L. Ron Hubbard – The Underground Bunker

While the planet melts: What Scientology predicted about climate change

Tony Ortega — Thu, 21 Jul 2022 11:00:04 +0000

The dog days are really on us now. Some serious heat enveloped New York yesterday, and we know that some of our readers are in places that are going through unprecedented heat waves. Scotland, for example, had its hottest day in recorded history on Tuesday.

As much as we were tempted to merely take a day off and hope for cooler weather, we were thankful to hear from one of our longtime readers and correspondents, who brought us an item that seemed perfect for this week’s temperatures. So grab a cool drink, crank up the fan, and beat the heat with this summer-fun anecdote. Scientology, it never fails to provide entertainment…

In the mid 1990s – before climate change was real to most people – Jarrett Buys, a Scientologist living in Clearwater, Florida, created a buzz in the Scientology community by predicting, using Hubbard’s method of data analysis, that planet Earth was headed for another Ice Age.

I was an active Scientologist at the time and heard about this from a friend. My friend also arranged for me to attend one of his briefings, which I did in around 1994.

Jarrett had studied the Hubbard Elementary Data Series Evaluator’s Course, which intended to teach Scientologists how to evaluate a pile of data and establish which things were true, false, important, less important, unimportant, etc. Like all Hubbard’s courses, this one included the study of theoretic principles as well as practical application.

If I remember correctly, Jarrett did an “eval” (short for “evaluation”) on the Earth’s environment for the practical requirement of the course – he had to choose a topic that warranted heavy, detailed “evaluation” and chose the Earth’s environment and what was going on in it. He had obtained a huge amount of scientific information and analyzed it according to Hubbard’s rules.

His conclusions, in a nutshell, were that the Earth was headed for another Ice Age and he predicted this would occur within the next 15 years or so (around the year 2010). Even though the issue of global warming was already on general public’s radar screen at the time, Jarrett insisted the scientists were wrong and the real deal was that the Earth was headed for another Ice Age.

Like any good Scientologist, he had sent copies of this “eval” with his findings to International Management, and they responded that this seemed like an important study, and they suggested that Jarrett head up some kind of unit to deal with this.

So Jarrett took his little show on the road and gave talks about this to Scientologists. My friend arranged for me to attend one of his talks on the environment in Los Angeles, which I did – along with a few dozen other Scientologists.

Jarrett spoke for about two to three hours that night; he talked a lot about studying chemtrails over the North Pole and a lot about exploration done in the South Pole to measure depth of ice, to determine how long it had been since the last Ice Age, how often they occur, etc.

Jarrett’s findings at the time boiled down to this: that the soil on planet Earth had demineralized to the point where another Ice Age would hit soon. The purpose of the Ice Age is to remineralize the soil. He said that life would not cease to exist during an Ice Age, but both the north and south parts of the planet would be uninhabitable due to glacier activity – i.e. the ice caps would descend from the North and South Poles to a point much closer to the equator. Most people who were able to would move to the land areas that were relatively close to the equator where the temperature would be warm enough to support life.

I think everyone who attended this briefing assumed his conclusion regarding another Ice Age due to soil demineralization had to be true because it was arrived at using Hubbard’s method of data analysis. I recall that it evoked anxiety or fear in the attendees, because while Jarrett wasn’t exactly predicting the end of the world, it sounded like a huge upheaval of people’s lives bordering on catastrophe – rather like what’s now going on in 2022.

— A Bunker correspondent

We sent an email to Jarrett Buys, asking if he was still predicting an ice age, and we received a lengthy reply from him. He tells us that our correspondent was wrong, that he was not predicting an ice age by the year 2010, but that one is coming, whether “in the the next 30 years or the next 1,000.” And he did acknowledge that he had graduated from the Data Series course twice, and was using it to evaluate data about the planet’s environment.

To simplify, the Data Series teaches you where to look by determining through a list of “out-points” where the “major departure from the ideal scene” is located – the area – so that you can further evaluate that situation and narrow the target, so to speak and come up with the WHY and the WHO (as there is always a WHO that is responsible for the WHY). Of course you have to know what the IDEAL SCENE is so you can determine what would be the major departure from it, in order to start your evaluation.
Back then, in ’94 and for a few years more, I did give a number of “briefings” within both the Scientology community, not only in the LA area but in Clearwater and NYC pertaining to the topic of Earth, its climate, the media’s obsession with “global warming” and the basics of having a safe foundation per Hubbard’s Precept 12-2, in THE WAY TO HAPPINESS book, which I am sure you have read or at least seen.

As for the data he used for his analysis, Jarrett helpfully directed our attention to a chart in a 1993 book which discusses temperature changes on the planet going back 600 million years.

As you will notice from the graph, the mean average temperature of Earth has only been declining for the past 150 million years. In the past 500,000 years that decline has intensified in frequency as well as gotten even colder. The apparent cyclic pattern is represented by approx. 90,000 years of glacial activity, followed by a much briefer and warmer 10,000 year Inter-glacial period, followed by another 90,000 year glacial period, on and on, right up to today where THIS current warming period we are now in – call the HOLOCENE – is coming to an end. I could go into a much longer and lengthy explanation of how I know this but I have not got the time to do this right now. Trust me, we are coming to the end of this Interglacial period – whether it is in the the next 30 years or the next 1000, it is “winding down”; there are indicators.
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Last time around – the end of the last Interglacial epoch – it happened in about 20 years – went from a warm Interglacial period (like we are currently in right now) to a glacial period. That’s why the the members of the Explorers Club (of NYC), which L. Ron Hubbard was a member, went on an expedition to Greenland (circa: 1953) and uncovered a woolly mammoth in a block of ice, that had fresh flowers in its mouth! Yes, that animal did not have time to even chew that vegetation as it was flash-frozen. There is scientific record of such occurrences many times on this planet; they are called pole-shifts. You should do some reading about this topic.

Ah! We are so glad that Jarrett brought up this particular piece of evidence. We have, in fact, read extensively on the subject of the “fresh flowers” supposedly found in a woolly mammoth that Hubbard found so impressive (he actually cited it as fresh vegetables in a mammoth’s stomach).

In 2018 we looked into this, and found that the great Jason Colavito, one of our favorite destroyers of myths, had thoroughly debunked the story.

“Legend has it that in 1951 the Explorers Club served meat from a frozen mammoth, as you can read in this 2014 Mental Floss article that takes the story at least somewhat seriously. But a new analysis of the preserved remains of that dinner (don’t ask why anyone kept the leftovers for 65 years) determined that the food was actually turtle, which had been passed off not as mammoth but as megatherium, an extinct ground sloth. The Christian Science Monitor misunderstood what a megatherium was in 1951 and reported that the food was mammoth, causing the legend,” Colavito noted.

As for the idea that the mammoth had frozen so quickly it had fresh vegetables in its stomach, Colavito also explains that there’s a long history of crackpots repeating that thoroughly debunked story as well. (Some flower pollen found in a carcass somehow became fresh flowers and then vegetables as the story got retold by various Creationists and other catastrophists.)

For Creationists, these badly mangled stories about flash-frozen mammoths have been used to argue that the Earth is extremely young. Hubbard used the story for a much more entertaining reason: To suggest that the “mammoth” had been instantly freeze-dried because some Operating Thetan had ripped the atmosphere off the planet with a flick of the finger. (Hubbard’s message was that you too could have such godlike powers if you studied his Scientology methods.)

Jarrett says the story of the mammoth is proof of sudden pole shifts, which he warns is really the problem with climate change.

We will give Jarrett the last word, and we thank him for responding to our email. It was such fun to think about that bogus mammoth story again.

Anyway, there are other scientific evidence of these things called Pole Shifts which can be learned about rather easily, if one’s head was not constantly being filled with the latest media BS, not substantiated by any science at all……..like global warming!
So, my point: Mankind is prone to only look at very short periods of time and make decisions based on what GEOLOGICALLY is a mere blink of time. The why for this is that many people are set on the concept that it’s “Miller time” – you know, you only go round once, so go for the gusto! – in other words, they are “one lifers.” So it is easy to make decisions that only entail their life or the future lives of their children and possibly their grandchildren – a couple of hundred years at best. “Grab what you can and go for the gusto” as you only have this one chance. Another big falsehood and really quite silly.
As to something to write about? The next glacial epoch, or better referred to by some as “ice age,” is still thousands of years away from now, not in your lifetime, your children’s, their children’s….etc. Unless we have a pole shift! So is this an extinction event for mankind? NO! How do I know that? Look back at the graph on page 27, I referred you to. See where HOMO SAPIEN begins? About 400,000 years ago! There have been three to four ice ages since then, many more pole shifts and God only knows what else. And, here we are still! So mankind made it! We ADAPTED to whatever was going on and are still here as a species on planet Earth. This was also the message at any briefing I ever gave – if those who were there were actually listening. But I am sure you know how that goes sometimes!

UPDATE: Jarrett expressed disappointment that we didn’t cite the source of the chart he drew from for his environmental data. We’re happy to add it: He was referring to a chart on page 27 of Tony McMichael’s 1993 book Planetary Overload. And we’ll do even better and post the image of that chart itself here:

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Now available: Bonus for our supporters

Episode 4 of the Underground Bunker podcast has been sent out to paid subscribers, and it’s a conversation with Bruce Hines about the mind-warping life in the Sea Org and a new story about Shelly Miscavige we hadn’t heard before. Meanwhile, we’ve made episodes 1 through 3 available to everyone, with Jeffrey Augustine on recent Scientology court cases, Claire Headley exposing Tom Cruise, and Marc Headley on what it must be like for David Miscavige living in Clearwater, Florida. Go here to get the episodes!

