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L. Ron Hubbard

Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (March 13, 1911 – January 24, 1986) was an American author, primarily of science fiction and fantasy stories, who is best known for having founded the Church of Scientology. In 1950, Hubbard authored Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health and established a series of organizations to promote Dianetics. In 1952, Hubbard lost the rights to Dianetics in bankruptcy proceedings, and he subsequently founded Scientology. Thereafter, Hubbard oversaw the growth of the Church of Scientology into a worldwide organization.

L. Ron Hubbard
Hubbard in 1950
Born
Lafayette Ronald Hubbard

(1911-03-13)March 13, 1911
DiedJanuary 24, 1986(1986-01-24) (aged 74)
EducationGeorge Washington University (dropped out)
Occupation(s)Author, religious leader
Known forInventor of Scientology
Notable workDianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health
Battlefield Earth
Criminal charge(s)Petty theft (in 1948),
Fraud (in absentia, 1978)
Criminal penaltyFine of 35,000 and four years in prison (unserved)
Spouse(s)
(m. 1933; div. 1947)

(m. 1946; div. 1951)

(m. 1952)
Children7:

With Margaret Grubb:

With Sara Hollister:

  • Alexis Hubbard*

With Mary Sue Whipp:

* Estranged from family
RelativesJamie DeWolf (great-grandson)
Military career
Allegiance United States
Service/branch United States Navy
Years of service1941–1945 (Active)
1945–1950 (Reserve)
Rank Lieutenant
Commands heldUSS YP-422 and USS PC-815
Battles/warsWorld War II
Awards Navy Pistol Marksmanship Ribbon

Navy Rifle Marksmanship Ribbon
American Defense Service Medal
Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal
American Campaign Medal

World War II Victory Medal
Signature

Born in Tilden, Nebraska, in 1911, Hubbard spent much of his childhood in Helena, Montana. After his father was posted to the U.S. naval base on Guam, Hubbard traveled to Asia and the South Pacific in the late 1920s. In 1930, Hubbard enrolled at George Washington University to study civil engineering but dropped out in his second year. He began his career as a prolific writer of pulp fiction stories and married Margaret "Polly" Grubb, who shared his interest in aviation.

Hubbard was an officer in the Navy during World War II, where he briefly commanded two ships but was removed from command both times. The last few months of his active service were spent in a hospital, being treated for a variety of complaints.

In 1953, the first churches of Scientology were founded by L. Ron Hubbard, and in 1954 a Scientology church in Los Angeles was founded, which became the Church of Scientology International. Hubbard also added organizational management strategies, principles of pedagogy, a theory of communication and prevention strategies for healthy living to the teachings of Scientology.[1]

Scientology became increasingly controversial during the 1960s and came under intense media, government and legal pressure in a number of countries. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Hubbard spent much of his time at sea on his personal fleet of ships as "Commodore" of the Sea Organization, an elite quasi-paramilitary group of Scientologists.

Hubbard returned to the United States in 1975 and went into seclusion in the California desert after an unsuccessful attempt to take over the town of Clearwater, Florida. In 1978, Hubbard was convicted of fraud after he was tried in absentia by France. In the same year, eleven high-ranking members of Scientology were indicted on 28 charges for their role in the Church's Snow White Program, a systematic program of espionage against the United States government. One of the indicted was Hubbard's wife Mary Sue Hubbard, who was in charge of the program; L. Ron Hubbard was named an unindicted co-conspirator.

Hubbard spent the remaining years of his life in seclusion in a luxury motorhome on a ranch in California, attended to by a small group of Scientology officials. He died at age 74 in January 1986. Following Hubbard's death, Scientology leaders announced that his body had become an impediment to his work and that he had decided to "drop his body" to continue his research on another plane of existence. Though many of Hubbard's autobiographical statements have been found to be fictitious, the Church of Scientology describes Hubbard in hagiographic terms and rejects any suggestion that its account of Hubbard's life is not historical fact.

Early life

L. Ron Hubbard was born in 1911 in Tilden, Nebraska,[2] the only child of Ledora May (née Waterbury), who had trained as a teacher, and Harry Ross Hubbard, a former United States Navy officer.[3][4] After moving to Kalispell, Montana, they settled in Helena in 1913.[4] Hubbard's father rejoined the Navy in April 1917, during World War I, while his mother worked as a clerk for the state government.[5]

During the 1920s the Hubbards repeatedly relocated around the United States and overseas.[6] Hubbard was active in the Boy Scouts in Washington, D.C. and earned the rank of Eagle Scout in 1924, two weeks after his 13th birthday.[7]

In 1925, Hubbard was enrolled as a freshman at Union High School, Bremerton,[8] and the following year studied at Queen Anne High School in Seattle.[9][7]

In April 1927, Hubbard's father was posted to Guam, and that summer, Hubbard and his mother traveled to Guam with a brief stop-over in a couple of Chinese ports. He recorded his impressions of the places he visited and disdained the poverty of the inhabitants of Japan and China, whom he described as "gooks" and "lazy [and] ignorant".[10][11][12]

In September 1927, while living with grandparents, Hubbard enrolled at Helena High School, where he contributed to the school paper.[13][14] On May 11, 1928, Hubbard was dropped from enrollment at Helena High due to failing grades.[15] Hubbard left Helena and rejoined his parents in Guam in June 1928.[11]

Between October and December 1928, Hubbard's family and others traveled from Guam to China.[16] Upon his return to Guam, Hubbard spent much of his time writing dozens of short stories and essays.[17] Hubbard failed the Naval Academy entrance examination.[18]

In September 1929, Hubbard was enrolled at the Swavely Preparatory School in Manassas, Virginia, to prepare him for a second attempt at the examination.[19] During his first semester at Swevely, Hubbard complained of eye strain and was diagnosed with myopia; this diagnosis precluded any enrollment in the Naval Academy.[15][20] As an adult, Hubbard would write to himself: "Your eyes are getting progressively better. They became bad when you used them as an excuse to escape the naval academy".[21]

He was instead sent to Woodward School for Boys in Washington, D.C. to qualify for admission to George Washington University without having to sit for the entrance examination. He successfully graduated from the school in June 1930 and entered the University the following September.[22][15]

Period at university and Caribbean trip

On September 24, 1930, Hubbard began studying civil engineering at George Washington University's School of Engineering, at the behest of his father.[23][22] Academically, Hubbard did poorly: his transcripts show he failed many courses including atomic physics, though later in life he would claim to have been a nuclear physicist. In September 1931, he was placed on probation due to poor grades, and in April 1932 he again received a warning for his lack of academic achievement.[15] During his first year, Hubbard helped organize the university Glider Club and was elected its president.[22]

During what would become Hubbard's final semester at GWU, he organized an ill-fated trip to the Caribbean for June 1932 to explore and film the pirate "strongholds and bivouacs of the Spanish Main" and to "collect whatever one collects for exhibits in museums".[24] Amid multiple misfortunes and running low on funds, the ship's owners ordered it to return to Baltimore.[25] Hubbard failed to return to University the following year.[26]

After his father volunteered him for a Red Cross relief effort, on October 23, 1932, Hubbard traveled to Puerto Rico.[27] En route, Hubbard apparently "decided to abandon the Red Cross", instead opting to accompany a mineral surveyor in a futile bid to find gold.[26]

First marriage and early literary career

 
Hubbard's "Yukon Madness" was originally published in the August 1935 issue of New Mystery Adventures.
 
Illustration by Edd Cartier for Hubbard's story "Fear"[28]
 
Hubbard's novella "The Kingslayer" was reprinted in Two Complete Science-Adventure Books in 1950 after its original publication in a 1949 Hubbard collection.

Hubbard returned from Puerto Rico to D.C. in February 1933. He struck up a relationship with a fellow glider pilot named Margaret "Polly" Grubb.[29] The two were married on April 13. She was already pregnant when they married, but had a miscarriage shortly afterwards; a few months later, she became pregnant again.[30] On May 7, 1934, she gave birth prematurely to a son who was named Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, Jr., whose nickname was "Nibs".[31] Their second child, Katherine May, was born on January 15, 1936.[32] The Hubbards lived for a while in Laytonsville, Maryland, but were chronically short of money.[33]

Hubbard became a well-known and prolific writer for pulp fiction magazines during the 1930s. His literary career began with contributions to the George Washington University student newspaper, The University Hatchet, as a reporter for a few months in 1931.[22] Six of his pieces were published commercially during 1932 to 1933.[34] The going rate for freelance writers at the time was only a cent a word, so Hubbard's total earnings from these articles would have been less than $100 (equivalent to $2,093 in 2021).[35] The pulp magazine Thrilling Adventures became the first to publish one of his short stories, in February 1934.[36] Over the next six years, pulp magazines published many of his short stories under a variety of pen names, including Winchester Remington Colt, Kurt von Rachen, René Lafayette, Joe Blitz and Legionnaire 148.[37]

Although he was best known for his fantasy and science fiction stories, Hubbard wrote in a wide variety of genres, including adventure fiction, aviation, travel, mysteries, westerns and even romance.[38] Hubbard knew and associated with writers such as Isaac Asimov, Arthur J. Burks, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Sprague de Camp and A. E. van Vogt.[39]

In the spring of 1936 they moved to Bremerton, Washington. They lived there for a time with Hubbard's aunts and grandmother before finding a place of their own at nearby South Colby. According to one of his friends at the time, Robert MacDonald Ford, the Hubbards were "in fairly dire straits for money" but sustained themselves on the income from Hubbard's writing.[40]

His first full-length novel, Buckskin Brigades, was published in 1937.[41] He became a "highly idiosyncratic" writer of science fiction after being taken under the wing of editor John W. Campbell,[42] who published many of Hubbard's short stories and also serialized a number of well-received novelettes that Hubbard wrote for Campbell's magazines Unknown and Astounding Science Fiction. These included Fear, Final Blackout and Typewriter in the Sky.[43]

He wrote the script for The Secret of Treasure Island, a 1938 Columbia Pictures movie serial.[44]

Hubbard spent an increasing amount of time in New York City,[45] working out of a hotel room where his wife suspected him of carrying on affairs with other women.[46][47]

Dental procedure, near-death experience, and Excalibur

In April 1938, Hubbard reportedly underwent a dental procedure and reacted to the drug used in the procedure. According to his account, this triggered a revelatory near-death experience. Allegedly inspired by this experience, Hubbard composed a manuscript, which was never published, with working titles of The One Command or Excalibur.[48][49]

Arthur J. Burks, who read the work in 1938, later recalled it discussed the "one command": to survive. This theme would be revisited in Dianetics. Burks also recalled the work discussing the psychology of a lynch mob.[50] Hubbard would later cite Excalibur as an early version of Dianetics.[51]

According to Burks, Hubbard believed that Excalibur would "revolutionize everything" and that "it was somewhat more important, and would have a greater impact upon people, than the Bible."[50] According to Burks, Hubbard "was so sure he had something 'away out and beyond' anything else that he had sent telegrams to several book publishers, telling them that he had written 'THE book' and that they were to meet him at Penn Station, and he would discuss it with them and go with whomever [sic] gave him the best offer." However, nobody bought the manuscript.[50]

Hubbard's failure to sell Excalibur depressed him; he told his wife in an October 1938 letter: "Writing action pulp doesn't have much agreement with what I want to do because it retards my progress by demanding incessant attention and, further, actually weakens my name. So you see I've got to do something about it and at the same time strengthen the old financial position."[52] He went on:

Sooner or later Excalibur will be published and I may have a chance to get some name recognition out of it so as to pave the way to articles and comments which are my ideas of writing heaven ... Foolishly perhaps, but determined none the less, I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it will take a legendary form even if all books are destroyed. That goal is the real goal as far as I am concerned.[52]

Forrest J Ackerman, later Hubbard's literary agent, recalled that Hubbard told him "whoever read it either went insane or committed suicide. And he said that the last time he had shown it to a publisher in New York, he walked into the office to find out what the reaction was, the publisher called for the reader, the reader came in with the manuscript, threw it on the table and threw himself out of the skyscraper window."[53] In 1948, Hubbard would tell a convention of science fiction fans that Excalibur's inspiration came during an operation in which he "died" for eight minutes.[54]

Hubbard realized that, while he was dead, he had received a tremendous inspiration, a great Message which he must impart to others. He sat at his typewriter for six days and nights and nothing came out. Then, Excalibur emerged.[55]

The manuscript later became part of Scientology mythology.[56] An early 1950s Scientology publication offered signed "gold-bound and locked" copies for the sum of $1,500 apiece (equivalent to $16,894 in 2021). It warned that "four of the first fifteen people who read it went insane" and that it would be "[r]eleased only on sworn statement not to permit other readers to read it. Contains data not to be released during Mr. Hubbard's stay on earth."[57]

Alaska trip

 
Ketchikan, Alaska, where Hubbard and his wife were stranded during the "Alaskan Radio-Experimental Expedition"

Hubbard joined The Explorers Club in February 1940 on the strength of his claimed explorations in the Caribbean and survey flights in the United States.[58] He persuaded the club to let him carry its flag on an "Alaskan Radio-Experimental Expedition".[59] The crew consisted of Hubbard and his wife aboard his ketch Magician.[60]

The trip was plagued by problems and did not get any further than Ketchikan.[61] The ship's engine broke down only two days after setting off in July 1940. Having underestimated the cost of the trip, he did not have enough money to repair the broken engine. He raised money by writing stories and contributing to the local radio station[62] and eventually earned enough to fix the engine,[58] making it back to Puget Sound on December 27, 1940.[62]

Military career

 
Hubbard and Thomas S. Moulton in 1943

After returning from Alaska, Hubbard applied to join the United States Navy. His friend Robert MacDonald Ford sent a letter of recommendation describing Hubbard as "one of the most brilliant men I have ever known".[63] Ford later said that Hubbard had written the letter himself: "I don't know why Ron wanted a letter. I just gave him a letter-head and said, 'Hell, you're the writer, you write it!'"[64]

Hubbard was commissioned as a lieutenant junior grade in the United States Naval Reserve on July 19, 1941. By November, he was posted to New York for training as an intelligence officer.[65] On December 18, he was posted to the Philippines and set out for the posting via Australia. While in Melbourne awaiting transport to Manilla, Hubbard was sent back to the United States. The U.S. naval attaché reported, "This officer is not satisfactory for independent duty assignment. He is garrulous and tries to give impressions of his importance. He also seems to think he has unusual ability in most lines. These characteristics indicate that he will require close supervision for satisfactory performance of any intelligence duty."[66]

After a brief stint censoring cables, Hubbard's request for sea duty was approved and he reported to a Neponset, Massachusetts, shipyard which was converting a trawler into a gunboat to be classified as USS YP-422. On September 25, 1942, the commandant of Boston Navy Yard informed Washington that, in his view, Hubbard was "not temperamentally fitted for independent command."[67] Days later, on October 1, Hubbard was summarily relieved of his command.[66]

Hubbard was sent to submarine chaser training, and in 1943 was posted to Portland, Oregon, to take command of a submarine chaser, the USS PC-815, which was under construction.[68] On May 18, PC-815 sailed on her shakedown cruise, bound for San Diego. Only five hours into the voyage, Hubbard believed he had detected an enemy submarine. Hubbard spent the next 68 hours engaged in combat, until finally receiving orders to return to Astoria. Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, commander of the Northwest Sea Frontier, concluded: "An analysis of all reports convinces me that there was no submarine in the area."[69] Fletcher suggested Hubbard had mistaken a "known magnetic deposit" for an enemy sub.[66]

The following month, Hubbard unwittingly sailed PC-815 into Mexican territorial waters and conducted gunnery practice off the Coronado Islands, in the belief that they were uninhabited and belonged to the United States. The Mexican government complained and Hubbard was relieved of command. A report written after the incident rated Hubbard as unsuitable for independent duties and "lacking in the essential qualities of judgment, leadership and cooperation".[70] The report recommended he be assigned "duty on a large vessel where he can be properly supervised".[71]

Hospitalizations and "discovery" of sabotage attempt

 
USS PC-815, Hubbard's second and final command

After being relieved of command of PC-815, Hubbard began reporting sick, citing a variety of ailments, including ulcers, malaria, and back pains. Hubbard was admitted to the San Diego naval hospital for observation—he would remain there for nearly three months.[66] Years later, Hubbard would privately write to himself: "Your stomach trouble you used as an excuse to keep the Navy from punishing you. You are free of the Navy."[21]

In 1944, Hubbard was posted to Portland where USS Algol was under construction. The ship was commissioned in July and Hubbard served as the navigation and training officer. Hubbard requested, and was granted, a transfer to the School of Military Government in Princeton. The night before his departure, the ship's log reports that "The Navigating Officer [Hubbard] reported to the OOD [Officer On Duty] that an attempt at sabatage [sic] had been made sometime between 1530–1600. A coke bottle filled with gasoline with a cloth wick inserted had been concealed among cargo which was to be hoisted aboard and stored in No 1 hold. It was discovered before being taken on board. ONI, FBI and NSD authorities reported on the scene and investigations were started."[72][66]

Hubbard attended school in Princeton until January 1945, when he was assigned to Monterey, California. In April, he again reported sick and was re-admitted to Oak Knoll Naval Hospital, Oakland.[66] His complaints included "headaches, rheumatism, conjunctivitis, pains in his side, stomach aches, pains in his shoulder, arthritis, hemorrhoids".[73] An October 1945 naval board found that Hubbard was "considered physically qualified to perform duty ashore, preferably within the continental United States".[74] He was discharged from the hospital on December 4, 1945, and transferred to inactive duty on February 17, 1946.[75] Hubbard would ultimately resign his commission after the publication of Dianetics, with effect from October 30, 1950.[76]

Occult involvement in Pasadena

 
Jack Parsons in 1938

Hubbard's life underwent a turbulent period immediately after the war. According to his own account, he "was abandoned by family and friends as a supposedly hopeless cripple and a probable burden upon them for the rest of my days".[77] His daughter Katherine presented a rather different version: his wife had refused to uproot their children from their home in Bremerton, Washington, to join him in California. Their marriage was by now in terminal difficulties and he chose to stay in California.[78]

In August 1945, Hubbard moved into the Pasadena mansion of John "Jack" Whiteside Parsons. A leading rocket propulsion researcher at the California Institute of Technology and a founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Parsons led a double life as an avid occultist and Thelemite, follower of the English ceremonial magician Aleister Crowley and leader of a lodge of Crowley's magical order, Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO).[79][80] He let rooms in the house only to tenants who he specified should be "atheists and those of a Bohemian disposition".[81]

Hubbard befriended Parsons and soon became sexually involved with Parsons's 21-year-old girlfriend, Sara "Betty" Northrup.[82] Despite this, Parsons was very impressed with Hubbard and reported to Crowley:

[Hubbard] is a gentleman; he has red hair, green eyes, is honest and intelligent, and we have become great friends. He moved in with me about two months ago, and although Betty and I are still friendly, she has transferred her sexual affection to Ron. Although he has no formal training in Magick, he has an extraordinary amount of experience and understanding in the field. From some of his experiences I deduced that he is in direct touch with some higher intelligence, possibly his Guardian Angel. He describes his Angel as a beautiful winged woman with red hair whom he calls the Empress and who has guided him through his life and saved him many times. He is the most Thelemic person I have ever met and is in complete accord with our own principles.[83]

Hubbard, whom Parsons referred to in writing as "Frater H",[84] became an enthusiastic collaborator in the Pasadena OTO. The two men collaborated on the "Babalon Working", a sex magic ritual intended to summon an incarnation of Babalon, the supreme Thelemite Goddess. It was undertaken over several nights in February and March 1946 in order to summon an "elemental" who would participate in further sex magic.[85] As Richard Metzger describes it,

Parsons used his "magical wand" to whip up a vortex of energy so the elemental would be summoned. Translated into plain English, Parsons jerked off in the name of spiritual advancement whilst Hubbard (referred to as "The Scribe" in the diary of the event) scanned the astral plane for signs and visions.[86]

The "elemental" arrived a few days later in the form of Marjorie Cameron, who agreed to participate in Parsons's rites.[85] Soon afterwards, Parsons, Hubbard and Sara agreed to set up a business partnership, "Allied Enterprises", in which they invested nearly their entire savings—the vast majority contributed by Parsons. The plan was for Hubbard and Sara to buy yachts in Miami and sail them to the West Coast to sell for a profit. Hubbard had a different idea; he wrote to the U.S. Navy requesting permission to leave the country "to visit Central & South America & China" for the purposes of "collecting writing material"—in other words, undertaking a world cruise.[87] Aleister Crowley strongly criticized Parsons's actions, writing: "Suspect Ron playing confidence trick—Jack Parsons weak fool—obvious victim prowling swindlers." Parsons attempted to recover his money by obtaining an injunction to prevent Hubbard and Sara leaving the country or disposing of the remnants of his assets.[88] They attempted to sail anyway but were forced back to port by a storm. A week later, Allied Enterprises was dissolved. Parsons received only a $2,900 promissory note from Hubbard and returned home "shattered". He had to sell his mansion to developers soon afterwards to recoup his losses.[89]

 
Hubbard and second wife Sara

Hubbard's fellow writers were well aware of what had happened between him and Parsons. L. Sprague de Camp wrote to Isaac Asimov on August 27, 1946, to tell him:

The more complete story of Hubbard is that he is now in Fla. living on his yacht with a man-eating tigress named Betty-alias-Sarah, another of the same kind ... He will probably soon thereafter arrive in these parts with Betty-Sarah, broke, working the poor-wounded-veteran racket for all its worth, and looking for another easy mark. Don't say you haven't been warned. Bob [Robert Heinlein] thinks Ron went to pieces morally as a result of the war. I think that's fertilizer, that he always was that way, but when he wanted to conciliate or get something from somebody he could put on a good charm act. What the war did was to wear him down to where he no longer bothers with the act.[90]

On August 10, 1946, Hubbard bigamously married Sara, while still married to Polly. It was not until 1947 that his first wife learned that he had remarried. Hubbard agreed to divorce Polly in June that year and the marriage was dissolved shortly afterwards, with Polly given custody of the children.[91]

During this period, Hubbard authored a document which has been called the "Affirmations" (also referred to as the "Admissions"). They consist of a series of statements by and addressed to Hubbard, relating to various physical, sexual, psychological and social issues that he was encountering in his life. The Affirmations appear to have been intended to be used as a form of self-hypnosis with the intention of resolving the author's psychological problems and instilling a positive mental attitude. In her book, Reitman called the Affirmations "the most revealing psychological self-assessment, complete with exhortations to himself, that [Hubbard] had ever made."[92] Among the Affirmations:

  • "Your eyes are getting progressively better. They became bad when you used them as an excuse to escape the naval academy. You have no reason to keep them bad."
  • "Your stomach trouble you used as an excuse to keep the Navy from punishing you. You are free of the Navy."
  • "Your hip is a pose. You have a sound hip. It never hurts. Your shoulder never hurts."
  • "Your foot was an alibi. The injury is no longer needed."[21]
  • "You can tell all the romantic tales you wish. ... But you know which ones were lies ... You have enough real experience to make anecdotes forever. Stick to your true adventures."
  • "Masturbation does not injure or make insane. Your parents were in error. Everyone masturbates."[93]

Request for psychiatric treatment

After Hubbard's wedding to Sara, the couple settled at Laguna Beach, California, where Hubbard took a short-term job looking after a friend's yacht [94] before resuming his fiction writing to supplement the small disability allowance that he was receiving as a war veteran.[95] Working from a trailer in a run-down area of North Hollywood,[91] Hubbard sold a number of science fiction stories that included his Ole Doc Methuselah series and the serialized novels The End Is Not Yet and To the Stars.[42] However, he remained short of money and his son, L. Ron Hubbard Jr, testified later that Hubbard was dependent on his own father and Margaret's parents for money and his writings, which he was paid at a penny per word, never garnered him any more than $10,000 prior to the founding of Scientology.[96] He repeatedly wrote to the Veterans Administration (VA) asking for an increase in his war pension.[97]

