Cults of Unreason By Dr. Christopher Evans Contents: INTRODUCTION: End flaps and title page Introduction I THE SCIENCE FICTION RELIGION In the Beginning... Lives Past, Lives Remembered Grow New Teeth Thought Has Mass The Master of Saint Hill Brush with Authority All at Sea Ethics and Uniforms From Psychotherapy to Religion II THE SAVIOURS FROM THE SKIES The Coming of the Saucers Jesus is Alive and Well and Living on Venus Myths in the Skies III BLACK BOXES The Pioneers More Mental Marvels IV THE MYSTIC EAST (OR THEREABOUTS) Many Masters Divers Holy Monks Yesterday and Tomorrow INDEX =============== Table Of Contents As organized religion has declined, new surrogate beliefs, many of them based on pseudoscientific rationality, have sprung up. These are what Dr. Christopher Evans calls the cults of unreason, man's attempt to fit technology to a religion-like belief. Evans discusses a number of these new "religions" - Scientology, the flying-saucer cults, the alpha-wave-feedback churches, the Eastern mysticism sects - describing how they were founded, how they operate, and how they are helpful or harmful to their followers. In many of these cults naivete and sophistication work side by side; ideas about advanced psychology and physiology are juxtaposed with remnants of pre-Christian myths and nineteenth-century occultism. All of the cults of unreason have one thing in common: they attempt to satisfy man's need to reach simple, understandable answers to the confusion around him. Dr. Evans wonders if we can expect more and more of these pseudo-religions as the hapless individuals in our society are confronted with newer and even more unwanted life styles and expectations. It is possible that systematized "unreason" is man's only possible response, and as such is not only necessary but welcome. Dr. Evans invites us to explore the area between what we know and what we would like to think is possible. In doing so we may find that the cults of unreason are our most intelligent answer to an unreasonable world. Cults of Unreason Cults of Unreason Dr. Christopher Evans Farrar, Straus and Giroux New York Copyright (c) 1973 by Christopher Evans All rights reserved First American edition, 1974 Library of Congress catalog card number: 73-87694 ISBN 0-374-13324-7 Printed in the United States of America ===================== From the British Reviews "A fascinating book, a vivid and excitingly written account of the extraordinary religious and psychological cults" - J. G. Ballard. "Compulsive reading. His account of Scientology is by far the best I have ever read" - Bernard Dixon, The New Scientist. "Dr. Evans brings a number of talents to bear on this delicious book: the scientist's scepticism, the psychologist's insight into human behaviour, and the journalist's flair for putting the story across" - David Fishlock, Financial Times. CHRISTOPHER EVANS is an experimental psychologist who has worked extensively on the brain from the viewpoint of visual and auditory perception. Recently he has been engaged in experimental work on the use of computers by totally untrained people. He is particularly interested in drawing parallels between the operation of computers and living brains and is co-author of a theory comparing dreaming to particular computer activities. The results of this work will be included in his work in progress, Landscapes of the Night. His scientific books include one on cybernetics, a second on the physiology and psychology of the brain, and a third on the neurophysiology of attention. Dr. Evans has also written books and articles on many scientific subjects for the general public in such publications as Vogue, The Observer, and The Sunday Times. Dr. Evans lectures extensively in Britain and North America and has made hundreds of appearances on television and radio on both continents. He currently devises and introduces a weekly science program on the BBC. Jacket design by Paul Agule FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX 19 UNION SQUARE WEST NEW YORK 10003 ISBN 0-374-13324-7 ============== Introduction We live in a world in which change has become the norm. The mountains, rivers, seas and continents may preserve an appearance of immutability, seeming as fixed and as stable to us as they ever seemed to our ancestors, but the fabric of our society, the pattern of rules which governs the complex interrelationships of human beings, is tearing and changing as never before in history. Two centuries ago it was possible for a man to live his life through in an environment devoid of change, with technology static and social laws and philosophical beliefs rigid and unquestionable. Neighbours would remain neighbours, houses rarely changed owners, and the tools which a young man might start work with would be passed on with his death to a new generation. Attitudes to life and death were governed by the religious dogma of the time and were generally held without question and even without much consideration. For most people, apart from those caught up in the convulsion of some war or insurrection, the time course of significant social and political change was such that it could barely be detected within any one lifetime. Society must have seemed as stable as any mountain, as predictable as the procession of the seasons. The Industrial Revolution wrecked all this. Hillsides which had produced grass and trees for a hundred thousand years were suddenly torn apart and blackened in the hunt for coal. Villages which had maintained social and agricultural dominance of a region since Roman times dwindled into insignificance in comparison with the new industrial cities, populated by migrant workers who have travelled distances which their fathers would have been unable to contemplate. Communications networks of road and rail sprang up, linking all urban and rural communities irrevocably, and human beings began in earnest that restless shuffling from place to place which is the lot of nearly all of us today. Other data communication networks - cheap books and newspapers, telephones, radio and television - all combined to totter the happy complacency of the old societies. Men could impose their personality and their philosophy on other men by the astute use of such networks infinitely more rapidly, and with far greater effectiveness, than could the conquering generals of the past. At this time the frenetic rush continues, with technological development hurtling ahead of the conceptual and ideological advances which should ideally match its pace. The tremendous successes of the American and Russian space programmes, which have considerably exceeded even the most optimistic predictions of the science fiction of the 1940s, should warn us of what we are about to face in the future. Even more significant, and yet almost totally unappreciated by the ordinary man or woman, is the really remarkable growth of computer technology which will impact in its most spectacular and far-reaching form in the 1980s to make the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution look tranquil and insignificant. Faced with these facts, and with the inescapable signs of the impact of science and technology on the world's social organization, one sees some critical questions that need to be answered. The first is probably simply whether Man can survive changes of this kind without some vast neurotic upheaval manifesting either in a major move towards what might be called `drop-out anarchy', or in a manic swing into nuclear war. To date, no psychologist, anthropologist or sociologist seems to have been able to confront this question adequately - we have no way of knowing whether the human species has the inherent or potential capability to handle the technology it can create, and at the same time preserve identity at both the personal and social level. For this we will have to wait and see, and those of us who are optimists are the fortunate ones. The second major question, which embraces the subject matter of this book, concerns the apparently widening gap between Man's ability to manipulate his environment - as with engineering, physics, astronautics, etc. - and his capacity to comprehend the implications of his technological success and to become a part of the much wider world that has opened up to him. It is in this area - the system of beliefs by which Man relates himself to the unknown forces of the Universe and the great mysteries of space and time, of beginnings, middles and ends - that what we know generally as Religion has lately failed in its ancient role. This failure has become more obvious and dramatic in the last decade, though the rot set in at the time of Copernicus and the first overt signs of decay did not appear until a century ago. In fact, until somewhere around the beginning of the nineteenth century - probably there is an association with the disquiet accompanying the Industrial Revolution - the average individual looked to the Bible and to orthodox religious teaching for answers to what he considered to be the important questions about the Universe. At the time these were such natural ones as, `What is Man?', `How did he come into existence?', `Where does God live?', `What happens after death?', etc., etc. If studied assiduously, the Bible in fact gives fairly straightforward and quite categoric answers to all such questions, and with a little imagination can produce reasonable answers to a good many others of a less religious kind. At the time of Galileo, for example, a flat quotation from Joshua 13 `...and the sun stood still...and hasted not to go down about a whole day' was counted as being a most suitable refutation for the theories of Copernicus which were based on painstaking scientific observation, but only a few gallant diehards would take this line today. In the past hundred years in particular, what we might term the `religious answer' has progressively lost its punch, with more and more people turning to the textbooks of science in an attempt at understanding the strange physical and mental environment we live in. The galloping decline of the authority of the Church - particularly in liberal societies such as England, and, to a lesser extent, in the USA - is evident in the shrunken congregations at Anglican churches, and in the decaying brick buildings, proudly erected as Baptist churches a century ago, which now spend their last days ignominiously as cut-price carpet centres, or temporary warehouses. And this decline, despite all the best efforts of media-conscious Bishops on motorcycles, shows no sign of being arrested. For who in this day and age, now that astronauts have waddled around the moon, can really feel that the Archbishop of Canterbury has anything important to say on celestial matters? Unfortunately where the answers provided by religious dogma fail to satisfy, there is frequently, as we have pointed out above, no suitable alternative answer provided by science. Science in general refuses to speculate, proffering to its adherents only those facts it considers to be established by virtue of the inductive experimental method. It is useless to ask a scientist - in his working role - such questions as `Why are we here?', or `How could the Universe come into being?', for he will merely say that he does not know. Answers are, of course, available from religious teaching, but they are answers which to most people simply don't gel and are really no better than no answer at all. The gap between the discoveries at the frontiers of science and their assimilation into some useful cosmological theory is already immense, and there is a danger that it may grow wider still. To the working scientist this is not necessarily alarming. He realizes that his technology can easily outstrip his philosophy, and holding himself to be a technologist he is content to leave it to the philosopher to make sense of it all. To the vast majority of mankind, however, who are still not yet scientists by any stretch of the imagination, but who are acquiring a more articulate curiosity which modern telecommunications only serve to titillate, this attitude is basically unsatisfying. In their heart of hearts most people still want some fairly simple, reasonably logical answers to the questions that human beings have always asked - answers which will ease the chill which we have all felt when, in the small hours of the morning, we wonder about life and death, time and space, creation and destruction. These gaps, we will have to agree, need plugging. And if science and present-day philosophy - currently obsessed with semantics and linguistics - are unprepared to offer help, while the great world religions offer only outdated, timeworn and implausible concepts, then the field is ripe as never before for stop-gap systems, pseudo-scientific philosophies, quasi-technological cults and new Messiahs to emerge. They are, in fact, already here, and there is evidence that their strength is growing. We shall examine some of them in this book, and when gazed at with a clinical eye they amuse rather than alarm. Yet they beg for careful study for they are sociological phenomena of great interest and significance. Perhaps more important, they give one a taste of things to come, for if the decline of the old-established religions continues at its present pace, and if technology continues to outstrip advances in the philosophy of science, the need for such cults will increase so that not only will they proliferate but some of the existing ones will rise to real power. What form do these surrogate belief-systems take? To some extent this depends upon their antiquity, for a full-fledged cult requires some time to mature. Scientology, for example, which is perhaps the most important and in some ways the most disturbing, has now got a measurable history behind it and an international organization with considerable financial resources to support it. It also has a leader who is of the greatest possible significance to the movement, and an organized dogma with means for distributing it. On the other hand, there are more nebulous cults - such as that surrounding a belief in flying saucers - not crystallized into any single organized body, but with considerable intellectual and emotional support in all parts of the world. Yet again there are relatively tiny cults, run by minor eccentric individuals and commanding limited support, though always with the potential for rapid expansion. Some are intellectually naive, others sophisticated to the point of semantic complexity. All are equatable in that, when looked at in close-up, they serve to fill a need which science and technology have created by cutting away the power of the old established religions. In this book, in the interests of keeping it down to reasonable size, I have concentrated on a cross-section of cults and fads. The best documented and the most immediately significant - that of Scientology - I have tackled at some length for its origins, history and evolution are immensely revealing and of the greatest interest to anyone interested in psychology and sociology. I have also gone into the topic of flying saucers at some length, for, while there is no single dominant cult connected with this, the belief in flying saucers - as Jung pointed out a decade ago - is another important sociological phenomena of our time. The third segment of the book is devoted to an examination of an interesting, but I hope allowable, diversion from the main theme - the various devices grouped under the generic heading of `Black Boxes'. Time and again I have found that individuals interested in one or other of today's cults have been peripherally fascinated by mysterious gadgetry of one kind or another, varying from devices such as pendulums used for detecting hidden gold or oil to elaborate boxes with valves, coloured lights and intriguing rotating parts. These devices, I believe, play a very significant role in providing quasi-scientific backing for many cultish beliefs, and are treated - as is the case with the Scientologists' E-meter - with considerable reverence by adherents. They serve to demonstrate (to believers) what is after all the fundamental thesis lying behind all cults - that the mind