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Source Code

“All sorts of disastrous things will occur If you become an expert Dianetic auditor. Then we’re all in trouble because we will start curing everything, you know, and knocking out psychosis and neurosis and doing all those poor doctors out of their jobs. And you don’t want to do any doctors out of their jobs. But I say this in all sincerity, this leads you in to the fact that you can heal, and that is not your profession. You’re trying to clear people, and these processes will heal people, even badly run. They’ll cure migraine headaches and arthritis and lumbosis and medicosis and all kinds of wild illnesses. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that it’s uniform. In other words, you don’t get one for one for one, you see, for the excellent reason that the whole reactive mind is the reason for very severe illnesses. It’s the whole mind. And you can key out parts of it and make somebody quite well, you see. You can key out some very specific illness like that and have it go away but don’t be too surprised if it comes back. So therefore, ‘cure’ is not well used. It’s ill-advised as a word.” — L. Ron Hubbard, July 21, 1966

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Avast, Ye Mateys

WWIII: The 18 July statement of Russia that it would back Arabs against Israel after an apparent squeeze play on Nasser is the first whiff of World War III. Yesterday’s news items of Soviet Rocket tests north of Hawaii is a confirming item. The Soviet has the US will to fight very knocked out internally in the US and is now following up to pressure the Middle East and the Pacific as a strategic action. They have of course misgauged the US reaction and a belligerent response wrongly done can tip over the cold war into a hot one. This is mentioned because it becomes a factor in our operations to be alert, preserve reserves, and beef up UK and EU.” — The Commodore, July 21, 1970

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Overheard in the FreeZone

“He is part LRH-Tech genius in some ways but he has also a lot of Justin Craig the Gangbanger, Ex-Con, and thug still in him. I can grant beingness to all of that, we are all works in progress, and he admits he has not regained all of the wisdom or charisma or writing ability that LRH had. He may be the same being, he may not, but his universe and his personality is not at all the same.”

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Past is Prologue

1997: The declaration of Roxanne Friend was posted for the first time on the net this week. Roxanne later died from a tumor that went undiagnosed during her time on Scientology staff. Some excerpts: “It was my understanding that everything about Scientology could be proven factually in the same manner as a scientist proves a scientific fact. These points are discussed at length in many Scientology publications. The Scientologist is not exposed to the above teachings until long after he/she has been indoctrinated into the group and subjected to mind control. Thus, for me, it became impossible to see the conflict between the scientific pretenses of Scientology and the ‘beliefs.’ I never accepted Scientology as a religion or belief and I continued to consider myself Jewish throughout my association with Scientology. I was also told that Scientology attempted to gain its status as a religion for two purposes–one being to avoid taxation for the organization and its constituents; and two, being to avoid having to come under scrutiny for its practices of Scientology and the far-out nature of the Upper Levels while I was still a member. During my relationship with Scientology, I was referred by Scientology to the Shaw Health Center for regular medical treatment. I was told that all of the doctors at Shaw were practicing Scientologists who used Scientology principles and techniques in their diagnosis and treatment. I was consistently dissuaded by my auditors and case supervisors from obtaining treatment from non-Scientologist physicians. [I]n the spring and summer of 1987 I was given auditing that I didn’t want and was not allowed to leave Flag when I wanted to. I was made to stay there for months to undergo auditing that I did not want and even though I told them I wanted to go back to Los Angeles because my father was visiting from the east, I was not permitted to do so. During this time I went from having mono to having pneumonia and getting very ill. Still, I was made to do auditing and was not allowed to leave. In December 1989 I went back to Florida for the purpose of doing a process called the Purification Rundown but was again forced to do the Introspection Rundown auditing. I left without Case Supervisor approval which was always required prior to leaving the Flag Land Base in Florida. I left in the middle of the night and took a taxi to a hotel near Tampa airport because I did not want to be on Scientology premises or continue the Introspection Rundown. Also, I made phone calls to the Clearwater, Florida or Tampa, Florida police saying that I was being held against my will. The Scientologists had the phone in my room cut off when I did this. In addition to the trauma of the kidnapping and imprisonment, the Scientologists took away my privacy. In December 1989 and January 1990, I was spied upon constantly, 24 hours a day. My phone calls were monitored (when I had a phone in December); my comings and goings were reported on; and, of course, in January when I was completely imprisoned, every aspect of my life was under constant surveillance. After I was released, I was unable to function at all. I could not work, I could not take care of personal business matters. I couldn’t think properly or have any social intercourse what-so-ever. I was so unbalanced by the experience that I was arrested for an assault and ended up under observation at U.S.C. Medical Center.”

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Random Howdy

“He’s found the right balance between non-sequitur sesquipedalian punster and heartfelt commenting.”

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

Criminal prosecutions:

— Danny Masterson charged for raping three women: Trial scheduled for October 11, pretrial conference August 17.
— ‘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: Readiness hearing scheduled for August 22 in Los Angeles
— David Gentile, GPB Capital, fraud: Next pretrial conference set for September 19.
— Yanti Mike Greene, Scientology private eye accused of contempt of court: Found guilty of criminal and civil contempt.

Civil litigation:
— Baxter, Baxter, and Paris v. Scientology, alleging labor trafficking: Complaint filed April 28 in Tampa federal court, Scientology moving to compel arbitration.
— Valerie Haney v. Scientology: Forced to ‘religious arbitration.’ Selection of arbitrators underway. Next court hearing: February 2, 2023.
— Chrissie Bixler et al. v. Scientology and Danny Masterson: Appellate court removes requirement of arbitration on January 19, case remanded back to Superior Court. Stay in place, next status hearing October 25.
— Brian Statler Sr v. City of Inglewood: Third amended complaint filed, trial set for December 6.
— Author Steve Cannane defamation trial: New trial ordered after appeals court overturned prior 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] US Supreme Court: Valerie Haney fires back at Scientology about its ‘religious ritual’
[TWO years ago] We’ve talked to the FBI’ Leah Remini says in first podcast, calling for Scientology raid
[THREE years ago] Evidence that Scientology is adopting an anti-vaxx strategy, and with political aspirations
[FOUR years ago] From Sands Hall’s excellent ‘Flunk. Start.’ — the paradox of ‘Keeping Scientology Working’
[FIVE years ago] As Leah Remini’s second season approaches, more Scientology survivors are opening up
[SIX years ago] Scientology goes shopping for a new top cop in L.A., and a new video from Chris Shelton!
[SEVEN years ago] Scientology’s speechwriter, the word of God, and a Hubbard bio that will never see the light of day
[EIGHT years ago] Surviving Scientology podcast: Former treasury employee Mat Pesch spills the beans
[NINE years ago] Neil Gaiman’s Nephew Fights for Scientology Marriage Rights in the UK
[TEN years ago] Why Do Scientologists Accept the Xenu Story?
[ELEVEN years ago] Scientology’s Top Former Spokesman Talks Spying; The Church’s Hollywood Properties Probed

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Scientology disconnection, a reminder

Bernie Headley (1952-2019) did not see his daughter Stephanie in his final 5,667 days.
Valerie Haney has not seen her mother Lynne in 2,732 days.
Katrina Reyes has not seen her mother Yelena in 3,237 days
Sylvia Wagner DeWall has not seen her brother Randy in 2,787 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his grandson Leo in 1,777 days.
Geoff Levin has not seen his son Collin and daughter Savannah in 1,668 days.
Christie Collbran has not seen her mother Liz King in 4,973 days.
Clarissa Adams has not seen her parents Walter and Irmin Huber in 2,843 days.
Carol Nyburg has not seen her daughter Nancy in 3,617 days.
Doug Kramer has not seen his parents Linda and Norm in 1,948 days.
Jamie Sorrentini Lugli has not seen her father Irving in 4,421 days.
Quailynn McDaniel has not seen her brother Sean in 3,737 days.
Dylan Gill has not seen his father Russell in 12,303 days.
Melissa Paris has not seen her father Jean-Francois in 8,222 days.
Valeska Paris has not seen her brother Raphael in 4,390 days.
Mirriam Francis has not seen her brother Ben in 3,970 days.
Claudio and Renata Lugli have not seen their son Flavio in 4,232 days.
Sara Goldberg has not seen her daughter Ashley in 3,268 days.
Lori Hodgson has not seen her son Jeremy and daughter Jessica in 2,983 days.
Marie Bilheimer has not seen her mother June in 2,508 days.
Julian Wain has not seen his brother Joseph or mother Susan in 863 days.
Charley Updegrove has not seen his son Toby in 2,038 days.
Joe Reaiche has not seen his daughter Alanna Masterson in 6,589 days
Derek Bloch has not seen his father Darren in 3,738 days.
Cindy Plahuta has not seen her daughter Kara in 4,058 days.
Roger Weller has not seen his daughter Alyssa in 8,913 days.
Claire Headley has not seen her mother Gen in 4,032 days.
Ramana Dienes-Browning has not seen her mother Jancis in 2,388 days.
Mike Rinder has not seen his son Benjamin and daughter Taryn in 6,691 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his daughter Spring in 2,797 days.
Skip Young has not seen his daughters Megan and Alexis in 3,195 days.
Mary Kahn has not seen her son Sammy in 3,071 days.
Lois Reisdorf has not seen her son Craig in 2,654 days.
Phil and Willie Jones have not seen their son Mike and daughter Emily in 3,149 days.
Mary Jane Barry has not seen her daughter Samantha in 3,403 days.
Kate Bornstein has not seen her daughter Jessica in 14,512 days.

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Posted by Tony Ortega on July 21, 2022 at 07:00

E-mail tips to tonyo94 AT gmail DOT com or follow us on Twitter. We also post updates at our Facebook author page. After every new story we send out an alert to our e-mail list and our FB page.

Our new book with Paulette Cooper, Battlefield Scientology: Exposing L. Ron Hubbard’s dangerous ‘religion’ is now on sale at Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats. Our book about Paulette, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology tried to destroy Paulette Cooper, is on sale at Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook versions. We’ve posted photographs of Paulette and scenes from her life at a separate location. Reader Sookie put together a complete index. More information can also be found at the book’s dedicated page.

