'm a punk kid, am I? You're the punk kid! I could finish you now but I'm not going to! ... This is just a sample. There's a lot more than that where it came from! I hope it hurts! I hope it makes you cry! You say a word to anybody and I'll kill you in earnest! ... I'm going to bust your face in. You don't know what it is to be hurt! ... I know what I'm going to do to you now! I'm going to punish you! etc.

Hubbard's hostility and unconscious obsession with violence runs through all of his writings. But it was apparent even before he presented Dianetics or Scientology. One of his earlier pseudonyms was "Winchester Remington Colt" and although it's possible he consciously chose the name for its euphony it does seem strange that all three names are those of guns. Freudians could have a field day with this pseudonym, and its obvious phallic counterpart, perhaps surmising that he unconsciously chose the name to compensate for other weaknesses.

 

 Does Scientology Work?

... I would say there is no validity [to Scientology processing]. But within Scientology you find a great deal of very direct truths, but then it is sort of like a bre'r rabbit tar baby. Inside the tar is this little nugget of truth; but all this black tar is over the side of it so people reach for the truth and they get all hung up in the tar and the various organizations and the science itself becomes perverted.

-- L. Ron Hubbard Jr.

Hubbard once claimed that processing could help or cure such ailments as astigmatism, arthritis, allergies, asthma, bursitis, cataracts, some coronary difficulties, colds, dermatitis, possibly diabetes, glandular imbalance, leukemia (which Hubbard said may have been caused by an engram which recorded the expression "it turns my blood to water"), migraine headaches, polio, radiation burns, sinusitis, thyroid malfunctioning, tuberculosis, ulcers, etc.

In addition, Dianetics, and possibly Scientology is supposed to "turn on and run out incipient cancer," and Hubbard believed that cancer, "especially malignant cancer," may be caused by engrams. One man in Scientology who was dying of a malignant growth in his stomach spent two and a half to six hours a day for several months while his auditor asked him (among other things): "What stomach can you confront?" "What stomach would you rather not confront?" "Think of a stomach you can confront?" "Think of a stomach you'd rather not confront," etc. The man died.

Hubbard has also claimed that Dianetics or Scientology can alter the shape of the body and make people grow taller, make them ambidextrous, make the insane sane, cure chronic chills, impotency, manic states, laryngitis, make children more beautiful, change the personality, improve Parkinson's disease, and make large bruises disappear in forty-five minutes. Scientology processing can apparently even bring the dead back to life, since Hubbard described a miracle one of his auditors performed that he said "the Pope himself would have been proud to own." Hubbard claims they brought a dead child back to life by ordering the thetan back and telling him to take over the body again.

Unfortunately, many of Hubbard's claims have not been and cannot be substantiated. There isn't time to analyze all of these claims. One claim, however, is that Scientology can relieve radiation burns, and that the reaction to radiation in persons who have been given processing was "by actual tests" much lower than those who have not received it.

Hubbard considers himself to be an expert in this field, and even wrote a book as a "nuclear physicist" entitled All About Radiation. As in almost all of Hubbard's books, the dedication was more interesting than the book. That one was dedicated to Winston Churchill "who could have written and said it much better" and Dwight David Eisenhower "who could solve it if he had a little more cooperation."

In All About Radiation Hubbard said they could "run out radiation" and "proof" people up against it. How can he prove such claims? He can't. So Scientologists simply say that they can cure the radiation we have in our bodies right now from our past lives. One can doubt it, but it's hard to disprove. They even sold a pill, Dianezene, to be used to wipe out radiation from our current and past lives.

Scientology is supposed to improve marriages, but the rate of divorce at the Orgs would put Hollywood to shame. Even Hubbard has been married three times. Two of the marriages were very stormy (he claims that this is because his first wives weren't Scientologists, while his current one is -- he not only met her in Dianetics but she sometimes acts as his auditor).

Scientology is supposed to cure frigidity. One woman who went to Scientology for that purpose was taught things that caused her husband to get a separate bed. Eventually he divorced her. In another case, a man refused to have sex with his wife because he felt he was too high on Hubbard's "tone scale" and that his wife was too low to bother.