In October 1947 he wrote to request psychiatric treatment:

After trying and failing for two years to regain my equilibrium in civil life, I am utterly unable to approach anything like my own competence. My last physician informed me that it might be very helpful if I were to be examined and perhaps treated psychiatrically or even by a psychoanalyst. Toward the end of my service I avoided out of pride any mental examinations, hoping that time would balance a mind which I had every reason to suppose was seriously affected. I cannot account for nor rise above long periods of moroseness and suicidal inclinations, and have newly come to realize that I must first triumph above this before I can hope to rehabilitate myself at all. ... I cannot, myself, afford such treatment.
Would you please help me?[98]

The VA eventually did increase his pension,[99] but his money problems continued. On August 31, 1948, he was arrested in San Luis Obispo, California, and subsequently pleaded guilty to a charge of petty theft, for which he was ordered to pay a $25 fine (equivalent to $282 in 2021).[100]

Dianetics

Origin

In 1948, Hubbard and his second wife Sara moved from California to Savannah, Georgia, where he would later claim to have worked as a volunteer lay practitioner in a local psychiatric clinic. In letters to friends, he began to make the first public mentions of what was to become Dianetics.[101]

He wrote in January 1949 that he was working on a "book of psychology" about "the cause and cure of nervous tension", which he was going to call The Dark Sword, Excalibur or Science of the Mind.[102] On March 8, 1949, Hubbard wrote to friend and fellow science-fiction author Robert Heinlein from Savannah, Georgia. Hubbard referenced Heinlein's earlier work Coventry, in which a utopian government has the ability to psychologically "cure" criminals of violent personality traits. He told Heinlein:

Well, you didn't specify in your book what actual reformation took place in the society to make supermen. Got to thinking about it other day. The system is Excalibur. It makes nul A's.[103]

His first published articles in Dianetics were "Terra Incognita: The Mind" in The Explorers Journal and another one that impacted people more heavily in Astounding Science Fiction.[104]

In April 1949, Hubbard wrote to several professional organizations to offer his research.[105] None were interested, so he turned to his editor John W. Campbell, who was more receptive due to a long-standing fascination with fringe psychologies and psychic powers ("psionics") that "permeated both his fiction and non-fiction".[106]

Campbell invited Hubbard and Sara to move into a cottage at Bay Head, New Jersey, not far from his own home at Plainfield. In July 1949, Campbell recruited an acquaintance, Dr. Joseph Winter, to help develop Hubbard's new therapy of "Dianetics". Campbell told Winter:

With cooperation from some institutions, some psychiatrists, [Hubbard] has worked on all types of cases. Institutionalized schizophrenics, apathies, manics, depressives, perverts, stuttering, neuroses—in all, nearly 1000 cases. But just a brief sampling of each type; he doesn't have proper statistics in the usual sense. But he has one statistic. He has cured every patient he worked with. He has cured ulcers, arthritis, asthma.[107]

Hubbard collaborated with Campbell and Winter to refine his techniques,[108] testing them on science fiction fans recruited by Campbell.[109] The basic principle of Dianetics was that the brain recorded every experience and event in a person's life, even when unconscious. Bad or painful experiences were stored as what he called "engrams" in a "reactive mind". These could be triggered later in life, causing emotional and physical problems. By carrying out a process he called "auditing", a person could be regressed through his engrams to re-experiencing past experiences. This enabled engrams to be "cleared". The subject, who would now be in a state of "Clear", would have a perfectly functioning mind with an improved IQ and photographic memory.[110] The "Clear" would be cured of physical ailments ranging from poor eyesight to the common cold,[111] which Hubbard asserted were purely psychosomatic.[112]

Winter submitted a paper on Dianetics to the Journal of the American Medical Association and the American Journal of Psychiatry but both journals rejected it.[113] Hubbard and his collaborators decided to announce Dianetics in Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction instead. In an editorial, Campbell said: "Its power is almost unbelievable; it proves the mind not only can but does rule the body completely; following the sharply defined basic laws set forth, physical ills such as ulcers, asthma and arthritis can be cured, as can all other psychosomatic ills."[114] The birth of Hubbard's second daughter Alexis Valerie, delivered by Winter on March 8, 1950, came in the middle of the preparations to launch Dianetics. Shortly afterwards in April 1950, a "Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation" was established in Elizabeth, New Jersey, with Hubbard, Sara, Winter and Campbell on the board of directors.[115]

Hubbard described Dianetics as "the hidden source of all psychosomatic ills and human aberration" when he introduced Dianetics to the world in the 1950s. He further claimed that "skills have been developed for their invariable cure."[116] Dianetics was duly launched in Astounding's May 1950 issue and on May 9, Hubbard's companion book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health was published[117] by Hermitage House. Hubbard abandoned freelance writing in order to promote Dianetics, writing several books about it in the next decade and delivering an estimated 4,000 lectures while founding Dianetics research organizations.[118]

Initial success

 
Hubbard conducting a Dianetics seminar in Los Angeles, 1950

Dianetics was an immediate commercial success and sparked what Martin Gardner calls "a nationwide cult of incredible proportions".[119] By August 1950, Hubbard's book had sold 55,000 copies, was selling at the rate of 4,000 a week and was being translated into French, German and Japanese. Five hundred Dianetic auditing groups had been set up across the United States.[120]

Dianetics was poorly received by the press and the scientific and medical professions.[120] The American Psychological Association criticized Hubbard's claims as "not supported by empirical evidence".[121] Scientific American said that Hubbard's book contained "more promises and less evidence per page than any publication since the invention of printing",[122] while The New Republic called it a "bold and immodest mixture of complete nonsense and perfectly reasonable common sense, taken from long acknowledged findings and disguised and distorted by a crazy, newly invented terminology".[123] Some of Hubbard's fellow science fiction writers also criticized it; Isaac Asimov considered it "gibberish"[39] while Jack Williamson called it "a lunatic revision of Freudian psychology".[124]

Several famous individuals became involved with Dianetics. Aldous Huxley received auditing from Hubbard;[125] the poet Jean Toomer[126] and the science fiction writers Theodore Sturgeon[127] and A. E. van Vogt became trained Dianetics auditors. Vogt temporarily abandoned writing and became the head of the newly established Los Angeles branch of the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation. Other branches were established in New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Honolulu.[128][129] Psychologist and systems theorist William T. Powers, also prolific as a science fiction writer, was another early advocate[130][131] and researcher connected with the Chicago branch.[132]

Although Dianetics was not cheap, a great many people were nonetheless willing to pay; van Vogt later recalled "doing little but tear open envelopes and pull out $500 checks from people who wanted to take an auditor's course".[128] Financial controls were lax. Hubbard himself took large sums with no explanation of what he was doing with it. On one occasion, van Vogt saw Hubbard taking a lump sum of $56,000 (equivalent to $630,000 in 2021) out of the Los Angeles Foundation's proceeds.[128] One of Hubbard's employees, Helen O'Brien, commented that at the Elizabeth, N.J. branch of the Foundation, the books showed that "a month's income of $90,000 is listed, with only $20,000 accounted for".[133]

Hubbard played a very active role in the Dianetics boom, writing, lecturing and training auditors. Many of those who knew him spoke of being impressed by his personal charisma. Jack Horner, who became a Dianetics auditor in 1950, later said, "He was very impressive, dedicated and amusing. The man had tremendous charisma; you just wanted to hear every word he had to say and listen for any pearl of wisdom."[134] Isaac Asimov recalled in his autobiography how, at a dinner party, he, Robert Heinlein, L. Sprague de Camp and their wives "all sat as quietly as pussycats and listened to Hubbard. He told tales with perfect aplomb and in complete paragraphs."[39] As Atack comments, he was "a charismatic figure who compelled the devotion of those around him".[135] Christopher Evans described the personal qualities that Hubbard brought to Dianetics and Scientology:

He undoubtedly has charisma, a magnetic lure of an indefinable kind which makes him the centre of attraction in any kind of gathering. He is also a compulsive talker and pontificator ... His restless energy keeps him on the go throughout a long day—he is a poor sleeper and rises very early—and provides part of the drive which has allowed him to found and propagate a major international organization.[136]

Collapse of Dianetics Foundation and subsequent kidnappings

Dianetics lost public credibility in August 1950 when a presentation by Hubbard before an audience of 6,000 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles failed disastrously.[137] He introduced a Clear named Sonya Bianca and told the audience that as a result of undergoing Dianetic therapy she now possessed perfect recall. However, Gardner writes, "in the demonstration that followed, she failed to remember a single formula in physics (the subject in which she was majoring) or the color of Hubbard's tie when his back was turned. At this point, a large part of the audience got up and left."[138]

Hubbard's supporters soon began to have doubts about Dianetics. Winter became disillusioned, and in 1951, he wrote that he had never seen a single convincing Clear: "I have seen some individuals who are supposed to have been 'clear,' but their behavior does not conform to the definition of the state. Moreover, an individual supposed to have been 'clear' has undergone a relapse into conduct which suggests an incipient psychosis."[139] He also deplored the Foundation's omission of any serious scientific research.[140]

Hubbard also faced other practitioners moving into leadership positions within the Dianetics community. It was structured as an open, public practice in which others were free to pursue their own lines of research and claim that their approaches to auditing produced better results than Hubbard's.[141] The community rapidly splintered and its members mingled Hubbard's ideas with a wide variety of esoteric and occult practices.[142]

By late 1950, the Elizabeth, N.J. Foundation was in financial crisis and the Los Angeles Foundation was more than $200,000 in debt (equivalent to $1,860,000 in 2021).[143] Winter and Art Ceppos, the publisher of Hubbard's book, resigned under acrimonious circumstances.[125] Campbell also resigned, criticizing Hubbard for being impossible to work with, and blamed him for the disorganization and financial ruin of the Foundations.[144] By the summer of 1951, the Elizabeth, N.J. Foundation and all of its branches had closed.[133]

The collapse of Hubbard's marriage to Sara created yet more problems. He had begun an affair with his 20-year-old public relations assistant in late 1950, while Sara started a relationship with Dianetics auditor Miles Hollister.[145] Hubbard secretly denounced the couple to the FBI in March 1951, portraying them in a letter as communist infiltrators. According to Hubbard, Sara was "currently intimate with [communists] but evidently under coercion. Drug addiction set in fall 1950. Nothing of this known to me until a few weeks ago." Hollister was described as having a "sharp chin, broad forehead, rather Slavic". He was said to be the "center of most turbulence in our organization" and "active and dangerous".[146] The FBI did not take Hubbard seriously: an agent annotated his correspondence with the comment, "Appears mental."[147]

 
Hubbard's wife, Sara, at a 1951 custody hearing

Three weeks later, Hubbard and two Foundation staff seized Sara and his year-old daughter Alexis and forcibly took them to San Bernardino, California, where he attempted unsuccessfully to find a doctor to examine Sara and declare her insane.[148] He let Sara go but took Alexis to Havana, Cuba. Sara filed a divorce suit on April 23, 1951, that accused him of marrying her bigamously and subjecting her to sleep deprivation, beatings, strangulation, kidnapping and exhortations to commit suicide.[149] The case led to newspaper headlines such as "Ron Hubbard Insane, Says His Wife."[150] Sara finally secured the return of her daughter in June 1951 by agreeing to a settlement with her husband in which she signed a statement, written by him, declaring:

The things I have said about L. Ron Hubbard in courts and the public prints have been grossly exaggerated or entirely false. I have not at any time believed otherwise than that L. Ron Hubbard is a fine and brilliant man.[151]

Dianetics appeared to be on the edge of total collapse. However, it was saved by Don Purcell, a millionaire businessman and Dianeticist who agreed to support a new Foundation in Wichita, Kansas. Their collaboration ended after less than a year when they fell out over the future direction of Dianetics.[152] The Wichita Foundation became financially nonviable after a court ruled that it was liable for the unpaid debts of its defunct predecessor in Elizabeth, N.J. The ruling prompted Purcell and the other directors of the Wichita Foundation to file for voluntary bankruptcy in February 1952.[145] Hubbard resigned immediately and accused Purcell of having been bribed by the American Medical Association to destroy Dianetics.[152] Hubbard established a "Hubbard College" on the other side of town where he continued to promote Dianetics while fighting Purcell in the courts over the Foundation's intellectual property.[153]

Only six weeks after setting up the Hubbard College and marrying a staff member, 18-year-old Mary Sue Whipp, Hubbard closed it down and moved with his new bride to Phoenix, Arizona. He established a Hubbard Association of Scientologists International to promote his new "Science of Certainty"—Scientology.[154] Scientology and Dianetics have been differentiated as follows: Dianetics is all about releasing the mind from the "distorting influence of engrams", and Scientology "is the study and handling of the spirit in relation to itself, universes and other life".[155]

Rise of Scientology

 
Hubbard established an "Academy of Scientology" at this Northwest, Washington, D.C. building in 1955. It is now the L. Ron Hubbard House museum.

The Church of Scientology attributes its genesis to Hubbard's discovery of "a new line of research"—"that man is most fundamentally a spiritual being (a thetan)".[156] Non-Scientologist writers have suggested alternative motives: that he aimed "to reassert control over his creation",[142] that he believed "he was about to lose control of Dianetics",[152] or that he wanted to ensure "he would be able to stay in business even if the courts eventually awarded control of Dianetics and its valuable copyrights to ... the hated Don Purcell."[157] Harlan Ellison has told a story of seeing Hubbard at a gathering of the Hydra Club in 1953 or 1954. Hubbard was complaining of not being able to make a living on what he was being paid as a science fiction writer. Ellison says that Lester del Rey told Hubbard that what he needed to do to get rich was start a religion.[158]

Hubbard expanded upon the basics of Dianetics to construct a spiritually oriented (though at this stage not religious) doctrine based on the concept that the true self of a person was a thetan—an immortal, omniscient and potentially omnipotent entity.[159] Hubbard taught that thetans, having created the material universe, had forgotten their god-like powers and become trapped in physical bodies.[160] Scientology aimed to "rehabilitate" each person's self (the thetan) to restore its original capacities and become once again an "Operating Thetan".[157][159] Hubbard insisted humanity was imperiled by the forces of "aberration", which were the result of engrams carried by immortal thetans for billions of years.[152]

In 2012, Ohio State University professor Hugh Urban[161] argued that Hubbard had adopted many of his theories from the early to mid 20th century astral projection pioneer Sylvan Muldoon stating that Hubbard's description of exteriorizing the thetan is extremely similar if not identical to the descriptions of astral projection in occult literature popularized by Muldoon's widely read Phenomena of Astral Projection (1951) (co-written with Hereward Carrington)[162] and that Muldoon's description of the astral body as being connected to the physical body by a long thin, elastic cord is virtually identical to the one described in Hubbard's "Excalibur" vision.[163]

Hubbard introduced a device called an E-meter that he presented as having, as Miller puts it, "an almost mystical power to reveal an individual's innermost thoughts".[164] He promulgated Scientology through a series of lectures, bulletins and books such as A History of Man ("a cold-blooded and factual account of your last sixty trillion years")[164] and Scientology: 8-8008 ("With this book, the ability to make one's body old or young at will, the ability to heal the ill without physical contact, the ability to cure the insane and the incapacitated, is set forth for the physician, the layman, the mathematician and the physicist.")[165]

Scientology was organized in a very different way from the decentralized Dianetics movement. The Hubbard Association of Scientologists (HAS) was the only official Scientology organization. Training procedures and doctrines were standardized and promoted through HAS publications, and administrators and auditors were not permitted to deviate from Hubbard's approach.[142] Branches or "orgs" were organized as franchises, rather like a fast food restaurant chain. Each franchise holder was required to pay ten percent of income to Hubbard's central organization. They were expected to find new recruits, known as "raw meat", but were restricted to providing only basic services. Costlier higher-level auditing was only provided by Hubbard's central organization.[166]

Although this model would eventually be extremely successful, Scientology was a very small-scale movement at first. Hubbard started off with only a few dozen followers, generally dedicated Dianeticists; a seventy-hour series of lectures in Philadelphia in December 1952 was attended by just 38 people.[167] Hubbard was joined in Phoenix by his 18-year-old son Nibs, who had been unable to settle down in high school.[168] Nibs had decided to become a Scientologist, moved into his father's home and went on to become a Scientology staff member and "professor".[169] Hubbard also traveled to the United Kingdom to establish his control over a Dianetics group in London. It was very much a shoestring operation; as Helen O'Brien later recalled, "there was an atmosphere of extreme poverty and undertones of a grim conspiracy over all. At 163 Holland Park Avenue was an ill-lit lecture room and a bare-boarded and poky office some eight by ten feet—mainly infested by long haired men and short haired and tatty women."[170] On September 24, 1952, only a few weeks after arriving in London, Hubbard's wife Mary Sue gave birth to her first child, a daughter whom they named Diana Meredith de Wolfe Hubbard.[171]

In February 1953, Hubbard acquired a doctorate from Sequoia University, an unaccredited degree mill.[172]

As membership declined and finances grew tighter, Hubbard had reversed the hostility to religion he voiced in Dianetics.[173] A few weeks after becoming "Dr." Hubbard, he authored a letter outlining plans for transforming Scientology into a religion. In that letter, Hubbard proposed setting up a chain of "Spiritual Guidance Centers" charging customers $500 for twenty-four hours of auditing proposing that Scientology should be transformed into a religion:[174]

We don't want a clinic. We want one in operation but not in name. Perhaps we could call it a Spiritual Guidance Center. Think up its name, will you. And we could put in nice desks and our boys in neat blue with diplomas on the walls and 1. knock psychotherapy into history and 2. make enough money to shine up my operating scope and 3. keep the HAS solvent. It is a problem of practical business. I await your reaction on the religion angle. In my opinion, we couldn't get worse public opinion than we have had or have less customers with what we've got to sell.[175]

The letter's recipient, Helen O'Brien, resigned the following September.[176] She criticized Hubbard for creating "a temperate zone voodoo, in its inelasticity, unexplainable procedures, and mindless group euphoria".[177]

The idea may not have been new; Hubbard has been quoted as telling a science fiction convention in 1948: "Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion."[147][178][179] J. Gordon Melton notes, "There is no record of Hubbard having ever made this statement, though several of his science fiction colleagues have noted the broaching of the subject on one of their informal conversations."[180]

Despite objections, on December 18, 1953, Hubbard incorporated the Church of Scientology, Church of American Science and Church of Spiritual Engineering in Camden, New Jersey.[181] Hubbard, his wife Mary Sue and his secretary John Galusha became the trustees of all three corporations.[182][183] The reason for Scientology's religious transformation was explained by officials of the HAS:

[T]here is little doubt but what this stroke will remove Scientology from the target area of overt and covert attacks by the medical profession, who see their pills, scalpels, and appendix-studded incomes threatened ... [Scientologists] can avoid the recent fiasco in which a Pasadena practitioner is reported to have spent 10 days in that city's torture chamber for "practicing medicine without a license."[184]

Scientology franchises became Churches of Scientology and some auditors began dressing as clergymen, complete with clerical collars. If they were arrested in the course of their activities, Hubbard advised, they should sue for massive damages for molesting "a Man of God going about his business".[181] A few years later he told Scientologists: "If attacked on some vulnerable point by anyone or anything or any organization, always find or manufacture enough threat against them to cause them to sue for peace ... Don't ever defend, always attack."[185] Any individual breaking away from Scientology and setting up his own group was to be shut down:

The purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather than to win. The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he is not authorized, will generally be sufficient to cause his professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly.[186]

The 1950s saw Scientology growing steadily. Hubbard finally achieved victory over Don Purcell in 1954 when the latter, worn out by constant litigation, handed the copyrights of Dianetics back to Hubbard.[187] Most of the formerly independent Scientology and Dianetics groups were either driven out of business or were absorbed into Hubbard's organizations.[188] Hubbard marketed Scientology through medical claims, such as attracting polio sufferers by presenting the Church of Scientology as a scientific research foundation investigating polio cases.[189] One advertisement during this period stated:

Plagued by illness? We'll make you able to have good health. Get processed by the finest capable auditors in the world today ... Personally coached and monitored by L. Ron Hubbard.[190]

Scientology became a highly profitable enterprise for Hubbard.[191] He implemented a scheme under which he was paid a percentage of the Church of Scientology's gross income and by 1957 he was being paid about $250,000 (equivalent to US$2,412,026 in 2021).[192] His family grew, too, with Mary Sue giving birth to three more children—Geoffrey Quentin McCaully on January 6, 1954;[176] Mary Suzette Rochelle on February 13, 1955;[193] and Arthur Ronald Conway on June 6, 1958.[194] In the spring of 1959, he used his new-found wealth to purchase Saint Hill Manor, an 18th-century country house in Sussex, formerly owned by Sawai Man Singh II, the Maharaja of Jaipur. The house became Hubbard's permanent residence and an international training center for Scientologists.[189]

Controversies and crises

 
The L. Ron Hubbard House at Camelback in Phoenix, Arizona. The house is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
 
L. Ron Hubbard's car, a 1947 Buick Super 8. The car is parked behind the house.

By the start of the 1960s, Hubbard was the leader of a worldwide movement with thousands of followers. A decade later, however, he had left Saint Hill Manor and moved aboard his own private fleet of ships as the Church of Scientology faced worldwide controversy.

