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A Thumb Nail Sketch of L Ron Hubbard

lkwdblds

Crusader
I wrote this early this morning as a post on the "Apollo 1973 thread and one of my viewers suggested that I make it an OP for a new thread.


A THUMBNAIL RECAP OF L. RON HUBBARD
He was basically very human and was a "louse", primarily Def. 4 below, built on similarities to definition 1b.

louse (lo̵us; for v., also lo̵uz)

noun pl. lice

1.
a.any of an order (Anoplura) of small, flat, wingless insects with sucking mouthparts, parasitic on the skin or hair of humans and some other mammals; esp., the human body louse (Pediculus humanus corporis) and head louse (P. h. capitis)
b.any of various arthropods that suck blood or juice from other animals or plants
4.Slang a person regarded as mean, contemptible, etc

His main motivations, pure and simple, were a desire to be rich, a desire for power over other people and a desire to be idolized and to stamp his name into history and be adored by others.

The man was nobody's fool. He was very bright, well read, and he had tremendous charisma and good Ethics Presence. He was well versed and skilled in several areas. To really see his true characteristics, an examination of his 3 marriages, 3 wives and 7 children pretty much cuts through all the PR and reveals a lot about his priorities and what he believed was important. As can be seen from those 10 people, family, for one thing, was unimportant to him.

He decided to start a religion to become rich and famous. To form his religion, he was able to sort through vast bodies of data and cull out the most useful and worthwhile facts in this enormous sea of data. He was able to select out many of the key principles of existence, sort them as to orders of importance, reformat and repackage them in Western terms and make them palatable for Western consumption.

PEOPLE HAVING WINS EARLY ON - He must have realized that to hook religious followers he would have to offer materials at a low cost, loss leaders or introductory samples so to speak, which were affordable to people both in terms of money and time spent at study. This, due to his brialliance, he was able to do and he spread his message through his talent and connections from being a good writer of popular fiction, especially science fiction. We do not fully know where he got his data, which data was developed by him personally and which came from other sources. It is clear that most came from other sources but he took credit for developing everything which he packaged. Book One kicked off his movement. People had more gains than he expected and Book One penetrated much more deeply into Society than he expected.

UNEXPECTEDLY, BRILLIANT AND CREATIVE PEOPLE JOINED HIS MOVEMENT, PEOPLE WHO REALLY WANTED TO HELP MANKIND!

Here is the crux of the Hubbard riddle! Dedicated people began to join Hubbard and actually began to develop technologies which helped people and made a stab at a "total know" and were designed to better society and better mankind. HUBBARD DECIDED TO GO ALONG FOR THE RIDE AND LET THESE PEOPLE CREATE.

The contributions of these others plus Hubbard's initial efforts to provide some "loss leaders" at low prices to entice people into the fold solve the riddle or dichotomy of Scientology and Hubbard. How can something developed to control people and suck out their talents and money also have a good side to it? Becauese of the 2 items stated above!

Hubbard had a dilemma to deal with. He wanted fame, power and money from his efforts; fame, power and money for just himself and no one else. HE DID NOT WANT ANYONE ELSE TO SHARE THE LIMELIGHT WITH HIM and reap any benefits from HIS creation, his CHURCH! This applied to all the brilliant people, rank and file people and his family members as well. There was to be only one MESSIAH in this new religion of his and he was it. Timing became critical, these brilliant people within his organization were developing technology which worked. HE DID NOT WANT TO KILL THE GOOSE THAT LAID THE GOLDEN EGGS! These people all had to be gotten rid of and he knew that from the start. The question was only how long to let them create and develop tech for him. A solution arose, every creator and contributor on his lines was allowed to contribute as long as they remained a background figure. If they began to build up a name for themselves and develop a following of admirers that is the point he chose to get rid of them. He developed a simple method of getting rid of any potential rivals within his group and that was to falsely accuse them of crimes against him and then "Dead Agent" them. This aspect of his organization was not sophisticated and is very easy to see through.

Thus went some of the early luminaries, Volney Mathison Jack Horner, Otto Roos, Johnny Mac, Ray Kemp, Alan Walter. After the creation of the secretive OT Levels, the secrecy was enough to keep rivals from emerging, for a while, but ultimately he got rid of luminaties such as Yvonne Jentzsch and Ken Urquhart and then his greatest asset of all, since Johnny Mac, and that was David Mayo.