Scientology is supposed to improve creativity but some Scientologists, while believing they're getting more and more creative every day, actually have stopped painting, writing, and sculpting, and spend all of their time on Scientology. Scientology is supposed to improve memory, but the one time Hubbard publicly introduced a clear who was supposed to be able to remember everything, including every single moment of her past, most of the audience of 6,000 people walked out when she was unable to remember a single formula in physics -- the subject she was majoring in at the time -- or even the color of Hubbard's tie when his back was turned.

Scientology claims it can increase a person's I.Q., while actually the I.Q. can't be increased substantially. Nonetheless, Hubbard wrote President Kennedy that Scientology could increase the I.Q. at the rate of one point for every hour of auditing, and he once told a reporter that he had raised an I.Q. from 83 to 212. Like many of Hubbard's claims, however, raising the I.Q. makes for good advertising copy and helps to bring insecure people into the Orgs. Hubbard told his followers that if someone's I.Q. is low, tell him "Scientology training can raise that." If it's high, tell him "I.Q. means little unless a person knows something with it."

Furthermore, afterwards, these people feel that they've been helped by Scientology because they believe that their I.Q. has been raised. What has actually improved is only the score on their I.Q. test -- and why shouldn't it? There is some evidence that the Scientologists give the same test twice.

Psychologists for years have been aware of the "practice effect" which means, in effect, that someone given the same test twice will do better the second time, not because they'll cheat and look up the answers they missed, or discuss it with someone else who took the test, which is always a possibility, but because they are familiar with the surroundings, they understand the test and the directions better, they are less nervous, etc. Not true, says Hubbard, "Everybody in the ... Universe is on a `mustn't happen again' and we automatically figure that a test taken twice will get a worse grade the second time."

One of the reasons that many of Scientology's claims can't be substantiated is that much of Hubbard's research runs counter to common knowledge and sometimes to common sense. During the days of Dianetics, for instance, perhaps it should have been called "Diarrhetics" since Hubbard gave preclears large doses of a haphazard mixture of vitamins and glutamic acid called "guk" in order to make them "run better" -- although there's little evidence elsewhere that diarrhea improves mental health.

His theory of the Boo-Hoo, or the primeval clam, is another example of his strange reasoning. He stated that his Boo-Hoo which "marked the transition from life in the sea to life on land" had a miserable life because it could get stranded or attacked by predatory birds. But if life was just emerging from the sea, where did the predatory birds come from?

Another claim: In his book called the History of Man he used the example of Piltdown Man to support one of his theories. Even after Piltdown Man was exposed as a scientific hoax, Hubbard didn't change his theory. In the same book, he told how Scientology could cure toothaches, a description which would surely make every dentist or even medically knowledgeable person cringe:

The Pulp of a tooth, for instance, tracks back, cell by cell, to early engrams; when these are relieved a "toothache" in that tooth becomes almost impossible, no matter how many "nerves" are exposed, a matter which brings about quite a revolution in dentistry.

In his best-seller, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, he said that Dianetics could improve hearing as follows:

... calcium deposits, for example, can make the ears ring incessantly. The removal of aberrations permits the ear to readjust toward its reachable optimum, the calcium deposits disappear and the ears stop ringing.

The trouble with this is that it has never been proven in the first place that calcium deposits cause ringing in the ear.

Perhaps some of these discrepancies have appeared because of the nature of Hubbard's "research" discussed in the last chapter. According to his second wife, who was married to him at the time he was supposed to be doing his research, there was no research done, no subjects run, the book was written in three months off the top of his head, and the "case studies" were the figment of his fertile imagination. Furthermore, as many people have suspected, she said the 1938 supposedly stolen manuscript Excalibur did not exist. She said it was one of those books that Hubbard always said he might like to write one day.

A reading of Hubbard's case studies seems to support the notion that his Dianetic theories emerged from his own imagination. Those cases that Hubbard described "in detail," which for him meant two pages, are simply rather hard to believe.

