Claire's theory on where L Ron Hubbard truly went wrong

[Voltaire's Child]

The problem with your theory, Claire, is L Ron didn't ever live an extravagant life, financially, despite the money.

Perhaps. I remember seeing some interview he did in the 60s-- I think I saw it on Operation Clambake- where he gets really evasive about Swiss bank accounts. I am very sure that he got off on the power and position of "Founder" and did not like to be questioned.

He wanted to be better than Buddha, he wanted to be the one who discovered the deepest secrets of mankind. He wanted it so badly, he re-wrote his own personal history and tried to re-make his own personality.

I've often thought he thought he could improve on Buddhism. This makes me think that his understanding and knowledge of Eastern religions was a bit superficial. For me, I find that the shortfalls Hubbard thought he saw in those aren't actually there.

[lkwdblds]

Good stuff.

Let’s take your reply in the sections that you have,

First one is OK. Second one – “other-determinism doesn’t only mean that one is doing it under duress. Merely adopting the viewpoint that “LRH knows best and even if I don’t understand it all nor agree with it all I will just do it the way he says” – this in itself is a MAJOR source of other determinism and many many people did their Scio in this way.

Hubbard certainl did get totally stuck in the endless trap of seeking out prior causes – no doubt about it. As you say, he never got free of his mind. And if one sticks to Scio as practiced by the CofS then it is guarranteed that one will never go free. But there is an immense amount of data given by Hubbard in the period up to about 1953 or 4 which, if he hadn’t ignored it, would have produced a very different subject altogether, even though still called Scientology. Where he got all the data and insights from is anone’s guess. I am sure that he himself never fully comprehended what he was writing or saying. Or his ego and his dark side swamped and submerged him totally. One needs to study the tapes of that period very thoroughly.

Third - you must recognise too that data and “tech” on entities being stuck to one’s body and mind-space predates Scientology. Apart from the Catholic Church’s exorcism rituals, which BTW are interesting because the process they use is one of getting the entity to identify and name itself accurately so closely parallels the NOTs technique; apart from that there is work by others e.g. Quatermain, Findlay and also Prof, Whiteman whom I met and had the chance to converse with. These are a few that I have come across, all of them predate Scio and all of them are fully aware of the liability of having entities as unwilling passengers. I don’t think Hubbard knew or followed any of these people though. Also the data is known (so I have been told) by the Rosacrucians (not AMORC but the real ones) and probably the Golden Dawn chaps. Croweley’s autobiography refers to them too.

So this is not new with Hubard, and neither is an appreciation of the value of handling the compulsive misidentification of self with them and vice-versa.

“You could also view the entire universe as life connected to life.” Sure you could. You could view it in an infinite number of different ways. But this leads nowhere too.

“Without these connections, there is truly nothing at all. Not what you create, but simply - nothing, nobody. Zero time, zero awareness, zero perception (nothing to perceive) zero space. Nothing. Not even you.” As, for example, we all experience every night during a period of dreamless sleep.


Last section: You are correct in saying that I have studied Scio more intensively than any other subject. But I have always studied periferal subjects too, wherever I could get hold of them. At present I’m busy with a study of New Thought writings. Thomas Troward I find particularly interesting.

One thing Hubbard taught and which I have not found anywhere else to date, is that the mind has mass, actual physical mass (and not the brain either) which is in a space of its own and which can yet be measured physically. Also his teachings of as-isness, that mental mass can be as-ised and that it then ceases to exist. I’ve not come across these aywhere else and they are fundamental to the whole subject. Other subjects tend for the most part to shift mental masses about into new and untroublesome patterns – but this is no more than re-arranging furniture really. The as-isness of mass – that is something special that he came up with. Or if he got it somewhere else then I don’t know where that somewhere is.


“Personally, I've found both Christian and Hindu tenets were far more comprehensive and spiritually enlightening than Scn. Some philosophers, like Kant, just knock me out. Plato changed my life.” Good on you! I got a lot out of Christianity on both the positive and negative sides. The others I just couldn’t get into much. Plato somewhat but not Kant or Eastern teachings.


Be well.

Leo

Nice summary Leon. Like you, I have noticed that no other group or technology that I have been introduced to has the concept of as-isness of matter. I have run that concept by several of the "intuitives" and healers whom I have encountered in the last year and non of them have ever looked at as-isness before. Oddly, so far all are receptive to it and not adversarial.

The most key instance of this was my attractive female friend, LH, who describes herself as an "intuitive" and a healer. At our workshop on February 5, the concept of as-isness came up and LH brightened up and had very good indicators. She said that the data on as-isness supplied her with missing theory for something she was already doing on a practical empirical basis.
Lakey

[Freeminds]

I don't understand your confusion.

