Re: Harlan Ellison on $cientology

I am writing this long post to provide the documentary evidence Charles Platt rightly demands.

In article <3sfb74$43@panix.com> cp@panix.com "Charles Platt" writes:

> henry (anon2c9e@nyx10.cs.du.edu) wrote:
>
> : hubbard published the initial draft of dianetics in analog
> : science fiction magazine, which generated a flash-in-the-pan
> : stir and considerable interest in the idea of 'clears' and
> : numerous amateur dianetics groups, but very little real
> : cash for hubbard, who was reduced in the early fifties to
> : writing pathetic letters pleading for money in increasingly
> : abject terms to the mailing list he retained from a failing
> : organization when dianetics failed to live up to the hype.
>
> There is an unfortunate tendency in Usenet groups for people to state, in
> a tone of total authority, opinions as facts--even though these opinions
> are little more than hearsay and are never checked with easily available
> reference works (yes, I mean BOOKS, not web sites).
The book (with references, written by a professional journalist) to check for facts about L. Ron Hubbard is Bare-Faced Messiah by Russell Miller (1987). This biography was written using primary material uncovered by a scientologist which revealed that various official biographical claims made by the church and by Hubbard were incorrect. I have reproduced a library card for this at the end of this post. The church of scientology has mounted numerous attacks on this book, but they have been notable by the absence of any refutation of the facts as presented in the book. My conclusion is that _either_ the church cannot afford to employ intelligent biographical researchers (whereas it _can_ afford to sue the author unsuccessfully for alleged copyright violation) _or_ the book is substantially accurate. >
> In fact, Analog magazine did not exist when the first article about
> Dianetics was published; the title of the magazine was then Astounding
> Science Fiction.
Correct. The article on Dianetics appeared in the May 1950 edition of John Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction.

> I believe the concept of a "clear" was not mentioned in
> the initial statements about Dianetics.
Although the term "clear" may not have appeared in the first article (which was basically just an ad for the book) the concept of the reactive mind was described, and Dianetics' goal was stated as clearing the reactive mind of engrams.

The May 9th publication of the book _Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health_ certainly made the concept of the clear a central part of Dianetics. At a rally on August 10th, 1950, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, L. Ron Hubbard presented Sonya Bianca, whom he dubbed "the first clear." The presentation was a shambles, his "clear" was tongue-tied and stricken with stage-fright, but that's beside the point.

> I am not sure who you think
> Hubbard wrote to, asking for cash; could we have some names? According to
> A. E. van Vogt, who managed an early Dianetics auditing center (and whom
> I have spoken to on this subject), there was a problem maintaining
> momentum in some centers in the early days, but others (including van
> Vogt's) did prosper, and according to van Vogt, Hubbard did well.
Henry is basically correct. In fact, Hubbard drew a substantial income from the Dianetics Institutes, but the nine-day-wonder nature of the first Dianetics craze did result in a slump. Van Vogt wrote an account of this time: Dianetics and the Professions, (1953) which Russell Miller used as source material. He writes: "A. E. van Vogt, meanwhile, was striving to keep the Los Angeles Foundation in business. He calculated that the six Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundations had spent around one million dollars and were more than $200 000 in debt. At the beginning of November [1950], while Hubbard was away on the East Coast, van Vogt cut the staff of sixty by half in an attempt to stay solvent. Hubbard was furious and began hiring indiscriminately the moment he returned: within a week, the payroll was back up to sixty-seven people. Van Vogt remonstrated, but Hubbard insisted that the extra staff was needed for research. 'Financial disaster was inevitable,' said van Vogt." -Russell Miller _Bare-Faced Messiah_, 1987. [see end of this post] To cut a long story short, Hubbard's financial mismanagement and some ill-starred ventures in his private life (which need not concern us here) take us to April 1951 [brackets: my comments]: "There was no question that Hubbard's fortunes had undergone a radical revision in the twelve months since his emergence as the adored founder of Dianetics. His personal life was in disarray, the Hubbard Dianetics Research Foundations in Elizabeth [NJ] and Los Angeles were disintegrating, most of the money had somehow been frittered away, he was months behind with his second book and he was stuck in Cuba with Alexis [his baby daughter: as I said, it's a long story] and he had no idea what to do with her. "What he needed was a saviour, preferably a saviour with plenty of ready cash. And there was one obvious candidate--Don Purcell, a businessman from Wichita, Kansas. Mr Purcell was not only an enthusiastic Dianeticist, he also happened to be a millionaire. "Towards the end of April, Hubbard sent a telegram to Purcell from Havana saying he needed help. De Mille [Hubbard's assistant] followed up with a long-distance telephone call urging Purcell to "do something" because Ron was dying. Purcell acted without delay. He sent a private plane to Cuba with a registered nurse on board to collect Ron and Alexis and bring them back to Kansas." Hubbard and Purcell soon fell out over Hubbard's tendency to spend money like water. Jean Oliver Moore, Purcell's Wichita lawyer, said "The bills were reaching astronomical proportions...the [Wichita] Foundation was losing money hand over fist at a rate faster than Purcell could replace it." Hubbard jumped ship during a bitter dispute. "One day [Purcell] arrived at the Foundation offices on West Douglas and found that all the address plates for the mailing list were missing." They were removed "inadvertently"--all 75 pounds of them--by a Hubbard aide. In the final accounts of the Wichita Foundation, Hubbard was recorded as receiving $22 000 in salaries [all other staff received a total of $54 0000]. Overall income was $142 000 and expenditure $205 000. Few tangible assets. >
> : dianetics was completely washed-up as a science in the early fifties,
> : so hubbard started adding semi-religious trappings to it
> : after copping the idea of the e-meter from volney mathiesen,
> : but scientology was not fully and legally a religion until
> : 1971.
>
> According to various books on this subject, which I believe are better
> researched than your post, Scientology was started as a religion in order
> to attain tax-exempt status; and again, according to the sources that I
> have read, Hubbard once said that this had been his greatest mistake,
> since it led to endless trouble with the IRS. Your suggestion that
> Dianetics "was completely washed up" needs to be substantiated; I doubt
> it is entirely true. Also, as I recall, the E-meter preceded Scientology,
> though I may be wrong about that.
The above quote from Bare-Faced Messiah appears to bear out Henry's claim, at least insofar as the Wichita, Elizabeth and Los Angeles Foundations are concerned. Hubbard showed great genius in building the highly successful Hubbard Association of Scientologists upon these failures. The claim that scientology was a religion came gradually, but was not really asserted seriously until the 1963 FDA raid when "radiation pills" and E-meters were seized over bogus medical claims. This is covered in the District Court decision: No. D.C. 1-63, United States District Court, District of Columbia, July 30, 1971 (333 F.Supp. 357). In the above decision, the E-meter and much dianetics and scientology literature was condemned on the basis of false medical claims. The District Court recognised the First Amendment rights of those US citizens who wished to use the E-meter in a religious context, but forbade its use by untrained users as encouraged in church literature. There's far too much of this to cover in a cross-post.

