Saturday, September 8, 2018

The road to Xenu




"Bare Faced Messiah" is the definitive biography of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology. The author, British journalist Russell Miller, takes a critical approach to his subject. The sources are varied: Hubbard's personal papers (a defector from Scientology gave Miller access to those), interviews with people who knew Hubbard personally, previously classified FBI files, etc.

Miller's portrait of the man Scientologists regard as the saviour of mankind is far from flattering. "Bare Faced Messiah" paints the picture of a habitual liar, embezzler, manic-depressive and paranoiac with serious delusions of grandeur. Apparently, Hubbard was also a bigamist, had several mistresses and had at one point been a Satanist! He used to be the magical partner of John Parsons, a prominent American supporter of the notorious black magician Aleister Crowley. Hubbard later eloped with Parson's mistress...

I admit that I haven't read the entire book, and probably never will. It contains an overwhelming amount of information on Hubbard, whose biography turns out to be very different from the official Scientology version. For instance, Hubbard's main activity during World War II (apart from a number of desk jobs and training courses) was commanding a war vessel which by mistake created an incident on Mexican territorial waters, after first having chased imaginary Japanese submarines off the coast of Oregon (the subs were probably magnetic deposits giving readings on the sonar). After various conflicts with his superior officers, Hubbard was relieved of command duty. Hubbard himself claimed a more central and heroic role for himself, including secret missions in Indonesia right under the nose of the Japanese. The Scientologists claim that Hubbard received 21 medals, but Miller only found evidence of four, all being routine medals awarded everyone who served during the world war. Hubbard's official biography also claims that Hubbard served in the Philippines and was taken home on a special presidential plane after being wounded in combat. According to Miller, he never reached the Philippines but was stranded in Australia and then sent home after a brawl with other officers.

Things didn't go well after the war, either. Hubbard habitually denounced everyone who left his movement to the FBI, accusing the defectors of Communism, but the Bureau didn't take him seriously. In fact, it's explicitly noted in Hubbard's FBI file that he was "a mental case"! At one point, he sent a letter to President Kennedy, offering to train the American astronauts. The President never responded. At another point, Hubbard entered Rhodesia in the belief that he could solve the political crisis between Britain and the Ian Smith regime. He wrote and published a draft proposal for a new Rhodesian constitution and made several unsuccessful attempts to get an audience with Smith himself. Eventually he was politely told to leave the country... This kind of megalomaniacal behaviour does ring a bell: leaders of small and deviant groups often claim contacts with important world leaders and occasionally even manage to get audiences with a handful. Usually, they just make everything up.

One fascinating piece of information in Miller's book suggests that Hubbard developed what later became Dianetics after a near-death experience, during which information about the riddles of the universe was transmitted to his soul, which had left the physical body behind. The first fruit of this supernatural experience was a manuscript on the human mind titled "Excalibur", which is long lost. Years later, Hubbard would write "Dianetics", but no longer claim spiritual inspiration. Rather, he said, Dianetics was based on original scientific research.

It's also interesting to note the connection between science fiction and Scientology. Hubbard was a science fiction writer, the first article on Dianetics appeared in the magazine "Astounding Science Fiction", and the magazine editor John W. Campbell was one of the earliest supporters of Dianetics (he fell out with the cantankerous Hubbard at a later point). Scientology contains many science fiction elements, as well. Thus, Hubbard would awe his loyal followers by bizarre tales about his previous lives on other planets, including his career as a race driver in the "Marcabian" civilization. The classified material on Xenu also belongs in this category. I found the Scientology-scyfy connection intriguing, since there is a similar connection between Neo-Theosophy, science fiction and UFO contactees. And no, it's not simply a matter of fiction influencing new religious groups - the influences seem to be criss-crossing and mutual.

It can't be ruled out that Hubbard had genuine spiritual experiences of some kind, but interpreted them through the lens of his own self-importance, and decided to put them to destructive uses. That seems to be a pretty common occurrence. Hubbard's affiliation with the Crowleyan OTO suggests a genuine spiritual interest, albeit of a dark and "Satanic" kind.

When Miller published his exposure of Hubbard, the Scientologists (as usual) went mustang and attempted to stop the book from being distributed, pointing out that it was to a large extent based on copyrighted private material. In the United States, the court ruled in favour of the Scientologists, but in Canada and the UK, on the other hand, the courts ruled in favour of the publishers. Miller has accused the Church of Scientology of various forms of harassment on top of the legal wrangling. It should perhaps be noted that "Bare Faced Messiah" is also available free on the web, where it seems impossible to stop...

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