It’s a Scientology Easter bonnet parade: Founder L. Ron Hubbard in his best finery!

We wish a fulfilling Ramadan, Passover, or Easter to all of those who partake in these ancient and venerated religious milestones around the world, and which this year have all happened to overlap with one another.

Although Easter does have its pagan elements (a bunny? and painted eggs?), for Christians it tends to have a more religious propensity than Christmas does, and that’s not surprising, considering what is being celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox.

Yesterday at his blog, Mike Rinder pointed out that Scientology is of course trying to use the Easter holiday as a recruiting opportunity, just as it tries to co-opt Christmas, and Mike pointed out how hypocritical this is given Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard’s attitudes about Christianity.

We say “attitudes” because over the years Hubbard actually expressed quite a few different ideas about Christianity (as well as the rest of the world’s mainstream religions) and it was generally not kind. But he said different things at different times, and we thought we’d add a little more historical context to the excellent things Mike pointed out in his piece.

Hubbard had been a pulp fiction author in the 1930s and 1940s before he changed tack and prepared to publish the book that would alter his fortunes so significantly.

In 1949, he wrote to his agent and longtime friend, Forrest Ackerman, and explained just how much impact the new book was going to have on the world.

I shall ship it along just as soon as decent. Then you can rape women without their knowing it, communicate suicide messages to your enemies as they sleep, sell the Arroyo Seco parkway to the mayor for cash, evolve the best way of protecting or destroying communism, and other handy house hold hints. If you go crazy, remember you were warned…[I] have not decided whether to destroy the Catholic church or merely start a new one.

The book, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, was published on May 9, 1950, and started a movement. We’ve described many times here at the Bunker that after that initial boom in interest, Dianetics (and Hubbard) suffered many setbacks in 1951, but by the next year Hubbard had regrouped with something he called “Scientology.”

In Dianetics, you were trying to recover memories of what it was like to be a fetus in the womb, hoping to remember traumatic incidents (generally, rough sex between mom and dad) that had resulted in lasting scars on your adult mind. In Scientology, the goal was to go much further back in time, and recover traumatic memories from past lives, millions or billions or even trillions of years ago, which were still affecting you today.

And in his early lectures, between 1950 and 1955, Hubbard was expressing some pretty open criticism of all religion, and Christianity in particular. In his cosmology we are all immortal beings called thetans who created the universe as a game quadrillions of years ago, and only through Hubbard’s counseling (called “auditing”) could we hope to recover those godlike powers. Repeatedly, Hubbard tells his listeners (or hints at it, he was often obscure) that they had created the universe, not “God,” and that the God concept was just a crutch invented by people who had forgotten that they were gods themselves. Scientology was not a religion, it was a science, and once people accepted it, religion would no longer be needed. Here are some sample utterances from those early lectures to show you what we mean.

Now, the MEST universe is all very well but it’s all illusion. Well, one doesn’t want an illusion, so he can’t have an illusion. And when he was very young, why, Christ was all right, he was very friendly, as a matter of fact, and so on. But that’s mostly — people, you know, they have to believe in that sort of thing. And they did once, but it requires nothing but faith and, of course, they can’t have any faith anymore and they did have hopes on that once in a while, but actually religion doesn’t lead anybody anyplace in the final analysis because you never get your wish anyway so, of course, one can’t survive on the basis of spirits and religion, and so forth. (October 27, 1951)

Christ bore the burdens of all man and the world, didn’t he? So, if a person keeps on offending, offending, offending against the seventh dynamic, he will eventually offend so wrongly and so widely and broadly that his only solution to it is to wind up as Christ. This isn’t saying that’s the route that Christ went although some of the lost books of the Bible tell you how he spent his early youth using his powers to destroy those around him. You may not be aware of these early accounts. There’s one story, in these lost books of the Bible, about his blinding a playmate merely by telling him to go blind. (March 8, 1952)

Every man there is, is a universe. You talk about God: The most you will know about God for probably a long time to come is you. If you want to know what God is all about, or if you want to know what you’re all about, you want to know what the fourth dynamic is all about, you consult the essential elements of ‘you-ness.’ Not buried, unconscious, submotivated, libido-icated, bypassed symbolizations of the left hind ruddy rod, which we therefore graph and say, ‘It’s all mysterious and you can’t understand you, so therefore we can own you.’ We’re not running that operation. (November 10, 1952)