or soul of Man is a real thing, not a mere epiphenomenon of the brain, and as such is measurable to some degree. They are an attempt to provide tangible proof of the existence of the spirit or life force that motivates our actions, and that survives the disintegration of our puny physical bodies. Finally I have included a section on a number of the strange varieties of Eastern religious beliefs which are currently flourishing and which have attracted such excitement in the media. If I appear to have spent so little time on such significant figures as the Maharishi Yogi, and concentrated on such lesser characters as Mr Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, it is because in a curious way the latter seems to be exhibiting more staying power. Perhaps the Maharishi's message was really too ascetic for most people's tastes - or maybe Mr Rampa simply tells a better story! I have deliberately refrained from a detailed analysis of the rather well-known variants of religious belief such as Christian Science, Theosophy, Spiritualism, etc., since these are well-documented elsewhere. Christian Science is a world religion of minority status which sprang up in the nineteenth century as the result of the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy, curious and dominant personality whose principal belief was that all sickness was illusion - essentially the product of inadequate mental or spiritual outlook. Faith in the fact of the illusory nature of illness is sufficient in itself to ensure total restoration to health. Like Spiritualism, another vigorous minority religion which preaches the possibility of communication with the spirits of dead people, Christian Science is essentially an attempt at a practical expression of basic Christian belief - in one case the power of Faith to heal and in the other the survival of the soul after death. Both these tenets are implicit in orthodox Christian belief (and in most major religious systems even of a non-Christian nature) but are supposed only to have been demonstrated practically in the past by great spiritual figures such as Jesus Christ, certain saints and so on. The upsurge of both these important variants of Christianity in the nineteenth century is a significant comment on the growing feeling that the orthodox lure was weak in some important aspects. Only now, after decades of formal opposition either to spiritual healing or psychic manifestations, are certain sections of the Established Church beginning to see in these outcrops of orthodoxy their one possible hope for the salvation of a fading cause, and it is no coincidence that a good number of Bishops are members of the Church's Fellowship for Psychical Study and that the Archbishop of Canterbury thought it worthwhile only a decade or so ago to set up a Commission to investigate divine or supernormal healing. However, the rush to incorporate the alleged findings of psychical research to bolster religious dogma appears to have come too late, as these findings are now themselves viewed with the utmost scepticism by most scientists, unlike their eminent Victorian predecessors who treated them with grave sympathy. They are also not truly contemporary cults, arising to fill gaps in cosmology caused by the onslaught of science, but rather attempts at practical application of one or other aspect of Christian thought. (Nowadays both varieties have almost totally dissociated themselves from the Christian Church, many Spiritualists in fact refusing to accept the divine origin of Christ.) The cults and fads that follow are, as the reader will soon see, products not of the nineteenth century, but very much of the second half of the twentieth century. They draw their logic, their language and their philosophy more from the raw material of science, of psychoanalysis and of the existentialist philosophers than from the traditional sources of religion. The mixture is often a bizarre one, but it is evidently potent enough to capture the minds of hundreds of thousands, even millions, of sane men and women on earth today. The students of society among us will watch their evolution with care, and contemporary religious leaders may look to them for possible practical truths, and perhaps even for some useful lessons to be learned. ================= PART I: THE SCIENCE FICTION RELIGION Cults of Unreason: In the Beginning... IN THE EARLY summer of 1968 newspapers in England began carrying stories of strange doings in the town of East Grinstead in Sussex. On the outskirts of this well-heeled and slightly snooty community, a commuter suburb for the better type of London advertising executive, an odd cult had set up its headquarters - rather improperly it was felt - in the Maharajah of Jaipur's former abode, Saint Hill Manor. From this elegant Georgian mansion emanated the policies and propaganda of one of the most curious, disturbing and occasionally, highly entertaining quasi-religious cults of this century, Scientology. Here too, until his exile to a yacht in the Mediterranean, lived the cult's flamboyant founder, one Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, an American science fiction writer, explorer, philosopher manque, mystic and Messiah. In that year of 1968 Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard were to make big news, and people in Britain, and most other parts of the world for that matter, were suddenly to become aware of the name of the cult and to get a taste of its largely unwanted flair for making headlines. Few were to understand what it was all about, and most took it as another passing phase, a nine-day wonder geared to the `silly season' of the newspaper year. For others, who had looked at it more closely, slightly edgy questions concerning religious tolerance and freedom were raised when the Home Office began to harass the organization on a limited scale, and these issues are not entirely resolved to date. The press turned out to be almost universally hostile, subjecting the Scientologists to a series of flaying and often ill-judged assaults. The police and forces of law and order, provoked by complaints from public and press, reacted uncertainly. Were Scientologists breaking the law? If so, how? Their activities might seem odd, but that was their affair. Still the headlines appeared, first in the local press (SCIENTOLOGY GIRLS IN COURT; ESTATE AGENT HITS BACK AT SCIENTOLOGISTS; CULT BANS 25 BUSINESSES IN GRINSTEAD; etc.) and then in national papers (MIND BENDERS PESTERED MAN BY POST; CULT CUTS SON OFF FROM FAMILY; SCIENTOLOGY INQUIRY BY THE YARD; etc.) increasing in frequency until a climax was reached in July 1968 when, in a blaze of publicity, Hubbard himself was banned from re-entering the country by order of the Home Secretary. Of the millions who sampled the delights of this flap in the papers and on TV, few realized that Scientology had had such heady moments before; far from being a mushroom cult destined for a few months of spongy glory, it had been founded with, if possible, even more publicity way back in the early fifties when Hubbard and his activities had leapt into prominence in the United States following the publication of best-selling book, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.This is still, incidentally, Hubbard's most famous work and the Scientologists' basic text. With only the current newspapers to go on the average person can be forgiven for feeling unable to plumb the mysteries of the cult, or to understand the motivation of its founder or, even more, its capacity for attracting enthusiastic and passionate devotees. Scientologists, of course, argue that no one can really understand their movement unless they become part of it themselves - a familiar strategy advanced by almost all other similar organizations. In fact, thanks to the frequently huge press coverage, to the loquacious ranks of its former adherents and, in particular, to Hubbard's own pacy and voluminous writings, a fairly comprehensive history of the movement can be put together, and some clear idea of its principal thesis, its origins and its aims can be grasped. It turns out to be a fascinating story, a sociological legend of our time and, as I have suggested in the introduction, an index of the shape of things to come. Hubbard claims that the genesis of his ideas lay back in the pre-war years when, as a young man, he trotted around the world with his father, a naval officer, and was able to sample the numerous exotic religious systems that the world enjoys. In a number of his written or spoken statements he makes out lat long periods of `intensive study and research' in far-flung parts of the globe convinced him that the world was in a pretty awful mess and that it ought to be possible for someone, or some new philosophy, to straighten it out. Never unduly modest, he makes it fairly clear that he, Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, and his brainchild, Scientology, ought between them to be able to do the trick. One of the prime problems in researching the background to Scientology is not that there is any shortage of material, for details are supplied quite lavishly by Hubbard and his aides, but rather the contradictory nature of the details, which are often disconcertingly at odds with the facts that can be gleaned from non-Scientological sources. Nevertheless, Hubbard and Scientology are pretty well inseparable and no history of the cult makes sense without a close inspection of his own background. We must do what we can, therefore, to sort the wheat out from the chaff. The early years of his life are not particularly well documented and information about his forbears is sparse and confusing. He was born in Tilden, Nebraska, in 1911. In an interview he granted the Sussex Evening Argus on 30th April 1959 (just about the time of his move to East Grinstead), he is stated to have claimed that his grandfather was one of the racy pioneers of the far West and `owned a quarter of Montana'. Hubbard's firstborn son, who also bears the name of Lafayette Ronald Hubbard but is better known by his nickname, `Nibs', contradicts this grandiose suggestion. According to him none of his father's family had much in the way of money or property, most of them being small farmers of one kind or another in the American North West and certainly not owning a quarter of the State of Montana. The founder of Scientology's father, who at the time of writing this book, is nearly ninety and still alive and well in the State of Washington, joined the US Navy straight from the farm in 1902 and was an ordinary seaman when Teddy Roosevelt sent the great white fleet around the world. After a year or so he left the navy and worked for a short while as a newspaper reporter but, after being awarded a commission in the Supply Corps, rejoined the navy in 1908. From then until his retirement in later years he toured the world with long spells of duty in China and Japan, and took his wife and young son along with him. No doubt this Asiatic backcloth to his boyhood served to inject into L. Ron's philosophies that unmistakable flavour of the Mystic East which can be detected in them. He has stated that he began formulating the principles of Dianetics and Scientology in 1923 which is not bad for a lad of twelve and suggests that he was a thoughtful, intellectually inclined child. Occasionally there are references in his writings and lectures to a `Commander Thompson USN' who had `studied with Freud in Vienna' and who was to teach Hubbard all he knew about psychoanalysis and Freudian psychology. Thompson, who laboured under the unfortunate nickname of `Snake', was in fact a navy doctor who was a great chum of L. Ron's father and certainly exerted a good deal of influence over the boy. `Stimulated by Freud's investigatory spirit and by the encouragement of the late Commander Thompson', the blurb to a recent Scientology publication reads, `and equipped with personal experience in the Orient with phenomena not generally known in the Western world, Dr Hubbard bent the exactitudes of Occidental engineering to the investigation and practical application of such data to the human mind.' This, a typical Scientology puff, is the sort of eulogistic waffle that anyone attempting a history of the movement has to contend with. What the phenomena `not generally known' to the West consists of is impossible to establish, and what the exactitudes of occidental engineering are is never made clear. Commander Thompson, incidentally, is by no means the only intellectual character whose assistance and inspiration Hubbard acknowledges. In the preface to his weird book, Scientology 8-8008, he admits to having drawn a few ideas from such other great thinkers as Aristotle, Euclid, Newton, Jesus of Nazareth and Voltaire, to name but five. The reference to `Dr' Hubbard in the blurb above is no misprint. In the same piece he is referred to as a `nuclear physicist' and an engineer and credited with the degree of Ph.D. These claims wilt somewhat under close investigation, but they are of interest and relevance here because they serve to warn one that much of the data on Hubbard or Scientology which appears in its official publications needs to be inspected with a critical eye. What exactly are the facts about Hubbard's professional and academic background? In the early 1930s a student named Lafayette Ronald Hubbard was certainly enrolled in the Engineering School of the George Washington University in Washington DC, but evidently something (perhaps it was the occidental engineering) got in the way and he is not recorded as having graduated with even the American Bachelor's degree - something corresponding to a good set of `A' levels in England. In fact it appears that he did not even see the course through. Despite the fact that there is no record of him having studied nuclear physics, or any other branch of physics for that matter, to degree level the myth has long persisted in Scientology circles that he has a profound knowledge of such matters. For example, it evidently seemed in no way incongruous to Scientologists that at the height of the radiation scare in the 1950s he could write, as a `nuclear physicist', a book entitled All About Radiation which is described in the blurb as a book `vital to the survival of your possessions, your family and the future of this planet'. In this unscholarly work Hubbard, who seems to consider himself an expert on vitamins too, publishes the formula for a mixture supposed to lower one's susceptibility to radiation damage. Called `Dianazene' and consisting of: nicotinic acid 200 mg iron ferrous gluconate 10 gr vitamin B1 25 mg vitamin B2 (riboflavin) 50 mg vitamin C (ascorbic acid) 200-500 mg dicalcium phosphate 23-35 gr it is a harmless mixture of vitamins which Hubbard recommends should be `taken daily, all at the same time, with milk and chocolate'. Its role as an effective barrier to high energy radiation would, one feels, be a difficult scientific and medical case to argue. The interest of Hubbard in vitamins goes back further than this, for in the early days of Dianetics the movement's eccentric medical director, Joseph Winter M.D., fell out with him over another vitamin brew he was urging followers to take. It was assumed greatly to assist Dianetic techniques and was picturesquely known as `GUK'. His latest achievement, according to Certainty, Volume 18, Number 7, is to discover the secret of how aspirin works. Pharmacologists the world over have been toiling away for decades in an attempt to solve the mystery of how acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin's main constituent) exercises its remarkable anti-inflammatory, antipyretic and analgesic properties, and have as yet got next to nowhere. Whether they will put away their test-tubes and microscopes on hearing L. Ron's solution is another matter. It seems the action of aspirin is to `inhibit the ability of the thetan to create and to impede the electrical conductivity of nerve channels'. Hubbard himself is in no doubt whatsoever about the merits of his achievement which he states `could be the medical bio-chemical discovery of the century'. He expects no thanks from the scientific community, however, and