THE HUBBARD IS BARE        

                            by Jeff Jacobsen
                               PO Box 3541
                               Scottsdale, AZ  85271

     copyright 1992 by Jeff Jacobsen
     may be reprinted so long as it is kept in its entirety and not 
     edited.
          
      
      
      INTRODUCTION
     
        In June of 1989 I was in Chicago at a large used book sale,
     one of the largest in the country.  I stumbled upon Physical
     Control of the Mind, by Jose Delgado.  Delgado had experimented
     with various animals by placing electrodes in certain parts of
     the brain, then passing an electrical signal to those electrodes. 
     By this process he could induce behavior in the animal.  Delgado
     became a notorious figure to me when I had read some of his
     experiments while researching mind control for a college paper.
        In discussing the brain's development, Delgado made the
     following statement about the writings of psychoanalyst Robert
     Sadger;
     
         Sadger reported that when he could not relate some patients'
         neuroses to their embryonic periods, he induced them to 
         recall what happened to their original spermatazoa and ova, 
         or even to remember possible parental attitudes which could 
         have produced a trauma in their delicate germinal cells 
         before conception.  Sadger maintained that these cells have 
         a psychic life of their own with the capacity to learn and 
         to remember.1
     
        This sounded strikingly like some theories I had read in
     Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health, by L. Ron
     Hubbard.  I had been reading and studying Hubbard's works, and
     had even written a tract critical of his Church of Scientology
     after studying the church's doctrine and history.  Dianetics
     seemed to be full of new and unique theories and ideas, but
     Delgado's statement caused me to wonder whether perhaps Hubbard
     had not actually ripped off some of his ideas instead of
     discovering them.  Sure enough, the reference date on Sadger's
     article was 1941 - eight years before Dianetics was published! 
        That was the beginning of the booklet you are about to read. 
     I had studied Hubbard's works since 1986, and had taken an
     introductory course in about 1983 (which included some "Book one"
     auditing).  By the time of the Chicago book sale, Hubbard's
     writing style, wacky theories and smugness were wearing on me,
     and I hoped to begin a study on electrical brain stimulation -
     hence the interest in Delgado.  But since the revelation hit that
     Hubbard borrowed rather than invented his theories, it seemed to
     be a ripe and exciting subject to pursue.
        The reason I thought this was an exciting topic was Hubbard's
     insistence that he came up with his ideas by himself and that
     they were as monumental a breakthrough from what came before as
     was the discovery of fire to the cavemen.  If it could be shown
     that dianetics was simply a synthesis of previous ideas, then
     Hubbard would be exposed as a huckster and fraud.  And I don't
     like hucksters and frauds.
        Generally speaking, it is my contention that Hubbard did no
     credible research of his own.  Instead he distilled ideas from
     books he had read, the few college courses he took, his own
     experiences, and his very fertile and disturbed mind, and came up
     with a mish-mash of bizarre theories which he wrote down in
     scientific-sounding phrases and words.
        The ideas Hubbard borrowed were generally bizarre ideas to
     begin with, and his fertile, twisted mind altered and embelished
     them to produce an even worse hodge-podge.
       It is a mammoth task to try to piece where Hubbard took ideas,
     since there is no definitive list of works he had read.  He did
     in the early years of dianetics credit some people such as
     Korzybski, Freud, and some others, but Sadger, for example, never
     shows up in any credit by Hubbard.  Thus, one has to pick an idea
     (from dianetics or some writing) and practice a little detective
     work to see whether the idea originated elsewhere.  Of course,
     this bares me to criticism that I am simply reading dianetics
     back into some work that just happens to sound like dianetics,
     but in fact what I am trying to show is that almost none of the
     ideas in Dianetics is new or unique, as Hubbard claims. My goal
     is not so much to trace back to the definite source where Hubbard
     took ideas, but to demonstrate that his "new" and "unique" ideas
     are neither.  But I think it is possible to show  that Hubbard
     absolutely stole ideas from some definite sources, such as Sadger
     and some others without ever crediting their works.  The examples
     I have been able to uncover I am convinced are just the tip of
     the iceberg.  There are ideas, for example, from William L.
     Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (which
     coincidentally was first published in 1950) that I find markedly
     reflected in the organization of Scientology.  Were it possible
     to get a list of what Hubbard read, I am certain that a very
     large volume could be written comparing what he read to what he
     wrote.  It is most certainly clear that Hubbard was first and
     foremost a synthesizer of ideas, not a creator.
     
        Some of the sections in this booklet are the culmination and
     conclusion of about 5 years' part-time research into Hubbard's
     teachings.  I wanted to put down what I had learned in order to
     move on to other topics.  
        Towards the completion of this work, I was reading the
     Australian "Report of the Board of Inquiry Into Scientology" from
     1965, and was amazed to see that some of my research was a
     repetition of that work.  The advantages to the Australian report
     are that they were able to call many actual experts to give their
     opinion of Hubbard's theories.  They also had representatives of
     Scientology at hand who were allowed to present evidence as well,
     although they apparently did not produce anything that negates
     anything in my writings.  This is a wonderful document despite
     its age, and I highly recommend it to anyone wishing to delve
     deeper into the subjects I have written about in this work.
        Actually, there should be no need to write about Hubbard's
     ideas at all, since most of them are so absurd and indefensible.  
     Hubbard's writing style is grandiose, difficult, exasperating,
     and just plain wacky.  But despite all this, there are still
     around 70,000 Scientologists today who consider Hubbard a genius
     and live their lives according to his dictates.  Scientology
     still actively advertises and recruits the unwary, and so long as
     this is happening, those of us who know better must speak out and
     expose the lies and deceits.   The way scoundrels win is by
     having no opposition.  One of Hitler's first official acts when
     he became chancellor was to silence his critics.  If we as
     critics remain silent, Scientology can go a long way, and Hubbard
     knew this - hence the constant attacks by Scientology on its
     perceived enemies.
     
     
     1 Jose M.R. Delgado, M.D.  PHYSICAL CONTROL OF THE MIND (Harper
     Colophon Books, New York, 1969) P.47-8.
     
     
     
     REVIEW OF HUBBARD'S THEORIES
     
     
        First I must tell you that there is NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE for
     most of Hubbard's theories, despite his claim that they are
     "scientific facts".  Secondly, Hubbard had no academic background
     to come up with theories of the mind, despite his false grandiose
     claims of world travel and incredible education.  Finally, the
     actual scientific community and in fact the real world all
     dispute with credible evidence almost all of Hubbard's theories. 
     Despite this, Hubbard still has a following.  And since he and
     the Church of Scientology have placed his teachings into the
     marketplace of ideas, it is useful to all interested parties to
     have these ideas critiqued.  But first, a brief overview of those
     ideas.
       If you already understand dianetics and Scientology doctrine,
     you may wish to skip this chapter as it is a general overview of
     these.  Most of this booklet deals with the teachings from the
     book Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health and the basic
     ideas that sprang from this work.  If you are not clear on
     dianetics, you should read this section in order to follow large
     portions of this booklet.  I will be brief yet concise enough for
     the reader to follow the deeper discussions.  Words underlined
     are Hubbard's terms that you should familiarize yourself with. 
     It is of course helpful to read the book Dianetics before
     continuing.
        L. Ron Hubbard, author of the book Dianetics: The Modern
     Science of Mental Health and founder of the Church of
     Scientology, was a science-fiction writer before penning the book
     that would launch his fame.  Dianetics is a self-help book
     published in 1950 which claimed to include new and unique
     theories on how the mind works.  Hubbard claimed that this work
     was totally unprecedented;  "...Dianetics was the bolt from the
     blue."1  Mankind was destroying himself by various means "without
     any idea of what caused Man to behave as he did or what made him
     sick or well.  THE answer was, and still is, Dianetics."2  
           So there would be no doubt as to the originality of his
     ideas, Hubbard wrote that "dianetics borrowed nothing but was
     first discovered and organized; only after the organization was
     completed and a technique evolved was it compared to existing
     information."3  According to Hubbard, some philosophers of the
     past helped provide the foundation of dianetics, but the
     remaining research had been done "what the navigator calls, 'off
     the chart'."4
        Dianetics became a New York Times Best seller in 1950, and has
     since sold many millions of copies.  
        Dianetics is a "science of mental health" as the full title of
     Hubbard's 1950 book declares.  The main theory of dianetics is
     that the human has two minds, the Analytical mind and the
     Reactive mind.  The Analytical mind is a perfectly working
     device, and life would be wonderful were it not for the Reactive
     mind lousing up the workings of the Analytical mind.  The
     Reactive mind stores memories of events in our life when we were
     unconscious and in pain.  These memories are perfect recordings
     of the events, but the problem occurs because they are not stored
     in the Analytical mind.  These memories can be triggered or
     restimulated by events in our environment that the Reactive mind
     interprets as similar to one of its memories.  When the Reactive
     mind spots such a similarity, it attempts to take over from the
     Analytical mind.  This is a problem because the Reactive mind is
     "moronic" and screws things up horribly and disrupts the proper
     activities of the Analytical mind.
        The goal of dianetics is to re-file these memories, called
     Engrams, into the Analytical mind, where they can be properly
     indexed and utilized.  The Reactive mind is an evolutionary
     throwback to how animals think, and is therefore a weaker area of
     the mind in the human.  
        An example of an Engram in the book Dianetics is of a child
     whose father beat his mother while the child was still in the
     womb (Engrams can be recorded from conception on in dianetics). 
     The child was knocked unconscious from the beating and was in
     pain when the father yelled "Take that!  Take it, I tell you! 
     You've got to take it!"5  When the child grew up and something
     (perhaps the sound of the father yelling) occurred within the
     child's surroundings that was similar to the recordings in the
     Engram, this keyed in or triggered the Engram, and the Reactive
     mind would take over, effectively shutting down the Analytical
     mind to a degree and controlling actions based instead on the
     moronic interpretation of statements made in the Engram.  Thus
     this child, because of the "Take it!" statements in the Engram,
     becomes a kleptomaniac.
        The goal of dianetics is to remove all Engrams from the
     Reactive mind and clear them out, transferring these memories
     into the Analytical mind where they can be properly utilized and
     processed.  When the Reactive mind is emptied, or cleared, of all
     Engrams, the person is declared a CLEAR, and from then on the
     person is able to utilize his or her mind to the utmost,
     operating on a heretofore unknown level of abilities.
        Engrams are found through auditing, where one person asks
     another questions about his past until an event with potential
     for an Engram is encountered.  If an Engram seems to exist, the
     event is then gone over several times until the auditor is
     satisfied that the Engram memory has now left the Reactive mind
     and has been filed in the Analytical mind (see the section on
     Clear for more details).
        Auditors are the practitioners that take you throught the
     dianetics process.  They search your past by asking you
     questions, looking for engrams to eradicate.  Auditors do not
     have to be trained much at all, according to the book Dianetics.6 
     So long as a person is reasonably intelligent and communicative,
     he can audit after reading Dianetics.
        After Dianetics was written, Volney Mattheison introduced
     Hubbard to a galvanic skin response meter.  Hubbard decided to
     use this device as a tool to find Engrams.  This device, which
     appeared in 1941 as a "new fun-provoking stunt for parties,"7
     simply registers the differing conduction of a weak electrical
     flow through the body which can differ by how hard a person
     squeezes the cans held in each hand or how much the person is
     sweating.  Hubbard called this device an E-meter.  In any event,
     the goal was still to re-file all memories in the Reactive mind
     to the Analytical mind.
        The goal of dianetics is to Clear the Planet, i.e. to process
     everyone on earth to the state of Clear.
        This, however, is not the end of it.  While your mind may now
     be running at an optimal level, your soul, known in Scientology
     as a Thetan, is still troubled.  Dianetics has supposedly fixed
     the problems of our mind, but now the religion of Scientology
     must enter to cure the problems of our soul.  Every person is not
     just a person with a mental problem, but is also a reincarnated
     spiritual being who has lived at least millions of years.  Each
     of us has experienced an identical horrible event whereby other
     Thetans were fused on to our own Thetan, and these interfere with
     the optimum activities of the main Thetan (our own soul). 
     Scientology processing teaches the Thetan how to rid itself of
     these Body Thetans that are attached to us somewhat like leeches,
     and also how to operate on a more efficient level.
        L. Ron Hubbard claims to have been the first person to
     discover the truths of both dianetics and Scientology.  Without
     his Tech, or methods to eradicate these hitherto undiscovered
     impediments to life, there is no hope for mankind.
     