The Best of the Underground Bunker, 1995-2021 Just starting out here? We’ve picked out the most important stories we’ve covered here at the Underground Bunker (2012-2021), The Village Voice (2008-2012), New Times Los Angeles (1999-2002) and the Phoenix New Times (1995-1999)

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

Watch our short videos that explain Scientology’s controversies in three minutes or less…

Check your whale level at our dedicated page for status updates, or join us at the Underground Bunker’s Facebook discussion group for more frivolity.

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

We have your invitation to Scientology’s holiest celebration of the year!

Tony Ortega — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 12:00:09 +0000

Bunker readers! If you were never a member of Scientology but always wondered what it was like to get tracked down and sent invites to the next big church event, we have you covered!

Former church member Ronn Stacy says it’s been five years since he was declared a “suppressive person” by Scientology, but he found that he’s back on the church’s call list.

“Desperate times? I haven’t been on Scientology services since 2009, and I was declared SP in 2012. But I’m back on the invite list apparently,” Ronn tell us.

He shared with us a voice mail he got yesterday, inviting him to one of Scientology’s biggest annual events — L. Ron Hubbard’s birthday, which falls on March 13 but will be celebrated at Clearwater, Florida’s Ruth Eckerd Hall on Saturday, March 11.

“It sounds like she was reading from a script, and probably with a Product Officer standing over her.”

We think it’s a hoot. We put some images from past birthday events to liven it up even further…

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Chris Shelton finishes his deep dive into ‘Scientology’!

Says Chris: “This is the final video in the Deconstructing Scientology series. This has been quite a task covering all the academic apologetics and nonsense these guys have spewed, but I think we’ve learned some pretty interesting things along the way. In this last episode, we examine the opportunism and deceptions the Church of Scientology engaged in so they could appear to be the heroes of 9/11 when in fact they contributed almost nothing to the overall effort. Now that this is done, you’ll be seeing more interviews and what I hope will be a pretty interesting analysis of some GO/OSA policies and then I’ll be starting a new series to take on the core bits of Scientology technology (including that E-meter video I’ve been promising for so long). It’s time that the subject of Scientology itself get the same analysis we just gave to these apologetics. Enjoy!”

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Aaron Smith-Levin goes in depth

Aaron Smith-Levin sent us a link to a podcast he took part in this week. From its description…

“Ex-Scientologist Aaron Smith Levin joins us once again to discuss the latest news regarding Scientology. Aaron begins by discussing his experiences on Leah Remini’s groundbreaking television series Scientology: The Aftermath. Aaron explains what it was like being interviewed and opening up about a dark chapter in his life and the trauma that Scientology brought down on him. Aaron also talks about the response from Scientology against Aaron, which has been in the form of his very own Scientology hate site.”

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Bonus items from our tipsters

Your proprietor took part in the Eddie, Jason and Chris show on Idobi radio this week, thanks to Samantha Scarlette…

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HowdyCon 2017: Denver, June 23-25. Go here to start making your plans.

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Scientology disconnection, a reminder

Bernie Headley has not seen his daughter Stephanie in 4,658 days.
Claudio and Renata Lugli have not seen their son Flavio in 2,255 days.
Sara Goldberg has not seen her daughter Ashley in 1,295 days.
Lori Hodgson has not seen her son Jeremy in 1,007 days.
Marie Bilheimer has not seen her mother June in 474 days.
Joe Reaiche has not seen his daughter Alanna Masterson in 4,592 days
Derek Bloch has not seen his father Darren in 1,762 days.
Cindy Plahuta has not seen her daughter Kara in 2,082 days.
Claire Headley has not seen her mother Gen in 2,057 days.
Ramana Dienes-Browning has not seen her mother Jancis in 413 days.
Mike Rinder has not seen his son Benjamin in 4,715 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his daughter Spring in 822 days.
Skip Young has not seen his daughters Megan and Alexis for 1,224 days.
Mary Kahn has not seen her son Sammy in 1,097 days.
Lois Reisdorf has not seen her son Craig in 678 days.
Phil and Willie Jones have not seen their son Mike in 1,183 days.
Mary Jane Sterne has not seen her daughter Samantha in 1,427 days.
Kate Bornstein has not seen her daughter Jessica in 12,536 days.

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Posted by Tony Ortega on February 9, 2017 at 07:00

E-mail tips and story ideas to tonyo94 AT gmail DOT com or follow us on Twitter. We post behind-the-scenes updates at our Facebook author page. After every new story we send out an alert to our e-mail list and our FB page.

Our book, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology tried to destroy Paulette Cooper, is on sale at Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook versions. We’ve posted photographs of Paulette and scenes from her life at a separate location. Reader Sookie put together a complete index. More information about the book, and our 2015 book tour, can also be found at the book’s dedicated page.

The Best of the Underground Bunker, 1995-2016 Just starting out here? We’ve picked out the most important stories we’ve covered here at the Undergound Bunker (2012-2016), The Village Voice (2008-2012), New Times Los Angeles (1999-2002) and the Phoenix New Times (1995-1999)

Learn about Scientology with our numerous series with experts…

BLOGGING DIANETICS: We read Scientology’s founding text cover to cover with the help of L.A. attorney and former church member Vance Woodward
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

Other links: Shelly Miscavige, ten 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 | Scientology’s Private Dancer | The mystery of the richest Scientologist and his wayward sons | Scientology’s shocking mistreatment of the mentally ill | Scientology boasts about assistance from Google | The Underground Bunker’s Official Theme Song | The Underground Bunker FAQ

L. Ron Hubbard’s daughter — the one he wanted to disappear — surfaces online

Tony Ortega — Mon, 06 Feb 2017 11:00:29 +0000

[L. Ron Hubbard and the daughter he turned his back on, Alexis]

What a surprise we got late last night when longtime friend to the Bunker Laurie “Chocolate Velvet” Harness posted some fascinating photos she had tracked down.

She tells us that just a few weeks ago, the woman in the photos, Alexis Connolly, had posted them on public websites, and Laurie immediately knew how significant they were.

Alexis, of course, is the daughter of L. Ron Hubbard who was born just weeks before her father published the book that changed his life, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health in 1950.

Laurie put together a couple of the photos with one of Hubbard and posted it last night on Facebook…

Hubbard was first married to Margaret “Polly” Grubb in 1933 and they had two children, L. Ron Hubbard Jr. (1934-1991) who was also known as “Nibs” and later in life as “Ron DeWolf,” and Katherine (1936-2010) who was called Katy and Kay, and whose married name was Gillespie.

Hubbard married Sara Northrup (1924-1997) in 1946, a year before his divorce to Polly came through in 1947. It was Sara who was with Hubbard when he wrote and published Dianetics and then experienced huge success in 1950. And it was their split in 1951 — as well as the Dianetics craze fading — that made 1951 probably the worst in his life…

In Alex Gibney’s documentary Going Clear, based on Lawrence Wright’s 2013 book of the same name, Sara and her story play an important part. Here’s a transcript of a key segment, describing Hubbard and his actions regarding his wife and young child. (Sara’s words were from a diary she left behind that was read by an actress for the movie).

Sara: We were surrounded by sycophants. He began to believe that he was a savior and hero, that he really was this god figure. He was absolutely convinced that he had the cure for the psychological ills of mankind, and that the only reason that it wasn’t being propagated far and wide was that the medical profession had a vested interest in keeping people sick. I think he was afraid that some psychiatrists would pop him into an institution. He degenerated into a really paranoid, terrifying person.
Alex Gibney: Sara threatened to leave Hubbard unless he got psychiatric help. He responded by kidnapping their baby and taking her to Cuba.
Lawrence Wright: He was incapable of taking care of her, so he put her in the charge of a mother and daughter who were both mentally retarded. And they apparently kept her in some kind of cage.
Sara: He called me and told me that he had killed her. He said he had cut her into little pieces and dropped the pieces in a river, and it was my fault. Then he’d call me back and say that she was still alive. And this went on and on and on.
Gibney: When Hubbard came back to the U.S., Sara persuaded him to agree to a divorce and give her custody of their daughter.
Sara: When I left him, he cleaned out all the joint bank accounts so that I wouldn’t have any money.

After their split, Ron tried to erase Sara and Alexis from his life. In 1952 he married his third wife, Mary Sue, and they went on to have four children.

Sara and Alexis made a key appearance in our book about Paulette Cooper, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely, and we thought it might be best just to reproduce the entire segment here, which included Paulette’s encounter with Alexis as a college student…

