Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard on nuclear radiation: It’s a state of mind

We were really knocked out by HBO’s miniseries, ‘Chernobyl,’ and so we thought it might be appropriate for our ‘Scientology Lit’ series if we take a look at L. Ron Hubbard’s notorious 1957 book, ‘All About Radiation.’ Referring to himself as a ‘nuclear physicist’ (he actually failed a course in ‘molecular and atomic physics’ at George Washington University in 1931 during his abortive college career), and a ‘medical doctor,’ Hubbard claimed generally that radiation’s danger was overblown and something Scientology counseling could easily deal with. We’ve chosen the chapter ‘Radiation and Scientology’ as a Fair Use look at the publication, and we’re looking forward to your thoughts about it.

 
Radiation and Scientology

In this lecture I will deal with radiation and Scientology. There are a number of things which have been learned during the past year and a half in Scientology which directly relate to radiation and it would be a great shame not to make these things known to the public at this time.

We already have data of sufficient importance and reliability to demonstrate that the Scientologist by processing and by processing of others can very easily nullify many of the dangers to a person of such a thing as a polluted atmosphere.

We care very little about whether there is radiation in the atmosphere because a person who is in excellent physical condition does not particularly suffer mentally and thus physically from the effects of radiation. When a person is at a level where his general physical health is good, then this worry is not capable of depressing him into ill health. Radiation is more of a mental than a physical problem and Scientology handles that.

The factors in Scientology which are most definitely influenced by radiation are the factors which are most definitely influenced by life. When we try to divide a peculiar illness from the general illnesses of being alive we are at once in conflict with the fact that man is as well as he is well. If each one of the infinite number of factors which can make him ill had to be taken up separately and independently and distinctly with an entirely different treatment, we would discover ourselves with our noses always and forever stuck into the newest and latest disease.

We don’t do that although we are aware of the latest techniques. It is an interesting fact that the latest technique always runs out the earlier technique—and that is why it is the latest technique. We are not studying the latest disease. We are studying a method to eradicate the cures of former times and the nullification of processes which were used earlier.

A technique is as good as it runs out earlier techniques. The technique which runs out, eradicates or even throws into restimulation an older technique is senior to it.

Let’s assume that we are treating smallpox. We find at first that we inject a serum which makes the individual’s arm swell up, makes them feel ill and feverish. After that they do or don’t get smallpox.

After further investigation and research we find that we could refine and perfect this technique by giving it orally. This seems to have a good workability. Finally we discover something that has to do with a particular hot bath, if you can imagine such a cure, and find that if we give somebody a hot bath he won’t get smallpox.

The technique of the three which is senior to the others will run out the other two. It is quite interesting that if the hot bath technique was a good pervasive, sweeping technique and was a considerable improvement on the other two, when we put the man in the hot bath, he would at once feel sick in his stomach from the pill and his arm would tend to get swollen from the old injection. After that the pill and injection would not trouble him any longer.

That doesn’t happen often in physical medicine, but it is not unknown. With the Scientologist we see this phenomenon often during our handling of people. It is highly probable that man has had cures along the developing genetic line which have become the diseases of tomorrow and if we can solve the factor of the cure that becomes the disease—which, by the way we have solved in Scientology — we are then capable of this kind of curing.

Let’s take alcohol as an example.

Alcohol was once the greatest medicine that man had. It was a wonderful medicine. If anything happened to a man from snake bite to a love affair, any disease, in fact, we administrated alcohol. That was a cure, but now we have alcoholism.

It is interesting that only a century and a half ago the stores of a British man-of-war amounted in terms of weight to more than 50% alcoholic beverages and less than 50 percent food and other amenities. Alcohol was quite a tremendous thing.

But here is an oddity. Today alcohol makes one tired. It has been laid in on the genetic line evidently to such a degree that it now produces the illness which it was most used as a remedy for. Any time one got tired one took a drink. In past years we conceive that the genetic blueprint is marching along and that it accumulates experiences.

It is definitely in the realm of genetics, but the geneticist has never realized that the experience the body line has in one generation, may culminate in another generation. Darwin found that if you took horses up to the high country in the Middle East they would grow long hair after a season or two. When they were taken back into the low hot country, they wouldn’t get rid of the long hair for about four generations. It tells us that the genetic line does carry a memory of what happened. There are many proofs and incidents of this character.