declares that he is content to `let the Nobel prizes continue to go to the inventors of nose drops and new ways to kill'. As for Hubbard's doctorate, it was awarded, one learns, from the magnificently styled `Sequoia University of California' - an establishment which you will search for endlessly the standard list of American universities, but which used to be well known to quacks on the West Coast as a degree mill where `qualifications' could be bought for suitable sums. There is some evidence, as it happens, that L. Ron has had occasion to regret his involvement with the diminutive faculty of the Sequoia University, for his bogus Ph.D. has been frequently brought up by unkind critics as a stick to beat him with - and one for which he can find no ready defence. On 8th March 1966, possibly tiring of suffering on behalf of this valueless embarrassment, but with a typically flamboyant gesture, he took an advertisement in the personal column of The Times, `resigning' his degree in the following words: I, L. Ron Hubbard of Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, having reviewed the damage being done in our society with nuclear physics and psychiatry by persons calling themselves `Doctor', do hereby resign in protest my university degree as a doctor of philosophy (Ph.D.), anticipating an early public outcry against anyone called `Doctor'; and although not in any way connected with bombs or `psychiatric treatment' or treatment of the sick, and interested only and always in philosophy and the total freedom of the human spirit, I wish no association of any kind with these persons and do so publicly declare, and request my friends and the public not to refer to me in any way with this title. With this characteristic piece, which it is impossible not to admire, he partly sealed a crack in his armour, at the same time cleverly taking the opportunity to pound psychiatrists, his perpetual antagonists. Having considered the Founder of Scientology's scanty academic background we now pass on to inspect other interesting claims which have helped to bolster his image as a man of wild and far-reaching talents. The claims are many and apart from the obvious, and quite unchallengeable, one that he is a writer, he is also often referred to as an explorer, a naval war hero, a philosopher, a master mariner and, most extraordinary of all, `one of the prime movers in the US effort of getting man into space'. As far as exploring is concerned there is not much doubt that Hubbard has roamed the world quite a bit. Quite apart from his roving childhood, he is a member in good standing (No. 99) of the exclusive Explorers Club in New York and in the American Who's Who in the South and West, he is listed as having commanded the `Caribbean Motion Picture Expedition and WI Minerals Expedition, 1935'. He is also slated to have led the `1940 Alaskan Radio Expedition' and is a fellow of the International Oceanographic Foundation. According to the Explorers Club he conducted `the first complete mineralogical survey of Puerto Rico in 1932 and 1933' and the `Caribbean Expedition resulting in valued data for the Hydrographic Office and the University of Michigan'. In February 1970 the Explorers Club stated that Hubbard was `conducting archaeological research' in the Mediterranean. On sailing, navigation and various other nautical topics L. Ron is an unquestioned expert. The sea has always held a deep fascination for him and in times less affluent than the present he told a close friend that one of the greatest desires of his life was to own a large personal yacht and that if ever he acquired a fortune the first thing he would do would be to buy one. This possibly underlies his present preoccupation, and that of the Scientologists as a whole, with their aquatic headquarters known as the `Sea Orgs' about which we shall be hearing more later. During the war he served as a lieutenant in the navy and at one stage commanded a corvette which did some sub-chasing in the Pacific. He also worked for a short time in naval intelligence, during which period he took a four-week course in military government at Princeton. One aspect of his war record particularly confused, and again typical of the mixture of glamour and obscurantism which surrounds Hubbard and his past, is the matter of wounds or injuries suffered on active service. It is frequently implied in the Scientology literature and also in tape recordings of his public lectures that he was severely wounded during his spell of duty with the navy. One official account (i.e., published by a Scientology organization) states that he was ordered to the Philippines on the entry of the US into the war and `flown home in the late Spring of 1942 in the Secretary of the Navy's private plane as the first US returned casualty from the Far East'. The same account states that at the end of the war `because of his physical condition Hubbard was relegated to the amphibious forces in the Pacific'. In other Scientology publications he is quoted as having been `crippled and blind at the end of the war'. Despite these handicaps he `resumed his studies of Philosophy and by his discoveries recovered so fully that he was reclassified in 1949 for full combat duty'. It is a `matter of medical record', the same publication adds, `that he has twice been pronounced dead'. Hubbard himself, in the now rare early publication, Dianetics: Axioms, first published in 1951, states that he spent a year (1945) in a naval hospital which he `utilized in the study of endocrine substances and protein'. Faced with this impressive, if annoyingly undetailed, record is hard to assess the nature or extent of Hubbard's battle scars in the service of his country. Many Scientologists believe that Hubbard was indeed severely wounded in action and it is certainly true that the Veterans Administration have confirmed that he receives $160 a month in compensation for disabilities incurred during the Second World War. However the conditions listed as being `40% disabling' are: duodenal ulcer, bursitis (right shoulder), arthritis, and blepharo- conjunctivitis It is possible that some of these conditions could have arisen as the result of some wound or wounds, though no mention of them as such seems to be given in the VA records. It is probably also relevant to point out that a Navy Department spokesman has stated that `an examination of Mr Hubbard's record does not reveal any evidence of injuries suffered while in the service of the United States Navy'. As for the alleged contribution to the United States' space effort, there doesn't seem to be much to back this up either. NASA could trace no recorded contribution to their own extra-terrestrial excursions, but among his followers Ron is often accredited with achievements in this sphere. For example, in a sycophantic piece in the Scientology journal Certainty, published shortly after the first successful satellites were launched, a Mr Tom Esterbrook wrote: `Ron spent five hours the other night trying to convince us that he had no hand in artificial moons. But you know who the favourite science fiction authors are in Russia? Jack London, H. G. Wells and L. Ron Hubbard.' Particularly popular in Russia, Esterbrook claimed, was Ron's nine-thousand-word article on `Moons' in the American magazine Air Trails published in 1946. `The Russkis could research it because they had read about it', he added, presumably implying that Hubbard's feature had triggered off the Soviet interest in Sputniks. If this failed to convince fellow Scientologists of Hubbard's great (though modestly denied) contributions to astronautics, Esterbrook had more revelations up his sleeve. Why, he asks rhetorically, only `48 hours before the Russians launched the moon, 24 hours before the US stock markets crashed for guided missile companies', had Ron `unloaded a huge number of guided missile shares he owned?'. `Ron told people a week before the flying moon was launched', Esterbrook concludes. `"There's more than one way to shock US science into action".' Hubbard, of course, is no more responsible for the fatuous adulation of his followers than is any other Messiah-figure. But there is a curious sidelight to all this which helps to put the whole discussion above in weird perspective. Who, you may ask, is the uncritical Mr Esterbrook who writes in such glowing terms about the Founder of Scientology's contribution to the US and Russian space efforts? The answer turns out to be rather complicated. According to a Scientology spokesman, the name Tom Esterbrook served as a blanket pen-name for various staff writers in The Auditor and Certainty. As he claims that `at least 10 people' had written under that pseudonym we will probably never be able to identify the author of the piece linking Hubbard with sputniks. Incidentally, one of the major users of the Esterbrook nom-de-plume was L. Ron Hubbard himself, as some senior members of the Scientology organization in those days knew quite well. The plain fact is that for all Scientologists `L. Ron' is a legendary figure, a man endowed with talents and qualities above those of normal men. To them he is a philosopher of the first magnitude, a literary, artistic and scientific genius all in one. Most of all, he is a brave pioneer in the exploration of that great uncharted area of the universe, the human mind. 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 - a conversation with Hubbard is anything but the two-way process so fundamental to Scientology. 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. He smokes heavily and has had pneumonia twice which leads him to seek the sun wherever and whenever he can. Hubbard is also reported to suffer, or to have suffered, from exceedingly bad teeth and this, coupled with an apparent reluctance to spend much time in the dentist's chair, has plagued him with dental abscesses. Whether the infected teeth have anything to do with an ulcer condition mentioned in his US Naval Record file is open to question. Even today, in his early sixties and a portly version of his former self, he is still equipped with the sustained dynamism that so many people find attractive in men and - quite reasonably - he enjoys the company of attractive women. He has had three wives, and a stormy relationship with at least two of these. His first wife, Margaret Louise Grubb, was born in Beltsville, Maryland, on 22nd September 1907 and bore him two children - the boy `Nibs' and a girl, Katherine May. Nibs, who was once one of the leading figures in the world of Scientology but has long since severed connections with the movement, recalls that his parents' domestic life was turbulent and unhappy. His father's Bohemian ways and fluctuating professional success led to long absences from hearth and home, and the family finances seesawed wildly from peaks of brief but considerable affluence to troughs of near poverty. On one occasion, typical of their slap-happy life, Nibs recalls that after a lengthy period when his father was almost totally broke and the family had been `living on beans' for weeks, he received a cheque from a publisher for 2,800 dollars. With the envelope still freshly opened, L. Ron went straight to the local boatyard and purchased a yacht on which he and his wife promptly set sail for Alaska. As the years passed, Hubbard spent longer and longer periods away from home - they lived near Seattle in the State of Washington - and relations with his wife steadily deteriorated. By 1947 a divorce was proposed and in due course Hubbard was remarried to Sarah Northrup, whose name figures prominently in the early Dianetics literature. By all accounts this marriage was a total disaster and his second wife was suing him for divorce in May 1951. She also claimed that Hubbard had attempted to abduct their thirteen- month-old baby girl, Alexis, and West Coast newspapers of the time are filled with sensational headlines such as `CULT FOUNDER ACCUSED OF TOT KIDNAP', and `HIDING OF BABY CHARGED TO DIANETICS AUTHOR'. So painful do the memories of these incidents appear to be that L. Ron has more than once denied that he was ever married to Sarah Northrup at all. For example in Dianetics: Axioms there is a curious reference to a woman who had `represented herself' as his wife and who had been `cured of a severe psychosis by Dianetics' but who, because of structural brain damage, would evidently `never entirely sane'. Later in the book he refers to her again, but this time describes her as `the woman who had been my wife'. A more recent example of this apparent erasure of Sarah Northrup from his mind was revealed in a television interview for the Granada news feature World in Action. The World in Action team, in September 1968, pulled off a fine scoop by getting cameras aboard Hubbard's big boat in the Mediterranean and conducting a three-hour-long filmed interview with the man himself. Amazingly - or is it really surprising? - they left with thousands of feet of film but little extra information about Scientology or its founder. They did, however, record him denying that he had a second wife in between his first, who died, and the present one, Mary Sue. In the same programme the Granada interviewer questioned an ex-Scientologist about how Hubbard's flock reacted when such evidence of error, if not of downright dishonesty, on his part was pointed out to them. It depended, came the answer, on how high up in the movement the people were and how recently recruited. Anyone who had been in Scientology for a long time, however, simply wouldn't dare to think in any terms other than those which fitted in with Hubbard's statements. For them Scientology was the real universe, and Hubbard's statements were facts whether or not they conflicted with material in the `outside' world. In any language, in any part of the world, or in any part of history for that matter, such attitudes are tragic. It is true that some of his statements would only be questioned by specialists. One good example is the claim that in 1938 the Soviet government - knowing that he was working on research of some significance - offered him the opportunity to take over the laboratories of Academician Ivan Pavlov, the great physiologist and discoverer of the conditioned reflex, with massive financial backing to complete his work under their auspices. This would seem an astonishing offer to say the least, though Hubbard refers to it in a letter he wrote to the late President Kennedy in 1962. However, few Scientologists would question it and most will presumably accept it at face value. But what of the even more fantastic statements, some so ludicrous that one doubts one's eyes when reading them? There is no scarcity of raw material here, but one can hardly quote a better example than the famous visit to Heaven, an event described by L. Ron in a bulletin issued on 11th May 1963. Here he tells his readers that he has twice visited Heaven, once `43,891,832,611,177 years, 344 days, 10 hours, 20 minutes and 40 seconds from 10:02 1/2 p.m., Daylight Greenwich Time, 9th May 1963'. He found `the gates...well done, well built. An avenue of statues of saints leads up to them. The gate pillars are surmounted by marble angels. The entering grounds are very well kept, laid out like the Bush Gardens in Pasadena, often seen in movies.' It seems to have been an insipid scene. On a second visit, eons later, the place had gone to seed: `The place is shabby', he tells us, `the vegetation is gone. The pillars are scruffy. The saints have vanished. So have the angels. A sign on one (the left as you enter) says: This is Heaven. The right has the sign Hell.' Hubbard, as should by now be coming clear, is a highly skilled professional writer, capable of turning his hand to quite a range of topics and styles. His successes in the literary field, long before Dianetics was launched on an unsuspecting world, began in the 1930s when he began to churn out a vast series of pulp magazine fiction including Westerns (using the rather unsubtle pen-name of Winchester Remington Colt), adventure tales of one kind or another, and even romances of the True Love variety. He also had numerous stints in the movie script-writing mill of Hollywood