Hubbard met Sara Elizabeth Northrup in 1945, when he’d been demobilized from the Navy following the war. His wanderings in California had taken him to the large, notorious Pasadena
house of rocket scientist Jack Parsons, an amateur occultist who only rented rooms to other eccentrics. Northrup was Parsons’s girlfriend, but soon after Hubbard moved in and joined Parsons in his occult activities, he stole Northrup away. Parsons didn’t seem too put out by it. By that time, Hubbard had separated from his first wife, Margaret “Polly” Grubb, but he was still legally married to her when he proposed to Northrup. They were married in Maryland in 1946.
Northrup reportedly wrote some of Hubbard’s published stories, perhaps helping to explain his prodigious output, and she was with him when, in 1950, he published Dianetics: The Modern
Science of Mental Health, the popular book that sparked a brief craze. (Their daughter Alexis arrived just a few weeks before the book did.) By 1951, however, the craze had subsided, Hubbard was broke, and his marriage was a shambles. Things got so bad, at one point Hubbard absconded with Alexis to Cuba, while Sara went to the press with damning allegations about the state of her husband’s mind. She also accused him of torture.
A few months later, Sara got custody of her daughter when she signed a retraction of her previous statements about Hubbard, and the marriage was legally ended. But then Hubbard began a long campaign to erase any mention of her and to pretend that he’d never married her and even that Alexis wasn’t his daughter.
In 1968, Hubbard gave an interview to the UK television program, World in Action. By then, he’d had four children with his third wife, Mary Sue Whipp. The interview included this exchange:
Hubbard: How many times have I been married? I’ve been married twice. And I’m very happily married just now. I have a lovely wife, and I have four children. My first wife is dead.
Interviewer: What happened to your second wife?
Hubbard: I never had a second wife.
It was a nonsensical answer that made obvious how badly Hubbard wanted to erase from his life his bigamous marriage to Sara Northrup, and his fathering of her child, Alexis. By the time Paulette’s book came out in the spring of 1971, Alexis Hollister was in college. (She had taken the last name of the man Sara had married after Hubbard, Miles Hollister.) While she was researching the book, Paulette had contacted Sara Hollister in Hawaii. They had exchanged some letters. After the book came out, Alexis also reached out to Paulette. She said she wanted to visit Paulette in New York. Paulette was wary, suspecting that it might be a hoax. But she gave Alexis directions for how to find her at 16 E. 80th Street, and the young woman came down from Smith College in Massachusetts.
As Paulette waited for her to show up, she thought about all the forms of identification she was going to ask for. This woman was going to have to do a lot to convince Paulette that she
really was the daughter of L. Ron Hubbard.
And then there was a knock at the door. Paulette opened it, and all of her doubts melted away. It was L. Ron Hubbard’s daughter all right. There was no mistaking it. Alexis was 22, she had the characteristic red hair, and she even had some of his facial features. Paulette was convinced. Alexis explained her reason for wanting to see Paulette, and it made her wince. Alexis wanted to know how Paulette had been convinced that her father had committed bigamy. Because if it were true, Alexis said, it made her a bastard.
Paulette’s heart sank. In the early 1970s, the notion of “illegitimacy” was still a serious social stigma. Paulette didn’t know what to say. “Don’t worry. I’d rather know the truth. I can take it,” Alexis told her.
Paulette showed her the documents which proved that Hubbard had still been married to his first wife, Polly Grubb, when he married Sara Northrup in 1946. Even though the divorce with Polly was final by the next year, 1947, and Alexis wasn’t born until 1950, the fact that her mother’s marriage had been bigamous when it started was enough to convince Alexis that her birth wasn’t legitimate. She thanked Paulette.
Then, on March 20, Sara sent Paulette a lengthy letter from Maui. She said that in the fall – in the months after Paulette’s book came out – a couple of men had come to visit her. “They were very pale – wore cheap black suits, white shirts, dark ties,” Sara wrote. They claimed to be “agents,” but wouldn’t tell her what agency they worked for. They asked her a lot of questions, and then warned her that reporters – or people posing as reporters – would be coming around to ask about Hubbard. They told her not to say anything. When Sara said she wouldn’t answer any of their questions unless they properly identified themselves, the men left, saying they were going to check with “headquarters.” They never returned.
Sara wrote that Alexis had also been approached by Hubbard’s agents, and they had delivered her a note at college that said Sara had been a prostitute, that she’d worked during the war as a Nazi spy, and that Alexis was an illegitimate child. The men who read it to her told her the note was written by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.
But Alexis didn’t buy it. She knew they weren’t FBI agents. She understood who had written the note. “She was both angry and shocked that Ron could do such a thing,” Sara wrote to Paulette.
In June 1951, Sara had signed a retraction of her earlier claims about Hubbard in order to get custody of Alexis and to finalize the divorce. But her 1972 letter to Paulette showed that in
fact, she hadn’t changed her mind at all. And if Sara went public with such thoughts, it could be the nightmare of 1951 all over again for Hubbard.

Alexis today lives on a horse farm, and she’s married and has three grown children. As Paulette discovered back in 1971, Alexis does resemble her father.

Alexis has turned down interview requests in the past. Does her putting photos online indicate that she’s ready to change her mind on that? We’ll try to find out.

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HowdyCon 2017: Denver, June 23-25. Go here to start making your plans.

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Scientology disconnection, a reminder

Bernie Headley has not seen his daughter Stephanie in 4,655 days.
Claudio and Renata Lugli have not seen their son Flavio in 2,252 days.
Sara Goldberg has not seen her daughter Ashley in 1,292 days.
Lori Hodgson has not seen her son Jeremy in 1,004 days.
Marie Bilheimer has not seen her mother June in 471days.
Joe Reaiche has not seen his daughter Alanna Masterson in 4,589 days
Derek Bloch has not seen his father Darren in 1,759 days.
Cindy Plahuta has not seen her daughter Kara in 2,079 days.
Claire Headley has not seen her mother Gen in 2,054 days.
Ramana Dienes-Browning has not seen her mother Jancis in 410 days.
Mike Rinder has not seen his son Benjamin in 4,712 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his daughter Spring in 819 days.
Skip Young has not seen his daughters Megan and Alexis for 1,221 days.
Mary Kahn has not seen her son Sammy in 1,094 days.
Phil and Willie Jones have not seen their son Mike in 1,180 days.
Mary Jane Sterne has not seen her daughter Samantha in 1,424 days.
Kate Bornstein has not seen her daughter Jessica in 12,533 days.

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Posted by Tony Ortega on February 6, 2017 at 06:00

Learn about Scientology with our numerous series with experts…

The odd and slightly troubling thing Elon Musk and L. Ron Hubbard have in common

Tony Ortega — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 12:00:52 +0000

We don’t keep a very watchful eye on Elon Musk and what he’s up to, so forgive us that we missed an interesting little news item about him last year which, once we were made aware of it, sort of knocked us for a loop.

Musk is the PayPal and Tesla Motors and SpaceX inventor, one of the richest people in the world, and he has legions of fans who follow his every move. So it was only natural that a Bloomberg reporter would take the opportunity at a press conference last summer to ask the avid reader what he was digging into recently. Musk gave an interesting answer, saying that he was enjoying an obscure 1929 book named Twelve Against the Gods.

The book was written by a South African journalist named William Bolitho (1891-1930), and it consists of twelve short biographies of people who had battled the gods to greatness, as it were. Long out of print, copies of the book could be found for about $6 at sites like eBay. But once Musk revealed that he was reading it, prices shot up and it quickly became hard to find a copy. Checking yesterday, we couldn’t find a copy at eBay for less than $250.

It made for a fun story that a number of different news organizations covered last summer, marveling that Musk had plucked from obscurity a book that almost no one had heard of.

No one, that is, except for Scientologists.

As soon as we saw the title, we remembered that Jon Atack has mentioned Twelve Against the Gods a couple of times here at the Underground Bunker. So we emailed Jon this week to ask him his thoughts on Elon Musk making a fad out of the book he told us was L. Ron Hubbard’s favorite.

Jon Atack: In February 1983, in written replies to Rocky Mountain News journalist Sue Lindsay, Hubbard said that his favorite non-fiction book was Twelve Against Gods by William Bolitho, adding, “the introduction is particularly good.”

The Bunker: February 1983? By that time Hubbard had been in total seclusion for three years, his whereabouts unknown even to nearly all Scientologists. How did he engage in a newspaper interview if he was in hiding?

Jon: He didn’t. For my book A Piece of Blue Sky I got to know Scientology’s former spokesman Robert Vaughn Young, who actually wrote Hubbard’s answers to the Rocky Mountain News (to prove that Hubbard was still alive). Vaughn told me he made up those answers by relying on a lecture that Hubbard had given on December 5, 1952 as part of the Philadelphia Doctorate Course.

The Bunker: Here’s what Hubbard said in that lecture:

Bolitho, good old Bolitho, with his Twelve Against the Gods. It’s a wonderful thing to read — gorgeous! And the introduction of Twelve Against the Gods is one of the best pieces of work I know of, even related to a lot of things, and particularly to this subject.

Jon: Bolitho’s book was published in 1929, and consists of 12 short biographies. Its central point is that “adventure is the vitaminizing element in histories both individual and social.” Bolitho lauded the adventurer above all others. His twelve chosen adventurers were Alexander, Casanova, Columbus, Mahomet (the Prophet Muhammad), Lola Montez, Cagliostro (and Seraphina), Charles XII of Sweden, Napoleon, Catiline, Napoleon III, Isadora Duncan and, for topical reasons, Woodrow Wilson. Judging by the tone of the book, had Bolitho written a new edition in the 1940s, Hitler would very probably have replaced Wilson. The following quotations are all taken from the “particularly good” introduction, and clearly state Bolitho’s basic thesis…

The adventurer is within us, and he contests for our favor with the social man we are obliged to be … we are obliged, in order to live at all, to make a cage of laws for ourselves and to stand on the perch. We are born as wasteful and unremorseful as tigers; we are obliged to be thrifty, or starve or freeze. We are born to wander, and cursed to stay and dig … all the poets are on one side and all the laws on the other; for laws are made by, and usually for, old men…
The moment one of these truants breaks loose, he has to fight the whole weight of things as they are; the laws and that indefinite smothering aura that surrounds the laws that we call morals; the family, that is the microcosm and whip-lash of society; and the dead weight of all the possessors, across whose interwoven rights the road to freedom lies. If he fails he is a mere criminal…
… the adventurer is an individualist and an egotist, a truant from obligations. His road is solitary; there is no room for company on it.
What he does, he does for himself. His motive may be simple greed.

The Bunker: That does sound like something Hubbard would find inspirational. Valuing the man who has lived as much as a dozen other men, etc.