For example, he cited the case of a man who got an impacted wisdom tooth which had to be pulled, a situation that ultimately led to the man's being put in a mental institution. In the beginning of this "case history" the man met a nurse who was "sexually aberrated" and an "aberee among aberees," who pumped him for information about his life while he was unconscious.

A few years later he met someone similar to the nurse, divorced his wife and married the pseudo nurse. His teeth got worse. His cavities increased. His memory degenerated. He developed eye troubles and a strange conjunctivitis. His lungs hurt. His energy dissipated. And because the dentist leaned on his stomach and chest with a sharp elbow during the wisdom teeth operation, he had stomach pains. Naturally he started beating his wife, in this case because the dentist had been angry with the original nurse. The wife, in turn, attempted suicide. And this man ended up in a mental institution. "Only the cavalry in this one case, arrived in the form of Dianetics and cleared the patient and the wife and they are happy today. This is an actual engram and an actual case history," Hubbard added, just in case no one believed him.

Ira Wallach in Hopalong Freud poked fun at Hubbard's scientific experiments. "Here is a classic example of the flex" he wrote, meaning an engram,

drawn from one of the 855 patients on whom the Diapetic Institute conducted clinical tests with maddeningly strict scientific controls. Shortly after conception the foetus in question overheard an argument between its parents. The argument, acrimonious in character, reached its climax when the mother shouted "Go ahead, you son of a bitch, hit me with that andiron...." Whenever the patient in adult life caught sight of an andiron (or a son of a bitch) he insisted upon being beaten on the head....

Yet Scientologists take as gospel truth every word that Hubbard writes, even if they don't understand it. Although some of Hubbard's writing is poetic, some of it is also incomprehensible and a lot of it is just pretentious. Some of this may be a put-on; for example, he wrote an article telling his followers that it was best to use soup cans for the E-meter, and titled the article "E-meter Electrodes: A Dissertation on Soup Cans."

But Hubbard also seems to try deliberately to be incomprehensible, perhaps confusing inscrutability with wisdom. He has written seven Prelogics and twenty-four Logics plus fifty-eight Scientology axioms ("AFFINITY IS A SCALE OF ATTITUDES WHLCH FALLS AWAY FROM THE COEXISTENCE OF STATIC, THROUGH THE INTERPOSITIONS OF DISTANCE AND ENERGY TO CREATE IDENTITY DOWN TO CLOSE PROXIMITY BUT MYSTERY"), and one hundred-ninety-four Dianetic axioms ("THETA VIA LAMDA EFFECTS AN EVOLUTION OF MEST"). The Australian Report commented on these, saying that "as axioms they claim to be self-evident truths, but they are neither true nor self evident."

And yet Hubbard, the same person who wrote the above, is always saying that Scientologists should never go past any word they don't understand, and he even goes to the trouble of defining simple little words like "synonymous" for his followers. Perhaps he should have also defined the following:

I think ... if what we really observed was what we were observing that we always observed to observe. And not necessarily maintaining a skeptical attitude, a critical attitude, or an open mind. But certainly maintaining sufficient Personal Integrity and sufficient personal belief and confidence in self and courage that we observe what we observe and weigh what we have observed.

Still, his followers believe that every word he writes is The Truth. In fact, a group of Hubbard's admirers wrote a book comparing his statements with the Bible (along with Saint Thomas Aquinas) where they believed the meanings were parallel.

It's hard to believe that Scientology or Dianetics has actually ever helped anybody. Yet the Scientologists have testimonial books in their lobby filled with "success stories" of people who have been helped by Scientology, and they even have a Director of Success at the Orgs who elicits these testimonials. The testimonials delivered do not tell of long range effects, however.

Even if these testimonials are not of very much value, the fact remains that a great number of people believe that they have been helped by Scientology and Dianetics, and probably many of them have been helped. Below are two testimonials, and while there were literally hundreds to choose from, these two were very complete, listing a large number of ailments that had been cured and a variety of ways that Dianetics had helped them.