when, at one stage, he was making 500 dollars a week helping to feed the public's ravenous appetite for the cinema. In the late thirties, when Hubbard was known as a minor literary figure in the Greenwich Village area of New York - somewhat given to wearing flowing cloaks and other strange attire according to acquaintances of the time - he began to generate under his own name, and also under the pseudonyms Kurt von Rachen and Rene Lafayette, a series of pacy science fiction stories which were to earn him an international reputation as one of the leading writers in this expanding field. The first of these was a short story called The Dangerous Dimension, which was followed by a novel, The Tramp. Both these stories were built around themes of paranormal human powers such as teleportation and the capacity of the mind to act on other human beings at a distance, which, as we shall see, are ideas inherent in the philosophy of Scientology itself. Another strain of Hubbard's science fiction consists of stories which are frequently classed by fans today under the heading `Sword and Sorcery', in which handsome, muscular and intelligent men incongruously armed with swords and magic powers, shoot round in space rescuing beautiful damsels in the teeth of opposition from pirate spaceships, dragons and wizard-scientists. In many of these - Kingslayer is a good example - one feels that one discerns in the hero Hubbard himself, complete with red hair a strong line of blarney. Other stories are more traditional SF of the period - such as Beyond the Black Nebula with a miniaturized army fighting a colossal battle against phagocytes in the stomach of a worm. His prodigious output, according to his son `Nibs', was the envy of his fellow professionals for his technique was to lock himself away with a typewriter - he could type with two fingers at ninety words a minute - for a day or so and emerge with a complete, saleable manuscript on its very first draft! In such a fashion did he generate not only the novel, Fear, first published in 1943 which many critics consider to be his fictional masterpiece, but also the manuscript of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health which was to launch him into a fame extending far beyond the parochial boundaries of the world of science fiction. Significantly, however, Dianetics found its first platform in the pages of the leading science fiction journal of the day, Astounding Science Fiction. For some idea as to why this turned out to be such an effective platform we need to consider the role of science fiction at the time as a purveyor and percolator of uninhibited intellectual speculation. To a large number of people, who have never taken it too seriously, science fiction conjures up visions of stories of the Flash Gordon kind - rockets engaged in orbital dogfights over the Martian moons with sinister bearded space tyrants, with names like Krang or Vargon, etc. In point of fact this kind of twenty-first century Western has not been the meat and drink of serious science fiction fans since the 1930s and is only to be met nowadays in books written for the most juvenile end of the scale. From around about 1940, SF magazines fed their growing army of fans an increasingly sophisticated diet, their authors - many of whom were working scientists - cleverly playing with the technological developments of the time and extrapolating into the future. Their predictions on occasions could be too successful. A story published in Astounding Science Fiction 1943 so clearly anticipated the development of a nuclear fission weapon that its author received a visit from Federal Security forces suspicious that this might constitute a leak from the top secret Manhattan project. By the end of the war, when the average individual was only superficially aware of what had happened at Hiroshima and Peenemunde, science fiction fans were gaily devouring stories about the social problems of a world shattered by a nuclear war or reading learned articles about the payloads that could be landed on the moon with developments of the existing V2. The concept of a talking, thinking, dying computer - which seems to have rocked everyone so much in Kubrick's recent space opera 2001 - was old hat to fantasy fiction readers twenty years ago, and words like `psychokinesis', `artificial gravity', `analogue' and `digital' were part of their breakfast vocabulary. Of all the magazines published in those halcyon days, there was none to match Astounding Science Fiction for the depth and quality of its material, and pace and sophistication of its writing. At one time its readership ran into the hundreds of thousands and it was known to be read by some of the leading scientists of the day. The man responsible for its success, and one of the most influential figures in the field, was the editor John Campbell Jnr. He was also the man who gave Hubbard his big break, and as such may be thought of as having quite a bit to answer for. Campbell, who died in 1971, was originally a fantasy writer himself. He was also a competent and persuasive editor with a tolerance for the off-beat and the suspected crank, which led him to pull off some spectacular scoops and at the same time to sanction a good deal of nonsense. Traditionally the opening feature of the magazine was his leading article and for most readers this was the highspot of the journal. In these leaders Campbell would argue a controversial scientific, philosophical or even political point, cleverly tapping ideas and trains of thought which had hitherto lain dormant in his readers' minds. The issues raised might vary from scientific prejudice against ESP, to the possibilities of submarine farming. To many of the young SF fans of the time, Campbell was the most important writer on earth, fertilizer of the intellect, liberator of the mind and father-figure all in one. His scientific training, though not exceptional was sound - he studied engineering at MIT and graduated at Duke University, later working for a brief period in the laboratories of Mack Trucks Inc. - and he numbered among his friends some of the best-known working scientists in the States. For years Campbell had been an acquaintance of Hubbard's and had published some of the latter's excellent science fiction. Some time in 1949 he became sufficiently interested in the new philosophical and psychological ideas that Hubbard was kicking around to experiment with them, and was one of the first to learn that they were gravid with a dramatic new system of psychotherapy. He was also one of the first to benefit from this, for that same year he underwent a course in Dianetic processing, as it was then known, and found to his utter amazement that he had been apparently completely cured of the chronic sinusitis which had plagued him for years. In Christmas of that year the tom-toms were beating out the message that Hubbard was about to come out with something sensational and in April of 1950 first details were given with an announcement in that month's issue of Astounding Science Fiction. In an enthusiastic preview Campbell wrote: Next month's issue will, I believe, cause one full-scale explosion across the country. We are carrying a sixteen- thousand word article entitled `Dianetics...An Introduction to a New Science', by L. Ron Hubbard. It will, I believe, be the first publication of the material. It is, I assure you, in full and absolute sincerity, one of the most important articles ever published. In this article, reporting on Hubbard's own research into the engineering question of how the human mind operates, immensely important basic discoveries are related. In the same eulogistic vein Campbell continued: This is no wild theory. It is not mysticism. It is a coldly precise engineering description of how the human mind operates, and how to go about restoring correct operation tested and used on some two hundred fifty cases. And it makes only one overall claim: the methods logically developed from that description work. The memory stimulation technique is so powerful that, within thirty minutes of entering therapy, most people will recall in full detail their own birth. I have observed it in action, and used the techniques myself. After such a build-up it was no wonder that the May issue of ASF practically sold out on publication day. The article itself is a strange piece of work, rattled off in a series of gasping phrases and peppered with exclamation marks, `like', as a contemporary critic remarked, `the commentary on a football match'. Its message, however, was unequivocal and simple. A dramatic breakthrough had occurred in psychotherapy. As the result of years of research and a number of important insights, new techniques had been discovered which sensationally struck at the roots of psychosomatic illnesses - and even some physical ones too. So effective were these techniques, all of which were bundled under the term Dianetics, that individuals could with a few hours of `auditing' (the name for the actual running of the treatment, which was later also given the somewhat unfortunate title of `processing') be rid of illnesses which had steadfastly resisted years and years of orthodox medical or psychiatric treatment. Furthermore - and here the bait was offered at its most tempting - these techniques were simple, easily describable and easily taught. They were available to any more or less normal individual after a minimal amount of instruction. The article claimed (over and over again) that they worked, as doubters would demonstrate for themselves. No more fertile ground could have been picked for the publication of such a piece. Telephone calls and mail flooded the offices of the publisher (2,000 letters in the first two weeks) and when Hubbard's book - Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health - was published by Hermitage House shortly afterwards, it moved into the best-seller list overnight. In essence it is a greatly expanded version of the original ASF article, somewhat, though not much more, cogently argued and enlivened by a number of `case histories'. It also included enough information to allow readers to practise the principles of Dianetics on each other and enough details of the philosophy of the system to titillate the curiosity of the tens of thousands of amateur psychologists who are traditionally among the ranks of science fiction fans. For such individuals, eager for marvels and in many cases desperately interested in abnormal psychology, yet lacking the academic training to practise it, the advent of Dianetics signalled the onset of the Golden Era. Anyone could now practise psychotherapy with a skill and facility far superior to that of the blundering psychologists who had ruled the roost in the past. Even more convenient was the fact that one didn't have to spend tedious years at university or medical school, listening to dull lectures and swotting up stuffy tomes. A few hours of Dianetics and one was a working Dianeticist who could get results! Such was unquestionably the image created by Hubbard's enormously successful book, and within weeks a Dianetic fad was sweeping the United States. In August Hermitage House reported that the book, at four dollars a copy, was still selling at the rate of a thousand copies a day, and even the leather- bound limited edition at twenty-five dollars a shot was sold out. How much of this, one wonders, could the author and originator have predicted as he battered away at his electric typewriter - a special one equipped with individual keys for `the', `and', etc., writing the book which was to sweep him to fame? He claims the manuscript was completed in three weeks, and its breathless style suggests that this could well be true. But what were the actual revelations which set the whole circus in motion and which still give it impetus today? As it happens, the principles of Dianetics are disarmingly simple and economic, and they have a naive precision which, when backed by the hyper-confident pronouncements of the originator, make the newcomer fleetingly wonder where they can be wrong. A closer examination soon shows the precision to be superficial and the logic either incomplete or contradictory. Furthermore, in a number of cases, one sees that what are offered up as important new discoveries or major philosophical advances are merely props of psychological and psychoanalytic theory renamed in tempting new jargon. The old Cartesian dichotomy of the distinction between mind and body is retained, and argued with great firmness. The mind controls the brain, in the manner of a signalman in a signal box, and this in turn controls the body. The mind itself is divided into two distinct entities, the analytic and the reactive. The former corresponds to the conscious mind of Freudian terminology and is likened by Hubbard, with his brushing acquaintance with electronic engineering, to a computer. This analytic mind works with great precision according to the data fed into it, and in a normal individual this will lead to a speedy and appropriate response to events in the external environment. Unfortunately the reactive mind - which bears some relationship to the Freudian unconscious - frequently intervenes to upset the apple cart, causing an individual to make a totally unsuitable response to a given set of circumstances. These Hubbard calls `aberrations' and they correspond in lots of ways to the neuroses and psychoses of orthodox psychopathology. Now the cause of the aberrations is interesting. In normal circumstances, when the analytic mind is fully operational, it stores and computes all sensory input and reacts appropriately. But in moments of unconsciousness or great emotional distraction, the analytic mind ceases to function properly and the reactive mind, which has been brooding away cloddishly without much to do, momentarily comes into play. It immediately begins to record details of the experiences - generally alarming - which have caused the analytic mind's loss of consciousness, and stores them in the form of some unspecified kind of traces which are called `engrams'. With the return of consciousness and of `normal' functioning the analytic mind gets under way again, having `forgotten' its recent traumatic experience which is, however, firmly stored in the data banks of the reactive mind. These engrams (this is not Hubbard jargon but a useful word culled from neurophysiology where it is used to denote the memory trace) are often very complex things consisting not only of the actual traumatic experience which caused unconsciousness - such as a punch in the teeth or a general anaesthetic - but also of all the sense data associated with it at the time it took place. For example, if someone is knocked down by a car the engram stored in the reactive mind will include the screech of brakes, the sound of the horn, the chatter of passers-by, the clang of the ambulance bell and even the feel of the pavement under the unconscious person's body. The reactive mind then becomes a special kind of lumber room filled with unpleasant junk (again notice the similarities Freudian views of the unconscious) and, what is worse, it is junk which has some definite power. For throughout one's life the engrams remain, exerting their baleful influence when the environmental conditions replicate one or more of the original conditions of the trauma. A person might be constantly handicapped by some odd experience stored in the reactive mind which manifested itself in a neurotic or even physical complaint. In fact, it was one of the earliest claims of Dianetics that all neuroses, psychoses and possibly even major physical illnesses, such as cancer, were caused by engrams. To this point one might feel that Hubbard's theory took matters little further than the idea of psychosomatic illnesses caused by repressed memories of physical or psychical trauma which Freud began to kick around nearly a century previously. But there is more to Dianetics than this, as the notion of the pre-natal engram demonstrates. Here again the idea is simple, if fantastic. According to his `researches' Hubbard became convinced that engrams were laid down not only in the individual's childhood and