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Here are the some more detail from L.Ron Hubbard.
Military career
Main article: Military career of L. Ron Hubbard
In 1941, Hubbard entered the navy and served a public relations role.[47] He was able to skip the initial officer rank of Ensign and was commissioned a Lieutenant, Junior Grade for service in the Office of Naval Intelligence.[48] He was unsuccessful there, and after some difficulty with other assignments found himself in charge of a 173-foot (53 m) submarine chaser.[49]In May 1943, while taking the USS PC-815 on her shakedown cruise to San Diego, Hubbard attacked what he believed to be two enemy submarines, ten miles (16 km) off the coast of Oregon. The battle took two days and involved at least four other US vessels plus two blimps, summoned for reinforcements and resupply.[50] Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, Commander Northwest Sea Frontier concluded after reviewing trip data and other captains' accounts that there were no submarines in the area at the time.[50] Hubbard and Tom Moulton, one of the ship's officers, subsequently claimed that the authorities' denials of any Japanese submarine presence off the Pacific coast had been motivated by a desire to avoid panic among the U.S. population.[51]
In June 1943, Hubbard was relieved of command after anchoring PC-815 off the Coronado Islands, which is Mexican territory. There, he conducted unauthorised gunnery practice. An official complaint from Mexican authorities, coupled with his failure to return to base as ordered, led to a Board of Investigation. It was determined that Hubbard had disregarded orders, and he was given the punishment of a formal warning and was transferred to other duties. Since this was the third leadership position Hubbard had lost during his tenure, he was not given command authority on his next assignment.[52] It was later reported that Hubbard had been relieved of command twice, and was the subject of negative reports from his superiors on several occasions.[53][54] However, he also won some praise, being described as a "capable and energetic" officer, "if temperamental", an "above-average navigator", and as possessing "excellent personal and military character".[51]
In 1947, Hubbard wrote to the Veterans Administration requesting psychiatric help.[55]
Early writings and Dianetics
Hubbard wrote many stories and novellas that were published in aviation, sports, and pulp magazines.[56] Between 1933 and 1938, Hubbard wrote 138 novels, both science fiction and adventure.[4] His first hardcover novel was published in 1937, titled Buckskin Brigades.[9] He co-wrote a 15-part movie serial The Secret of Treasure Island (1938).[9] Literature critics have cited Final Blackout, set in a war-ravaged future Europe, and Fear, a psychological horror story, as the best examples of Hubbard's pulp fiction.[57] Among his published stories were Sea Fangs, The Carnival of Death, Man-Killers of the Air, and The Squad that Never Came Back, which he wrote under numerous pseudonyms.[8] He became a well-known author in the science fiction and fantasy genres.[58] He also published westerns and adventure stories.[59] His agent at one time was the well known science fiction guru Forrest Ackerman.[60] According to friend and colleague A.E. van Vogt, Hubbard wrote:
"...about a million words a year, straight on to the typewriter at incredible speed. My guess was that he typed at about seventy words a minute. It just poured out—I have seen typists working at that speed, but never a writer. I was in his apartment a couple of times when he said he had to finish a story and he would sit typing steadily for twenty minutes without a break and without looking up. That would have been totally impossible for me."[61]Unable to elicit interest from mainstream publishers or medical professionals,[62][63][64] Hubbard turned to the science fiction editor John W. Campbell, who had for years published Hubbard's science fiction.[65] Hubbard wrote the Ole Doc Methuselah series for Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction, and in 1949 published the first article on Dianetics in the magazine.[65] Campbell referred to Dianetics in the preface of the article as a "scientific method" of mental therapy.[66]
In works such as "Masters of Sleep," the story features "a mad psychiatrist, Doctor Dyhard, who persists in rejecting Dianetics after all his abler colleagues have accepted it [and] believes in prefrontal lobotomies for everyone".[67][68] Most of Hubbard's output thereafter was related to Dianetics or Scientology. During Hubbard's transition from science fiction to Dianetics, his story The Professor was a Thief was adapted and aired on the Dimension X radio show, whose writers included Ray Bradbury, Robert A. Heinlein and Kurt Vonnegut.[69] Hubbard did not make a major return to non-Dianetics fiction until the 1980s.