Very few people have added this into the field of medicine, taking it out of the line of natural selection. Today a person may get tired when he takes a drink. In other words, it restimulates that which it was once made to cure. Possibly on the genetic line, some time or another, and being farfetched about it, radiation might have been a cure for something. Using this principle that the cure eventually becomes the disease and eventually restimulates the disease it is supposed to cure, I am sure that somewhere on the genetic line, radiation was used to cure a bad stomach or skin. It certainly is today — sunbathing.

What is the sun but a ball of radiation? There are photons that come from the sun but they are hand in glove with a great deal of other radiation. Radiation is all over the atmosphere, always has been. Sunburn is not an overdose of heat but simply radiation.

In my basic physics textbook they used to teach that the sun was combusting on hydrogen. They calculated the length of life of the sun on hydrogen, but if that were so one would get a difference in the heat of the sun from year to year because it would be burning out. It was an interesting fact that the sun didn’t burn out so the theory was eventually abandoned and people finally owned up and said that they didn’t know why the sun kept on burning. It was only when nuclear physics became dominant in men’s thinking that sunlight was explained, and sunlight is now understood to be occasioned by a continuous fission going on a sphere called the sun. Therefore sunburn is a radiation burn.

When one looks at people who are burned in an atomic blast such as there was at Hiroshima, one is looking at the outer fringes of burns that look very much like sunburn.

For instance, a man was standing with his back to a picket fence. The bomb exploded far back of him and he had sunburn where there weren’t any pickets. In other words he got a burn pattern much as one would if one was wearing a bathing costume.

If radiation is drifting around in the air all the time, one is not getting a direct burn, one is getting a sort of continuous intolerable type of burn which is too imbalanced and the absorption of which one doesn’t find healthy. Every person has a great deal of experience with sunburn on the genetic line and sunburn occasionally causes hives, red flushes, prickliness, an upset stomach and colitis. It will even cause loss of hair. It is something with which we have had experience. Radiation is not new and strange. There is just more of it and it is drifting in the wrong place.

We have also had X-rays. X-rays oddly enough has been used as a cure for cancer. A cure for cancer? It must have been in vogue for some time for the excellent reason that X-ray can cause cancer. It is therefore no surprise that if one tries to cure something long enough and often enough, it may eventually cause what it is trying to cure. Its effectiveness will diminish.

We therefore must handle this cure factor, which we can do with the technology we have in Scientology.

In other words, the solution of a problem is the problem, not a solution. If one wants no liability in any solution then its solution is the problem.

Somebody decides that his wife is mad and he takes her to see a psychiatrist. They put big electrodes on her head and shock her and she comes back. What is she suffering from now? She is suffering from being electrocuted. So one day she walks over to the light and as she turns it on it short-circuits, gives her a slight shock and she is crazy all over again. It often happens and it is quite common. They are using electricity in some wild, barbaric manner in some offhanded attempt to cure insanity.

This business of curing illnesses carries with it the liability of leaving the cure sitting there. We cure some disease by running an individual’s temperature to 107 degrees Fahrenheit and leaving it there for 48 hours. A few years go by and something is wrong with him. What is wrong with him? Well, he gets hot!

One therefore has to have the individual conceive of problems of comparable magnitude to the problem in order to take his fixation off the problem. As long as he is fixated on the problem and then solves it he continues to be fixated on the problem. He just puts a barrier between himself and the problem but the problem is still there.

One therefore has to raise the individual’s tolerance for that type of problem and the moment that is done, the problem is “solved”. In other words, the solution is always the problem. One has to be able to “handle,” “tolerate” and “confront” the problem. When one cannot confront a problem and one “solves” it completely he then becomes obsessed with the solution of it.

Let’s take a look at radiation. People cannot solve it, cannot confront it — I should say they cannot confront it as it is drifting all through the atmosphere. Have somebody look into space for a while. One says to him, “Don’t look at anything. Just look into space,” and after a while this person is in rather poor condition. He will get queasy.

Therefore if radiation is scattered all through the air and we tell people: “Look, it is floating all around in space, but you cannot see it,” everybody starts getting queasy. We can produce to a marked degree all the effects of radiation in Scientology with the greatest of ease simply by restimulation and in the absence of any real radiation!

