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Reading "Messiah or Madman"

programmer_guy

True Ex-Scientologist
Alan said:
The infamous "Mission Holders Conference" got their properties returned to them.

AFAIK, Bent still owns that property. A couple of years ago another ex-staffer and I strolled through the basement (which is now an excersize/health club). I asked them if Bent still owned the building and they said something like "Oh, you know Bent?"... confirming that Bent still owns it.
 

programmer_guy

True Ex-Scientologist
Remembering...

Rmack,

Depending on which Div you were in, you and I may have met at some time... I don't know. (You may have been on staff while I was at ASHO for training... depending on how long you were on staff there.)

I was on staff, at that time, as Comm Course sup, HQS sup, and HSDC sup at different times. On the HSDC I supped with Rodney Michaelson for awhile.

Steven Rothchild watched over the HQS and the HSDC as a senior supervisor.

Debbie Butler was senior supervisor over the Comm Course while I supped on that course. This was at the same time that Jim Hamre was also supping the Comm Course (before he switched to regging in Div2.)

During that time Rene Ansert was an auditor and Jeff Kovac was a reg. Darcy was an auditor that (I think) also did some C/Sing under Mary Corydon.
 

Wisened One

Crusader
WOW! :clap: AWESOME VIDEO!! Where's the rest of it, tho?

Transcribed excerpts from 'Secret Lives':

http://www.xenu.net/entheta/entheta/media/tv/secret/secret3.html

'Secret Lives', BBC program on L. Ron Hubbard:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3020827931130963516

Hana Eltringham, in short clip, tells of the 4 year old boy - Derek Greene.

http://www.xenu-directory.net/practices/children1.html

The 'L. Ron Hubbard, Messiah or Madman?' thread.

http://forum.exscn.net/showthread.php?t=1090
 

Tim Skog

Silver Meritorious Patron
I ws lucky enough to find an early copy (the one with the makeshift bookjacket) on ebay and snapped it up.

I sort of read bits and pieces on the net over the years but never thoroughly.

So I am enjoying snuggling up in bed at night and sinking my teeth into this wonderful book.

There are a number of passages that I'd love to throw up for discussion, but I'll start with this one.

This is from Part 1, Chapter 9 - The brainwashing manual



I felt a literal kick in the guts when I read this.

It explained so much for me.

For the last 6 years I've wondered about the seeming contradiction of Scientology. How you could read something and be blown away by the beauty and simplicity of it, and experience real case gain from the realisations JUST from reading, yet once you left the sanctity of the courseroom, you were confronted with an Organisation of madness.

When "in" Scientology, I used to justify this madness by explaining it away as untrained admin terminals, group bank or something similar. But I slowly began to realise it was more than that, especially after a trip or two uplines for an ethics handling to a SO Org where the insanity was even worse. My excuses just didn't hold water after that.

Reading that passage made so much sense to me. To understand a little better how the trap was laid makes it easier to get out of.

Yes, it is an excellent account of Hubbo. Ron was a very good con man. He knew that you had to reel them in and the best way was to give someone a truth that could lead to a win.

The whole lower portion of the Grade Chart and all the early basic books are geared to create wins for people. And once you are winning it makes it easier to move you along to the tougher and harder (and more expensive) to believe stuff like OT3, etc.

The other clever thing that LRH did was to announce in the Sci Fi mag (don't remember which one) that a new Science of the Mind was going to appear in the next edition. He promoted to the one audience that would surely take an interest in DMSMH. And it worked like a charm.
 

Thrak

Gold Meritorious Patron
Yeah I've always thought some of the beginning stuff had some validity if only for the reason of getting people in. The question that remains for me is, is what he ended up with what he had intended all along, or did his intentions change and even oscillate through the years? To me it is just too complex for there to have been one plan that he never wavered from. I guess my theory is that he was schizo and had good and bad personalities he went in and out of and the bad won. But I'm sure some won't agree.
 

Martini

Patron Meritorious
Hey OB,yeah it would make sense that they would get that information
out of those sessions.Whether top scientists and engineers with
security clearances were being audited is another matter.Who knows?

That was the exact part of DeWolfe's story that made my B.S. meter go off to it's highest point. Not a plausible story at all. What a story teller. I guess he got it from his dad. Apparently he had a lot to get even for.

The whole Penthouse article is bogus.

