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About Excalibur (original manuscript)

Little Bear Victor

Silver Meritorious Patron
Note: Anons are looking for the manuscript of the original Excalibur. This inspired me to write the following post over at Enturb, which others may find of some interest, so I am posting it here as well.

Since there are a limited number of people that have ever seen this particular book, I figured I should tell you what I know of it, since I happen to be one of them.

I had one opportunity to see the book, but as I had limited time I didn't read it in full. Nevertheless, I did read sections of it knowing this was going to be a once-in-a-lifetime chance.

The content of the book is accurately relayed by Arthur J Burks, Gerry Armstrong and Robert Vaughn Young.

There are no big revelations in the book for anyone who has read Dianetics or later works on the subject, but it is written from a more, shall I say, pompous style. In other words, Hubbard was convinced that he had just learned the secrets of the universe and that it gave him the keys to all of existence, the way to achieve any goal, improve any aspect of life, master any subject, be the king of all existence. He suddenly knew everything. And he firmly believed that with this "knowledge" one could rule the world, align all data and advance every subject and science.

I personally believe this book is crucial in understanding how Dianetics and Scientology came about. This was the breakthrough. This was the original work.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is the introduction which is not written by Hubbard but by one of his sci-fi author friends. It describes the nitrous oxide dental operation that Hubbard underwent, his near-death experience and his successful return from with with his memory intact and the secrets of the universe laid bare in front of his very eyes.

In my opinion this drug experience was THE experience that shaped Hubbards life and made him find his purpose (from his personal point of view) in life. It made him "the chosen one," so to speak.

The book goes through the various theories of Dianetics, but unlike the 1950 book Dianetics, doesn't include any therapy or means for anyone else to achieve or put into use the "knowledge" imparted. It was, as I said, a pompous statement that "with this knowledge everything you have ever dreamed of can now be yours."

The passage "The One Word" is indeed the first chapter of the book. That chapter has actually been published in one of the church "Ron magazine" PR publication series.

Moreover, as someone mentioned, the current Official CoS LRH Biographer is Danny Sherman, who has access to the Excalibur manuscript. In fact, Danny gave an event speech to Scientology publics, telling (his own version) of the story of LRH's dental operation experience. This event video may be available (???) although I have not seen it as yet.

As to other copies of the manuscript, unfortunately I don't know of any outside-the-Church copies. There are two copies I know exist for certain: One in the LRH Biographer files, one in the LRH House (Bonnie View). Both of them are on the Int Base, so you won't be able to get a hold of them.

Another place equally difficult to get to which more than likely has a copy is CST who is supposed to have the original of every single thing LRH has ever written (In some cases the only "original" they have is a copy already, but the most original version of any LRH writing goes to CST). So at least three copies of this manuscript exist.

As to the remark that there are three versions of the manuscript, this is also accurate -- even if you discount the non-LRH Excalibur Revisited -- but the only difference between the three as far as I could tell was the sequence and completeness or lack thereof of the three versions.

I would recognize and could authenticate the manuscript if you got hold of one. One thing that no one has mentioned is that there were a number of diagrams in the book, hand drawn by Hubbard. One of them was a copy of a diagram from a book by another author, which showed a conic representation of the history of evolution of life. As I recall, at the top of the cone was "the past" with a single living cell (unless it started all the way from the big bang, but I don't think so). More and more developed organisms were drawn in that developed through time. At the base of the cone was "present," with man and animals as they exist today.

There were several other diagrams in the manuscript.

The prospects of the Church publishing the book: David Miscavige has said he COULD publish the book without any great problem, that there isn't something extraordinary in it that would be totally new and strange to anyone who has read Dianetics. But he is not planning to do so. There are a couple of reasons for this:

Firstly, as has been said, the best reason is that it has more value as a "myth" than a published book.

Secondly, there are all the lies that have been told about it (it was stolen, lost, reading it will drive you crazy, and so on).

The third, and probably most important factor is that the sequence of the manuscript is not clear from any of the three copies and there are things that would certainly have to be edited out "for PR purposes." At least for the Scientology public. For instance, Hubbard was talking about women and sex much more freely. It was nothing shocking, but would reveal some of his attitudes about women and sex that would hardly be suitable for church publics.