We’re not trying to make superman here, because after you’ve done that is when you start to work to really make superman. Now you really have to get clever. Of course, a thetan in real good operating condition can make himself visible. It would be the shock of somebody’s life to suddenly realize that he was visible. And it would ruin this whole society and put us squarely in the hands of Bishop Shenanigan if you were to start doing this. Because you as a MEST body would never be able to explain fast enough to tell him you really weren’t Christ. They’ve been looking for him to come back — with blood in their eyes. You know, they only got a few nails in that guy last time. (November 4, 1953)

A god of this universe, an anthropomorphic god — and I hope that you understand me very clearly when I use this word ‘god’ loosely and even blasphemously, for the good reason that this thing g-o-d is something which man has set up in his image. And it is merely an ambition on the part of a thetan, it’s an effort, a co-effort on the part of thetans to have a playing field and so on. And there is, actually, beings above the beingness of this universe. There are beings, but they are not this anthropomorphic thing who is the jealous god, who has hate and vengeance and so forth, that happens to be above that level. And the jealous god, the most jealous god there would be, would be a god who would insist at all times that he must not be duplicated, even to the point of not using his name in vain. He mustn’t be duplicated. No graven images. His space, it’s all his space and so forth. And we go on this way. Interesting, isn’t it? (December 14, 1953)

There is nothing more simple than for a fellow to duplicate himself any place in the universe because he isn’t any place in the universe because he is every place in the universe. Any one of you immediately, any one of you immediately answers up to the definition that has been given the anthropomorphic itself entitled God. Any one of you, because you’re everywhere on omniscient and omnipresent, and on the bus, and everything. (January 7, 1954)

The Eighth Dynamic is really infinity stood upright. And it simply means infinity. Now, you can come along and say, ‘Well, you also mean the Supreme Being?’ No, we don’t particularly mean the Supreme Being. How do we know that you aren’t, collectively, the Supreme Being. See? That’s probably much more closer to truth. There are gods around of various kinds. There are some wind gods over in India; there are various savage gods of one kind or another. But if you give them a good quizzing you find out that they’re just a thetan and they behave most remarkably like you would if you hadn’t thought that you ought to lay aside all the power you had, too. (October 19, 1954)

Why do you think it is that simply looking at something will make it vanish as far as a thetan is concerned? We know that this will take place. All right, that’s because he goes into communication with it and it is a mismanaged communication. To be an it, to be a something, we must have had a mismanaged communication of one kind or another. That’s why we say ‘God built this universe.’ Now that is a mismanaged communication, per se, it is right there. God did not build this universe. And so that is mismanaged so there is the wrong point of origin, see, some point of origin is mocked-up, and so on. (December 22, 1954)

But then, things changed. In 1953, business had got so bad, Hubbard suggested, in a letter to one of his most ardent followers, that it was time they try out the “religion angle.” And in December of that year Hubbard and his son and their wives and two others signed papers in Camden, New Jersey, to form the first “Church of Scientology” corporation. The first actual church facility then opened a few months later in Los Angeles in February 1954, and the “Founding Church” opened in Washington DC in the summer of 1955.

And by that year, Hubbard had changed his tune. He not only had shifted from denigrating Christianity, he was now telling his followers to pretend that Scientology was somehow allied with the Christian church.

Here are actual lines from a manual that Hubbard wrote for Scientologists in 1955, telling them openly to fool outsiders…

Should anyone challenge you for having suddenly secured a relief in a hospital or an institution from some dire malady which balked the efforts of the professional men in charge of it, and should you ever be “called upon the carpet” for having “interfered” with the progress of a case, you should be extremely dismayed, and act it, to find yourself in the presence of barbarians who do not believe in the power of prayer, in the will of God, or the promises of Jesus Christ….Your entire address to such people, in such a situation, publicly or privately, should be entirely overt, accusative, and not at any time apologetic. And you should immediately make it your business to place this matter before the proper authorities, that people are in charge of an institution here, are not Christians, and do not believe in God, and you should inform your accusers that you are going to do so.

