Journey to the Centre of Ron's Brain

As this essay has shown, Hubbard had some truly weird ideas. Of course, many others have propounded bizarre theories - two outstanding examples are the infamous Immanuel Velikovsky (Venus erupted from Jupiter and in passing caused the parting of the Red Sea) and Wilhelm Reich (orgasms are powered by blue "orgone energy"). But few can have had such sustained success and yet remained so resolutely unconventional as Hubbard. Why?

There seem to be a number of reasons for this. The most obvious is that Hubbard's most bizarre writings were promulgated in obscure settings. During the 1950s, Scientology was in a classic cult phase: a relatively small group of loyal followers gathered around a revered leader with whom they were in close physical contact. Likewise, when the OT levels were written in the 1960s, Hubbard spent much of his time in a relatively confined environment - whether at his manor house at Saint Hill, in Sussex, England, or aboard the Apollo in the Mediterranean. By that time his organisation was very much bigger (and very widely-spread), but his odder writings were no longer circulated through the entire membership.

This ensured two things. First, by confining his "upper-level materials" to a select group, he was able physically to control their dissemination. These days, OT and NOTs documentation is held under military-style security arrangements; however, this has not stopped them being leaked in their entirety onto the Internet. Second, the upper-level materials are only accessible to those who have already extensively been indoctrinated in Scientology; they are the people who are most likely to accept whatever Hubbard says, no matter how implausible.

The secrecy surrounding the OT materials in particular have helped Scientology to maintain a facade of being an entirely normal system of belief and self-advancement, completely compatible with Christianity and other mainstream religions. And indeed, to a large extent, this it is. Several million people have taken Scientology courses over the last 30 years or so, but only about 50,000 have reached "Clear," the most significant grade before OT. The number of OTs cannot be more than 50,000 and is probably far less. This means that the bulk of Scientologists, past and present, genuinely do not know about Xenu and body thetans and devote themselves to a philosophy which, while still somewhat odd, is not nearly as bizarre as the story of the thetans being nuked in Earth's volcanoes. Scientology is very much a gnostic religion and takes pains to conceal its "hidden truths".

Did Hubbard himself believe in the stories he told? There is no sign that he did not. He was a natural storyteller and had sufficient charisma to make the fantastic seem like fact. He discovered (or generated) the more bizarre aspects whilst auditing himself. His followers would faithfully take notes, which he would then write up and disseminate as, in effect, official dogma. There seems little doubt that the incidents he produced originated solely in his own mind. What inspired them? Hubbard is thought to have used recreational drugs during the 1960s (notably barbiturates, which he obtained on prescription) but it is unclear whether he used them during self-auditing - if he did, that must surely have contributed to some of his more exotic revelations. The fact that he had been a pulp science fiction writer almost certainly influenced his writings. His recall of Xenu and Helatrobus and the like was the product of a fertile imagination which had greatly been influenced by sci-fi, now let loose in self-auditing. Hubbard's strangest writings probably tell us rather more about Hubbard himself than they do about the hidden mysteries of the universe.

But why do Scientologists themselves believe even the wildest statements made by Hubbard? There is enough evidence to suggest that he was, at the very least, unbalanced. Surely that can't be true of everyone in Scientology?

Plainly, it's not. Relatively few Scientologists show a long-term commitment to the organisation. Even on the Church's own figures, nearly 50% of new recruits drop out within a year. Many more drop out over the medium term; only a small number remain for ten or more years. The longer one stays in the organisation, it seems, the longer one is likely to stay in it. It's not clear why so many drop out (no survey has been done) but it's probably for a combination of reasons: dissatisfaction with the results of auditing, financial strains, dislike of the high-pressure environment, and so on. One major factor is likely to be that, whatever the merits of Scientology, its belief system does not provide what the person seeks.

This means that by the time a Scientologist gets to do the OT levels, he or she has effectively passed the test of commitment. Some have had their commitment shattered by the outlandishness of the OT levels - that is one reason why copies of the OT documents have been leaked over the years. But most who take OT III will have come to trust implicitly the word of Hubbard, no matter how improbable. They are not loons by any means. They are simply committed to a belief which to outsiders might seem bizarre, but to them appears completely logical and factual. Their world-view has been altered through years of training, to a point where they have dissociated themselves entirely from the mental world inhabited by "wogs" (non-Scientologists); indeed, Hubbard acknowledged this, deliberately emphasising the difference between "homo novus", the "OT élite" of Scientology and the hapless wogs ("homo sap", with the emphasis on sap) outside. "Let sleeping sapiens snore in the bulk for yet awhile," he wrote in A History of Man. "Then meet someplace and decide what to do about him and his twopenny wars, his insane and his prisons."

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