Let's Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky: Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology (27 page)

Hubbard's description of the “clam” makes particularly fine
reading. Hubbard was quite right when he warned that the reader may think that
he, the author, has “slipped a cable or two in his wits.”
²⁴
Hubbard
warned his followers of dangers inherent in any discussion of “the clam”
²⁵
:

By the way, if you cannot take a warning, your discussion of
these incidents with the uninitiated in Scientology can produce havoc. Should
you describe “the clam” to someone [sic], you may restimulate it in him to the
extent of causing severe jaw hinge pain. One such victim, after hearing about a
clam death could not use his jaws for three days. Another “had to have” two
molars extracted because of the resulting ache ... So do not be sadistic with
your describing them [these incidents] to people - unless, of course, they
belligerently claim that Man has no past memory for his evolution. In that
event, describe away. It makes believers over and above enriching your friend
the dentist who, indeed, could not exist without these errors and incidents on
the evolutionary line!

The next stage in Hubbard's evolutionary theory was another
shellfish, the “Weeper” (also the “Boohoo,” or as Hubbard jovially refers to it
at one point, “the Grim Weeper”).
²⁶
This creature is the origin of
human “belching, gasping, sobbing, choking, shuddering, trembling.” Fear of
falling has its origin with hapless Weepers which were dropped by predatory
birds. After a few comments on “being eaten” (which allegedly explains diet
fads and vegetarianism), Hubbard moves forward in evolution to the “sloth.”
²⁷
It seems that none of the incarnations between shellfish and the “sloth” was
unpleasant enough to cause major psychological damage. From the sloth, Hubbard
moves on to the “ape,” and the Piltdown man
²⁸
(who had very large
teeth, and a nasty habit of eating his spouse); then the caveman (who
presumably had smaller teeth, and used to cripple his wife instead of eating
her). From there, usually “via Greece and Rome,” Hubbard's theory moves to
modern times.

What to Audit
was published in the year before
complete proof discrediting the “Piltdown man” was announced. However, Hubbard's
book has remained uncorrected. Quite typically, Hubbard did not revise or
correct his earlier works.

However, this explanation of evolution relates only to the
“genetic entity.” The “Theta being” only came to earth 35,000 years ago (presumably
from outer space. Velikovsky's
Worlds in Collision
was on the best
seller lists with
Dianetics
in 1950), to transform the caveman into homo
sapiens. The Theta being has been systematically “implanted” with a variety of
control phrases. The earliest such implant was “facsimile one” (or “Fac one”),
which originated a mere million years ago “in this Galaxy,” but was only given
out about ten or twenty thousand years ago in this neck of the galaxy.
²⁹

Hubbard claimed that “Fac one” was inflicted with a black
box, the “Coffee-grinder”:

The Coffee-grinder ... is leveled at the preclear and a
push-pull wave is played over him, first on his left side, then on his right
and back and forth from side to side, laying in a bone-deep somatic [pain] ...
When this treatment is done, the preclear is dumped in scalding water, then immediately
in ice water. Then the preclear is put in a chair and whirled around. FAC ONE
[sic] was an outright control mechanism, invented to cut down raids on invader
installations. It was probably designed by the Fourth Invader ... it gave him a
nice, non-combative, religiously insane community.

Hubbard described many other implants in bizarre detail
including the Halver, the Joiner, the Between-lives (administered in an
“implant station” in the Pyrenees, or on Mars), the Emanator, the Jiggler, the
Whirler, the Fly-trap, the Boxer, the Rocker, and so on, and so on.

In
What to Audit
, Hubbard also warned that the Earth
was on the verge of psychic war.
³⁰
In a 1952 lecture called “The
Role of Earth,” he explained that the Fourth Invader Force still had outposts
on Mars. These were the very individuals responsible for the “between lives implants.”
Hubbard made no comment on the later failure of planetary probes to discover
any signs of the Invaders on Mars, nor of the Fifth Invader Force, who
supposedly inhabit Venus.