How do we know that this was a cynical ploy, and that Hubbard had not actually suddenly decided that Scientology would be a sort of branch of Christianity? Because in his lectures, he went right on telling his followers that they were gods who had created the universe, while throwing more jabs at the Christian church. A sample…

Authorship of the universe is something which has been in question for many years. People have been arguing about this for a long time. Even in ancient times the Christian argument with the conservative, status quo religion of Rome involved the creation of the universe. Who created the universe? In the early days of Greece, you found the various factions fighting over this fact of the actual creator of the universe. People have a tendency to run it backwards and try to find an earlier creator or a master creator, or this and that. What are they looking for? They’re looking for you! You’re hunted! To that degree, you’re hunted. Fascinating. (January 22, 1957)

One of the prime principles you must know about any universe to keep it in a good, messy, chaotic, solid, disordered form is to take no responsibility for ever having created it. Say, ‘God did it,’ you’ve practically got it made! And the more you say, ‘God did it,’ the more solid the universe is going to get — if you made it up. Get the idea? Listen, if God made it and that was the true ownership of it, it would disappear! Because that’s assignment of proper ownership; that’s taking a full responsibility for it. That’s understanding exactly what its source was. And it would disappear, just like that. (April 9, 1959)

Evidently, it’s practically an affront not to be able to find out about something. Any time you want to go around wearing a bath towel with a Woolworth diamond on it and be a swami reading people’s minds, also take out a large insurance policy and get your burial arrangements straight. It’s probably why they hung Christ, if they did. That’s right. That’s right. If he was the Son of God, he should have been able to find out about all the orthodox malpractices. And he didn’t. And they hung him. They didn’t hung him. They crucified him. Common practice of the day. If he existed. It isn’t true that he led a good life, so they crucified him. You see, that wouldn’t be the right story. He should have found out about ’em and he didn’t, so you see they had to crucify him and that’s just about the way it would be. Now, if you go around telling everybody you can read their minds — I know this might get you lots of PCs for a little while — be sure at the same time that you go down to the Bide-a-Wee Cemetery and get yourself a nice quiet lot because probably you won’t have time a little while later. It’s very hard to buy a lot when you haven’t got a body to pull money out of the pockets of. But that’s about how it is, you see? (February 7, 1962)

This idea of somebody full-armed from the brow of Jove or something like that, coming down and helping man, and so on, that’s an old story. That isn’t even news. But somebody by his own bootstraps, even as you, pulling himself up through this thing, that is news. And whatever you have done and been on the Whole Track, or whatever I have done and been on the Whole Track, it still amounts to the fact that a guy just like you made this. And has made it, and also ‘physician heal thyself,’ has been broken all ways from the middle. Because it never happened before. That’s what’s news. I suppose my bank to a large degree’s been keyed out but over a period of time has been keying in harder and harder and harder and about knocked my head off, and I was working out technology by which you could get Clear, and I hadn’t had any auditing to amount to anything for a couple of years, actually. Mary Sue rolled up her sleeves and there we went and here we are. And this is a very satisfactory, well, I won’t say an end to the story, because the story is a long way from ended. But I will say it’s a very satisfactory denouement on the question, ‘Can one lift himself by his own bootstraps and beat all the laws of God and men in this whole universe from one corner to the other?’ And the answer, of course, is yes. (February 21, 1963)

It’s pretty hard to complete a cycle in a half a billion years. You can try. And you get it down to a million years, and of course, to get anything done in a million years and make it stick, that’s really going some, man, you’re really on your way, that’s tearing the ground up in all directions. The length of time since the birth of Chr — the alleged birth of Christ — is so short, that before you’ve gone very long on the road to OT, you could probably remember what you had for breakfast in the year 2, and during the third day of the Saturnalia or something like that. Not that you would, probably cause you as much work to remember what you had for breakfast that morning as it does now to remember what you had for breakfast yesterday, see. You probably can’t think of what you had for breakfast yesterday right now. So that is a very finite period of time. That’s a very short period of time. A couple of thousand years, nothing. I’d like a couple of thousand years just to sit on a rock and look at the scenery — one of my ambitions. (May 30, 1963)