The Church of Scientology says that the problems of this period were due to "vicious, covert international attacks" by the United States government, "all of which were proven false and baseless, which were to last 27 years and finally culminated in the Government being sued for 750 million dollars for conspiracy."[195] Behind the attacks, stated Hubbard, lay a vast conspiracy of "psychiatric front groups" secretly controlling governments: "Every single lie, false charge and attack on Scientology has been traced directly to this group's members. They have sought at great expense for nineteen years to crush and eradicate any new development in the field of the mind. They are actively preventing any effectiveness in this field."[196]

Hubbard believed that Scientology was being infiltrated by saboteurs and spies and introduced "security checking"[185] to identify those he termed "potential trouble sources" and "suppressive persons". Members of the Church of Scientology were interrogated with the aid of E-meters and were asked questions such as "Have you ever practiced homosexuality?" and "Have you ever had unkind thoughts about L. Ron Hubbard?"[197] For a time, Scientologists were even interrogated about crimes committed in past lives: "Have you ever destroyed a culture?" "Did you come to Earth for evil purposes?" "Have you ever zapped anyone?"[198]

He also sought to exert political influence, advising Scientologists to vote against Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election and establishing a Department of Government Affairs "to bring government and hostile philosophies or societies into a state of complete compliance with the goals of Scientology". This, he said, "is done by high-level ability to control and in its absence by a low-level ability to overwhelm. Introvert such agencies. Control such agencies."[199]

The U.S. Government was already well aware of Hubbard's activities. The FBI had a lengthy file on him, including a 1951 interview with an agent who considered him a "mental case".[144] Police forces in a number of jurisdictions began exchanging information about Scientology through the auspices of Interpol, which eventually led to prosecutions.[200] In 1958, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service withdrew the Washington, D.C. Church of Scientology's tax exemption after it found that Hubbard and his family were profiting unreasonably from Scientology's ostensibly non-profit income.[191] The Food and Drug Administration took action against Scientology's medical claims, seizing thousands of pills being marketed as "radiation cures"[201] as well as publications and E-meters. The Church of Scientology was required to label them as being "ineffective in the diagnosis or treatment of disease".[202]

Following the FDA's actions, Scientology attracted increasingly unfavorable publicity across the English-speaking world.[203] It faced particularly hostile scrutiny in Victoria, Australia, where it was accused of brainwashing, blackmail, extortion and damaging the mental health of its members.[204] The Victorian state government established a Board of Inquiry into Scientology in November 1963.[205] Its report, published in October 1965, condemned every aspect of Scientology and Hubbard himself. He was described as being of doubtful sanity, having a persecution complex and displaying strong indications of paranoid schizophrenia with delusions of grandeur. His writings were characterized as nonsensical, abounding in "self-glorification and grandiosity, replete with histrionics and hysterical, incontinent outbursts".[206] Sociologist Roy Wallis comments that the report drastically changed public perceptions of Scientology:

The former conception of the movement as a relatively harmless, if cranky, health and self-improvement cult, was transformed into one which portrayed it as evil, dangerous, a form of hypnosis (with all the overtones of Svengali in the layman's mind), and brainwashing.[204]

The report led to Scientology being banned in Victoria,[207] Western Australia and South Australia,[208] and led to more negative publicity around the world. Newspapers and politicians in the UK pressed the British government for action against Scientology. In April 1966, hoping to form a remote "safe haven" for Scientology, Hubbard traveled to the southern African country Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe) and looked into setting up a base there at a hotel on Lake Kariba. Despite his attempts to curry favour with the local government—he personally delivered champagne to Prime Minister Ian Smith's house, but Smith refused to see him—Rhodesia promptly refused to renew Hubbard's visa, compelling him to leave the country.[209] In July 1968, the British Minister of Health, Kenneth Robinson, announced that foreign Scientologists would no longer be permitted to enter the UK and Hubbard himself was excluded from the country as an "undesirable alien".[210] Further inquiries were launched in Canada, New Zealand and South Africa.[208]

Hubbard took three major new initiatives in the face of these challenges. "Ethics Technology" was introduced to tighten internal discipline within Scientology. It required Scientologists to "disconnect" from any organization or individual—including family members—deemed to be disruptive or "suppressive".[211] According to church-operated websites, "A person who disconnects is simply exercising his right to communicate or not to communicate with a particular person." Hubbard stated: "Communication, however, is a two-way flow. If one has the right to communicate, then one must also have the right to not receive communication from another. It is this latter corollary of the right to communicate that gives us our right to privacy."[212] Scientologists were also required to write "Knowledge Reports" on each other, reporting transgressions or misapplications of Scientology methods. Hubbard promulgated a long list of punishable "Misdemeanors", "Crimes", and "High Crimes".[213] The "Fair Game" policy was introduced, which was applicable to anyone deemed an "enemy" of Scientology: "May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed."[214][215]

At the start of March 1966, Hubbard created the Guardian's Office (GO), a new agency within the Church of Scientology that was headed by his wife Mary Sue.[216] It dealt with Scientology's external affairs, including public relations, legal actions and the gathering of intelligence on perceived threats.[217] As Scientology faced increasingly negative media attention, the GO retaliated with hundreds of writs for libel and slander; it issued more than forty on a single day.[218] Hubbard ordered his staff to find "lurid, blood sex crime actual evidence [sic] on [Scientology's] attackers".[219]

Finally, at the end of 1966, Hubbard acquired his own fleet of ships.[79] He established the "Hubbard Explorational Company Ltd" which purchased three ships—the Enchanter, a forty-ton schooner,[220] the Avon River, an old trawler,[221] and the Royal Scotman [sic], a former Irish Sea cattle ferry that he made his home and flagship.[222] The ships were crewed by the Sea Organization or Sea Org, a group of Scientologist volunteers, with the support of a couple of professional seamen.[79][223]

Commodore of the Sea Org

 
Corfu town, where the Sea Org moored in 1968–1969

After Hubbard created the Sea Org "fleet" in early 1967 in the Canary Islands[224][225] it began an eight-year voyage, sailing from port to port in the Mediterranean Sea and eastern North Atlantic. The fleet traveled as far as Corfu in the eastern Mediterranean and Dakar and the Azores in the Atlantic, but rarely stayed anywhere for longer than six weeks. Ken Urquhart, Hubbard's personal assistant at the time, later recalled:

[Hubbard] said we had to keep moving because there were so many people after him. If they caught up with him they would cause him so much trouble that he would be unable to continue his work, Scientology would not get into the world and there would be social and economic chaos, if not a nuclear holocaust.[226]

When Hubbard established the Sea Org he publicly declared that he had relinquished his management responsibilities. According to Miller, this was not true. He received daily telex messages from Scientology organizations around the world reporting their statistics and income. The Church of Scientology sent him $15,000 (equivalent to $121,901 in 2021) a week and millions of dollars were transferred to his bank accounts in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.[227] Couriers arrived regularly, conveying luxury food for Hubbard and his family[228] or cash that had been smuggled from England to avoid currency export restrictions.[229]

Along the way, Hubbard sought to establish a safe haven in "a friendly little country where Scientology would be allowed to prosper", as Miller puts it.[230] The fleet stayed at Corfu for several months in 1968–1969. Hubbard renamed the ships after Greek gods—the Royal Scotman was rechristened Apollo—and he praised the recently established military dictatorship.[229] The Sea Org was represented as "Professor Hubbard's Philosophy School" in a telegram to the Greek government.[231] In March 1969, however, Hubbard and his ships were ordered to leave.[232] In mid-1972, Hubbard tried again in Morocco, establishing contacts with the country's secret police and training senior policemen and intelligence agents in techniques for detecting subversives.[233] The program ended in failure when it became caught up in internal Moroccan politics, and Hubbard left the country hastily in December 1972.[234]

At the same time, Hubbard was still developing Scientology's doctrines. A Scientology biography states that "free of organizational duties and aided by the first Sea Org members, L. Ron Hubbard now had the time and facilities to confirm in the physical universe some of the events and places he had encountered in his journeys down the track of time."[235] In 1965, he designated several existing Scientology courses as confidential, repackaging them as the first of the esoteric "OT levels".[236] Two years later he announced the release of OT3, the "Wall of Fire", revealing the secrets of an immense disaster that had occurred "on this planet, and on the other seventy-five planets which form this Confederacy, seventy-five million years ago".[237] Scientologists were required to undertake the first two OT levels before learning how Xenu, the leader of the Galactic Confederacy, had shipped billions of people to Earth and blown them up with hydrogen bombs, following which their traumatized spirits were stuck together at "implant stations", brainwashed with false memories and eventually became contained within human beings.[238] The discovery of OT3 was said to have taken a major physical toll on Hubbard, who announced that he had broken a knee, an arm, and his back during the course of his research.[239] A year later, in 1968, he unveiled OT levels 4 to 6 and began delivering OT training courses to Scientologists aboard the Royal Scotman.[240]

Scientologists around the world were presented with a glamorous picture of life in the Sea Org and many applied to join Hubbard aboard the fleet.[240] What they found was rather different from the image. Most of those joining had no nautical experience at all.[240] Mechanical difficulties and blunders by the crews led to a series of embarrassing incidents and near-disasters. Following one incident in which the rudder of the Royal Scotman was damaged during a storm, Hubbard ordered the ship's entire crew to be reduced to a "condition of liability" and wear gray rags tied to their arms.[241] The ship itself was treated the same way, with dirty tarpaulins tied around its funnel to symbolize its lower status. According to those aboard, conditions were appalling; the crew was worked to the point of exhaustion, given meager rations and forbidden to wash or change their clothes for several weeks.[242] Hubbard maintained a harsh disciplinary regime aboard the fleet, punishing mistakes by confining people in the Royal Scotman's bilge tanks without toilet facilities and with food provided in buckets.[243] At other times erring crew members were thrown overboard with Hubbard looking on and, occasionally, filming.[244] David Mayo, a Sea Org member at the time, later recalled:

We tried not to think too hard about his behavior. It was not rational much of the time, but to even consider such a thing was a discreditable thought and you couldn't allow yourself to have a discreditable thought. One of the questions in a sec[urity] check was, "Have you ever had any unkind thoughts about LRH?" and you could get into very serious trouble if you had. So you tried hard not to.[245]

From about 1970, Hubbard was attended aboard ship by the children of Sea Org members, organized as the Commodore's Messenger Organization (CMO). They were mainly young girls dressed in hot pants and halter tops, who were responsible for running errands for Hubbard such as lighting his cigarettes, dressing him or relaying his verbal commands to other members of the crew.[246][247] In addition to his wife Mary Sue, he was accompanied by all four of his children by her, though not his first son Nibs, who had defected from Scientology in late 1959.[248] The younger Hubbards were all members of the Sea Org and shared its rigors, though Quentin Hubbard reportedly found it difficult to adjust and attempted suicide in mid-1974.[249]

Life in hiding

 
The Internal Revenue Service building in Washington D.C., one of the targets of Hubbard's "Snow White Program"

During the 1970s, Hubbard faced an increasing number of legal threats. French prosecutors charged him and the French Church of Scientology with fraud and customs violations in 1972. He was advised that he was at risk of being extradited to France.[250] Hubbard left the Sea Org fleet temporarily at the end of 1972, living incognito in Queens, New York,[251] until he returned to his flagship in September 1973 when the threat of extradition had abated.[252] Scientology sources say that he carried out "a sociological study in and around New York City".[253]

Hubbard's health deteriorated significantly during this period. A chain-smoker, he also suffered from bursitis and excessive weight, and had a prominent growth on his forehead.[254] He suffered serious injuries in a motorcycle accident in 1973 and had a heart attack in 1975 that required him to take anticoagulant drugs for the next year.[255] In September 1978, Hubbard had a pulmonary embolism, falling into a coma, but recovered.[256]

He remained active in managing and developing Scientology, establishing the controversial Rehabilitation Project Force in 1974[257] and issuing policy and doctrinal bulletins.[258] However, the Sea Org's voyages were coming to an end. The Apollo was banned from several Spanish ports[258] and was expelled from Curaçao in October 1975.[259] The Sea Org came to be suspected of being a CIA operation, leading to a riot in Funchal, Madeira, when the Apollo docked there. At the time, The Apollo Stars, a musical group founded by Hubbard and made up entirely of ship-bound members of the Sea Org, was offering free on-pier concerts in an attempt to promote Scientology, and the riot occurred at one of these events. Hubbard decided to relocate back to the United States to establish a "land base" for the Sea Org in Florida.[260] The Church of Scientology attributes this decision to the activities on the Apollo having "outgrow[n] the ship's capacity".[253]

In October 1975, Hubbard moved into a hotel suite in Daytona Beach. The Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Florida, was secretly acquired as the location for the "land base".[260] On December 5, 1975, Hubbard and his wife Mary Sue moved into a condominium complex in nearby Dunedin.[261] Their presence was meant to be a closely guarded secret but was accidentally compromised the following month.[262] Hubbard immediately left Dunedin and moved to Georgetown, Washington, D.C., accompanied by a handful of aides and messengers, but not his wife.[263] Six months later, following another security alert in July 1976, Hubbard moved to another safe house in Culver City, California. He lived there for only about three months, relocating in October to the more private confines of the Olive Tree Ranch near La Quinta.[264] His second son Quentin committed suicide a few weeks later in Las Vegas.[265][266]

Throughout this period, Hubbard was heavily involved in directing the activities of the Guardian's Office (GO), the legal bureau/intelligence agency that he had established in 1966. He believed that Scientology was being attacked by an international Nazi conspiracy, which he termed the "Tenyaka Memorial", through a network of drug companies, banks and psychiatrists in a bid to take over the world.[267] In 1973, he instigated the "Snow White Program" and directed the GO to remove negative reports about Scientology from government files and track down their sources.[268] The GO was ordered to "get all false and secret files on Scientology, LRH  ... that cannot be obtained legally, by all possible lines of approach ... i.e., job penetration, janitor penetration, suitable guises utilizing covers." His involvement in the GO's operations was concealed through the use of codenames. The GO carried out covert campaigns on his behalf such as Operation Bulldozer Leak, intended "to effectively spread the rumor that will lead Government, media, and individual [Suppressive Persons] to conclude that LRH has no control of the C of S and no legal liability for Church activity". He was kept informed of GO operations, such as the theft of medical records from a hospital, harassment of psychiatrists and infiltrations of organizations that had been critical of Scientology at various times, such as the Better Business Bureau, the American Medical Association, and American Psychiatric Association.[269]

Members of the GO infiltrated and burglarized numerous government organizations, including the U.S. Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service.[270] After two GO agents were caught in the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the IRS, the FBI carried out simultaneous raids on GO offices in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. on July 7, 1977. They retrieved wiretap equipment, burglary tools and some 90,000 pages of incriminating documents. Hubbard was not prosecuted, though he was labeled an "unindicted co-conspirator" by government prosecutors. His wife Mary Sue was indicted and subsequently convicted of conspiracy. She was sent to a federal prison along with ten other Scientologists.[271]

Hubbard's troubles increased in February 1978 when a French court convicted him in absentia for obtaining money under false pretenses. He was sentenced to four years in prison and a 35,000FF ($7,000) fine, equivalent to $29,082 in 2021.[272] He went into hiding in April 1979, moving to an apartment in Hemet, California, where his only contact with the outside world was via ten trusted messengers. He cut contact with everyone else, even his wife, whom he saw for the last time in August 1979.[273] Hubbard faced a possible indictment for his role in Operation Freakout, the GO's campaign against New York journalist Paulette Cooper, and in February 1980 he disappeared into deep cover in the company of two trusted messengers, Pat and Annie Broeker.[274][275]

For the first few years of the 1980s, Hubbard and the Broekers lived on the move, touring the Pacific Northwest in a recreational vehicle and living for a while in apartments in Newport Beach and Los Angeles.[276] Hubbard used his time in hiding to write his first new works of science fiction for nearly thirty years—Battlefield Earth (1982) and Mission Earth, a ten-volume series published between 1985 and 1987.[277] They received mixed responses; as writer Jeff Walker puts it, they were "treated derisively by most critics but greatly admired by followers".[278] Hubbard also wrote and composed music for three of his albums, which were produced by the Church of Scientology. The book soundtrack Space Jazz was released in 1982.[279] Mission Earth and The Road to Freedom were released posthumously in 1986.[280]

In Hubbard's absence, members of the Sea Org staged a takeover of the Church of Scientology and purged many veteran Scientologists. A young messenger, David Miscavige, became Scientology's de facto leader. Mary Sue Hubbard was forced to resign her position and her daughter Suzette became Miscavige's personal maid.[281]

Death and legacy

 
The ranch in San Luis Obispo County, California where Hubbard spent his final years

For the last two years of his life, Hubbard lived in a luxury Blue Bird motorhome on Whispering Winds, a 160-acre (65 ha) ranch near Creston, California. He remained in deep hiding while controversy raged in the outside world about whether he was still alive and, if so, where. He spent his time "writing and researching", according to a spokesperson, and pursued photography and music, overseeing construction work and checking on his animals.[282] He repeatedly redesigned the property, spending millions of dollars remodeling the ranch house—which went virtually uninhabited—and building a quarter-mile horse-racing track with an observation tower, which reportedly was never used.[276]

He was still closely involved in managing the Church of Scientology via secretly delivered orders[276] and continued to receive large amounts of money, of which Forbes magazine estimated "at least $200 million [was] gathered in Hubbard's name through 1982." In September 1985, the IRS notified the Church that it was considering indicting Hubbard for tax fraud.[283]

Hubbard suffered further ill-health, including chronic pancreatitis, during his residence at Whispering Winds. He suffered a stroke on January 17, 1986, and died a week later.[271][284] His body was cremated and the ashes were scattered at sea.[285] Scientology leaders announced that his body had become an impediment to his work and that he had decided to "drop his body" to continue his research on another planet,[286] having "learned how to do it without a body".[287]

Hubbard was survived by his wife Mary Sue and all of his children except his second son Quentin. His will provided a trust fund to support Mary Sue; her children Arthur, Diana and Suzette; and Katherine, the daughter of his first wife Polly.[288] He disinherited two of his other children.[289] L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. had become estranged, changed his name to "Ronald DeWolf" and, in 1982, sued unsuccessfully for control of his father's estate.[290] Alexis Valerie, Hubbard's daughter by his second wife Sara, had attempted to contact her father in 1971. She was rebuffed with the implied claim that her real father was Jack Parsons rather than Hubbard, and that her mother had been a Nazi spy during the war.[291] Both later accepted settlements when litigation was threatened.[289] In 2001, Diana and Suzette were reported to still be Church members, while Arthur had left and become an artist. Hubbard's great-grandson, Jamie DeWolf, is a noted slam poet.[292]

The copyrights of his works and much of his estate and wealth were willed to the Church of Scientology.[293] In a bulletin dated May 5, 1980, Hubbard told his followers to preserve his teachings until an eventual reincarnation when he would return "not as a religious leader but as a political one".[294] The Church of Spiritual Technology (CST), a sister organization of the Church of Scientology, has engraved Hubbard's entire corpus of Scientology and Dianetics texts on steel tablets stored in titanium containers. They are buried at the Trementina Base in a vault under a mountain near Trementina, New Mexico, on top of which the CST's logo has been bulldozed on such a gigantic scale that it is visible from space.[295][296]

In the 1980s Hubbard's followers were buying large numbers of the books and re-issuing them to stores, in order to boost sales figures.[297] Opinions are divided about his literary legacy. Scientologists have written of their desire to "make Ron the most acclaimed and widely known author of all time".[297] The sociologist William Sims Bainbridge writes that even at his peak in the late 1930s Hubbard was regarded by readers of Astounding Science Fiction as merely "a passable, familiar author but not one of the best", while by the late 1970s "the [science fiction] subculture wishes it could forget him" and fans gave him a worse rating than any other of the "Golden Age" writers.[298]

In 1996, the Los Angeles City Council renamed a street close to the Scientology headquarters "L. Ron Hubbard Way".[299] In 2011, the West Valley City Council declared March 13 as L. Ron Hubbard Centennial Day.[300] In April 2016, the New Jersey State Board of Education approved Hubbard's birthday as one of its religious holidays.[301][302]

 
Hubbard's beliefs and practices, drawn from a diverse set of sources, influenced numerous offshoots, splinter-groups, and new movements.

In 2004, eighteen years after Hubbard's death, the Church claimed eight million followers worldwide. According to religious scholar J. Gordon Melton, this is an overestimate, counting as Scientologists people who had merely bought a book.[303] The City University of New York's American Religious Identification Survey found that by 2009 only 25,000 Americans identified as Scientologists.[304] Hubbard's presence still pervades Scientology. Every Church of Scientology maintains an office reserved for Hubbard, with a desk, chair and writing equipment, ready to be used.[293] Lonnie D. Kliever notes that Hubbard was "the only source of the religion, and he has no successor". Hubbard is referred to simply as "Source" within Scientology and the theological acceptability of any Scientology-related activity is determined by how closely it adheres to Hubbard's doctrines.[305] Hubbard's name and signature are official trademarks of the Religious Technology Center, established in 1982 to control and oversee the use of Hubbard's works and Scientology's trademarks and copyrights. The RTC is the central organization within Scientology's complex corporate hierarchy and has put much effort into re-checking the accuracy of all Scientology publications to "ensur[e] the availability of the pure unadulterated writings of Mr. Hubbard to the coming generations".[305]

The Danish historian of religions Mikael Rothstein describes Scientology as "a movement focused on the figure of Hubbard". He comments: "The fact that [Hubbard's] life is mythologized is as obvious as in the cases of Jesus, Muhammad or Siddartha Gotama. This is how religion works. Scientology, however, rejects this analysis altogether, and goes to great lengths to defend every detail of Hubbard's amazing and fantastic life as plain historical fact." Hubbard is presented as "the master of a multitude of disciplines" who performed extraordinary feats as a photographer, composer, scientist, therapist, explorer, navigator, philosopher, poet, artist, humanitarian, adventurer, soldier, scout, musician and many other fields of endeavor.[306] The Church of Scientology portrays Hubbard's life and work as having proceeded seamlessly, "as if they were a continuous set of predetermined events and discoveries that unfolded through his lifelong research" even up to and beyond his death.[307]

According to Rothstein's assessment of Hubbard's legacy, Scientology consciously aims to transfer the charismatic authority of Hubbard to institutionalize his authority over the organization, even after his death. Hubbard is presented as a virtually superhuman religious ideal just as Scientology itself is presented as the most important development in human history.[308] As Rothstein puts it, "reverence for Scientology's scripture is reverence for Hubbard, the man who in the Scientological perspective single-handedly brought salvation to all human beings."[306] David G. Bromley of the University of Virginia comments that the real Hubbard has been transformed into a "prophetic persona", "LRH", which acts as the basis for his prophetic authority within Scientology and transcends his biographical history.[307] According to Dorthe Refslund Christensen, Hubbard's hagiography directly compares him with Buddha. Hubbard is viewed as having made Eastern traditions more accessible by approaching them with a scientific attitude. "Hubbard is seen as the ultimate-cross-cultural savior; he is thought to be able to release man from his miserable condition because he had the necessary background, and especially the right attitude."[309]

Hubbard, although increasingly deified after his death, is the model Operating Thetan to Scientologists and their founder, and not God. Hubbard then is the "Source", "inviting others to follow his path in ways comparable to a Bodhisattva figure" according to religious scholar Donald A. Westbrook. Scientologists refer to L. Ron Hubbard as "Ron", referring to him as a personal friend.[310]

Biographies

 
Gerry Armstrong, formerly Hubbard's official biographical researcher, whose trial disclosed many details of Hubbard's life

In the late 1970s, two men began to assemble a picture of Hubbard's life. Michael Linn Shannon, a resident of Portland, Oregon, became interested in Hubbard's life story after an encounter with a Scientology recruiter. Over the next four years he collected previously undisclosed records and documents. He intended to write an exposé of Hubbard and sent a copy of his findings and key records to a number of contacts but was unable to find a publisher.[311]

Shannon's findings were acquired by Gerry Armstrong, a Scientologist who had been appointed Hubbard's official archivist.[311] He had been given the job of assembling documents relating to Hubbard's life for the purpose of helping Omar V. Garrison, a non-Scientologist who had written two books sympathetic to Scientology, to write an official biography. However, the documents that he uncovered convinced both Armstrong and Garrison that Hubbard had systematically misrepresented his life. Garrison refused to write a "puff piece" and declared that he would not "repeat all the falsehoods they [the Church of Scientology] had perpetuated over the years". He wrote a "warts and all" biography while Armstrong quit Scientology, taking five boxes of papers with him. The Church of Scientology and Mary Sue Hubbard sued for the return of the documents while settling out of court with Garrison, requiring him to turn over the nearly completed manuscript of the biography.[312] In October 1984 Judge Paul G. Breckenridge ruled in Armstrong's favor, saying:

The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background and achievements. The writings and documents in evidence additionally reflect his egoism, greed, avarice, lust for power, and vindictiveness and aggressiveness against persons perceived by him to be disloyal or hostile. At the same time it appears that he is charismatic and highly capable of motivating, organizing, controlling, manipulating and inspiring his adherents. He has been referred to during the trial as a "genius", a "revered person", a man who was "viewed by his followers in awe". Obviously, he is and has been a very complex person and that complexity is further reflected in his alter ego, the Church of Scientology.[313]

In November 1987, the British journalist and writer Russell Miller published Bare-faced Messiah, the first full-length biography of L. Ron Hubbard. He drew on Armstrong's papers, official records and interviews with those who had known Hubbard including ex-Scientologists and family members. The book was well-received by reviewers but the Church of Scientology sought unsuccessfully to prohibit its publication on the grounds of copyright infringement.[314] Other critical biographical accounts are found in Bent Corydon's L. Ron Hubbard, Messiah or Madman? (1987) and Jon Atack's A Piece of Blue Sky (1990).