And in the end was there enough proof to show that LRH what do anything
for money,so to speak?

Selling U.S. nuclear bomb military secrets because of auditing on the engineer of nuclear bombs in which he violated all the highest of security clearances and gave over this information? lol
 

Veda

Sponsor
That was the exact part of DeWolfe's story that made my B.S. meter go off to it's highest point. Not a plausible story at all. What a story teller. I guess he got it from his dad. Apparently he had a lot to get even for.

The whole Penthouse article is bogus.



Selling U.S. nuclear bomb military secrets because of auditing on the engineer of nuclear bombs in which he violated all the highest of security clearances and gave over this information? lol

There is a total of five pages of material, from Ron Jr., in the book, 'L. Ron Hubbard, Messiah or Madman?'. Nothing from the 'Penthouse' article appears there. All the material used in "Madman?' was supported by others' testimony and by court's evidence.

There's a confusion re. the 'Penthouse' article, as stories told to Ron Jr., by his father, were presented as being believed by Ron Jr. Ron Jr. belived some of it, not all of it, and was uncertain about some things. That's one category: Things he was *told* by his father. His father *told* him (he was 17 in 1950) that he was selling secrets to the Russians, just as his father told Scientologists so many things. And, not unlike the Scientologists who are still "sorting it out" and recovering, so did Ron Jr. attempt to do so.

Of course, Ron Jr. had the problem of having been Fair Gamed, by his father and Scientology, for most of his life. The two "buttons" that Scientology Inc. went after were "family, wife, children," and "money, jobs, etc." Scientology Inc. was relentless. There was even a little celebration after Ron Jr.'s son was born with Downs syndrome. They figured that would be the final emotional straw that broke Ron Jr.'s back.

Nice.

Ron Jr. was told many things by his father, but he also *witnessed* his father's behavior: his father throwing dinner plates against walls, his father drinking heavily, and his father using drugs; he witnessed his father's fascination with the writings of Aleister Crowley, and with the darkest aspects of the occult, witnessed his father's use of self-hypnosis with the 'Affirmations' - the 'Affirmations' beginning in the late 1930s. He also witnessed his father secretly stuffing cash into shoe boxes, telling people he had no money, and then declaring bankruptcy, and he witnessed the contempt with which his father regarded Scientologists, the Scientologists to whom his father had repeatedly lied.

All this, and more, has since been confirmed.

However, Ron Jr. was told so many tall tales by his father, that he spent the rest of his life trying to sort it out, and free himself from his father's manipulations. And he said so.

After the birth of Ron Jr.s youngest son in the early 1970s, who was born with Downs syndrome, Scientology Inc. - which was already tightening the screws on Ron Jr. with an assortment of covert dirty tricks, such as messing with his credit rating, having him fired from jobs, and even taking pictures of his kids walking to school, etc. - approached him to "settle, and "make peace." He did, for a while, and then began to speak out again in the early 1980s. A few years later, he had emergency surgery related to diabetes, come under further harassment, was penniless again, and settled again, withdrawing from involvement with the (then) half written 'Messiah or Madman?' book.

Ron Jr.'s name does not appear on the 2nd (1992), 3rd (1996), or Russian language (2005) editions.
 

crm1978

Patron with Honors
I loved Bent's book It took a lot of guts to take on CofS back when it was much easier to suppress info before the internet He and Gerry Armstrong deserve a medel for the way they exposed the lies hubbard told about his background .Another book I loved is "Inside Scientology" by Bob Kaufman.It described his path from idealistic newcomer then his desent into madness caused by the O.T. levels and his loss of belief in "tech" and his recovery from his Scion experence.A great read just as true today as in 1968.The part in Bent's book about where LRH really got the "tech" from makes a lot of sense As others have said the outer layer of Scn.is an appealing and very wonderfull veneer if you read some of the things LRH wrote such as "What is Greatness" and other nobel ideals as that.Unfortunently those are not the "real Hubbard"sadly many people don't discover that till they are. way in sometimes they never do.
 

Ulduz

Patron with Honors
My favorite book about Scientology is Bare Faced Messiah. I do not think any other book comes close to it. I give B- to Messiah or Madman
 

Veda

Sponsor
Opening post of this thread and follow up post by Emma:

I was lucky enough to find an early copy (the one with the makeshift bookjacket) on ebay and snapped it up.