Jon: However, as Bolitho said, “these are men betrayed by contradiction inside themselves.” With his casual reference to Twelve Against the Gods, Hubbard gave his own betraying contradiction: It is a glaring admission of his deep-seated aspirations. The quoted passages give concise expression to the underlying pattern of Hubbard’s whole life, and to his self-image. Hubbard considered himself an adventurer, a man above morality, who steadfastly followed his goal. It is possible that Hubbard read Bolitho’s book when it was published (he was 18 at the time), and took it as his model. There is powerful evidence to support this thesis. In 1939, at the age of 27, just after his failure to find a publisher for Excalibur, Hubbard wrote to his first wife…

Living is a pretty grim joke, but a joke just the same. The entire function of man is to survive. Not “for what” but just to survive. The outermost limit of endeavor is creative work. Anything less is too close to simple survival until death happens along. So I am engaged in striving to maintain equilibrium sufficient to at last realize survival in a way to astound the gods. Personal immortality is only to be gained through the printed word, barred note or painted canvas or hard grabite [sic]. Foolishly perhaps, but determined none the less, I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it will take a legendary form even if all the books are destroyed. That goal is the real goal as far as I am concerned. Things which stand too consistently in its way make me nervous. It’s a pretty big job. In a hundred years Roosevelt will have been forgotten – which gives some idea of the magnitude of my attempt. And all this boils and froths inside my head and I’m miserable when I am blocked. Let the next man concentrate upon “peace” and “contentment.” When life was struck into me something else accompanied it. And when I leave things in the lap of the gods who seem to be interested in my destiny, boy, things happen!
My fight right now is to get into a spot where I can tide across the gap until the next blaze. Excalibur [“The Book”] may be fought, accepted or forgotten. I don’t care. I seem to be the only one that has attained actual personal contact with it. Others take it mentally and seem to be at a loss to apply it. When I wrote it I gave myself an education which outranks that of anyone else. I don’t know but it might seem that it takes terrific brain work to get the thing assembled and useable in the head. I do know that I could formulate a political platform, for instance, which would encompass the support of the unemployed, the industrialist and the clerk and day laborer all at one and the same time. And enthusiastic support it would be. Things are due for a bust in the next half dozen years. Wait and see…
I seem to have a sort of personal awareness which only begins to come alive when I begin to believe in a destiny. And then a strange force stirs in me and I seem to be completely aloof and wholly invincible. It is the problem of “Who am I?”
Psychiatrists, reaching the high of a dusty desk, tell us that Alexander and Genghis Khan and Napoleon were madmen. I know they were maligning some very intelligent gentlemen. So anybody who dares say that maybe he’s going to cut things up considerably is immediately branded as a [sic] egomaniac or something equally ridiculous so that little men can still save their hides in the face of possible fury. It’s one thing to go nutty and state, “I’m Napoleon, nobody dares touch me,” and quite another to say, “If I watch my step and don’t let anything stop me, I can make Napoleon look like a punk.” That’s the difference … It’s a big joke, this living. God was feeling sardonic the day He created the Universe. So its [sic] rather up to at least one man every few centuries to pop up and come just as close to making Him swallow his laughter as possible.
Anyway, these are the things about which I revolve. I can’t blame it on environment or experience, strangely enough. When I was eight I remember figuring out how long it would take me to achieve these ends, still saying to myself, “Who am I?” And I said it at sixteen and I’m saying it at twenty-six even though the old cards persist in getting stacked against me and people are often like tugs trying to shunt me into a dismally peaceful berth. A few months of cold logic on the subject I struck upon in February have shown me that I didn’t have it all under control. Hence I must needs slow down on my concept, though it broadened in another way which compensates and it has some popularity angles now which it lacked before. I guess I’m thirty percent showman after all because I instinctively dive towards popular huzzahs. And so, quite magnanimously for me, I gave man back his human soul and created a new explanation for creative urge [sic] which the lads will love. Nonetheless, the things are as true as can be.

The Bunker: Hubbard was pretty desperate to live a life that rivaled Bolitho’s dozen.

Jon: Hubbard lusted after fame, wealth and power, and was clearly willing to abandon moral restrictions to accomplish his ends. By his own admission, Hubbard was a showman. He was a natural entertainer, able to captivate some people with his charm. It often took prolonged, close contact for those so charmed to see that he was arrogant, extravagant, eccentric and a liar on a grand scale. Even then many continued to believe in his genius.

Hubbard could be dismissed as a fabulist, a compulsive storyteller, whose exaggerations were harmless. But he was far worse than this. His avarice, coupled with deliberate deceit, became outright fraud. Hubbard plainly made fraudulent claims about himself and his supposed research. He also made fraudulent claims about the money gathered ostensibly to further the publicized aims of Scientology. This was not harmless puffery: It was conscious deceit designed to make him ever more famous, influential and wealthy. The poverty and suffering of those believers who sustained his opulent life-style must also be taken into account.

Although Hubbard single-mindedly pursued his ambition, he may well have believed throughout that he was doing good. Nonetheless, he laid his “road to truth” on a foundation of lies. Hubbard’s long hours and obvious absorption in his work support the view that he believed in the efficacy of his “Technology.” Bolitho’s idea that “the magician must believe in himself, if it is only as long as he is spouting,” falls short of the mark. Martin Gardner, well-known adversary of parapsychology in general and Ron Hubbard in particular, made a germane observation: “Cranks by definition believe their theories, and charlatans do not, but this does not prevent a person from being both crank and charlatan.” Hubbard’s fraudulent claims make a charlatan of him.

The Bunker: Well, OK, Jon. Thanks for that pretty grim explanation of why L. Ron Hubbard found common cause with Bill Bolitho. But what does it say about Musk?

We couldn’t find a story that explained how Musk had stumbled across Twelve Against the Gods. And as far as we know, the South African-born inventor isn’t mixed up with Scientology. Maybe the common country of origin was enough to bring Bolitho to his attention.

As for what Musk sees in the book, we’ll point out that Elon Musk is an adventurer in a way that Hubbard only pretended to be. Hubbard talked a big game — he was a world-class tall-tale teller, there is no doubt — but he was mostly all talk and many of his claims about his adventures turned out to be exaggerations. Musk, on the other hand, really is disrupting the automobile and space industries and heck, we want some of those solar power shingles he was showing off the other day.

If Musk sees himself in the company of Alexander and Napoleon, well, he may actually have a point. He wants to start cities on Mars, and if that’s not battling against the gods, we don’t know what is. But Hubbard in the same list of names? Pshaw! As if.

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Bonus items from our tipsters

Yesterday, we were discussing Scientology’s museum to L. Ron Hubbard and the Sea Org that is part of its Super Power Building in Clearwater, Florida. One of our tipsters found that a Scientologist from Spain recently toured that museum and put up a few photos that help illustrate what we were reading about yesterday.

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HowdyCon 2017: Denver, June 23-25. Go here to start making your plans.

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Posted by Tony Ortega on February 1, 2017 at 07:00

Learn about Scientology with our numerous series with experts…

For 30 grand or so, Scientology will let you into its shrine to L. Ron Hubbard. Here’s a peek.

Tony Ortega — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 12:00:42 +0000

Thanks again to reader Rasha, we have a first look at another entertaining Scientology publication today, in this case Source magazine, the publication of the Flag Land Base in Clearwater, Florida.

Source does its best to entice wealthy Scientologists to “Flag,” where they can progress up Scientology’s “Bridge to Total Freedom,” to some of its most expensive upper-level offerings.

That includes, of course, Scientology’s crown jewel, its “Flag Building” that was opened in 2013 and is more colloquially known as the “Super Power Building.” It takes up a full city block, and Scientology raised something like $200 million to construct it, which took about 20 years. Mike Rinder found documents that spell out what Scientology is charging members to set foot in the place, and he estimated that a typical Super Power experience is going to run a Scientologist about $32,000.

For us, there was one particular treat about the Super Power Building in this edition of Source — it’s our best look yet at the shrine to L. Ron Hubbard that we had first noticed when we published leaked renderings for the building back in early 2012. Those plans called for a museum to Hubbard focusing on his years running Scientology from sea (1967-1975) as the Commodore of his own small private navy.

The centerpiece of it would be his office on the yacht Apollo recreated to exacting detail…

Here’s how Source magazine, issue number 244, describes how the actual shrine itself came out. We thought you’d get a kick out of it.

IMAGINE YOURSELF WALKING through the palatial and perfect Flag Building. You’ve come to this place of learning, wisdom and spiritual freedom to go on services, but also to explore the deep legacy of our religion as only can be experienced in this singular location.
Marveling at the soaring architecture of sweeping staircases and exquisite arches clad in Italian travertine, you discover the Sea Org Museum just off the Grand Atrium. If you feel you have just passed through boundless space and time rendered in thoughtful design, you are now entering a rare and privileged look back into the foundations of Scientology via the implements, instruments and writings of LRH himself.

Dedicated to Flag’s seaborne heritage, the Sea Org Museum is a repository of living history — a testament to the fact that it was aboard the Apollo that LRH originally established the Flag Service Organization. Ultimately, as the religion grew and demand exceeded the ship’s capacity, LRH moved Flag ashore in 1975 and established the Flag Land Base. But this is as close as you can possibly get to being where it all started.

Notably, as you enter, some of the first items you encounter are instruments of navigation that are on display. How fitting, considering that what Ron gave the world were the tools and guidance needed to chart a course through the travails and traps of life to successfully progress to the state of complete liberation.
As you continue further into the museum, your senses heighten as you fully realize what you are experiencing is a treasure trove of the largest collection of artifacts ever assembled from the Flagship of the flotilla. Here is where you can view firsthand everything from LRH’s handwritten issues and manuscripts including copies of HCO Policy Letters, HCO Bulletins and Flag Orders, to the actual uniform he wore during the Apollo‘s christening.
The artifacts are many — some 60 in all — and together, they emanate Ron’s presence in a way that is palpable. Here is the Apollo‘s original radar, the ship’s phone, the Commodore’s wind velocity meter and weather station. Further along, the buffed-to-a-brassy-sparkle ship’s bell. A center island showcases additional artifacts including information on Sea Org Mission Technology, weather prediction, The Four Unprofitable Courses and a fittingly nautical display of ship’s knots.

A list of visitor favorites would also have to include beautifully rendered handcrafted models of the ships Athena, Diana, Apollo and Freewinds.
Then there is the transporting moment you encounter a detailed re-creation of the ship’s promenade deck, complete with a life-size image of Ron and a crew member making the rounds, giving the impression you are there with the Commodore himself.
Additionally, six museum panels cover various eras aboard the ship while two flat screens display multiple videos featuring LRH excerpts normally reserved only for Sea Org members. Throughout, the exquisite displays are presented in a setting that echoes a ship below decks, with curved beams and polished wood finishes enhancing the feeling of discovery.
But perhaps the most moving and memorable feature here is the Office of the Commodore, LRH’s command central and research room. The site of countless technical and administrative breakthroughs, the timeless tableau stands exactly as it did when LRH walked the bridge of the Apollo. Indeed, it is the absolute centerpiece of the museum. From his original Mark V E-meter with its hand-carved case, to the mantel with its model of the Cutty Sark, the office is perfect and authentic to the last detail — as will be your experience here in this museum, a voyage through time, space and Scientology that will remain with you for eternity.

