Let's Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky: Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology (31 page)

What is Communism?

Do you feel Communism has some good points?

The “Jo'burg” covered all manner of wrongdoing, from simple
theft to “illicit Diamond buying.” It also asked “Have you ever been a newspaper
reporter?” A cardinal sin to Hubbard. At the end of the security check a series
of questions (14 in all) designed to ensure the recipient's loyalty to Hubbard
and his organization was asked, among them:

Have you ever injured Dianetics or Scientology?

Have you ever had unkind thoughts about LRH
[Hubbard]?

Have you ever had unkind thoughts about Mary Sue
[Hubbard]?

Do you know of any secret plans against Scientology?

Throughout 1961, additional Security Checks poured out of
the Church. There was even one for children. Hubbard ordered that “
All
Security Check sheets of persons Security Checked should be
forwarded to St
Hill
.”
²⁶

Hubbard was assembling a comprehensive set of intelligence
files on Scientologists, with their willing assistance as well as on supposed
enemies without their knowledge. The procedure has been refined, and remains to
the present day. The Scientology Church keeps a file on every-one who has ever
taken a course or even had a single hour of counseling. Scientologists are not
allowed to see the contents of their own confessional files, so cannot correct
any errors.

The most elaborate Sec Check was for the “Whole Track” (the
whole “Time-Track,” “past lives” included), and consisted of over 400 questions.
It was written by a couple devoted to Hubbard, and was approved by the man
himself. A few sample questions
²⁷
:

Have you ever warped an educational system?

Have you ever destroyed a culture?

Have you ever blanketed bodies for the sensation
kick?

Have you ever bred bodies for degrading purposes?

Did you come to Earth for evil purposes?

Have you ever deliberately mocked up an
unconfrontability?

Have you ever torn out somebody's tongue?

Have you ever been a professional critic?

Have you ever had sexual relations with an animal,
or bird?

Have you ever given God a bad name?

Have you ever eaten a human body?

Have you ever zapped anyone?

Have you ever been a religious fanatic?

Have you ever failed to rescue your leader?

Any wrongdoing discovered during the questioning would be
traced back to “earlier similar incidents.” It must have taken months to check
and recheck all 400 questions. However, it was not very useful for intelligence
gathering. You could hardly threaten to expose a person for “zapping” someone
20 trillion years ago. Security Checks were soon limited to “this lifetime.”
²⁸

Hubbard even tried to extend Security Checking into the
outside world, by advising Scientologists to set up a “Citizens' Purity League”
in their area. The Scientologists would Sec Check local officials and the
police.
²⁹
An attempt at this was made in Melbourne, Australia, which
was soon to become a very dangerous place indeed for Scientology.

On August 13, 1962, in between lectures at Saint Hill,
Hubbard again offered Scientology to the American government. The FBI Communist
Activities Department had ceased to exist, and Hubbard decided to go right to
the top. He wrote to President Kennedy.

1.
   
Technical Bulletins
, vol.4, p.28.

2.
   
Hubbard,
What is Scientology?,
p.142.

3.
   
East Grinstead Courier, 16 August 1959.

4.
   
Garden News, 18 December 1959. The TV program was BBC's “Tonight”.
Hubbard was interviewed by Alan Whicker. Unfortunately, the BBC has lost the
interview.

5.
   
See also Evans,
Cults of Unreason
, pp.72-4.

6.
   
The
Sunday Mirror
, 28 July 1968.

7.
   
Technical Bulletins
, vol.3, p.522. It should be noted that the
tomato is a perennial plant which is grown as an annual in temperate climates,
so it is ‘everbearing’ by its nature. The harvest will be poor in the second
year.

8.
   
Technical Bulletins
, vol.3, pp.555 & 557.

9.
   
ibid
, vol.12, p.245.

10.
 
e.g.,
Professional Auditor's Bulletin
no.74 (only in original).

11.
 
Technical
Bulletins
, vol.2, p.474.

12.
 
ibid
,
vol.3, pp.555-9 & vol.4, p.11.

13.
 
Astronomer
Patrick Moore reviewed the book for the East Grinstead Courier (25 March 1960):
“The reviewer has often encountered the Flat Earthers, the Pyramidologists, the
Circle-Squarers and others of their kind; Hubbardism, however, is in a class by
itself, and certainly adds to the gaiety of nations.”

14.
 
CSC
v. Armstrong, read in, vol.26, p.4617, exhibit 500-4T.

15.
 
Technical
Bulletins
, vol.4, p.59-60.

16.
 
Technical
Bulletins
, vol.4, p.76.

17.
 
Foster
report, paragraph 71. Life memberships were cancelled in 1982, and ultimately
the whole membership system was replaced by the International Association of
Scientologists, in October 1984.

18.
 
Technical
Bulletins, vol.4, p.114.

19.
 
ibid
.
The initial administrator was George Hay, who was lambasted by Diana Hubbard in
an “evaluation” of May 1980.

20.
 
Organization
Executive Course
, vol.7, p.484.

21.
 
Technical
Bulletins
, vol.4, p.161.

22.
 
Wallis, p.191; Cooper,
Scandal of Scientology,
p.102.

23.
 
Organization
Executive Course
, vol.7, p.487.

24.
 
There is some uncertainty about the number of Hubbard
lectures. There may well be more than 3000. It is very difficult to get
accurate statistics from his organizations, such was Hubbard's own propensity
for exaggeration.
The Guinness Book of Records
asserts that he was the most prolific author of all time, but the list
of works accepted by them has not been scrutinized by this author.

25.
 
Technical
Bulletins
, vol.4, p.242.

26.
 
ibid
,
p.378.

27.
 
ibid
,
p.337.

28.
 
ibid
,
vol.12, p.248, point 19.

29.
 