I sort of read bits and pieces on the net over the years but never thoroughly.

So I am enjoying snuggling up in bed at night and sinking my teeth into this wonderful book.

There are a number of passages that I'd love to throw up for discussion, but I'll start with this one.

This is from Part 1, Chapter 9 - The brainwashing manual

[QUOTE FROM 'THE BRAINWASHING MANUAL' CHAPTER]

I felt a literal kick in the guts when I read this.

It explained so much for me.

For the last 6 years I've wondered about the seeming contradiction of Scientology. How you could read something and be blown away by the beauty and simplicity of it, and experience real case gain from the realisations JUST from reading, yet once you left the sanctity of the courseroom, you were confronted with an Organisation of madness.

When "in" Scientology, I used to justify this madness by explaining it away as untrained admin terminals, group bank or something similar. But I slowly began to realise it was more than that, especially after a trip or two uplines for an ethics handling to a SO Org where the insanity was even worse. My excuses just didn't hold water after that.

Reading that passage made so much sense to me. To understand a little better how the trap was laid makes it easier to get out of.

Yeah I know it's weird that I hadn't read it.

I read "A Piece of Blue Sky" and "Bare Faced Messiah" as soon as I was able to when I got out. I borrowed APOBS from the library and read BFM on line.

I've read a bunch of other stuff too, but for some reason I never got to this one, not in full anyhow.

I'm LOVING it. It has to be one of the best I've read. I'm glad I own a copy.

I also managed to snap up "The Mind Benders" by the late Cyril Vosper. I enjoyed the book although it didn't really teach me anything I didn't know. I found it entertaining and a bit sad. I was on staff when Cyril was living in Melbourne and used to put the fear of Xenu into the local OSA crows when he showed up to picket. When he died we lost a great SP in Melbourne.

Emma, if you're ever inclined to quote other passages from 'Madman?' for discussion, I'm sure many would be interested.
 
The Life Arts Building

m.jpg
 

programmer_guy

True Ex-Scientologist
Re: The Life Arts Building


Yep, that's it.

Bent's office was in the upper corner (2nd floor).
The intro lecture (given by Joe Yazbeck) was in the room directly below that.

Auditing rooms were on the 2nd floor, and then later, also some in the basement.

The Comm Course was on the 1st floor; the HQS and HSDC were in the basement.

The Div2 regs were on the 2nd floor. One Div6 reg, Rene Walker's office, was right next to the intro lecture room.

EDIT: I had also carried 3/4 inch sheet rock up the stairs to build the reg and auditing room walls shortly after we moved into that building, decades ago. (Some of it was also 1/2 inch sheet rock. I don't remember why we had both. I think that, way back then, Bobby Mongello was making the decisions on these constructions. Correct me if I am wrong.)
 
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LongTimeGone

Silver Meritorious Patron
Anyone complaining about the cruelties of Psychiatry should be made to read The Chapter "A Seafaring Messiah." (Page 27 of Messiah or Madman)

Here he describes a 4 year old boy, Tony, spending two days in the chain locker aboard the Apollo for the "crime" of eating a Telex.

Cruelty beyond comprehension.

LTG
 
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Rmack

Van Allen Belt Sunbather
This book was the catalyst that freed me from the cult. I read it in one sitting.

I'm sure Emma finished it a long time ago, but I for one would be interested in what she thought about it.

Does anyone have any more info on the deal with LRH jr. and his association with the book? I understand that he was originally given credit as a co-author, but then than was dropped, or something. Someone mentioned a payoff from the cult to shut up on live chat. Where later copies of this book edited? Is it hard to get nowadays, or something? I still have my hardcover copy. Was it ever published in paperback?
 

Clarence Rockaway

Patron with Honors
I ws lucky enough to find an early copy (the one with the makeshift bookjacket) on ebay and snapped it up.

I sort of read bits and pieces on the net over the years but never thoroughly.

So I am enjoying snuggling up in bed at night and sinking my teeth into this wonderful book.

There are a number of passages that I'd love to throw up for discussion, but I'll start with this one.

This is from Part 1, Chapter 9 - The brainwashing manual



I felt a literal kick in the guts when I read this.

It explained so much for me.

For the last 6 years I've wondered about the seeming contradiction of Scientology. How you could read something and be blown away by the beauty and simplicity of it, and experience real case gain from the realisations JUST from reading, yet once you left the sanctity of the courseroom, you were confronted with an Organisation of madness.

