Welcome to our ongoing project, where we blog a 1950 first edition of Scientology’s bible, Dianetics, with the help of ex-Scientologist, Bay Area lawyer, blogger, and author Vance Woodward. Go here for the first post in the series.
We’re now entering Book Two, which promises to take us into the nuts and bolts of dianetic theory. And it begins with Hubbard describing to us how the human mind works — that it has three divisions, and in this first chapter he is going to explain how the analytical mind works.
The analytical mind, he explains, is the “I”. It’s the awareness we have as a self. When we’re conscious and thinking, it’s our analytical mind that is helping us make decisions.
And remarkably, the analytical mind works just like an error-free computer, analyzing data stored in massive data banks, never making a mistake.
Gosh, that’s a keen idea, and we figure it must have sounded downright spiffy in 1950, when this book came out.
Tomorrow, Ursula Caberta will retire from her post with the Hamburg state government after spending more than 20 years investigating Scientology’s influence in Germany.
Yesterday, we had a lengthy telephone conversation with her, and reviewed some of the highlights of her career, which was one of the most troublesome for Scientology in Europe.
“I’m done with my work for Hamburg. I’m free to do other things, including finishing my final book on Scientology,” she says.
We’ve commented in the past how remarkable it is that some of Atlanta’s local news outlets have banded together to keep a close watch on one of Scientology’s more intriguing messes going on there.
Pete Combs of WSB Radio, Jodie Fleischer of WSB-TV, and Christian Boone of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution have coordinated their coverage as a wrongful death and civil racketeering lawsuit has exposed shocking improprieties at Scientology’s drug rehab center in Atlanta, known as Narconon Georgia.
With a trial looming, the case has been going terribly for Scientology, and the state has announced its intention to revoke the facility’s license and shut the place down.
And last night, Combs tweeted the latest sign that things are going to hell in a handbasket for Scientology leader David Miscavige’s side: Narconon Georgia Executive Director Mary Rieser has apparently lost her position, when she had been doing such an effective job lying like a rug.
Just a quick evening post for some blatant self-promotion as we point out a couple of smart news stories that feature quotes from the Bunker.
This afternoon, The Observer‘s Dan Duray published an insightful look at the fact-checking process that journalists go through when they investigate the Church of Scientology. Specifically, he talked with Lawrence Wright and his indefatigable researcher, Lauren Wolf, about what they went through trying to get answers from Scientology’s spokeswoman, Karin Pouw.
And Dan revealed what we told him: that we haven’t heard directly from Pouw since the Debbie Cook lawsuit last February.
Last March, we visited former Scientology spokesman Mike Rinder at his home in Florida. The result of our visit was a series of videos that we posted at the Village Voice website in April. However, since leaving the Voice our YouTube account was shut down. Thankfully, with help from a loyal reader, we managed to retrieve those videos and have posted them to YouTube once again. So we’ve decided to republish the entire story along with the videos.
And our timing is good, because Chris Owen just published a lengthy and detailed Wikipedia entry about “The Hole,” Scientology’s concentration camp for top executives, and that’s the subject of many of these video segments. We’re glad to get this interview with Rinder back on the ‘net…
Well, not everyone loves Lawrence Wright’s book, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, & the Prison of Belief. The Church of Scientology isn’t very happy about it, but neither is Steven Hassan, who writes about cults and mind control. He wishes Larry had said more about undue influence in Scientology, and we’d like to hear what you think about that in the comments.
It’s time for another look at the fundraising fliers and other come-ons that Scientologists received this week. On Sundays, we like to post the items that our tipsters have forwarded to us, so we can get a snapshot of what church members are getting hit up for at the moment.
This week, there are so many fun things to spend money on. A table at a CCHR awards banquet? A campaign of terror against psychiatry? Or more books for libraries around the world? Get that checkbook out and let’s start saving the world!
On January 14, Kima Douglas died in Scottsdale, Arizona after fighting a battle with pancreatic necrosis. She was 70 years old.
Nothing was reported in the local media about her passing. And except for some Facebook testaments written by friends and family, there has been little notice online that she is gone.
But Kima Douglas was well known in the world of Scientology, and spent several years caring for L. Ron Hubbard as his nurse during some of the most difficult years that he ran the organization while on the run himself.
Kima left Scientology in 1980 and then gave a rather legendary interview to Hubbard’s biographer, Russell Miller, in 1986. But after that she kept a low profile, and is remembered by friends for her kindness and caring.
In a delicious new story by Tony Dokoupil at Newsweek/The Daily Beast, a trove of new L. Ron Hubbard documents was found where no one thought to look before — at The Explorers Club here in New York City.
As Dokoupil points out, “the club was more than Hubbard’s watering hole. It was his permanent home, and — in a messy life of multiple homes, marriages, and children — his most stable family.” And to this day the club has a file of letters, journals, and some artifacts that record Hubbard’s association with it.
Dokoupil digs into the dispatches that Hubbard faithfully sent to the club, and checks them against the facts presented in Lawrence Wright’s new book, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, & the Prison of Belief (which mirrors the work done by numerous previous authors) and against the version of Hubbard’s life that the Church of Scientology puts out.
Once again, it’s no contest: the church’s story just doesn’t stack up against the biographies written by journalists. L. Ron Hubbard is, it turns out, a blowhard of epic proportions.
Welcome to our ongoing project, where we blog a 1950 first edition of Scientology’s bible, Dianetics, with the help of ex-Scientologist, Bay Area lawyer, blogger, and author Vance Woodward. Go here for the first post in the series.
This week we have a short chapter in which Hubbard defines the four dynamics. Yes, four. Later, he will expand them to eight, but for now, we have four dynamics for survival — the self, sex, the group, and all mankind.
Earlier, Hubbard had introduced the idea that the purpose of life is to survive, and that we have more pleasure in our lives the closer we are to immortality, and more pain the closer we are to death. He defined something that tended to keep us from immortality as a “suppressor.” (And it’s important to remember that word for later.)
For now, Hubbard expands the idea of survival, saying that we are trying to survive in different realms, not only as individuals, but we’re also trying to leave behind children to carry on our names, and we also want the entire race to persevere.
Welcome to our ongoing project, where we blog a 1950 first edition of Scientology’s bible, Dianetics, with the help of ex-Scientologist, Bay Area lawyer, blogger, and author Vance Woodward. Go here for the first post in the series.![Ursula Caberta [Credit: dpa/DPA]](http://tonyortega.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Ursula_Caberta.jpg)
![[Adrian Gaut for Newsweek]](https://tonyortega.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/LRH_Explorers-300x199.jpg)