Fair Game

by Steve Cannane

  But if Hubbard really did cure himself of his mythical injuries by 1947, why was he still claiming a part disability pension? Why did he write to Veterans Administration in October of the same year saying he’d been ‘trying and failing for two years to regain my equilibrium in civil life’ and asking for help paying for psychiatric treatment? Why did he continue to lobby for an increase to his pension over this period of time? And why was it the case that he claimed a disability pension for decades afterwards?46

  Some of the answers can be found in excerpts from Hubbard’s private journals, which came to light during the 1984 court case brought by the Church of Scientology of California against former Hubbard archivist Gerry Armstrong. The documents, commonly referred to as the ‘Affirmations’, were part of an archive compiled by Gerry Armstrong for a planned biography of Hubbard. Armstrong was a member of the Sea Org, but fell out of favour with Scientology’s hierarchy when he wrote a report detailing the contradictions in Hubbard’s personal history. Armstrong transferred a copy of the documents, including the ‘Affirmations’, to his lawyer and the Church of Scientology unsuccessfully sued for what they saw as the theft of private papers.

  The ‘Affirmations’ are thought to have been written in 1946 or 1947.47 They read like a detailed catalogue of self-hypnosis mantras designed by Hubbard to overcome his fears and troubles. A number of them refer to his naval record and his disability pension. Before listing the ‘Affirmations’, he writes, ‘By hypnosis I must be convinced as follows: That I bear no physical aftermath of disease … That I do not need to have ulcers any more … That I am well and that there is no advantage in appearing ill.’48

  The ‘Affirmations’ also read like admissions. Hubbard confesses to malingering, scamming and dodging military justice:

  ‘Your eyes are getting progressively better. They became bad when you used them as an excuse to escape the naval academy.’

  ‘Your stomach trouble you used as an excuse to keep the Navy from punishing you. You are free of the Navy. You have no further reason to have a weak stomach.’

  ‘Your hip is a pose. You have a sound hip. It never hurts. Your shoulder never hurts. Your foot was an alibi. The injury is no longer needed. It is well. You have perfect and lovely feet.’

  ‘In the Veterans’ examination you will tell them how sick you are. You will look sick when you take it. You will return to health one hour after the examination and laugh at them.’

  Hubbard also admits to feeling shame over the true nature of his military record, and tries to convince himself his time in the forces was not all bad.

  ‘My service record was not too glorious. I must be convinced that I suffer no reaction from any minor disciplinary action, that all such were minor. My service was honorable, my initiative and ability high.’49

  After hearing extracts from the ‘Affirmations’ and other evidence while presiding over the Armstrong case, Judge Paul Breckenridge of the Los Angeles Superior Court wrote, ‘The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background and achievements.’50

  Hubbard’s lies and exaggerations went beyond his war record. He would later claim he was a nuclear physicist. He was not. He said he had many degrees. He had none. He called himself ‘Doctor’ for a while, claiming he had a PhD in Philosophy. The PhD came from Sequoia University, a shonky diploma mill that sold degrees to the unqualified. There are similar clouds over claims made about Hubbard’s early years, his explorations and his relationships.

  But it is the false claims about his war record that do the most to undermine both Hubbard’s reputation, and the foundations of Scientology. Men of integrity do not lie about their war service. True war heroes are more likely to downplay their military service, not talk it up. Hubbard had been caught out lying about his rank, his war wounds, his war decorations, and where he served. In the United States it is referred to as ‘stealing valor’ and if Hubbard were alive today he could be subjected to laws that prevent fake war heroes from benefiting from false claims about their service records.

  In 1948, as he planned his next move, hardly anyone would have expected that within two years he would become a wealthy man with a worldwide following. Following his visit to the San Gabriel Township Justice Court, Hubbard could have been classified as a petty thief, a con artist, a bigamist, a wife-beater, a dead-beat dad, a valor thief, a malingerer and a liar. Yet his next scheme was to convince others that he had found a way to solve any and all of their life problems. Hubbard was working on a book he would ultimately describe as a ‘milestone for Man comparable to his discovery of fire and superior to his inventions of the wheel and arch’.51

  CHAPTER 3

  DIANETICS

  BURIED DEEP IN A vault in the side of a mountain in the New Mexico desert lies a copy of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. Etched onto stainless steel plates and secured in a titanium capsule, Scientology’s most venerated text is barricaded against future destruction from nuclear war.