HCO
Executive Letter 14 April 1961; see also Wallis, p.202.

Chapter seventeen

 “Try not to do things to others that you
would not like them to do to you.”

—L.
Ron Hubbard,
The Way to Happiness

“Harass these persons in any possible
way.”

—L.
Ron Hubbard
¹

On May 25, 1961, President Kennedy, in a momentous speech before
the United States Congress, urged America to put a man on the moon before the
decade was out. It took Hubbard a little while to jump on the bandwagon. His letter
to President Kennedy began
²
:

In the early '40s a lonely letter wandered into the White
House, uninvited, unannounced. It was brief. It was factual, and it gave
America the deciding edge in arms superiority. Its subject was the atom bomb
and its signature was Professor Albert Einstein ... This is another such
letter.

Hubbard offered his mental “technology” to the President to
assist in the Space Program. He repeated his usual tale about Russian interest
in his work, saying he had been offered Pavlov's laboratory in 1938. He said
Scientology “conditioning” would increase the IQ and “body skills” of
astronauts, and that “The perception of a pilot or Astronaut can be increased
far beyond normal human range and stamina and be brought to an astonishing
level, not hitherto attainable in a human being.”

The “conditioning” was to cost $25 per hour. Hubbard ended
with an admonition to President Kennedy: “Such an office as yours receives a
flood of letters from fakes, crackpots and would-be wonder-workers. This is not
such a letter ... If that earlier letter from Einstein had been filed away; we
would have lost our all in the following twenty years. Is this such a letter?”

Hubbard did not receive a reply from the President. On
January 4, 1963, however the Food and Drug Administration raided the Washington
Church and Hubbard felt this constituted an indirect response.
³

The FDA seized a huge quantity of E-meters and books. As
with “Dianazene,” the FDA charged mislabeling. The raid was precisely the sort
of theater Hubbard could use to effect. The dour agents, and the scale of the
raid, could only create public sympathy for Scientology. Such reactions by
government agencies can do more good than harm to a cult, uniting it and
feeding its public image. It makes wonderful press.
⁴

Eventually, the FDA won their case against the labeling of
the E-Meter, and forced the Scientologists to label it ineffective in the diagnosis
or treatment of disease. The Scientologists failed to thoroughly comply with
the ordered wording, and took issue with the court's decision (never
implemented) to destroy the confiscated books and meters, rather than returning
them.

The US government was not alone in its concern about
Scientology. On November 27, 1963, the Governor of the Australian State of
Victoria appointed a Board of Inquiry into Scientology. The Board consisted of one
man; Kevin Victor Anderson.
⁵
He conducted his Inquiry with
considerable showmanship and ferocity. He took nearly two years to investigate
and present his immense report.

While the Australian Inquiry was underway, Hubbard added to
his mystique by telling the
Saturday Evening Post
he had been approached
for the secrets of Scientology by Castro's Cuban government, the latest
Communist threat).
⁶

At Saint Hill, Hubbard released his “Study Technology.”
⁷
He began with the premise that no-one teaches people
how
to study.
Korzybski had argued that it is crucial to fully understand every word in a
text, and that there is a physiological response to misunderstood words.
Hubbard adopted these ideas, without mentioned of their source. He dubbed the
misunderstood word an “m.u.” (mis-understood).

Hubbard emphasized the necessity of studying “on a
gradient.” It is important to base study on a completely understood idea, and
to proceed from one fully comprehended idea to the next. A student should
progress with no gaps in his understanding. In a school system, this process
would mean that a child would need to do first year chemistry to a 100 percent
pass, before moving on to second year chemistry.

Hubbard also asserted that much failure in study is due to
an “absence of mass.” Where possible the student should come to grips with what
he is studying. So an engineer should have a good look at construction
materials and real bridges, rather than spending all of his time studying books
explaining the chemical make-up of materials, and structural mathematics.
Abstractions should be represented by the student through drawing, or with plasticine
models (called “clay demos”). Through these a sequence of actions could be
demonstrated, and so more thoroughly grasped.

Typically, there has been no proper scientific evaluation of
the effectiveness of Hubbard's Study Tech, but pupils of the several
Scientology children's schools do not display astonishing aptitude, indeed they
seem to perform below the educational average in some cases.
⁸

The Scientology world changed rapidly through the early
1960s. By 1965, Hubbard had released an entire organizational system with which
Scientology “Orgs” had to comply, the Study Technology, the Ethics Technology,
and the new “Bridge.”

The approach to Preclears became more systematic. They would
start with specific auditing processes or procedures at the bottom of the
“Bridge,” progressing through numbered grades of “release,” at each of which a
definite ability should be regained. These release grades deal with memory,
communication, problems, “overts” and “withholds,” upsets, and justifications
for failure, from Grade 0 to IV.

Perhaps the most drastic changes came with the Ethics
Technology. Hubbard said that certain people are “anti-social,” and are
determined opponents of anything which can benefit humanity; especially Scientology.
He labeled such people “Suppressive Persons” (or SPs), and asserted that SPs
make up two and a half percent of the population. A further 17 1/2 percent are
said to be influenced by SPs to such an extent that they are “Potential Trouble
Sources” (or PTS).
⁹
Hubbard decided that PTS people would have to
“disconnect” (refuse any communication or contact) from SPs identified by the
organization. The rigidity with which this rule has been applied over the years
has varied, but marriages have been split up when someone had to disconnect
from a spouse labeled “Suppressive.”

With the new Ethics Technology came a department of the Org
which would “keep ethics in.” Hubbard determined that unethical people would
not make gains in Scientology, so conversely anyone who did not make gains in
Scientology was unethical (“out-ethics”). Where Scientology failed it was the
fault of the recipient, never of Scientology. Ethics Officers came into being
to deal with “out-ethics” people.