The first letter comes from a 35-year old woman who had an unbelievable host of symptoms: she used to cry all the time, couldn't see very well, was very nervous, had trouble gaining weight, was inhibited, dependent, afraid of crowds, had pains on her side, the measles she had at eleven seemed to have "settled in her left eye," was constantly talking, and had two operations during the time she was in Dianetics. She kept a diary over a period of a few months to show how processing had not only helped her relieve a large number of these symptoms but enabled her breasts and feet to grow and her hair to curl:

My hair ... in the last three weeks it curls more than ever.... I can't explain it but my feet seem to be growing! Of course I am developing more all over. I have had rather large pores around my nose for several years. In the last week I noticed that my skin has smoothed out and is more like when I was twenty ... about two months ago I noticed my feet seemed to be growing ... before starting on these sessions my breasts were unusually small. In fact, I wore a size 32A brassiere ... I am now wearing a size 34C and from all indications will wear still larger. My breasts never really developed as they should, but now, thanks to Dianetics, I am beginning to be as nature intended.

Although no one in the center apparently recognized it, including Hubbard who presented this case, any doctor or psychiatrist would have immediately questioned whether she was being helped or whether a basic schizophrenic condition was being exacerbated. As she continued to be processed (and the above entry represents diary jottings from several months) she thought she was being helped, but perhaps she was actually acquiring or aggravating schizophrenic symptoms. It is a fairly common delusion among a certain type of schizophrenic that parts of the body are growing and changing.

The next letter is a testimonial to a Dianetics Center:

During the past week through Dianetics processing I have been relieved of pains in the stomach due to ulcers; have regained hearing in my right ear in which I have been deaf for three and a half years; have regained the ability to breathe through my nostrils which I had not been able to do for the past six or seven years; have been relieved of severe constipation which has been continuous for at least six years and now my stools are entirely normal; the burning sensation of my eyes of eight or nine years duration caused by electrical flashes has been relieved, and I am no longer bothered by headaches after using my eyes for reading. I had not been able to do any extensive reading at night for the past seven or eight years without getting headaches and for several years I have had cramps in my legs and feet at night until the past week....

Many people would agree, however, that this letter comes from an extremely neurotic woman, whose ailments were probably psychosomatic. They couldn't have been cured in a week without medication if they had really had a physiological basis. For her, Dianetics seems to have acted as a form of faith healing, and like any form of faith healing, Dianetics and Scientology can be effective -- however they may be effective only on those who are so suggestible that they might have been helped by anything so long as they believed in it and stayed with it. But what happens when a Scientologist loses faith and stops believing? Most Scientologists never find out because they never lose faith and leave. Instead of preparing them to cope with the real world, as therapy would, Scientology prepares them to cope with the world of Scientology.

There are always new courses for them to take. When they get tired of being audited they can always audit others. When they get tired of the Org they can join the Sea Org. And when they get tired of all that, they can get a franchise -- excuse me, start a mission -- and go into the Scientology business themselves. Thus, they may be helped, but only at a tremendous cost in time and money.

For some the cost is even higher. In one case, Robert Kaufman, who wrote a fascinating book called How I Joined Scientology and Became Superhuman, was in a New York Scientology franchise at first, but then went to Saint Hill to take the advanced courses that are offered there. Not long after his arrival there, he was upset to see two Scientologists who were in an advanced state of severe emotional disturbance under twenty-four-hour watch. He was told that one had just gone clear and that the other was in the midst of the course.

In addition, he was appalled by what he describes as "the police-state type atmosphere of the place and constant punishments, like the dirty-gray armbands they forced people to wear for the most trivial mistake." He writes that he "was in a state of walking hypnotism. Part of me was repelled by what I saw, and the other part of me desperately wanted to go on to catch the Golden Fleece and go `clear.' "

He went clear after he left Saint Hill and went to Edinburgh, but he discovered that the symptoms that had started at Saint Hill were getting worse. He still couldn't sleep at night, and when he would finally collapse from exhaustion, he would wake up in the morning with an acute attack of anxiety. Fearing that his symptoms would get worse if he stopped, he continued on with the next three secret upper levels, whose description is so strange as to be almost unbelievable.

Kaufman claims that these strange exercises caused him to "undergo extreme disorientation and splitting of personality" plus a new symptom: an obsession to commit suicide. He says that all during this time "I felt rotten, but every time I reached another level, everyone would smile, pat me on the back, hand me my certificates [diplomas] -- and take my money for the next course."