Members of the science fiction community held varying opinions about Hubbard's Dianetics work. Isaac Asimov, a professor of biochemistry, criticized Dianetics' unscientific aspects, and veteran author and literature PhD Jack Williamson described Dianetics as "a lunatic revision of Freudian psychology", likening it to a scam.[70] Campbell and novelist A. E. van Vogt, on the other hand, enthusiastically embraced Dianetics. Campbell became Hubbard's treasurer, and van Vogt—convinced his wife's health had been transformed for the better by auditing—interrupted his writing career to run the first Los Angeles Dianetics center.[71] Joseph A. Winter M.D., who supported Hubbard, submitted papers outlining the principles and methodology of Dianetic therapy to the journal of the American Medical Association and the American Journal of Psychiatry, but they were rejected.[72] Although Campbell was initially supportive of Dianetics, he reversed his position in 1951.[73]
In April 1950, Hubbard and several others established the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation in Elizabeth, New Jersey to coordinate work related for the forthcoming publication of a book on Dianetics.[74] The book, entitled Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, was published in May 1950 by Hermitage House, whose head was also on the Board of Directors of the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation.[75] With Dianetics, Hubbard introduced the concept of "auditing", a two-person question-and-answer therapy that focused on painful memories, referred to as engrams. Hubbard claimed that Dianetics could cure physical illnesses and increase intelligence.[76] In his introduction to Dianetics, Hubbard called his discoveries "a milestone for Man comparable to his discovery of fire and superior to his inventions of the wheel and the arch".[77]
Dianetics sold 150,000 copies within a year of publication.[78] Reviews were almost entirely hostile.[79] In September 1950, The New York Times published a cautionary statement by the American Psychological Association which stated that the claims of Dianetics were not supported by empirical evidence, recommending against the use of the techniques described therein until they had scientific evidence to support their use.[80] Consumer Reports, in an August 1951 assessment of Dianetics, called it "the basis for a new cult", noted its lack of modesty, and pointed out that it made generalizations without backing them up with evidence or facts.[81]
Branch offices of the Dianetics Foundation opened in five other US cities before the end of 1950.[82] In August of that year, amid public pressure to show evidence of the book's claims, Hubbard arranged to present a Clear (the end product of Dianetics) in the Shrine Auditorium. He presented a physics student, Sonya Bianca, who failed to answer several questions testing her memory and analytical abilities.[77] Many of the Dianetics practices folded within a year of establishment and Hubbard abandoned the Foundation, denouncing a number of his former associates to the FBI as communists.[83][84]
What led Hubbard from science fiction writing to the creation of Dianetics and Scientology is unknown. Sam Moskowitz, a science fiction editor, claimed that Hubbard made comments to 23 members of the Eastern Science Fiction Association in 1948 about starting a religion to make money.[85] Lloyd Esbach recalls Hubbard making such a statement in 1948, made to a group of science fiction authors.[54] According to The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Hubbard made statements to the effect that developing a religion or psychiatric method was an effective way to make money.[86] Harlan Ellison says that Hubbard told John W. Campbell that he was going to devise a religion that would make him wealthy.[87] After spending some time with Hubbard in 1951, Del Close claimed that Hubbard frequently complained about the American Medical Association and IRS, expressing interest in starting a religion.[88]
Scientology
In March 1952, Hubbard moved to Phoenix, Arizona. He claimed that he had conducted years of intensive research into the nature of human existence.[89] He codified a set of ideas that promised to improve the condition of the human spirit, which he called a "Thetan".[90] To describe his findings, he developed an elaborate system of neologisms which he described as Scientology, "an applied religious philosophy".[91][92]
In December 1953, Hubbard founded the Church of Scientology in Camden, New Jersey.[93] He moved to Washington, D.C. in 1955 and organized the Founding Church of Scientology. His Washington, D.C. residence, the L. Ron Hubbard House, now operates as a historic house museum.[94] In 1952, Hubbard visited England for the first time and started a Dianetic training center in London; the news spread far and wide abroad.[95] In 1959, Hubbard moved to England where he supervised the growing organization from Saint Hill Manor near the Sussex town of East Grinstead, a Georgian manor house once owned by the Maharajah of Jaipur which Hubbard purchased in 1959.[95][96] This became the world headquarters of Scientology.[97]
