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How I was fooled by Hubbard

LA SCN

NOT drinking the kool-aid
Ever since my departure from the CofS I have been on the path of discovery.

First was the task to find out everything I could find out about the CofS that the CofS wasn't telling. Mindboggling. And without the internet, forget it. You could find some of it in libraries but it would take forever and you would not nearly get it all; in fact, only a fraction of the story.

Once possessed of the WHOLE story of Hubbard, Dn & Scn, discovery became 'How the hell was I so thoroughly fooled and bamboozled' to the point of denying to myself, even in the face of valid argument, that there could be any fault with the cult or its founder and my sacrificing of any kind of sensible financial, health, community, parental, spousal or personal lifestyle.

The simple fact in the beginning was I wanted to achieve a better level of living, to be more able, powerful, happy and successful in life. That included being freed from any bad feelings from past events or existing non-optimum conditions or disabilities.

After reading a book, doing a course and interacting with the folks at the center, I had observable gains, wins etc. and I began to BELIEVE.

Based on that crucial premise - BELIEF - I self-determinedly and with gusto fully entered a trap it would take me over 30 years to get out of - but thankfully I did.

I hope this information will be of help to others:

One indisputable fact about Hubbard can be stated: he was a writer. He capitalized on that ability to bring about the achievement of his goals as stated in the Admissions of L. Ron Hubbard here:

http://www.lermanet.com/reference/Admissions.pdf

Reading the materials of Dn and Scn that Hubbard wrote could be very captivating and seem so much The Truth as if he really had done the research and walked the walk. There is a reason for this and it can be found in Hubbards' own words here:

http://writer.lronhubbard.org/page44.htm

In this article Hubbard explains how library research, i.e. reading books by others, laid the foundation for him to write on a subject and come off sounding believable and like an expert who really 'knows' the subject without ever actually having been there or done that. The article also shows how Hubbard was looking for ways to make more MONEY not write the best book people ever read:

(From the LRH article) "In Tacoma a few months ago, I heard a writer sighing that he was having a hell of a time getting plots. This acute writing disease had eaten deeply into his sleep and bankbook. It had made him so alert that he was ruined as a conversationalist, acting, as he did, like an idea sponge. Hanging on and hoping but knowing that no ideas could possibly come his way.

As usual, I injected my thoughts into his plight – a habit which is bad and thankless.

I said, “Here’s an idea. Why not go out and dig around in the old files at the library and the capitol at Olympia and find out everything you can on the subject of branding? There should be a lot of stories there.”

He raised one eye and leered, “What? Do all that work for a cent and a half a word?”

And just to drive the idea home, I might remark that one day I happened into the New York public library. Crossing the file room I slammed into a heavy bulk and ricocheted back to discover I had walked straight into Norvell Page and he into me.

I gaped. “Page!”

“Hubbard!” he whispered in awed tones.

Solemnly we shook each other by the hand.

CHORUS: Well, this is the first time I ever saw a writer in a library!

These two instances should serve to illustrate the fact that research does not rhyme with writer no matter what kind of mill you pound.

Research is a habit which is only acquired by sheer force of will. The easy thing to do is guess at the facts – so thinks the writer. When, as a matter of facts, the easy thing to do is go find the facts if you have to tear a town to pieces."


Any of you who have read Buckskin Brigades may have gotten the impression that Hubbard knew firsthand the geography, the Blackfeet Indians, the Hudsons' Bay Company and the independant trappers but he did not - it was all concocted BELIEVABLY from his library research.

So Hubbard DID do research - but it was in the library studying the actual work of others in the field of the mind and spirit. But as a writer, he was able to come off as BELIEVABLE. Another author, A. E. Van Vogt discovered this quality of BELIEVABLE here:

http://www.roger-russell.com/sffun/nulla.htm

(From the A.E. Van Vogt article) "While in Ottawa, he (Van Vogt) took a course in writing at the Palmer Institute for Authorship. He discovered that he could write about the ocean that he had never seen and realized this had verisimilitude (having the appearance of truth). The moment he understood that, he knew he could write fiction. He wrote his first story and entered a contest in True Story magazine. He didn't win the contest but they sent him a check for $110. The story was published as "No One to Blame but Herself." He wrote more stories for them and eventually wrote one that earned him a year's salary. He went on to write not only confession stories, but also love stories and an occasional radio play. It was about this time that he met Mayne, his future wife.

His first science fiction story was inspired by John W. Campbell's Who Goes There? [August 1938 Astounding Science Fiction]. It later was adapted for film as The Thing From Outer Space. Campbell returned his first story, Vault of the Beast, for rewriting. His second story, Black Destroyer, made the cover of the July 1939 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and won first place in the reader voting for July. It was also patterned after Who Goes There?"