I know it’s mean of me, it’s cabalist, it’s rabble-rousing for me to infer that the majesty of government is actually being used to further some foul, religious end in some way and to cause everybody to be dead. But I’m very interested in the fact that the Church of England, of all organizations, right down here in the form of a vicar (who, I think, has had to move since), this bird — I’m looking at a face or two here who were present in this — was being very censorious about our giving death lessons to young children. Story went around the world. What do you think this guy does every time he stands up there in the pulpit? He’s talking about going to heaven and all this sort of thing. He’s giving death lessons to little kids. Diana came home from school one day crying. She was going to a local school up here. She wanted to know if all this stuff about poor Christ was true. And I gave her the hot dope, and — well, as a matter of fact, I did. I was very reasonable about the whole thing. I said, ‘Native populaces have their religious beliefs, and wherever you are, you must remain tolerant of the current beliefs,’ and so forth, and she took this in. But it’s interesting that this bird down here is asserting how wrong it is, don’t you see, to give children death lessons while he himself is giving them death lessons. Only our death lessons are straight dope this is what happens with regard to death — but his are a darn lie. (August 27, 1963)

When we go into the idea of supreme beings or gods or big thetans or something like that, well, we’ve just taken the whole curve all the way around and the only thing we’ve got on this planet today is just pure nuttiness on this subject, see, the theory of the Big Thetan, see. Actually, the Big Thetan theory is simply one of the GPMs and it — there’s end words that have to do with gods and things like this, you see. And there’s one of the root words — several of the root words — have to do with worship and so forth and it’s just goofiness, see? There isn’t anybody, any Big Thetan around who’s permeating everything that just because you say, ‘Now, please give me cake and ice cream for my supper tonight,’ is going to suddenly go into a brown study and wonder how to get you cake and ice cream tonight, see. There just is no such being. (July 15, 1964)

You can see that there’s actually a long, long history of Hubbard ridiculing religion, Christianity, and Jesus before we get to the infamous 1968 lecture which Mike cited yesterday (and which we have many times as well), which has Hubbard saying, on tape, “There was no Christ.”

“The core belief of Scientology is that Christ not only didn’t exist, he is a figment of the reactive mind,” Mike explained, and it’s really that simple.

In 1999 or 2000, we had lunch at the Hollywood Celebrity Centre with Scientology spokeswoman Karin Pouw, who had invited our editor and he had brought us along. Over a nice plate of sea bass at the Renaissance, the restaurant at the Celebrity Centre, we asked Pouw about this notion, that in Scientology Jesus was just a made up story, an “implant” put into our minds by evil galactic overlords. She tried to avoid the question, but we were persistent, and finally, she burst out, “So we believe Jesus is a figment of the imagination. So what?”

It was a precious moment.

So why, if Scientology has nothing to do with Christianity, does it have a cross on its buildings that looks very much like the Christian symbol? We really can’t explain it better than Mike Rinder did yesterday:

Hubbard placed an enormous amount of importance on the symbols contained in “the R6 bank” — this series of “implants” installed in everyone on earth 75 million years ago: “The whole population of the planet responds like a clock to R6 symbols. They respond to nothing else. They do not respond to reason. They only respond to R6 symbols.”

That’s the real reason Scientology uses a cross symbol.

It is the cynicism of Scientology highlighted once again — though THIS is really what Hubbard says about Christ’s crucifixion, they nevertheless seek to pretend otherwise and use Easter as a reason to get people to come in and give them money.

Happy Easter, everyone!

 
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Derek Lambert and Karen de la Carriere

 
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Source Code

“I only talk about animal psychologists because I want the beast to be known by his right name. That’s all he is and all he ever pretended to be. Any psychologist is an animal psychologist because the basic theory on which he operates is ‘man is an animal.’ So we call him animal psychologist. And I think that will effectively take care of that as the years roll along. Now, don’t ever use that word psychologist after this. See, just use animal psychologist, always. And you’ll get it around. You’ll find the Times, sooner or later, will be talking about the animal psychologist. And people will be phoning them up to take care of their horses. I wouldn’t let them though. And I don’t even like horses. I wouldn’t let them take care of my horse.” — L. Ron Hubbard, April 17, 1962