Hubbard's followers believed his techniques gave them access to their past lives, the traumas of which led to failures in the present unless they were dealt with in a process referred to as "auditing". By this time, in the 1950s, just after the publication of Dianetics: the modern science of mental health,[98] Hubbard had introduced a biofeedback device to the auditing process, which he called a "Hubbard Electropsychometer" or "E-meter", originally invented in the 1940s by a chiropractor and later Dianetics enthusiast named Volney Mathison and refined to Hubbard's specifications in 1959.[99] This machine is used by Scientologists in auditing to evaluate what Hubbard referred to as "mental masses" which were said to impede thetans from realizing their full potential.[100] Hubbard professed that many physical diseases were psychosomatic, and that a person who had attained the enlightened state of "clear" would be relatively disease free.[101] Hubbard insisted humanity was imperiled by such forces, which were the result of negative memories (or "engrams") stored in the unconscious or "reactive" mind, some carried by the immortal thetans for billions of years.[102]
Church members were expected to pay fixed donation rates for courses, auditing, books and E-meters, all of which proved very lucrative for the Church, which paid emoluments directly to Hubbard and his family.[103] In a case fought by the Founding Church of Scientology of Washington, D.C. over its tax-exempt status (revoked in 1958 because of these emoluments) it was found that Hubbard had personally received over $108,000 from the Church and affiliates over a four-year period, over and above the percentage of gross income (usually 10%) he received from Church-affiliated organizations.[104] Hubbard denied such emoluments many times in writing, stating instead that he never received any money from the Church.[105]
The Church of Scientology founded its own companies to publish Hubbard's works: Bridge Publications for the US and Canadian market, and New Era Publications based in Denmark for the rest of the world.[106] New volumes of his transcribed lectures continue to be produced.[107] There are estimated to be 110 related volumes.[108] Hubbard also wrote a number of works of fiction during the 1930s and 1980s, which are published by the Scientology-owned Galaxy Press.[109] All three of these publishing companies are subordinate to Author Services Inc., another Scientology corporation.[110]
Some documents written by Hubbard himself suggest he regarded Scientology as a business, not a religion. In one letter dated April 10, 1953, he says that calling Scientology a religion solves "a problem of practical business [...] A religion charter could be necessary in Pennsylvania or NJ to make it stick."[111] In a 1962 policy letter, he said that Scientology "is being planned on a religious organization basis throughout the world. This will not upset in any way the usual activities of any organization. It is entirely a matter for accountants and solicitors."[111] However, in his work, Hubbard emphasizes the importance of spirit and mind over the physical body. He says, "... The body can be best studied in such books as Gray's Anatomy and other anatomical texts. This is the province of the medical doctor and, usually, the old-time psychiatrist or psychologist who were involved in the main in body worship."[112]
Legal difficulties and life on the high seas
Scientology became a focus of controversy across the English-speaking world during the mid-1960s, with the United Kingdom, New Zealand, South Africa, the Australian state of Victoria[113][114][115] and the Canadian province of Ontario all holding public inquiries into Scientology's activities.[116] In 1966, Hubbard moved to Rhodesia, claiming to be the reincarnation of De Beers founder, Cecil Rhodes.[117][118] Following Ian Smith's Unilateral Declaration of Independence, Hubbard offered to invest large sums in Rhodesia's economy which was then hit by UN sanctions, but was asked to leave the country.[117][119]
Around 1967 Hubbard formed the religious order known as the "Sea Organization" or "Sea Org", with titles and uniforms.[120] The Sea Org subsequently became the management group within Hubbard's Scientology empire.[121] He was attended by "Commodore's Messengers"; teenage girls who performed various tasks for him, such as fixing his shower, dressing him, and catching the ash from his cigarettes.[122][123] He had frequent screaming tantrums and instituted harsh punishments such as being confined to the ship's dirty chain-locker for days or weeks at a time, or being bound, blindfolded, and thrown overboard.[124][125] Some of these punishments were applied to children as well as to adults.[126]
A letter Hubbard wrote to his third wife, Mary Sue, when he was in Las Palmas around 1967: "I’m drinking lots of rum and popping pinks and greys..."[127] An unauthorized Hubbard biography also says that "John McMasters told me that on the flagship Apollo in the late sixties he witnessed Hubbard's drug supply. 'It was the largest drug chest I had ever seen. He had everything!'".[127] This was confirmed by Gerry Armstrong through Virginia Downsborough who said in 1967 Hubbard returned to Las Palmas totally debilitated from drugs.[128] His drug use appears to pre-date the 1967 accounts.[129] Hubbard claimed in a letter to his first wife that he had once been an opium addict. The last sentence of the letter reads: "...I do love you, even if I used to be an opium addict."[6] [130]