        All the above has been deciphered from about 16 books by
     Hubbard, over 45 hours of taped lectures,  countless articles on
     and by the Church of Scientology, and discussions with several
     current and ex-members.  Hubbard is often times repetitive and
     undecipherable, so understanding some of his ideas is difficult. 
     Take this sample of his writing;
     
         In other words, Life, faced with a non-understanding thing, 
         would feel itself balked, for Life, being Understanding, 
         could not then become non-understanding without assuming the 
         role of being incomprehensible.  Thus it is that the seeker 
         after secrets is trapped into being a secret himself.8
     
        It is this sort of stuff that makes Hubbard exasperating to
     try to follow.
     
        The above is a brief review of a complex subject.  There are
     many more points to this teaching, but I will attempt to point
     out the intricacies when needed for the reader to follow my
     arguments.
     
     
     1 L. Ron Hubbard, DIANETICS: THE ORIGINAL THESIS (Los Angeles;
     Church of Scientology of California Publications Organization,
     1951) outside back jacket
     2 Ibid. 
     3 L. Ron Hubbard, DIANETICS, THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH
     (Los Angeles; Bridge Publications, 1987) p.340
     4 DIANETICS, p.400.
     5 DIANETICS, p.281
     6 DIANETICS, P.225
     7 Giant Home Workshop Manual, 1941.  See The Survivor, volume 8,
     p.1   P.O. Box 95, Alpena, AR  72611
     8 L. Ron Hubbard, DIANETICS 55! (Los Angeles; Bridge
     Publications, Inc.,  1955) p.41
     
     
     
     THE MURKY STATE OF CLEAR
     
     
        It would seem that the first person to reach the state of
     Clear should stick out in history like a sore thumb.  After all,
     a Clear - 
     
     * never has colds or accidents, 
     * has a soaring IQ, 
     * total recall of his entire life from conception on, 
     * has cancer (possibly) and other physical deficiencies
     repaired,1
     * can compute in seconds what the average person needs 30 or more
     minutes for ,2  and
     * is the first case of a truly rational person.3
     
     As Hubbard states, "We are dealing here with an entirely new and
     hitherto nonexistent object of inspection, the Clear.".4
        A Clear would be an immense boost to many social areas, such
     as law enforcement, where a Clear could recall events when he was
     a fetus or unconscious and thus help solve crimes he may have
     "witnessed" while in an unconscious state.  Biology would make
     giant leaps if you could really recall what you were thinking
     when you were a sperm or ovum (Planned Parenthood might be helped
     by having a person recall their life as an ovum; "could you have
     stopped the sperm from impregnating you?").  Clears would be the
     most sought after people in many sciences, in law enforcement,
     medicine, and other fields.  Clears, being the most rational and
     intelligent of society, should naturally rise to positions of
     power and authority in academics and politics, making the world a
     better place to live.
        This allegedly superhuman condition is the end result of
     dianetics and the launching point toward the upper levels of
     Scientology training.  Any person not yet Clear is an aberrated
     person and not capable of full human potential.
       It should be obvious to all, considering the incredible
     abilities and states of being involved, who the first Clear was.  
     Just as we know who was the first man to walk on the moon, we
     should all be taught who the first person in history to reach the
     state of Clear was.  L. Ron Hubbard himself should surely have
     known who this person was, since he claimed discovery of the
     condition.
       Or was it Hubbard himself?  Imagine, says Hubbard, an engineer
     who builds a bridge up to a high plateau that had never been
     visited by man.  After finishing the bridge, "He himself crosses
     and he inspects the plateau carefully."5  Others cross after the
     engineer.  This analogy is obvious.  The engineer is Hubbard, and
     the plateau is the state of Clear.  So Hubbard was the first
     Clear, and to support this further is the "Scientology
     Catechism", which asks if Hubbard was Clear, and answers "Yes- in
     order to map the route for others he had to make it himself."6
        Yet, in a speech in 1958, Hubbard said that the first Clears
     were people he was treating in Los Angeles while he was disguised
     as a swami.7  The first of these became Clear "by 1947"; "these
     were the first Clears."8 "There were people who were run on the
     old techniques who were Cleared years ago," Hubbard stated on
     June 12, 1950.9 
        On August 10, 1950, Hubbard gave a talk at the Shrine
     Auditorium in Los Angeles where he introduced Sonya Bianca (aka
     Ann Singer) as the world's first Clear.10  After she miserably
     failed recall tests on stage, she was never again referred to as
     the first Clear.  This declaration, however, seems to contradict
     the notion that Hubbard was the first, or even that the "swami's"
     patients were.
        Hubbard declared Sara, his first wife, as the first Clear
     until she divorced him.11   "He stood up on stage in Los Angeles
     and announced that I was the first 'Clear.'  I was so
     embarrassed..."12 
        Within Dianetics itself several Clears are mentioned, who
     would thus have to have been Clear before 1950.  A woman with
     twelve difficult prenatal engrams finally "progressed to
     Clear."13   A husband and wife team Cleared each other.14  A
     pianist who was halted by his engrams became "one of the
     best-paid concert pianists in Hollywood".15 Others are indirectly
     mentioned.16  These pre-Dianetics Clears seem logically to be
     necessary, otherwise how would Hubbard have been able to describe
     what a Clear was like?
        For example, how did Hubbard know that a Clear has "an
     increase in longevity which is at least a hundred to one for
     every hour of therapy"?17  Wouldn't at least one Cleared person
     have had to have lived for quite some time before Hubbard, with
     his reported penchant for scientific accuracy, could write this? 
     Also, how did he know that about 500 hours of auditing is the
     average amount needed to produce a Clear,18 and that it otherwise
     takes from 30 to 1200 hours?19   This indicates that there must
     have been several Clears at the time Hubbard wrote Dianetics.
        And last but not least, John Mcmaster was checked and double
     checked, and the Church of Scientology officially declared him
     the first Clear on March 9, 1966.20
        Will the real first Clear please stand up?  
     