adult life, but also in the period when the foetus was developing in the womb. At this time, while the analytic mind was still in the early stages of development, the reactive mind could register traumatic experiences. These might be beatings by the husband of his pregnant wife, or violent rows in which the threatening or cruel phrases uttered by either of the parties would be rigidly impressed in the data banks, to pop up with tiresome frequency during the individual's subsequent lifetime. The peace which we normally feel is associated with foetal development turns out, according to the practitioners of Dianetics, to be a pretty illusory one. The wretched baby, it seems, is more or less continually being knocked unconscious, either by thumps, kicks, violent sexual intercourse or the mother bumping against furniture - all these incidents of course storing engrams in the receptive mind. The blandly literal way in which the reactive mind stores this material, later to reproduce it with crippling force, is illustrated by one case history involving the processing of a kleptomaniac. Routine hunting through the reactive data banks revealed a memory of the father beating the mother during pregnancy, shouting as he did so, `Take that! Take it, I tell you! You've got to take it!', thus inevitably storing these commands with the foetus for future reference in adult life. The technique of the therapy is simple beyond all measure - or was in its early days. The patient simply lay on a couch in a relaxed state, prattling on with any fantasies that came to his mind as the result of the probing of the therapist, who in Dianetic and Scientological terms is known as the auditor. By suitable guiding the auditor would soon begin to pick up areas on which it seemed worth concentrating, and when the patient began to look or act disturbed - feeling weird pains in different parts of the body, sweating, moaning and groaning, or hysterically laughing - the auditor knew an engram was near. The confrontation of the patient with the memory has the effect of pushing it out of the reactive banks, whence it erased to free the individual of this particular aberration. This is the point at which the sinusitis disappears, the mysteriously backache vanishes, the acne of twenty-five years' standing fades away, or the stutter miraculously improves. By many contemporary accounts - such as the case of Campbell himself - these manifestations of past traumas did yield dramatically to Dianetic therapy. Unfortunately after a variable period of time, which could be as short as a day but might be as long as a year or two, the symptoms, which should in theory have gone for ever, would often return in their former glory, and it became obvious that some model, a little less simple and all-embracing, would have to be dreamt up. Amazingly it took a long time for this realization to dent the Dianetic fad, and when it did Hubbard had other material to exhibit. But so rapidly did it get under way, and such was the immense aura of confidence given off by its founder and his converts, that literally hundreds of thousands of people - many of them the intelligent and well educated - were drawn into the movement. ---------------------------------------------------- Scientologists claim that, despite the close family relationship, Nibs has never been a `leading figure' in the movement. They also point out that his statements on Scientology matters have been occasionally contradictory. When the author met Campbell in New York in 1969 he complained of his sinusitis and from time to time took penetrating sniffs at a pocket inhaler. The `cure' had evidently only been transient. =================================================== Lives Past, Lives Remembered IN 1950 L. R. HUBBARD found himself a figure of national prominence He rose to the occasion splendidly, happily enjoying the publicity, dashing off new tracts to supplement the original thesis and at the same time attempting to seal up the cracks which were beginning to appear in its logic. The success of his book (it sold over a million) had put large sums of money into his hands and these he decided to reinvest rapidly in establishing Dianetic Research Centres across America. The first, and in the early days the most famous, was established at Elizabeth, New Jersey and here, auditing each other like mad and listening to ad hoc lectures of incredible length, were to be found an amazing collection of individuals. Some were lonely neurotics for whom the techniques had struck a spark, some science fiction writers such as the brilliant A. E. Van Vogt, some figures such as John Campbell himself - who must have been beginning to wonder what it was he had started - and some academics such as the political scientist from Massachusetts, Professor F. L. Schuman (who risked the ridicule of his university colleagues in order to champion Dianetics in the weekly New Republic). There was even a sprinkling of scientists and mathematicians who were at least intrigued at the song and dance that Hubbard was making. Businessmen too found Dianetics of compelling interest. It wasn't long before at least two millionaires had enthusiastically involved themselves in the movement, one of whom was the oil king, Don Purcell, who considerably expanded Hubbard's empire by building a spanking new headquarters for him in Wichita, Kansas. Here, in expensively furnished offices, secretaries clacked away at typewriters, telephones rang non-stop and all the signs were evidence of a business going into boom. In a specially constructed lecture theatre, for a fee of a hundred dollars a time, Ron Hubbard (paid by Purcell) lectured daily to full houses. In other parts of the country eager audiences awaited the words of the master who flew back and forth from coast to coast, addressing enthusiastic groups and gathering around him the collection of sensation seekers, sycophants, fanatics, fortune hunters and considerable numbers of honest individuals who believed that Hubbard had really got hold of something of significance. For, despite the aura of razzamatazz which had swiftly surrounded the topic and its originator, there was at this time a brief but measurable period when the world of psychology quaked. Was it possible, was it just conceivable, that this fantastic, academically unqualified extrovert had developed techniques which worked, and had really pulled something out of the bag? Hubbard himself evidently had no doubt, for the opening lines of the synopsis to his first book describe Dianetics as `a milestone for Man comparable to his discovery of fire and superior to his inventions of the wheel and arch'. But he must have realized also that this was no time to rest on his laurels. Thanks to intensive research, the frontiers of Dianetics were being steadily advanced, and the concept of a `Clear' became particularly important. This is a word which appears in Scientology literature today ad nauseam and it continually mystifies ordinary people not conversant with the cult's elaborate jargon. It is also a concept which has changed quite considerably as the years have passed. It will be recalled that in therapy the auditor undertook a quest for his patient's engrams and, by causing him to confront them or `run them through', erased them from the reactive memory banks. As each engram slid away in limbo, so the patient gradually rid himself of the tedious physical and psychological afflictions which they had caused, gradually becoming a healthier and happier person. Now obviously, if these engrams were, as Hubbard claimed, the source of practically all human ills, then one should be able to produce a physically and psychologically perfect individual if only they could all be cleared away. Any such individual would then become a `Clear', all others being ipso facto `preclear - the name used to denote the rank and file of Dianetics, and later Scientology. Clears, as you may imagine, would be very superior people indeed, and Hubbard spelt out the fact in no uncertain terms. They would, he claimed, not only be totally without neuroses, etc., but their bodies would cease to be a prey to the minor tribulations of life. Clears would not get colds for example. Their eyesight would improve to the point where they would not need glasses. If wounded they would heal abnormally quickly. Even their IQ would be raised. To many, Clear sounded a tempting state of being and a goal to be vigorously pursued. Unfortunately, Dianetic processing was not cheap. In 1951 the Wichita Foundation was charging over five hundred dollars for thirty-six hours' processing, and personal attention at the hands of Hubbard was even costlier. Thirty-six hours, however, never seemed to be quite enough to product any Clears, and no one seemed sure, since there were no comparison samples around, just how long it would take to reach the final state. But it was obvious to all that at nearly fourteen dollars an hour clearing could be quite expensive if it turned out to take, say, a year. There didn't seem much point in going to Hubbard himself about this either, for he was uncharacteristically coy on the matter of whether he was Clear himself. He did, however, promise that the state was attainable, and so the processing continued. In the meanwhile more exciting new facts emerged. Behind every reactive and analytic mind, it appeared, lay an entity known as the `Thetan'. Thetans are the really important part of the human being - the part that is `aware of being aware', as Hubbard put it nicely. They are entirely non-physical and also quite immortal. They inhabit bodies, moving them around like someone operating a puppet, but have for the most part forgotten that they are immortal. They have, in principle, complete and absolute power over their bodies. Most of them, Hubbard sorrowfully points out, even think they are bodies! The reasons for this unaccountable error we will go into later, merely noting at this time that since they are immortal, on the death of their puppet body they must presumably go elsewhere. Where? Well you guessed right if you say to yet another body - taking it over at the point of conception and sticking with it, for better or for worse, until it dies of old age or whatever. And now we come to another revelation, and this is the point at which many people feel that Dianetics began the long and slippery descent into occultism. When the Thetan enters this new body it comes not, as one might hope, fresh and clean, but equipped with the accumulated detritus of its previous lives, all the engrams which have piled up in its apparently limitless backlog of existence. Fortunately Ron Hubbard soon found it was quite possible, though arduous and expensive, to clear even these ancient engrams, some of which had been thwarting their Thetans for millions of years. Thus encouraged, the faithful plunged back into battle, and in houses and apartments, in Dianetic Centres, in colleges and even army camps across America the fans of Dianetics began the exploration of their many, many past lives. In countless sessions, in countless houses, auditors watched as their preclears ran through the traumatic engrams of the past, re-dying dramatic deaths in blazing zeppelins, in sinking ocean liners, in the retreat from Moscow, beneath the guillotine, during the Black Death, leaping from the Wooden Horse of Troy, etc., etc. The cheery swopping of past lives and deaths became a feature of sophisticated conversation at many parties, anticipating the Bridey Murphy `reincarnation' vogue by several years. Obviously it now became necessary to reconsider the concept of Clear, for the techniques of Dianetics, potent though they might be, could hardly be expected to whisk away the engrams of a million previous lifetimes in the twinkling of an eye. Most people would have to rest content with the prospect of one day becoming a MEST-Clear (these being the initials for the universe of Matter, Energy, Space and Time) when they would find themselves with only the limited rewards of perfect health, boundless energy, a photographic memory, a vastly increased IQ and some measure of telepathic ability. For the real achievers, assuming some speeding up of the Dianetic technique, the next step would be the clearing of past life engrams, and then the state of `Operating Thetan' - i.e., the state in which an individual becomes capable of exercising literally miraculous powers and being pretty well independent of the shackles of the MEST-universe - would be attained. Like that of Clear, the concept of Operating Thetan has today been considerably watered down, and at the time of writing the latter state has not yet been fully achieved. There is, however, a suggestion that in 1952 or thereabouts Hubbard must have felt that there were some OTs in existence for in an extraordinary passage in one of his more extraordinary books (History of Man) he urges such beings to preserve their anonymity and: ...not go upsetting governments and putting on a show to prove anything to homo sapiens for a while; it's a horrible temptation to knock off hats at 50 yards and read books couple of countries away...but you'll just make it tough on somebody else who's trying to get across this bridge. Compared with such nonsense Hubbard's earlier words, on the potential of Clear, seem like crystal sanity, though they do have slightly unpleasant overtones: One sees with some sadness that more than three quarters of the world's population will become subject to the remaining quarter as a natural consequence about which we can do exactly nothing. In these days Hubbard was still able to talk about Clears without actually having to produce one. It was a sunny period free of carping criticism or childish backsliding, and he was able, with a few choice friends, to engage in some peaceful research in the friendly surroundings of the Wichita Foundation. It was at this point that a young mathematician appeared on the scene and, impressed by Hubbard's platform manner and convinced for various reasons of the workability of at least some of the Dianetic's methods, offered his services in the cause. His name was Perry Chapdelaine, and today he is a distinguished computer scientist who looks back wryly on his youthful love-affair with the cult. He was, somewhat to his surprise, to play a significant role in its further evolution and became a close associate of Hubbard. He also served as his personal auditor and soon found, even in his own first flush of enthusiasm, that the Master's research methods did not match the vigour of even the most rudimentary scientific study. The actual procedure, Chapdelaine reports, was for Hubbard to settle himself on a couch with a tape recorder handy and an `auditor' who would be expected to provide appropriate feedback. In no time a flow of introspection - like the free association characteristic of a psychoanalytic session - would begin. But, unlike an orthodox session in analysis where the material is treated with the suspicion that all ramblings from the unconscious deserve, in Hubbard's research periods all was apparently accepted with solemn deliberation - the most outre fantasies, the most oddball ideas being treated as unremarkable fact. Much of the text of History of Man, which is quite one of Hubbard s odder works, emerged from these Wichita sessions, and knowing this one can see why it reads so peculiarly. Candidly, the more one inspects its text, the more one begins to wonder whether he ever meant it to be taken seriously. It is, one feels, not particularly rich in literary merit, but because it marks a transition point at which the technically oriented Dianetics became the philosophically oriented Scientology we will need to take a rather close look at it. Fortunately has the saving grace of being exceedingly funny, so the process of inspection is less painful than one might fear. History of Man begins soberly enough with the following remark: `This is a cold-blooded and factual account of your last sixty trillion years', and after tossing off a few remarks about making the blind see and the lame walk, it gets down to real business. The message is simple. Dianetics, which deals largely with the technique of