One can be made to relive a past experience and therefore can be made to relive past illnesses as Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health has demonstrated. One can actually see people stuck in these moments of illnesses.

If a person is liable to get restimulated or is upset by dangers in the atmosphere, he will get sick in his stomach a short while after one has asked him to look into space. One gets colitis and gastroenteritis often as a result of this apparently harmless technique of asking people to look into space without paying particular notice to any specific objects that may be present. This is a test anybody could make.

Pollution of and danger in space makes a total effect out of man and one is brought to believe one can do nothing about it. These are the combinations from our viewpoint as Scientologists, which bring this condition we know as radiation sickness and we can do something about each one of them. We can give man something to confront that is like radiation and being able to confront this we give him practice in confronting the unconfrontable.

What are the other factors behind radiation? Radiation is being used as a control mechanism. It is being used to control people. They are not supposed to have war with and are to obey countries that do have radiation.

As it goes on it becomes apparent to people that it is a control mechanism.

As long as a person is allergic to control he will suffer from attempts to control him. If everybody has an allergy to control and to being controlled, and thinks that there is something wrong with control, isn’t that an aberration? Isn’t that something that should be handled by a Scientologist—something one should raise the tolerance of people on? People get so afraid of being controlled that they resist everything. When they get afraid of radiation when it is used as a control mechanism, they resist it and it burns them — and only then does it burn them.

One can conduct this experiment by taking somebody and saying: “Isn’t it terrible about this radiation. Think of all the air round here in this room at this moment being full of little invisible particles that are just chewing our bodies to bits.” He gets the idea and wonders why he is itching all over his body.

If people are allergic to control it is something that they ought to settle with themselves. A person can only be controlled against his will as long he is allergic to control and it is against his will. A person who is very bland about this subject and doesn’t mind being controlled can be controlled as easily as a toy and can stop it as easily as a giant. He has power of choice over control and if one has power of choice over control it doesn’t much matter if one is being controlled or controlling a situation or persons oneself.

As long as control, directions, orders and postulates are resisted, a person has a tendency to lock up with them — in other words become their effect which then produces a considerable discomfort to the person. Resistance to a terminal — person or object — brings about one way or another a closure of terminals with the thing to such a degree that an individual then obeys it, doesn’t know he is obeying it or what he is obeying and that is more or less what aberration is.

If radiation is used as a control factor then a person is made to close terminals with something which his body cannot tolerate. But it is the person who is closing that terminal, not the body, and that is our foremost discovery. As long as we have an orientation on the subject of radiation, are no longer resisting it, or upset about it, and particularly if we are in fair condition with regard to space, spaciousness and don’t get claustrophobia, then we really don’t have to fear from radiation. That is the first thing we have learned in Scientology.

This organization of Scientologists knows a great deal about radiation, since it was once in Arizona, 250 miles from a hundred and some atomic bomb tests that were made in Nevada. The central headquarters of this organization were moved from Phoenix, Arizona to Washington, D.C., only because pianos began to count like uranium mines. Everything was live and radioactive. Dust blew in one’s face at night and one had sunburn although there was no sun. There was just too much radiation.

We had a lot of experience and found something rather peculiar. We found that people who were in good condition were not in restimulation with regard to radiation and those who were in bad condition would get something that would hardly count on a geiger counter and would get sick in their stomachs. People received Scientological processing — “treatment” — and had no further repercussion from radiation.

Here is a good example. A man came into the Hubbard Scientology Organization in Phoenix. He had been driving past one of the atomic bomb explosion sites and as he went past the site at some considerable distance away, he saw the flash on the horizon. At once his face and eyes swelled and he could hardly drive into Phoenix. He was in terrible condition and felt very bad about this. So I just gave him a Scientology assist and the swelling went down immediately.

The general auditing of individuals is then a basic solution. Group auditing also solves the control factor and helps communication to a marked degree.

The reaction to radiation in persons who have been given Scientology processing is by actual tests much lower than those who have not received it. We have conducted some experiments in that direction. But even we would find it very difficult and even antipathetic to get everybody together and give them the amount of group processing needed as safeguard against radiation.