 
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Avast, Ye Mateys

ORG SECURITY: Mail and telex security and personal mail still must maintain security. Now and then an incompetent or false report wipes out security. The object is to make it difficult for an enemy to predict location and activity. We have had several severe upsets traceable to lack of security. You don’t name ports or detail plans in personal letters or org telexes. You carefully obscure them — Halifax becomes ‘our last port.’ ‘We intend to go to the Seychelles’ becomes ‘we’ll soon be in warmer climes.’ Lloyd’s Weekly Shipping Register was rumored to carry us port to port. This is false. We are never listed as we’re a yacht. But there are at least six other commercial Apollos. Scn orgs have taken to advertising the SO. This is silly. The SO is not their product. We are the organization three feet behind the head of Scn orgs. We succeed if we are least noticed.” — The Commodore, April 17, 1970

 
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Overheard in the FreeZone

“The core of this procedure is in the conversion of enmest and entheta back into mest and theta (aligned and balanced); one creates an equilibrium of forces which was in an imbalance, enturbulated; it converts enmest and entheta back into its rightful condition, which leads to more power, knowledge and beingness for the one causing it. Theta applies the laws of mest for the purposes of conquering it.”

 
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Past is Prologue

2000: Slashdot reported that online auction host eBay has been removing auctions of e-meters due to demands from Scientology under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. “Rod Keller, a Scientology critic, noticed that e-meter auctions were being taken down, and wrote eBay to ask why. The response was: ‘These items are not prohibited due to their nature, but the Church of Scientology is giving us Notices of Infringement, which we are legally required to honor. These items are being ended for that reason.’ When Mr. Keller expressed surprise at this, the next message went into a little more detail: ‘There is a procedure under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act whereby someone who claims to be an owner of Intellectual property can send a notice sworn under penalty of perjury that an item is infringing. The internet provider must then remove the item. The seller of the item (not a third party) can request and fill out a counter notice. If he/she does so, the complaining party who filled out the original notice has a limited period of time to file suit, or the provider can go ahead and relist the item. Based on eBay’s statements, the Church of Scientology has sworn under penalty of perjury that it has an ‘exclusive right’ to copyright on the material that was posted in the auction. To me, that seems obviously wrong. But to enjoy the protections of the DMCA, service providers must remove any material as soon as they’re told it infringes on copyright. Once material has been challenged, the service provider must act ‘expeditiously’ to remove it. Only when the material is gone can the accused user make a case to defend it.”

 
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Random Howdy

“I took two trazodone at least six hours ago and I woke up and it’s only an hour later. What the hell is going on? Did the Fifth Invader Force land?”“It all depends on what the definition of a ‘win’ is. Somebody claiming they were cured of their asthma or allergies is ridiculous. Somebody saying that auditing made them happier is vague BS also. The only thing you ‘win’ in Scientology is the Booby Prize.”

 
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Full Court Press: What we’re watching at the Underground Bunker

Criminal prosecutions:
— Danny Masterson charged for raping three women: Next pretrial conference May 31. Trial scheduled for August 29.
— ‘Lafayette Ronald Hubbard’ (a/k/a Justin Craig), aggravated assault, plus drug charges: Last hearing was on January 18, referred to grand jury. Additional charges also referred to grand jury after January 5 assault while in jail.
— Jay and Jeff Spina, Medicare fraud: Jay sentenced to 9 years in prison. Jeff’s sentencing to be scheduled.
— Rizza Islam and other family members, Medi-Cal fraud: Pretrial conference May 20 in Los Angeles

Civil litigation:
— Luis and Rocio Garcia v. Scientology: Eleventh Circuit affirmed ruling granting Scientology’s motion for arbitration. Garcias considering next move.
— Valerie Haney v. Scientology: Forced to ‘religious arbitration.’ Valerie’s motion for reconsideration denied on March 15.
— Chrissie Bixler et al. v. Scientology and Danny Masterson: Appellate court removes requirement of arbitration on January 19, case remanded back to Superior Court. Next hearing scheduled for June 29.
— Brian Statler Sr v. City of Inglewood: Third amended complaint filed, trial set for June 28.
— Author Steve Cannane defamation trial: Trial concluded, Cannane victorious, awarded court costs. Appeal hearing held Aug 23-27. Awaiting a ruling.
— Chiropractors Steve Peyroux and Brent Detelich, stem cell fraud: Lawsuit filed by the FTC and state of Georgia in August, now in discovery phase.