        Since it seems impossible to understand the state of Clear by
     observing the first example, let us come at it from what Hubbard
     wrote from his observations of Clears in Dianetics.  "If this
     person now feels he can solve all the problems of life, lick the
     world with one hand tied behind him and feel a friend to all men,
     you have a Clear."21  Hubbard is helpful here, although it could
     be argued that he is also describing a drunk.
        Of course, Hubbard has more scientific sounding definitions:
     "the Clear is an unaberrated person... [who] has no engrams which
     can be restimulated..."22   This sounds more helpful, but how can
     you tell when there are no more engrams?  
        Engrams, those memories stored in the reactive mind, have to
     be found, and gone over and over until the auditor perceives that
     the pre-Clear has come up through apathy, anger, boredom, and
     finally laughter.23  Once the pre-Clear is having a good time
     reliving his father's attack on his mother or his mother
     attempting to abort him (to use Hubbard's examples), then the
     engram is said to have moved out of the reactive mind and into
     the analytical mind, and the auditor moves on to search for
     another engram.  Simply put, then, an auditor has a pre-Clear
     relive an experience (which has pain and unconsciousness in the
     experience) stored in the reactive mind over and over until the
     auditor is satisfied that the engram no longer affects the
     pre-Clear.  At this point the engram is considered erased [note:
     there seems to be a contradiction here in that the auditor is not
     to evaluate for the pre-clear, although here the auditor decides
     when an engram is gone].
        Although Hubbard declared that anyone can audit (Dianetics is,
     after all, a how-to-audit manual) there are many pitfalls an
     auditor must watch out for while searching for engrams.  He may
     encounter a "lie factory" engram that makes the pre-Clear
     "remember" things that never really occurred.  Hubbard offers no
     help in differentiating between actual engrams and "lie factory"
     memories, and in fact says you will wind up in a "tangled
     hash."24
        The "denyer" engram may hide itself by denying its own
     existence. Phrases in an engram like "I'm not here" and "forget
     about it" will hide its existence from the auditor because the
     pre-Clear, in his aberrated state, takes language phrases in an
     engram literally.  The method used to find these is to GUESS at a
     phrase that may be in the engram.  In one example, Hubbard tells
     of an auditor who tried 200 phrases before he got one that seemed
     to fit the bill.25  This would seem by the auditing methods used
     then to probably have taken days of the auditor telling the
     pre-Clear to "Repeat this phrase, 'you won't find me' (pre-Clear
     repeats many times.  No apparent evidence of an engram, so...) 
     Now repeat 'I can't be found'..."  Doesn't this seem to be a way
     to drive someone insane rather than therapy?  And Hubbard says
     there are thousands of denyer phrases!!!26
        The "bouncer" engram is another deceptive type, with phrases
     like "get out," which kicks the pre-Clear out of the engram.27 
     Again, the solution is to GUESS at a phrase since this is the
     best way to find engrams.28  Consequently a lot of guessing goes
     on in this precise "scientific" process of auditing.
        The "holder", "misdirector", "grouper", and "derailer" all
     offer similar problems to the auditor.  And all the above are
     simply blocks to FINDING an engram.  There are also problems in
     eradicating the engram.  You may think an engram has been erased,
     yet you may only have reduced its effect on the pre-Clear.  
        There is even the possibility that the pre-Clear has engrams
     in another language that he doesn't know about!29  How these can
     be declared eradicated when there is no proof of their existence
     in the first place strains the imagination to the utmost.
         The above (incomplete) examples of problems in auditing are
     brought up to show that finding someone who has no engrams is a
     difficult task, since engrams according to Hubbard's own words
     are often hard to detect.  And if just one engram escapes
     detection, you do not have a Clear.
        Let us consider a theoretical example of a person who knows
     Dianetics but is not a Clear.  This person, during auditing,
     kicks in a "lie factory" engram, and since this person
     understands the auditing process he is skillfully able to create
     fake engrams, and even can fake its eradication.  His mother
     lived with her Greek parents until the fifth month of pregnancy,
     and engrams in the Greek language were instilled in the fetus. 
     The auditor found prenatals in auditing (after the fifth month),
     and it was assumed that all were eradicated, since the person
     became much more assertive, happier, and the like after many
     hours of auditing.  This person could be declared Clear because
     the "lie factory" engrams were skilled at hiding by understanding
     the auditing game, and the foreign language engrams were never
     restimulated or found because auditing was done in English.  This
     is a perfectly conceivable case under Hubbard's theories.  But a
     worse case might be when an auditor continually searches for
     weeks trying to find engrams that don't even exist, in other
     words, auditing a Clear.
        It should be obvious from the above that the entire process of
     auditing is subjective.  An engram is declared gone because the
     auditor perceives that the person has gotten better.  A Clear is
     declared because the auditor decides he is now free of
     "aberration" and "psychosomatic illness."30  Hubbard even states
     that "The subjective reality, not the objective reality, is the
     important question to the auditor."31   This massive amount of
     subjectivity puts a strain on Hubbard's claims of scientific
     accuracy.
        The auditor is continually required to make subjective
     decisions and yet is taught that the entire process is a
     mechanistic, scientifically precise exercise.  The auditor is
     never allowed to consider that a hindrance to auditing is from
     anything other than engrams.  If a person is skeptical of
     engrams, the auditor is assured that an engram is causing the
     skepticism32 and certainly not a healthy amount of research on
     the part of the skeptic.  When someone "resists" auditing, that
     is caused by an engram rather than the person's conclusion that
     dianetics is stupid.33  Boredom is never from genuine boredom,
     according to Hubbard, but from an engram.  Consequently, anything
     other than full acceptance and submission to dianetics auditing
     must be caused by engrams.  
        This entire process of finding and eradicating engrams is
     totally subjective.  Although Hubbard tries valiantly to make
     auditing seem a mere mechanical process34 with his engineering
     and scientific talk, the mind is not a mechanical object.  It is
     the most complex device nature ever made, and has to this day
     baffled those who have tried to figure out how it works. 
     Personality, culture, upbringing, and more, influence individual
     actions, not just a finite set of past events incorrectly stored
     in the reactive mind.  
     
        In the real world, the state of Clear is basically a rank
     within the Church of Scientology.  In the real world, the
     superhuman qualities of Clear have not been perceived by
     independent investigators, nor have these superhumans been able
     to take over or at least greatly effect society in any fashion. 
     In other words, although thousands of people have obtained the
     rank of Clear, there is no proof that any of them fit Hubbard's
     grandiose claims for them in Dianetics.  Nor have they been able
     to accomplish what Hubbard claimed they could.  
     
     PROBLEMS WITH THE ENGRAM THEORY
     
     1. CONDITIONING
        Conditioning is an alternative explanation of people's
     behavior to Hubbard's engram theory.  I wondered why Hubbard
     argued that there was no such thing as conditioning35 until I
     realized that if conditioning exists, then many activities
     attributed to engrams could more rationally be attributed to
     conditioning, and thus, people could receive help elsewhere than
     from dianetics.
        Hubbard even unwittingly provides a good example of
     conditioning himself.  A small fish in shallow, stale waters is
     bumped and hurt by a larger fish trying to eat him.  The small
     fish got an engram from this occurrence (pain and momentary
     unconsciousness being present).  The small fish is attacked again
     later in a quite similar manner, and the first engram is "keyed
     in", thus reinforcing the first engram.  From then on, whenever
     the fish enters stale, shallow waters, he panics and heads
     elsewhere, even when there is no danger present.36  This is very
     similar to Pavlov's experiments with dogs who drooled at the
     sound of a bell that normally rang only when food was provided. 
     Yet Hubbard claims that Pavlov's dogs "might be trained to do
     this or that.  But it was not conditioning.  The dogs went mad
     because they were given engrams."37
         From Hubbard's own example of the fish, we can see that some
     things described as engrams can in fact be better attributed to
     conditioning.  The fish story could work just as well without
     pain and unconsciousness even being present, thus negating
     engrams.  Were we to continue following the fish around, he may
     at a later time figure out that stale, shallow waters do not
     always include dangers, and thus may return to those areas to
     feed.  Conditioning can thus be unlearned, whereas engrams remain
     until audited out.  
        This is much more than a game of semantics.  Conditioning is a
     learned pattern of responsive behavior acquired from repetitive
     stimulation of a certain type.  Pavlov's dogs learned that
     whenever they heard a bell that food became accessible to them. 
     They became accustomed to anticipating food at the sound of the
     bell, so naturally they salivated at the sound of the bell after
     a time, even when food did not always thereafter accompany the
     sound (this works with humans, also).  Hubbard's engram theory
     applied to this case cannot account for such behavior, since
     there was no pain or unconsciousness present during these
     experiences, and thus no engrams were created.  Conditioning is a
     danger to Hubbard's engram theory because it is an alternative
     explanation for certain behaviors.  The fish in Hubbard's above
     example need not have been knocked unconscious or even been in
     pain to learn to avoid certain areas where it regularly came in
     contact with an enemy.  Pavlov's dogs did not have engrams that
     made them salivate.  Where engrams don't exist, there is no need
     for dianetics.
        Habits are also caused by engrams, according to Hubbard.   
     Habits "can only be changed by those things which change
     engrams."38  Habits may be considered a simple form of
     conditioning where a person unconsciously trains him or herself
     to perform a certain activity at certain times.  A girl, for
     example, may twirl her hair when she gets nervous.  A grownup
     might bite his nails when he is under stress.  If habits are
     engramic, as Hubbard states, then the only way to stop a habit
     would be through dianetic auditing.  But certainly common sense
     and life experience teach that this is not the case at all.  The
     girl generally outgrows her hair twirling, and the man can train
     himself not to bite his nails.  There is no need for the engram
     theory to explain habits, and in fact the engram theory is
     weakened by the constant experience of people stopping habits
     without dianetic auditing.
     
     2. THE INTELLIGENT MORON
     
        The reactive mind, says Hubbard, is moronic.  It considers
     everything in an engram to be identical to everything else in the
     engram.  "Recall that the reactive mind can think only on this
     equation - A=A=A, where the three A's may be respectively a
     horse, a swear word, and the verb to spit.  Spitting is the same
     as horses is the same as God."39  Remember this example, where
     the reactive mind cannot differentiate between a verb, an animal,
     the deity, and an expletive.
        Remember also that the reason engrams cause problems is that
     they replay past memories where someone is stating something, and
     then the reactive mind literally interprets the statement and
     causes the person to act on that statement.  I have previously
     mentioned the example of a child whose engram stated "You've got
     to take it."  This child grew up to be a kleptomaniac because the
     reactive mind literally interpreted this statement in the engram,
     although it was actually the father yelling at the mother while
     raping her.
        But there is a contradiction here.  On the one hand, Hubbard
     states that the reactive mind thinks in identities, A=A=A.  On
     the other hand, the reactive mind understands a most complex
     concept unique to man, language.  In order to understand
     language, you must be able to differentiate between sounds, such
     as "ch" and "th".  You must be able to differentiate between
     verbs and nouns.  As anyone who has learned a second language can
     attest, understanding a language is an enormous analytical
     challenge, yet this is what is required of the moronic reactive
     mind in Hubbard's theory.
        Hubbard does not grasp this contradiction at all.  He skirts
     the issue to some degree, stating for example that you should
     never name your son a junior (George, Jr. etc.) since any engrams
     with"George" in them will be interpreted by the reactive mind to
     apply to the junior when he grows up (although, surprisingly,
     Hubbard named his son L. Ron Hubbard, Jr.).  "I hate George", for
     example, is incorrectly interpreted and applied to the junior,
     "though Mother meant Father".40  But one can see in this case
     that the reactive mind could not tell one George from another,
     although it could differentiate between the "I" sound and the "G"
     sound, and also understood which sound was the noun, which the
     verb, and which the pronoun.  It could not only differentiate the
     sounds into the three words, it could comprehend that "I" meant
     the mother, "hate" meant dislike intensely, and "George" meant
     the junior.
        Now, let us remember the previous statement of Hubbard where a
     horse equals a swear word equals a deity.  Consider also this
     other example, where "The reactive mind says 'NO!' Arthritis is a
     baby is a pig grunt is a prayer to God."41   In this case a pig
     grunt cannot be differentiated between a prayer, nor an animate
     object, for that matter.
        According to Hubbard's theories there is a great gulf between
     the analytical mind and the reactive mind.  They are in fact in
     different areas of the body, where the analytical mind is in the
     brain and the reactive mind is "cellular".  The analytical mind
     is said to be a perfect computer, making no mistakes and able to
     compute difficult items in split seconds.  The reactive mind is
     moronic and thinks that everything equals everything else.  If it
     could be shown that there was really little difference between
     the two or that they were so thoroughly connected that there was
     essentially no differentiation between the two, then dianetics
     theory collapses because its two major competitive components are
     revealed as in fact one.  And this in fact is the case:
     
     * As has been shown already, the reactive mind understands
     language, which is perhaps the shining triumph of analytical
     thinking.  
     * The reactive mind also makes decisions.  It must decide one of
     five types of reaction to an engram that it will command the body
     to perform.42
     * It distinguishes in an engram between the ally and the enemy,
     if there are two or more people present.43
     * It chooses which valence, or which role, to dramatize from the
     engram.44
     * It decides which engram to restimulate if there is more than
     one engram with the same sensual recording being restimulated.
     