One additional note, about that “recreation of the ship’s promenade deck,” which includes the life-size image of Hubbard and a replica lifeboat. Here’s how it looked in the computer rendering we published in 2012…

Look closely and you’ll notice that there’s a small girl following behind the Commodore…

Another photo of the scene which showed up in another Scientology publication gives us a better view of her…

And a closer look at that image revealed that the little girl appeared to have a black eye…

The girl herself, Julie Blundell, showed up at the WWP forum to confirm that she was one of the “Commodore’s Messengers,” young girls who lived on the ship and whose job it was to shadow Hubbard and run to and fro delivering his communications. She explained that she was between 8 and 11 years old in the photo, and that an accident with a wayward pulley had given her the shiner.

Julie was later erased when the photo was used in the “RON” encyclopedia…

And if you look carefully at the image of the actual museum that is shown in this issue of Source, you can see that when they built the replica of the Apollo’s deck, they went with the image in which Julie had been photoshopped out.

Because, after all, why would you want to remind wealthy Scientologists paying so much money that the place operates in part on the indentured servitude of children working long hours for little or no pay?

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Leah Remini sits down with Joe Rogan

In case you missed it yesterday, here’s video of Leah Remini’s entertaining talk with Joe Rogan on his popular podcast. Even if you’re familiar with her book and her A&E series, Scientology and the Aftermath, we think you’ll learn a few things from this recording.

For example, unless it was in her book and we just don’t remember it, we think this was the first time we’ve heard Leah say that during her 3-month interrogation at the Flag Land Base following the Cruise-Holmes wedding debacle, one of the things they asked her about was whether she had any “sexual intentions towards Tom Cruise.” Well, that sounds like Scientology. Anyway, it’s a lively interview and Leah is more and more sure of herself and her mission, as you’ll see.

And yesterday we had another fun time with Jillian Barberie and John Phillips of KABC radio in Los Angeles. The Scientology starts up at about the 22:30 mark…

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HowdyCon 2017: Denver, June 23-25. Go here to start making your plans.

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Posted by Tony Ortega on January 31, 2017 at 07:00

Learn about Scientology with our numerous series with experts…

What Scientology can tell us about a 20th of January like no other

Tony Ortega — Fri, 20 Jan 2017 12:00:02 +0000

L. Ron Hubbard warned us that he was a garden-variety crackpot right from the start. Go ahead, take a look at the very first words in Hubbard’s 1950 manifesto, Dianetics. Here’s what it says:

“The creation of dianetics is a milestone for Man comparable to his discovery of fire and superior to his inventions of the wheel and arch.”

How that didn’t prevent anyone from taking the rest of this book seriously is truly a mystery.

A penny-a-word pulp fiction hack hanging out in New Jersey with the woman he’d stolen away from an occult-obsessed rocket scientist friend in Pasadena (he ripped off the friend and bigamously married the gal), Hubbard had spent a few months jotting down a preposterous set of ideas, turning his well-documented and prodigious hypnotism skills into a parlor trick aimed at convincing rubes that they could recall what it had been like to get battered and bruised while they were fetuses in their mother’s wombs.

And Hubbard told them that his insight was as great a discovery as fire itself.

He knew the only way to pull off a shakedown like this was at full speed and without concerns for such concepts as “evidence” or “truth.” The bigger the claim, the bolder you have to tell it, and there were few bullshit artists like Ron — just ask any of his close friends (or read the letters they left behind).

Hubbard’s “charisma” is usually cited by reporters and academics that we swear must never have actually listened to a Hubbard lecture. That anyone didn’t see this swindler coming a mile away is one of the great enigmas of the 20th century. Because, and here’s the real mystery, so many people did take this guy seriously.

He lied to them. He denigrated them to their faces. He made it so obvious that he was knowingly ripping them off he literally told them that he was selling them a bridge. The Bridge to Total Freedom.

It’s simply incredible, if you stop to think about it.

But here’s the most amazing part. So many people in so many different places didn’t care about all of those obvious signs, but saw in L. Ron Hubbard what they wanted to see — mankind’s greatest friend, a genius scientist who had cracked the code to existence itself, even a messiah.

In some ways, Hubbard was a perfect crackpot prophet for America. He tapped into the deep mistrust many people in this country have for authority figures. And Hubbard thrashed them all — the medical establishment, the academics and their ivory towers, government officials at all levels and, most of all, the psychiatric profession.

Hubbard told you that your crummy life was the result of the crap your parents had done to you as a kid, to the bullshit your doctor was telling you about your condition, to the secret world government run by a tiny group of shadowy figures. You were being held down, and only Hubbard had unlocked the secret to making you the superman or superwoman that you had always known you could be. With his expensive therapy, he could make you great again.

And so you accepted his bullshit. And that’s when he had you. You became invested in it, rabid about it, and the more people told you that you were wrong and that Hubbard was a huckster, the more that the detested press attacked Hubbard and his ideas, the more it made you buy in even deeper.

And it was important that you did. Because Hubbard was a man consumed with a need for revenge. He saw enemies everywhere, but none enraged him like followers who turned their backs on him.

The result was a vicious organization, steeped in Hubbard’s paranoia, that prided itself on appealing only to the “able” and openly hating the less fortunate. It was a deeply homophobic organization, nearly all white, that saw in your hardships sure signs of your weakness.

Thankfully, L. Ron Hubbard and his toxic ideas only ever appealed to a small percentage of the public. Although he had unusual influence over his followers, he spent most of his later years on the run, hiding from process servers and government investigators. He died on January 24, 1986 in a remote California ranch with only a few trusted lieutenants around him. He hadn’t seen his own wife and children in more than six years.

Enough people recognized Hubbard for what he was that he never got near what he actually wanted — real political power over millions of lives. In 1966, he went to Rhodesia with the thought that he could actually charm his way into taking it over, but was summarily kicked out only a few months later.

What if Hubbard had taken over a country? What if someone like Hubbard, with no regard for facts, someone with only the barest grasp of the fields he claimed to be expert in — what if someone like that not only was given the seat of power in a small country somewhere, but was actually handed the most powerful political position on the planet?

What if?

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New Zealand, David Miscavige is in you

As this story goes live at 7 am Eastern time here in New York, it will be 1 am on Saturday in Auckland, New Zealand. And that means we’re only about 13 hours away from Scientology leader David Miscavige’s big appearance for the grand opening of an “Ideal Org” in that fair city.

For our newer readers, we’ll provide a little context. Beginning around 2002 or 2003, Miscavige was faced with having to replace Scientology churches — called “orgs” — in three cities for various reasons: in Buffalo, New York; Johannesburg, South Africa; and Tampa, Florida. According to former Scientology spokesman Mike Rinder, Miscavige was also thinking about something he’d been told by Tom Cruise, who had been embarrassed to bring a friend to the Tampa facility because it was such a shithole. So Miscavige announced the “Ideal Org” program, and over the last fourteen years he’s been on a manic buying spree, purchasing historic buildings around the world and renovating them to replace more mundane orgs.

But New Zealand is special and here’s why. The Ideal Org program has mostly been about insanely intense fundraising. In places like Portland, Oregon and Phoenix, Arizona, the local Scientologists were pressured for years to raise the money to buy a building and renovate it. It was all on the locals to make an Ideal Org happen, and for years Miscavige pitted the people of one city against another as they tried to find the cash for these expensive projects.

And so when it was announced several years ago that Auckland was getting an Ideal Org, Miscavige didn’t even try to pretend that the locals could pay for it. We remember seeing that announcement, and that the Auckland org would be paid for by the IAS itself (the International Association of Scientologists is a massive membership fund at Miscavige’s disposal; former executives tell us it has more than a billion in ready cash).

Why the largesse? Because New Zealand Scientologists are rarer than Hobbit holes in that country. But how could an entire English-language country not have an Ideal Org? You see Miscavige’s dilemma.

So, later today, we hope to begin getting reports from our correspondents on the scene as Miscavige deigns to appear and bestow on New Zealand the Ideal Org he was so generous as to pay for himself. Or rather, with the money of the whales who donate to the IAS.

We should begin hearing something after around 7pm here in New York, and please, if you’re on the scene, be polite and orderly.

Here’s an update from our man on the scene: “Despite the mocked up image of the ribbon on the front of the building, it appears the ceremony is going to be held in an internal courtyard. People are gathering and I saw some media complaining about being followed.”

“People are filing through the gateway into the internal courtyard, through heavy security.”

I’m sitting in a park opposite the gateway unto the courtyard. Approached by a couple of Scientologists who were friendly enough, asking if I was a public and coming in.

“Local security, as is typical Islander chaps (Auckland has the largest population of Pacific Islanders of any city in the world) are kicking back now and invited me to have a sandwich. Top blokes.”

“Ceremony started with a blare of trumpets and now I can hear a haka being performed inside. Haka are a traditional Maori challenge, typically performed at formal ceremonies. Haka are deeply meaningful to all Kiwis, despite ethnicity.”

“The woman in the red dress is some sort of handler, she’s the one I saw media complaint to earlier for following them. The chap in the black shirt wearing a wig and a gopro camera on his head tried to sneak into the event as is now being hassled along the street by the woman in red and two cameramen. I have heard several dozen scientologists speak so far, invariably with Australian accents. As far as I can determine there are no Kiwi scientologists in attendance.”

——————–

June will be here before you know it

HowdyCon 2017: Denver, June 23-25. Go here to start making your plans.

[Thank you, Observer.]