When "in" Scientology, I used to justify this madness by explaining it away as untrained admin terminals, group bank or something similar. But I slowly began to realise it was more than that, especially after a trip or two uplines for an ethics handling to a SO Org where the insanity was even worse. My excuses just didn't hold water after that.

Reading that passage made so much sense to me. To understand a little better how the trap was laid makes it easier to get out of.
I used to get auditing from Bent Corydon's wife Mary. I was sitting with Bent in his kitchen in Riverside, California when he told me that he was going to write an expose on LRH. There was some discussion of my helping him edit it. But Brian Ambry was on the spot and far better qualified than I was. But I did write a poem called The O.T. Carrot. And this was supposed to divide book one from book two. However, Bent's publisher found him to be some 350 pages over the limit, and so my poem had to be axed. It was printed however in IVY. I hate to say it, but Corydon's was a case of fighting fire with fire. His own history with other people's money isn't lilly white. (Thea Greenberg died before he paid her back the $100 he owed her.) His rep in Riverside wasn't all that savory. I could say more on this, however, his contribution of the book outweighs all I guess.
 
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Veda

Sponsor
This book was the catalyst that freed me from the cult. I read it in one sitting.

I'm sure Emma finished it a long time ago, but I for one would be interested in what she thought about it.

Does anyone have any more info on the deal with LRH Jr. and his association with the book? I understand that he was originally given credit as a co-author, but then than was dropped, or something. Someone mentioned a payoff from the cult to shut up on live chat. Where later copies of this book edited? Is it hard to get nowadays, or something? I still have my hardcover copy. Was it ever published in paperback?

I'm pretty sure that the situation with L. Ron Hubbard Jr. is covered in the Preface of the book. I did a quick cut and paste of some stuff already posted on ESMB, which might help.

The only scan available of the book is the 1998 scan of the 1987 edition (The one with with the "emergency cover.")

L. Ron Hubbard, Messiah or Madman?, 2nd edition: http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0942637577/ref=sib_dp_pt/102-0654802-4263319

Below is a video by Mark Bunker from around 2000. Includes an interview with the former mayor of Clearwater, and a look at Dennis Clarke, cult thug and, then, head of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights. From 15:48 to 16:20 Mark holds up and discusses a copy of the 3rd edition of the book, 'Messiah or Madman?' http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4595729596527335458


Messiah or Madman?

The book L. Ron Hubbard, Messiah or Madman? has been published in three English language editions, each further revised and updated (1987, 1992, and 1996.) There is also a hardbound Russian language edition that became available in 2005.

An excerpt from the book flap for the 464 page 1996 edition:


"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. Things which stand too
consistently in my way make me nervous.
It's a pretty big job. In a hundred years
Roosevelt will have been forgotten - which
gives some idea of the magnitude of my
attempt. And all this boils and froths inside
my head...
"Psychiatrists, reaching the high of the
dusty desk, tell us that Alexander, Genghis
Khan and Napoleon were madmen. I know
they're maligning some very intelligent
gentlemen."

L. Ron Hubbard wrote these words in a letter to
his first wife in 1938.

In 1950 he wrote the bestseller 'Dianetics, the
Modern Science of Mental Health. This inspired a
layman oriented mental health movement which,
ultimately, developed into Scientology, the most
profitable of the money-making new religions.

Hubbard's early Dianetic and Scientology writings
borrow freely from Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and
the founder of General Semantics, Alfred Korzybski.

And P.T. Barnum appears to have been an inspiration.

Hubbard also took much from the writings of Aleister
Crowley - self-proclaimed "Beast 666." This is a source
of embarrassment for the Scientology Church, which
is determined to achieve broad public acceptance.

In the 1960s Hubbard incorporated Brainwashing
methodologies into the subject. He established the
"Fair Game Policy" which states that an "enemy" of
Scientology "may be deprived of property or injured
by any means by any Scientologist, without
discipline of that Scientologist. May be tricked,
sued, lied to or destroyed."

He also became the Commodore of his own private
navy, and began to refer to himself as "Source."

L. Ron Hubbard, Messiah or Madman? exposes
as never before the dark side of Scientology, yet
contains an in-depth examination of the potential
positives of the subject and their actual origins.
 
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