        For Hubbard to call the reactive mind moronic, and yet declare
     that it can perform all these functions, seems to be
     contradictory.  Since Hubbard did not seem to perceive this
     contradiction, he of course offered no explanation, so I offer
     two possible ones that could be presented to try to save the
     theory.
     1) The reactive mind connects with the analytical mind and
     utilizes some of its abilities.  
     2) The reactive mind is actually a part of the analytical mind.
        Either of these solutions is, however, actually a death blow
     to dianetics.  The whole point of dianetics is that these two
     minds cannot communicate and are completely separate.  Dianetic
     auditing, where one spends hundreds of hours searching out
     memories in the reactive mind, is touted as the only way that
     memories in the reactive mind can be transferred to the
     analytical mind and erased from the reactive mind.  If #1 or #2
     above were true, then this roundabout trip into the reactive mind
     would not be necessary, since the two minds are already on
     speaking terms.
        I understand that this point is perhaps hard to follow, but I
     have elaborated on it because I believe that if I am right, then
     the dianetic theory collapses right at the beginning of its
     explanation of how the mind works.  If there is no gulf between
     the reactive and analytical mind (if this dichotomy even exists
     in reality), as dianetics posits, then there is no reason for
     dianetics to exist, as there would be no need for auditing.
     
     
     
     1 DIANETICS, p. 24
     2 DIANETICS, p. 228
     3 DIANETICS, p. 24
     4 DIANETICS, p. 18
     5 DIANETICS, p. 543
     6 L. Ron Hubbard and staff, WHAT IS SCIENTOLOGY? (Los Angeles;
     Church of 
     of California, 1978), p.202
     7 L. Ron Hubbard, "The Story of Dianetics and Scientology"
     cassette tape, 1958. tape #581OC18
     8 ibid.
     9 L. Ron Hubbard, RESEARCH AND DISCOVERY SERIES (Copenhagen,
     Denmark; Scientology Publications Organization ApS, 1980) vol. 1,
     p.84
     10 Russell Miller, BARE FACED MESSIAH (New York; Henry Holt and
     Co., 1987), p.165
     11 Stewart Lamont, RELIGION, INC. (London; Harrap, Ltd., 1986) 
     p.24
     12 Bent Corydon and L. Ron Hubbard, Jr., L. RON HUBBARD, MESSIAH
     OR MADMAN? (Secaucus, NJ; Lyle Stuart, Inc., 1987) p.288
     13 DIANETICS, p. 365
     14 DIANETICS, p. 502-3
     15 DIANETICS, p. 316
     16 DIANETICS, pp. 211,228,311,552
     17 DIANETICS, 1975 edition, p.417.  This is not in the newer
     version.
     18 DIANETICS, p.258
     19 DIANETICS, p.519
     20 RELIGION, INC., pp.53-4
     21 DIANETICS, p.414
     22 DIANETICS, p.565
     23 DIANETICS, p.429
     24 DIANETICS, p.256
     25 DIANETICS, p.295
     26 DIANETICS, p.440
     27 DIANETICS, p.282-3
     28 DIANETICS, p.369
     29 DIANETICS, pp.418-419
     30 DIANETICS, p.227
     31 DIANETICS, p.522
     32 DIANETICS, p.246-7
     33 DIANETICS, p.479
     34 DIANETICS, p.522
     35 DIANETICS, p.193
     36 DIANETICS, pp. 88-9
     37 DIANETICS, p.193
     38 DIANETICS, p.56
     39 DIANETICS, p.243
     40 DIANETICS, p.405
     41 DIANETICS, p.323
     42 DIANETICS, p.197-200
     43 DIANETICS, p.463
     44 DIANETICS, p.155
     
     
     
     SCIENCE AND DIANETICS
     
     
        L. Ron Hubbard constantly makes the claim that dianetics is a
     "scientific fact."  In fact, he makes that claim 35 times in
     Dianetics.  For example, "All our facts are functional and these
     facts are scientific facts, supported wholly and completely by
     laboratory evidence."1  Hubbard shows that he regards correct
     scientific experimentation to a high degree by carefully hedging
     his approval of another scientific experiment done by someone
     else.  This test was conducted in a hospital to see whether
     unattended children became sick more often than attended
     children.  "The test... seems to have been conducted with proper
     controls,"2 he cautiously states, not having apparently seen the
     entire written report.
        In The Phoenix Lectures Hubbard is also critical of the early
     psychiatric work of Wundt in the latter 1800's; "Scientific
     methodology was actually not, there and then, immediately
     classified... what they did was unregulated, uncontrolled,
     wildcat experiments, fuddling around collecting enormous
     quantities of data..."3  And in a lecture in 1954, Hubbard
     complained loudly and long about how poorly psychologists and
     psychoanalysts conducted research and how they neglected to
     maintain proper records.4
       I am similarly cautious about Hubbard's experiments, especially
     since there seems to be no record of how they were done, what
     exactly the results were, what kind of control group was used,
     whether the experiments were double blind, how many subjects
     there were in each experiment, and other pertinent data.  I have
     asked ranking scientologists for this data, and have fervently
     searched for it myself, and have yet to see it.  This brings up
     the question about whether Hubbard can call his original research
     science.
        And, in keeping with the need to understand each word we use,
     it brings up the question of just what science is.  What does it
     take for someone to legitimately make the claim that his ideas
     are scientifically proven?  When can something be called a
     scientific fact?
     
        As with many subjects in life, the deeper one looks into
     science, the more complex it gets.  There is not even one single
     agreed upon definition for science in the scientific community. 
     Those people who seek to establish a unifying definition are
     dealing in what is called the philosophy of science.  One of the
     most respected and most influential of these is Karl Popper. 
     Popper claims that no theory can be called scientific unless it
     can be demonstrated that deliberate attempts to prove a theory
     wrong are unsuccessful.  Thus, a theory must open itself up to
     criticism from the scientific community to see whether it can
     withstand critical scrutiny.
      Popper's formulation for scientific validation is;
     
       (1) It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for
     nearly every theory - if we look for confirmations.
       (2) Confirmations should count only if they are the result of
     RISKY PREDICTIONS; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the
     theory in question, we should have expected an event which was
     incompatible with the theory - an event which would have refuted
     the theory.
       (3) Every 'good' scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids
     certain things to happen.  The more a theory forbids, the better
     it is.
       (4) A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is
     non-scientific.  Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as
     people often think) but a vice.
       (5) Every genuine TEST of a theory is an attempt to falsify it,
     or to refute it.  Testability is falsifiability; but there are
     degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more
     exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were,
     greater risks.
       (6) Confirming evidence should not count EXCEPT WHEN IT IS THE
     RESULT OF A GENUINE TEST OF THE THEORY; and this means that it
     can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify
     the theory (I now speak in such cases of 'corroborating
     evidence'.)
       (7) Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false,
     are still upheld by their admirers - for example by introducing
     AD HOC some auxiliary assumption, or by re-interpreting the
     theory AD HOC in such a way that it escapes refutation.  Such a
     procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from
     refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering,
     its scientific status.5
     
        The falsifiability approach is a good one, because no theory
     can be proven unless every case possible is individually examined
     to see that it applies to every possible case, which is normally
     impossible to do.  For instance, a popular example of a "fact" in
     science classrooms of the 19th century was that "all swans are
     white."  This was, however, shown to be untrue when a variety of
     swan in South America was discovered to be black.  This "fact"
     was proven wrong by a previously unknown exception to the rule,
     and this example points out that it is never entirely possible to
     prove a theory in the positive without examining every possible
     case of that theory. (It is, of course, not possible to
     completely falsify many theories also, but for the sake of
     brevity I would refer the reader to Popper's Logic of Scientific
     Discovery for further arguments on this subject.) 
        Let us go now momentarily to one of Hubbard's scientific
     claims: 
     
     Its [the reactive mind's] identity can now be certified by any
     technician in any clinic or in any group of men.  Two hundred and
     seventy-three individuals have been examined and treated,
     representing all the various types of inorganic mental illness
     and the many varieties of psychosomatic ills.  In each one this
     reactive mind was found operating, its principles unvaried.6
     
        After the brief previous discussion of science, we can begin
     to question Hubbard's claim to scientific validity.   Exactly who
     were these 273 people?  Were they believers in Hubbard's theories
     or a representative sample of the public at large?  Exactly how
     was the experiment conducted that proved the existence of the
     reactive mind?  This needs to be known so others can try it to
     test for variables that Hubbard may have overlooked, to see if
     his experiment produced a statistical fluke, and to help in
     conducting experiments to try to disprove the theory.  The more
     times an experiment is conducted, the more likely it is shown to
     be true, keeping in mind of course that no matter how many times
     an expedition went looking for white swans, it would find them,
     so long as they didn't go to South America.
        Was Hubbard seeking confirmation in his experiments or was he
     attempting to refute his theory, as Popper suggests a true man of
     science would do?  Designing a test that will provide
     confirmation of a thesis is not difficult.  Below is such a test.
     