After
What to Audit
was published, Hubbard went to
England for three months, taking his pregnant wife with him.
³¹
Mary
Sue's first child, Diana Meredith DeWolf Hubbard, was born in London, in September
some six months after their marriage. At the end of November, Ron was back in
Philadelphia at the most successful of the Association centers, the Scientology
organization run by Helen O'Brien and John Neugebauer (or “Noyga”). Helen
O'Brien's book
Dianetics in Limbo
gives a vivid account of her close
association with Hubbard.

In December 1952, Hubbard gave the Philadelphia Doctorate
Course lectures to an audience of 38.
³²
The lectures were taped, all
72 hours of them. The tapes are still heavily promoted, and sold for a high
price, as is a course including them all. The lectures were based on Hubbard's
newest book,
Scientology 8-8008
. Here the cosmology of Scientology was
expanded further. Hubbard took the symbol “8” for infinity (by turning the
mathematicians' infinity symbol - ∞ - upright), and explained that the
book's title meant the attainment of infinity (the first 8) by the reduction of
the physical universe's command value to zero (the 80), and the increase of the
individual's personal universe to an infinity (the last 08). In short, through
the application of the techniques given in the lectures, the individual would
supposedly become a god.

The Theta being, or individual human spirit, acquired the
name it retains in Scientology: the Thetan. The Thetan is the self, the “I,”
that which is “aware of being aware” in Man. Since its entry into the physical
universe
trillions
of years ago the Thetan, originally all-knowing, has
declined through a “dwindling spiral” of introversion into Matter, Energy,
Space and Time. The Thetan can allegedly “exteriorize” from its physical body,
and Hubbard gave auditing techniques which he claimed would achieve this
result. The Thetan is immortal and capable of all sorts of remarkable feats.
Scientologists call these “Operating Thetan” (or “OT”) abilities. They include
telekinesis, levitation, telepathy, recall of previous lives, “exterior”
perception (or “remote viewing”) disembodied movement to any desired location,
and the power to will events to occur: to transform, create or destroy Matter,
Energy, Space and Time (or “MEST”).

The main new auditing technique was Creative Processing. In
Creative Processing, the Auditor asks the Preclear to make a “mental image
picture” of something. During a demonstration Hubbard asked a female subject to
“mock-up” a snake. She refused, because she was frightened of snakes. So
Hubbard asked her to “mock it up” at a distance from her. He directed her to
make it smaller, change its color, and so forth, until she had the confidence
to let it touch her. Theoretically, this would allay the subject's fear of
snakes.

In the 72 hours of the Philadelphia Doctorate Course,
Hubbard expounded an
entire
cosmology. He talked about implants, the
Tarot, a civilization called Arslycus (where we were all slaves for 10,000
life-times, largely spending our time polishing bricks in zero-gravity, how to
sell people on Scientology, “anchor points” (which Thetans extend to mesh their
own
space with that of the physical universe), how to bring up children,
and how to give up smoking (by smoking as much as you can) – about a hundred
and one things. And he did it all with his usual mischievous charm.

Hubbard also defined his Axioms of Scientology at great
length. We learn that “Life is basically a static” without mass, motion,
wavelength, or location space or in time; that the physical universe is a
reality only because we all
agree
it is a reality (Robert Heinlein used
this idea in
Stranger in a Strange Land
. Mahayana Buddhists have mulled
it over for centuries).

It was during the course of the Philadelphia Doctorate
Course that Hubbard mentioned his “very good friend,” Aleister Crowley, and in
places his ideas do seem to be a science-fictionalized extension of Crowley's
black magic. Crowley too was an advocate of visualization techniques.

On the afternoon of December 16, the lectures were abruptly
interrupted by the arrival of US Marshals. A warrant had been issued against
Hubbard for failing to return $9,000 withdrawn from the Wichita Foundation.
There was something of a scuffle with the Marshals. Hubbard was arrested, but
returned to finish the lecture that evening.
³³
Almost immediately
afterward, he left for England to complete the “Doctorate” series there.
³⁴
Hubbard had claimed to have no idea of his income from the Wichita Foundation,
saying he had been denied access to the financial records.
³⁵
Eventually, he settled by paying $1,000 and returning a car supplied by
Purcell. This was the last time that Hubbard was apprehended by the law.