Scientology biographies

Hagiographical accounts published by the Church of Scientology describe Hubbard as "a child prodigy of sorts" who rode a horse before he could walk and was able to read and write by the age of four.[315] A Scientology profile says that he was brought up on his grandfather's "large cattle ranch in Montana"[316] where he spent his days "riding, breaking broncos, hunting coyote and taking his first steps as an explorer".[68] His grandfather is described as a "wealthy Western cattleman" from whom Hubbard "inherited his fortune and family interests in America, Southern Africa, etc."[317] Scientology claims that Hubbard became a "blood brother" of the Native American Blackfeet tribe at the age of six through his friendship with a Blackfeet medicine man.[4][318]

 
Queen Anne High School, Seattle, which L. Ron Hubbard attended in 1926–1927

However, contemporary records show that his grandfather, Lafayette Waterbury, was a veterinarian, not a rancher, and was not wealthy. Hubbard was actually raised in a townhouse in the center of Helena.[319] According to his aunt, his family did not own a ranch but did own one cow and four or five horses on a few acres of land outside the city.[68] Hubbard lived over a hundred miles from the Blackfeet reservation. While some sources support Scientology's claim of Hubbard's blood brotherhood, other sources say that the tribe did not practice blood brotherhood and no evidence has been found that he had ever been a Blackfeet blood brother.[320][321][322][323]

According to Scientology biographies, during a journey to Washington, D.C. in 1923 Hubbard learned of Freudian psychology from Commander Joseph "Snake" Thompson, a U.S. Navy psychoanalyst and medic.[6][324] Scientology biographies describe this encounter as giving Hubbard training in a particular scientific approach to the mind, which he found unsatisfying.[325] In his diary, Hubbard claimed he was the youngest Eagle Scout in the U.S.[326]

Scientology texts present Hubbard's travels in Asia as a time when he was intensely curious for answers to human suffering and explored ancient Eastern philosophies for answers, but found them lacking.[327] He is described as traveling to China "at a time when few Westerners could enter"[328] and according to Scientology, spent his time questioning Buddhist lamas and meeting old Chinese magicians.[327] According to church materials, his travels were funded by his "wealthy grandfather".[329]

Scientology accounts say that Hubbard "made his way deep into Manchuria's Western Hills and beyond — to break bread with Mongolian bandits, share campfires with Siberian shamans and befriend the last in the line of magicians from the court of Kublai Khan".[330] However, Hubbard did not record these events in his diary.[331] He remained unimpressed with China and the Chinese, writing: "A Chinaman can not live up to a thing, he always drags it down." He characterized the sights of Beijing as "rubberneck stations" for tourists and described the palaces of the Forbidden City as "very trashy-looking" and "not worth mentioning". He was impressed by the Great Wall of China near Beijing,[332] but concluded of the Chinese: "They smell of all the baths they didn't take. The trouble with China is, there are too many chinks here."[333]

Despite not graduating from George Washington, Hubbard claimed "to be not only a graduate engineer, but 'a member of the first United States course in formal education in what is called today nuclear physics.'"[334] However, a Church of Scientology biography describes him as "never noted for being in class" and says that he "thoroughly detest[ed] his subjects".[335] He earned poor grades, was placed on probation in September 1931 and dropped out altogether in the fall of 1932.[334][336] Hubbard is noted as once being offered employment at the Soviet-American trade organization AMTORG[337]

Scientology accounts say that he "studied nuclear physics at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., before he started his studies about the mind, spirit and life"[338] and Hubbard himself stated that he "set out to find out from nuclear physics a knowledge of the physical universe, something entirely lacking in Asian philosophy".[335] His university records indicate that his exposure to "nuclear physics" consisted of one class in "atomic and molecular phenomena" for which he earned an "F" grade.[339]

Scientologists claim he was more interested in extracurricular activities, particularly writing and flying. According to church materials, "he earned his wings as a pioneering barnstormer at the dawn of American aviation"[318] and was "recognized as one of the country's most outstanding pilots. With virtually no training time, he takes up powered flight and barnstorms throughout the Midwest."[340] His airman certificate, however, records that he qualified to fly only gliders rather than powered aircraft and gave up his certificate when he could not afford the renewal fee.[34]

 
Luquillo, Puerto Rico, near where Scientologists say Hubbard carried out the "West Indies Mineralogical Survey" in 1932

After leaving university Hubbard traveled to Puerto Rico on what the Church of Scientology calls the "Puerto Rican Mineralogical Expedition".[341] Scientologists claim he "made the first complete mineralogical survey of Puerto Rico"[235] as a means of "augmenting his [father's] pay with a mining venture", during which he "sluiced inland rivers and crisscrossed the island in search of elusive gold" as well as carrying out "much ethnological work amongst the interior villages and native hillsmen".[341] Hubbard's unofficial biographer Russell Miller writes that neither the United States Geological Survey nor the Puerto Rican Department of Natural Resources have any record of any such expedition.[27]

According to the Church of Scientology, Hubbard was "called to Hollywood" to work on film scripts in the mid-1930s, although Scientology accounts differ as to exactly when this was (whether 1935,[342] 1936[335] or 1937 [340]). The Church of Scientology claims he also worked on the Columbia serials The Mysterious Pilot (1937), The Great Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok (1938) and The Spider Returns (1941),[340] though his name does not appear on the credits. Hubbard also claimed to have written Dive Bomber (1941),[343][344] Cecil B. DeMille's The Plainsman (1936) and John Ford's Stagecoach (1939).[345]

Scientology accounts of the expedition to Alaska describe "Hubbard's re-charting of an especially treacherous Inside Passage, and his ethnological study of indigenous Aleuts and Haidas" and tell of how "along the way, he not only roped a Kodiak Bear, but braved seventy-mile-an-hour winds and commensurate seas off the Aleutian Islands."[346] They are divided about how far Hubbard's expedition actually traveled, whether 700 miles (1,100 km)[340] or 2,000 miles (3,200 km).[346]

The Church disputes the official record of Hubbard's naval career. It asserts that the records are incomplete and perhaps falsified "to conceal Hubbard's secret activities as an intelligence officer".[68] In 1990 the Church provided the Los Angeles Times with a document that was said to be a copy of Hubbard's official record of service. The U.S. Navy told the Times that "its contents are not supported by Hubbard's personnel record."[68] The New Yorker reported in February 2011 that the Scientology document was considered by federal archivists to be a forgery.[79]

The Church of Scientology presents him as a "much-decorated war hero who commanded a corvette and during hostilities was crippled and wounded".[347] Scientology publications say he served as a "Commodore of Corvette squadrons" in "all five theaters of World War II" and was awarded "twenty-one medals and palms" for his service.[348] He was "severely wounded and was taken crippled and blinded" to a military hospital, where he "worked his way back to fitness, strength and full perception in less than two years, using only what he knew and could determine about Man and his relationship to the universe".[342] He said that he had seen combat repeatedly, telling A. E. van Vogt that he had once sailed his ship "right into the harbor of a Japanese occupied island in the Dutch East Indies. His attitude was that if you took your flag down the Japanese would not know one boat from another, so he tied up at the dock, went ashore and wandered around by himself for three days."[349][specify]

Hubbard's war service has great significance in the history and mythology of the Church of Scientology, as he is said to have cured himself through techniques that would later underpin Scientology and Dianetics. According to Moulton, Hubbard told him that he had been machine-gunned in the back near the Dutch East Indies. Hubbard asserted that his eyes had been damaged as well, either "by the flash of a large-caliber gun" or when he had "a bomb go off in my face".[68] Scientology texts say that he returned from the war "[b]linded with injured optic nerves, and lame with physical injuries to hip and back" and was twice pronounced dead.[79] Hubbard's official Navy service records indicate that "his military performance was, at times, substandard" and he received only four campaign medals rather than the claimed twenty-one. He was never recorded as being injured or wounded in combat and never received a Purple Heart.[68]

The Church of Scientology says that Hubbard's key breakthrough in the development of Dianetics was made at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. According to the Church,

In early 1945, while recovering from war injuries at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital, Mr. Hubbard conducts a series of tests and experiments dealing with the endocrine system. He discovers that, contrary to long-standing beliefs, function monitors structure. With this revolutionary advance, he begins to apply his theories to the field of the mind and thereby to improve the conditions of others.[350]

Scientology accounts do not mention Hubbard's involvement in occultism. He is instead described as "continu[ing] to write to help support his research" during this period into "the development of a means to better the condition of man".[351] The Church of Scientology has nonetheless acknowledged Hubbard's involvement with the OTO; a 1969 statement, written by Hubbard himself,[352] said:

Hubbard broke up black magic in America ... L. Ron Hubbard was still an officer of the U.S. Navy, because he was well known as a writer and a philosopher and had friends amongst the physicists, he was sent in to handle the situation. He went to live at the house and investigated the black magic rites and the general situation and found them very bad ... Hubbard's mission was successful far beyond anyone's expectations. The house was torn down. Hubbard rescued a girl they were using. The black magic group was dispersed and destroyed and has never recovered.[353]

The Church of Scientology says Hubbard was "sent in" by his fellow science fiction author Robert Heinlein, "who was running off-book intelligence operations for naval intelligence at the time". However, Heinlein's authorized biographer has said that he looked into the matter at the suggestion of Scientologists but found nothing to corroborate claims that Heinlein had been involved, and his biography of Heinlein makes no mention of the matter.[79]

The Church of Scientology says Hubbard quit the Navy because it "attempted to monopolize all his researches and force him to work on a project 'to make man more suggestible' and when he was unwilling, tried to blackmail him by ordering him back to active duty to perform this function. Having many friends he was able to instantly resign from the Navy and escape this trap."[195] The Navy said in a statement in 1980: "There is no evidence on record of an attempt to recall him to active duty."[76]

Following Hubbard's death, Bridge Publications published several stand-alone biographical accounts of his life. Marco Frenschkowski notes that "non-Scientologist readers immediately recognize some parts of Hubbard's life are here systematically left out: no information whatsoever is given about his private life (his marriages, divorces, children), his legal affairs and so on."[354] The Church maintains an extensive website presenting the official version of Hubbard's life.[355] It also owns a number of properties dedicated to Hubbard including the Los Angeles-based L. Ron Hubbard Life Exhibition (a presentation of Hubbard's life), the Author Services Center (a presentation of Hubbard's writings),[356] and the L. Ron Hubbard House in Washington, D.C.

In late 2012, Bridge published a comprehensive official biography of Hubbard, titled The L. Ron Hubbard Series: A Biographical Encyclopedia, written primarily by Dan Sherman, the official Hubbard biographer at the time. This most recent official Church of Scientology biography of Hubbard is a 17 volume series, with each volume focusing on a different aspect of Hubbard's life, including his music, photography, geographic exploration, humanitarian work, and nautical career. It is advertised as a "Biographic Encyclopedia" and is primarily authored by the official biographer, Dan Sherman.[357][358]

During his lifetime, a number of brief biographical sketches were also published in his Scientology books. The Church of Scientology issued "the only authorized LRH Biography" in October 1977 (it has since been followed by the Sherman "Biographic Encyclopedia").[195] His life was illustrated in print in What Is Scientology?, a glossy publication published in 1978, with paintings of Hubbard's life contributed by his son Arthur.[359]

Bibliography

According to the Church of Scientology, Hubbard produced some 65 million words on Dianetics and Scientology, contained in about 500,000 pages of written material, 3,000 recorded lectures and 100 films. His works of fiction included some 500 novels and short stories.[295]

See also

References

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  2. ^ Hall, Timothy L. American religious leaders, p. 175. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2003. ISBN 978-0-8160-4534-1
  3. ^ Miller, Russell. Bare-faced Messiah: the true story of L. Ron Hubbard, p. 11. London: Joseph, 1987. ISBN 0-7181-2764-1, OCLC 17481843
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  35. ^ Miller, p. 63
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  44. ^ Harmon, Jim; Glut, Donald F. (1973). The Great Movie Serials: Their Sound and Fury. London: Routledge. p. 329. ISBN 978-0-7130-0097-9.
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  47. ^ Miller, p. 84
  48. ^ "'Going Clear': A New Book Delves Into Scientology". NPR.org. January 24, 2013.
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General and cited references