     A REAL EXPERIMENT COMES UP DRY
     
        Hubbard does mention an experiment to perform that can prove
     the existence of engrams: 
     
     If you care to make the experiment you can take a man, render him
     "unconscious," hurt him and give him information.  By Dianetic
     technique, no matter what information you gave him, it can be
     recovered.  This experiment should not be carelessly conducted
     because YOU MIGHT RENDER HIM INSANE.7 {emphasis in original}
     
        Three researchers at the University of California, Los
     Angeles, decided in 1950 to give this experiment a try.8  
     
     If an individual should be placed, by some means of [sic] other,
     into an unconscious state, then, according to traditional
     psychology, no retention of the events occurring about him should
     take place and consequently, no reports of such events can be
     elicited from the individual, no matter what methods of
     elicitation are employed (hypothesis I).  According to dianetics,
     retention should take place with high fidelity and, therefore an
     account of the events can be elicited by means of dianetic
     auditing (hypothesis II).9
     
        The Dianetic Research Foundation of Los Angeles cooperated
     with the experimenters by providing a subject and several
     qualified auditors.  The subject was a 30 year old male who
     worked for the foundation and was considered a good candidate for
     the experiment by the foundation since he had "sonic" recall and
     had been audited.  The experiment was carefully laid out
     according to dianetic theory and was at all times done under the
     cooperation and suggestions of the Foundation.
        The subject was knocked unconscious with .75 grams of sodium
     pentathol by Dr. A. Davis, MD, who is one of the authors of the
     experiment.  When the subject was found to be unconscious, Mr.
     Lebovits was left alone with the subject while two recording
     devices recorded the session.  Mr. Lebovits read a 35-word
     section of a physics book to the subject, administering pain
     during the reading of the last 18 words.  He then left the room,
     and the patient was allowed to rest for another hour, at which
     time he was awakened.
       Two days later, the professional auditors from the Dianetic
     Research Foundation began to audit the subject, trying to elicit
     the engram, or recording of the spoken text that according to
     dianetic theory resided in the subject's reactive mind.
        The auditors did elicit several possible passages from the
     subject and supplied these to the experimenters.  The results
     were that "comparison with the selected passage shows that none
     of the above-quoted phrases, nor any other phrases quoted in the
     report, bear any relationship at all to the selected passage. 
     Since the reception of the first interim report, in November
     1950, the experimenter tried frequently and repeatedly to obtain
     further reports, but so far without success."10
     
        The experimenters concluded by stating that while their test
     case was only one subject, they felt that the experiment was well
     done and strongly suggested that the engram hypothesis was not
     validated.  I know of no other scientifically valid experiment
     besides this one by non-dianeticists which attempted to prove
     Hubbard's engram theory.
        Here was an experiment designed to confirm the engram
     hypothesis which, according to Hubbard, was a "scientific fact." 
     Apparently (or, perhaps, IF) Hubbard did this test he got
     positive results.  But this is a good example for showing that
     even one type of experiment should be conducted several times in
     order to be sure of its outcome.  Perhaps some neutral party
     today could be persuaded to attempt it again.
        There is one point I consider the most damning to Hubbard's
     attempt to cloak dianetics in scientific validity.  While he
     seems to be inviting others to conduct their own investigations
     (and thus seems to be open to attempts to refute his claims), he
     never explains his own experimental methods, thus closing the
     door to the scientific community's ability to attempt to verify
     his claims.  In order to evaluate Hubbard's claims, the
     scientific community would seek to replicate his experiments to
     see if the same results were obtained and to check for possible
     influences on the experiment Hubbard may have overlooked.  They
     would also, as Popper suggests, try to shoot holes in the theory,
     either on a logical basis or by conducting refutational
     experiments.
        If Hubbard really respected science, he would have welcomed
     and helped the scientific community in its attempts to both
     support and attempt to refute his theories.  But he and his
     successors in dianetics and Scientology refuse to join in
     scientific debate over the merits of Hubbard's ideas, maintaining
     a dogmatic rather than scientific stance.  
        My attempts to get the experiments from the Church of
     Scientology have been in vain.  I have never heard of anyone who
     has seen them, nor even anyone who claimed to know how they were
     conducted.  It is mainly for this reason, I believe, that
     dianetics cannot claim scientific validity.  Until Hubbard's
     supposed original experiments are released to the public,
     dianetics can only be called science fiction.
        As a footnote, the only references I found to Hubbard's actual
     notes on any original experiments were on taped lectures by
     Hubbard in 1950 and 1958.  He stated in 1950 that "my records are
     in little notebooks, scribbles, in pencil most of them.  Names
     and addresses are lost... there was a chaotic picture..."  A
     certain Ms. Benton asked Hubbard for his notes to validate his
     research, but when she saw them, "she finally threw up her hands
     in horror and started in on the project [validation] clean."11 
     In another lecture in 1958 he explained "the first broad test"12
     of dianetics, wherein he would audit some patients of Dr.
     Yankeewitz at the Oak Knoll Hospital without the knowledge of the
     doctor.  Hubbard called these shoddily done tests "significant",
     but added that they are "unfortunately not totally available to
     us".13
        If this is the type of material Hubbard was basing his
     "scientific facts" on, then there is probably no need to even see
     them to be able to reject them with good conscience.
     
     
     
     1 DIANETICS, (1987 edition) p. 96
     2 DIANETICS, p.143
     3 L. Ron Hubbard, THE PHOENIX LECTURES,  (Los Angeles; Bridge
     Publications, 1982) p.203
     4 L. Ron Hubbard, "Lecture:Universes", 1954, from the "Universes
     and the War Between Theta and Mest" collection, cassette tape
     #5404C06
     5 Karl Popper, CONJECTURES AND REFUTATIONS: THE GROWTH OF
     SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE (NY; Harper Torch Books, 1963) pp. 36,37
     6 DIANETICS, p.70-71
     7 Dianetics, p.76
     8 Psychological Newsletter (Dept. of Psychology, New York
     University, New York, NY) 1959, 10:131-134 "An Experimental
     Investigation of Hubbard's Engram Hypothesis (Dianetics)", by
     Fox, Davis, and Lebovits
     9 ibid. p.132
     10 ibid. p.133
     11 L. Ron Hubbard, "What Dianetics Can Do", lecture series 2,
     1950, cassette tape #5009M23
     12  "The Story of Dianetics and Scientology"
     13 ibid.
     
     
     
     HUBBARD'S SOURCES
     
          Advance comes from asking free-minded questions of nature, 
          not from quoting the works and thinking the thoughts of 
          by-gone years.1
     
        There is certainly no book in existence quite like Dianetics,
     with its wild scientific claims and unsubstantiated arguments. 
     The claim is that dianetics was a totally unique theory of the
     mind wrought from Hubbard's "many years of exact research and
     careful testing."2 But was it rather a loose composite of already
     existing theories mixed with novel, unproven ideas?  Despite
     Hubbard's claims of originality, many of the ideas in dianetics
     were already existing and even in vogue before dianetics
     appeared.  Either Hubbard really studied other (uncredited) works
     before he wrote Dianetics, or he wasted years of his time
     re-inventing the wheel.
        Although there are no reference notes in Dianetics to see what
     are Hubbard's ideas and what are borrowed, we can quickly
     eliminate the idea that dianetics appeared "from the blue" by
     Hubbard's own statements.  In Dianetics itself is the statement
     that "many schools of mental healing from the Aesculapian to the
     modern hypnotist were studied after the basic philosophy of
     dianetics had been postulated".3  Alfred Korzybski, Emil
     Kraepelin, Franz Mesmer, Ivan Pavlov, Herbert Spencer, and others
     are mentioned as resources in Dianetics, so we must assume
     Hubbard was crediting these people to some degree.  He must
     certainly have known, then, of at least some of the research from
     his time which will be mentioned in this article.  Hubbard in
     other settings acknowledged Sigmund Freud (especially through
     Commander "Snake" Thompson),4 Count Alfred Korzybski,5 and
     Aleister Crowley,6 as contributors to his ideas on the human
     mind.  In a speech in 1958, Hubbard stated that he had spent much
     time in the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital medical library in 1945
     during a stay for ulcers, where "I was able to get in a year's
     study."7
        In fact, many of the theories and ideas in Dianetics can be
     found in scientific and philosophical literature previous to the
     first publishing of Hubbard's theories.  Parts of Dianetics, for
     example, have striking resemblance to two articles found in
     Volume 28 (1941) of the Psychoanalytic Review.
        Dianetics theory posits the existence of engrams.  These are
     memories of events that occur around us when our analytical mind
     is unconscious, and they are recorded in a separate area of the
     mind called the reactive mind.  A seemingly unique theory in
     Dianetics is that these memories begin being stored "in the cells
     of the zygote - which is to say, with conception."8  These
     engrams can cause problems for the person throughout life unless
     handled through dianetics auditing.
        Dr. J. Sadger, nine years before the introduction of Dianetics
     in 1950, wrote that several of his patients were not cured of
     their psychological problems until he had taken them back to
     their existence as sperm or ovum.  He declared that "there exists
     certainly a memory, although an unconscious one, of embryonic
     days, which persists throughout life and may continuously
     determine an action."9  Sadger spends much time explaining how
     his patients' memories of the time when they were zygotes or even
     sperm or ovum had affected their adult behaviors, noting that "an
     unconscious lasting memory must have remained from these
     embryonic days."10   There were "unmistakable dreams" of being a
     sperm in the father's testicle.
        Engrams, those unconscious memories in dianetics, are said by
     Hubbard to be stored in the cells of the body and passed on to
     their clone cells and finally on to the adult being.  Hubbard
     claimed to discover that "patients sometimes have a feeling that
     they are sperms or ovums... this is called the sperm dream."11 
     It was impossible, he claimed, to deny to a pre-clear that he
     could remember being a sperm.  But Sadger wrote about this first,
     and Hubbard could well have read this in his "year's study" at
     Oak Knoll Hospital.
        Another coincidental "discovery" of Hubbard and Sadger was
     that mothers often attempt to abort their child.  Sadger states
     that "so many a fall or other accident of a pregnant woman is
     nothing else than an attempt at abortion on the part of the
     unconscious, not to mention those cases where the mother seeks to
     free herself more or less forcibly from the unwanted child."12  
     Hubbard concurs; "Attempted abortion is very common,"13 and in
     fact "twenty or thirty abortion attempts are not uncommon in the
     aberee".14  Again, not an idea "from the blue."
        Life in the womb was not very kind, according to one of
     Sadger's patients; "Perhaps when father performed coitus with
     mother in her pregnancy I was much shaken and rocked.  Shall that
     have been one reason that I so easily became dizzy and that all
     my life I have had an aversion even as a child from swings and
     carousels?"15  Hubbard, in a similar vein, insists that the
     mother "should not have coitus forced upon her.  For every coital
     experience is an engram in the child during pregnancy."16  "Papa
     becomes passionate and baby has the sensation of being put into a
     running washing machine."17
        There are at least three other similarities like the "sperm
     dreams", commonality of abortion attempts, and fetus discomfort
     during parental sex.  This seems quite a coincidence, but it is
     not known whether Hubbard read Sadger's article.  Suffice it to
     say that these are major ideas in dianetics, but they are not new
     ideas.
     