As the luminaries began to be kicked out, Hubbard played a greater role in the release of the upper levels and that is probably why they are controversial and do not yield the results which are claimed for them. When the sanest technical voice, a voice of integrity, Mayo, was Dead Agented, the technology took a real dump and nothing worthwhile in the area of tech has come out of C of S since that time. The upper bridge tech was drastically watered down, eliminating Power, Grade 6, and the Clearing Course. Then OT Levels IV through VII were dropped and replaced with NOTs. I believe the idea was to get everyone onto NOTs, a level which could be run year in and year out endlessly. OT VIII was already out but was not delivering anywhere near what was promised so it was reworked a bit. OT Levels 9 through 15 and Super Power were promoted as carrots on the end of a stick, so as to keep the flock looking ahead and paying towards the ultimate levels which would finally deliver the goods originally promised in Book One.

KSW #1 may be totally a 180 degree reverse vector. Perhaps the truth is an exact reversal of what KSW #1 states. Others developed the workable portions of the tech, LRH brought out thousands of items of tech as well but of his contributions perhpas only 20 had permanent value and of those 20, non were fundamental or basic. THE WORKABLE PORTIONS OF THE TECH, THE THINGS PEOPLE SWEAR BY AND STILL USE WERE ALL DEVELOPED IN THE 1950'S and EARLY 1960's BY OTHERS AND WERE ONLY PACKAGED AND MARKETED BY LRH.

This synopsis completes my thumbnail analysis of LRH, a project I began 5 years ago to try and understand who the man was and what he was all about.
Lakey
 

Thrak

Gold Meritorious Patron
That pretty much lines up with what I've seen and explains why many people continue to hang on. The percentage of auditing that was actually "successful" or beneficial for me was probably less than 1% of everything I did but the couple of good things that did happen were enough to keep me hanging on for another 10 years.

Overall I definitely agree with J. Peelers description of it being a mind control network optimized for maximum profit but there had to be something in there or people wouldn't bother.
 
I agree their were some intelligent and very dedicated people that worked with Hubbard and created a majority of the material, but I wouldn't exactly call them luminaries, they got taken for a ride by a con man just like everyone else did. In the end Hubbard's 'Tech' is a pile of shit with a few raisins in it. All all of Hubbard's clones claim to have found the few secret shit covered raisins. What it comes down to is; do you want to spend the rest of your life hoping to find a few raisins in a pile of shit, or would you rather spend your time actually studying something that is worthwhile? There are no shortcuts to getting your shit together, and there is no such thing as Clear or OT.
 

fisherman

Patron with Honors
Lakey,

You did a fine job with this thumbnail sketch!

The only point I would question is the notion that LRH was well read. I believe he was a highly intelligent and clever man, but not well educated or well read.

As you know, I researched this and could find very little evidence that Hubbard was an avid reader of anything other than pulp fiction. The only subjects he appeared to study throughout his lifetime and in some depth was Crowley, occult topics, and probably mind control.

Hubbard's references to scholarly subjects are taken entirely from secondary sources. He cribbed heavily from encyclopedias and popular works, most especially those of that wonderful scholar Will Durant. Durant's easy to read surveys of philosophy were popular best-sellers that Hubbard borrowed from rather liberally. Hubbard dedicated Dianetics to Will Durant.

These points concerning Hubbard's reading habits are covered in several of the biography's. In "Blue Sky" (Part 9 Chapter 1, "The Founder") John Atack wrote the following,

Hubbard read voraciously, mostly pulp fiction. There is nothing to suggest that he studied any serious subject in depth. It is doubtful that he read much Freud, or Korzybski (he claimed Heinlein had explained Korzybski to him, though his second wife, Sara, says she did). He read popularizations. In a lecture on study he complained that the contemporary Encyclopaedia Britannica was too difficult for him, it was written by experts for experts, so he used the pre-World War One edition. In what appeared to be a joke, he said he intended to use children's textbooks in future. This parallels his self-confessed method of story research, described in a 1930s article called "Search for Research." He would read the Britannica entry, and then skim through any readily available books referred to in the entry's bibliography. The story had to be written in a couple of days, so research had to be fast. Whole sections of Scientology also seem to have been fashioned in this way. The original Dianetic techniques can be derived almost entirely from three short Freud lectures. Hubbard's statements about Buddhism also show a lack of study. In fact, he only started to incorporate what he believed to be Buddhist ideas in the early 1950s, after he had been given an extensive library of mystical and religious books. One of his staff read and summarized the contents. Hubbard displayed no specialized knowledge of any subject, except of course Scientology.

