Let's Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky: Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology (28 page)

17.
 
Scientology: A
History of Man,
p.8.

18.
 
ibid
,
pp.14 & 20.

19.
 
ibid
,
p.14.

20.
 
ibid
,
pp.16 & 42.

21.
 
ibid
,
p.26.

22.
 
ibid
,
p.27.

23.
 
ibid
,
pp.29-30.

24.
 
ibid
,
p.16.

25.
 
ibid
,
p.25.

26.
 
ibid
,
pp.30-1.

27.
 
ibid
,
p.34.

28.
 
ibid
,
p.33.

29.
 
ibid
,
pp.12 & 60-2.

30.
 
ibid
,
pp.44-5.

31.
 
Hubbard,
Technical Bulletins
, vol.1, p.279.

32.
 
Hubbard,
Technical Bulletins
, vol.1, p.298.

33.
 
Ron
de Wolfe, Clearwater Hearings vol.1, p.283; letters to the author from de
Wolfe, O'Brien and another attendee.

34.
 
Hubbard,
Technical Bulletins
, vol.1, p.306.

35.
 
Hubbard
College Lectures, tape 21.

36.
 
Technical
Bulletins
, vol.1, p.337.

37.
 
Technical
Bulletins
, vol.1, p.343.

38.
 
ibid
,
p.369.

39.
 
What is Scientology?,
p.295.

40.
 
O'Brien,
p.76.

41.
 
O'Brien,
pp.vii, 73 & 77

Chapter fifteen

“Dianetics and Scientology are more a
crusade for sanity than they are a business.”

—L.
Ron Hubbard, 1954
¹

“The things which have been happening
... have removed Scientology entirely from any classification as a
psychotherapy ... We can only exist in the field of religion.”

—L.
Ron Hubbard,
The Hope of Man
, 1955
²

In his autobiography
Over My Shoulder
, publisher
Lloyd Arthur Eshbach remembered taking lunch with John Campbell and Ron Hubbard
in 1949.
³
Hubbard repeated a statement he had already made to
several other people. He said he would like to start a religion, because that
was where the money was.

In 1980, Hubbard issued a statement saying Scientologists
had “insisted” their organization become a “Church,” adding that “It is sometimes
supposed that I founded the Church. This is not correct.” Perhaps time had
affected Hubbard's memory.

The Scientologists maintain that that Church of Scientology
of California was their first Church. It was incorporated in California on
February 18, 1954, by Burton Farber. In an explanatory letter of the following
month, Hubbard said the new “Church” was contracted to the “Church of American
Science,” to which it paid a 20 percent tithe.
⁴
Naturally, Hubbard
was the President of the Church of American Science.
⁵

 In fact, both the Church of American Science and a Church
of Scientology had been incorporated without fanfare by Hubbard in December
1953, in Camden, New Jersey, along with the “Church of Spiritual Engineering.”
⁶
The Church of American Science was represented as a Christian Church.
⁷

Evidence of Hubbard's interest in moving Scientology into a
religious position was given in the Armstrong case. In a letter dated April 10,
1953, Hubbard wrote from England to Helen O'Brien, who had recently taken over
the management of Scientology in the US, telling her that it was time to move
from a medical to a religious image. His objectives were to eliminate all other
psychotherapies, to salvage his ailing organization, and, Hubbard was quite
candid, to make a great deal of money. Being a religion rather than a
psychotherapy was a purely commercial matter, Hubbard said. He enthused about
the thousands that could be milked out of preclears attracted by this new
promotional approach:

We don't want a clinic. We want one in operation, but
not in name. Perhaps we could call it a Spiritual Guidance Center. Think up its
name, will you? And we could put in nice desks and our boys in neat blue with
diplomas on the walls and one, knock psychotherapy into history and, two, make
enough money to shine up my operating scope, and, three, keep the HAS [Hubbard
Association of Scientologists] solvent. It is a problem in practical business.