As to getting a hold of a copy of the manuscript, unless someone can convert Danny Sherman from a true believer into a disbeliever and walk out with a copy of the manuscript, your best bet is to try and trace where those few copies went that did make it to the handful of original readers who supposedly went crazy. For while the LRH Personal PR Office and CST have done all in their power to find any and all LRH originals, correspondence and every piece of scrap paper or napkin LRH ever put a pen down on, I am certain that if anyone ever had a copy of Excalibur and the Church came to retrieve it, they would either say they didn't have it, or make a copy of it for themselves before turning it in.

So you might be able to find it. I say there is a small-to-fair chance, although it won't be easy.
 

tookmeawhile

Patron with Honors
Little Bear,

Thanks so much for posting this here. I love this sort of information! I know I should already know this, but what is CST?
 

Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
Little Bear,

Thanks so much for posting this here. I love this sort of information! I know I should already know this, but what is CST?

Church of Spiritual Technology, or "Archives". The "preservation of the tech" people, "L. Ron Hubbard Library" etc.

And thanks very much, LBV.

Paul
 

DartSmohen

Silver Meritorious Patron
I would like to see a copy of the book, bearing in mind that he catagorically stated to me and others that it never existed, that it was a legend he created to generate a mystique.

I suppose that he told so many lies to so many different people, he found it difficult to remenber what he said and to whom.
 
Ok, so I have read a these summations of Excalibur now, what part of that would make people crazy or sick??? It seems to just have info about 'survive' and some dianetics basics / sociology concepts... So what would make people go crazy...

With OTIII he at least had a better excuse of 'oh its this whole track incident and it will make you die' blah! But what about Excalibur made people go insane?

I know that its all BS, but I'm just curious as to what LRH or whoever thought would make us be crazy?

My idea, maybe if a true-believer were to read it they would see how crazy and stupid Hubbard was and then they would go crazy because of all the money they have blown in this crazy dudes organization?!?
 

Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
Ok, so I have read a these summations of Excalibur now, what part of that would make people crazy or sick??? It seems to just have info about 'survive' and some dianetics basics / sociology concepts... So what would make people go crazy...

Sounds like merely another Hubbard lie for PR purposes.

Like that "nitrous oxide" experience. What evidence is there for it beyond Hubbard's say-so?

You could do far worse than discount every single thing Hubbard ever said or wrote for which there is no independent evidence.

Paul
 
Sounds like merely another Hubbard lie for PR purposes.

Like that "nitrous oxide" experience. What evidence is there for it beyond Hubbard's say-so?

You could do far worse than discount every single thing Hubbard ever said or wrote for which there is no independent evidence.

Paul

Agreed, that is prolly what happened.

In my humble opinion...

Heck, I can think of several instances of total hyperbole while I was on staff. You know the game where you get in a circle, you whisper a message in the ear of the person next to you, and the message travels from person to person until you are left with an odd unrelated or exaggerated message at the end... It's exactly like that.

There are all these stories floating around orgs about the four year old that made his parents take him to the org, he regurgitates his IAS membership number and says who he was in a previous life, then the org continues his auditing where he left off. These stories are common, but you never actually meet these people, because they don't exist.

Like OT's with abilities, they don't have any. Some may be stable and successful, but there are far more stable and successful non-Scientologists out there.

I recently read the Buddhist 'The Dhammapada' and the more I read the more I realized how so much of Scientology is really these same concepts excruciatingly drawn out. The thing that's frustrating is that The Dhammapada is already boiled down to simplicity and it was written a few thousand years ago (I think...). So when Hubbard ripped off all these other volumes he over complicated everything. Its not a secret that Hubbard took from older philosophies, hell, he even has lectures about it. Its just funny that the original texts are more condensed and make more since than some of the Scientology materials that drown on and on and on...

I can remember how I used to get excited about a lecture because of the title, the subject, or a short quote... Just to discover that the 55 minute lecture is really about 40 minutes of LRH rambling about random stuff, 10 minutes of LRH blabbering about how great Scientology is and how there is nothing else like it and no other hope, and maybe 5 minutes on the actual 'subject' that the lecture is supposed to be all about. Soo much of Scientology is like this. AND THE CURRENT SCIENTOLOGY ESTABLISHMENT KNOWS IT. For example, look at the How to Use Dianetics DVD that came out a couple or three years ago. This takes a long ass book, simplifies it into a couple hours, and for the first time it all makes sense (my experience). They (SO execs) knew that DMSMH was confusing and too long and random. So they corrected his work and came out with this film.

