||||| From: "Feisty" Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology Subject: Hubbard's Research Methods Revealed (2000 Chris Owen Essay) Lines: 270 Organization: Tilton B. Sideways X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 66.72.96.103 X-Complaints-To: abuse@prodigy.net X-Trace: newssrv26.news.prodigy.com 1068528840 ST000 66.72.96.103 (Tue, 11 Nov 2003 00:34:00 EST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 00:34:00 EST X-UserInfo1: O@ZMR_CEEZRSP_@YMZJ\_Q\@TJ_ZTB\MV@BNMRQIMASJETAANVW[AKWZE\]^XQWIGNE_[EBL@^_\^JOCQ^RSNVLGTFTKHTXHHP[NB\_C@\SD@EP_[KCXX__AGDDEKGFNB\ZOKLRNCY_CGG[RHT_UN@C_BSY\G__IJIX_PLSA[CCFAULEY\FL\VLGANTQQ]FN Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 05:34:00 GMT Path: news2.lightlink.com!news.lightlink.com!skynet.be!skynet.be!newsfeed.news2me.com!snoopy.risq.qc.ca!news.primus.ca!news.primus.ca!prodigy.com!newsmst01.news.prodigy.com!prodigy.com!postmaster.news.prodigy.com!newssrv26.news.prodigy.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: news2.lightlink.com alt.religion.scientology:1656397 From: Chris Owen Subject: ESSAY: Hubbard's research methods revealed Date: 2000/01/22 Something that's puzzled me for a long time is just how Hubbard came up with Scientology's bizarre mythos: a shabby, run-down heaven with radioactive statues, Xenu, the Fifth Invader Force with "incredibly horrible hands" (sic) and so on and so forth. One particularly curious point is that his original research notes have never been published. They probably show him to be a complete fruitcake, if a fascinating lecture entitled "Electromagnetic Scouting: Battle of the Universes" (April 1952, exact date unknown) is anything to go by. Back in 1952, this lecture was just another part of Scientology - there wasn't anything secret or, for that matter, sacred about it (this was in the days when it was explicitly stated that it was a science, not a religion). It wasn't until the start of the 1960s that such material began to be designated "confidential" as part of the OT courses. Access to this particular tape is highly restricted these days, so presumably it forms part of the OT materials. The lecture features Mary Sue Hubbard auditing her husband. Ron is trying to locate and question "theta entities" - his term at the time for what were later termed Body Thetans - to find out their purposes. The Hubbards were using the first version of the E-meter (the Matheson version) to try out various ideas and seeing if they caused a reaction on the meter, indicating a response on the part of the BTs. As the session begins, Ron declares that "I am, for the first time in ages, completely without a somatic" - the implication being that, as somatics ("a pain or ache sensation") are in Hubbard's view caused by BTs, the BTs have all run off and hidden to avoid being exposed by the E-meter. Sure enough, says Ron, "I got a notion they're all standing about 20 feet from me, at least." The question-and-answer session gives a vivid insight into the way Hubbard worked out his mythos: LRH: Well here we made this what we've been calling Home Universe. That's actually the MEST Universe... MSH: Dropping there. LRH: ...and was actually the Home Universe and we were just getting along fine and the reason we settled off and just started to make the Home universe and so on and dropped off the main body of theta is because theta started expanding. No more than that. It just started expanding. I think there was probably something wrong in its vicinity or something of the sort. MSH: The needle's rising. LRH: Something wrong in its vicinity. MSH: Drop there. What was wrong in its vicinity? LRH: It was getting encroached on, so it's sort of a divide and rule. It's the whole modus operandi of the other universes. They started riding up the main body of theta to some degree. No, no drop. Anyway, the theta universe just suddenly got ambitious and decided to make a universe and picked up everything and... MSH: Your needle dropped... ---------- MSH: Well, what are these entities composed of? LRH: What..? MSH: Well, what would you call this kind of stuff? LRH: Well, it may be first universe stuff - and stuff ... MSH: Yeah. LRH: ... maybe twenty-ninth universe stuff - fifteenth universe stuff - twenty-first universe stuff - thirty-three universe ... is there a thirty-three universe? MSH: No drop. LRH: No ... MSH: They come from a lot of different universes. ---------- Here Hubbard comes up with the idea of Earth being a "prison planet", the basic rationale for Xenu dumping people here in the first place: LRH: The entheta beings ... I think in recent times entheta beings have been triumphing in certain locales over theta and I think earth is a prison planet to some degree because the entheta beings have pretty well won out over the people that are here. MSH: You got a big drop on that. LRH: I did? Entheta beings have worn out all the people who are here and what I got a big drop on is just the .... Well, now we can do a rehabilitation job throughout this part of the universe and we can do a rehabilitation job on straightening out these entheta beings and theta. Because all the entheta beings are running around - they're here, out of line. They may be the product of a union. The entheta beings [unintelligible] or something of the sort. They didn't do what they were told. MSH: You got a drop there. [...] LRH: Well that's what theta did. Now, theta sitting right out in space some place, other planets, and so forth, all of a sudden says, the hell with these bodies and beings, we've got a heck of a lot of theta beings ... MSH: Bang! Needle is dropping. LRH: ... who have been beaten by entheta beings. MSH: Bang! LRH: And the battleground is too rough and these things have mutinied so let's put 'em all in one place and lock 'em on to earth. They gotta stay on earth 'til we get 'em straightened out. They'll send somebody down here sooner or later and he'll straighten them out. MSH: You're getting drops in needle on all this material. ---------- Hubbard goes on to slap