Hubbard kept his devotees apace of his ideas by issuing
regular newsletters. He continued to make strenuous claims for his miraculous
mental “technology,” for example: “Leukaemia is evidently psychosomatic in
origin and at least eight cases of leukaemia had been treated successfully with
Dianetics after medicine had traditionally [sic] given up. The source of
leukaemia has been reported to be an engram containing the phrase 'It turns my
blood to water'.”
³⁶

In England, in May 1953, Hubbard complained that he had just
given “probably the most disastrous lecture in terms of attendance in the city
of Birmingham.”
³⁷
In the same month he explained that he was off to
the Continent
³⁸
“to stir up some interest in Scientology. I will be
stopping at various spas and have an idea of entering this little bomb of a
racing car I have in a few of the all-outs in Europe. The car has a 2.5 litre
souped-up Jaguar engine. It is built of hollow steel tubing and aluminum and
weighs nothing. Its brakes sometimes work but its throttle never fails. I have
also a British motorcycle which might do well in some of these scrambles ... I
think by spreading a few miracles around the spas, I will be able to elicit
considerable interest in Scientology.” No report followed about the miracles
performed or the races run. Hubbard seems instead to have taken a long holiday
in Spain.
³⁹

Meanwhile, Helen O'Brien and her husband were managing the
Scientology empire from Philadelphia. Under their direction, it started to
prosper. The last Hubbard Congress they arranged was attended by about 300, and
“each paid a substantial fee to attend.”
⁴⁰
But in October, O'Brien
and Noyga became disillusioned with Hubbard's attitude and actions:

Beginning in 1953, the joy and frankness shifted to
pontification. The fact filled “engineering approach” to the mind faded out of
sight, to be replaced by a “Church of Scientology” ... as soon as we became
responsible for Hubbard's interests, a projection of hostility began, and he
doubted and double-crossed us, and sniped at us without pause. We began to believe
that the villains of Dianetics-Scientology had been created by its founder ...
My parting words [to Hubbard] were inelegant but, I still think, apropos. “You
are like a cow who gives a good bucket of milk, then kicks it over.”
⁴¹

Having entered the realm of the spirit, or Thetan, it was
only natural that Scientology should shift its legal status from a
psycho-therapy to a religion. Religious belief is protected in the United
States by the Constitution. So Hubbard could entice the public with claims of
“spiritual” cures, and the US Government as well as the American Medical Association
and the American Psychiatric Association would be severely handicapped in any
attempt to restrict him.

1.
   
Upward,
The New Word.
Upward's forename is mistakenly spelled “Alan” in the first edition of
Piece
of Blue Sky.

2.
   
Scientologie, Wissenschaft von der Beschaffenheit und der Tauglichkeit
des Wissens, Verlag von Ernst Reinhardt, Munchen, 1934.

3.
   
Scientology:
A History of Man,
p.6.

4.
   
Hubbard College Lectures, tape 21.

5.
   
The
Auditor,
issue 21.

6.
   
O'Brien,
Dianetics in Limbo
, pp.52-5; Hubbard,
Technical
Bulletins
, vol.1 pp.372 & 409.

7.
   
Hubbard,
Technical Bulletins
, vol.1, p.220.

8.
   
Hubbard asserted that ‘Scientology’ derives from ‘Scio’ meaning ‘to
know’ and ‘logos’ meaning the ‘study of’. However, there may be an etymological
joke hidden here: ‘scio’ means a ‘ghost’ or ‘shadow.’ So Scientology can also
mean, ‘the study of shadows.’

9.
   
Wallis, p.78.

10.
 
O'Brien,
p.52.

11.
 
Promotional
piece, “Announcing the Theta Clear”.

12.
 
Reprinted as
Scientology: A History of Man,
p.5.

13.
 
ibid
,
p.47.

14.
 
p.401.

15.
 
Scientology: A
History of Man,
p.6.

16.
 
on
“glare fights”.