——————–

Posted by Tony Ortega on January 20, 2017 at 07:00

Learn about Scientology with our numerous series with experts…

Behold, it’s Scientology Jesus as you’ve never seen him before!

Tony Ortega — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 12:00:01 +0000

[Recognize your lord and savior?]

It’s one of the questions we’ve been getting the most in recent weeks as A&E’s hit series Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath has brought around a lot of curious new folks here and at Twitter. Is it true, they ask us, what Scientologists say — that you can join the Church of Scientology and still remain a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Jew?

Former Scientology spokesman and Leah’s co-star, Mike Rinder, gave the best answer to that question we’ve ever seen over at his website a couple of weeks ago, and if you haven’t seen it yet, you really should.

Rinder starts out by making it clear that there is only one correct answer to this question:

Scientologists, Celebrities and PR spokespeople dish up this line routinely to make themselves sound benign and unthreatening. They talk about “respecting the religious beliefs of others” (as long as they are not former Scientologists) and other pablum that sounds sort of “religious” and makes them seem more “acceptable”…
This is a lie.

He then goes through L. Ron Hubbard’s writings in a meticulous way to firmly establish the case that all Scientologists, after they have been in the organization a certain amount of time, will be asked to drop what are referred to as “other practices.”

“This indoctrination that Scientology is the ONLY path to spiritual freedom continues to be reinforced as you progress in Scientology,” Rinder writes. And then he really sinks in the knife: Hubbard explained — scrawled in his own handwriting, no less — that Earth’s modern religions were merely “implants” forced on thetans some 75 million years ago, and are carried around as mental image pictures by people today.

In other words, it’s not just that Scientology doesn’t “believe” in Christianity or other religions, it actively denigrates them. L. Ron Hubbard told his followers that Christ and other Earth prophets were fakes foisted on humankind by a sadistic galactic overlord.

We’ve tried to explain this to people for a long time — that Scientology teaches its members that they are superior to other people and their stupid fake religions — but Rinder really knocked it out of the park with his December 31 blog post.

The reason we’re bringing it up today is that we scored a really great photo that helps make this point. You see, when we think about the way Scientology talks about other religions, we tend to recall a remarkable image that first came to our attention more than seven years ago thanks to our Kansas City pal, now Village Voice film editor Alan Scherstuhl. (Yes, the old friend we mentioned just a few days ago who writes the “Studies in Crap” column.)

Alan had found a copy of the 1994 Scientology Handbook, which includes a stunning double-truck photo-illustration helping to put in perspective how Scientology conceives of itself in relation to the world’s ancient faiths.

The photo features various religious figures from the past, but standing over them, as if he were the end result of the evolution of faith on Earth, is the Scientology auditor.

“The implication: all of religious history has been building to this schmoe measuring your thetans,” Alan observed. “What truly startles, though, is the inclusion of Mohammed just to the left of that bored looking Bed-Sheet Jesus. Yes, only the prophet’s eyes and hands are visible, but that’s not likely to comfort followers of the Hadith rules that strictly forbid any such depiction. Remember those Danish cartoons a couple years back?”

Alan then provides a close-up of Mohammed and “Bed-Sheet Jesus”…

“When it comes to offending all faiths with garish Photoshoppery, the Scientologists hit for the cycle,” Alan quipped.

But here’s a fun piece of trivia about that photo that some of our oldtimers probably know. It turns out that Bed-Sheet Jesus was none other than an old friend of the Underground Bunker and a featured guest on Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath.

It’s Marc Headley!

“See my ankles? They felt like they were about to crack,” he says, remembering the grueling day when he and the other Int Base workers put on costumes, got into some red hatchbacks, and drove up into the San Bernardino mountains for the location shoot. What they were told to do, he says, was re-create a similar image that had been a part of a previous book, the 1977 Scientology Volunteer Minister’s handbook, which had been directed by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard himself…

“They shot it on one of the islands, Corfu or something. And Hubbard said exactly how he wanted it. So we had to do the same thing for the new handbook,” Marc says. (Actually it was Curaçao in 1975, one of our readers learned.)

Besides having to ride up the mountain in costume and then dealing with uncertain footing on the rocks, Marc says there was another reason the shot was difficult to get right.

“Confucius had gas,” he says, referring to Gary Lew — who went by the code name “Luigi” — dressed as Confucius, who was standing next to him. “He was farting full time, and everyone behind him was laughing and giggling while we were trying to get the shot.” (The models: Mohammed/Casavius Tabayoyon, Jesus/Marc Headley, Confucius/Gary Lew, Buddha/Hiro Kimoto, Lao-tse/Terrence Une, Zoroaster/Robert Barry, Moses/Carrol Alexander, Abraham/Bill Price, Zeus?/John Gonzalves)

All of the figures of world religion were taken up the mountain to pose, except for one — the Scientologist. “He was added later,” Marc says, “because they wanted the light just right on him.”

In that original image for the 1994 handbook, the Scientology auditor is actually a Sea Org worker named Uwe Stuckenbrock. His story is one of the saddest cases of a Sea Org worker being confined to the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF), the Sea Org’s prison detail. He was in the RPF for years while he was suffering from MS, and then he died. Amelia McDonnell-Parry lays out the basics of Uwe’s story in a piece at The Frisky (second item).

After Uwe died in 2007, the church decided to replace him in the photo — and there was a problem with Jesus, too. Marc and his wife Claire Headley had escaped from Int Base in 2005, as viewers learned on Leah Remini’s show. So here is the new shot with the replacement Scientologist (Kenny Seybold) and a new Jesus, that Marc thinks was just a photoshop manipulation of his previous image. The sky, meanwhile, has changed from blue to orange. But otherwise it’s the same shot.

We asked Marc if he was aware, when they were making the photo, that including Mohammed was a controversial move. “At the time, I was oblivious to who all these guys were supposed to be. I mean, I know Jesus,” he says with a laugh.

Even if Marc didn’t have a background in comparative religion, he says the point of the photo was crystal clear.

“This is a visual representation of how they see themselves compared to all other religious people. They think the average Scientologist is higher and smarter than all of those other people,” he says.

And now, a delightful reminder of that memorable photo has suddenly showed up. Mark found a photo of himself that had been put into a book the church had returned to him and Claire. He doesn’t think the church realized that it was in there.

“It’s me after we got back from the shoot. I took off the wig, but I kept the beard on for a while,” he says.

We think it’s a great shot. Scientology Jesus, who had to escape Int Base in 2005 on a motorcycle and got run off the road.

Marc and Claire told their harrowing escape story to Leah Remini in episode 5 (“Golden Era,” which first aired Dec. 27), and Claire got to tell a national television audience about having to go through a forced abortion. (She actually had to go through two of them while she was in the Sea Org.)

As a result, Scientology predictably posted a video calling the Headleys “losers” because a lawsuit they filed against the church failed, and also calling Marc a thief for selling Gold Base equipment on eBay — something he was authorized to do, he says.

“If I was such a criminal, then why did they dress me up as Jesus and put me up on top of a mountain?” he asks.

Well, he’s got a hell of a point there.

——————–

June will be here before you know it

HowdyCon 2017: Denver, June 23-25. Go here to start making your plans.

[Thank you, Observer.]

——————–

Posted by Tony Ortega on January 17, 2017 at 07:00

Learn about Scientology with our numerous series with experts…

The most incredible lie Scientology attorney Monique Yingling told ABC ’20/20′

Tony Ortega — Sat, 14 Jan 2017 12:00:33 +0000

Jeffrey Augustine is back with another investigation of Scientology’s essential concepts…

Following the sudden departure of Tommy Davis as the Church of Scientology’s spokesman in 2011, the organization no longer has an actual Scientologist to represent it on television or in documentaries. Seemingly by default, Scientology leader David Miscavige’s attorney Monique Yingling — a non-Scientologist – has found herself cast in the unlikely role as the international spokeswoman for the church.

During ABC 20/20’s recent episode, “Scientology: A War Without Guns,” Yingling appeared to speak on behalf of Miscavige at the last minute. Like her previous appearance in April in an episode about Ron Miscavige’s book Ruthless, Yingling was given a lot of airtime to present the church’s side of things. And this time, at one point ABC’s Dan Harris asked her a very straightforward question, and her reply was stunning:

Harris: Scientology has described psychiatry as an “industry of death.” Why is that?

Yingling: Well, I think that’s a catchphrase. But what Scientology has worked hard against are abusive practices of psychiatry. Not psychiatry in general.

Harris: You say, “not psychiatry in general,” but an “industry of death” sounds pretty general.

Yingling: Well because unfortunately there have been a lot of abuses, and psychiatry has caused a lot of deaths.

Right there on national television, this was a pretty spectacular lie.

If you know much about Scientology at all, you know that founder L. Ron Hubbard considered all of psychiatry an abomination that has plagued mankind for trillions — yes trillions of years. Hubbard even claimed that the “evil psychs” were a special race, traceable to the planet “Farsec.” The goal of the psychs, according to Hubbard, is to implant, enslave, and kill humans.

From 1950 until his death in 1986, Hubbard created, expanded, and sustained Scientology’s attack upon psychiatry that continues to this day.

As part of Hubbard’s efforts to expose psychiatry, Scientology created the Citizens Commission on Human Rights in 1969 as a “mental health industry watchdog whose mission is to eradicate abuses committed under the guise of mental health.” But what does CCHR actually do? One thing CCHR does is work to get psychiatrists arrested, tried, and imprisoned for abuses.

CCHR’s Psychiatric Crime Database, yet another typically exaggerated and bizarre Scientology PR effort, puts the lie to Monique Yingling’s claims that “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death” is merely a catchphrase:

CCHR also markets and sells the book “Psychiatrists – the Men Behind Hitler” on its website. This tawdry book blames psychiatry for the Holocaust:

In 2005, CCHR opened its “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death Museum” in Hollywood. This was the same year Tom Cruise launched into his hostile attack against psychiatry and psychiatric drugs during his interview with Matt Lauer. And then at the 2007 New Year’s event at the Shrine auditorium in Los Angeles, David Miscavige infamously used animated exploding hand grenades to call for the global obliteration of Psychiatry:

I was in the audience that night and was appalled to see the way in which the gathered Scientologists jumped to their feet to scream wildly and applaud Miscavige’s violent call for the global obliteration of Psychiatry and the mass arrest and imprisonment of psychiatrists. Miscavige further bragged at this event that CCHR had a “smart bomb” that “sniffs out Psych fuel lines and blows the funding mechanism. And in that way, to put it bluntly, we booby-trapped the whole psychiatric ecosystem.”