Scientology seems to have been formulated as a means of escaping a dispute with Purcell over the rights to Dianetics materials. "Back in Wichita, the new Mrs Hubbard [his last wife, Mary Sue] assumed partial responsibility for running the Hubbard College [a new Hubbard venture for Hubbard's ideas], which occupied the second floor of a modern office building on North Broadway. It only stayed in business for just six weeks, but it was long enough for the founder to gather together, by telegram, as many loyal followers as he could find to attend a convention at which he promised to present 'important new material.'

"About eighty people turned up for the event, which was held in the banqueting hall of a Wichita hotel. Hubbard first introduced an ingenious little gadget called the E-meter [invented by a Dianeticist called Volney Mathieson], which he claimed was capable of measuring emotions accurately enough 'to give an auditor a deep and marvellous insight into the mind of his pre-clear.' It was a black metal box with a lighted dial, adjustment knobs and wires connected to two tin cans... "The excitement generated by the E-meter was as nothing compared to Hubbard's next revelation. He had, he said, discovered an entirely new science which transcended the limitations of Dianetics. It was a science of _certainty_ and he already had a name for it--he was going to call it Scientology." >
> : despite the opening paragraph, which was added by a third
> : party, harlan didn't say in the interview that
> : he was there the night hubbard invented dianetics, but the
> : night that he invented scientology.
>
> The Ellison statement, quoted here, clearly refers to a time before
> Hubbard established Dianetics. Therefore it can have nothing to do with
> Scientology, which came many years later.
There's little point arguing about Harlan Ellison. He's a well known blowhard. Maybe he was there, maybe not. A number of others have stated they were there. The newsgroup alt.religion.scientology has a FAQ (long) and a mini-FAQ dealing with this subject. .. > --
> ############################################################
> Charles Platt cp@panix.com
>
Here's the library card I promised. The first entry is for the UK edition (now out of print but still available). The second is for the US edition.

AUTHOR: Miller, Russell. TITLE: Bare-faced messiah : the true story of L. Ron Hubbard / PLACE: London : PUBLISHER: M. Joseph, YEAR: 1987 PUB TYPE: Book FORMAT: 390 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. ; 24 cm. ISBN: 0718127641 SUBJECT: Hubbard, L. Ron -- (La Fayette Ron), -- 1911- Hubbard, L. Ron -- (LaFayette Ron), -- 1911-1986. Church of Scientology -- Biography Scientologists -- Biography. Church of Scientology -- Hubbard, L -- Ron - Biographies

AUTHOR: Miller, Russell. TITLE: Bare-faced messiah : the true story of L. Ron Hubbard / EDITION: 1st American ed. PLACE: New York : PUBLISHER: H. Holt, YEAR: 1988 PUB TYPE: Book FORMAT: x, 390 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. ; 24 cm. NOTES: Includes index. Bibliography: p. [382]-383. ISBN: 0805006540 SUBJECT: Hubbard, L. Ron -- (La Fayette Ron), -- 1911- Scientologists -- Biography.

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