External links

hubbard, lafayette, ronald, hubbard, march, 1911, january, 1986, american, author, primarily, science, fiction, fantasy, stories, best, known, having, founded, church, scientology, 1950, hubbard, authored, dianetics, modern, science, mental, health, establishe. Lafayette Ronald Hubbard March 13 1911 January 24 1986 was an American author primarily of science fiction and fantasy stories who is best known for having founded the Church of Scientology In 1950 Hubbard authored Dianetics The Modern Science of Mental Health and established a series of organizations to promote Dianetics In 1952 Hubbard lost the rights to Dianetics in bankruptcy proceedings and he subsequently founded Scientology Thereafter Hubbard oversaw the growth of the Church of Scientology into a worldwide organization L Ron HubbardHubbard in 1950BornLafayette Ronald Hubbard 1911 03 13 March 13 1911Tilden Nebraska U S DiedJanuary 24 1986 1986 01 24 aged 74 Creston California U S EducationGeorge Washington University dropped out Occupation s Author religious leaderKnown forInventor of ScientologyNotable workDianetics The Modern Science of Mental HealthBattlefield EarthCriminal charge s Petty theft in 1948 Fraud in absentia 1978 Criminal penaltyFine of 35 000 and four years in prison unserved Spouse s Margaret Polly Grubb m 1933 div 1947 wbr Sara Northrup Hollister m 1946 div 1951 wbr Mary Sue Whipp m 1952 wbr Children7 With Margaret Grubb L Ron Hubbard Jr d 1991 Katherine May Hubbard With Sara Hollister Alexis Hubbard With Mary Sue Whipp Quentin Hubbard d 1976 Diana Hubbard Suzette Hubbard Thomas Hubbard Estranged from familyRelativesJamie DeWolf great grandson Military careerAllegiance United StatesService wbr branchUnited States NavyYears of service1941 1945 Active 1945 1950 Reserve RankLieutenantCommands heldUSS YP 422 and USS PC 815Battles warsWorld War II Pacific TheaterAwardsNavy Pistol Marksmanship RibbonNavy Rifle Marksmanship Ribbon American Defense Service Medal Asiatic Pacific Campaign Medal American Campaign Medal World War II Victory MedalSignatureBorn in Tilden Nebraska in 1911 Hubbard spent much of his childhood in Helena Montana After his father was posted to the U S naval base on Guam Hubbard traveled to Asia and the South Pacific in the late 1920s In 1930 Hubbard enrolled at George Washington University to study civil engineering but dropped out in his second year He began his career as a prolific writer of pulp fiction stories and married Margaret Polly Grubb who shared his interest in aviation Hubbard was an officer in the Navy during World War II where he briefly commanded two ships but was removed from command both times The last few months of his active service were spent in a hospital being treated for a variety of complaints In 1953 the first churches of Scientology were founded by L Ron Hubbard and in 1954 a Scientology church in Los Angeles was founded which became the Church of Scientology International Hubbard also added organizational management strategies principles of pedagogy a theory of communication and prevention strategies for healthy living to the teachings of Scientology 1 Scientology became increasingly controversial during the 1960s and came under intense media government and legal pressure in a number of countries During the late 1960s and early 1970s Hubbard spent much of his time at sea on his personal fleet of ships as Commodore of the Sea Organization an elite quasi paramilitary group of Scientologists Hubbard returned to the United States in 1975 and went into seclusion in the California desert after an unsuccessful attempt to take over the town of Clearwater Florida In 1978 Hubbard was convicted of fraud after he was tried in absentia by France In the same year eleven high ranking members of Scientology were indicted on 28 charges for their role in the Church s Snow White Program a systematic program of espionage against the United States government One of the indicted was Hubbard s wife Mary Sue Hubbard who was in charge of the program L Ron Hubbard was named an unindicted co conspirator Hubbard spent the remaining years of his life in seclusion in a luxury motorhome on a ranch in California attended to by a small group of Scientology officials He died at age 74 in January 1986 Following Hubbard s death Scientology leaders announced that his body had become an impediment to his work and that he had decided to drop his body to continue his research on another plane of existence Though many of Hubbard s autobiographical statements have been found to be fictitious the Church of Scientology describes Hubbard in hagiographic terms and rejects any suggestion that its account of Hubbard s life is not historical fact Contents 1 Early life 2 Period at university and Caribbean trip 3 First marriage and early literary career 3 1 Dental procedure near death experience and Excalibur 3 2 Alaska trip 4 Military career 4 1 Hospitalizations and discovery of sabotage attempt 5 Occult involvement in Pasadena 6 Request for psychiatric treatment 7 Dianetics 7 1 Origin 7 2 Initial success 7 3 Collapse of Dianetics Foundation and subsequent kidnappings 8 Rise of Scientology 9 Controversies and crises 10 Commodore of the Sea Org 11 Life in hiding 12 Death and legacy 13 Biographies 13 1 Scientology biographies 14 Bibliography 15 See also 16 References 17 General and cited references 18 External linksEarly lifeMain article Early life of L Ron Hubbard L Ron Hubbard was born in 1911 in Tilden Nebraska 2 the only child of Ledora May nee Waterbury who had trained as a teacher and Harry Ross Hubbard a former United States Navy officer 3 4 After moving to Kalispell Montana they settled in Helena in 1913 4 Hubbard s father rejoined the Navy in April 1917 during World War I while his mother worked as a clerk for the state government 5 During the 1920s the Hubbards repeatedly relocated around the United States and overseas 6 Hubbard was active in the Boy Scouts in Washington D C and earned the rank of Eagle Scout in 1924 two weeks after his 13th birthday 7 In 1925 Hubbard was enrolled as a freshman at Union High School Bremerton 8 and the following year studied at Queen Anne High School in Seattle 9 7 In April 1927 Hubbard s father was posted to Guam and that summer Hubbard and his mother traveled to Guam with a brief stop over in a couple of Chinese ports He recorded his impressions of the places he visited and disdained the poverty of the inhabitants of Japan and China whom he described as gooks and lazy and ignorant 10 11 12 In September 1927 while living with grandparents Hubbard enrolled at Helena High School where he contributed to the school paper 13 14 On May 11 1928 Hubbard was dropped from enrollment at Helena High due to failing grades 15 Hubbard left Helena and rejoined his parents in Guam in June 1928 11 Between October and December 1928 Hubbard s family and others traveled from Guam to China 16 Upon his return to Guam Hubbard spent much of his time writing dozens of short stories and essays 17 Hubbard failed the Naval Academy entrance examination 18 In September 1929 Hubbard was enrolled at the Swavely Preparatory School in Manassas Virginia to prepare him for a second attempt at the examination 19 During his first semester at Swevely Hubbard complained of eye strain and was diagnosed with myopia this diagnosis precluded any enrollment in the Naval Academy 15 20 As an adult Hubbard would write to himself Your eyes are getting progressively better They became bad when you used them as an excuse to escape the naval academy 21 He was instead sent to Woodward School for Boys in Washington D C to qualify for admission to George Washington University without having to sit for the entrance examination He successfully graduated from the school in June 1930 and entered the University the following September 22 15 Period at university and Caribbean tripOn September 24 1930 Hubbard began studying civil engineering at George Washington University s School of Engineering at the behest of his father 23 22 Academically Hubbard did poorly his transcripts show he failed many courses including atomic physics though later in life he would claim to have been a nuclear physicist In September 1931 he was placed on probation due to poor grades and in April 1932 he again received a warning for his lack of academic achievement 15 During his first year Hubbard helped organize the university Glider Club and was elected its president 22 During what would become Hubbard s final semester at GWU he organized an ill fated trip to the Caribbean for June 1932 to explore and film the pirate strongholds and bivouacs of the Spanish Main and to collect whatever one collects for exhibits in museums 24 Amid multiple misfortunes and running low on funds the ship s owners ordered it to return to Baltimore 25 Hubbard failed to return to University the following year 26 After his father volunteered him for a Red Cross relief effort on October 23 1932 Hubbard traveled to Puerto Rico 27 En route Hubbard apparently decided to abandon the Red Cross instead opting to accompany a mineral surveyor in a futile bid to find gold 26 First marriage and early literary careerSee also Written works of L Ron Hubbard Hubbard s Yukon Madness was originally published in the August 1935 issue of New Mystery Adventures Illustration by Edd Cartier for Hubbard s story Fear 28 Hubbard s novella The Kingslayer was reprinted in Two Complete Science Adventure Books in 1950 after its original publication in a 1949 Hubbard collection Hubbard returned from Puerto Rico to D C in February 1933 He struck up a relationship with a fellow glider pilot named Margaret Polly Grubb 29 The two were married on April 13 She was already pregnant when they married but had a miscarriage shortly afterwards a few months later she became pregnant again 30 On May 7 1934 she gave birth prematurely to a son who was named Lafayette Ronald Hubbard Jr whose nickname was Nibs 31 Their second child Katherine May was born on January 15 1936 32 The Hubbards lived for a while in Laytonsville Maryland but were chronically short of money 33 Hubbard became a well known and prolific writer for pulp fiction magazines during the 1930s His literary career began with contributions to the George Washington University student newspaper The University Hatchet as a reporter for a few months in 1931 22 Six of his pieces were published commercially during 1932 to 1933 34 The going rate for freelance writers at the time was only a cent a word so Hubbard s total earnings from these articles would have been less than 100 equivalent to 2 093 in 2021 35 The pulp magazine Thrilling Adventures became the first to publish one of his short stories in February 1934 36 Over the next six years pulp magazines published many of his short stories under a variety of pen names including Winchester Remington Colt Kurt von Rachen Rene Lafayette Joe Blitz and Legionnaire 148 37 Although he was best known for his fantasy and science fiction stories Hubbard wrote in a wide variety of genres including adventure fiction aviation travel mysteries westerns and even romance 38 Hubbard knew and associated with writers such as Isaac Asimov Arthur J Burks Robert A Heinlein L Sprague de Camp and A E van Vogt 39 In the spring of 1936 they moved to Bremerton Washington They lived there for a time with Hubbard s aunts and grandmother before finding a place of their own at nearby South Colby According to one of his friends at the time Robert MacDonald Ford the Hubbards were in fairly dire straits for money but sustained themselves on the income from Hubbard s writing 40 His first full length novel Buckskin Brigades was published in 1937 41 He became a highly idiosyncratic writer of science fiction after being taken under the wing of editor John W Campbell 42 who published many of Hubbard s short stories and also serialized a number of well received novelettes that Hubbard wrote for Campbell s magazines Unknown and Astounding Science Fiction These included Fear Final Blackout and Typewriter in the Sky 43 He wrote the script for The Secret of Treasure Island a 1938 Columbia Pictures movie serial 44 Hubbard spent an increasing amount of time in New York City 45 working out of a hotel room where his wife suspected him of carrying on affairs with other women 46 47 Dental procedure near death experience and Excalibur Main article Excalibur L Ron Hubbard In April 1938 Hubbard reportedly underwent a dental procedure and reacted to the drug used in the procedure According to his account this triggered a revelatory near death experience Allegedly inspired by this experience Hubbard composed a manuscript which was never published with working titles of The One Command or Excalibur 48 49 Arthur J Burks who read the work in 1938 later recalled it discussed the one command to survive This theme would be revisited in Dianetics Burks also recalled the work discussing the psychology of a lynch mob 50 Hubbard would later cite Excalibur as an early version of Dianetics 51 According to Burks Hubbard believed that Excalibur would revolutionize everything and that it was somewhat more important and would have a greater impact upon people than the Bible 50 According to Burks Hubbard was so sure he had something away out and beyond anything else that he had sent telegrams to several book publishers telling them that he had written THE book and that they were to meet him at Penn Station and he would discuss it with them and go with whomever sic gave him the best offer However nobody bought the manuscript 50 Hubbard s failure to sell Excalibur depressed him he told his wife in an October 1938 letter Writing action pulp doesn t have much agreement with what I want to do because it retards my progress by demanding incessant attention and further actually weakens my name So you see I ve got to do something about it and at the same time strengthen the old financial position 52 He went on Sooner or later Excalibur will be published and I may have a chance to get some name recognition out of it so as to pave the way to articles and comments which are my ideas of writing heaven Foolishly perhaps but determined none the less I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it will take a legendary form even if all books are destroyed That goal is the real goal as far as I am concerned 52 Forrest J Ackerman later Hubbard s literary agent recalled that Hubbard told him whoever read it either went insane or committed suicide And he said that the last time he had shown it to a publisher in New York he walked into the office to find out what the reaction was the publisher called for the reader the reader came in with the manuscript threw it on the table and threw himself out of the skyscraper window 53 In 1948 Hubbard would tell a convention of science fiction fans that Excalibur s inspiration came during an operation in which he died for eight minutes 54 Hubbard realized that while he was dead he had received a tremendous inspiration a great Message which he must impart to others He sat at his typewriter for six days and nights and nothing came out Then Excalibur emerged 55 The manuscript later became part of Scientology mythology 56 An early 1950s Scientology publication offered signed gold bound and locked copies for the sum of 1 500 apiece equivalent to 16 894 in 2021 It warned that four of the first fifteen people who read it went insane and that it would be r eleased only on sworn statement not to permit other readers to read it Contains data not to be released during Mr Hubbard s stay on earth 57 Alaska trip Ketchikan Alaska where Hubbard and his wife were stranded during the Alaskan Radio Experimental Expedition Hubbard joined The Explorers Club in February 1940 on the strength of his claimed explorations in the Caribbean and survey flights in the United States 58 He persuaded the club to let him carry its flag on an Alaskan Radio Experimental Expedition 59 The crew consisted of Hubbard and his wife aboard his ketch Magician 60 The trip was plagued by problems and did not get any further than Ketchikan 61 The ship s engine broke down only two days after setting off in July 1940 Having underestimated the cost of the trip he did not have enough money to repair the broken engine He raised money by writing stories and contributing to the local radio station 62 and eventually earned enough to fix the engine 58 making it back to Puget Sound on December 27 1940 62 Military careerMain article Military career of L Ron Hubbard Hubbard and Thomas S Moulton in 1943 After returning from Alaska Hubbard applied to join the United States Navy His friend Robert MacDonald Ford sent a letter of recommendation describing Hubbard as one of the most brilliant men I have ever known 63 Ford later said that Hubbard had written the letter himself I don t know why Ron wanted a letter I just gave him a letter head and said Hell you re the writer you write it 64 Hubbard was commissioned as a lieutenant junior grade in the United States Naval Reserve on July 19 1941 By November he was posted to New York for training as an intelligence officer 65 On December 18 he was posted to the Philippines and set out for the posting via Australia While in Melbourne awaiting transport to Manilla Hubbard was sent back to the United States The U S naval attache reported This officer is not satisfactory for independent duty assignment He is garrulous and tries to give impressions of his importance He also seems to think he has unusual ability in most lines These characteristics indicate that he will require close supervision for satisfactory performance of any intelligence duty 66 After a brief stint censoring cables Hubbard s request for sea duty was approved and he reported to a Neponset Massachusetts shipyard which was converting a trawler into a gunboat to be classified as USS YP 422 On September 25 1942 the commandant of Boston Navy Yard informed Washington that in his view Hubbard was not temperamentally fitted for independent command 67 Days later on October 1 Hubbard was summarily relieved of his command 66 Hubbard was sent to submarine chaser training and in 1943 was posted to Portland Oregon to take command of a submarine chaser the USS PC 815 which was under construction 68 On May 18 PC 815 sailed on her shakedown cruise bound for San Diego Only five hours into the voyage Hubbard believed he had detected an enemy submarine Hubbard spent the next 68 hours engaged in combat until finally receiving orders to return to Astoria Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher commander of the Northwest Sea Frontier concluded An analysis of all reports convinces me that there was no submarine in the area 69 Fletcher suggested Hubbard had mistaken a known magnetic deposit for an enemy sub 66 The following month Hubbard unwittingly sailed PC 815 into Mexican territorial waters and conducted gunnery practice off the Coronado Islands in the belief that they were uninhabited and belonged to the United States The Mexican government complained and Hubbard was relieved of command A report written after the incident rated Hubbard as unsuitable for independent duties and lacking in the essential qualities of judgment leadership and cooperation 70 The report recommended he be assigned duty on a large vessel where he can be properly supervised 71 Hospitalizations and discovery of sabotage attempt USS PC 815 Hubbard s second and final command After being relieved of command of PC 815 Hubbard began reporting sick citing a variety of ailments including ulcers malaria and back pains Hubbard was admitted to the San Diego naval hospital for observation he would remain there for nearly three months 66 Years later Hubbard would privately write to himself Your stomach trouble you used as an excuse to keep the Navy from punishing you You are free of the Navy 21 In 1944 Hubbard was posted to Portland where USS Algol was under construction The ship was commissioned in July and Hubbard served as the navigation and training officer Hubbard requested and was granted a transfer to the School of Military Government in Princeton The night before his departure the ship s log reports that The Navigating Officer Hubbard reported to the OOD Officer On Duty that an attempt at sabatage sic had been made sometime between 1530 1600 A coke bottle filled with gasoline with a cloth wick inserted had been concealed among cargo which was to be hoisted aboard and stored in No 1 hold It was discovered before being taken on board ONI FBI and NSD authorities reported on the scene and investigations were started 72 66 Hubbard attended school in Princeton until January 1945 when he was assigned to Monterey California In April he again reported sick and was re admitted to Oak Knoll Naval Hospital Oakland 66 His complaints included headaches rheumatism conjunctivitis pains in his side stomach aches pains in his shoulder arthritis hemorrhoids 73 An October 1945 naval board found that Hubbard was considered physically qualified to perform duty ashore preferably within the continental United States 74 He was discharged from the hospital on December 4 1945 and transferred to inactive duty on February 17 1946 75 Hubbard would ultimately resign his commission after the publication of Dianetics with effect from October 30 1950 76 Occult involvement in PasadenaSee also Scientology and the occult and Affirmations L Ron Hubbard Jack Parsons in 1938 Hubbard s life underwent a turbulent period immediately after the war According to his own account he was abandoned by family and friends as a supposedly hopeless cripple and a probable burden upon them for the rest of my days 77 His daughter Katherine presented a rather different version his wife had refused to uproot their children from their home in Bremerton Washington to join him in California Their marriage was by now in terminal difficulties and he chose to stay in California 78 In August 1945 Hubbard moved into the Pasadena mansion of John Jack Whiteside Parsons A leading rocket propulsion researcher at the California Institute of Technology and a founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Parsons led a double life as an avid occultist and Thelemite follower of the English ceremonial magician Aleister Crowley and leader of a lodge of Crowley s magical order Ordo Templi Orientis OTO 79 80 He let rooms in the house only to tenants who he specified should be atheists and those of a Bohemian disposition 81 Hubbard befriended Parsons and soon became sexually involved with Parsons s 21 year old girlfriend Sara Betty Northrup 82 Despite this Parsons was very impressed with Hubbard and reported to Crowley Hubbard is a gentleman he has red hair green eyes is honest and intelligent and we have become great friends He moved in with me about two months ago and although Betty and I are still friendly she has transferred her sexual affection to Ron Although he has no formal training in Magick he has an extraordinary amount of experience and understanding in the field From some of his experiences I deduced that he is in direct touch with some higher intelligence possibly his Guardian Angel He describes his Angel as a beautiful winged woman with red hair whom he calls the Empress and who has guided him through his life and saved him many times He is the most Thelemic person I have ever met and is in complete accord with our own principles 83 Hubbard whom Parsons referred to in writing as Frater H 84 became an enthusiastic collaborator in the Pasadena OTO The two men collaborated on the Babalon Working a sex magic ritual intended to summon an incarnation of Babalon the supreme Thelemite Goddess It was undertaken over several nights in February and March 1946 in order to summon an elemental who would participate in further sex magic 85 As Richard Metzger describes it Parsons used his magical wand to whip up a vortex of energy so the elemental would be summoned Translated into plain English Parsons jerked off in the name of spiritual advancement whilst Hubbard referred to as The Scribe in the diary of the event scanned the astral plane for signs and visions 86 The elemental arrived a few days later in the form of Marjorie Cameron who agreed to participate in Parsons s rites 85 Soon afterwards Parsons Hubbard and Sara agreed to set up a business partnership Allied Enterprises in which they invested nearly their entire savings the vast majority contributed by Parsons The plan was for Hubbard and Sara to buy yachts in Miami and sail them to the West Coast to sell for a profit Hubbard had a different idea he wrote to the U S Navy requesting permission to leave the country to visit Central amp South America amp China for the purposes of collecting writing material in other words undertaking a world cruise 87 Aleister Crowley strongly criticized Parsons s actions writing Suspect Ron playing confidence trick Jack Parsons weak fool obvious victim prowling swindlers Parsons attempted to recover his money by obtaining an injunction to prevent Hubbard and Sara leaving the country or disposing of the remnants of his assets 88 They attempted to sail anyway but were forced back to port by a storm A week later Allied Enterprises was dissolved Parsons received only a 2 900 promissory note from Hubbard and returned home shattered He had to sell his mansion to developers soon afterwards to recoup his losses 89 Hubbard and second wife Sara Hubbard s fellow writers were well aware of what had happened between him and Parsons L Sprague de Camp wrote to Isaac Asimov on August 27 1946 to tell him The more complete story of Hubbard is that he is now in Fla living on his yacht with a man eating tigress named Betty alias Sarah another of the same kind He will probably soon thereafter arrive in these parts with Betty Sarah broke working the poor wounded veteran racket for all its worth and looking for another easy mark Don t say you haven t been warned Bob Robert Heinlein thinks Ron went to pieces morally as a result of the war I think that s fertilizer that he always was that way but when he wanted to conciliate or get something from somebody he could put on a good charm act What the war did was to wear him down to where he no longer bothers with the act 90 On August 10 1946 Hubbard bigamously married Sara while still married to Polly It was not until 1947 that his first wife learned that he had remarried Hubbard agreed to divorce Polly in June that year and the marriage was dissolved shortly afterwards with Polly given custody of the children 91 During this period Hubbard authored a document which has been called the Affirmations also referred to as the Admissions They consist of a series of statements by and addressed to Hubbard relating to various physical sexual psychological and social issues that he was encountering in his life The Affirmations appear to have been intended to be used as a form of self hypnosis with the intention of resolving the author s psychological problems and instilling a positive mental attitude In her book Reitman called the Affirmations the most revealing psychological self assessment complete with exhortations to himself that Hubbard had ever made 92 Among the Affirmations Your eyes are getting progressively better They became bad when you used them as an excuse to escape the naval academy You have no reason to keep them bad Your stomach trouble you used as an excuse to keep the Navy from punishing you You are free of the Navy Your hip is a pose You have a sound hip It never hurts Your shoulder never hurts Your foot was an alibi The injury is no longer needed 21 You can tell all the romantic tales you wish But you know which ones were lies You have enough real experience to make anecdotes forever Stick to your true adventures Masturbation does not injure or make insane Your parents were in error Everyone masturbates 93 Request for psychiatric treatmentSee also L Ron Hubbard and psychiatry and Scientology and psychiatry After Hubbard s wedding to Sara the couple settled at Laguna Beach California where Hubbard took a short term job looking after a friend s yacht 94 before resuming his fiction writing to supplement the small disability allowance that he was receiving as a war veteran 95 Working from a trailer in a run down area of North Hollywood 91 Hubbard sold a number of science fiction stories that included his Ole Doc Methuselah series and the serialized novels The End Is Not Yet and To the Stars 42 However he remained short of money and his son L Ron Hubbard Jr testified later that Hubbard was dependent on his own father and Margaret s parents for money and his writings which he was paid at a penny per word never garnered him any more than 10 000 prior to the founding of Scientology 96 He repeatedly wrote to the Veterans Administration VA asking for an increase in his war pension 97 In October 1947 he wrote to request psychiatric treatment After trying and failing for two years to regain my equilibrium in civil life I am utterly unable to approach anything like my own competence My last physician informed me that it might be very helpful if I were to be examined and perhaps treated psychiatrically or even by a psychoanalyst Toward the end of my service I avoided out of pride any mental examinations hoping that time would balance a mind which I had every reason to suppose was seriously affected I cannot account for nor rise above long periods of moroseness and suicidal inclinations and have newly come to realize that I must first triumph above this before I can hope to rehabilitate myself at all I cannot myself afford such treatment Would you please help me 98 The VA eventually did increase his pension 99 but his money problems continued On August 31 1948 he was arrested in San Luis Obispo California and subsequently pleaded guilty to a charge of petty theft for which he was ordered to pay a 25 fine equivalent to 282 in 2021 100 DianeticsOrigin In 1948 Hubbard and his second wife Sara moved from California to Savannah Georgia where he would later claim to have worked as a volunteer lay practitioner in a local psychiatric clinic In letters to friends he began to make the first public mentions of what was to become Dianetics 101 He wrote in January 1949 that he was working on a book of psychology about the cause and cure of nervous tension which he was going to call The Dark Sword Excalibur or Science of the Mind 102 On March 8 1949 Hubbard wrote to friend and fellow science fiction author Robert Heinlein from Savannah Georgia Hubbard referenced Heinlein s earlier work Coventry in which a utopian government has the ability to psychologically cure criminals of violent personality traits He told Heinlein Well you didn t specify in your book what actual reformation took place in the society to make supermen Got to thinking about it other day The system is Excalibur It makes nul A s 103 His first published articles in Dianetics