For those who may be interested there is more here:

http://wiki.whyweprotest.net/Hubbard_was_not_a_scholar

http://www.forum.exscn.net/showthread.php?t=14012

Please don't think I'm raising this to criticize your thumbnail! As you know, this is a point I like to make and your thread has given me a chance to give it some limelight. :)

All the best to you!

fisherman

P.S. If "a picture's worth a thousand words" this one seems to say it all concerning LRH's scholarship and reading habits! :eyeroll:

LRHDurant.jpg
 
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lkwdblds

Crusader
What do you think of some of the "Off Shoots"?

I agree their were some intelligent and very dedicated people that worked with Hubbard and created a majority of the material, but I wouldn't exactly call them luminaries, they got taken for a ride by a con man just like everyone else did. In the end Hubbard's 'Tech' is a pile of shit with a few raisins in it. All all of Hubbard's clones claim to have found the few secret shit covered raisins. What it comes down to is; do you want to spend the rest of your life hoping to find a few raisins in a pile of shit, or would you rather spend your time actually studying something that is worthwhile? There are no shortcuts to getting your shit together, and there is no such thing as Clear or OT.

Chuck Norris, I like your first clause which I put in blue. We have a point of agreement here. The rest of your post is also fine. You and I differ a bit on how much shit and how many raisins make up the pile. I would say a higher precentage of raisins then you and otherwise we are one the same page.

I was just curious what your opinion is on some of the technologies developed by people who left Scientology. Mike Goldstein developed Idenics with John Galusha who was one of the "luminaries" or as you might call them, "decent people who were taken for a ride". Idenics has built up a following and nothing negative that I know of has been said about it. I took 3 or 4 sessions from Mike by phone and was satisfied with the results. Also there is "knowledgism" developed by Alan Walter. This technology has very many people on ESMB who use it and swear by it. I am very curious as to how a person with your particular point of view feels about other Technologies, where the originator was once in Scientology and left and developed some other technology.
Lakey

P.S. - I also wanted to thank Thrak for his post!
 

lkwdblds

Crusader
Points well taken!

Lakey,

You did a fine job with this thumbnail sketch!

The only point I would question is the notion that LRH was well read. I believe he was a highly intelligent and clever man, but not well educated or well read.

As you know, I researched this and could find very little evidence that Hubbard was an avid reader of anything other than pulp fiction. The only subjects he appeared to study throughout his lifetime and in some depth was Crowley, occult topics, and probably mind control.

Hubbard's references to scholarly subjects are taken entirely from secondary sources. He cribbed heavily from encyclopedias and popular works, most especially those of that wonderful scholar Will Durant. Durant's easy to read surveys of philosophy were popular best-sellers that Hubbard borrowed from rather liberally. Hubbard dedicated Dianetics to Will Durant.

These points concerning Hubbard's reading habits are covered in several of the biography's. In "Blue Sky" (Part 9 Chapter 1, "The Founder") John Atack wrote the following,



For those who may be interested there is more here:

http://wiki.whyweprotest.net/Hubbard_was_not_a_scholar

http://www.forum.exscn.net/showthread.php?t=14012

Please don't think I'm raising this to criticize your thumbnail! As you know, this is a point I've studied for some time and your thread has simply given me been a chance to give it some limelight. :)

All the best to you!

fisherman

Hi Fisherman, long time no see! Your point is well taken. His bio states that his Mother was an educated woman, rare at that time, and that she schooled Hubbard in his early years. His bios claim that he read many of the classic novels of literature at a very early age. I always accepted that but since most of his official biography which the C of S publishes is either made up or over embellished, reading major tomes as a youth while being schooled by his Mother may or may not be true.