  The vault’s entrance is carved into the side of a rocky ledge in the desert near the ghost town of Trementina, and was covered by a three-storey house that was later removed in favour of a fake rock wall. Nearby, the logo for Scientology’s Church of Spiritual Technology is tattooed into the landscape. The markings, which look like crop circles from the air, are designed to help survivors of a nuclear holocaust track down Hubbard’s back catalogue so they can rebuild society based on his words of wisdom.1

  Dianetics is Scientology’s most sacred text. Scientologists refer to it simply as Book One. Hubbard even invented his own calendar off the back of its publication date. In his 1963 Christmas message to Melbourne Scientologists, Hubbard wished his ‘cobbers down under’ a Merry Christmas and a Clear New Year, dating it 13 AD (After Dianetics).2 Hubbard claimed it took him only six weeks to write Dianetics,3 but the truth is he had been working on and off for over a decade on what he privately referred to as his ‘magnum opus’.4

  In early 1949, Hubbard and his wife Sara moved to Savannah, Georgia, home then to the world’s largest paper mill. The mill, known colloquially as ‘The Bag’, employed thousands of locals.5 But the pulp fiction writer was no fan of the pulp mill. ‘How it stinks,’ he wrote to his friend the science fiction writer Robert Heinlein. ‘Soon as I get myself in the chips I am going someplace where I can breathe!’6

  To get himself ‘in the chips’ Hubbard had set out to revive Excalibur, an unpublished manuscript from 1938. In a letter he wrote to Heinlein in late 1948, he outlined his plans, ‘I got a million dollar book ready to write … I will soon, I hope, give you a book risen from the ashes of old Excalibur which details in full the mathematics of the human mind, solves all the problems of the ages and gives six recipes for aphrodisiacs and plays a mouth organ with the left foot.’7

  The Church of Scientology regards Excalibur as Hubbard’s ‘first philosophic statement’.8 It was in this manuscript, according to Scientology mythology, that Hubbard ‘isolated the common denominator of existence: SURVIVE. That man was surviving was not a new idea. But that this was the single basic common denominator of existence was.’9

  Hubbard claimed this ‘breakthrough of magnitude’,10 as the Church of Scientology calls it, stemmed from an experience on the operating table. As his literary agent Forrest Ackerman described it, ‘Basically what he told me was that after he died he rose in spirit form and looked back on the body he had formerly inhabited. Over yonder he saw a fantastic great gate, elaborately carved like something you’d see in Baghdad or ancient China. As he wafted towards it, the gate opened and just beyond he could see a kind of intellectual smorgasbord on which was outlined everything that had ever puzzled the mind of man.’11

  Hubbard told his literary agent he absorbed all this information and re-entered his body. ‘According to Ron,’ said Ackerman, ‘he jumped off the operating table, ran to his Quonset hut, got two reams of paper and a gallon of scalding black coffee and for the next 48 hours, at a bli
nding rate, he wrote a work called Excalibur, or The Dark Sword.’12

  Gerry Armstrong is one of the few people to have read Excalibur. Before becoming one of Scientology’s most trenchant critics, Armstrong worked as an archivist for the Church of Scientology. While researching an official biography of Hubbard in the 1980s, Armstrong came across the manuscript. He discovered it was happy gas, not a near-death experience, that inspired Excalibur. ‘Hubbard had a couple of teeth extracted,’ says Armstrong, ‘and it was while under the effect of nitrous oxide that he came up with Excalibur.’13

  There are conflicting claims about what happened to the original copies of Excalibur. The Church of Scientology says only small sections of the manuscript still exist because ‘two copies were actually stolen by agents of foreign intelligence services who wished to appropriate those ideas for political ends’.14 The Church of Scientology maintains Hubbard chose not to publish because ‘it did not include an actual therapy for improvement’.15