were Terra Incognita The Mind in The Explorers Journal and another one that impacted people more heavily in Astounding Science Fiction 104 In April 1949 Hubbard wrote to several professional organizations to offer his research 105 None were interested so he turned to his editor John W Campbell who was more receptive due to a long standing fascination with fringe psychologies and psychic powers psionics that permeated both his fiction and non fiction 106 Campbell invited Hubbard and Sara to move into a cottage at Bay Head New Jersey not far from his own home at Plainfield In July 1949 Campbell recruited an acquaintance Dr Joseph Winter to help develop Hubbard s new therapy of Dianetics Campbell told Winter With cooperation from some institutions some psychiatrists Hubbard has worked on all types of cases Institutionalized schizophrenics apathies manics depressives perverts stuttering neuroses in all nearly 1000 cases But just a brief sampling of each type he doesn t have proper statistics in the usual sense But he has one statistic He has cured every patient he worked with He has cured ulcers arthritis asthma 107 Hubbard collaborated with Campbell and Winter to refine his techniques 108 testing them on science fiction fans recruited by Campbell 109 The basic principle of Dianetics was that the brain recorded every experience and event in a person s life even when unconscious Bad or painful experiences were stored as what he called engrams in a reactive mind These could be triggered later in life causing emotional and physical problems By carrying out a process he called auditing a person could be regressed through his engrams to re experiencing past experiences This enabled engrams to be cleared The subject who would now be in a state of Clear would have a perfectly functioning mind with an improved IQ and photographic memory 110 The Clear would be cured of physical ailments ranging from poor eyesight to the common cold 111 which Hubbard asserted were purely psychosomatic 112 Winter submitted a paper on Dianetics to the Journal of the American Medical Association and the American Journal of Psychiatry but both journals rejected it 113 Hubbard and his collaborators decided to announce Dianetics in Campbell s Astounding Science Fiction instead In an editorial Campbell said Its power is almost unbelievable it proves the mind not only can but does rule the body completely following the sharply defined basic laws set forth physical ills such as ulcers asthma and arthritis can be cured as can all other psychosomatic ills 114 The birth of Hubbard s second daughter Alexis Valerie delivered by Winter on March 8 1950 came in the middle of the preparations to launch Dianetics Shortly afterwards in April 1950 a Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation was established in Elizabeth New Jersey with Hubbard Sara Winter and Campbell on the board of directors 115 Hubbard described Dianetics as the hidden source of all psychosomatic ills and human aberration when he introduced Dianetics to the world in the 1950s He further claimed that skills have been developed for their invariable cure 116 Dianetics was duly launched in Astounding s May 1950 issue and on May 9 Hubbard s companion book Dianetics The Modern Science of Mental Health was published 117 by Hermitage House Hubbard abandoned freelance writing in order to promote Dianetics writing several books about it in the next decade and delivering an estimated 4 000 lectures while founding Dianetics research organizations 118 Initial success Main article History of Dianetics Hubbard conducting a Dianetics seminar in Los Angeles 1950 Dianetics was an immediate commercial success and sparked what Martin Gardner calls a nationwide cult of incredible proportions 119 By August 1950 Hubbard s book had sold 55 000 copies was selling at the rate of 4 000 a week and was being translated into French German and Japanese Five hundred Dianetic auditing groups had been set up across the United States 120 Dianetics was poorly received by the press and the scientific and medical professions 120 The American Psychological Association criticized Hubbard s claims as not supported by empirical evidence 121 Scientific American said that Hubbard s book contained more promises and less evidence per page than any publication since the invention of printing 122 while The New Republic called it a bold and immodest mixture of complete nonsense and perfectly reasonable common sense taken from long acknowledged findings and disguised and distorted by a crazy newly invented terminology 123 Some of Hubbard s fellow science fiction writers also criticized it Isaac Asimov considered it gibberish 39 while Jack Williamson called it a lunatic revision of Freudian psychology 124 Several famous individuals became involved with Dianetics Aldous Huxley received auditing from Hubbard 125 the poet Jean Toomer 126 and the science fiction writers Theodore Sturgeon 127 and A E van Vogt became trained Dianetics auditors Vogt temporarily abandoned writing and became the head of the newly established Los Angeles branch of the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation Other branches were established in New York Washington D C Chicago and Honolulu 128 129 Psychologist and systems theorist William T Powers also prolific as a science fiction writer was another early advocate 130 131 and researcher connected with the Chicago branch 132 Although Dianetics was not cheap a great many people were nonetheless willing to pay van Vogt later recalled doing little but tear open envelopes and pull out 500 checks from people who wanted to take an auditor s course 128 Financial controls were lax Hubbard himself took large sums with no explanation of what he was doing with it On one occasion van Vogt saw Hubbard taking a lump sum of 56 000 equivalent to 630 000 in 2021 out of the Los Angeles Foundation s proceeds 128 One of Hubbard s employees Helen O Brien commented that at the Elizabeth N J branch of the Foundation the books showed that a month s income of 90 000 is listed with only 20 000 accounted for 133 Hubbard played a very active role in the Dianetics boom writing lecturing and training auditors Many of those who knew him spoke of being impressed by his personal charisma Jack Horner who became a Dianetics auditor in 1950 later said He was very impressive dedicated and amusing The man had tremendous charisma you just wanted to hear every word he had to say and listen for any pearl of wisdom 134 Isaac Asimov recalled in his autobiography how at a dinner party he Robert Heinlein L Sprague de Camp and their wives all sat as quietly as pussycats and listened to Hubbard He told tales with perfect aplomb and in complete paragraphs 39 As Atack comments he was a charismatic figure who compelled the devotion of those around him 135 Christopher Evans described the personal qualities that Hubbard brought to Dianetics and Scientology He undoubtedly has charisma a magnetic lure of an indefinable kind which makes him the centre of attraction in any kind of gathering He is also a compulsive talker and pontificator His restless energy keeps him on the go throughout a long day he is a poor sleeper and rises very early and provides part of the drive which has allowed him to found and propagate a major international organization 136 Collapse of Dianetics Foundation and subsequent kidnappings Dianetics lost public credibility in August 1950 when a presentation by Hubbard before an audience of 6 000 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles failed disastrously 137 He introduced a Clear named Sonya Bianca and told the audience that as a result of undergoing Dianetic therapy she now possessed perfect recall However Gardner writes in the demonstration that followed she failed to remember a single formula in physics the subject in which she was majoring or the color of Hubbard s tie when his back was turned At this point a large part of the audience got up and left 138 Hubbard s supporters soon began to have doubts about Dianetics Winter became disillusioned and in 1951 he wrote that he had never seen a single convincing Clear I have seen some individuals who are supposed to have been clear but their behavior does not conform to the definition of the state Moreover an individual supposed to have been clear has undergone a relapse into conduct which suggests an incipient psychosis 139 He also deplored the Foundation s omission of any serious scientific research 140 Hubbard also faced other practitioners moving into leadership positions within the Dianetics community It was structured as an open public practice in which others were free to pursue their own lines of research and claim that their approaches to auditing produced better results than Hubbard s 141 The community rapidly splintered and its members mingled Hubbard s ideas with a wide variety of esoteric and occult practices 142 By late 1950 the Elizabeth N J Foundation was in financial crisis and the Los Angeles Foundation was more than 200 000 in debt equivalent to 1 860 000 in 2021 143 Winter and Art Ceppos the publisher of Hubbard s book resigned under acrimonious circumstances 125 Campbell also resigned criticizing Hubbard for being impossible to work with and blamed him for the disorganization and financial ruin of the Foundations 144 By the summer of 1951 the Elizabeth N J Foundation and all of its branches had closed 133 The collapse of Hubbard s marriage to Sara created yet more problems He had begun an affair with his 20 year old public relations assistant in late 1950 while Sara started a relationship with Dianetics auditor Miles Hollister 145 Hubbard secretly denounced the couple to the FBI in March 1951 portraying them in a letter as communist infiltrators According to Hubbard Sara was currently intimate with communists but evidently under coercion Drug addiction set in fall 1950 Nothing of this known to me until a few weeks ago Hollister was described as having a sharp chin broad forehead rather Slavic He was said to be the center of most turbulence in our organization and active and dangerous 146 The FBI did not take Hubbard seriously an agent annotated his correspondence with the comment Appears mental 147 Hubbard s wife Sara at a 1951 custody hearing Three weeks later Hubbard and two Foundation staff seized Sara and his year old daughter Alexis and forcibly took them to San Bernardino California where he attempted unsuccessfully to find a doctor to examine Sara and declare her insane 148 He let Sara go but took Alexis to Havana Cuba Sara filed a divorce suit on April 23 1951 that accused him of marrying her bigamously and subjecting her to sleep deprivation beatings strangulation kidnapping and exhortations to commit suicide 149 The case led to newspaper headlines such as Ron Hubbard Insane Says His Wife 150 Sara finally secured the return of her daughter in June 1951 by agreeing to a settlement with her husband in which she signed a statement written by him declaring The things I have said about L Ron Hubbard in courts and the public prints have been grossly exaggerated or entirely false I have not at any time believed otherwise than that L Ron Hubbard is a fine and brilliant man 151 Dianetics appeared to be on the edge of total collapse However it was saved by Don Purcell a millionaire businessman and Dianeticist who agreed to support a new Foundation in Wichita Kansas Their collaboration ended after less than a year when they fell out over the future direction of Dianetics 152 The Wichita Foundation became financially nonviable after a court ruled that it was liable for the unpaid debts of its defunct predecessor in Elizabeth N J The ruling prompted Purcell and the other directors of the Wichita Foundation to file for voluntary bankruptcy in February 1952 145 Hubbard resigned immediately and accused Purcell of having been bribed by the American Medical Association to destroy Dianetics 152 Hubbard established a Hubbard College on the other side of town where he continued to promote Dianetics while fighting Purcell in the courts over the Foundation s intellectual property 153 Only six weeks after setting up the Hubbard College and marrying a staff member 18 year old Mary Sue Whipp Hubbard closed it down and moved with his new bride to Phoenix Arizona He established a Hubbard Association of Scientologists International to promote his new Science of Certainty Scientology 154 Scientology and Dianetics have been differentiated as follows Dianetics is all about releasing the mind from the distorting influence of engrams and Scientology is the study and handling of the spirit in relation to itself universes and other life 155 Rise of ScientologySee also Scientology and Timeline of Scientology Hubbard established an Academy of Scientology at this Northwest Washington D C building in 1955 It is now the L Ron Hubbard House museum The Church of Scientology attributes its genesis to Hubbard s discovery of a new line of research that man is most fundamentally a spiritual being a thetan 156 Non Scientologist writers have suggested alternative motives that he aimed to reassert control over his creation 142 that he believed he was about to lose control of Dianetics 152 or that he wanted to ensure he would be able to stay in business even if the courts eventually awarded control of Dianetics and its valuable copyrights to the hated Don Purcell 157 Harlan Ellison has told a story of seeing Hubbard at a gathering of the Hydra Club in 1953 or 1954 Hubbard was complaining of not being able to make a living on what he was being paid as a science fiction writer Ellison says that Lester del Rey told Hubbard that what he needed to do to get rich was start a religion 158 Hubbard expanded upon the basics of Dianetics to construct a spiritually oriented though at this stage not religious doctrine based on the concept that the true self of a person was a thetan an immortal omniscient and potentially omnipotent entity 159 Hubbard taught that thetans having created the material universe had forgotten their god like powers and become trapped in physical bodies 160 Scientology aimed to rehabilitate each person s self the thetan to restore its original capacities and become once again an Operating Thetan 157 159 Hubbard insisted humanity was imperiled by the forces of aberration which were the result of engrams carried by immortal thetans for billions of years 152 In 2012 Ohio State University professor Hugh Urban 161 argued that Hubbard had adopted many of his theories from the early to mid 20th century astral projection pioneer Sylvan Muldoon stating that Hubbard s description of exteriorizing the thetan is extremely similar if not identical to the descriptions of astral projection in occult literature popularized by Muldoon s widely read Phenomena of Astral Projection 1951 co written with Hereward Carrington 162 and that Muldoon s description of the astral body as being connected to the physical body by a long thin elastic cord is virtually identical to the one described in Hubbard s Excalibur vision 163 Hubbard introduced a device called an E meter that he presented as having as Miller puts it an almost mystical power to reveal an individual s innermost thoughts 164 He promulgated Scientology through a series of lectures bulletins and books such as A History of Man a cold blooded and factual account of your last sixty trillion years 164 and Scientology 8 8008 With this book the ability to make one s body old or young at will the ability to heal the ill without physical contact the ability to cure the insane and the incapacitated is set forth for the physician the layman the mathematician and the physicist 165 Scientology was organized in a very different way from the decentralized Dianetics movement The Hubbard Association of Scientologists HAS was the only official Scientology organization Training procedures and doctrines were standardized and promoted through HAS publications and administrators and auditors were not permitted to deviate from Hubbard s approach 142 Branches or orgs were organized as franchises rather like a fast food restaurant chain Each franchise holder was required to pay ten percent of income to Hubbard s central organization They were expected to find new recruits known as raw meat but were restricted to providing only basic services Costlier higher level auditing was only provided by Hubbard s central organization 166 Although this model would eventually be extremely successful Scientology was a very small scale movement at first Hubbard started off with only a few dozen followers generally dedicated Dianeticists a seventy hour series of lectures in Philadelphia in December 1952 was attended by just 38 people 167 Hubbard was joined in Phoenix by his 18 year old son Nibs who had been unable to settle down in high school 168 Nibs had decided to become a Scientologist moved into his father s home and went on to become a Scientology staff member and professor 169 Hubbard also traveled to the United Kingdom to establish his control over a Dianetics group in London It was very much a shoestring operation as Helen O Brien later recalled there was an atmosphere of extreme poverty and undertones of a grim conspiracy over all At 163 Holland Park Avenue was an ill lit lecture room and a bare boarded and poky office some eight by ten feet mainly infested by long haired men and short haired and tatty women 170 On September 24 1952 only a few weeks after arriving in London Hubbard s wife Mary Sue gave birth to her first child a daughter whom they named Diana Meredith de Wolfe Hubbard 171 In February 1953 Hubbard acquired a doctorate from Sequoia University an unaccredited degree mill 172 As membership declined and finances grew tighter Hubbard had reversed the hostility to religion he voiced in Dianetics 173 A few weeks after becoming Dr Hubbard he authored a letter outlining plans for transforming Scientology into a religion In that letter Hubbard proposed setting up a chain of Spiritual Guidance Centers charging customers 500 for twenty four hours of auditing proposing that Scientology should be transformed into a religion 174 We don t want a clinic We want one in operation but not in name Perhaps we could call it a Spiritual Guidance Center Think up its name will you And we could put in nice desks and our boys in neat blue with diplomas on the walls and 1 knock psychotherapy into history and 2 make enough money to shine up my operating scope and 3 keep the HAS solvent It is a problem of practical business I await your reaction on the religion angle In my opinion we couldn t get worse public opinion than we have had or have less customers with what we ve got to sell 175 The letter s recipient Helen O Brien resigned the following September 176 She criticized Hubbard for creating a temperate zone voodoo in its inelasticity unexplainable procedures and mindless group euphoria 177 The idea may not have been new Hubbard has been quoted as telling a science fiction convention in 1948 Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous If a man really wants to make a million dollars the best way would be to start his own religion 147 178 179 J Gordon Melton notes There is no record of Hubbard having ever made this statement though several of his science fiction colleagues have noted the broaching of the subject on one of their informal conversations 180 Despite objections on December 18 1953 Hubbard incorporated the Church of Scientology Church of American Science and Church of Spiritual Engineering in Camden New Jersey 181 Hubbard his wife Mary Sue and his secretary John Galusha became the trustees of all three corporations 182 183 The reason for Scientology s religious transformation was explained by officials of the HAS T here is little doubt but what this stroke will remove Scientology from the target area of overt and covert attacks by the medical profession who see their pills scalpels and appendix studded incomes threatened Scientologists can avoid the recent fiasco in which a Pasadena practitioner is reported to have spent 10 days in that city s torture chamber for practicing medicine without a license 184 Scientology franchises became Churches of Scientology and some auditors began dressing as clergymen complete with clerical collars If they were arrested in the course of their activities Hubbard advised they should sue for massive damages for molesting a Man of God going about his business 181 A few years later he told Scientologists If attacked on some vulnerable point by anyone or anything or any organization always find or manufacture enough threat against them to cause them to sue for peace Don t ever defend always attack 185 Any individual breaking away from Scientology and setting up his own group was to be shut down The purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather than to win The law can be used very easily to harass and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway well knowing that he is not authorized will generally be sufficient to cause his professional decease If possible of course ruin him utterly 186 The 1950s saw Scientology growing steadily Hubbard finally achieved victory over Don Purcell in 1954 when the latter worn out by constant litigation handed the copyrights of Dianetics back to Hubbard 187 Most of the formerly independent Scientology and Dianetics groups were either driven out of business or were absorbed into Hubbard s organizations 188 Hubbard marketed Scientology through medical claims such as attracting polio sufferers by presenting the Church of Scientology as a scientific research foundation investigating polio cases 189 One advertisement during this period stated Plagued by illness We ll make you able to have good health Get processed by the finest capable auditors in the world today Personally coached and monitored by L Ron Hubbard 190 Scientology became a highly profitable enterprise for Hubbard 191 He implemented a scheme under which he was paid a percentage of the Church of Scientology s gross income and by 1957 he was being paid about 250 000 equivalent to US 2 412 026 in 2021 192 His family grew too with Mary Sue giving birth to three more children Geoffrey Quentin McCaully on January 6 1954 176 Mary Suzette Rochelle on February 13 1955 193 and Arthur Ronald Conway on June 6 1958 194 In the spring of 1959 he used his new found wealth to purchase Saint Hill Manor an 18th century country house in Sussex formerly owned by Sawai Man Singh II the Maharaja of Jaipur The house became Hubbard s permanent residence and an international training center for Scientologists 189 Controversies and crisesSee also Scientology controversies The L Ron Hubbard House at Camelback in Phoenix Arizona The house is listed in the National Register of Historic Places L Ron Hubbard s car a 1947 Buick Super 8 The car is parked behind the house By the start of the 1960s Hubbard was the leader of a worldwide movement with thousands of followers A decade later however he had left Saint Hill Manor and moved aboard his own private fleet of ships as the Church of Scientology faced worldwide controversy The Church of Scientology says that the problems of this period were due to vicious covert international attacks by the United States government all of which were proven false and baseless which were to last 27 years and finally culminated in the Government being sued for 750 million dollars for conspiracy 195 Behind the attacks stated Hubbard lay a vast conspiracy of psychiatric front groups secretly controlling governments Every single lie false charge and attack on Scientology has been traced directly to this group s members They have sought at great expense for nineteen years to crush and eradicate any new development in the field of the mind They are actively preventing any effectiveness in this field 196 Hubbard believed that Scientology was being infiltrated by saboteurs and spies and introduced security checking 185 to identify those he termed potential trouble sources and suppressive persons Members of the Church of Scientology were interrogated with the aid of E meters and were asked questions such as Have you ever practiced homosexuality and Have you ever had unkind thoughts about L Ron Hubbard 197 For a time Scientologists were even interrogated about crimes committed in past lives Have you ever destroyed a culture Did you come to Earth for evil purposes Have you ever zapped anyone 198 He also sought to exert political influence advising Scientologists to vote against Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election and establishing a Department of Government Affairs to bring government and hostile philosophies or societies into a state of complete compliance with the goals of Scientology This he said is done by high level ability to control and in its absence by a low level ability to overwhelm Introvert such agencies Control such agencies 199 The U S Government was already well aware of Hubbard s activities The FBI had a lengthy file on him including a 1951 interview with an agent who considered him a mental case 144 Police forces in a number of jurisdictions began exchanging information about Scientology through the auspices of Interpol which eventually led to prosecutions 200 In 1958 the U S Internal Revenue Service withdrew the Washington D C Church of Scientology s tax exemption after it found that Hubbard and his family were profiting unreasonably from Scientology s ostensibly non profit income 191 The Food and Drug Administration took action against Scientology s medical claims seizing thousands of pills being marketed as radiation cures 201 as well as publications and E meters The Church of Scientology was required to label them as being ineffective in the diagnosis or treatment of disease 202 Following the FDA s actions Scientology attracted increasingly unfavorable publicity across the English speaking world 203 It faced particularly hostile scrutiny in Victoria Australia where it was accused of brainwashing blackmail extortion and damaging the mental health of its members 204 The Victorian state government established a Board of Inquiry into Scientology in November 1963 205 Its report published in October 1965 condemned every aspect of Scientology and Hubbard himself He was described as being of doubtful sanity having a persecution complex and displaying strong indications of paranoid schizophrenia with delusions of grandeur His writings were characterized as nonsensical abounding in self glorification and grandiosity replete with histrionics and hysterical incontinent outbursts 206 Sociologist Roy Wallis comments that the report drastically changed public perceptions of Scientology The former conception of the movement as a relatively harmless if cranky health and self improvement cult was transformed into one which portrayed it as evil dangerous a form of hypnosis with all the overtones of Svengali in the layman s mind and brainwashing 204 The report led to Scientology being banned in Victoria 207 Western Australia and South Australia 208 and led to more negative publicity around the world Newspapers and politicians in the UK pressed the British government for action against Scientology In April 1966 hoping to form a remote safe haven for Scientology Hubbard traveled to the southern African country Rhodesia today Zimbabwe and looked into setting up a base there at a hotel on Lake Kariba Despite his attempts to curry favour with the local government he personally delivered champagne to Prime Minister Ian Smith s house but Smith refused to see him Rhodesia promptly refused to renew Hubbard s visa compelling him to leave the country 209 In July 1968 the British Minister of Health Kenneth Robinson announced that foreign Scientologists would no longer be permitted to enter the UK and Hubbard himself was excluded from the country as an undesirable alien 210 Further inquiries were launched in Canada New Zealand and South Africa 208 Hubbard took three major new initiatives in the face of these challenges Ethics Technology was introduced to tighten internal discipline within Scientology It required Scientologists to disconnect from any organization or individual including family members deemed to be disruptive or suppressive 211 According to church operated websites A person who disconnects is simply exercising his right to communicate or not to communicate with a particular person Hubbard stated Communication however is a two way flow If one has the right to communicate then one must also have the right to not receive communication from another It is this latter corollary of the right to communicate that gives us our right to privacy 212 Scientologists were also required to write Knowledge Reports on each other reporting transgressions or misapplications of Scientology methods Hubbard promulgated a long list of punishable Misdemeanors Crimes and High Crimes 213 The Fair Game policy was introduced which was applicable to anyone deemed an enemy of Scientology May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist May be tricked sued or lied to or destroyed 214 215 At the start of March 1966 Hubbard created the Guardian s Office GO a new agency within the Church of Scientology that was headed by his wife Mary Sue 216 It dealt with Scientology s external affairs including public relations legal actions and the gathering of intelligence on perceived threats 217 As Scientology faced increasingly negative media attention the GO retaliated with hundreds of writs for libel and slander it issued more than forty on a single day 218 Hubbard ordered his staff to find lurid blood sex crime actual evidence sic on Scientology s attackers 219 Finally at the end of 1966 Hubbard acquired his own fleet of ships 79 He established the Hubbard Explorational Company Ltd which purchased three ships the Enchanter a forty ton schooner 220 the Avon River an old trawler 221 and the Royal Scotman sic a former Irish Sea cattle ferry that he made his home and flagship 222 The ships were crewed by the Sea Organization or Sea Org a group of Scientologist volunteers with the support of a couple of professional seamen 79 223 Commodore of the Sea OrgMain article Sea Org Corfu town where the Sea Org moored in 1968 1969 After Hubbard created the Sea Org fleet in early 1967 in the Canary Islands 224 225 it began an eight year voyage sailing from port to port in the Mediterranean Sea and eastern North Atlantic The fleet traveled as far as Corfu in the eastern Mediterranean and Dakar and the Azores in the Atlantic but rarely stayed anywhere for longer than six weeks Ken Urquhart Hubbard s personal assistant at the time later recalled Hubbard said we had to keep moving because there were so many people after him If they caught up with him they would cause him so much trouble that he would be unable to continue his work Scientology