In March 1969, the Greek Government branded L. Ron Hubbard and his group of 200 disciples "undesirables". The group had been living aboard the 3,300 ton Panamanian ship Apollo and had been docked in the harbor of Corfu island since August. On March 18, local authorities issued a 24-hour ultimatum to the Scientologists, but Hubbard was granted an extension due to engine problems. The expulsion order was the result of mounting pressure from American, British, and Australian diplomats to examine the activities of the Apollo occupants. Most of the occupants were American, some were British, Australian, and South African.[131]
In 1977, Scientology offices on both coasts of the United States were raided by FBI agents seeking evidence of Operation Snow White, a programme to obtain information from government offices by covert and illegal means.[132][133] Hubbard's wife Mary Sue and a dozen other senior Scientology officials were convicted in 1979 of conspiracy against the United States Federal Government, while Hubbard himself was named by federal prosecutors as an "unindicted co-conspirator."[134] At this time the IRS also had evidence that he had skimmed millions of dollars from church accounts and secreted the funds to destinations overseas.[2]
In 1978, as part of a case against three French Scientologists, Hubbard was convicted of making fraudulent promises and given a four-year prison sentence and a 35,000₣ fine by a French court.[135] The case was subsequently appealed by one of the other convicts in 1980, during which the court indicated that all those who had been convicted could be pardoned if they filed their own appeals against the original ruling.[136] A second defendant did in 1981, and the fraud charges were canceled by judgment on November 9, 1981 on two more except Hubbard.[137] Hubbard himself never took any action, and the fine was never enforced.[138]
Hubbard's refusal to speak with British immigration officials about this conviction is said to have later caused the British Home Office to re-affirm an earlier decision to bar him from the UK.[139] In 1989 however the then Home Office Minister of State, Tim Renton, confirmed in writing that from 1980 until the date of his death, Hubbard had been free to apply for entry to the United Kingdom under the ordinary immigration rules and that any ban had been lifted on July 16, 1980.[140][141] The accuracy of Hubbard's self-representations were challenged in court during a 1984 custody case of a Scientologist and his former wife about two of their children. The judgment of the High court of London (Family Division) quotes the opinion of Justice Latey, that Scientology is "dangerous, immoral, sinister and corrupt" and "has its real objective money and power for Mr. Hubbard."[142]
According to the 1965 Report of the Board of Enquiry into Scientology in the Australian state of Victoria, Hubbard falsely claimed scientific and other credentials and his sanity was "to be gravely doubted".[143] The report concluded that while Hubbard's followers are taught that they are entitled to question the beliefs, they are conditioned to believe that the teachings are correct.[144] It also notes that Hubbard's claims of finding a cure for atomic radiation is unsupported by evidence.[145] The Scientologists' response was a pamphlet entitled Kangaroo Court, describing Victoria as "the riff-raff of London's slums [...] a very primitive community, somewhat barbaric".[143]
"Fair Game" was introduced by Hubbard as a policy against people or groups that "actively seeks to suppress or damage Scientology or a Scientologist by Suppressive Acts." He defined it as: ENEMY — SP Order. Fair game. May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.[146]
In July 1968, Hubbard revised this definition to a somewhat milder wording: ENEMY — Suppressive Person order. May not be communicated with by anyone except an Ethics Officer, Master at Arms, a Hearing Officer or a Board or Committee. May be restrained or imprisoned. May not be protected by any rules or laws of the group he sought to injure as he sought to destroy or bar fair practices for others. May not be trained or processed or admitted to any org.[147] The use of the expression "Fair Game" was canceled altogether in October 1968, with Hubbard stating that
The practice of declaring people FAIR GAME will cease. FAIR GAME may not appear on any Ethics Order. It causes bad public relations. This P/L does not cancel any policy on the treatment or handling of an SP.Hubbard later explained that:
– L. Ron Hubbard[148]
There was never any attempt or intent on my part by the writing of these policies (or any others for that fact), to authorize illegal or harassment type acts against anyone. As soon as it became apparent to me that the concept of 'Fair Game' as described above was being misinterpreted by the uninformed, to mean the granting of a license to Scientologists for acts in violation of the law and/or other standards of decency, these policies were canceled."While the number of incidents involving so-called dirty tricks or unethical actions dropped in the years that followed,[150] several judges and juries have through their decisions or comments asserted that the tactics continued beyond Hubbard's order canceling use of the term Fair Game in 1968.[151]
– L. Ron Hubbard[149]
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