By the end of this time, plus a brief stint back in America, he had spent about $8,000 in Scientology and the only thing that kept him from suicide was his fear that if he did so it would "invalidate Scientology" and his name would be put on the bulletin board. (Kaufman was the man mentioned earlier who was so upset over the notices posted on the bulletin board about the epileptic who died.) But in the end he no longer cared, and in order to save his own life, he voluntarily committed himself to a mental institution. Today he is out of the hospital and has no desire ever to return to Scientology.

Another even worse case involves a Falls Church, Virginia, couple and their two children: one was retarded and the other, while speaking early in his life, later stopped talking. The couple went to Scientology for help with the second child, and Hubbard, his wife, and several others in the Washington Church at that time all promised to increase the child's I.Q., "improve on nature whatever happened to be the defect," and cause him to speak within a specific number of hours.

At the end of the twelve-week session, when the child still couldn't speak, the distraught parents were told that the Scientologists were at a near breakthrough and that they should continue with the processing and take more courses than they had originally agreed upon. The couple could ill afford to lose this money, since they raised it by cashing in life insurance bonds and a small inheritance. Although it eventually cost them over $3,000 "as a contribution to spiritual guidance," the child was never able to speak.

The Australian Report presented something worse, as they put it, a woman "processed into insanity." They had set up a special two-way mirror to witness Scientology techniques so that they could judge the merits of their auditing. Such a situation would of course be a little different than a regular auditing session, since the person was aware that he was being observed, and the sessions were shorter than the usual.

They watched a woman who had already had sixty hours of Scientology processing and had signed up for a total of 300. At the beginning of the session she said her goals for the session were that she would get "wins" and feel more positive about things, that she would feel calmer, and she could handle situations at home. At the conclusion of the session, when her goals were read out to her, she claimed she had made "gains" in all of them. Nine days later she entered a mental hospital. A psychiatrist who saw the transcript of the demonstration session told the board that her behavior obviously indicated she was in a state of mania -- not ecstasy -- and that this would have been apparent to a psychiatrist.

A slightly similar case occurred in England. In March, 1967, Mr. Peter Hordern got up in Parliament to describe the case of one of his constituents, Karen Henslow, a thirty-year-old manic-depressive who had been institutionalized three times. Scientologists were aware of her background. Her contact with Scientology started when she met at a dance an Australian, Murray Youdell, who was taking the highest auditing grade at Saint Hill.

He began to audit Miss Henslow, although she told him of her illness, and in January she was interviewed at Saint Hill. Karen told her mother that she had mentioned her illness to them, saying "I told her all about my illness and I cried. She [probably the Registrar] was sweet and understanding." Later, in May, she was offered a job as a "Progress and Filing Clerk" for about $18 a week, of which she had to relinquish about $10 for bed and breakfast.

After two weeks in Scientology she disconnected from her mother and wrote saying, "... I do not want to see you or hear from you again. From now on you don't exist in my life...." The same day the mother received a second letter, with no date, apologizing for the first letter and saying she wanted to "nullify it as a communication," and that it was mailed without her permission. "You are the last person I want to disconnect from" she wrote. Later, among Karen's possessions were four more letters labeling friends and relatives suppressive.

On July 27, two months after she began Scientology, Karen arrived at her mother's house dressed in only a nightgown and raincoat and shoes and "in a completely deranged condition," according to her mother. With her was Mr. Youdell, along with another Scientologist. Mrs. Henslow said the other Scientologist had processed Karen for three hours the previous night to try to get her better. It apparently didn't work. Later that night, Karen went screaming from her house and was subsequently put in a mental institution. The consulting psychiatrist in charge of her case allegedly said that Scientology had "probably precipitated" her collapse. Karen felt she had benefited from Scientology and stated that she wanted to return to it when she left the hospital.

During a subsequent interview on the matter, Mr. Youdell, who had gotten Karen into Scientology allegedly "answered ... questions ... with an unblinking stare and a colleague said Mr. Youdell was `in cycle' and not to be interrupted," and referred inquiries to Mr. Reg. Sharpe, Mr. Hubbard's personal assistant.