I think that Scientology should keep evolving like this. There are some good concepts in there, mixed in between all the BS. I'm not saying that its all original or anything... If Scientology kept evolving and simplifying like the DMSMH DVD, we could end up with a small collection of concise useful data to add to your book shelf among other philosophies (non scientology). Not $30,000+ of materials but a few books and a few dvd's would be enough. Maybe if the DM ever blows over or gets booted..... Stop thinking of LRH as a God and continue to improve his work, because seriously, there is a LOT LOT LOT LOT of FILLER in threre!!! In my estimation, if you took the Basics Books and Lectures Package... It could probably be condensed into 1 medium sized book, and a few hours of lectures just for fun.

Just my thoughts...
 

Panda Termint

Cabal Of One
I have a "Letter From Ron" on the SO#1 line where I asked him about Excalibur. "He" told me exactly where I could find the data contained in Excalibur, from memory it was in "What To Audit: (aka History Of Man) and some basic texts such as DMSMH etc (as already mentioned).
I'll hit the storage boxes and scan the letter in the next day or three. :biggrin:
 

Veda

Sponsor
I have a "Letter From Ron" on the SO#1 line where I asked him about Excalibur. "He" told me exactly where I could find the data contained in Excalibur, from memory it was in "What To Audit: (aka History Of Man) and some basic texts such as DMSMH etc (as already mentioned).
I'll hit the storage boxes and scan the letter in the next day or three. :biggrin:

From the various accounts, there's nothing resembling the content of 'History of Man' in 'Excalibur', but I'll add that to the list of Hubbardian "shore stories" concerning 'Excalibur'. This will be, I think, shore story #5. :)

The part about 'DMSMH' was correct, at least some of the theory part.

What all the Hubbard shore stories have in common is that they lead to: "No. You can't see 'Excalibur'."
 

Veda

Sponsor
Nothing? Oh well, you're the expert on this stuff.

There's a little from the Genetic Line part of 'H.O.M'., but no out-of-body thetans zooming about throwing lightning bolts, no Body Thetans or entities, and no implanters, and no whole track.

The idea in citing both Dianetics and Scientology texts was to encourage the idea that all of Scientology - in brilliantly concise powerful form, so powerful that it could be dangerous to read all at once - was contained in 'Excalibur'.

Whoever wrote the letter you received - it probably wasn't Hubbard - would not have seen 'Excalibur' but would be familiar with Hubbard's tales, and know the 'acceptable truths' re. 'Excalibur'.

RV Young and Gerry Armstrong both read 'Excalibur' and have described it.
 

BardoThodol

Silver Meritorious Patron
I've always been curious about the "research" line prior to Dianetics. Hubbard had to have been auditing a lot of people to develop the techniques for DMSMH. Even if the "research" were merely empirical.

In several of his lectures he talked about pivotal years. 1938 was one of them. I don't remember the rest. (then again, a few minutes ago, I couldn't remember the word "synonym" for about fifteen seconds. Oy vey! Getting old.)

Excalibur was a lynchpin in creating the Hubbard myth. I remember being in Scientology and wondering where this being had come from. How he had just come down from somewhere beyond with all this knowledge. Knowledge beyond my comprehension. Mercy-me. Too many drugs exploring other dimensionality.

I also remember how disappointed I was to see how rudimentary The Original Thesis was. That this was the "original thesis" gainsaid the appearance of a supernatural being.

Then, if you believed Hubbard in his lectures, he really wasn't aware of past lives as real until all these pcs kept going prior to in the womb experiences. He claimed that the use of past lives was merely necessitated by what pcs were running. His "what works" claim.

Since Hubbard was a writer, almost a compulsive writer, I would find it hard to believe he didn't leave a trail of all he was thinking way before Dianetics.

And I'd love to get a chance to look at that stuff. Be interesting.

As for the material in Excalibur driving a person crazy: Hubbard may well have experienced being driven crazy from what he experienced that prompted him to write the work.

Contacting Chakras and letting loose the sensations and awareness contained in them can give one the sense of going crazy. Gaddy has written about some of this.

"Crazy" could easily be defined as seeing the world in uncontrolled and inexplicable ways. All of your basic sense of stability is unhinged. Like an LSD experience that you weren't expecting.

If you were able to step back suddenly and perceive the world around you as all the whizzing atomic and subatomic phenomena you would get the sense that you were going crazy. Experience would have destabilized.

For all his bullshit and myth building, Hubbard was just a slob like the rest of us, trying to figure it all out.
 
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