Sec Checking was originally developed to detect "SP's" who were sent to join staff by anti-scn groups (government agencies, etc) and wreck scn.

I'm afraid the infiltrations are a myth - with the occasional exception of a curious journalist. I'm not aware of any government agency taking LRH seriously in those years, still less launching an operation against him.

When the infiltration finally did happen, it was in the other direction: LRH ordered an operation against the government of his own nation - treason - and similar infiltrations of the embassies of a number of allied nations. That was Operation Snow White, of coruse.

It suited LRH to tell his victims that they were surrounded by enemies, however imaginary those enemies were. It was a good way to get all his victims to see him as their only hope, and to make them follow his orders ever more unquestioningly. Remember, people tend to surrender their personal freedoms a lot more willingly if they are 'at war' - even though the war in question was entirely fabricated.

This state of affairs also suited Ron because whenever anything failed (and let's be honest, a lot of his ventures did) he could ascribe the failure to The Enemy, and leave the concept of the Tech untainted by the failure. It also allowed him to inject the paranoia into the cult, which gave him a handy way to purge anybody that looked like they might do well, and outshine him.

The price for the imaginary enemy nonsense was paid by people such as Susan Meister. I'm sure you know the story of her suicide.

[Voltaire's Child]

So much of Scn tech is a two edged sword and can be abused. Dianetics/black dianetics, running out overts/culling pc folders, gang bang sec checks, and so on.

That's why I think that having the initial component of TOTAL altruism (or as close to it as possible) needs to be there. And it wasn't.

[Voltaire's Child]

I think you hit the nail right on the head Claire. Alot of the TV preachers are the same way.

I think so, too. And Rajneesh was and some of the swamis and gurus. I think if you truly had the altruism component and that this was their sole guiding reason, that there'd be very few abuses and problems. There'd be some problems because not everyone gets everything right, but you wouldn't see the messes you see now in CofS, in various Christian churches, in other churches, cults, and so on.

[Helena Handbasket]

No, not true.

The origins of sec checking are way before the notion of SP in Scn.

The first sec check goes back to things like the Joberg, circa 1961-2. It was a development of the think following the "Clean Hands Congress" tech of 1960 . . . this is the tech to do with getting off all your "overts" in order to have clean hands and thus make case gain. This then morphed into withhold and MWH tech circa '63 and emphasized with a vengeance in '64.

The original "tech" for handling "Security Risks" was the use of the Scientology List 1 assessed for R/Ss. That was around September '62.

I stand corrected.

I'm afraid the infiltrations are a myth - with the occasional exception of a curious journalist. I'm not aware of any government agency taking LRH seriously in those years, still less launching an operation against him.

Of course there were infiltrators, plenty of them from high places. Example: David Miscavige.

Helena

[Auditor's Toad]

To be " totally free " sure takes a pile of credit cards !

[Leon]

The Sea Org was thoroughly infiltrated by morons. There's no denying it.

[Voltaire's Child]

The SO probably recruits morons sometimes. They take a lot of warm bodies. They particularly like to recruit very young people so that they can be indoctrinated and worked very hard.

BUT, I will also say that in a setting like that, it's almost impossible to shine. Some people DID, but many are just starving and overworked.

[Student of Trinity]

My take is that the L. Ron Hubbard had a fair amount of intelligence, but was fatally spoiled as a child. He grew up vain and lazy. He also grew up good at spinning stories. If you've got those traits, the temptation to live in a fantasy world is very strong.

So I think that in one sense Hubbard genuinely believed in his 'tech', and genuinely wanted to help people with it. But only in the sense that he lived in a fantasy world, in which he was entitled to be worshiped for saving humanity. I'm not sure he really believed in his fantasy with a cold, narrow gaze, the way a hard-nosed investor believes in the business he puts his money into. Maybe it was just a matter of insisting on playing pretend.

I think that a lot of the content of Scientology was probably designed, at least subconsciously, so that Hubbard could maintain his fantasy despite being an intelligent and experienced guy. He really did command a warship, and he really did sell a lot of fiction. It's not easy to live in a fantasy world if you've done those things.

But a fantasy universe of thetans who mock everything up is maybe slick enough to pull it off with. If that's your fantasy, then whenever your common sense starts to kick in, or you start to recognize that you're making stuff up, you can handle the doubt by saying, "Of course I'm mocking it up — I'm Source!" If you keep that juicy thought in the back of your mind, you can quite comfortably laugh and wink about the foolishness of it all, and pretend convincingly that you're not pretending at all. A fantasy about how reality is just fantasy can look reality in the eye and not blink. Or at least seem to. That's how I imagine Hubbard could come across as a down-to-earth guy, when he wanted, and not as the megalomanical cult leader he really was.

Anyway, that's my guess. Scientology is effective at helping people maintain their own delusion, because it was designed to help Hubbard maintain his.