Is there anything that we could give a person that would help him against radiation? There is. There are several preparations which prevent radiation. It is getting rather common now and progress is being made on the whole subject. Here is an article from “The New Scientist” of the 28th March, 1957, by Dr. Peter Alexander, called “Protection against Radiation.”

He tells us that, working independently, several people have found that harmful effects of radiation can be reduced by injecting some quite simple chemicals before exposure to the rays. The comment on the whole article is: “Could medicines be used to protect against the effects of radiation?”

A short time ago such a suggestion would have been thought absurd. Today chemical protection against radiation is a subject of much research.

But we are leading on this. We knew that old-time nicotinic acid restimulated and ran out sunburns and that a person who had been given nicotinic acid actually did not receive a continuous effect from it. Anybody can make this test.

It happens that there is an incorrect entry in both the British and American pharmacopoeias. It says that nicotinic acid — not niacinamide — turns on a flush, and in overdose is therefore toxic. This is not correct. People who have taken nicotinic acid in overdoses do get red and prickly but one has to take about 90 grains to kill oneself.

It is fascinating that there could be this insufficient information. It could be that people don’t look because that isn’t what it does at all. In a large number of cases it doesn’t turn on flushes but turns on hives, gastroenteritis, aching bones, or a fearful, terrified condition which is not a physical reaction at all. Here is a variable reaction from something toxicand notice that it turns on the conditions brought about by atomic radiation.

What sort of a toxic pill is this which when administered over a period of time is no longer toxic even though all the time it is being administered it is above toleration? The body cannot tolerate the amount that is being administered but after a while it no longer has any effect. Unless one knows Dianetics and Scientology this doesn’t seem to make much sense.

Nicotinic acid runs out, abolishes, sunburns — and that is the simple answer to this question. When it is given to a person, he gets sunburns he has already had before and turns as red as a beet. Keep him on a regimented dose every day and after a while two things will happen: one, he no longer gets sick when nicotinic acid is administered to him and, two, he doesn’t have a bad reaction from sunburn.

We have made the test with sunlamps and found that a person’s liability to being burned is decreased by the administration of nicotinic acid and the running out of past burns. This, therefore, is true of this type of radiation illness.

I conducted several experiments in 1950 which were in total disagreement with the pharmacopoeia, but any medical doctor or biochemist could make the same experiments. One would administer 200 mg nicotinic acid per day to somebody and see all the manifestations I have spoken earlier, turn on, eventually disappear and not recur until one has administered about 500 mg per day, which will turn it all on again, but much less this time. Then one gives this person 1,000 mg per day for several days and finds that there is just a small reaction after which one administers 2,000 mg per day and finds no more effects. One can thus feed people this toxic drug without any effect whatsoever.

Remembering this series of experiments I made in 1950 I again looked them up in the files of the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation. More recently we got some brave volunteer who took nicotinic acid over a period of a couple of weeks and sure enough our old experiments were bearing out with one exception: the reactions per dose were five and six times more violent than they had been in 1950!

I then got hold of some of the people who were given nicotinic acid in 1950 and they took the same course all over again. They got a little sick in their stomachs but were better off than other people and they got an entirely different reaction.

In order to make the intake of nicotinic acid more effective, I did more experimenting and eventually combined it with vitamins and other minerals and finally produced a formula called Dianazene.

The Formula for Dianazene
Nicotinic Acid……………200 mg.
Iron Ferrous Gluconate . . . 10 grains.
Vitamin B1……………….25 mg.
Vitamin B2 —Riboflavin . . .50mg.
Vitamin C—Ascorbic Acid . 200 to 500 mg.
Dicalcium Phosphate ………… 15 to 20 grains.

It should be taken daily, all at the same time, with milk and chocolate.

But it is not the best solution. It is a cure. It does something and it can eventually be run out with Scientology. But if we didn’t have anything else Dianazene might serve the purpose very well in a limited sense.

Dianazene runs out radiation — or what appears to be radiation. It also proofs a person up against radiation in some degree. I have seen it run out skin cancer. A man who didn’t have much liability to skin cancer (only had a few moles) took Dianazene. His whole jaw turned into a raw mass of cancer. He kept on taking Dianazene and it disappeared after a while. I was looking at a case of cancer that might have happened.