There is a series of Ron books and the one called, "Ron the Writer tells some of his favoite authors. He praises Dostoyevsky and also praises Edgar Alan Poe on many occasions. In his taped lectures he mentions George Bernard Shaw and also brings up George Orwell and particularly his novel "1984" Of course he personally recommends the book, "The Four Seasons of Manuella" which is a biography of the lives of Simon Bolivar and his mistress Manuaela Saenz. He wrote the Simon Bolivar policies after reading this tome and actually recommended it as a good read for Scientologists.

In his preface to his earliest books, he lists a series of contributors to the advancement of Human Knowledge and dozens of people are named including Will and Areil Durant whom you mention as well as Freud, Thomas Jefferson, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Anxagoras, Buddha, Lao Tsu, Descarte,Isaac Newton, Coun Korzybski and many others. Surely he had to have more than passing familiarity with the writings of these great luminaries to include them in the list of people whom he gives credit to as source material for some of his knowledge.

After all, Fisherman, he is accused by many critics for plagerizing the discoveries of others. Well, if he plagerised them that means he had to read them first. I do know that he was familiar with the work of Buckminster Fuller as well, admired him and praised him on tape. Also, on a tape he talks very negatively of the Economist John Maynard Keynes and Keynsian Economics which he vehemently states to be based on false data and he insists it is destructive when applied by governments. For his pleasure reading in the 60's he is said to have been an avid reader of Ian Flemming's James Bond Series.

Several that I mentioned, I am sure he was well versed in, i.e. Dostoyevski, Edgar Alan Poe, George Bernard Shaw, George Orwell, Will Durant, Sigmund Freud, the author who wrote "THe Four Seasons of Manuela", Ian Flemming. Dashiel Hammet, who he speaks very highly of on tape, a 30's, 40's and 50's pulp and detective story writer who went on and wrote "Sam Spade" {Maltese Falcon}, and "Nora and Nick" (The Thin Man) and other successfull writings for radio, and the movies. Another souce to pick up on some of his knowledge is his Data Series. In there you will find references to famous spies and the intelligence networks of various countries during the two World Wars. Gehlen, a famous German spy is heavily praised as is The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Some of his tech on never defending but always being on the attack and using the court system to harrass comes from the teachings of Sun Tzu, I believe and Hubbard was an expert at that.

This is all I know about what Hubbard had read. If you take all of this plus his reading major classics as a little boy under his Mother's tutelage, then he was very well read. If it is not true that he read the classics as a youth then he is not very well read but he was far from illeterate and was better read than average. You have to have heard his taped lectures and read his Data Series, as I have done to get a real feel for how well read he actually was. I am not a John Attack fan at all, Ken Urquhart, whom I greatly admire, reviewed Attack's book and at best gave it a lukewarm rating. Now Bent Corydon's book, there is an author to respect. Ditto for Russel Miller and his book. If they said he did not study much, I would listen but to me, though Attack's book has some good features, it is not on a par with those other two.
Lakey
 
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fisherman

Patron with Honors
Lakey,

Thanks for your thoughtful reply! You raise some good points that I'll address, but we may need to "agree to disagree on this one."

First off, let me say that if Hubbard was "well read" I'd be happy to confirm it. I first approached this subject as an outsider with no particular ax to grind. In fact, I was determined to disprove Jon Atack by using textual analysis to show Hubbard as an "Eric Hoffer" kinda guy. A layperson influenced by "great authors" even if he was not a scholar. I felt exactly as you wrote here,

Surely he had to have more than passing familiarity with the writings of these great luminaries to include them in the list of people whom he gives credit to as source material for some of his knowledge.

What flabbergasted me is that I couldn't do it. I couldn't find even a single reference Hubbard made that had any more than the most superficial validity. If Hubbard read these guys, he must have forgotten every word or made a concerted effort to hide all knowledge of them. It really astonished me, like reviewing an SAT exam with not a single answer correct.

Frankly, I don't believe Hubbard plagiarized. Hubbard skimmed sources, grabbed names and facts, ad hoc, and used them as a schema for whatever point he wanted to make. He published an article advocating this research style for writing science fiction and there's no reason to think he deviated from it when it came to other areas.

Also, it's not necessarily damning that Hubbard operated in this way. He had his own point to make and used other authors as a sales tool. I was trained as a historian and my interest is simply to cut through the clutter to understand what actually took place. Hubbard was not a scholar and by common standards, not well read. To me, what we can interpret from that is the interesting discussion.