        The second article under discussion from Psychoanalytic Review
     deals with the unbearable conditions during birth and the affects
     of these in later life.  Grace W. Pailthorpe, M.D., argued in
     this 1941 article that patients should be psychoanalyzed more
     deeply into the period of infancy, or at least to the 'trauma of
     birth'.  Otherwise no lasting therapeutic effect could be
     expected.  Birth has traumatized all of us, she declares, and
     these unconscious memories drive us in our adulthood.  "It is
     only when deep analysis has finally exposed the unconscious
     deviations of our vital force"18 that we can recover and enjoy
     life.  
        "It was no obscure theory," wrote Hubbard, "which brought
     about the discovery of the exact role prenatal experience and
     birth play in aberration and psychosomatic ills."  He
     coincidentally concurs with Pailthorpe's obscure theory, however.
        With Pailthorpe's article, for example, we can also note the
     dramatic similarities of dianetics with simple Freudian
     psychoanalysis.  There is in both the return to past times in the
     patient's life to search for the source of his or her current
     problems.  Once these problematic memories are discovered and
     treated the problems vanish.  In Pailthorpe's article we have a
     man who was hopelessly traumatized by the events at his birth. 
     He was cruelly kicked out of his "home" in the womb, and his
     resistance to this was assumed to be the cause of the immediate
     traumas of the nurse's and mother's attentions (which were
     "painful to the child's sensitive body"19).  These traumas caused
     headaches and social disorders in adult life.  Psychoanalysis
     discovered the causes (birth trauma) and when these were brought
     to the conscious level with their meaning explained, the
     headaches and social dysfunctions were alleviated.
        Dianetics follows this line of reasoning to a great degree. 
     According to Hubbard, engrams (past traumas) are discovered in
     the pre-clear's past, and bringing these engrams into
     consciousness (from the reactive to the analytic mind) alleviates
     the disorder.  Hubbard claims that after auditing people (he had
     the pre-clear lie on a couch in Freudian imitation),
     "psycho-somatic illness...by dianetic technique...has been
     eradicated entirely in every case."20 
        In Dianetics, the reader is left with the impression that the
     ideas of birth and pre-birth memories and traumas, multiple
     abortion attempts, and fetal discomfort in the womb are new
     discoveries.  As can be seen, this is not the case.  And there
     are many impressions of "new" and "unique" that are incorrect as
     well. 
     
     THOMAS HOBBES
     
        Another important "discovery" of Hubbard's is that "Man, as a
     life form, can be demonstrated to obey in all his actions and
     purposes the one command: 'Survive!'."21   Hubbard's four
     "dynamics" of self, sex (meaning procreation), group, and
     mankind, all deal with survival of man.  Although Hubbard makes
     grandiose claims that he discovered that man's ultimate goal is
     survival, one can trace this idea back to Thomas Hobbes, an
     English philosopher who wrote in the 1600's.  In his famous work,
     Leviathan, Hobbes wrote; "The Right of Nature... is the Liberty
     each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himselfe, for the
     preservation of his own Nature; that is to say, of his own Life;
     and consequently, of doing any thing, which in his own Judgement,
     and Reason, hee shall conceive to be the aptest means
     thereunto."22  This, in Hubbard's terms, is the first dynamic, or
     personal survival.  Leviathan is divided into three parts, on
     Man, Commonwealth, and Darkness.  The first, in Hubbard's terms,
     could be said to deal with the first dynamic (self-survival), and
     the second with the third dynamic (group survival).  "The finall
     Cause, End, or Designe of men... in the introduction of that
     restraint upon themselves (in which wee see them live in
     Common-wealths), is the foresight of their own preservation."23 
     Again we have an idea which Hubbard claims to have discovered,
     found in another's writings years earlier.
        Coincidentally (?), Hobbes has some other ideas in common with
     Hubbard.  At the beginning of every dianetics and Scientology
     book is this note: "In reading this book, be very certain you do
     not go past a word you do not understand."24  Throughout both
     dianetics and Scientology training is the notion that words must
     be clearly understood before course study can continue.  This is
     a useful suggestion, and many Scientologists may believe Hubbard
     "discovered" this idea, but Hobbes stressed it over 300 years
     before Hubbard did.  In Leviathan, Hobbes derided others whose
     ideas he was critical of thusly; "The first cause of Absurd
     conclusions I ascribe to the want of Method; in that they begin
     not their Ratiocination [argument] from Definitions; that is,
     from settled significations of their words."25  Hobbes covers
     this idea several times, stressing that "in the right Definition
     of Names, lyes the first use of Speech; which is the Acquisition
     of Science: and in wrong, or no Definitions, lyes the first
     abuse; from which proceed all false and senselesse Tenets."26
        I will leave it to the reader to investigate the other similar
     ideas between Hobbes and Hubbard, and will leave the question
     open whether Hubbard borrowed rather than discovered these ideas,
     since again there is no complete list of what books Hubbard had
     read.
     
     ALEISTER CROWLEY
     
     
        Hubbard had clear connections to the occult.  Even in the
     first publication of dianetics in "Astounding Science Fiction",
     Hubbard in explaining how he did his "research" into what the
     mind was doing, says he used "automatic writing, speaking and
     clairvoyance"27 to discover what the mind's memory banks were
     doing.  Automatic writing is an occult method of communicating
     with the spirit world, although psychologists consider its
     products to arise from subconscious thoughts of the writer. 
     Whichever is correct, it is hardly a method used by competent
     scientific researchers.
        Hubbard's connection to the occultist Aleister Crowley is
     quite clear and noteworthy.  Crowley called himself the
     Anti-Christ, the Beast of Revelations, and 666.  Russell Miller
     has adequately chronicled Hubbard's connection in 1945 to John W.
     Parsons, who headed Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis chapter in Los
     Angeles.28  Hubbard was an active member in this group for
     several months, and first met his second wife there.  The Church
     of Scientology claims that Hubbard was actually infiltrating this
     group in order to break it up, but the following should suffice
     to dismiss this claim.
        In the Philadelphia Doctorate Course lectures taped in 1952,
     Hubbard discusses occult magic of the middle ages, and recommends
     a current book - "it's fascinating work in itself, and that's
     work written by Aleister Crowley, the late Aleister Crowley, my
     very good friend."29  The book recommended was The Master
     Therion, (published in London in 1929) later re-released as
     Magick in Theory and Practise.  L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. asserts that
     during the time when the Philadelphia course was given his father
     would read Crowley's works "in preparation for the next day's
     lecture..."30
        There are interesting similarities between Crowley's writings
     and the teachings of Hubbard.  Dianetics' Time Track, in which
     every incident in a person's life is chronologically recorded in
     full in the mind, is quite similar to Crowley's Magical Memory. 
     The Magical Memory is developed over time until "memories of
     childhood reawaken"31 which were previously forgotten, and
     memories of previous incarnations are recalled as well.  Hubbard
     gives examples in the Philadelphia Doctorate Course of several
     people remembering lives earlier on earth, some up to a million
     years ago.  The similarity between the Magical Memory and Time
     Track, then, is that they both can recall every past incident in
     a person's life, they both can recall incidents from past lives,
     and they both must be developed by certain techniques in order to
     make use of them.
        Both Hubbard and Crowley consider it important to have the
     person recall his or her birth.  "Having allowed the mind to
     return for some hundred times to the hour of birth, it should be
     encouraged to endeavour to penetrate beyond that period"32
     (Crowley).  "After twenty runs through birth, the patient
     experienced a recession of all somatics and 'unconsciousness' and
     aberrative content." "Thus there was no inhibition about looking
     earlier than birth for what Dianetics had begun to call
     basic-basic"33  (Hubbard).  
        Both Hubbard and Crowley are avowedly anti-psychiatry. 
     "Official psychoanalysis is therefore committed to upholding a
     fraud... psychoanalysts have misinterpreted life, and announced
     the absurdity that every human being is essentially an
     anti-social, criminal, and insane animal"34 (Crowley).  Hubbard
     considered that psychiatry controlled most of society and was
     struggling to create their own 1984 world.35
        Hubbard36 and Crowley both posit the ability of the person to
     leave his or her body at times.  Crowley states that the way to
     learn to leave your body is to mock up a body like your own in
     front of your physical body.  Eventually you will learn to leave
     your physical body with your "astral body" and travel and view at
     will without physical restrictions.37  Hubbard teaches the same,
     and his method of "exteriorization" is to tell the person to
     "have preclear mock up own body"38, which will send the person
     outside his body.
        Both Crowley39 and Hubbard40 use an equilateral triangle
     pointing up in a circle as one of their group's symbols.  Both
     use Volume 0 instead of Volume 1 to begin enumerating their
     works.  One could go on for quite some time listing the
     similarities between Crowley's and Hubbard's theories and
     writings, but for more the reader is encouraged to look for him
     or herself.
        In Crowley's Organization are several grade levels.  To reach
     the Grade of Adeptus Exemptus "The Adept must prepare and publish
     a thesis setting forth His knowledge of the Universe, and his
     proposals for its welfare and progress.  He will thus be known as
     the leader of a school of thought."41  It is apparent that
     Hubbard has fulfilled this requirement.
     
     GNOSTICISM
     
        First, an explanation of what gnosticism is.  It is an old
     religious philosophy with Platonic roots.  Basically, gnostics
     believe that we as humans are "outsiders" to this material
     universe.  Our immortal godlike souls were trapped here in a body
     by evil forces, and we are reincarnated continually, while our
     true spiritual identities are clouded from our memory.  It is our
     task to discover the hidden knowledge, or gnosis, that will allow
     us to escape this evil material world of illusion and return to
     our rightful place.  We keep reincarnating until we learn how to
     escape.
     