I await your reaction on the religion angle. In my
opinion, we couldn't get worse public opinion than we have had or have less
customers with what we've got to sell. A religious charter would be necessary
in Pennsylvania or N.J. to make it stick. But I sure could make it stick.

If we were to return there [to Phoenix] we'd be able
to count 10 to 15 preclears per week at $500 for 24 hours processing. That is
real money. I have seen it happen before. We get more preclears at $850 per
week [counseling] intensive. Charge enough and we'd be swamped. We need that
money. We should not long plan to have it siphoned away.
⁸

As usual, Hubbard was keeping all of the options open. In
his explanatory letter to the membership about the new “Church,” he also
introduced the “Freudian Foundation of America.” A variety of degrees were
offered to students, including “Bachelor of Scientology,” “Doctor of
Scientology,” “Freudian Psycho-analyst,” and “Doctor of Divinity” to be issued by
the “University of Sequoia,”
⁹
an American diploma mill (which was
closed down by the California Department of Education in 1958
¹⁰
). Hubbard
received an “honorary doctorate” in philosophy from Sequoia.

In New Zealand, the Auckland Scientology group also became a
Church in February 1954.
¹¹
Gradually other centers followed suit,
and “Churches of Scientology” came into being all over the world. These
“Churches” were franchises paying a tithe to the “mother church.” Scientology
had become the McDonald's hamburger chain of religion, increasingly absorbing
the mass-production and marketing aspects of North American commerce.

In 1954, Don Purcell, weary of the battle with L. Ron
Hubbard, and unable to make his Dianetic organization self-sustaining, withdrew
to join Art Coulter's “Synergetics,” a derivative of Dianetics. Purcell
dissolved the Wichita Dianetic Foundation, and gave its assets to Hubbard.
¹²
These included he copyrights to several Hubbard books.
¹³
The use of
the word “Dianetics” and even the name “L. Ron Hubbard” had been in dispute.
Hubbard had complete control of his original subject once again. He expressed
his jubilation in a newsletter to Scientologists, in which he even forgave
Purcell, if only for a short time. Purcell had given his own attitude
succinctly earlier that year: “Ron's motive has always been to limit Dianetics
to the Authority of his teachings. Anyone who has the affrontry [sic] to suggest
that others besides Ron could contribute creatively to the work must be
inhibited.”
¹⁴

Hubbard had learned from his mistakes. He employed a simple
method of retaining complete control over his many Scientology and Dianetic
corporations. He was not on the Board of every corporation, so a check of
records would not show his outright control. He did, however, collect signed,
undated resignations from directors before their appointment. Hubbard also
controlled the bank accounts.
¹⁵

In May 1953, in a “Professional Auditor's Bulletin,” Hubbard
had written
¹⁶
: “It is definitely none of my business how you apply
these techniques. I am no policeman ready with boards of ethics and court
warrants to come down on you with a crash simply because you are 'perverting
Scientology.' If there is any policing to be done, it is by the techniques
themselves, since they have in themselves a discipline brought about by their
own power. All I can do is put into your hands a tool for your own use and then
help you use it.”

By 1955, Hubbard's attitude had changed markedly. In one of
his most bizarre pieces, “The Scientologist: a Manual on the Dissemination of
Material,” Hubbard recommended legal action against those who set up as
independent practitioners of Scientology, or “squirrels”: “The purpose of the
suit is to harass and discourage rather than to win. The law can be used very
easily to harass, and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin
edge anyway, well knowing that he is not authorized, will generally be sufficient
to cause his professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly.”
¹⁷

Hubbard further urged that Scientologists employ private
detectives to investigate critics of Scientology, adding
¹⁸
: “we
should be very alert to sue for slander at the slightest chance so as to
discourage the public press from mentioning Scientology.”