clearing engrams, is a relatively slow and temporary measure. Scientology, its bouncing progeny, takes up where Dianetics leaves off and provides techniques which allow one to tackle the problem of past lives with relative ease and pave the way to achieving the states of Clear and Operating Thetan. Furthermore, it is no longer just a technique in isolation, but has a philosophy with it. For those interested, the real secret of the universe is as follows. In the beginning are the Thetans. These are omnipotent, indestructible beings who suffer from being immortal. The reason they suffer is because immortality, when one has nothing to do, becomes intolerably boring. There are, it is true, other Thetans about, but since they too do nothing it's just as boring as if there were only one. Now in order to help while away eternity they decided to play some games. These consist, in the first instance, of creating universes of one kind and another, and playing with them. The games could be of any kind. They might create a world, for example, where pigs fly and centipedes wear green socks, or a world, like the one in Alice in Wonderland, entirely made of treacle. You name it, the Thetans can make it. After a while this too becomes boring, and the Thetans begin to realize that their omnipotence and omniscience is the real trouble. So with a master-stroke typical of their genius they decide voluntarily to handicap themselves, limiting their powers and cutting down the range of their knowledge. Now the game becomes more interesting, and the Thetans enter into it with greater enthusiasm. Then, imperceptibly, something begins to happen. Slowly but surely, as the countless millions of years pass by, the lures of the universe they have created out of matter, energy, space and time (MEST) begin to snare them. They become more and more immersed in the game, less and less concerned about their true status as Thetans. Slowly, like flies sinking into honey, they become more hopelessly trapped in the material universe, reaching their present state (almost total ensnarement) many millions of years ago. And the path has been steadily downward. Nowadays the Thetans have forgotten what they really are, and go around thinking they are bodies. They have even forgotten that they are playing a game at all! But something has happened. One man, Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, has stumbled on the secret, has remembered what it's all about and will lead us back until we cease to be pawns and return to our heritage as players. Such is the grand design behind all our lives as revealed by Scientology. It is imaginative, if nothing else, and smacks from top to bottom of the very best science fiction. If this seems unfair, then a closer look at the contents of History of Man is prescribed. Much of the book is devoted to details of past lives and intensely traumatic encounters in the Thetan's catastrophic past. In the long haul of evolution the Thetan has struggled up through a number of life forms, all of which have left their mark on poor twentieth-century homo sapiens. For several million years, for example, the principal form of life was THE CLAM, the normal type of bivalve, one supposes, tossed about on beaches and subject to the whim of wind and wave. You can soon tell, advises Hubbard, whether a preclear is really hung up on incidents from his past as a clam by saying to him, `Can you imagine a clam sitting on the beach, opening and closing its shell very rapidly?'. At the same time you make a motion with your thumb and forefinger as of rapid opening and closing. This gesture will suffice to upset large numbers of people, causing a clam-type to `grip his jaws with his hand and feel quite upset. He may even have to have a few teeth pulled ...and he will feel quite sad emotionally.' `You will be amazed', Hubbard adds later, `to find the clam sufficiently advanced as a cellular-somatic mind to have postulates, to think thoughts'. After the clam comes THE WEEPER, a mollusc which also lay around on beaches for vast tracts of evolutionary history. We have all been through this too, as the Thetans, and our memory banks bear the scars. It must have been a tedious period for the plights ot the weeper were `many and pathetic. Still obtaining its food from the waves, it had yet to breathe. Waves are impetuous and often irregular. The WEEPER [the capitals are Hubbard's] would often open up to get food from the water and get a wave in the shell. It would vigorously pump out the water and try to get some air and then, before it could gulp atmosphere, be hit by another wave. Here was anxiety.' Indeed. But worse was to follow, for the creature had two respiratory tubes which continually had `very rough treatment, getting full of sand, being battered by surf'. The inability of the preclear to cry, we are informed, is a particularly good sign that he is hung up on his past lives as a weeper for he is afraid of getting sand in his eyes. The weeper, Hubbard informs us, was originally called the `Grim Weeper' or the `Boohoo', and it had `trillions of misadventures'. Other ghastly incidents in the past include a period on earth when volcanoes abounded. Smoking tobacco, Hubbard hints, might well be a `dramatization of volcanoes'. Skipping past THE SLOTH, which `had bad times falling out of trees' and being attacked by baboons, and THE APE, which is usually `an area of overt acts against animals and incidents of protecting young', we pass on to THE PILTDOWN MAN, an area rich in engrams containing `freakish acts of strange logic, of demonstrating dangerous [sic] on one's Fellows, of eating one's wife and other somewhat illogical activities'. The Piltdown teeth, we read, were `ENORMOUS and he was quite careless as to whom and what he bit'. Piltdown's successor, THE CAVEMAN, was a more complicated individual, being concerned with `keeping women at home for men and keeping a man from keeping one at home for women'. If you feel here that your own personal hold on sanity is beginning to slip, then Hubbard's amazing book is not for you. Just be glad that Scientology is around to unburden you of all the trauma of your past lives as CLAM, WEEPER, and SLOTH, to say nothing of PILTDOWN with his ENORMOUS teeth. Anyone who has wondered at what happens, if anything, after death will be relieved to hear that a good deal of information is now available, thanks to the work Hubbard undertook at Wichita. `At death', we learn, `the theta being leaves the body and goes to the between-lives area. Here he "reports in", is given a strong forgetter implant and is then shot down to a body just before it is born'. The forgetter implant sounds very unpleasant. `The preclear is seated before a wheel which contains numbers of pictures. As the wheel turns the pictures go away from him... A force screen hits him through these pictures...The whole, effect is to give him the impression that he has no past life, that he is no longer the same identity, that his memory has been erased'. Some individuals do not always report - small wonder - but we are not told what happens to them. Presumably they hang around in limbo putting off the inevitable as one postpones dental appointments on earth. Hubbard reveals that a good deal is known about the location of the report areas. `The report area for most', he declared, `has been Mars. Some women report to stations elsewhere in the solar system. There are occasional incidents about Earth report stations. These are protected by screens. The last Martian report station on earth was established in the Pyrenees.' This rather extensive coverage of what must be, intentionally or unintentionally, one of the most absurd books ever written, would not of course be justifiable if it were an obscure cranky work, read at the most by a few hundreds of people. The real oddity - and it is a slightly frightening one - is that History of Man (which was first published in 1951) has not sold hundreds, but probably hundreds of thousands of copies and is devoured with great eagerness and diligence by Scientologists young and old in all parts of the world. The rest of the book concerns the kind of engrams which are implanted as the result of various wars and conflicts between Thetans which have occurred on and off in the past `60 trillion years' and, if anything, it is even sillier than the first part. A large number of devices were employed to trap Thetans, who when caught were subjected to various weird punishments, all of which get soaked into the eternal memory and which manifest themselves during auditing. Among the traps were the `Jack-in-the-Box', a curious contrivance which operated like a booby-trap, exploding when touched by a nosey Thetan and `filling his beingness full of pictures which are extremely confusing, being pictures of boxes of pictures'. Human beings who are particularly hung up on this episode reveal themselves by being `very curious about cereal boxes which have pictures of boxes of cereal which have pictures of boxes of cereal'. If you can wade your way through that one you might stand a chance of making sense of the `Coffee Grinder' - one of my own personal favourites. This episode goes back to a time when Thetans brainwashed each other with a `two-handled portable machine which, when turned, emits a heavy push-pull electronic wave in a series of stuttering "baps"'. People are attracted to the job of operating pneumatic drills not, as we all thought in our ignorance, because they could find nothing better to do but because they had, a trillion years ago, been `bapped' by a coffee grinder. These devices, it happens were operated by Thetans wearing hoods and goggles, rather like asbestos fire-fighting suits, and this provided added trauma to the victim. The operators, no doubt aware of their odd appearance, concealed themselves behind a black gauze curtain while operating the machine, but the victims nevertheless generally caught a glimpse of them at least once. If you are wondering what mark this vision leaves on Thetans when they assume human forms eons later, you will be interested to know that they show an intense dislike of people who wear horn-rimmed glasses. And what type of people tend to wear horn-rimmed glasses? Correct! The former operators of the coffee grinders. ============================ Grow New Teeth THE FRUITS OF Hubbard's Wichita research, which we have just been describing, were received with enthusiasm by his supporters, despite their mind-boggling contents, but things were not going as well as they might for Dianetics. All over the country relapses were beginning to occur, the original wild claims were not being met, and the peak of growth of the cult seemed to have been reached. Furthermore - and this to Hubbard was, as it always has been, anathema - some of his more level-headed adherents were beginning to dispute his judgement on points of technique as well as theory. Worst of all, from all sides rose a swelling chorus demanding to see a real honest-to-goodness Clear. If Clears were so easy to produce, well then let someone produce one! From every point of view L. Ron was in a ticklish spot. He was in the very dangerous position of being expected to continually astound people, and there is no harder role to play. Moreover, he had been badly burnt once in the past when, not too long after the publication of Dianetics, he had exhibited in public someone supposed lo be Clear. It had been a grave tactical error and Hubbard seems to have become justly cautious of committing himself as far as Clears were concerned. The circumstances were as follows: In 1950 Dianetics was being taken up with great enthusiasm in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and it had become a fad among the well-to-do movie stars of the time. Gloria Swanson was one of the stars who received lengthy processing and the great jazz pianist, Dave Brubeck, made the claim that it had helped him in his musical career. A relation of Cecil B. de Mille even used his influence to get the phrase `Dianetic processing' inserted into the scripts of a number of `B' movies in place of the word `psychoanalysis', and as a result uncomprehending movie audiences from Harwich to Hong Kong heard a well-known actress announce in one film that she was late for a `Dianetic session'. The well-known film director, Cy Endfield - Zulu, Hide and Seek and, more recently, de Sade are some of his best known films - was at that time working in California. Like many others in the movie business he had been intrigued by the impact Dianetics was making in Hollywood, and was sufficiently curious to attend one or two meetings in Los Angeles where the well-known science fiction Cwriter, A. E. Van Vogt, lectured warmly on the topic. Endfield found it all a bit unconvincing, but when it was announced that shortly the founder himself would be lecturing and presenting the world's first Clear to a public meeting he decided that this was too good an opportunity to miss. The venue was the famous Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, a huge hall capable of accommodating six thousand. This was packed to capacity, for good - or at least interesting - news travels fast. Endfield recalls that a stir of excitement ran through the audience when Hubbard, after speaking at some length on various matters, called out on to the stage a pretty college student called Sonia Bianca, whom he introduced to the audience as the world's first Clear. Miss Bianca, who seemed somewhat overcome by it all, answered a few routine questions from Hubbard without revealing any spectacular powers, and it is possible that Hubbard thought that no more formal demonstration than this was necessary. But it was not to be, for Mr Endfield, remembering that Clears were currently supposed to have perfect recall of all sense perceptions and knowing Miss Bianca was a major in physics, decided to ask her some simple questions in her own topic. Amazingly she seemed unable to remember even rudimentary formulae, such as Boyle's Law, and fell down completely when asked to give the colour of Hubbard's tie when his back was turned. It was an awful moment. There was improper laughter and sections of the audience got up and left. With this flop in mind it is no wonder that Hubbard showed no great enthusiasm when, in 1952, news came from an unexpected quarter that another Clear had been created. The story of this Clear, and the ones that followed, is revealing. In 1951, it will be recalled, the mathematician Chapdelaine had been acting as an auditor for Hubbard during the so-called research period which gave the world the first news of the `Clam' and the `Weeper'. For various reasons Chapdelaine felt that Dianetics could achieve remarkable effects, and he was eager to do whatever he could to assist its progress, however unusual the tasks he might be called upon to do. And some of the tasks were very odd indeed. On one occasion Hubbard handed him a bundle of papers with some assorted rough notes on them, asking him to convert the data they contained into mathematical form. Chapdelaine strongly suspected that these notes were the famous `original thesis' of Dianetics, and he burnt much midnight oil trying to get some way into what seemed an impossible task. He succeeded in part, and produced a set of semi-formalized statements which he handed to Hubbard telling him it was impossible to do any better with the material provided. It now seems likely that these efforts were later further adapted, probably by Hubbard himself, into what are now known as the Logics, Pre-Logics and Axioms, a set of numbered statements faintly reminiscent of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. From these appear to be derived the `Factors' - 30 numbered statements like `And there are Universes' or `The action of dimension point is reaching and withdrawing'. These have been set to music by Scientologist Bobby Richards and are sung rather like psalms at Scientology church meetings. Mr Richards presently holds the post of `Master of the Commodore's Music'. Another task given to the willing, but disconcerted mathematician, was to help Hubbard launch the ill-fated `Allied Scientists of the World' organization. This, one