L. Ron Hubbard: Difference between revisions

Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (March 13, 1911 – January 24, 1986), better known as L. Ron Hubbard, was a prolific and controversial American author and the founder of Dianetics and Scientology. In addition to philosophical works and self-help books, he wrote fiction in several genres, business management texts, essays and poetry.

The Church of Scientology cult has produced numerous biographical publications that make extraordinary claims about his life and career; many of those claims are disputed by journalists and critics. However, there is general agreement about the basic facts of Hubbard's life.

Hubbard was born during 1911 in Tilden, Nebraska, to Harry Ross Hubbard (1886 - 1975) and Ledora May Waterbury, who had married in 1909.

Harry was born "Henry August Wilson" in Fayette, Iowa but was orphaned as an infant and adopted by the Hubbards, a farming family of Fredericksburg, Iowa. Harry joined the United States Navy in 1904, leaving the service in 1908, then reenlisting in 1917 when the US declared war on Germany. He served in the Navy until 1946, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Commander in 1934.

May was a feminist who had trained to become a high school teacher. Her father, Lafayette O. Waterbury (born 1864), was a veterinarian turned coal merchant. Her mother, Ida Corinne DeWolfe, was the daughter of affluent banker John DeWolfe. Her paternal grandfather Abram Waterbury was from the Catskill Mountains of New York and later headed West, employed as a veterinarian.

During the 1920s, Hubbard travelled twice to the Far East to visit his parents during his father's posting to the United States Navy base on the island of Guam. He attended the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the George Washington University in Washington, DC between 1930–1932. In 1931, he was placed on probation for deficiency in scholarship and did not complete the program [1].

Hubbard instead pursued fiction writing, publishing many stories and novellas in pulp magazines during the 1930s [2]. He became a well known author in the science fiction and fantasy genres, and he also wrote westerns and adventure stories. Critics often cite Final Blackout, set in a war-ravaged future Europe, and Fear, a psychological horror story, as among the best examples of Hubbard's pulp fiction.

Hubbard married Margaret "Polly" Grubb in 1933, with whom he fathered two children, L. Ron, Jr. (1934–1991) and Katherine May (born 1936). They lived in Bremerton, Washington during the late 1930s, during which time Hubbard supported his family through his fiction writing.

In June 1941, with war looming, Hubbard joined the United States Navy as a lieutenant (junior grade). After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he was posted to Australia. He subsequently commanded the harbor protection vessel USS YP-422 (based in Boston, Massachusetts, formerly the fishing trawler Mist; contrary to Hubbard's partisans, the ship never carried the name "USS Mist" in US Navy service) and the subchaser USS PC-815 (based in Astoria, Oregon). He was relieved of command of both vessels, in the latter case after shelling a Mexican island off Baja California, having previously landed himself in hot water for accusing Vice Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, the regional commander, of covering up his "submarine" contact, supposedly to protect his reputation from "further stain." Unfortunately for Hubbard's story, in late 1942, Fletcher, along with his colleague, Rear Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, was one of the Navy's most renowned heroes, having delivered a stunning victory at the Battle of Midway at the loss of only a single aircraft carrier and one destroyer. Following this incident, Hubbard would receive a notation in his file denoting him as unfit for duty at sea under any conditions but close supervision, and he was ordered to report aboard the combat transport ship USS Algol (AKA-54). Most of Hubbard's wartime service was spent ashore in the continental United States. He was mustered out of the active service list in late 1945 and resigned his commission in 1950, completely unaware that he had been promoted to Lieutenant Commander on 25 June 1947. The letter informing him of his promotion reached his address at the home of Jack Parsons, who by that time was bitterly enraged toward Hubbard (Hubbard having run off with $10,000 of Parsons' money and Parsons' girlfriend, Sara Northrup).

Hubbard remarried in 1946. Hubbard's second wife, Sara Northrup Hubbard, gave birth to Hubbard's third child, Alexis Valerie, in March, 1950.

In May 1950, Hubbard published a book describing the self-improvement technique of Dianetics, touted as "The Modern Science of Mental Health." With Dianetics, Hubbard introduced the concept of "auditing," a two-person question-and-answer therapy that involved reviewing painful memories. According to Hubbard, dianetic auditing could eliminate emotional problems, cure physical illnesses, and increase intelligence. In his introduction to the book, Hubbard declared that "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."