  However, Arthur J Burks, a friend and writer who claimed he was the first person to read the manuscript, says Hubbard was desperate to get it published. ‘He was so sure he had something “away out and beyond” anything else that he had sent telegrams to several book publishers, telling them that he had written “THE book” and that they were to meet him at Penn Station, and he would discuss it with them and go with whomever gave him the best offer.’16

  Hubbard would later tell his agent he withdrew Excalibur from publication because the first six people who read the manuscript went insane or committed suicide. But the reality is that Hubbard needed every cent he could get and was desperate to sell the manuscript. As he had written to his wife Polly in 1938: ‘I’m still faced with the necessity of somehow getting lined up on steady money whether that be the sales of Excalibur or a movie job.’17

  For Hubbard, the publication of Excalibur was not only about the money. He saw it as his way of making a name for himself. As Arthur J Burks wrote, ‘He told me what he wanted to do with it – it was going to revolutionize everything: the world, people’s attitudes toward one another. He thought it was somewhat more important, and would have a greater impact upon people, than the Bible.’18 Hubbard’s letter to Polly written a decade earlier laid out his vaulting ambition: ‘I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it will take a legendary form, even if all the books are destroyed. That goal, is the real goal as far as I am concerned.’19

  Hubbard’s letter to his first wife, Polly, says much about his state of mind and his beliefs. The man who would later convince his followers that he held the secrets to eternal life shows no signs of believing in immortality himself. Hubbard bemoans that he will last only ‘thirty-nine more years at the most’ and sees his writing as his only hope for life beyond the grave. ‘Personal immortality,’ he wrote, ‘is only to be gained through the printed word, barred note or painted canvas or hard granite.’20

  Given his failure to have Excalibur published and recognised before the war, Hubbard must have placed himself under immense pressure to nail the expanded version of his ideas a decade later. Before he had completed it, he was already talking up the book’s special powers in a bizarre letter to his agent Ackerman. ‘I shall ship it along just as soon as decent,’ he wrote in January 1949. ‘Then you can rape women without their knowing it, communicate suicide messages to your enemies as they sleep, sell the Arroyo Seco parkway to the mayor for cash, evolve the best way of protecting or destroying communism, and other handy household hints.’21

  As Hubbard battled away on the book that eventually became Dianetics, he updated his friends on its progress. He told Robert Heinlein his experiences in the Navy Reserve were having an influence on the rewrite: ‘When I re-read it, my war experiences pointed several necessary alterations and inclusions and I slave away.’22 In the eyes of Hubbard, the book that would become the foundation stone of Scientology was not about religion. ‘I fear the Catholic Church is going to take a look at that book and have a fit … It aint agin religion. It just abolishes it.’23

  In his letters to Heinlein, Hubbard says he has been experimenting on local children as well as Sara and himself. He claims he can double a person’s IQ, and treat asthma, ulcers and arthritis. He boasts he can now sleep less and climax more. ‘I am cruising on four hours sleep a night,’ he wrote, ‘but the most interesting thing is, I’m up to eight comes. In an evening, that is.’24

  Just as Heinlein acted as a sounding board for Hubbard’s ideas, another friend from the science fiction scene would prove critical in providing Dianetics with a launching pad. John W Campbell published much of Hubbard’s and Heinlein’s early work in his magazine Astounding Science Fiction. He was regarded as the most influential editor in what became known as the Golden Age of Science Fiction. After Hubbard moved to New Jersey in the spring of 1949, he started ‘treating’ Campbell, hypnotising him and retrieving real or perceived childhood memories. ‘Ron’s technique consists of bringing these old memories into view,’ Campbell wrote, ‘and then erasing the memory.’25 The chain smoking, garrulous young editor was sold on Dianetics and he was about to help Hubbard sell it to the world.