Mr. Sharpe, a man in his sixties who wears the badge of a "clear" and is said to work for Hubbard for no pay, said "We tried to help this girl. We did not know she had a mental history. We do not take on for processing anyone who has got a mental history." That such a statement is not true seems obvious not only from this case (although the Scientologists claim that they did not know about her illness but that only Murray Youdell did), but also from another letter reported by the Daily Mail in England.

This letter was allegedly written by two Scientologists to tell the "success story" of a girl who went to Saint Hill: "At that time Hilary was completely broken down in mind and body; having spent the past four years in various mental hospitals undergoing `treatment.' "

In reading Hubbard's work one comes across reference to "psychotic" people that were helped, and in his PABS (Preclear Auditor's Book) #3 Hubbard even told what procedure to use in "Processing psychotics vs. neurotics." That Scientologists do occasionally take in mentally disturbed people was also revealed in court during one of the American tax cases. They admitted that they did take in mental cases because a registrar would feel sorry for someone with a problem and want to help them. Attorney Michael I. Sanders had asked:

Q: Were exceptions [i.e., people taken in who were disturbed] made in those cases where the preclear had available funds?

A: There would usually be, because the Org needed funds rather badly.

In addition to working with mentally disturbed people or at least people who have been institutionalized at one time, there is also some evidence that they have worked with mentally deficient people. In Ability magazine Hubbard once described the case of a person with an I.Q. of seventy-three -- which is officially classified as a "moron" -- which he raised to eighty-eight -- which, by the way, is still classified as a moron.

Despite these cases and others, Scientology claims that no one was ever harmed by Scientology or Dianetics. They may be right when they say that Dianetics and Scientology did not cause these people's difficulties. But letting an auditor, without proper medical or psychological training, work with people who may have had mental and physical disturbances would seem to be a dangerous practice -- even if they claim to be treating only the spirit. And having an auditor try to help people by taking them back to the womb and their former lives might not be as beneficial as having them talk out their real problems in their real life.

There are fourteen stages of crawling before a child can actually walk; the mind, too, develops in a somewhat hierarchical manner, and each of these steps must be stabilized somewhat before the person can safely move from one to another. Scientologists, encouraged by auditors whose qualifications are questionable, may move on to the next step before they are ready to handle it. And like walking before they can crawl -- they may fall flat on their psychical faces.

Conclusion

In this book, I have tried to explain what Scientologists believe, what they do, how Scientology started and is expanding, and what happens to a person once he joins Scientology. One question I have not yet answered is the one that is most frequently asked of me -- "Why do people join Scientology?"

For one thing, they haven't read this book -- or anything else that really tells them about the group. Most of the people who attend the introductory lecture or visit the Org out of curiosity know nothing about: the people who joined and found that their emotional difficulties were being aggravated instead of alleviated; the people who spent thousands of dollars on Scientology in one year; and the people who were harassed after they left.

The Scientologists have done everything possible to keep these stories private. Not only have they sued and harassed those who have spoken out publicly against the group, but they have also tried to discredit them by sometimes "revealing" their supposed "crimes" in lurid and ludicrous detail.

While the people who join Scientology usually have not had a chance to hear the Scientology critics, they also haven't heard the Scientologists themselves either. They do not really know what Scientology has to offer or what they are getting into. Those who join the group spend quite a bit of time in it before they find out what the Scientologists really believe, about the Scientology auditing process, or even that there is a Scientology auditing process.

That's because Scientologists are very evasive about their activities, usually answering (or avoiding) questions about what Scientology is or what Scientologists do with such statements as "it's beautiful," "it'll make you free," and "you'll have to try it for yourself." In fact, people have to try it for themselves for quite some time before they discover how deeply involved both financially and emotionally they have become. Sometimes, by that time, they are too deeply involved to leave.