 
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THE PROSECUTION OF DANNY MASTERSON

We first broke the news of the LAPD’s investigation of Scientology celebrity Danny Masterson on rape allegations in 2017, and we’ve been covering the story every step of the way since then. At this page we’ve collected our most important links, including our four days in Los Angeles covering the preliminary hearing and its ruling, which has Danny facing trial and the potential sentence of 45 years to life in prison.

SCIENTOLOGY: FAIR GAME

After the success of their double-Emmy-winning, three-season A&E series ‘Scientology and the Aftermath,’ Leah Remini and Mike Rinder continue the conversation on their podcast, ‘Scientology: Fair Game.’ We’ve created a landing page where you can hear all of the episodes so far.

LEAH REMINI: SCIENTOLOGY AND THE AFTERMATH

An episode-by-episode guide to Leah Remini’s three-season, double-Emmy winning series that changed everything for Scientology watching. Originally aired from 2016 to 2019 on the A&E network, and now on Netflix.

SCIENTOLOGY’S CELEBRITIES, from A to Z

Find your favorite Hubbardite celeb at this index page — or suggest someone to add to the list!

 
Other links: SCIENTOLOGY BLACK OPS: Tom Cruise and dirty tricks. Scientology’s Ideal Orgs, from one end of the planet to the other. Scientology’s sneaky front groups, spreading the good news about L. Ron Hubbard while pretending to benefit society. Scientology Lit: Books reviewed or excerpted in a weekly series. How many have you read?

 
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THE WHOLE TRACK

[ONE year ago] Scientology ‘Sea Org’ members are a cut above, and have to prove it day and night
[TWO years ago] New amended complaint packs a wallop in Miami Scientology child sex assault lawsuit
[THREE years ago] Spyentology: For Scientology, operating as an intelligence agency is a religious mandate
[FOUR years ago] More proof that L. Ron Hubbard really did want Scientologists to consider him the Antichrist
[FIVE years ago] Before Scientology’s Xenu was a genocidal galactic overlord, he was a … mountain?
[SIX years ago] Louis Theroux’s ‘My Scientology Movie’ at Tribeca today, & more in our social media review
[SEVEN years ago] Is France dropping its anti-Scientology fervor because Tom Cruise is just too délicieux?
[EIGHT years ago] Leah Remini ‘Fair Gamed’ by Scientology? Her sister gets a visit, and Tony Dovolani is tailed
[NINE years ago] Love in the Time of Miscavige

 
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Posted by Tony Ortega on April 17, 2022 at 07:00

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Other links: BLOGGING DIANETICS: Reading Scientology’s founding text cover to cover | UP THE BRIDGE: Claire Headley and Bruce Hines train us as Scientologists | GETTING OUR ETHICS IN: Jefferson Hawkins explains Scientology’s system of justice | SCIENTOLOGY MYTHBUSTING: Historian Jon Atack discusses key Scientology concepts | Shelly Miscavige, 15 years gone | The Lisa McPherson story told in real time | The Cathriona White stories | The Leah Remini ‘Knowledge Reports’ | Hear audio of a Scientology excommunication | Scientology’s little day care of horrors | Whatever happened to Steve Fishman? | Felony charges for Scientology’s drug rehab scam | Why Scientology digs bomb-proof vaults in the desert | PZ Myers reads L. Ron Hubbard’s “A History of Man” | Scientology’s Master Spies | The mystery of the richest Scientologist and his wayward sons | Scientology’s shocking mistreatment of the mentally ill | The Underground Bunker’s Official Theme Song | The Underground Bunker FAQ

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Our non-Scientology stories: Robert Burnham Jr., the man who inscribed the universe | Notorious alt-right inspiration Kevin MacDonald and his theories about Jewish DNA | The selling of the “Phoenix Lights” | Astronomer Harlow Shapley‘s FBI file | Sex, spies, and local TV news | Battling Babe-Hounds: Ross Jeffries v. R. Don Steele

 

Tony Ortega at The Daily Beast