Christianity and religion as a whole (which gives a whole new perspective to Scientology's accusations of its opponents as anti-religious). In point of fact, his comments in this session were of a piece with his many other denigrations of established religions, notably Christianity but also Islam and Hinduism. (This is perhaps not surprising; only six years previously he had been a member of Jack Parsons' black magic coven.) He also comes up with the generic name of the MEST beings: LRH: ... These entheta beings are controlled over by religion. I think there was an experiment one time that was a religious experiment. MSH: You dropped. Needle's dropping LRH: Big experiment on religion. MSH: Is that when Christianity came into being? LRH: That's an entheta operation. No drop? MSH: Slight. LRH: It's got to be an entheta operation. MSH: Is it? LRH: Entheta - The entheta is actually, like anything that is under duress, these entheta beings - we shouldn't be calling them entheta beings - we ought to be calling them Targs... That's the proper name. MSH: Crash! LRH: Targs - Some of them are Targs. There are several other kinds. There are other kinds than Targs. MSH: Where did you get the name - Targ? LRH: That's common in a lot of theta languages. It means slave. Entheta slave. MSH: You got a drop LRH: Lower order slave. Body holders - horse holders - boot polishers. Entheta is really [unintelligible]. I guess there may be some other prison planets out in this galaxy. MSH: Are there any other planets which are [unintelligible]. LRH: I think flying saucers right now that's coming to dump off more theta beings - ah, dump off more entheta, entheta-ed beings. Targs. MSH: Mmm. LRH: What they're dropping down here is Targ ridden. It's a disease - somebody gets Targ ridden - gets unbalanced. The thing to do is not so much how to know how to get rid of the Targs but how to straighten out Targs. - No drop? MSH: No drop - Targ doesn't want to be straightened out. ---------- What I find particularly fascinating about this bizarre auditing session is that it shows exactly how Hubbard came up with his ideas. Prof. Martin Gardner wrote an essay on Dianetics in his classic book "[Fads and Fallacies] In the Name of Science" (1953) (an online version is at http://wpxx02.toxi.uni-wuerzburg.de/~cowen/essays/gardner.html) in which he analysed the flaws inherent in Hubbardian auditing: Perhaps the most revealing parts of Dr. Winter's book ["Dianetics: A Doctor's Report", Dr. J.A. Winter, 1951] are the records of his own dianetic sessions - revealing because they indicate with unmistakable starkness the manner in which the auditor suggests to a patient what sort of things he is supposed to recall. The patient, it must be remembered, in the vast majority of cases, is already familiar with dianetic theory... The therapist's questions are of such a "leading" character that even Dr. Winter admits they "encourage fantasy." Hubbard himself admits that many patients indulge in fantasies about their uterine experiences. "The patient tells about father and mother," he writes, "and where they are sitting and what the bedroom looks like, and yet there he is in the womb." Hubbard rejects the theory "that the tortured foetus develops extrasensory perception in order to see what is coming next." This is a good theory, he admits, but must be rejected in view of the fact that the foetus has no mind and therefore lacks clairvoyant powers. A Dianetics "patient" undergoing auditing would typically recall a variety of incidents, some undoubtedly genuine buried memories and some patent fantasies, such as the aforementioned uterine experiences. Transcripts of Dianetics auditing sessions reprinted in the "Research & Discovery Series" volumes show that there was a great deal of free association going on in the "patient's" mind, albeit in many cases guided by the auditor's leading questions. The Dianetics movement eventually broke up when Hubbard insisted on auditing "past lives", which had even less plausibility than so-called "sperm dreams" in the uterus. He and other supporters - many of whom were, significantly, science-fiction readers who had read his original article on Dianetics in "Astounding Science Fiction" in June 1950 - reported unearthing memories of past lives on Earth and in outer space. A collection of Scientologists' accounts of past lives was eventually published in "Have You Lived Before This Life?" (1960), which for my money just pips "A History of Man" for the title of weirdest book ever published by Scientology. The accounts, which really are hysterically funny, include a those of a man who fell in love with "a robot decked out as a beautiful red-haired girl", another man who recalled being run over by a Martian bishop driving a steam roller, the later critic Cyril Vosper's recollections of life as an intergalactic walrus which perished after falling out of a flying saucer and the story of "a very happy being who strayed to the planet Nostra 23,064,000,000 years ago". Freud would have had a field day. It's easy to see from this lecture how such bizarreness originated. Put together a science fiction fan (and writer, in Hubbard's case) and an auditor. Add a large dose of free association and a scientifically unproven theory of what E-meter readings represent. Voila - the result is a stream-of-consciousness science fiction story with biofeedback, as measured by the E-meter, as the editor. It did not matter that it would not have passed muster as fiction, let alone as scientifically proven fact. Hubbard believed that his foundation stone - the ideas of the thetan and that thought could be detected electronically - was completely secure. The "Battle of the Universes" tape shows vividly how elaborate was the superstructure which he built so casually on such fragile foundations. -- | Chris Owen - chriso@OISPAMNOlutefisk.demon.co.uk | |---------------------------------------------------------------| | THE TRUTH ABOUT L. RON HUBBARD AND THE UNITED STATES NAVY | | http://www.ronthewarhero.org |