            The world seems to be 'the epitome of evil'.  Because it 
         is alien to their true nature, human beings must renounce it 
         and flee from it in order to be able to return to their 
         heavenly home.  To achieve this aim they must possess Gnosis, 
         be reborn in their true nature, and be baptized in the cup of 
         knowledge into which the divine intellect has been poured. 42
     
        Salvation begins with a messenger from beyond bringing the
     necessary knowledge to mankind, but this knowledge is given only
     to those deemed worthy, and even then one must follow certain
     steps in order to arrive at the ultimate Truths.  The individual
     must struggle to earn and then incorporate the secret knowledge
     needed to return to his rightful place.
        There is a need for someone to bring this gnosis or knowledge
     to mankind:
     
         It follows that this divine reality cannot be known through 
         the ordinary faculties of the mind.  Illumination, revelation, 
         the intervention of a celestial mediator is required.  He 
         descends from above to call the Gnostic, to rouse him from 
         earthly sleep and drunkenness, to take him back to his divine 
         homeland.43
     
        While on this earth, man is plagued by many difficulties which
     lessen his real abilities and being.  One problem to us all is
     that within each of our bodies is a plethora of spirits or souls,
     causing us harm:
     
            A hierarchy of demons, servile and ready, is continually at
         work in everyone's body, transformed into a remorseless inferno
         in miniature.44
     
        Mankind is also cursed with forgetfulness of his true home and
     true composition, being blinded by this material world.
        As with Christianity today, there were many sects of
     gnosticism.  The most famous gnostics were those that took the
     basic ideas of Christianity and mixed them into their own
     otherworldly theories.  One of the most dangerous enemies of the
     early church were the Christian gnostic movement, for it greatly
     distorted the essential message of Christ and his followers while
     using similar terminology.  The early church fathers, such as
     Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian, spent much of their time
     speaking out against gnosticism.
        Scientology, however, embraces gnosticism.  Its doctrines are
     gnostic, and it uses gnostic writings to support its own ideas. 
     For example, "Advance!" issue 93 has an article entitled "The
     Surprising Christian Tradition of Reincarnation", which relies
     heavily on gnostic writings such as the Pistis Sophia (the best
     known of the surviving gnostic writings) to support its
     viewpoint.  Scientology is clearly gnostic, by its own admission
     and by the similarities to its own and gnostic teachings.  Once
     again, ideas Hubbard declares to be new and discovered by him,
     are shown to be derived from old and widespread teachings in
     existence long before he came along.
        Hubbard claimed to be the sole source of the hidden knowledge
     needed to escape these earthly bonds.  "The mystery of this
     universe... has been, as far as its track is concerned,
     completely occluded.  No one has ever been able to make any
     breakthrough and come off with it and know what happened... I
     finally was able to make a breakthrough which brought people
     through the zone safely."45
        When Hubbard died in 1986, it was announced that he had left
     this "MEST" (the acronym of Matter, Space, Time, and Energy)
     universe to continue his work and research.  In other words, he
     had obtained the gnosis needed to break the bonds to this
     material illusory plane and travel to other worlds or dimensions
     at will.46
        Hubbard was the sole source for the technology Scientologists
     need to break free from this MEST universe.  "Nobody else -
     NOBODY - ever discovered it."47  He is thus the gnostic
     "celestial mediator" empowered to bring mankind the knowledge
     needed to bring us back home.
        Another obvious connection to gnosticism is in the upper level
     of training known as Operating Thetan III, or "The Wall of Fire." 
     It is at this level that the Scientologist first is taught that
     many of his problems are caused by other souls attached to his
     soul.  These souls are detached and sent on their way through the
     course training.  The goal of OTIII is to rid the individual of
     hundreds of "Body Thetans", or other souls attached to the main
     dominant individual.  No one is even allowed to see OTIII
     material until he has completed the previous courses leading up
     to OTIII.48  This material is carefully guarded and treated as a
     great important mystery to be imparted only to those proven
     worthy.
        These great "discoveries" of Hubbard actually were taught as
     far back as 300 AD:

         "For many spirits dwell in it [the body] and do not permit it 
         to be pure; each of them brings to fruition its own works, 
         and they treat it abusively by means of unseemly desires.  
         To me it seems that the heart suffers in much the same way 
         as an inn: for it has holes and trenches dug in it and is 
         often filled with filth by men who live there licentiously 
         and have no regard for the place because it belongs to 
         another."49
     
        Although this sounds almost identical to ideas in OTIII, it is
     in fact a quote from Valentinus, one of the most famous early
     Christian gnostics, writing around 300 AD.  Valentinus taught
     that there was more than one spirit within an individual, causing
     difficulties for the "host" or main soul of the individual.  The
     gnostic Basilides also taught in a similar vein that man
     "preserves the appearance of a wooden horse, according to the
     poetic myth, embracing as he does in one body a host of such
     different spirits."50
        The above is similar to the New Testament idea of demons in
     that demons are "outsiders" from the main inhabitant of the body
     and are problematic to the host.  Gnostics, however, seem to feel
     that it is the normal human condition to have these other souls,
     whereas Christianity considers this a rare aberration.
        Another gnostic idea, that this is a world of illusion, is in
     Scientology doctrine as well.  Scientology teaches that this
     universe we live in is the MEST (matter, energy, space, time)
     universe that exists solely because the non-MEST beings known as
     thetans decided to agree to bind themselves to the rules and laws
     that we see operating here, such as gravity and the speed of
     light: "a Thetan may postulate a material or mental condition and
     subsequently consider that he cannot escape that condition, and
     succumb to the resulting illusion of entrapment within it."51 
     Theta beings (Hubbard's name for the soul) lived here on earth by
     dwelling in a human body.  Humans, that is, the living body,
     existed without the theta being before the thetans were trapped
     in this material universe.  Theta beings are "trapped" into human
     bodies by trickery and forget their true nature:
     
        Your preclear was basically good, happy, ethical and aesthetic
     before the contagion of the MEST universe got him.  Then, still a
     thetan, he wasn't very good but he was still trusting and
     ethical.  Finally, when he had a body - well, look around.52
     
        Scientology then shares the gnostic idea that mankind is
     separate from the physical universe and is trapped against his
     will here.
        As gnosticism is a secret knowledge, Scientology hides its
     upper level or OT level teachings under a strict veil of secrecy. 
     When I visited the Los Angeles "Big Blue Building" of
     Scientology, I was invited to listen to some OT VIII's speak via
     satellite from the "Free Winds" ship where OT VIII is exclusively
     taught.  An OT VII on board said that the OT VIII material is in
     a locked case, and the only way to open the case is to enter a
     certain locked room and pass the case under a laser beam there. 
     Scientologists are taught that if they hear the teachings of OT
     III before they have taken the necessary previous courses, they
     will catch pneumonia and die.
        Early gnostics also used various methods to hide their
     teachings.  The initiations were so secret that today we can only
     piece parts of them together.  The writings of many gnostics were
     purposely vague and incomprehensible, so only the initiated could
     understand them.
        The goal of dianetics and Scientology is to return the Theta
     being to its inherent abilities (i.e. freeing it from the laws of
     this universe) and remove it from its need to have a body.  The
     sole source for accomplishing this is the technology of L. Ron
     Hubbard, celestial mediator of the gnostic Church of Scientology. 
     
        Parenthetically, one can clearly see from above that these
     teachings clash with Christian thinking today.  While
     Scientologists claim that "in Scientology there is no attempt to
     change another's beliefs or to persuade the person away from his
     own religious practice,"53 in reality there is an incongruity of
     beliefs that must fall either to the side of Scientology or
     Christianity.  They are not compatible.  Scientology is gnostic,
     which has been seen from almost the beginning of Christianity to
     be a great threat to correct Christian dogma (see the Ante-Nicene
     Fathers writings, for example), and it requires the belief in
     reincarnation, which is foreign to Christian thought.  Elsewhere
     I write about Hubbard's connection to Aleister Crowley, "my very
     good friend," who called himself the anti-christ and taught
     accordingly.  Hubbard generously borrowed ideas from and admired
     the writings of Crowley.  Obviously, Scientology's claim that
     their ideas will not interfere with a person's Christian beliefs
     is absurd.
     
     
     
     1 DIANETICS, p. 173
     2 DIANETICS, p.ix of 1975 edition.
     3 DIANETICS, p.165.
     4 BARE-FACED MESSIAH pp.230-1
     5 L. Ron Hubbard, cassette tape, "Introduction to Dianetics",
     Dianetics Lecture Series 1.  1950.  Bridge Publications, Inc.
     6 L. Ron Hubbard, Philadelphia Doctorate Course series, cassette
     #18
     7 L. Ron Hubbard,"The Story of Dianetics and Scientology" , 1958
     cassette tape #581OC18
     8 DIANETICS, p.176.
     9 Dr. J. Sadger, "Preliminary Study of the Psychic Life of the
     Fetus and the Primary Germ."  PSYCHOANALYTIC REVIEW July 1941 
     28:3. p.333
     10 Sadger, p.343-4.
     11 DIANETICS, p.391.
     12 Sadger, p.336.
     13 DIANETICS, p. 211.
     14 DIANETICS, p.214.
     15 Sadger, p.352.
     16 DIANETICS, p.214.
     17 DIANETICS, p.176.
     18 Grace W. Pailthorpe, M.D., "Deflection of Energy, As a Result
     of Birth Trauma, and its Bearing Upon Character Formation" (The
     Psychoanalytic Review, vol. 27, pp.305-326) p.326
     19 Pailthorpe, p.307.
     20 DIANETICS, p.123.
     21 DIANETICS, P.29
     22 Thomas Hobbes, LEVIATHAN (London; Penquin Books, 1968) p.189
     23 LEVIATHAN, p.223
     24 DIANETICS, p.vii
     25 LEVIATHAN, p.114
     26 LEVIATHAN, p.106
     27 L. Ron Hubbard, "Dianetics: Evolution of a Science", 
     Astounding Science Fiction May 1950 p.66
     28 BARE-FACED MESSIAH pp.112-130
     29 L. Ron Hubbard, "Conditions of Space/Time/Energy" Philadelphia
     Doctorate Course cassette tape #18  5212C05
     30 L. RON HUBBARD, MESSIAH OR MADMAN? p.305
     31 Aleister Crowley, MAGIC IN THEORY AND PRACTICE (NY: Dover
     Publications, Inc., 1976) p.51 (originally published 1929,
     London)
     32 MAGICK, p.419.
     33 DIANETICS, p. 171 and 172.
     34 MAGICK, p. xxiv
     35 L. Ron Hubbard, "What Your Donations Buy", church pamphlet
     36 DIANETICS pp. 340f.
     37 MAGICK pp. 146-7
     38 L. Ron Hubbard, THE CREATION OF HUMAN ABILITY, (Sussex,
     England: The Department of Publications Worldwide, 1954)  p.226f
     39 Francis X. King, MIND AND MAGIC (London: Dorling Kindersley
     Ltd., 1991) p.100. see photograph.
     40 see for example the bookends of Hubbard's Research and
     Discovery series.
     41 MAGICK p.236
     42 Giovanni Filoramo, GNOSTICISM, (Cambridge, MASS:Basil
     Blackwell, 1990) p.9
     43 GNOSTICISM, p.40
     44 GNOSTICISM, p.92
     45 " Advance!" issue 93, p.16
     46 International Scientology News, issue 8, p. 3.
     47 International Scientology News issue 8 p.7
     48 The material has been released publicly in court cases. 
     Scientologists refuse to read it, however, until they reach the
     proper level of training.  They believe they will die if reading
     it unprepared.
     49 GNOSTICISM, p.98
     50 The Ante-Nicene Fathers (WM. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,
     Grand Rapids MI) reprinted February 1983.  Volume 2, p.372.
     51 L. Ron Hubbard, SCIENTOLOGY: A WORLD RELIGION EMERGES IN THE
     SPACE AGE,
     (Church of Scientology Information Service, Department of
     Archives, date and location not listed) p.23
     52 L. Ron Hubbard, A HISTORY OF MAN (Sussex, England; Department
     of Publications Worldwide, 1961), p.55
     53 Staff of Church of Scientology, WHAT IS SCIENTOLOGY?
     (Kingsport Press, Inc., 1978) p.199
     