I heartily grant your comment concerning the influence of Hubbard's mother. I think you've raised an important point. Unfortunately we don't have much substantiated evidence. If she promoted classical fiction, that may have sparked Hubbard's creativity. Nonetheless, Hubbard's academic career would suggest that her influence didn't produce a scholar.

I like trying to puzzle out the different factors. In this case, we might need to hash out what we mean by "passing familiarity" but ultimately, that would lead us to an interesting discussion and a clearer picture!

fisherman
 

Leon

Gold Meritorious Patron
A few points.

The Four Seasons of manuala was no tome. It was a flimsy paperback. It was floating around the aft lounge on the Apollo when I was there. About a centimetre thick, like a Corgi paperback.

Hubbard clearly said on several tapes lectures that a large amount of his work could be found in the writings of other people. But he pointed out that those same writers also said massinges of other things that were complete rubbish and that his ability here lay in be able to distinguish the good from the bad and then pick out the good for incorporation into Scio.


If you say that all of the important and workable portions were written by others. Could you give some detail here? I know of claims made by various people but have seen little or no indication of just how much they did in thjis regard and to what extent they developed anything. I'm not challenging your assertion here, I just am looking for support to bolster the claims.

For example, I know that Psychocybernetics spoke of engrams and how they affect a person - but nowhere did they develop anything like an auditing technology that an ordinary intelligent person could read and aopply to the betterment of his fellows. One cannot, from the fact of the name engram and some observations of its affect on people, claim that they "discovered" Dianetics, or that Dianetics was in any way plagiarised.


"Others developed the workable portions of the tech, LRH brought out thousands of items of tech as well but of his contributions perhpas only 20 had permanent value and of those 20, non were fundamental or basic. " This is one hell of a claim to make. Would you care to substantiate it?
 

Leon

Gold Meritorious Patron
Here's a quote from Ken Ogger, aka The Pilot, that is well worth reading again:

WHAT IS: Many of the ideas and techniques in Scientology stem from earlier sources. Ron would say this quite freely in the early days. The Dianetic breakthrough into past lives (which strips away all the usual BS about everybody having been Cleopatra that comes up in many mystical circles) provided an organizing point (a stable datum) around which all the existing data in metaphysics and philosophy could be aligned. Scientology was originally a system for separating the wheat from the chaff (see the 1952 lecture "Scientology: Milestone One").

Ron pulled together stuff out of everything from General Semantics and Magic to Krishnamurti and the Tibetan materials. He distilled out the essence of what he saw as true, discarded the old superstitions that were mingled in, and pulled it together into what he considered to be a cohesive whole. Even as late as 1955 he talked about himself as being the great organizer rather than an originator.

From magic and Crowley he deduces that the one thing they were doing that worked was to practice clearly visualizing the effect of a spell before trying to cast it so as to avoid the spell going wrong and backfiring. Ron realized that when these spells work, it was this visualization and "The Will" which created the success rather than the mumbo-jumbo rituals. He distills this down to the mockup processing which is the mainstay of the Philadelphia Doctorate Course and he refines Crowly's idea of "Will" into a much more clearly defined concept of "Intention".

Early in this century, self hypnosis and auto-suggestion were in vogue and according to the unauthorized biographies, Ron jumped on the bandwagon with his "affirmations". This makes total sense because if you drop out the hypnosis (which Ron turned his back on fairly early) and evolve the concept into its highest imaginable form, you find yourself with the Scientology concept of making postulates. And that's quite a step above positive thinking (which also evolved out of auto-suggestion).

You'll find the "Yoga of the psychic heat" (see Evan's "Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines") in a vastly improved form among the Route 1 drills in Creation of Human Ability and you'll find that the "Meditation on a Breathing Object" is the forerunner of TR0. But the improvements made are vast and show real brilliance. He got very good at this over the years.
 

EP - Ethics Particle

Gold Meritorious Patron
From over my left shoulder...

The Senior C/S took a quick read of Lakey's "Thumbnail Sketch" said: "That's about right, and well written too." :yes:

Then went off to check her email and water some plants. :wink2:

Took about a minute and a half, I guess. :melodramatic:

Great job, Lakey. :clap::thumbsup:

EP

(Note for Lakey - she never, ever said anything by Hubbard was well written.)
 