Unable to elicit interest from mainstream publishers or medical professionals, Hubbard had turned to the legendary science fiction editor John W. Campbell, who had for years published Hubbard's science fiction stories. Beginning in late 1949, Campbell publicised Dianetics in the pages of Astounding Science Fiction. The science fiction community was divided about the merits of this new craze. Campbell's star author Isaac Asimov criticised Dianetics' unscientific aspects, and veteran author Jack Williamson described Dianetics as "a lunatic revision of Freudian psychology" that "had the look of a wonderfully rewarding scam." But Campbell and novelist A. E. van Vogt enthusiastically embraced Dianetics: Campbell became Hubbard's treasurer, and van Vogt—convinced that his wife's health had been transformed for the better by dianetic auditing—interrupted his writing career to run the first Los Angeles Dianetics center.

Dianetics was a hit, selling 150,000 copies within a year of publication. The Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation was incorporated in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and branch offices were opened in five other US cities before the end of 1950 (though most folded within a year and Hubbard soon abandoned the Foundation, denouncing a number of his former associates as communists).

With success, Dianetics became a subject of critical scrutiny by the medical establishment and the press. In September, 1950, The New York Times published a cautionary statement on the topic by the American Psychological Association, which read in part, "the association calls attention to the fact that these claims are not supported by empirical evidence," and went on to recommend against use of "the techniques peculiar to Dianetics" until such time that it had been validated through scientific testing. Consumer Reports, in an August, 1951 assessment of Dianetics[3], dryly noted that "one looks in vain in Dianetics for the modesty usually associated with announcement of a medical or scientific discovery" and stated that the book had become "the basis for a new cult." The article observed that "in a study of L. Ron Hubbard's text, one is impressed from the very beginning by a tendency to generalization and authoritative declarations unsupported by evidence or facts." Consumer Reports warned its readers against the "possibility of serious harm resulting from the abuse of intimacies and confidences associated with the relationship between auditor and patient," an especially serious risk, they concluded, "in a cult without professional traditions."

Hubbard's private behavior became the subject of unflattering headlines when Sara filed for divorce in late 1950, citing the fact that Hubbard was, unknown to her, still married to his first wife at the time he married Sara. Her divorce papers also accused Hubbard of kidnapping their baby daughter Alexis, and of conducting "systematic torture, beatings, strangulations and scientific torture experiments."

In mid-1952, Hubbard expanded Dianetics into a secular philosophy which he called Scientology. Hubbard also married his third wife that year, Mary Sue Whipp, to whom he remained married for the rest of his life. With Mary Sue, Hubbard fathered four more children--Diana, Quentin, Suzette and Arthur--over the next six years.

In December 1953, Hubbard declared Scientology to be a religion and the first Church of Scientology cult was founded in Camden, New Jersey. He moved to England at about the same time and during the remainder of the 1950s he supervised the growing Scientology cult from an office in London. In 1959, he bought Saint Hill Manor near the Sussex town of East Grinstead, a Georgian manor house formerly owned by the Maharajah of Jaipur. This became the worldwide headquarters of the Scientology cult.

Hubbard claimed to have conducted years of intensive research into the nature of human existence; to describe his findings, he developed an elaborate vocabulary with many newly coined terms [4]. He codified a set of axioms [5] and a "technology" that promised to improve the condition of the human spirit, which he called the "Thetan." The bulk of Scientology focuses on the rehabilitation of the thetan vis a vis its environment.

Hubbard's followers in the Scientology cult believed that his "applied religious philosophy" gave them access to their past lives, the traumas of which led to failures in the present unless they were audited. By this time, Hubbard had introduced a biofeedback device to the auditing process, which he called a "Hubbard Electropsychometer" or "E-meter." It was invented in the 1940s by a chiropractor named Volney Mathison. This machine, related to the electronic lie detectors of the time, was (and still is) used by Scientologists to evaluate "mental masses" that surround the thetan.

Hubbard claimed that physical disease was largely psychosomatic, and that one who, like himself, had attained the enlightened state of "clear" and become an "Operating Thetan" would be virtually disease free; according to biographers, Hubbard's doctors and personal associates report that he went to great lengths to have evidence of his recourse to modern medicine suppressed, attributing the symptoms of disease to attacks by malicious forces, both spiritual and earthly. Hubbard insisted that humanity was imperiled by such forces, which were the result of negative memories (or "engrams") stored in the unconscious or "reactive" mind, some of which have been carried by the immortal thetans for billions of years. Thus, Hubbard claimed, the only possibility for spiritual salvation was a concerted effort to "clear the planet," that is, to bring the benefits of the Scientology cult to all people everywhere, and to attack all forces, both social and spiritual, that were hostile to the interests of the Scientology cultmovement.

Cult members were expected to pay fixed donation rates for courses, auditing sessions, books and E-meters, all of which proved very lucrative for the cult, which paid emoluments directly to Hubbard and his family.