of Ron's lesser-known enterprises, began with a direct-mail shot - six secretaries worked for weeks merely typing envelopes - to most the working scientists in America and some other parts of the globe. They were invited, for a small fee, to enrol in a new organization which was to act as a clearing house for scientific literature, and was planning, among other schemes, to build an H-bomb-proof underground library. Chapdelaine was suddenly woken one night and dispatched peremptorily by Hubbard to Denver, Colorado to open the head office of the organization and to handle what was presumably expected to be a vast and enthusiastic rush to join. After a week or so, during which time only four out of the many thousands of scientists circulated showed any interest to the extent of sending in dollars, the `Allied Scientists of the World' was rapidly wound up and Chapdelaine returned, penniless, to Wichita. Here he found the atmosphere distinctly unhappy, with Hubbard showing signs of quarrelling with his millionaire backer, and in a moment of decision he withdrew from the headquarters organization to practise Dianetics privately. It was at this point he began auditing an individual named Ron Howes, and achieved such apparent success with him that in early 1952 he became convinced that he had in his hands a potential Clear. Howes was a physical chemist from Minneapolis who had recently undergone an operation for the removal of a kidney stone. His rapid return to health, accompanied by much auditing, and his abnormal visual memory led Chapdelaine to the view that the great breakthrough was imminent, and on 20th January 1952 Ron Howes was declared Clear. If Chapdelaine was confident of this achievement, Howes was even more so. In an extraordinary interview which he gave a few days later, and which was published by the Psychological Research Foundation (a Scientology offshoot in Phoenix, Arizona), he reveals touches of megalomania and intellectual hyper-confidence which are characteristic of the manic state achieved with a religious conversion. The content of the dialogue turns out to be, unfortunately, middle-grade science fiction, spiced with some muddled philosophy. I am quoting now some extended passages below so that the reader may judge the flavour for himself. Q: What do you intend to do with your new powers? Howes: They are not new. All I have done is to recover the full use of my control centres. I am reintegrating all my purposes, goals, postulates, effects, causes, until I have rid myself of all my agreements to be modified cause. Q: What is possible? Howes: For me at the moment, anything and everything is possible. The only arbitrary is time. Now if I become other than what I am in the optimum state I may remove the arbitrary. Then everything, in an instant, is possible. After a rather dull patch in which Howes delivers a homily on creativity, and a point where he hints at telepathic powers he is asked a series of questions about his supposed super- normal abilities. The answers, which at the time were counted as being historic, are worth quoting verbatim to give some idea of what people were hoping for, for themselves and for others, from the achievement of the state of Clear: Q: What is your reading speed compared to what it was? Howes: It's mighty fast and improving steadily every day. I noticed, and my wife remarked upon it, that I seemed to be turning the pages about three times as fast. My comprehension of printed material has gone up enormously compared to the past. The more difficult paragraphs in technical reading are very easy now. No confusion, no identity, no failure. My ability to pick up errors in judgement of other people on paper is much higher. Q: Can you be affected by bacteria? Howes: I still believe that there are bacteria which I can't resist, but there must be many bacteria that I can resist now that I could never resist before. Q: What do you contemplate as your duration of life? Howes: In chronological years, if my anti-gravity plan works, I would assume approximately another four hundred years. Under present circumstances, one hundred and a quarter. Q: What experiments have you performed on yourself? One of them concerns such a simple little thing as sunburn. I had been sunburned approximately a full year, continuously, in my life. In the past had I taken even as much as fifty milligrams of niacin, I'd have burnt like a furnace for days. Now, after running out of sunburn, I can take niacin to my heart's content. No more sunburn. The other night I loaded myself with 400 milligrams of niacin - no blush, no heat, no pallor, no sunburn. Another experiment concerns changing the total pH of the body. One very definitely affects ability by changing the balance between acidity and alkalinity. I'm attempting to find out just how alkaline I can get and still be maximum cause. I've also tried to see if I can regenerate teeth. For the moment I've got some very sore gums but no teeth. Perry suggested to me, in a roundabout way, that I should regenerate teeth. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday I got extremely sore gums. Teeth were pulled out. I've regenerated tissue. To the maximum extent I can. The soreness is now disappearing. The gums are much more healthy. Next point is what constitutes a seed tooth? I think it's possible to construct them again. Incidentally, I haven't decided what I am going to look like yet. Q: Have you made any experiment with sleep? Howes: Yes. I went forty-eight hours without it. There was no diminution of my enthusiasm and my control, but there was a definite lag physically. The body requires rest. Rest permits muscles, blood, nerves to undergo certain readjustments. Without this rest one might continue for possibly two weeks without sleep. Apart from the occasional word or phrase drawn from the jargon of Scientology, which may be unfamiliar to the general reader, there should be no difficulty in understanding the gist of this interview, nor its implications. It is quite evident that here were a number of intelligent human beings who, for a brief period of time, believed that one of their number had been created a superman - the first of a new species of man who would gradually replace the old as surely as homo sapiens replaced the Australopithecines and Neanderthal Man. In other contemporary literature the being which the techniques of Dianetics and Scientology were creating was even assigned a special name - homo novus, the New Man. The creating of a superior race to replace our own seemed at the time to be an inevitable consequence of the arrival of Dianetics, and when the news of the `clearing' of Ron Howes spread, a surge of new confidence ran through the movement. Only Hubbard, significantly, seemed sceptical, though he apparently became more interested when reports were circulated that Howes was developing unusual telepathic powers. The first specimen of homo novus certainly went through a period of hyperconfidence in his own powers and even began issuing a series of pretentious `Bulletins' and `Messages' to other Scientologists which must have considerably niggled Hubbard, who liked to reserve such ex cathedra statements for himself. The first such Bulletin begins pompously: `The following is addressed to all optimum and pre-optimum humans...', and then goes on to advise on the steps needed to develop the optimum race, using phrases such as `tone-scale' (a Dianetics concept which allows one to assess the level of `beingness', or super-power of the Thetan), `life-cause', `race intelligence' and other such mystic notions. The reference to growing new teeth must have intrigued many readers. This, together with radical improvements in eyesight, increased muscle tone, etc., were counted at the time as being merely some of the inevitable concomitants of being a Clear, and would certainly seem to merit investigation. Howes, as we noted, felt that his new powers were beginning to make his gums itch - presumably a step in the right direction - but he seems not to have got much further than this. But before long a minor spate of new Clears arrived - none from Hubbard's stable, but rather from the hands of individual auditors in various parts of the country. These Clears, and their auditors, must have presented a ticklish dilemma to L. Ron, who could neither deny their genuineness, because they were merely following his gospel and producing the predicted miracles, nor publicly sponsor them in case - as he must certainly have expected - they were merely flashes in the pan. Instead he preserved a steely silence, the best strategy of all. But steadily the list grew. On the `third day of the third month, 1952', Jack Horner was reporting from Van Nuys, California, that he had been auditing a fifteen-year-old girl who had reached the state of Clear with dramatic ease. She had begun to exploit her new powers by `clearing up all the minor scars on the body'. She also learnt typing from scratch, achieving twenty-five words a minute after merely studying the keyboard chart for fifteen minutes. `Because some of her teeth were bad', Horner reports in a letter, which contains not the slightest sign of corroborative evidence to back up these claims, `she had decided to make them fall out and grow new ones in their place. She decided that a mole on her cheek would look good so she grew one, then decided it didn't look so good after all and made it disappear....' Another magnificent specimen of homo novus was the former motor mechanic, H. R. `Wing' Angell of Denver, Colorado, who made a name for himself in the fifties, thanks to a lecture tour in which he amazed audiences with accounts of the wonders he had performed - or could if he could only be bothered to. At one session, when asked directly what changes himself he had actually experienced, the following dialogue rook place: Angell: Well, when old man Hubbard wrote a book, I got it the first week in June 1950. As I sat down to read that book with my thick glasses, my trembling hands, my paroxysmal tachycardia kicking against my ribs, my indigestion and my general attitude that the world owed me a living and was damn sure not doing anything about it...I was a mess. Now I know my body from one end to the other and it's a friend of mine, a part of me. I know the Universe around me better than I ever have before, and I enjoy everything in it. What more could you want? Q: And the tachycardia and the various things like that? Angell: They went away - I didn't need them any more! It was as simple as that. Later, when asked about growing teeth, he replied: Yeah, I'd like to talk about teeth in a broad general basis. I discovered that a person can grow new teeth if he wants 'em, and I've done so. But that's parlour tricks. They aren't even teeth that would have been valuable to me one way or the other. It was just an experiment and it worked. For years Wing Angell was known primarily for his claim to have grown new teeth, and he certainly made the most of it. It is possible that he was even behind an anonymous company which launched advertisements in anumber of the occult and psychic fringe periodicals in 1956 stating in bold letters: GROW NEW TEETH! IT CAN BE DONE! IT HAS BEEN DONE! Write Box... It is barely necessary to assure readers that none of the tooth regeneration claims were ever attested by independent medical, dental or scientific authorities, and one suspects that Angell's new dentition was about as functional as Howes's proposed anti-gravity machine. Of the little glut of early Clears, incidentally, few appear to be connected in any way with Scientology now, or with Hubbard. Howes is a successful salesman somewhere in America, Miss Bianca and Jack Horner's protege cannot be readily traced, and Wing Angell died of a heart attack while still a youngish man some years ago. But, by the end of 1952, the fashion for producing Clears had died away, and some serious rifts in the movement were beginning to appear. =========================== Thought Has Mass JUST OVER TWO years after its sensational beginnings, a critic attempting to survey the status of Dianetics and Scientology might at first be inclined to the view that it was in a sturdy condition. The name of the founder was known all over America and in many other parts of the world. Literally hundreds of thousands of people - perhaps as many as a million - had had some first-hand experience of auditing and were familiar with the principles of Dianetic therapy. Many claimed to have received some positive benefit from it. Furthermore, the philosophy (as expounded through Scientology), with the concepts of the Thetan and its limitless past lives, its immortality and potential omnipotence, and also the strange but imaginative idea that life was a game played by Gods - ourselves - who had temporarily lost their God-like powers, had struck a spark in many quarters. On closer inspection everything in the garden was revealed as anything but lovely. True there were numerous claims of the successes of Dianetics therapy - but there is nothing remarkable about this. It is well known to any qualified medical practitioner or psychologist that neurotic symptoms - often quite spectacular ones - may dramatically yield as soon as the sick individual acquires a strong faith in something. This faith may be in magic, in spiritual healing, in Christian Science, in some quack doctor, in herbal remedies or whatever. Provided it is strong enough, neurotic symptoms will yield, temporarily. And such was turning out to be the case with the first Dianetic cures, and with the inevitable relapses came the inevitable disillusionment. Furthermore, through his constant claims that the therapy worked, and that it could be made to work even better, Hubbard seems to have got himself into the difficult position of having constantly to supply marvels in order to simply stay in one place. Hence the repeated announcements of dramatic new techniques `hundreds of times more effective' than the previous ones, etc., etc. But at each step, of course, the time between the making of the claim and the request for explanations as to why it didn't work, became shorter and shorter. Even Hubbard's most solid converts, Campbell and the physician, Dr Joseph Winter, fled the field - the former by turning quietly back to science fiction of the space-ship variety, the latter by a public renunciation of Hubbard in his interesting book A Doctor Looks at Dianetics. Winter had been wildly enthusiastic in the early days, and for a medical man showed himself to be quite credulous. After the split with Hubbard which came partly, as we have said earlier, because Hubbard was `prescribing' his weird mixture of vitamins - GUK - to accompany auditing, and partly, perhaps, because of Hubbard's rooted disinclination to have anyone in his entourage who might constitute a rival, Winter set up in practice with his own version of Dianetics. This he persisted with until his death a few years ago. Another man to fall out with Ron was his fellow science fiction writer, A. E. Van Vogt, who also set up to practise a modified version of Dianetics in California. Van Vogt and Hubbard later made it up for a while, the former writing a fantastic science fiction novel, The Universe Makers, in which a man gradually acquires super powers through various Scientological insights and ends up creating and destroying the Universe at will. At the time of writing Van Vogt is still true to the principles of Dianetics and still practising them on a professional basis. The story ot the association between Purcell and Hubbard and its ultimate demise is worth telling for it helps one to understand the abrupt transition between Dianetics and Scientology which took place in the early fifties, and which is otherwise so puzzling. There are several versions of the tale each with minor variations, but most agree on salient points. In 1950, after the first raving runaway success of Dianetics when, briefly, orthodox medicine and psychology turned curious eyes on the cult and its techniques, there were signs of important rifts in the upper echelons of the movement. These, it appears, were occasioned by the conflict of goals and interest between