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secretiveoldfag

Silver Meritorious Patron
Reviews of the original Dianetics in 1950-51 were uniformly bad.

http://www.holysmoke.org/cos/dianetics-might-kill.htm

Writing for "The Nation" of 5 August 1950, Dr. Milton Sapirstein:

"The real and, to me, inexcusable danger in dianetics lies in its conception of the amoral, detached, 100 per cent efficient mechanical man - superbly free-floating, unemotional, and unrelated to anything. His is the authoritarian dream, a population of zombies, free to be manipulated by the great brains of the founder, the leader of the inner manipulative clique. Fortunately for us this is an unattainable dream, on the rocks of which every great authoritarian leader has sooner or later met his fate."

The existentialist psychoanalyst Dr Rollo May, who was Hubbard's exact contemporary, wrote in the New York Times that "books like this do harm by their grandiose promises to troubled persons and by their oversimplification of human psychological problems... he does not see that the excessive use of shock therapy and surgical mutilation of the brain are based on the same assumptions as his own theory- namely the oversimplification of complex human ailments and the endeavor to heal these ailments by mechanical methods."

Worse than anything was the review of Dianetics by Professor Isaac Isidor Rabi, published in The Scientific American in January 1951. Rabi was what Hubbard claimed to be: winner of the Nobel prize in physics in 1944, and professor of physics at Columbia University.

"This volume probably contains more promises and less evidence per page than has any publication since the invention of printing. Briefly, its thesis is that man is intrinsically good, has a perfect memory for every event of his life, and is a good deal more intelligent than he appears to be. However, something called the engram prevents these characteristics from being realized in man's behavior. During moments of unconsciousness and pain and at any time from conception onward, the "reactive mind" can still record experience, but experiences so recorded -engrams- are a major source of man's misery, his psychosomatic ills, his neuroses and psychoses, his poor memory, and his generally inefficient functioning. By a process called dianetic reverie, which resembles hypnosis and which may apparently be practiced by anyone trained in dianetics, these engrams may be recalled. Once thoroughly recalled, they are "refiled," and the patient becomes a "clear," who is not handicapped by encumbering engrams and who can thenceforth function at a level of intellect, efficiency and goodness seldom if ever realized before in the history of man. The system is presented without qualification and without evidence. It has borrowed from psychoanalysis, Pavlovian conditioning, hypnosis and folk beliefs, but, except for the last, these debts are fulsomely denied. The huge sale of the book to date is distressing evidence of the frustrated ambitions, hopes, ideals, anxieties and worries of the many persons who through it have sought succor."

There is no doubt that Hubbard gleaned ideas from books selected at random and read unsupervised. He says he did a lot of this in Oak Knoll Naval Hospital c.1945. You can almost catalogue the books he read: an outdated Freudian work on hysteria c.1894, a collection of philosophical quotes, some up-to-date manuals on hypnosis, and so on. At first he acknowledged sources; very shortly it was all his own unaided work. Finally he claimed everything created within Scientology.
 

lkwdblds

Crusader
How about the Swavely Prep School he attended?

Fisherman, we may never know how much he read in his younger days, it is conjecture on my part, Attack's part and your part. For something more tangible, it would be interesting to see if we can find out anything about the Swavely Prep School and the Woodward School for Boys which he attended prior to enrolling at George Washington University. Swavely was designed to prepare its students to get into the U.S. Naval Academy. Apparently Hubbard did not make the cut there and his Father transferred him to Woodward School for boys. When he could not pass the tests to get into the U.S. Naval Academy, his Father insisted that he instead enroll in a course to become a Civil Engineer.

Here is an excerpt from a Wikepedia article about LRH

"After studies at Swavely Preparatory School in Manassas, Virginia and graduating from Woodward School for Boys in 1930, Hubbard enrolled at The George Washington University where he majored in civil engineering.[24] There he became one of eight assistant editors of the University newspaper The University Hatchet.[25][26] While spending most of his time on extracurricular activities such as the university gliding club, Hubbard received extremely poor grades.[27] University records show that after two semesters he had received an A for physical education, B for English, C for engineering, D for chemistry and Fs for German and calculus.[27] Despite being placed on academic probation, Hubbard continued to neglect his studies, preferring to write stories for the school newspaper and literary magazine.[28] He again earned failing grades in his second year—two Ds and an F in Calculus and Physics classes, and a B in English.[29] Hubbard left the university after only two years and never earned a college degree."