Scientology became a focus of controversy across the English-speaking world during the mid-1960s, with Britain, New Zealand, South Africa, the Australian state of Victoria and the Canadian province of Ontario all holding public inquiries into Scientology's cult-like activities. [6]

In 1967, Hubbard left this unwanted attention behind by resigning as executive director of the cult and appointing himself "Commodore" of a small fleet of Scientologist-crewed ships which spent the next eight years cruising the Mediterranean Sea. Here, Hubbard formed the para-military group known as the "Sea Organization," or "Sea Org." With titles and uniforms of Hubbard's design, the Sea Org subsequently became the controlling group within Hubbard's Scientology empire. He returned to the United States in the mid-1970s and lived for a while in Florida.

In 1977, Scientology cult offices on both coasts of the United States were raided by FBI agents seeking evidence of a suspected cult-run espionage network. Hubbard's wife Mary Sue and a dozen other senior Scientology officials were convicted in 1979 of conspiracy against the United States Government, while Hubbard himself was named by Federal prosecutors as an "unindicted co-conspirator." Facing intense media interest and many subpoenas, he secretly retired to a ranch in tiny Creston, California, north of San Luis Obispo.

During the 1980s, Hubbard returned to fiction writing, publishing Battlefield Earth and Mission Earth, the latter being a satirical work of science fiction published in ten volumes. He also wrote an unpublished screenplay called Revolt in the Stars. Hubbard's later science fiction works sold well, receiving mixed reviews (and additional press reports describing how sales of Hubbard's books were artificially inflated by Scientologists' purchasing large numbers of copies at select retailers in order to manipulate the bestseller charts [7]). While claming to be entirely divorced from the actions of Scientology management, Hubbard continued to draw an enormous income from the Scientology cult enterprises; Forbes magazine estimated that his Scientology-related income exceeded US $40,000,000 in 1982 alone.

Hubbard died on January 24, 1986, in an expensive Bluebird motorhome on his ranch. He had not been seen in public since 1981. The Church of Scientology announced that Hubbard had deliberately "discarded the body" to do "higher level spiritual research," unencumbered by mortal confines. However, reports say L. Ron Hubbard died of a stroke.

Following Hubbard's death, David Miscavige, one of Hubbard's former personal assistants, took over the leadership of the Scientology cult empire, via his position as Chairman of the Religious Technology Center, a non-profit corporation set up in 1982 to control Hubbard's copyrighted works.

L. Ron Hubbard's past is embroiled in controversy, as is the history of Scientology (for more on that, see the Wikipedia article Scientology controversy). His son, L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. claimed in 1983 that "99% of what my father ever wrote or said about himself is totally untrue". [8]

Some documents written by Hubbard himself appear to suggest that he regarded Scientology as primarily 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", and status as a religion achieves something "more equitable...with what we've got to sell". In a 1962 official policy letter, he said "Scientology 1970 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." [9]. A Reader's Digest article of May 1980 quoted Hubbard as saying in the 1940s "Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion."[10]

In a 1983 interview, L. Ron, Jr. said "according to him and my mother", that he was the result of a failed abortion and recalls at six years old seeing his father performing an abortion ritual on his mother with a coat hanger. In the same interview, he said "Scientology is a power-and-money-and-intelligence-gathering game" and described his father as "only interested in money, sex, booze, and drugs". [11]

One controversial aspect of Hubbard's early life revolves around his association with Jack Parsons, a rocket propulsion researcher at Caltech and an associate of the British occultist Aleister Crowley. Hubbard and Parsons were allegedly engaged in the practice of ritual magick in 1946, including an extended set of sex magick rituals called the Babalon Working, intended to summon a goddess or "moonchild." (Among occultists today, it is widely accepted that Hubbard derived a large part of 'Dianetics' from Golden Dawn occult ideas such as the Holy Guardian Angel.) The Church of Scientology insists that Hubbard was acting as a US government intelligence agent, on a mission to put an end to Parsons' magickal activities and to "rescue" a girl Parsons was "using" for magickal purposes. Critics of Scientology dismiss the Church's claims as after-the-fact rationalizations. Crowley recorded in his notes that he considered Hubbard a "lout" who made off with Parsons' money and girlfriend in an "ordinary confidence trick." Discussions of these events can be found in the critical biographies Bare-Faced Messiah, A Piece of Blue Sky and in The Marburg Journal of Religion.

Hubbard later married the girl he claimed to have rescued, Sara Northrup. This marriage was an act of bigamy, as Hubbard had abandoned, but not divorced, his first wife and children as soon as he left the Navy (he divorced his first wife more than a year after he had remarried). Both women have alleged that Hubbard physically abused them. He is also alleged to have once kidnapped his and Sara's infant daughter, Alexis, taking her to Cuba. Later, he disowned Alexis, claiming she was actually Jack Parsons' child.