There is another instance of somebody who had a little bit of colitis which worried him slightly from time to time. After taking Dianazene he started to bleed from the intestines. He kept on taking this formula and came out without colitis. He may have been facing an eventual colitis of a fatal nature — hemorrhages.

The whole point in taking Dianazene is to keep taking it until bad effects vanish.

As the level of food intake from country to country varies, it is important that people who don’t eat regular wholesome food take milk and chocolate with this preparation, otherwise they get a very poor reaction to it. I found that if one took milk and chocolate with it — or milk and glucose — it worked much better. In other words, the people who are the poorest fed would evidently be the most susceptible to radiation.

However, there could be thousands of other factors involved. If we are alert there is no reason to worry about radiation at this time particularly. But there is the same old worry about the case and health level of the peoples of the Earth, and if we continue along in this same direction, we would also win in the face of radiation. Who knows that we wouldn’t get a plague tomorrow that would wipe out nations. I assure you that it would be the people who are worried and are in a bad state of health who would go down first.

If one wanted to get the better of the plague, whether man or bug made, one should be audited by Scientology technologies. That seems to me about all I could say offhand that one might find of use in the understanding and handling of atomic radiation.

— L. Ron Hubbard

 
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HowdyCon 2019 in Los Angeles

THURSDAY NIGHT OPPORTUNITY: This year’s HowdyCon is in Los Angeles. People tend to come in starting on Thursday, and that evening we will have a casual get-together at a watering hole. But we also want to point out that Cathy Schenkelberg’s “Squeeze My Cans” will be running at the Hollywood Fringe, and we encourage HowdyCon attendees to see her show on Thursday night, June 20. Tickets and more dates available here.

Friday night June 21 we will be having an event in a theater (like we did on Saturday night last year in Chicago). There will not be a charge to attend this event, but if you want to attend, you need to RSVP with your proprietor at tonyo94 AT gmail.

On Saturday, we are joining forces with Janis Gillham Grady, who is having a reunion in honor of the late Bill Franks. Originally, we thought this event might take place in Riverside, but instead it’s in the Los Angeles area. If you wish to attend the reunion, you will need to RSVP with Janis (janisgrady AT gmail), and there will be a small contribution she’s asking for in order to help cover her costs.

HOTEL: Janis tells us she’s worked out a deal with Hampton Inn and Suites, at 7501 North Glenoaks Blvd, Burbank, (818) 768-1106. We have a $159 nightly rate for June 19 to 22. Note: You need to ask for the “family reunion” special rate.

 
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Scientology’s celebrities, ‘Ideal Orgs,’ and more!

We’ve been building landing pages about David Miscavige’s favorite playthings, including celebrities and ‘Ideal Orgs,’ and we’re hoping you’ll join in and help us gather as much information as we can about them. Head on over and help us with links and photos and comments.

Scientology’s celebrities, from A to Z! Find your favorite Hubbardite celeb at this index page — or suggest someone to add to the list!

Scientology’s ‘Ideal Orgs,’ from one end of the planet to the other! Help us build up pages about each these worldwide locations!

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 our weekly series. How many have you read?

 
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THE WHOLE TRACK

[ONE year ago] Here’s proof that Scientology members have to be forced to watch Scientology TV
[TWO years ago] Federal judge urged to ignore Scientology whining and get on with arbitration disaster
[THREE years ago] More signs of the apocalypse for the Church of Scientology’s bitter-enders
[FOUR years ago] Westward, Ho! Hey, Bunkerites, we need your help, and fast
[FIVE years ago] Scientology Sunday Funnies: The Tom Cruise history lesson edition!
[SIX years ago] Jon Atack on Why It’s So Hard To Recover From Scientology
[SEVEN years ago] It’s a Scientology Book Avalanche! RUN FOR COVER!
[EIGHT years ago] Scientology’s Anti-Commie, Space Opera Beginnings, and Other Nuggets From New Academic Book

 
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Posted by Tony Ortega on June 8, 2019 at 07:00

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The Best of the Underground Bunker, 1995-2018 Just starting out here? We’ve picked out the most important stories we’ve covered here at the Underground Bunker (2012-2018), The Village Voice (2008-2012), New Times Los Angeles (1999-2002) and the Phoenix New Times (1995-1999)

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