Hubbard himself and the numerous intelligent, and often very well-educated, professional men who had become involved in Dianetics. Some of these, like Frederick Schuman, Professor of Government at Williams College, Massachusetts, who, in a letter to the New York Times declared that `History has become a race between Dianetics and catastrophe', went completely overboard on the topic. Others, like Winter, gradually cooled their enthusiasm. All were united however at one time with the aim of getting Hubbard `organized', in other words moulding his personality and ideas into some sort of traditional or establishment form, and thereby making Dianetics and its practice academically and professionally `OK'. In this enterprise they were doomed, for if there is one person on earth who dislikes being organized by others it is L. Ron Hubbard. Tensions grew steadily, with matters complicated by the fact that Hubbard's second marriage was hitting the rocks. He had been divorced from his first wife, Margaret Louise Grubb, in 1947, and married his second, Sarah Northrup, somewhere about this time - and she had become enthusiastically involved in Dianetics. For some reason or another, and quite possibly with some justification, Hubbard began to suspect that his wife and other Dianeticists, including Dr Winter, were planning to take control of the organization out of his hands. According to his son Nibs, he even entertained the notion, altogether less plausible, that the red hand of Communism was at work attempting to steal the secrets of Dianetics from the West and, after a peculiar incident in his New York apartment when he believed he had been drugged and `brainwashed', Hubbard packed a few belongings and, with characteristic decision, left for Puerto Rico. A great flap arose in the Dianetic Research Foundation when it was discovered that the leader had departed, and press interest was also considerable. It was at this point that the millionaire Purcell intervened. After tracking down L. Ron in San Juan he persuaded him to return with the promise that Dianetics would be put on a business footing - which in Purcell's eyes meant establishing it along formal company lines. This Hubbard agreed to, though with what alacrity is not known. In return Purcell launched and partly financed the Hubbard Dianetic Foundation at 211 West Douglas Avenue, Witchita, which now replaced Elizabeth, NJ, as the focal point of Dianetic activity. There was a big snag, however. Convinced that Hubbard needed `organizing' Purcell had persuaded him to assign the rights of his books, recorded tapes, techniques and all the titles and paraphernalia of Dianetics over to the Foundation. Hubbard's stake in the whole business was no longer that of the autocratic creator, but rather that of something equivalent to a company director. According to acquaintances of his this proved too much for his roving intellect, and in February 1952 he did another disappearing trick and, grabbing a typewriter and not much else, moved to Phoenix, Arizona, to start all over again. But alas he now found himself in the maddening position of being legally unable to practise or even write about his very own brainchild - Dianetics! Lesser men might here have given up and turned to cactus growing or to Christian Science, but not Mr Lafayette Ronald Hubbard. With magnificent aplomb he launched, from its new headquarters in Phoenix, the latest brand new science to supersede Dianetics - Scientology. Before long this was issuing its own journal replete with such headlines as `Source of Life Energy Found!', photographs of his `Desert Research Laboratory', and warnings about something called `Black Dianetics'. What exactly went on in this scholarly haven is not absolutely certain, but there is little doubt that some remarkable thoughts passed through L. Ron's head. One discovery that he seems to have made at this time was that it was relatively easy for the Thetan to leave the physical body at will. This could be accomplished by the simple expedient of the auditor saying to the preclear: `Be three feet back of your head'. One didn't need even to be a sensationally advanced Scientologist to do this and Hubbard claimed that sixty per cent of humanity could achieve `exteriorization', as the trick was called, on the first attempt. This is still one of the basic features of any sustained period of auditing today, and most Scientologists will tell you that they can achieve it. Unfortunately they never seem to be able to do anything useful or interesting when exteriorized. It is no good, for example, asking them to read something written on a bit of paper in another room or even to describe an object hidden behind their backs, for you will be told loftily that such tricks can't be done to order or, more maddeningly, `I could if I wanted lo, but right now I don't want to'. Exteriorization may have been going on since the early 1950s but, to be frank, it seems to be one of Man's most useless metaphysical accomplishments. It was also in this period of hiatus that Hubbard, or one of his organizations, is reputed to have offered for sale the typescript of a work called Excalibur. This allegedly contained data so staggering that it was `not to be released during Mr Hubbard's stay on earth' and would-be purchasers would be sworn `not to permit other readers to read it'. `Gold-bound and locked', individually typed and retailing at fifteen hundred dollars, it is hard to say, without reading it, whether it was worth the money or not. Nor can it have been a joke, for the blurb for Excalibur warned that `four of the first fifteen people to read it had gone insane'. Meanwhile back in Wichita, the Hubbardless Dianetic Foundation pottered slowly on, feebly attempting to quantify the ephemeral phenomena of the cult, desperately hoping to achieve academic and professional recognition. Within two years, despite its hold on Hubbard's earlier books and the world famous name of Dianetics, it was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Purcell and his colleagues learned the hard way that whatever the cult was called and however professionally it was organized, it was nothing without L. Ron. With supporters melting away and no new Clears to speak of, things in Scientology were beginning to look almost dull. Fortunately there appeared on the scene a simple but impressive piece of gadgetry which has caused as much controversy as any of the stunts connected with Scientology and which is now perhaps one of the most important features of any standard Scientological auditing session. I am referring of course to the magnificently styled `electropsychometer' - or more simply, the `E-meter'. In modern cults quasi-scientific gadgets often play an important role, as we shall note in later sections of this book. Because of the importance of the E-meter to Scientology theory and practice and because of the muddled image - a mixture of witchcraft, brainwashing and electronic hocus-pocus - which the press publicity has unfairly created for it we shall take a close look at the device. Before doing so, however, it will also be necessary to take a brief refresher course on the techniques of auditing. It will be recalled that engrams and hang-ups of various kinds evaporate when the individual `confronts' them and shows that he can control or manipulate them at will. The auditor directs the patient or preclear along the track of his past lives and zeros in on any point where the memory seems either particularly acute or resistant. Once the incident is spotted, the preclear is ordered to control it by suitable fantasies - he may be invited to `destroy it' or `recreate it' a large number of times, and make it smaller or bigger by suitable use of his powers of imagination until he feels able to `handle it' and reduce or erase its oppressive hold on him. For example, let us suppose that the auditor has discovered that his preclear is `stuck' with an incident involving a dead crow - it may have been the last thing he saw before he died in the Battle of Hastings, or something along those lines. Now one way of eliminating this incident would be for the preclear to acquire mastery over the mental images of dead crows, and the auditor can help achieve this by requiring him to manipulate, in his mind, various mental pictures - they are called `mock-ups' in Scientology jargon. He may be asked to destroy dead crows, `burn' them, imagine himself eating them, watch other people eating them, etc., etc. When he has done this many times and he begins to seem a bit blase about it all, the incident is reckoned to be erased and eliminated as a debilitating engram. In the early days of Dianetics many dramatic cures were reported to have arisen as the result of processing of this kind. It is important to realize that to Scientologists the mental images which most of us can observe and manipulate in our mind's eye, so to speak, are not just fantasy creatures of the brain, but have a real and objective existence in their own space time continuum where the Thetan with his omnipotent powers has created them. In principle it should be possible to create such an image to be so `real' that other people could see it as well as oneself. At this point the object has `reality' for them as well as for you. The universe we inhabit at the moment, according to the Scientologists, is simply the result of a whole bunch of Thetans - you, me and everyone else - at some time agreeing to share reality on a number of these mock-ups and these now constitute the world around us. This explains the great weight attached in Scientological processing to the ability to handle these mental images with skill, and it is tough luck on those members of the human race who don't have the necessary vivid visual imagination, for they can be slow to advance in Scientology. Returning now to the point from which we digressed, even those familiar with the marvels of auditing will appreciate that in the early days it was one thing to talk about identifying the points in the memory track where the significant or repressed incidents occurred, and another thing to actually find them. At best an auditor would have to rely on getting some signal - such as a twitch or gasp from his preclear - when he got near some critical point and it might be all too easy to be misled by such unreliable incidents. Then, in late 1950 or early 1951, an individual named Volney Mathison turned up in Elizabeth, NJ, bearing a strange but intriguing box, equipped with wires, handles, a dial, etc., which he claimed was capable of measuring thought. To anyone engaged in the tricky business of tracking down thoughts and memories, Mathison's device would seem to be just what was wanted, but Hubbard, who never seems to care for developments in Scientology which are not his own, was at first rather suspicious of it. However, the staff at the Research Foundation felt sufficiently curious to look into the matter further and sought a demonstration of its worth. The trick, Mathison explained, was to hold one handle in each hand, set the meter needle at zero, and then start to think of something. When any unpleasant or dramatic thought occurred, lo, the needle would swing dramatically across the dial. To many people the electropsychometer was a truly marvellous device, and its potential for auditing was not lost on the group present. On the other hand, anyone who had ever tinkered with electronics or taken a course in experimental psychology, would immediately have recognized it as a device for measuring what is known as the galvanic skin response - a change in the electrical conductivity of the skin which occurs during periods of even slight excitability or emotional stress. The basic principle is that the individual, by taking one of the two terminals of the set-up in each hand, becomes part of an electrical circuit via a little amplifier and recording meter - in scientific jargon, the psychogalvanometer. Changes in the resistance of this circuit will cause deflections of the needle on the meter Now there are various ways in which this resistance can be varied, as the first psychologists working with the `galvanic skin response' in the nineteenth century discovered. In the first place, if the terminals are held in the hands of the individual and the grips gently squeezed, this will produce a better contact between metal and skin surface, thus lowering the resistance and inducing a corresponding change in the reading on the meter. Another cause of reduction in the resistance of the circuit is the production of sweat, even in minute amounts, on the surface of the skin, for the saline acts as a conductor which again causes needle deflection. Since both these effects, particularly the first one, are under the voluntary control of the individual linked to the galvanometer, the device in its simplest form is more or less useless as an objective measure of his psychological state. Obviously anyone wishing to induce a needle change may do so simply by squeezing the terminals, and with a little practice one can soon cause the needle to do just what one wants it to. There is in fact a third important phenomenon involved. This is a very minor change in the electrical conductivity of the skin itself which is part of the general sensitizing process occurring when a human or an animal is alerted or aroused - and this slight change, which is not under conscious voluntary control but pretty well a reflex act, can be measured by a sensitive galvanometer. In order to rule out artificial results caused by squeezing, sweating, etc., the proper use of the galvanometer requires that small electrodes, coated with a neutral jelly, are attached to the palms of the hand. When set up in this form (a standard laboratory demonstration in university psychology courses) the needle will then be seen to move about spectacularly when the subject is threatened with a pinprick, when some taboo word is spoken or a grisly photograph shown. Now Scientologists dispense with the primary precautions outlined above and the preclear simply hold the terminals - they look like small tin cans - in his hand. Thus the significant incidents in his past life, or lives, which the E-meter is supposed to root out, can be produced pretty well at will either by conscious or unconscious effort on the part of the person being audited. Even when the meter is not being watched by the preclear himself, but is being monitored by the auditor, it is of course perfectly easy for the matter to give unconscious signals to the other as to when he wants the needle to move. (Such unconscious signals are exceedingly common and contributed enormously to the early `evidence' for telepathy when subjects under tests were not hidden from each other by screens.) Significantly, the final steps to the state of Clear are approached by a long period of `solo-auditing' in which the subject monitors his own E-meter at each stage. When tackled on the question of using cans rather than electrodes in an effort to rule out voluntary control of the E-meter, Scientologists argue that the kind of deflection caused by a squeeze is very characteristic, and that trained auditors know how to disregard such artefacts. They even hold that the movements caused by an increase or decrease in sweat output, etc., produce responses which are detectable to the trained operator, and that there is a further class of needle activity, due to none of the above causes, which is the real meat of the matter. The important point, they claim, is that the mental images of past happenings, whether traumatic or not and whether in this or in any previous life, are real events which have an objective existence outside their representation in the memory store. In other words, thought has mass and when an object is imagined it acquires a reality which may be sufficiently substantial to influence the circuitry of the E-meter. Changes in the circuit occur because at one moment there is just the person and the gadget, but when he creates his mental image or recalls his engram, this intrudes as an extra in the system. Sometimes the thought may have relatively low mass and needle deflections will be small or slow; on other occasio