Also, though he goofed around a lot in extra curricular activities, if you notice, he did obtain a solid B in English both years he attended University. We don't know if this was a study of English Literature or a study of how to become a writer. Again, from the book, "Ron the Writer", the English classes he took seemed to prepare him for a writing career. In this book, Hubbard heavily praises his English professor at George Washington, a picture is shown of him and some letters of corresponce between him and LRH are shown. These took place in the 1930's after LRH had left scholl and launched his writing career.

It should be relatively easy for you as a scholar and researcher to see what kind of cuuricula were offered at Swavely and at Woodward school for boys.

As far as plagerism, I can not comment with authority on whether or not he plagerized the writings of other authors or did the kind of quick scan which you are suggesting. I will say this, as regards his study of the Vedic religions - he had to do more than just a quick scan. His axioms of Scientology are long and extremely detailed and could only be done if he knew Vedic principles, the principles of Buddhism and Hinduism in great detail. Also, to come up with his "The Factors", he had to have real understanding of the Vedic religions there as well. No quick scan could have enabled him to write those things.

One thing I do know is that he plagerized and stole tech from followers of his, including both staff members and public.

I am friends with Purple Haze who told me she developed Conditions by Dynamics and Exchange by Dynamics. Correction lists in auditing were developed by Alan Walter and I am not certain but believe Alan also developed "listing and nulling". The Halpern's, Dick and Jane, I believe developed TR's 0 thru 4. John Mc Master developed the Power Processes, Grades V and Va and also Grade 6 (he R6 End Words) and also the Clearing Course. David Mayo either fully developed NOTs or co developed it with LRH, probably the latter. Study tech was developed by a married couple in England who told LRH of their discovery one night. The next night, LRH gave a lecture and introduced Study Tech as something new he had just developed while this couple sat in the audience just listening and were shocked at what they heard.

I figured that if he plagerized all of these things plus much more, he must have plagerized from other authors as well but that is not necessarily true. When it comes to other authors, lifting their tech the way you described is possible.

By the way, I do think there is proof that he was well read in Freud. He wrote a long treatise in two installments in 1956 about Freud and Psychotherapy. These treatises are contained in the red Tech Volumes. Each installment is about 12 to 15 pages of text as I recall. The techniques of Psychoanlaysis are described and discussed in great detail by Hubbard in this treatise. There can be no doubt that he studied Freud once you read this treatise.

SUMMARY How well read LRH was is not central to my Opening Post. All that needs to be said is that he was bright and was not completely clueless as to his fund of general knowledge. He either knew a large fund of knowledge from his readings or he could easily skim any area of knowledge which he wanted to know about and pick out enough pieces from it to make himself seem creditable. Of course he was no formal scholar, that goes without saying! He was not the type of guy to just read and store away knowledge and sit in an Ivory Tower and pontificate his knowledge to the learned elite. He was a hands on guy who liked to get deeply involved in society and live life rather than concentrate on reading about it.

I see no point in us arguing about how well read Hubbard was any further. I admit that by me just stating matter of factly that he was well read, I was wrong. I can't or am not willing to do the research necessary to prove that he was well read. If you would like, I can eliminate that descriptive from my OP and it does not diminish the OP in any way so I am going to end our little debate right here. If you have time to do more research, I think a study of the curriculum of Swavely Prep School and Woodward School for Boys might yield some important information. Leon has just posted some materials which seem to be relevant to how well read Hubbard actually was.
Lakey
 
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Panda Termint

Cabal Of One
One thing that has always interested me about Hubbard is how he managed to appear to be whatever people thought he was.

He was many things to many people. Apparently, he still is.

I think he reflected as much as he projected.
 
One thing that has always interested me about Hubbard is how he managed to appear to be whatever people thought he was.

He was many things to many people. Apparently, he still is.

I think he reflected as much as he projected.

Yeah kind of like Jim Jones and Marshall Applewhite, except everyone who saw them as luminaries and visionary spiritual leaders are now dead.
 

Kookaburra

Gold Meritorious Patron
Great thread. Keep posting, guys!