Interestingly enough, Van Vogt became a follower of Hubbard and obtained help with his own life from Dianetics but in later years left the fold. But the help he got from Dianetics was not due to any work by Hubbard - it was the plagiarized work of Freud that gave him benefit.

That was the bait in the trap - there was helpful knowledge there to be had, albeit the work of others with the profit going to Hubbard. More information on just how extensive was greed motivated plagiaristic fraud of Hubbard can be found here, An invaluable list of sources written up by Jon Atack:

http://home.snafu.de/tilman/j/origins6.html

You can also find that the meter and prepared list assessing was done as early as 1906 by Jung here:

http://clearingtech.net/wp-content/themes/thematic/clearingtech_html/article4.html

As the years passed Hubbard found that people would get gains and then move on. He needed to keep people in his cult longer to get more money from them longer. He invented the OT levels; from the study of totalitarian systems he took heavy handed ethics practices to make people feel guilty and enslave them into doing his bidding, as well as secret police and terrorist activities of which the SS and KGB would be proud.

I sometimes wonder how many people caved on the formula "Find out who you really are?", propitiated to Hubbard and left their own valence, never to return.

And Miscavige continues the evil, demented ways of Hubbard with a robotic moronic vengeance.
 

freethinker

Sponsor
Thanks for posting this. I neer knew that the entirety of Dianetics was discovered and developed by others long before Hubbard.

It explains, for me why the nature of the OT levels seemed so strangely different to Dianetics and going Clear.

IMO one should mesh seemlessly into the other but instead the whole technique became different and Dianetics could not be used on Clears and above.

It explains why I found Dianetics to be acceptable but Scientology to be strange and foreign and almost unrelated.

I never really viewed Scientology as realistic and had a mind of I'll have to experience it to believe it. Scientology auditing never really worked for me and I spent much of my auditing time on correction lists which only served to anoy me.
 

LA SCN

NOT drinking the kool-aid
Thanks guys,

E P and freethinker - thanks.

I hope it helps a lot of folks to get the truth.
 

Alanzo

Bardo Tulpa
You've come to very similar conclusions to mine.

I, too, have spent much of my time and energy trying to figure out how Hubbard did it. It produces a lot of very good results.

I find that the field of social psychology has a lot of information that helps a person who has been involved in Scientology figure out how they ended up where they did.

Good post, LA SCN.

Keep going!
 

Axiom142

Gold Meritorious Patron
It’s quite a journey isn’t it La Scn?

Thank God we can actually look at ourselves and start to think about what happened to us and how we put up with it for so long.

I’ve been reading a really good book which on the face of it has nothing to do with Scientology, but when you really get into it, explains so much about why we went along and why so many are still stuck in the cult and probably will remain there. This book is ‘Mistakes Were Made (but not by me)’ (http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were...3909/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1301865595&sr=8-1 )

Personally I wasn’t so much concerned with how Hubbard did it – as soon as I started looking at how people can be manipulated by professionals such as Derren Brown, it became fairly obvious – but instead, why I went along with it.

I pride myself as being a fairly rational and analytical sort of chap, sometime a bit cynical, and yet I allowed myself to be pulled into a morass of pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo for two decades while paying handsomely for the privilege!

I’ve come to the conclusion that we all have weaknesses and if someone has the right tools and is unscrupulous enough and gets to us when we are at our most vulnerable, virtually anyone can succumb.

Axiom142
 

Operating DB

Truman Show Dropout
That was a nice post LA SCN. This thread could very well be retitled "How We All Were Fooled by Hubbard".
 

LA SCN

NOT drinking the kool-aid
Compadre -

You've come to very similar conclusions to mine.

I, too, have spent much of my time and energy trying to figure out how Hubbard did it. It produces a lot of very good results.

I find that the field of social psychology has a lot of information that helps a person who has been involved in Scientology figure out how they ended up where they did.

Good post, LA SCN.

Keep going!

Thanks for the reply - great minds think alike!:thumbsup:

Luckily for me, my wake up call was of sufficient magnitude that leaving was a slam-dunk.

Now my what I want is to find a way to break through to those still in the clutch of the cult and help them see the light. I do try.

Where would we be without Emma and ESMB!
 

LA SCN

NOT drinking the kool-aid
You speak sooth!

It’s quite a journey isn’t it La Scn?

Thank God we can actually look at ourselves and start to think about what happened to us and how we put up with it for so long.