David Miscavige’s violent 2007 rant against psychiatry was nothing new. In October 1995, Miscavige promised Scientologists that psychiatry would be destroyed in five years:

“There are a lot of opinions out there as to what is wrong with Earth, 1995. But if you really want to eliminate those problems all you have to do is work for the objectives that we, as members of the IAS, have set for the year 2000: Objective One – place Scientology at the absolute forefront of Society. Objective Two – eliminate psychiatry in all its forms. Let’s get rid of psychiatry, and let’s bring Scientology to every man, woman and child on this planet.”

Finally, and here we arrive at the crux of the matter, L. Ron Hubbard was infuriated that psychiatry had obtained what he thought was a fraudulent monopoly on mental health treatment. To Hubbard’s way of thinking, psychiatry was rigged because it required an eight-year medical degree plus a four-year psychiatric residency to become a psychiatrist. This conspiracy to require medical degrees and residencies effectively locked Hubbard and his e-meter out of the tens of billions dollars per year in government funding spent on mental health treatment.

Hubbard wanted that money. He wanted Scientology to have an exclusive global monopoly on mental health treatment and the billions of government dollars pouring into psychiatric and mental health programs. As Hubbard wrote in his confidential 1969 memo Intelligence Actions:

Our war has been forced to become to take over absolutely the field of mental healing on this planet in all forms… Our total victory will come when we run his (the enemy’s) organization, perform his functions and obtain his financing and appropriations.

Monique Yingling was prevaricating when she told Dan Harris that “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death” was a catchphrase. Yingling knows that, per its own policies, Scientology will not accept anyone as a member who has been suicidal or has been treated with psychiatric drugs. In a paradoxical coda to this article, we note that these two prohibitions disqualify L. Ron Hubbard from Scientology.

In 1947, L. Ron Hubbard wrote to the US Veterans Administration complaining of suicidal ideations and moroseness, or what we would today call depression. Hubbard asked the Veterans Administration to provide him with psychiatric treatment.

And at the end of his life, in January 1986, L. Ron Hubbard suffered a stroke and was treated with the psychiatric tranquilizer Vistaril.

Hubbard’s intense hatred of psychiatry was most curiously book-ended between his request for psychiatric help in 1947 and his use of a doctor-prescribed psychiatric tranquilizer at the end of his life. I wonder how Monique Yingling would spin that?

— Jeffrey Augustine

——————–

June will be here before you know it

HowdyCon 2017: Denver, June 23-25. Go here to start making your plans.

[Thank you, Observer.]

——————–

Posted by Tony Ortega on January 14, 2017 at 07:00

Learn about Scientology with our numerous series with experts…

The Scientology-Nation of Islam Alliance: Sideshow or Armageddon?

Tony Ortega — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 11:00:23 +0000

Still one of our favorite photos: Louis Farrakhan at the Scientology Celebrity Centre in Hollywood for a gala several years ago, with Scientology’s Alfreddie Johnson and former X-Factor contestant Stacy Francis

For several years now some of us in the press have been bringing up the strange relationship that has grown up between Scientology and the Nation of Islam. Most recently, Eliza Gray did a wonderful job looking at Louis Farrakhan’s embrace of L. Ron Hubbard in The New Republic.

It’s been fascinating to watch Farrakhan explain in videotaped lectures how he’s managed to fall under the spell of the whitest man who ever lived. And it’s true that he’s asked many of his followers to get trained in Dianetics and to get training as auditors. But on this Saturday, we’d like to open up the blog for discussion of a question we have about this strange relationship between such unusual groups.

For whatever reason, Farrakhan has decided to embrace the ideas in Hubbard’s books, and to make sure a large number of his followers get trained in order to benefit the Nation of Islam. But we wonder, is there really all that much cross-pollination going on in the other direction? What we mean is, are these NOI members actually becoming active members of the Church of Scientology and gaining positions of authority in it under David Miscavige?

Tell us what you think: is the Nation of Islam embrace of L. Ron Hubbard just a weird sideshow, or is Miscavige really allowing Scientology to tie its destiny to Farrakhan?

L. Ron Hubbard Explains Your Life “Before Earth”

Tony Ortega — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 12:03:00 +0000

We have a treat for you today from a new copy of Advance! magazine. Yes, the same magazine whose issues from the 1970s we’ve been mining for their excellent “OT Phenomena” testimonials. We’re happy to say that Advance! is still ticking along in 2012, and virtually in the exact format as it was 30 to 40 years ago, bringing exciting news about the OT life for upper-level Scientologists.

As in the past, Advance! issue 213 features a fascinating piece by L. Ron Hubbard himself — an excerpt from a 1952 lecture — and we found it quite illuminating. We thought we’d summarize it for you, and provide a few direct quotes (under the “fair use” doctrine) to give you its flavor.

Now, before we do that, we want to first deal with the heartburn that our independent Scientologist readers are probably already feeling.

Here at the Underground Bunker, we have a lot of respect for the longtime Scientologists who are declaring themselves independent of David Miscavige’s corporate church as a matter of conscience. We think it takes a lot of guts not only to walk away from an organization that might have been their home for decades, but also to speak out publicly when we all know what that can mean in the way of retaliation from a bullying crew that hides behind religious cloaking.

And no matter how much the Anonymous folks give us hell for it, we’re still convinced that the indie movement is an admirable group that has no desire to replicate the Church of Scientology’s abusive practices: the Sea Org, disconnection, fair game, sec checking, regging, and the rest.

What independent Scientologists and official church members do have in common, however, is an abiding admiration for L. Ron Hubbard. And that’s fine with us. However, we can never understand why they are so sensitive about the rest of us actually looking at what the man said and wrote about science, human beings, and history.

This is Hubbard. This is Scientology, official or unofficial. And we’re going to take a look.

Now, for the most part, Hubbard’s fascinating tale of Incident Two as told in OT 3 tends to get most of the attention. But that was written in about 1966 or 1967 when Hubbard was on the ship Apollo.

This 1952 lecture, however, shows that virtually from the beginning, Scientologists were being told about their quadrillion-year history as non-human, non-Earth beings.

Here’s how the excerpt of the March 10, 1952 speech begins:

You sit here on Earth today, not as a race of people who go back down an evolutionary track on Earth, but as an evolutionary race or a race which goes back into the depths of the galaxy.

Hubbard then explains that you should not confuse the two separate origins that produced you and your body. Your current body comes from a “protoplasm line,” but you are from a “theta line.” And that’s what separates you from the animals that evolved here on Earth.

You really don’t have anything in common with a tiger or a jackal or even the monkeys in the zoo.

(Even today, about half of Americans resist the idea that humans and other primates shared a common ancestor, so this probably went over even more easily in 1952.)

Hubbard then explains that your theta line has been inhabiting your Earth protoplasm line only for the last ten or twenty thousand years. Before that, your theta line was inhabiting one protoplasm line and then another, jumping from one place to another.

And here on Earth you arrive as a theta-I line and dub in on the Earth theta line and the protoplasm line on Earth, which was already continuing.

But where did all this begin? Hubbard is now going to take us to “O”, or origin.

This origin, at some unimaginable length of time in the past, certainly in terms of millions of years, perhaps in terms of hundreds of millions of years, perhaps in terms of thousands of millions of years (which would be billions) and perhaps even in terms of other-universe years, as distinct from this universe and its planets — way back here at origin, you get the first separation from theta. And that actually would be Incident One. Now, there are many other incidents follow that.

It’s interesting to see that Hubbard isn’t certain whether the origin of theta happened a few million or a few quadrillion years ago. That’s sort of like a coroner saying he isn’t sure whether a murder victim died on Monday or before the Second Punic War. But we digress.

Back to Hubbard’s story, which really begins to get interesting. After Incident One, there’s something called Heavy Facsimile One, which involves an “incoming race.”

The race to which we are native — the theta line to which we are native — was actually highly mystic. It was capable of a lot of things — telepathy, teleportation, odds and ends, stuff — and concentrated rather heavily in that. This invader race came in with a lot of electronics and said, “Boys, all you’ve got to do is take this little jim-dandy whizzer and, you know, you will be twice as ‘thetesque’ as before.”

This invader force, apparently millions of years ago, then imprisoned the rest of us using a device that “went around your head and across the top of your head and under your chin.” The device was aimed at our pineal glands, and it sapped our mystic powers.

That made us useless, apparently, so yet another race decided to discard us on a prison planet — which happens to be the Earth.

I don’t know too much about the modus operandi that worked at that time, but they evidently had it in mind. It contains, by the way, sort of being put in an ice cube state. It’s quite nice. And by the way, the early Christian hell was painted up as a hot hell and a cold hell. And you see the early Christian paintings have guys up to — ice cube up to the neck. Now, that’s two hundred — about two hundred A.D., you find them doing this.

To sum up, Hubbard reminds his audience that there’s Incident One (way, way back), Heavy Facsimile One (a few million years ago), and then getting kicked to the Earth (10 or 20 thousand years ago). “And the Earth is hell and you’re here, I guess, until you get reformed.”

And he reminds us that there’s another race out beyond space which doesn’t think much of us.

And here’s Hubbard’s very interesting final line from this excerpt:

I’m sorry if it stretches your credulity. I do hope, however, that it doesn’t stretch it to the point where you won’t operate on it.

Incredulity? Wherever could he get such a notion?

Well, this is good stuff and we’re glad we could share it with you today. We’ll now turn things over to our excellent commenting community for analysis.