During the late 1950s, most of the independent groups either
became “Churches,” or went out of business. They had accepted Hubbard's
direction, and were under contract to his “Hubbard Association of
Scientologists International,” but Hubbard wanted complete legal control. The
franchised “Churches” were gradually absorbed into various organizations controlled
directly by Hubbard.
¹⁹

Hubbard continued to write to the FBI's Department of
Communist Activities. He asserted that the Russians had, on three occasions,
tried to recruit him, and were upset by his patriotic refusal to work for them.
. By now, Hubbard felt that his organizations had been harassed from the outset
not only by psychiatrists but also by Communist infiltrators. He claimed that
the most recent approach was from an individual with a position in the US
government.
²⁰

“The attack on the HASI [Hubbard Association of
Scientologists International], like the attacks on the 1950 Hubbard Dianetic
Research Foundation found psychiatry and Communist connected personnel very
much in evidence ... I expect that when the Russian-inclined 'friend' finds
that my desires to travel in and work in Russia do not exist, I can expect more
violent measures. I have not given you the name of this contact because he is a
little too highly placed on the Hill [Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC]”

A few months later, Hubbard again complained of Communist
infiltration into Scientology organizations,
²¹
and attributed this
to psychiatrists using LSD. He made no suggestion that Scientology itself might
have had anything to do with these eruptions of insanity. He alleged that since
offering his brainwashing techniques to the Defense Department, his organizations
had been under constant attack.

He cited examples of Scientologists suddenly going insane
attributing this to psychiatric “LSD attacks.” He made no suggestion that Scientology
itself might have had anything to do with it. He alleged that since Scientology
had “informed the Defense Department about brain-washing technologies in our
hands and offered them, we have been in a state of siege.”

In September 1955, Hubbard published an issue entitled
“Psychiatrists,”
²²
calling Scientology “the only Anglo-Saxon
development in the field of the mind and spirit,” and insisting that
Scientologists inform the authorities if they suspected that any of their
clients had been given LSD surreptitiously by a psychiatrist.

The FBI tired of Hubbard's missives, and stopped acknowledging
them. One agent wrote “appears mental” on a Hubbard letter. Hubbard later
privately admitted to having taken LSD himself.
²³

At the end of 1955, the “Hubbard Communications Office” in
Washington, DC, published a peculiar booklet entitled
Brainwashing
,
which claimed to be a Russian textbook on “psychopolitics” written by the
Soviet chief of the secret police, Beria. In an elaborate charade, Hubbard
claimed the booklet had arrived anonymously, and mentioned a version in German,
published in Berlin in 1947, and discovered in the Library of Congress.
²⁴
The Library has no record of the German booklet. The version published by the
Scientologists cannot have been written before December 1953, as there are
several references to the “Church of Scientology.”
²⁵
In fact, the
author of “Brainwashing” was none other than L. Ron Hubbard. There are two
witnesses,
²⁶
and the literary style, and the slant of the contents
provide further evidence of Hubbard's authorship:

You must work until “religion” is synonymous with “insanity.”
You must work until the officials of city, county and state governments will
not think twice before they pounce upon religious groups as public enemies ...
Like the official the bona-fide medical healer also believes the worst if it
[religion] can be shown to him as dangerous competition.
²⁷

Hubbard was perfectly willing to cash in on the intense
interest in brainwashing a hot topic in the United States with the return of
POWs from North Korea. He was also willing to infect his devotees with his
paranoia, and the booklet highlighted the grand conspiracy supposedly directed
against Hubbard and his organizations.

In 1956, Hubbard recommended that Scientologists recruit new
people by placing the following advertisement in the newspapers
²⁸
:
“Polio victims. A research foundation, investigating polio desires volunteers
suffering from the effects of that illness to call for examination.”

Hubbard said that the research foundation could also
advertise for asthmatics or arthritics. Further
²⁹
: “Any auditor
anywhere can constitute himself as a minister or an auditor, a research worker
in the field of any illness ... It is best that a minister representing himself
as a 'charitable organization' ... do the research.”