would not get into the world and there would be social and economic chaos if not a nuclear holocaust 226 When Hubbard established the Sea Org he publicly declared that he had relinquished his management responsibilities According to Miller this was not true He received daily telex messages from Scientology organizations around the world reporting their statistics and income The Church of Scientology sent him 15 000 equivalent to 121 901 in 2021 a week and millions of dollars were transferred to his bank accounts in Switzerland and Liechtenstein 227 Couriers arrived regularly conveying luxury food for Hubbard and his family 228 or cash that had been smuggled from England to avoid currency export restrictions 229 Along the way Hubbard sought to establish a safe haven in a friendly little country where Scientology would be allowed to prosper as Miller puts it 230 The fleet stayed at Corfu for several months in 1968 1969 Hubbard renamed the ships after Greek gods the Royal Scotman was rechristened Apollo and he praised the recently established military dictatorship 229 The Sea Org was represented as Professor Hubbard s Philosophy School in a telegram to the Greek government 231 In March 1969 however Hubbard and his ships were ordered to leave 232 In mid 1972 Hubbard tried again in Morocco establishing contacts with the country s secret police and training senior policemen and intelligence agents in techniques for detecting subversives 233 The program ended in failure when it became caught up in internal Moroccan politics and Hubbard left the country hastily in December 1972 234 At the same time Hubbard was still developing Scientology s doctrines A Scientology biography states that free of organizational duties and aided by the first Sea Org members L Ron Hubbard now had the time and facilities to confirm in the physical universe some of the events and places he had encountered in his journeys down the track of time 235 In 1965 he designated several existing Scientology courses as confidential repackaging them as the first of the esoteric OT levels 236 Two years later he announced the release of OT3 the Wall of Fire revealing the secrets of an immense disaster that had occurred on this planet and on the other seventy five planets which form this Confederacy seventy five million years ago 237 Scientologists were required to undertake the first two OT levels before learning how Xenu the leader of the Galactic Confederacy had shipped billions of people to Earth and blown them up with hydrogen bombs following which their traumatized spirits were stuck together at implant stations brainwashed with false memories and eventually became contained within human beings 238 The discovery of OT3 was said to have taken a major physical toll on Hubbard who announced that he had broken a knee an arm and his back during the course of his research 239 A year later in 1968 he unveiled OT levels 4 to 6 and began delivering OT training courses to Scientologists aboard the Royal Scotman 240 Scientologists around the world were presented with a glamorous picture of life in the Sea Org and many applied to join Hubbard aboard the fleet 240 What they found was rather different from the image Most of those joining had no nautical experience at all 240 Mechanical difficulties and blunders by the crews led to a series of embarrassing incidents and near disasters Following one incident in which the rudder of the Royal Scotman was damaged during a storm Hubbard ordered the ship s entire crew to be reduced to a condition of liability and wear gray rags tied to their arms 241 The ship itself was treated the same way with dirty tarpaulins tied around its funnel to symbolize its lower status According to those aboard conditions were appalling the crew was worked to the point of exhaustion given meager rations and forbidden to wash or change their clothes for several weeks 242 Hubbard maintained a harsh disciplinary regime aboard the fleet punishing mistakes by confining people in the Royal Scotman s bilge tanks without toilet facilities and with food provided in buckets 243 At other times erring crew members were thrown overboard with Hubbard looking on and occasionally filming 244 David Mayo a Sea Org member at the time later recalled We tried not to think too hard about his behavior It was not rational much of the time but to even consider such a thing was a discreditable thought and you couldn t allow yourself to have a discreditable thought One of the questions in a sec urity check was Have you ever had any unkind thoughts about LRH and you could get into very serious trouble if you had So you tried hard not to 245 From about 1970 Hubbard was attended aboard ship by the children of Sea Org members organized as the Commodore s Messenger Organization CMO They were mainly young girls dressed in hot pants and halter tops who were responsible for running errands for Hubbard such as lighting his cigarettes dressing him or relaying his verbal commands to other members of the crew 246 247 In addition to his wife Mary Sue he was accompanied by all four of his children by her though not his first son Nibs who had defected from Scientology in late 1959 248 The younger Hubbards were all members of the Sea Org and shared its rigors though Quentin Hubbard reportedly found it difficult to adjust and attempted suicide in mid 1974 249 Life in hiding The Internal Revenue Service building in Washington D C one of the targets of Hubbard s Snow White Program During the 1970s Hubbard faced an increasing number of legal threats French prosecutors charged him and the French Church of Scientology with fraud and customs violations in 1972 He was advised that he was at risk of being extradited to France 250 Hubbard left the Sea Org fleet temporarily at the end of 1972 living incognito in Queens New York 251 until he returned to his flagship in September 1973 when the threat of extradition had abated 252 Scientology sources say that he carried out a sociological study in and around New York City 253 Hubbard s health deteriorated significantly during this period A chain smoker he also suffered from bursitis and excessive weight and had a prominent growth on his forehead 254 He suffered serious injuries in a motorcycle accident in 1973 and had a heart attack in 1975 that required him to take anticoagulant drugs for the next year 255 In September 1978 Hubbard had a pulmonary embolism falling into a coma but recovered 256 He remained active in managing and developing Scientology establishing the controversial Rehabilitation Project Force in 1974 257 and issuing policy and doctrinal bulletins 258 However the Sea Org s voyages were coming to an end The Apollo was banned from several Spanish ports 258 and was expelled from Curacao in October 1975 259 The Sea Org came to be suspected of being a CIA operation leading to a riot in Funchal Madeira when the Apollo docked there At the time The Apollo Stars a musical group founded by Hubbard and made up entirely of ship bound members of the Sea Org was offering free on pier concerts in an attempt to promote Scientology and the riot occurred at one of these events Hubbard decided to relocate back to the United States to establish a land base for the Sea Org in Florida 260 The Church of Scientology attributes this decision to the activities on the Apollo having outgrow n the ship s capacity 253 In October 1975 Hubbard moved into a hotel suite in Daytona Beach The Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater Florida was secretly acquired as the location for the land base 260 On December 5 1975 Hubbard and his wife Mary Sue moved into a condominium complex in nearby Dunedin 261 Their presence was meant to be a closely guarded secret but was accidentally compromised the following month 262 Hubbard immediately left Dunedin and moved to Georgetown Washington D C accompanied by a handful of aides and messengers but not his wife 263 Six months later following another security alert in July 1976 Hubbard moved to another safe house in Culver City California He lived there for only about three months relocating in October to the more private confines of the Olive Tree Ranch near La Quinta 264 His second son Quentin committed suicide a few weeks later in Las Vegas 265 266 Throughout this period Hubbard was heavily involved in directing the activities of the Guardian s Office GO the legal bureau intelligence agency that he had established in 1966 He believed that Scientology was being attacked by an international Nazi conspiracy which he termed the Tenyaka Memorial through a network of drug companies banks and psychiatrists in a bid to take over the world 267 In 1973 he instigated the Snow White Program and directed the GO to remove negative reports about Scientology from government files and track down their sources 268 The GO was ordered to get all false and secret files on Scientology LRH that cannot be obtained legally by all possible lines of approach i e job penetration janitor penetration suitable guises utilizing covers His involvement in the GO s operations was concealed through the use of codenames The GO carried out covert campaigns on his behalf such as Operation Bulldozer Leak intended to effectively spread the rumor that will lead Government media and individual Suppressive Persons to conclude that LRH has no control of the C of S and no legal liability for Church activity He was kept informed of GO operations such as the theft of medical records from a hospital harassment of psychiatrists and infiltrations of organizations that had been critical of Scientology at various times such as the Better Business Bureau the American Medical Association and American Psychiatric Association 269 Members of the GO infiltrated and burglarized numerous government organizations including the U S Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service 270 After two GO agents were caught in the Washington D C headquarters of the IRS the FBI carried out simultaneous raids on GO offices in Los Angeles and Washington D C on July 7 1977 They retrieved wiretap equipment burglary tools and some 90 000 pages of incriminating documents Hubbard was not prosecuted though he was labeled an unindicted co conspirator by government prosecutors His wife Mary Sue was indicted and subsequently convicted of conspiracy She was sent to a federal prison along with ten other Scientologists 271 Hubbard s troubles increased in February 1978 when a French court convicted him in absentia for obtaining money under false pretenses He was sentenced to four years in prison and a 35 000FF 7 000 fine equivalent to 29 082 in 2021 272 He went into hiding in April 1979 moving to an apartment in Hemet California where his only contact with the outside world was via ten trusted messengers He cut contact with everyone else even his wife whom he saw for the last time in August 1979 273 Hubbard faced a possible indictment for his role in Operation Freakout the GO s campaign against New York journalist Paulette Cooper and in February 1980 he disappeared into deep cover in the company of two trusted messengers Pat and Annie Broeker 274 275 For the first few years of the 1980s Hubbard and the Broekers lived on the move touring the Pacific Northwest in a recreational vehicle and living for a while in apartments in Newport Beach and Los Angeles 276 Hubbard used his time in hiding to write his first new works of science fiction for nearly thirty years Battlefield Earth 1982 and Mission Earth a ten volume series published between 1985 and 1987 277 They received mixed responses as writer Jeff Walker puts it they were treated derisively by most critics but greatly admired by followers 278 Hubbard also wrote and composed music for three of his albums which were produced by the Church of Scientology The book soundtrack Space Jazz was released in 1982 279 Mission Earth and The Road to Freedom were released posthumously in 1986 280 In Hubbard s absence members of the Sea Org staged a takeover of the Church of Scientology and purged many veteran Scientologists A young messenger David Miscavige became Scientology s de facto leader Mary Sue Hubbard was forced to resign her position and her daughter Suzette became Miscavige s personal maid 281 Death and legacy The ranch in San Luis Obispo County California where Hubbard spent his final years For the last two years of his life Hubbard lived in a luxury Blue Bird motorhome on Whispering Winds a 160 acre 65 ha ranch near Creston California He remained in deep hiding while controversy raged in the outside world about whether he was still alive and if so where He spent his time writing and researching according to a spokesperson and pursued photography and music overseeing construction work and checking on his animals 282 He repeatedly redesigned the property spending millions of dollars remodeling the ranch house which went virtually uninhabited and building a quarter mile horse racing track with an observation tower which reportedly was never used 276 He was still closely involved in managing the Church of Scientology via secretly delivered orders 276 and continued to receive large amounts of money of which Forbes magazine estimated at least 200 million was gathered in Hubbard s name through 1982 In September 1985 the IRS notified the Church that it was considering indicting Hubbard for tax fraud 283 Hubbard suffered further ill health including chronic pancreatitis during his residence at Whispering Winds He suffered a stroke on January 17 1986 and died a week later 271 284 His body was cremated and the ashes were scattered at sea 285 Scientology leaders announced that his body had become an impediment to his work and that he had decided to drop his body to continue his research on another planet 286 having learned how to do it without a body 287 Hubbard was survived by his wife Mary Sue and all of his children except his second son Quentin His will provided a trust fund to support Mary Sue her children Arthur Diana and Suzette and Katherine the daughter of his first wife Polly 288 He disinherited two of his other children 289 L Ron Hubbard Jr had become estranged changed his name to Ronald DeWolf and in 1982 sued unsuccessfully for control of his father s estate 290 Alexis Valerie Hubbard s daughter by his second wife Sara had attempted to contact her father in 1971 She was rebuffed with the implied claim that her real father was Jack Parsons rather than Hubbard and that her mother had been a Nazi spy during the war 291 Both later accepted settlements when litigation was threatened 289 In 2001 Diana and Suzette were reported to still be Church members while Arthur had left and become an artist Hubbard s great grandson Jamie DeWolf is a noted slam poet 292 The copyrights of his works and much of his estate and wealth were willed to the Church of Scientology 293 In a bulletin dated May 5 1980 Hubbard told his followers to preserve his teachings until an eventual reincarnation when he would return not as a religious leader but as a political one 294 The Church of Spiritual Technology CST a sister organization of the Church of Scientology has engraved Hubbard s entire corpus of Scientology and Dianetics texts on steel tablets stored in titanium containers They are buried at the Trementina Base in a vault under a mountain near Trementina New Mexico on top of which the CST s logo has been bulldozed on such a gigantic scale that it is visible from space 295 296 In the 1980s Hubbard s followers were buying large numbers of the books and re issuing them to stores in order to boost sales figures 297 Opinions are divided about his literary legacy Scientologists have written of their desire to make Ron the most acclaimed and widely known author of all time 297 The sociologist William Sims Bainbridge writes that even at his peak in the late 1930s Hubbard was regarded by readers of Astounding Science Fiction as merely a passable familiar author but not one of the best while by the late 1970s the science fiction subculture wishes it could forget him and fans gave him a worse rating than any other of the Golden Age writers 298 In 1996 the Los Angeles City Council renamed a street close to the Scientology headquarters L Ron Hubbard Way 299 In 2011 the West Valley City Council declared March 13 as L Ron Hubbard Centennial Day 300 In April 2016 the New Jersey State Board of Education approved Hubbard s birthday as one of its religious holidays 301 302 Hubbard s beliefs and practices drawn from a diverse set of sources influenced numerous offshoots splinter groups and new movements In 2004 eighteen years after Hubbard s death the Church claimed eight million followers worldwide According to religious scholar J Gordon Melton this is an overestimate counting as Scientologists people who had merely bought a book 303 The City University of New York s American Religious Identification Survey found that by 2009 only 25 000 Americans identified as Scientologists 304 Hubbard s presence still pervades Scientology Every Church of Scientology maintains an office reserved for Hubbard with a desk chair and writing equipment ready to be used 293 Lonnie D Kliever notes that Hubbard was the only source of the religion and he has no successor Hubbard is referred to simply as Source within Scientology and the theological acceptability of any Scientology related activity is determined by how closely it adheres to Hubbard s doctrines 305 Hubbard s name and signature are official trademarks of the Religious Technology Center established in 1982 to control and oversee the use of Hubbard s works and Scientology s trademarks and copyrights The RTC is the central organization within Scientology s complex corporate hierarchy and has put much effort into re checking the accuracy of all Scientology publications to ensur e the availability of the pure unadulterated writings of Mr Hubbard to the coming generations 305 The Danish historian of religions Mikael Rothstein describes Scientology as a movement focused on the figure of Hubbard He comments The fact that Hubbard s life is mythologized is as obvious as in the cases of Jesus Muhammad or Siddartha Gotama This is how religion works Scientology however rejects this analysis altogether and goes to great lengths to defend every detail of Hubbard s amazing and fantastic life as plain historical fact Hubbard is presented as the master of a multitude of disciplines who performed extraordinary feats as a photographer composer scientist therapist explorer navigator philosopher poet artist humanitarian adventurer soldier scout musician and many other fields of endeavor 306 The Church of Scientology portrays Hubbard s life and work as having proceeded seamlessly as if they were a continuous set of predetermined events and discoveries that unfolded through his lifelong research even up to and beyond his death 307 According to Rothstein s assessment of Hubbard s legacy Scientology consciously aims to transfer the charismatic authority of Hubbard to institutionalize his authority over the organization even after his death Hubbard is presented as a virtually superhuman religious ideal just as Scientology itself is presented as the most important development in human history 308 As Rothstein puts it reverence for Scientology s scripture is reverence for Hubbard the man who in the Scientological perspective single handedly brought salvation to all human beings 306 David G Bromley of the University of Virginia comments that the real Hubbard has been transformed into a prophetic persona LRH which acts as the basis for his prophetic authority within Scientology and transcends his biographical history 307 According to Dorthe Refslund Christensen Hubbard s hagiography directly compares him with Buddha Hubbard is viewed as having made Eastern traditions more accessible by approaching them with a scientific attitude Hubbard is seen as the ultimate cross cultural savior he is thought to be able to release man from his miserable condition because he had the necessary background and especially the right attitude 309 Hubbard although increasingly deified after his death is the model Operating Thetan to Scientologists and their founder and not God Hubbard then is the Source inviting others to follow his path in ways comparable to a Bodhisattva figure according to religious scholar Donald A Westbrook Scientologists refer to L Ron Hubbard as Ron referring to him as a personal friend 310 Biographies Gerry Armstrong formerly Hubbard s official biographical researcher whose trial disclosed many details of Hubbard s life In the late 1970s two men began to assemble a picture of Hubbard s life Michael Linn Shannon a resident of Portland Oregon became interested in Hubbard s life story after an encounter with a Scientology recruiter Over the next four years he collected previously undisclosed records and documents He intended to write an expose of Hubbard and sent a copy of his findings and key records to a number of contacts but was unable to find a publisher 311 Shannon s findings were acquired by Gerry Armstrong a Scientologist who had been appointed Hubbard s official archivist 311 He had been given the job of assembling documents relating to Hubbard s life for the purpose of helping Omar V Garrison a non Scientologist who had written two books sympathetic to Scientology to write an official biography However the documents that he uncovered convinced both Armstrong and Garrison that Hubbard had systematically misrepresented his life Garrison refused to write a puff piece and declared that he would not repeat all the falsehoods they the Church of Scientology had perpetuated over the years He wrote a warts and all biography while Armstrong quit Scientology taking five boxes of papers with him The Church of Scientology and Mary Sue Hubbard sued for the return of the documents while settling out of court with Garrison requiring him to turn over the nearly completed manuscript of the biography 312 In October 1984 Judge Paul G Breckenridge ruled in Armstrong s favor saying The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history background and achievements The writings and documents in evidence additionally reflect his egoism greed avarice lust for power and vindictiveness and aggressiveness against persons perceived by him to be disloyal or hostile At the same time it appears that he is charismatic and highly capable of motivating organizing controlling manipulating and inspiring his adherents He has been referred to during the trial as a genius a revered person a man who was viewed by his followers in awe Obviously he is and has been a very complex person and that complexity is further reflected in his alter ego the Church of Scientology 313 In November 1987 the British journalist and writer Russell Miller published Bare faced Messiah the first full length biography of L Ron Hubbard He drew on Armstrong s papers official records and interviews with those who had known Hubbard including ex Scientologists and family members The book was well received by reviewers but the Church of Scientology sought unsuccessfully to prohibit its publication on the grounds of copyright infringement 314 Other critical biographical accounts are found in Bent Corydon s L Ron Hubbard Messiah or Madman 1987 and Jon Atack s A Piece of Blue Sky 1990 Scientology biographies Hagiographical accounts published by the Church of Scientology describe Hubbard as a child prodigy of sorts who rode a horse before he could walk and was able to read and write by the age of four 315 A Scientology profile says that he was brought up on his grandfather s large cattle ranch in Montana 316 where he spent his days riding breaking broncos hunting coyote and taking his first steps as an explorer 68 His grandfather is described as a wealthy Western cattleman from whom Hubbard inherited his fortune and family interests in America Southern Africa etc 317 Scientology claims that Hubbard became a blood brother of the Native American Blackfeet tribe at the age of six through his friendship with a Blackfeet medicine man 4 318 Queen Anne High School Seattle which L Ron Hubbard attended in 1926 1927 However contemporary records show that his grandfather Lafayette Waterbury was a veterinarian not a rancher and was not wealthy Hubbard was actually raised in a townhouse in the center of Helena 319 According to his aunt his family did not own a ranch but did own one cow and four or five horses on a few acres of land outside the city 68 Hubbard lived over a hundred miles from the Blackfeet reservation While some sources support Scientology s claim of Hubbard s blood brotherhood other sources say that the tribe did not practice blood brotherhood and no evidence has been found that he had ever been a Blackfeet blood brother 320 321 322 323 According to Scientology biographies during a journey to Washington D C in 1923 Hubbard learned of Freudian psychology from Commander Joseph Snake Thompson a U S Navy psychoanalyst and medic 6 324 Scientology biographies describe this encounter as giving Hubbard training in a particular scientific approach to the mind which he found unsatisfying 325 In his diary Hubbard claimed he was the youngest Eagle Scout in the U S 326 Scientology texts present Hubbard s travels in Asia as a time when he was intensely curious for answers to human suffering and explored ancient Eastern philosophies for answers but found them lacking 327 He is described as traveling to China at a time when few Westerners could enter 328 and according to Scientology spent his time questioning Buddhist lamas and meeting old Chinese magicians 327 According to church materials his travels were funded by his wealthy grandfather 329 Scientology accounts say that Hubbard made his way deep into Manchuria s Western Hills and beyond to break bread with Mongolian bandits share campfires with Siberian shamans and befriend the last in the line of magicians from the court of Kublai Khan 330 However Hubbard did not record these events in his diary 331 He remained unimpressed with China and the Chinese writing A Chinaman can not live up to a thing he always drags it down He characterized the sights of Beijing as rubberneck stations for tourists and described the palaces of the Forbidden City as very trashy looking and not worth mentioning He was impressed by the Great Wall of China near Beijing 332 but concluded of the Chinese They smell of all the baths they didn t take The trouble with China is there are too many chinks here 333 Despite not graduating from George Washington Hubbard claimed to be not only a graduate engineer but a member of the first United States course in formal education in what is called today nuclear physics 334 However a Church of Scientology biography describes him as never noted for being in class and says that he thoroughly detest ed his subjects 335 He earned poor grades was placed on probation in September 1931 and dropped out altogether in the fall of 1932 334 336 Hubbard is noted as once being offered employment at the Soviet American trade organization AMTORG 337 Scientology accounts say that he studied nuclear physics at George Washington University in Washington D C before he started his studies about the mind spirit and life 338 and Hubbard himself stated that he set out to find out from nuclear physics a knowledge of the physical universe something entirely lacking in Asian philosophy 335 His university records indicate that his exposure to nuclear physics consisted of one class in atomic and molecular phenomena for which he earned an F grade 339 Scientologists claim he was more interested in extracurricular activities particularly writing and flying According to church materials he earned his wings as a pioneering barnstormer at the dawn of American aviation 318 and was recognized as one of the country s most outstanding pilots With virtually no training time he takes up powered flight and barnstorms throughout the Midwest 340 His airman certificate however records that he qualified to fly only gliders rather than powered aircraft and gave up his certificate when he could not afford the renewal fee 34 Luquillo Puerto Rico near where Scientologists say Hubbard carried out the West Indies Mineralogical Survey in 1932 After leaving university Hubbard traveled to Puerto Rico on what the Church of Scientology calls the Puerto Rican Mineralogical Expedition 341 Scientologists claim he made the first complete mineralogical survey of Puerto Rico 235 as a means of augmenting his father s pay with a mining venture during which he sluiced inland rivers and crisscrossed the island in search of elusive gold as well as carrying out much ethnological work amongst the interior villages and native hillsmen 341 Hubbard s unofficial biographer Russell Miller writes that neither the United States Geological Survey nor the Puerto Rican Department of Natural Resources have any record of any such expedition 27 According to the Church of Scientology Hubbard was called to Hollywood to work on film scripts in the mid 1930s although Scientology accounts differ as to exactly when this was whether 1935 342 1936 335 or 1937 340 The Church of Scientology claims he also worked on the Columbia serials The Mysterious Pilot 1937 The Great Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok 1938 and The Spider Returns 1941 340 though his name does not appear on the credits Hubbard also claimed to have written Dive Bomber 1941 343 344 Cecil B DeMille s The Plainsman 1936 and John Ford s Stagecoach 1939 345 Scientology accounts of the expedition to Alaska describe Hubbard s re charting of an especially treacherous Inside Passage and his ethnological study of indigenous Aleuts and Haidas and tell of how along the way he not only roped a Kodiak Bear but braved seventy mile an hour winds and commensurate seas off the Aleutian Islands 346 They are divided about how far Hubbard s expedition actually traveled whether 700 miles 1 100 km 340 or 2 000 miles 3 200 km 346 The Church disputes the official record of Hubbard s naval career It asserts that the records are incomplete and perhaps falsified to conceal Hubbard s secret activities as an intelligence officer 68 In 1990 the Church provided the Los Angeles Times with a document that was said to be a copy of Hubbard s official record of service The U S Navy told the Times that its contents are not supported by Hubbard s personnel record 68 The New Yorker reported in February 2011 that the Scientology document was considered by federal archivists to be a forgery 79 The Church of Scientology presents him as a much decorated war hero who commanded a corvette and during hostilities was crippled and wounded 347 Scientology publications say he served as a Commodore of Corvette squadrons in all five theaters of World War II and was awarded twenty one medals and palms for his service 348 He was severely