Hubbard has been interpreted as both a savior (Scientologists refer to him as "The Friend of Mankind") and as a criminal con-artist. These sharply contrasting views have been a source of considerable tension and hostility between Hubbard's supporters and his critics. A California court judgement in 1984 involving Gerald Armstrong, who had been assigned the task of writing Hubbard's biography, highlights the extreme opposition of the two sides:

"In addition to violating and abusing its own members' civil rights, the organization [Scientology] over the years with its "Fair Game" doctrine has harassed and abused those persons not in the Church whom it perceives as enemies. The organization clearly is schizophrenic and paranoid, and the bizarre combination seems to be a reflection of its founder LRH [L. Ron Hubbard]. The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background, and achievements. The writings and documents in evidence additionally reflect his egoism, greed, avarice, lust for power, and vindictiveness and aggressiveness against persons perceived by him to be disloyal or hostile. At the same time it appears that he is charismatic and highly capable of motivating, organizing, controlling, manipulating, and inspiring his adherents." -- Superior Court Judge Paul Breckinridge, Church of Scientology of California vs. Gerald Armstrong, June 20, 1984. [12]

The "Fair Game" doctrine was introduced by Hubbard, and incites Scientologists to use criminal behaviour, deception and exploitation of the legal system to resist "Supressive Persons", i.e. people or groups that "actively seeks to suppress or damage Scientology or a Scientologist by Suppressive Acts". He defined it "Fair Game" 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.

Conflicting interpretations of Hubbard's life are presented in the online version of Russell Miller's largely critical biography of Hubbard, Bare Faced Messiah; this version includes links to Scientology's official accounts of Hubbard's past, embedded within Miller's description of the same history.

Several issues surrounding Hubbard's death and the disposition of his estate are also subjects of controversy — a swift cremation with no autopsy; the destruction of coroner's photographs; coroner's evidence of the drug Vistaril present in Hubbard's blood; questions about the whereabouts of Dr. Eugene Denk (Hubbard's physician) during Hubbard's death, and the changing of wills and trust documents the day before his death, resulting in the bulk of Hubbard's estate being transferred not to his family, but to the Scientology organization.

Main article: L. Ron Hubbard bibliography

Hubbard was an unusually prolific author. Because the majority of Hubbard's writings of the 1950s through the 1970s were aimed exclusively at Scientologists, the organization founded its own companies to publish his work, Bridge Publications (http://www.bridgepub.com/) for the US market and New Era Publications (http://www.newerapublications.com/nep/index.htm), based in Denmark, for the rest of the world. New volumes of his transcribed lectures continue to be produced; that series alone will ultimately total a projected 110 large volumes. An extensive series of audio recordings of Hubbard's lectures are also published by Bridge/New Era. A selection of Hubbard's best-known titles are below; an extensive bibliography of Hubbard's work is available in a separate article.

• Buckskin Brigades (1937)
• Final Blackout (1940)
• Fear (1951)
• Typewriter in the Sky (1951)
• Battlefield Earth (1982)

• Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, New York 1950
• Child Dianetics. Dianetic Processing for Children, Wichita, Kansas 1951
• Scientology 8-80, Phoenix, Arizona 1952
• Dianetics 55!, Phoenix, Arizona 1954
• Dianetics: the Evolution of a Science, Phoenix, Arizona 1955
• Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought Washington, DC 1956
• The Problems of Work Washington, DC 1956
• Have You Lived Before This Life?, East Grinstead, Sussex 1960
• Scientology: A New Slant on Life, East Grinstead, Sussex 1965
• The Volunteer Minister's Handbook, Los Angeles 1976
• Research and Discovery Series, a chronological series collecting Hubbard's lectures. Vol 1, Copenhagen 1980
• The Way to Happiness, Los Angeles 1981

• L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman? by Bent Corydon and L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
• A Piece of Blue Sky by Jon Atack
• Bare Faced Messiah by Russell Miller
• Ron the War Hero by Chris Owen, a critical review of Hubbard's World War II Navy record

• Official L. Ron Hubbard biography site, from the Church of Scientology
• The Ron Series published by the Church of Scientology
• Scientology.org's Hubbard page
• Author Services Inc., L. Ron Hubbard's literary agency

• FBI Files from The Smoking Gun (in which Hubbard Asks for Protection from Communists)
• Operation Clambake (a comprehensive archive of critical material on Hubbard and Scientology )
• L. Ron Hubbard - The Rotten Library
• A glossary of Scientology terms as used on the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology

• Annotated bibliography of literature by and about L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, by Marco Frenschkowski
• Negative: Summary of Hubbard's writing career, hosted on Amazon.com
• Positive: Hubbard's writings, hosted on Amazon
• L. Ron Hubbard at IMDb
• L. Ron Hubbard at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

• Websites about L. Ron Hubbard (from the Open Directory)