  Astounding Science Fiction had around 150,000 subscribers and in December 1949, before Hubbard had even completed his book, Campbell was already talking Dianetics up. ‘The item that most interests me at the moment,’ Campbell teased his readers, ‘is an article on the most important subject conceivable. This is not a hoax article. It is an article on the science of the human mind, of human thought.’26 Campbell promised a forthcoming article and in March once again pumped up Hubbard’s new work in an editorial, writing: ‘It is of more importance than you can readily realize.’27

  In the May 1950 edition of Astounding Science Fiction, Campbell published a long essay by L. Ron Hubbard titled Dianetics: The Evolution of a Science. In an editorial, Campbell was again at pains to tell his readership Hubbard’s work was not pseudoscience: ‘I want to assure every reader, most positively and unequivocally, that this article is not a hoax, joke, or anything but a direct, clear statement of a totally new scientific thesis.’28 On 9 May 1950, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health was released in book form. The publishers Hermitage House did not share John Campbell’s faith; the initial print run was just 6000 copies.29

  Dianetics was sold as a science, not a religion. Hubbard’s ‘science of the mind’ carved the brain into two parts, the ‘reactive mind’ and the ‘analytical mind’. Hubbard asserted the reactive mind was like a database, recording emotional trauma and physical pain. He called these recordings ‘engrams’. Hubbard’s theory was that engrams, unlike memories, could not be easily recalled. They could only be recovered through Dianetic counselling or auditing, a process that uses techniques from hypnosis to create a ‘reverie’ or light trance. According to Hubbard, once relived, these experiences are refiled into the analytical mind where they become part of the rational brain.

  If the engrams are not sent to the analytical mind, so the theory goes, they can cause illness and anxiety. In Dianetics, Hubbard cites the story of a woman who has been knocked unconscious: ‘She is kicked and told she is a faker, that she is no good, that she is always changing her mind,’ he writes. ‘A chair is overturned in the process. A faucet is running in the kitchen. A car is passing in the street outside. The engram contains a running record of all these perceptions.’30

  According to Hubbard, these traumatic events can be easily ‘restimulated’ if the engrams are not processed. ‘Running water from a faucet might not have affected her greatly,’ he wrote, ‘but water running from a faucet plus a passing car might have begun some slight reactivation of an engram, a vague discomfort in the areas where she was struck and kicked … When the engram is restimulated in one of the great many ways possible, she has a “feeling” that she is no good, a faker and she will change her mind.’31

  Like most forms of self-help, Dianetics provides individuals with a goal. That goal is to become ‘clear’,
to refile all engrams from the reactive to the analytical mind. Hubbard argued that a ‘clear’ was free of ‘any and all psychoses, neuroses, compulsions and repressions’.32 He claimed that by removing engrams you could cure ‘psychosomatic ills’ including asthma, arthritis, sinusitis, ulcers, heart problems, tuberculosis, alcoholism, allergies and the common cold.33 Once ‘clear’ an individual’s IQ would skyrocket with the added bonus that ‘the clear’ would operate in a state in which ‘full memory exists throughout the lifetime’.34

  According to Dianetics, to get ‘clear’ you have to go and relive all the traumatic experiences filed in your reactive mind going back to conception. For Hubbard the womb was a world of pain. Engrams could be created in utero by a mother’s farts, coughs, sneezes, bouts of constipation and sexual acts. Even dirty talk is off limits during sex with a pregnant woman. ‘If the husband uses language during coitus,’ wrote Hubbard, ‘every word of it is going to be engramic.’35

  But grunting and farting were not the greatest dangers when it came to generating prenatal engrams that could trigger psychoses and neuroses later in life. In Hubbard’s view, that was reserved for failed abortion attempts. ‘It is a scientific fact,’ he wrote, ‘that abortion attempts are the most important factor in aberration.’36

  Hubbard’s claims about the rate at which women attempt to terminate their pregnancies defy logic. ‘Twenty or thirty abortion attempts are not uncommon in the aberee,’ he wrote, ‘and in every attempt the child could have been pierced through the body or brain.’37 Hubbard argued that this epidemic of abortion attempts was responsible for filling the country’s jails and asylums: ‘However many billions America spends yearly on institutions for the insane and jails for the criminals are spent primarily because of attempted abortions done by some sex-blocked mother to whom children are a curse, not a blessing of God.’38