I’ve been reading a really good book which on the face of it has nothing to do with Scientology, but when you really get into it, explains so much about why we went along and why so many are still stuck in the cult and probably will remain there. This book is ‘Mistakes Were Made (but not by me)’ (http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were...3909/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1301865595&sr=8-1 )

Personally I wasn’t so much concerned with how Hubbard did it – as soon as I started looking at how people can be manipulated by professionals such as Derren Brown, it became fairly obvious – but instead, why I went along with it.

I pride myself as being a fairly rational and analytical sort of chap, sometime a bit cynical, and yet I allowed myself to be pulled into a morass of pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo for two decades while paying handsomely for the privilege!

I’ve come to the conclusion that we all have weaknesses and if someone has the right tools and is unscrupulous enough and gets to us when we are at our most vulnerable, virtually anyone can succumb.

Axiom142

You are so right and boy was it an addictive and adventurous thrill ride!
 
On research. I think someone said recently on ESMB that asking a question is research. Which it isn't. Research is doing all the searching, experiments to answer a question. Research which is done to write cheap novels is just gathering facts that can be spun to make a convincing story. Research which is done to write history books or serious news articles has to be more rigorous and research which is done for psychology or, if you like to change the human psyche in a systematic and predictable way, and sold as that, needs experimentation, control groups, serious research into what others have done.

Hubbard and his followers use the cult-followers definition of research which is that the cheap novelists quick flick through an encyclopedia is "research" for psychological methods.
Labelling it as religion is just one of the silly two-steps where fatty wanted a bob on each horse.
 

Petey C

Silver Meritorious Patron
On research. I think someone said recently on ESMB that asking a question is research. Which it isn't. Research is doing all the searching, experiments to answer a question. Research which is done to write cheap novels is just gathering facts that can be spun to make a convincing story. Research which is done to write history books or serious news articles has to be more rigorous and research which is done for psychology or, if you like to change the human psyche in a systematic and predictable way, and sold as that, needs experimentation, control groups, serious research into what others have done.

Hubbard and his followers use the cult-followers definition of research which is that the cheap novelists quick flick through an encyclopedia is "research" for psychological methods.
Labelling it as religion is just one of the silly two-steps where fatty wanted a bob on each horse.

Agree. Sitting in a library reading stuff to write a trasho novel is the sort of "research" people do when they're looking to buy a house. Real research means reading the literature, posing a question that is unanswered, looking for potential answers, posing a hypothesis, testing it, replicating under scientific conditions. What Hubby did was not research. It was really just a big brain wank.

The religion thing is clearly a strategy to fly under the tax radar and acquire some respectability for a shonky enterprise.
 

LA SCN

NOT drinking the kool-aid
Ain't it the truth...

That was a nice post LA SCN. This thread could very well be retitled "How We All Were Fooled by Hubbard".

That's the hell of it...the best intentioned , most trusting people get hammered the worst by con men of Hubbards' ilk.

Thanks for your reply!
 

LA SCN

NOT drinking the kool-aid
Thanks, Arnie!

I typed in an excerpt today by a mind control expert (for the gov) from 1949,

http://www.forum.exscn.net/showthread.php?p=558260#post558260

The structure of the promises made by dianetics and scientology will be instantly evident to ex's reading this... who have progressed beyond 'denial'..

This excerpt helped me understand how Hubbard did it.

I'm honored by your reply and admire your work and respect you tremendously for the heat you've taken in pursuit of a just and righteous cause. Your website was invaluable to me early in my post Scn truth gathering. Good data then and now!:thumbsup:
 

LA SCN

NOT drinking the kool-aid
Oh, hell yeah!

On research. I think someone said recently on ESMB that asking a question is research. Which it isn't. Research is doing all the searching, experiments to answer a question. Research which is done to write cheap novels is just gathering facts that can be spun to make a convincing story. Research which is done to write history books or serious news articles has to be more rigorous and research which is done for psychology or, if you like to change the human psyche in a systematic and predictable way, and sold as that, needs experimentation, control groups, serious research into what others have done.

Hubbard and his followers use the cult-followers definition of research which is that the cheap novelists quick flick through an encyclopedia is "research" for psychological methods.
Labelling it as religion is just one of the silly two-steps where fatty wanted a bob on each horse.

As a high school and college student well founded in math and physics, research meant to me a postulate was placed as a premise and then strictly controlled tests were performed to determine which approach, method, recipe, mixture, etc. gave the desired results. for example, which concrete formulation gave the best tensile strength in a column supporting a certain load. Actual research would chronicle the test parameters, the results and any conclusion. There is a distinct paucity of this in Scn.
 
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