wounded and was taken crippled and blinded to a military hospital where he worked his way back to fitness strength and full perception in less than two years using only what he knew and could determine about Man and his relationship to the universe 342 He said that he had seen combat repeatedly telling A E van Vogt that he had once sailed his ship right into the harbor of a Japanese occupied island in the Dutch East Indies His attitude was that if you took your flag down the Japanese would not know one boat from another so he tied up at the dock went ashore and wandered around by himself for three days 349 specify Hubbard s war service has great significance in the history and mythology of the Church of Scientology as he is said to have cured himself through techniques that would later underpin Scientology and Dianetics According to Moulton Hubbard told him that he had been machine gunned in the back near the Dutch East Indies Hubbard asserted that his eyes had been damaged as well either by the flash of a large caliber gun or when he had a bomb go off in my face 68 Scientology texts say that he returned from the war b linded with injured optic nerves and lame with physical injuries to hip and back and was twice pronounced dead 79 Hubbard s official Navy service records indicate that his military performance was at times substandard and he received only four campaign medals rather than the claimed twenty one He was never recorded as being injured or wounded in combat and never received a Purple Heart 68 The Church of Scientology says that Hubbard s key breakthrough in the development of Dianetics was made at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland California According to the Church In early 1945 while recovering from war injuries at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital Mr Hubbard conducts a series of tests and experiments dealing with the endocrine system He discovers that contrary to long standing beliefs function monitors structure With this revolutionary advance he begins to apply his theories to the field of the mind and thereby to improve the conditions of others 350 Scientology accounts do not mention Hubbard s involvement in occultism He is instead described as continu ing to write to help support his research during this period into the development of a means to better the condition of man 351 The Church of Scientology has nonetheless acknowledged Hubbard s involvement with the OTO a 1969 statement written by Hubbard himself 352 said Hubbard broke up black magic in America L Ron Hubbard was still an officer of the U S Navy because he was well known as a writer and a philosopher and had friends amongst the physicists he was sent in to handle the situation He went to live at the house and investigated the black magic rites and the general situation and found them very bad Hubbard s mission was successful far beyond anyone s expectations The house was torn down Hubbard rescued a girl they were using The black magic group was dispersed and destroyed and has never recovered 353 The Church of Scientology says Hubbard was sent in by his fellow science fiction author Robert Heinlein who was running off book intelligence operations for naval intelligence at the time However Heinlein s authorized biographer has said that he looked into the matter at the suggestion of Scientologists but found nothing to corroborate claims that Heinlein had been involved and his biography of Heinlein makes no mention of the matter 79 The Church of Scientology says Hubbard quit the Navy because it attempted to monopolize all his researches and force him to work on a project to make man more suggestible and when he was unwilling tried to blackmail him by ordering him back to active duty to perform this function Having many friends he was able to instantly resign from the Navy and escape this trap 195 The Navy said in a statement in 1980 There is no evidence on record of an attempt to recall him to active duty 76 Following Hubbard s death Bridge Publications published several stand alone biographical accounts of his life Marco Frenschkowski notes that non Scientologist readers immediately recognize some parts of Hubbard s life are here systematically left out no information whatsoever is given about his private life his marriages divorces children his legal affairs and so on 354 The Church maintains an extensive website presenting the official version of Hubbard s life 355 It also owns a number of properties dedicated to Hubbard including the Los Angeles based L Ron Hubbard Life Exhibition a presentation of Hubbard s life the Author Services Center a presentation of Hubbard s writings 356 and the L Ron Hubbard House in Washington D C In late 2012 Bridge published a comprehensive official biography of Hubbard titled The L Ron Hubbard Series A Biographical Encyclopedia written primarily by Dan Sherman the official Hubbard biographer at the time This most recent official Church of Scientology biography of Hubbard is a 17 volume series with each volume focusing on a different aspect of Hubbard s life including his music photography geographic exploration humanitarian work and nautical career It is advertised as a Biographic Encyclopedia and is primarily authored by the official biographer Dan Sherman 357 358 During his lifetime a number of brief biographical sketches were also published in his Scientology books The Church of Scientology issued the only authorized LRH Biography in October 1977 it has since been followed by the Sherman Biographic Encyclopedia 195 His life was illustrated in print in What Is Scientology a glossy publication published in 1978 with paintings of Hubbard s life contributed by his son Arthur 359 BibliographyMain article L Ron Hubbard bibliographySee also Bibliography of Scientology and Written works of L Ron Hubbard According to the Church of Scientology Hubbard produced some 65 million words on Dianetics and Scientology contained in about 500 000 pages of written material 3 000 recorded lectures and 100 films His works of fiction included some 500 novels and short stories 295 See also Biography portalAleister Crowley Norton S Karno an attorney for the Church of Scientology and for L Ron Hubbard Timeline of L Ron HubbardReferences Dericquebourg R Scientology Nova religio 2017 20 4 5 12 doi 10 1525 nr 2017 20 4 5 Hall Timothy L American religious leaders p 175 New York Infobase Publishing 2003 ISBN 978 0 8160 4534 1 Miller Russell Bare faced Messiah the true story of L Ron Hubbard p 11 London Joseph 1987 ISBN 0 7181 2764 1 OCLC 17481843 a b c Christensen pp 236 237 Miller p 19 a b Miller p 23 a b Ortega Tony November 14 2016 At an early age Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard learned how to captivate the press Miller p 27 Miller p 28 Atack p 54 a b Miller p 31 Lewis James R 2009 Scientology New York NY Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0195331493 Miller p 34 Clarke Peter ed 2004 Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements Routledge p 281 ISBN 9781134499700 a b c d Ortega Tony February 24 2015 New government release contains a surprise L Ron Hubbard flunked out of high school too Miller p 41 Miller p 44 Wakefield Margery Understanding Scientology Chapter 2 L Ron Hubbard Messiah Or Madman Retrieved July 25 2016 Miller p 45 Miller p 46 a b c Wright p 53 a b c d Miller p 47 Atack p 59 Miller p 52 Miller p 55 a b Atack p 63 a b Miller p 56 Nicholls Peter The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction 1978 p 108 ISBN 0 586 05380 8 Miller p 59 Miller p 61 Miller p 64 Miller p 70 Miller p 62 a b Atack p 64 Miller p 63 About L Ron Hubbard Master Storyteller Galaxy Press Retrieved February 8 2011 Miller p 72 Frenschkowski Marco July 1999 L Ron Hubbard and Scientology An annotated bibliographical survey of primary and selected secondary literature PDF Marburg Journal of Religion University of Marburg 4 1 15 doi 10 17192 mjr 1999 4 3760 Archived PDF from the original on April 27 2021 Retrieved May 13 2015 via CORE a b c Asimov Isaac 1979 In Memory Yet Green The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov 1920 1954 New York Doubleday p 413 ISBN 978 0 385 13679 2 Miller p 74 Staff July 30 1937 Books Published Today The New York Times p 17 a b Stableford Brian 2004 Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Literature Lanham MD Scarecrow Press p 164 ISBN 978 0 8108 4938 9 Miller p 86 Harmon Jim Glut Donald F 1973 The Great Movie Serials Their Sound and Fury London Routledge p 329 ISBN 978 0 7130 0097 9 Miller p 71 Miller p 75 Miller p 84 Going Clear A New Book Delves Into Scientology NPR org January 24 2013 The History of Excalibur lermanet com a b c Burks Arthur J December 1961 Yes There Was A Book Called Excalibur By L Ron Hubbard The Aberee Ortega Tony October 23 2014 L Ron Hubbard explains to a friend the real reason he wrote Dianetics a b Letter from L Ron Hubbard October 1938 quoted in Miller p 81 Ackerman Forrest J November 19 1997 Secret Lives L Ron Hubbard Channel 4 Television Gardner p 272 Malko p 40 Atack p 66 Quoted in Malko p 39 a b Miller p 85 Miller p 88 Miller p 89 Atack p 68 a b Miller p 91 Ron the War Hero Joining Up Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science Retrieved January 8 2022 Miller p 93 Miller p 97 a b c d e f Bare Faced Messiah Chapter 6 www cs cmu edu Atack Jon 1990 A Piece of Blue Sky Carol Publishing Group p 74 ISBN 0 8184 0499 X a b c d e f g Sappell Joel Welkos Robert June 24 1990 The Making of L Ron Hubbard Creating the Mystique Los Angeles Times p A38 1 Battle Report Submission of A16 3 3 PC815 Vice Adm Frank Jack Fletcher Commander NW Sea Frontier June 8 1943 Image of document Sappell Joel Welkos Robert W June 24 1990 The Mind Behind the Religion Chapter Two Creating the Mystique Hubbard s image was crafted of truth distorted by myth Los Angeles Times Retrieved July 25 2022 Miller p 107 Atack p 81 Streeter p 208 Bare Faced Messiah Chapter 7 www cs cmu edu Atack p 84 https www cs cmu edu dst Cowen warhero crippled htm a b Stafford Charles L Orsini Bette January 9 1980 Church moves to defend itself against attackers St Petersburg Times Hubbard L Ron My Philosophy Church of Scientology International 1965 retrieved February 17 2011 Miller p 125 a b c d e f Wright Lawrence February 14 2011 The Apostate Paul Haggis vs the Church of Scientology The New Yorker retrieved February 8 2011 Miller p 113 Miller p 114 Miller p 117 Quoted in Symonds John The Great Beast the life and magick of Aleister Crowley p 392 London Macdonald and Co 1971 ISBN 0 356 03631 6 Stoddard Martin 1989 Orthodox Heresy The Rise of magic As Religion and Its Relation to Literature Macmillan Press p 195 ISBN 978 0 333 43540 3 a b Urban Hugh B Magia sexualis sex magic and liberation in modern Western esotericism p 137 Berkeley CA University of California Press 2006 ISBN 978 0 520 24776 5 Metzger Richard Book of Lies The Disinformation Guide to Magick and the Occult p 200 New York The Disinformation Company 2008 ISBN 978 0 9713942 7 8 Pendle p 268 Pendle p 269 Pendle p 270 De Camp L Sprague letter of August 26 1946 Quoted by Pendle p 271 a b Miller p 134 Reitman p 20 Wright p 53 4 Miller p 132 Streeter p 210 Video on YouTube Miller pp 125 128 131 Hubbard L Ron letter to Veterans Administration October 15 1947 quoted in Miller p 137 Miller p 139 Miller p 142 Miller p 143 Miller p 144 Ortega Tony November 8 2014 The Heinlein Letters What L Ron Hubbard s close friends really thought of him The Underground Bunker Retrieved January 14 2020 Melton J Gordon 2000 The Church of Scientology Signature Books ISBN 9781560851394 One such letter can be found on the Church of Scientology s official L Ron Hubbard website See Letters from the Birth of Dianetics Church of Scientology International 2004 retrieved February 8 2011 Luckhurst Roger 2005 Science Fiction Malden MA Polity p 74 ISBN 978 0 7456 2893 6 Miller p 149 Atack p 106 Miller p 150 Streeter pp 210 211 Atack p 108 Miller Timothy 1995 America s Alternative Religions Albany State University of New York Press pp 385 386 ISBN 978 0 7914 2398 1 OCLC 30476551 Winter p 18 Quoted in Miller p 145 Miller p 152 The TIME Vault December 22 1952 Retrieved July 25 2016 Atack p 107 L Ron Hubbard encyclopedia com Retrieved December 18 2015 Gardner p 265 a b Staff August 21 1950 Dianetics book review Best Seller Newsweek Maisel Albert December 5 1950 Dianetics Science or Hoax Look magazine p 79 Rabi Isaac Isador Book Review Scientific American January 1951 Gumpert Martin August 14 1950 Dianetics book review by Martin Gumpert The New Republic Miller p 153 a b Atack p 113 Kerman Cynthia Earl Eldridge Richard The lives of Jean Toomer a hunger for wholeness pp 317 318 Baton Rouge Louisiana State University Press 1989 ISBN 978 0 8071 1548 0 Sturgeon Theodore Williams Paul Baby is three p 414 Berkeley CA North Atlantic Books 1999 ISBN 978 1 55643 319 1 a b c Miller p 166 Melton p 190 Northwestern University Library William T Powers Papers Retrieved January 3 2021 Powers William T Knowlton Gerald N 1951 Logical Development of Dianetics Chicago Illinois Dianetic Processing amp Research Foundation OCLC 742875041 Griswold Irwin E August 19 1969 FDA Files Scientology E Meter Retrieved January 3 2021 a b O Brien p 27 Miller pp 159 160 Atack p 377 Evans p 26 Whitehead p 67 Gardner p 270 Winter p 34 Miller p 169 Stark Rodney Bainbridge William Sims The future of religion secularization revival and cult formation pp 268 269 Berkeley University of California Press 1986 ISBN 978 0 520 05731 9 a b c Marshall Gordon In praise of sociology p 186 London Routledge 1990 ISBN 978 0 04 445688 9 Miller p 173 a b Miller p 181 a b Miller p 170 Miller p 180 a b Methvin Eugene H May 1990 Scientology Anatomy of a Frightening Cult Reader s Digest pp 16 Atack p 117 Martin Walter Ralston Zacharias Ravi K ed The Kingdom of the Cults p 338 Minneapolis Bethany House 2003 ISBN 978 0 7642 2821 6 Staff April 24 1951 Ron Hubbard Insane Says His Wife San Francisco Chronicle Quoted in Miller p 192 a b c d Streissguth p 71 Miller p 200 Atack p 129 Mccall W Vaughn 2007 Psychiatry and Psychology in the Writings of L Ron Hubbard Journal of Religion and Health 46 3 437 47 doi 10 1007 s10943 006 9079 9 S2CID 10629230 L Ron Hubbard A Chronicle 1950 1959 Church of Scientology International 2007 retrieved February 8 2011 a b Miller p 203 Underdown James 2018 I Was There Harlan Ellison Witnesses the Birth of Scientology Skeptical Inquirer 42 6 10 a b DeChant Dell Danny L Jorgensen The Church of Scientology A Very New American Religion in Neusner Jacob World Religions in America An Introduction p 226 Westminster John Knox Press 2003 ISBN 0 664 22475 X Bromley p 91 Ortega Tony September 15 2011 Hugh Urban An Interview With the Professor Who Took on Scientology The Village Voice Retrieved April 19 2016 Muldoon Sylvan 1951 The Phenomena of Astral Projection Amazon Rider ASIN B0000CHX60 Urban Hugh 2012 Scientology A History of a New Religion Google Books Princeton University Press p 77 ISBN 9781400839438 a b Miller p 204 Miller p 206 Tucker p 304 Miller p 210 Miller p 207 Miller p 232 O Brien p 49 Miller p 208 Miller p 212 Kent Stephen A The Creation of Religious Scientology Religious Studies and Theology 18 2 pp 97 126 1999 ISSN 1747 5414 Streeter p 215 Miller p 213 Westbrook Donald A 2018 Among the Scientologists History Theology and Praxis Oxford Oxford University Press p 84 a b Miller p 214 O Brien p vii Lawrence Sara April 18 2006 The Secrets of Scientology The Independent Retrieved February 17 2011 Staff April 5 1976 Religion A Sci Fi Faith Time Retrieved February 17 2011 Melton J Gordon 2000 Studies in Contemporary Religion The Church of Scientology 1 ed Torino Italy Elle Di Ci Leumann pp 55 74 ISBN 978 1 56085 139 4 The actual quote seems to have come from a cynical remark in a letter written by Orwell published in The Collected Essays Journalism and Letters of George Orwell a b Williams Ian The Alms Trade Charities Past Present and Future p 127 New York Cosimo 2007 ISBN 978 1 60206 753 0 Voltz Tom Scientology und k ein Ende p 75 Solothurn Walter 1995 ISBN 978 3 530 89980 1 Atack p 137 Staff April 1954 Three Churches Are Given Charters in New Jersey The Aberree volume 1 issue 1 p 4 a b Miller p 239 Hubbard L Ron The Scientologist A Manual on the Dissemination of Material 1955 Quoted in Atack p 139 Atack p 138 Atack p 139 a b Streissguth p 74 Staff Hubbard November 1957 Ability Issue 58 p 5 a b Atack p 142 Miller p 227 Miller p 221 Miller p 230 a b c Flag Information Letter 67 L R H Biography Sea Organization October 31 1977 Hubbard L Ron Constitutional Destruction June 9 1969 retrieved February 8 2011 Atack p 150 Hubbard L Ron Sec Check Whole Track HCO Bulletin of June 19 1961 quoted in Atack p 152 Hubbard L Ron Department of Government Affairs HCO Policy Letter of August 15 1960 quoted in Miller p 241 Fooner Michael Interpol issues in world crime and international criminal justice p 13 New York Plenum Press 1989 ISBN 978 0 306 43135 7 Miller p 228 Atack p 154 Wallis p 192 a b Wallis p 215 Miller p 250 Miller pp 252 253 Wallis p 193 a b Wallis p 196 Reitman 2011 pp 80 81 Atack p 183 Atack p 155 What is disconnection Retrieved December 17 2015 Atack p 156 Hubbard L Ron Penalties for Lower Conditions HCO Policy Letter of October 18 1967 Issue IV Quoted in Atack pp 175 176 Wallis pp 144 145 Atack p 161 Atack p 165 Atack p 189 Atack p 160 Miller p 264 Miller p 265 Miller p 269 Miller p 272 Jaime Rubio August 4 2017 El mosqueo de Franco con el fundador de la Cienciologia ABC Edu Bravo August 2 2017 Como el creador de la Cienciologia cambio su vida en las Islas Canarias Vanity Fair Quoted in Miller p 297 Miller p 299 Miller p 300 a b Miller p 290 Miller p 310 Miller p 295 Miller p 296 Miller p 311 Miller p 312 a b Hubbard L Ron Mission into Time p 7 Copenhagen AOSH DK Publications Department A S 1973 ISBN 87 87347 56 3 Atack p 159 Hubbard L Ron Ron s Journal 67 quoted in Atack p 173 Atack p 32 Atack p 173 a b c Atack p 177 Miller p 285 Miller p 286 Atack p 180 Atack p 186 Miller p 289 Miller p 301 Sappell Joel Welkos Robert June 24 1990 The Mind Behind the Religion Life With L Ron Hubbard Los Angeles Times retrieved February 20 2011 Miller p 236 Miller p 325 Corydon Bent L Ron Hubbard Messiah or Madman p 94 Fort Lee N J Barricade Books 1992 ISBN 978 0 942637 57 1 Miller p 314 Miller p 318 a b L Ron Hubbard A Chronicle 1970 1979 Church of Scientology International 2007 retrieved February 8 2011 Miller p 316 Atack p 255 Atack p 256 Atack p 206 a b Atack p 204 Atack p 209 a b Miller p 334 Miller p 336 Miller p 338 Miller p 340 Miller p 343 Miller p 344 Sappell Joel Robert W Welkos June 24 1990 The Mind Behind the Religion Life With L Ron Hubbard Aides indulged his eccentricities and egotism Los Angeles Times Retrieved February 19 2011 Beresford David February 7 1980 Snow White s dirty tricks London The Guardian Miller pp 317 318 Marshall John January 24 1980 The Scientology Papers Hubbard still gave orders records show Toronto Globe and Mail Streissguth p 75 a b Reitman 2007 p 323 Marshall John January 26 1980 The Scientology Papers The hidden Hubbard Toronto Globe and Mail Atack p 258 Atack p 259 Miller p 364 a b c Sappell Joel Welkos Robert W June 24 1990 The Mind Behind the Religion Chapter Four The Final Days Deep in hiding Hubbard kept tight grip on the church Los Angeles Times retrieved February 8 2011 Queen Edward L Prothero Stephen R Shattuck Gardiner H Encyclopedia of American religious history Volume 1 p 493 New York Infobase Publishing 2009 ISBN 978 0 8160 6660 5 Walker Jeff The Ayn Rand Cult p 275 Chicago Open Court 1999 ISBN 978 0 8126 9390 4 Garchik Leah March 17 2006 Leah Garchik Daily Datebook San Francisco Chronicle The Chronicle Publishing Co p E16 Goldstein Patrick September 21 1986 Hubbard Hymns Los Angeles Times p 40 Miller p 366 Brown Mark January 30 1986 Creston provided quiet retreat for controversial church leader The County Telegram Tribune San Luis Obispo pp 1A 5A Behar Richard October 27 1986 The prophet and profits of Scientology Forbes 400 Forbes Church of Scientology L Ron Hubbard s death Image of Death Certificate Retrieved on June 15 2012 Miller p 375 Petrowsky Marc 1998 Sects Cults and Spiritual Communities A Sociological Analysis Westport Conn Praeger p 144 ISBN 978 0 275 95860 2 Atack p 354 Staff February 7 1986 Hubbard Left Most of Estate to Scientology Church Executor Appointed The Associated Press a b Atack p 356 Lamont p 154 Miller p 306 Lattin Don February 12 2001 Scientology Founder s Family Life Far From What He Preached San Francisco Chronicle retrieved February 12 2011 a b Reitman 2007 p 324 Urban Hugh B 2006 Fair Game Secrecy Security and the Church of Scientology in Cold War America Journal of the American Academy of Religion 2 74 a b Gallagher Eugene V Ashcraft Michael 2006 African Diaspora Traditions and Other American Innovations Introduction to New and Alternative Religions in America Vol 5 Westport Conn Greenwood Publishing Group p 172 ISBN 978 0 275 98717 6 35 31 28 6 N 104 34 20 2 W 35 31 28 6 N 104 34 20 2 W a b Sappell Joel Welkos Robert W June 28 1990 Costly Strategy Continues to Turn Out Bestsellers Los Angeles Times Archived from the original on February 6 2008 Retrieved February 15 2011 Bainbridge William Sims Science and Religion The Case of Scientology in Bromley David G Hammond Phillip E eds The Future of new religious movements p 63 Macon GA Mercer University Press 1987 ISBN 978 0 86554 238 9 Times Los Angeles March 31 2015 How Scientology got L A to name street after L Ron Hubbard Los Angeles Times Retrieved July 25 2016 Tribune Pamela Manson The Salt Lake West Valley City recognizes L Ron Hubbard Day Retrieved July 25 2016 N J approves more than 100 school religious holidays April 11 2016 Retrieved July 25 2016 N J Now Has More Than 100 School Religious Holidays You May Not Know About April 12 2016 Retrieved July 25 2016 Jarvik Elaine September 20 2004 Scientology Church now claims more than 8 million members Deseret Morning News Archived from the original on June 16 2008 Retrieved February 13 2011 Defections court fights test Scientology Associated Press November 1 2009 Retrieved February 14 2011 a b Rothstein p 24 a b Rothstein p 21 a b Bromley p 89 Rothstein p 20 Christensen Dorthe Refslund 2005 Lewis James R Petersen Jasper Aagaard eds Controversial New Religions 1st ed Oxford University Press Westbrook Donald A 2017 Researching Scientology and Scientologists in the United States Methods and Conclusions In Lewis James R Hellesoy Kjersti eds Handbook of Scientology Brill Handbooks on Contemporary Religion Brill ISBN 9789004330542 a b Atack p 46 Shelor George Wayne Writer tells of Hubbard s faked past Clearwater Sun May 10 1984 Breckenridge Jr Paul G October 24 1984 Memorandum of Intended Decision Church of Scientology of California vs Gerald Armstrong Quoted by Miller pp 370 71 Murtagh Peter October 10 1987 Scientologists fail to suppress book about church s founder The Guardian Tucker p 300 About The Author in Hubbard L Ron Have You Lived Before This Life A Scientific Survey A Study of Death and Evidence of Past Lives p 297 Los Angeles Church of Scientology Publications Organization 1977 ISBN 978 0 88484 055 8 Quoted in Rolph p 17 a b L Ron Hubbard and American Pulp Fiction in Hubbard L Ron The Great Secret p 107 108 Hollywood CA Galaxy Press 2008 ISBN 978 1 59212 371 1 Atack p 48 Sappell Joel Welkos Robert June 24 1990 The Making of L Ron Hubbard Staking a Claim to Blood Brotherhood Los Angeles Times p A38 5 McDowell Michael Brown Nathan Robert 2009 World Religions at your Fingertips Penguin ISBN 9781592578467 Retrieved January 8 2016 Lewis James R 2009 Scientology New York NY Oxford University Press ISBN 9780199715954 Retrieved January 8 2016 Lewis James R Aagaard Petersen Jesper 2005 Controversial New Religions Oxford University Press ISBN 9780195156836 Retrieved January 8 2016 Whitehead p 46 Christensen p 238 Miller p 25 a b Christensen pp 239 240 About the Author in Hubbard L Ron Battlefield Earth No page number given Los Angeles Galaxy Press 2005 ISBN 978 1 59212 007 9 Appendix in Hubbard L Ron Hymn of Asia No page number given Los Angeles Church of Scientology of California Publications Organization 1974 ISBN 0 88404 035 6 L Ron Hubbard Biographical Profile Asia and the South Pacific Church of Scientology International 2010 retrieved February 17 2011 Atack p 57 Miller p 42 Miller p 43 a b Malko p 31 a b c A Brief Biography of L Ron Hubbard Ability Church of Scientology Washington D C Issue 111 January 1959 Wallis p 18 KGB Deep Background Reference Detail PBS Foreword in Hubbard L Ron Scientology The Fundamentals of Thought p vii Los Angeles Bridge Publications 2007 ISBN 978 1 4031 4420 1 Streeter p 206 a b c d L Ron Hubbard A Chronicle 1930 1940 Church of Scientology International 2007 retrieved February 17 2011 a b L Ron Hubbard Biographical Profile Puerto Rican Mineralogical Expedition Church of Scientology 2010 retrieved February 8 2011 a b About the Author in Hubbard L Ron Dianetics Today p 989 Los Angeles Church of Scientology of California 1975 ISBN 0 88404 036 4 Hubbard L Ron The Story of Dianetics and Scientology lecture of October 18 1958 Atack p 65 Miller p 69 a b L Ron Hubbard Biographical Profile Alaskan Radio Experimental Expedition Church of Scientology International 2010 retrieved February 17 2011 Lamont pp 19 20 Rolph p 16 Miller p 141 L Ron Hubbard A Chronicle 1941 1949 Church of Scientology International 2007 retrieved February 17 2011 L Ron Hubbard A Chronicle 1941 1949 Church of Scientology International retrieved February 8 2011 Atack p 90 Scientology New Light on Crowley The Sunday Times December 28 1969 Frenschkowski Marco L Ron Hubbard and Scientology An annotated bibliographical survey of primary and selected secondary literature Marburg Journal of Religion 4 1 July 1999 retrieved February 8 2011 Available at www lronhubbard org Cowan Douglas E Bromley David G Cults and new religions a brief history p 30 Oxford Blackwell 2008 ISBN 978 1 4051 6128 2 The L Ron Hubbard Series Retrieved July 25 2016 Gallagher Eugene V The new religious movements experience in America p 216 Greenwood Publishing Group 2004 ISBN 978 0 313 32807 7 Miller p 350General and cited referencesAtack Jon A Piece of Blue Sky Scientology Dianetics and L Ron Hubbard exposed Carol Publishing Group 1990 ISBN 978 0 8184 0499 3 OCLC 20934706 Behar Richard Pushing Beyond the U S Scientology makes its presence felt in Europe and Canada Bromley David G Making Sense of Scientology Prophetic Contractual Religion in Lewis James R ed Scientology Oxford Oxford University Press 2009 ISBN 978 0 19 533149 3 OCLC 232786014 Christensen Dorthe Refslund Inventing L Ron Hubbard On the Construction and Maintenance of the Hagiographic Mythology of Scientology s Founder pp 227 258 in Lewis James R Petersen Jesper Aagaard Controversial new religions Oxford Oxford University Press 2005 ISBN 978 0 19 515683 6 OCLC 53398162 available through Oxford Scholarship Online doi 10 1093 019515682X 003 0011 Evans Christopher Cults of Unreason New York Farrar Straus and Giroux 1974 ISBN 0 374 13324 7 OCLC 863421 Gardner Martin Fads and fallacies in the name of science New York Courier Dover Publications 1957 ISBN 978 0 486 20394 2 OCLC 18598918 Jacobsen Jeff Day Robert RJ What the Church of Scientology Doesn t Want You To Know Lamont Stewart Religion Inc The Church of Scientology London Harrap 1986 ISBN 978 0 245 54334 0 OCLC 23079677 Malko George Scientology The Now Religion New York Delacorte Press 1970 OCLC 115065 Melton J Gordon Encyclopedic handbook of cults in America Taylor amp Francis 1992 ISBN 978 0 8153 1140 9 Miller Russell Bare faced Messiah the true story of L Ron Hubbard London Joseph 1987 ISBN 0 7181 2764 1 OCLC 17481843 O Brien Helen Dianetics in Limbo A Documentary About Immortality Philadelphia Whitmore Publishing 1966 OCLC 4797460 Pendle George Strange Angel The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons Orlando FL Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2006 ISBN 978 0 15 603179 0 OCLC 55149255 Reitman Janet Inside Scientology pp 305 348 of American Society of Magazine Editors Ed The Best American Magazine Writing 2007 New York Columbia University Press 2007 ISBN 978 0 231 14391 2 OCLC 154711228 Reitman Janet Inside Scientology The Story of America s Most Secretive Religion Boston MA Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2011 ISBN 978 0 618 88302 8 OCLC 651912263 Rolph Cecil Hewitt Believe What You Like what happened between the Scientologists and the National Association for Mental Health London Deutsch 1973 ISBN 978 0 233 96375 4 OCLC 815558 Rothstein Mikael Scientology scripture and sacred traditions in Lewis James R Hammer Olav eds The invention of sacred tradition Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2007 ISBN 978 0 521 86479 4 OCLC 154706390 Streeter Michael Behind closed doors the power and influence of secret societies London New Holland Publishers 2008 ISBN 978 1 84537 937 7 OCLC 231589690 Streissguth Thomas Charismatic cult leaders Minneapolis The Oliver Press 1995 ISBN 978 1 881508 18 2 OCLC 30892074 Tucker Ruth A Another Gospel Cults Alternative Religions and the New Age Movement Grand Rapids MI Zondervan 2004 ISBN 978 0 310 25937 4 OCLC 19354219 Wallis Roy The road to total freedom a sociological analysis of Scientology New York Columbia University Press 1977 ISBN 978 0 231 04200 0 OCLC 2373469 Whitehead Harriet Renunciation and reformulation a study of conversion in an American sect Ithaca NY Cornell University Press 1987 ISBN 978 0 8014 1849 5 OCLC 14002616 Winter Joseph A A Doctor s Report on Dianetics Theory and Therapy New York Julian Press 1951 OCLC 1572759 Wright Lawrence Going Clear Scientology Hollywood and the Prison of Belief New York Vintage Books 2013 ISBN 978 0 307 74530 9External linksL Ron Hubbard at Wikipedia s sister projects Media from Commons Quotations from Wikiquote Texts from Wikisource Textbooks from Wikibooks Data from Wikidata Official website Bare Faced Messiah by Russell Miller Biographical documentation from The New Yorker Operation Clambake Critical material on Hubbard and Scientology U S Government FBI Files for Hubbard via The Smoking Gun Frenschkowski Marco L Ron Hubbard and Scientology An annotated bibliographical survey of primary and selected secondary literature Marburg Journal of Religion Vol 1 No 1 July 1999 ISSN 1612 2941 L Ron Hubbard at IMDb L Ron Hubbard at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database Hubbard L Ron at The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Hubbard L Ron Archived October 4 2018 at the Wayback Machine at the Encyclopedia of Fantasy Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title L Ron Hubbard amp oldid 1134519448, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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