All I have to add here is that I have seen the orders LRH put in to a book club when he was on the ship and was relaying all his needs and wants to St Hill. He would order half a dozen books or more each time. Anything and everything to do with philosophy or the social sciences or history. Anything that could even remotely relate to Scn.

I have no idea how thoroughly he read them, though.

I have a feeling he may have been skimming for data to use in his lectures and HCOBs. He came up with all sorts of obscure things as examples.
 
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lkwdblds

Crusader
What you write is all true but ...........

Reviews of the original Dianetics in 1950-51 were uniformly bad.

http://www.holysmoke.org/cos/dianetics-might-kill.htm

Writing for "The Nation" of 5 August 1950, Dr. Milton Sapirstein:

"The real and, to me, inexcusable danger in dianetics lies in its conception of the amoral, detached, 100 per cent efficient mechanical man - superbly free-floating, unemotional, and unrelated to anything. His is the authoritarian dream, a population of zombies, free to be manipulated by the great brains of the founder, the leader of the inner manipulative clique. Fortunately for us this is an unattainable dream, on the rocks of which every great authoritarian leader has sooner or later met his fate."

The existentialist psychoanalyst Dr Rollo May, who was Hubbard's exact contemporary, wrote in the New York Times that "books like this do harm by their grandiose promises to troubled persons and by their oversimplification of human psychological problems... he does not see that the excessive use of shock therapy and surgical mutilation of the brain are based on the same assumptions as his own theory- namely the oversimplification of complex human ailments and the endeavor to heal these ailments by mechanical methods."

Worse than anything was the review of Dianetics by Professor Isaac Isidor Rabi, published in The Scientific American in January 1951. Rabi was what Hubbard claimed to be: winner of the Nobel prize in physics in 1944, and professor of physics at Columbia University.

"This volume probably contains more promises and less evidence per page than has any publication since the invention of printing. Briefly, its thesis is that man is intrinsically good, has a perfect memory for every event of his life, and is a good deal more intelligent than he appears to be. However, something called the engram prevents these characteristics from being realized in man's behavior. During moments of unconsciousness and pain and at any time from conception onward, the "reactive mind" can still record experience, but experiences so recorded -engrams- are a major source of man's misery, his psychosomatic ills, his neuroses and psychoses, his poor memory, and his generally inefficient functioning. By a process called dianetic reverie, which resembles hypnosis and which may apparently be practiced by anyone trained in dianetics, these engrams may be recalled. Once thoroughly recalled, they are "refiled," and the patient becomes a "clear," who is not handicapped by encumbering engrams and who can thenceforth function at a level of intellect, efficiency and goodness seldom if ever realized before in the history of man. The system is presented without qualification and without evidence. It has borrowed from psychoanalysis, Pavlovian conditioning, hypnosis and folk beliefs, but, except for the last, these debts are fulsomely denied. The huge sale of the book to date is distressing evidence of the frustrated ambitions, hopes, ideals, anxieties and worries of the many persons who through it have sought succor."

There is no doubt that Hubbard gleaned ideas from books selected at random and read unsupervised. He says he did a lot of this in Oak Knoll Naval Hospital c.1945. You can almost catalogue the books he read: an outdated Freudian work on hysteria c.1894, a collection of philosophical quotes, some up-to-date manuals on hypnosis, and so on. At first he acknowledged sources; very shortly it was all his own unaided work. Finally he claimed everything created within Scientology.

Dear Secretive, what you write is all true and I thank you for your post. I don't think your post either supports my OP or denies it, it is just good general comment on Hubbard. The point about first acknowledging sources and then shortly thereafter failing to achknowledge was a bad move by him. I may not have joined had those acknowledgements not been in the first book I looked at. Later on when I had doubts and was considering leaving, the knowledge that those acknowledgements were no longer there influenced me towards leaving. Those acknowledgements should have remained in those books to this day and beyond. It was a terrible move to remove them.
Lakey
 

Infinite

Troublesome Internet Fringe Dweller
Fascinating thread. A detailed anaylsis of Hubbard's life will assist greatly in understanding his "creation".

In relation to Leon's comment about Dianetics, there is ample evidence to suggest that the subject is a re-write "abreaction" as detailed here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abreaction

. . . the on-again, off-again, on-again role of the e-meter shows that the device is little more than a stage prop to lend a false sence of "science" to the auditing process.
 
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