     
     
     THE IDEAL DIANETICS SOCIETY
     
         ...if anyone wants a monopoly on Dianetics, be assured that 
         he wants it for reasons which have to do not with Dianetics 
         but with profit.1
     
        Hubbard's goal from the beginning was to "clear the planet",
     in other words, to see that everyone on earth became a clear.  Up
     until the time that this happened, he envisioned a sharp
     demarcation in status between clears (real people) and pre-clears
     (deficient people).  Only clears, for example, could marry and
     bear children.2  And if pre-clears did have children, they would
     most likely be taken away to avoid the "restimulative" affects
     that parents would have on the child.3
        "Perhaps at some distant date only the unaberrated person will
     be granted civil rights before law.  Perhaps the goal will be
     reached at some future time when only the unaberrated person can
     attain to and benefit from citizenship.  These are desirable
     goals."4  Would pre-clears have any rights whatsoever?  And what
     indeed would be the fate of those unfortunates who rejected
     Hubbard's ideas, or even spoke out against him?
        These questions can be answered to some degree by looking at
     the organizations that Hubbard built, and the status of people
     within and without these organizations.  Non-Scientologists are
     referred to by Scientologists normally as "wogs"5 or "raw meat,"
     6 depending on whether they were being considered generic
     outsiders or potential members.  The judicial system in outside
     society was referred to as the derogatory "wog law".  Outside
     society was an evil place surreptitiously controlled by
     psychiatrists, who ran the media and governments.  Psychiatry had
     been attacking dianetics from its inception, claimed Hubbard,
     "because they feared that as our power increased they would lose
     their easy appropriations and fail in their plan for a 1984
     World."7  It was to be a fight to the finish between the evil
     outside world and the valiant crew of Hubbardites.
        The goal of a Clear Planet was always the important thing.  If
     someone got in the way, they could be smashed.  Hubbard wrote the
     famous "Fair Game Policy" in 1967 in which he declared that
     anyone caught disturbing Scientology's mission could be "tricked,
     sued, or lied to, or destroyed."8  Another process called R2-45
     involved making a person "go exterior" (i.e. leave his body) by
     shooting the person in the head with a .45 pistol.  Hubbard did
     not say to use this process, however, because "its use is frowned
     upon by society at this time,"9 but there have been some
     disturbing incidents relating to R2-45. 
        Hubbard created a Guardian's Office, whose members were
     responsible for bulldozing anything or anyone that may stand in
     the way of Scientology.  After the G.O. was disbanded when Mary
     Sue Hubbard and other G.O. officers were sent to prison for
     infiltrating federal offices, the Office of Special Affairs took
     over the G.O.'s duties.
        Within the organization, ethics took on strange meaning. The
     purpose of ethics was "TO REMOVE COUNTER INTENTIONS FROM THE
     ENVIRONMENT,"10 which could be interpreted to mean to remove
     those obstructions to the church's accomplishing its goals.  A
     member stayed in good standing, not by being a good and moral
     person, but by making sure he was producing for the church - "a
     staff member can get away with murder so long as his statistic
     [i.e. work record] is up and can't sneeze without a chop if it's
     down."11  If the goal of a cleared planet was getting closer, and
     all nay-sayers and critics were silenced, then all was well in
     Hubbard's world, regardless of how these were accomplished.
        Hubbard ruled the organization of the church like a dictator
     with an eye for detail.  Every structure and action of every
     Scientologist was covered by some policy order or writing by
     Hubbard.  These had to be strictly followed.  If someone was not
     producing as much as was expected, he may be sent for a security
     check on the E-meter (a crude lie-detector) to see if he may be a
     subversive or suppressive person.  If a member seemed to be
     hindered by critical parents or a spouse, he would be ordered to
     "disconnect," or cut off communication with, those people seen to
     be impeding the work of the church.  Most outside interests and
     activities were given up to devote all possible time and energy
     to the church's goals.  In fact, members of the Sea Org, the
     innermost unit of the church hierarchy, sign a form pledging to
     devote themselves to Scientology for the next billion years.
        The church has its own penal system known as the
     Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF).  Those who have gone through
     the RPF describe a system similar to conditions in a gulag, where
     there are scraps for food, little sleep, constant physical labor,
     and intense degradation.12
        In short, what Hubbard created was one of the closest replicas
     of George Orwell's 1984 world in existence.
     
     
     1 DIANETICS, p.226
     2 DIANETICS, p.411
     3 DIANETICS, p.209
     4 DIANETICS, p.534
     5 DIANETICS AND SCIENTOLOGY TECHNICAL  DICTIONARY, p.471
     6 ibid. p.335
     7 "What Your Donations Buy" church of Scientology handout, p.3
     8 HCO Policy Letter October 16, 1967
     9 L. Ron Hubbard, THE CREATION OF HUMAN ABILITY (Sussex, England;
     Department of Publications Worldwide, 1954) p. 120
     10 HCO Policy letter of 18 June 1968
     11 HCO Policy letter of 1 September AD15 (i.e. 1965)
     12 A PIECE OF BLUE SKY, p. 206
     
     
     
                         CONCLUSION
     
        Toward the end of my research on this booklet, I was
     contemplating whether I really needed to read Korzybski's Science
     and Sanity, the gnostic Pistis Sophia, and to listen to about 40
     more hours of Hubbard's taped lectures I had access to before I
     could call my research done.  I decided that this was a case
     similar to the nuclear arms race; you don't really need 30,000
     atomic bombs if you already have 300.  In other words, there is a
     point of diminishing returns in gathering the lies, distortions,
     errors, and wacky ideas Hubbard promulgated.  After you have so
     many, there's really no reason to keep gathering.  Fortunately
     for both of us, I decided that I had compiled enough evidence
     already for my purpose, which was mainly to show Hubbard a fraud
     for claiming that his ideas were his invention and the only hope
     for mankind.
        I understand, however, that there are people who say "so what
     if he was a fraud, the tech. works!"  To this I respond, what do
     you mean by "works"?  Do you mean that you feel better after
     auditing?  Do you mean that you can actually leave your body? 
     That you can alter the physical universe?  That your IQ was
     increased tremendously, that you never have colds, that you are
     now more confident?  Just what do you mean?  I think what these
     people mean is it makes them feel better.  To that I would agree. 
     But I also hasten to add that just feeling better is not all
     there is to life.  In that case a lobotomized drunk might have
     the ideal life, since he is not burdened by any worries and
     always has that alcoholic high.
        I would submit that our goal should be not just feeling good
     but also learning about and learning how to live in the Real
     World.  There is a Real World that we all share (except, perhaps,
     for lobotomized drunks).  In this world, both of us will die if
     hit by a bus doing about 60 mph, even if one of us thinks that by
     positing a world where he survives such an encounter that he
     thereby will survive.  In this world, neither of us can control
     street lights just by our will so they will turn green before we
     get to the intersection.  And in this world, Scientology takes
     you away from the common sense and actuality of the Real World by
     taking you to a Fake World where you sacrifice reality for a
     sense of belonging and well-being.
        So, yes, Scientology works, so long as you wish to live in the
     Scientology World.  But if you want to live in the Real World, it
     doesn't.  I was in a cult myself for 6 years in my own Fake
     World.  From that experience I can say that I prefer the Real
     World with its uncertainties and problems to my Fake World where
     I knew all the answers and felt the bliss of my mystical
     experiences.  The Fake World is an easier world to live in, but
     what's the point?  What is gained by living like some kids today
     so deeply involved in Dungeons and Dragons fantasy that they
     loose sight of food, sleep, jobs, family, friends?  The Emperor
     in his new fake clothes was quite happy amongst people who also
     "saw" his wonderful robes, but when confronted by a child from
     the Real World, his Fake World disintigrated.  Is living in a
     Fake World really worth anything?  I think not.
     
        There is much more evidence that has been presented by others
     on the history of Scientology, the biographical data on L. Ron
     Hubbard, and the horrible experiences that many Scientologists
     have had.  It was not my goal to even touch any of the above, and
     it was not even my goal to comprehensively cover my selective
     topic.  It seemed to me that there was little written on the
     ideas of dianetics and Scientology and their evolution.  This is
     what I attempted to uncover.  My hope is that this will be useful
     for those who have left the church so they can better understand
     the illusion that caught them, for those who are investigating
     the church with thoughts of joining, and for those with a
     curiosity about one of the most dangerous organizations on earth
     today.  I also hope that this may be useful by suggesting an
     approach to the study of other cults and movements in the
     religious marketplace today.  
     
     
     
     
     FOR FURTHER READING:
     
     Russell Miller, BARE FACED MESSIAH (New York; Henry Holt and Co.,
     1987)
     
     Stewart Lamont, RELIGION, INC. (London: Harrap, Ltd., 1986)
     
     Bent Corydon and L. Ron Hubbard, Jr., L. RON HUBBARD, MESSIAH OR
     MADMAN? (Secaucus, NJ; Lyle Stuart, Inc., 1987)
     
     Jon Atack, A PIECE OF BLUE SKY (Carol Publishing Group, NYNY,
     1990)