For the deeper a person goes into Scientology, the deeper he may have to go into Scientology. The more courses he takes, the more time he spends with Scientologists. The more time he spends with his new friends, the less time he spends with his old friends. If he leaves his job and goes to work for Scientology, as many do, he will soon be living and working only for Scientology, spending time only with Scientologists, and, as many people who have met them have discovered to their dismay, talking only about Scientology.

But while this may explain why they stay there, it does not explain their initial attraction to the group. I think one thing that attracts people to the group is its appearance. It appears to be religious (ministers, clerical robes, etc.) It appears to be scientific ("Scientology"). It appears to be involved with technology (the E-meter). It appears to have a philosophical body of knowledge (Hubbard's writings). Another thing that attracts them is the appearance of some of the people themselves.

Although by now it may seem that Scientologists have crazy stares, talk gobbledy-gook language, and act as if they're from outer space, the usual initial impression that most people acquire when they walk into an Org is that of people who are young, very attractive, and often, intelligent.

Furthermore, many of these young people are unattached, so that single or lonely people are attracted to Scientology's social life. Some people join Scientology because they have already met their mate -- a person who was or became a Scientologist. Some of the most ardent Scientologists admitted that they initially joined or became interested in the group because their spouses or loved ones were Scientologists and the only way they could continue to see that person, or have something in common with them, was by joining the group themselves.

In addition to those who join because they are seeking a mistress or a mate (a person), many people join because they are seeking a group to which they can really belong and be a part. Scientology is really just one big family. Hubbard, of course, is the father, and his wife plays the role of the mother. Scientologists are children who, if they're good, will be taken care of; if they're bad, and protest or question anything, father says they will be expelled from the family unit.

Everything in their life is planned for them. There are certain courses for them to take and certain goals they must achieve in each course. If they disobey, or balk at any level, the punishments are rigidly set forth. Fortunately for the Scientologists, Hubbard treats his children somewhat kindly -- so long as they don't ever grow up and try to leave his home.

Like any family group, or in fact any group, Scientology fulfills some of the personal needs of its members. Someone with a strong desire to be respected by others can easily become a Scientology minister and be treated with the reverence generally accorded to men of the cloth. Someone with feelings of intellectual inferiority believes he can have his I.Q. raised by Scientology, and can, in fact, get a (Scientology) B.A. or a (Scientology) Doctorate degree. Someone who feels lonely has a place to go to and friends to see once he joins Scientology -- Scientology brings meaning into his life where once there was only emptiness.

The man I described in the first chapter who said that before he discovered Scientology he used to lie in bed and stare at the ceilings may not have been that different from some of the others who joined. But now that man has a place to go and something to do. People understand what he's saying because he's speaking their language. People look him straight in the eye when he talks to them. People like him now because he has the same goals. More important -- now he has some goals. He is working hard to bring everyone into Scientology so that together they can all save this world. It would be a laudable goal, too, except for one thing: no one is allowed to disagree with or criticize the manner in which the Scientologists think they're going to save the world.

When all is said and done, what Scientology has to offer is merely their treatment or processing. They believe that it is our only road to salvation. The Scientologists like to say that there can't be two sides to the truth. Since they believe that they have found the truth, those who disagree with them are wrong. Perhaps. Sometimes when I am most skeptical about the efficacy of their methods, I think back to what one Scientologist said (using typically inflated figures) about their membership: "Fifteen million people can't be wrong." But history has often proven otherwise.

Many of the theories and teachings of scientology are so fanciful that the reaction of the normal individual on hearing them is generally one of amusement and incredulity ... the impression may exist ... that scientology is just harmless nonsense and its followers merely queer people, that its theories are foolish but funny and that not much harm is being done by allowing silly people to have their silly beliefs and carry on their silly practices. Such an attitude is welcomed by the scientologists, for it serves to obscure the real nature of scientology.

-- from the Australian Report

 

 

Incredulity of our data and validity. This is our finest asset and gives us more protection than any other single thing. If certain parties thought we were real we would have infinitely more trouble ... without a public incredulity we never would have gotten as far as we have. And now it's too late to be stopped. The protection was accidental but it serves us very well indeed. Remember that the next time the ignorant scoff.

-- L. Ron Hubbard

http://www.clambake.org/archive/books/tsos/sos-20.html