I recently did a post about “What Is Greatness” (L. Ron Hubbard — Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde?). This is a follow up with another of Hubbard’s “PR” pieces intended to make him sound magnanimous and benign. These are the two pillars of the Hubbard myth.
If you read My Philosophy without blindly accepting what he has to say, it is apparent that his philosophy is to tell a whole lot of lies.
I’m not going to document each of the lies with the factual citations — just make note of the most egregious ones in he recounting of “hi philosophy.” If you want to know the truth read Barefaced Messiah by Russell Miller and Ron the War Hero by Chris Owen.
These are the biggest bs statements:
The first principle of my own philosophy is that wisdom is meant for anyone who wishes to reach for it. [You must pay for it]
The second principle of my own philosophy is that it must be capable of being applied.
Learning locked in mildewed books is of little use to anyone and therefore of no value unless it can be used. [Again, you have to BUY it]
The third principle is that any philosophic knowledge is only valuable if it is true or if it works. [From the very start with Dianetics, the claims he made were not true and it did not make Clears — a pattern that proceeded from one “breakthrough” to the next, always promising to deliver what had been promised and not delivered previously]
Therefore, for 15 years I have had Mankind knocking on my door. It has not mattered where I have lived or how remote, since I first published a book on the subject, my life has no longer been my own. [He tried to be in the headlines, always selling his latest “discoveries,” he pretends he tried to avoid a life in the limelight, the only time this is true is when he was trying to avoid governments seeking to prosecute him]
Blinded with injured optic nerves, and lame with physical injuries to hip and back, at the end of World War II, I faced an almost nonexistent future. [Just not true — he had an ulcer]
My Service record stated: “This officer has no neurotic or psychotic tendencies of any kind whatsoever,” but it also stated “permanently disabled physically.” [Again, not true]
I was abandoned by family and friends as a supposedly hopeless cripple and a probable burden upon them for the rest of my days. [Another lie — he abandoned his wife at the time and their two children]
I yet worked my way back to fitness and strength in less than two years, using only what I knew and could determine about Man and his relationship to the universe. I had no one to help me; what I had to know I had to find out. And it’s quite a trick studying when you cannot see. [He recovered from his ulcer and was never unable to see]
Yet I came to see again and walk again, and I built an entirely new life.
So my own philosophy is that one should share what wisdom he has, one should help others to help themselves, and one should keep going despite heavy weather for there is always a calm ahead.
I think this piece by Hubbard should be renamed: “My Hypocrisy”
Mockingbird says
I happen to have a bit of a different take. Hubbard didn’t sell his knowledge, he applied it.
The distinction is found in his affirmations and several other places such as his statement that if you want to control people you have to lie to them. The gamesmaker tape from The Philadelphia Doctorate course lectures, entitled structure/function, details how Hubbard would create Scientology and noted that you have to do various things to have a game as he described but that you must use a 180 degree vector of the truth, meaning lie, specifically with Orwellian reversal, calling things by their opposite term.
To be clear, Hubbard saw his psychology as so good it hypnotizes others to help with his goals of making slaves of men as described in his affirmations.
A significant thing that is often missed about Scientology is that Hubbard occasionally let the cat out of the bag and admitted or hinted that he didn’t believe in Scientology.
As an example I remember a clearing congress video in which Hubbard said that he gets asked about his ideas about the mind and that he has quite a few, but let’s stick to Scientology! Meaning he had ideas about the mind, which is something that Scientology describes in depth, but his ideas that he actually believes are outside of Scientology!
He occasionally would admit it in old lectures as well. Remember, Hubbard was a pathological liar who couldn’t stop talking and writing and he was a drug addict and alcoholic, so it stands to reason that occasionally he would slip and accidentally admit the truth.
Drug addicts are notorious for not being able to keep secrets and often seen as a bad risk in criminal organizations such as gangs and the mafia.
It stands to reason that a drug addict who also had a nearly non-stop compulsion to communicate for decades would occasionally slip up and tell the truth. We all make mistakes, after all.
I also recall the story of Hubbard being asked if believed in reincarnation and hesitating to answer but being quick to say yes when asked if Scientologists believe in reincarnation. I believe this was when he was filmed by a documentary film crew.
As described in his affirmations in fine deta, Hubbard wanted his mind to be protected against any influence from the words or beliefs of others, but he wanted to as he described influence and control others with his words. In terms of rhetoric which he studied in college, he wanted the aesthetic wavelength of his sublime writing to inspire ecstasy (a euphoric trance state) in his victims aka followers. I think he plagiarized all the ideas for his Art Book and series from the subject of rhetoric. It’s barely changed at all.
To sum up he knew he was lying and manipulating people and had the ideas he presented to people to control them and his own separate and hidden beliefs and techniques he used to control them.
Snookie McKernan says
From a very young age, having been born into Scientology, I firmly believed Hubbard was a man who knew the “secrets” of life itself.
As I studied along (I studied a LOT), my belief was that he was misunderstood and abused by his fellow Man… almost like a martyr of sorts.
I now know that Hubbard had, what I consider, extreme insecurities and may have been quite mentally ill. I have had several conversations with those who were close to him. His sense of reality and fantasy were so intertwined, he was attractive to those who wanted to see their own accomplishments blown into the stars alongside Hubbard’s fallacies.
It was only through recognizing the hypocrisy and outright lies that I woke up.
Take care Mike and thank you!!
LoosingMyReligion says
He wasn’t mistakenly labeled a pathological liar.
He lied to everyone all the time.
No one was exempt. People he met, students, journalists, friends (I don’t know if he had any real ones, same for miscavige by the way) and even his family and various wives.
Snookie McKernan says
So true!
ammo alamo says
It’s amazing that the lie of “Clear” has persisted so long within even the true believers who have been around long enough to know better. Is it the ‘sunk cost fallacy’ keeping them in line, of just their yearning to finally get a taste of that carrot dangling just out of reach? I suspect it is something about group dynamics, wherein people do not easily abandon friends and associates, almost like quitting a job which, while not remunerative, is at least a well known quantity.
Marie guerin says
Evil genius? Egomaniac ? Master hypnotist? A combination of all ?
Depending on the individual victims he might have done some good or irreparable damage . On an overall scale the good is overwhelmed by the bad . But the perceived good is keeping people in.
What a despicable man !
Aquamarine says
I don’t understand why Hubbard believed it necessary to invent illnesses and disabilities he didn’t have. He enlisted and served in World War 2. He spent time in Oak Noll – for what, I don’t know. He came out of the war with an ulcer. Why invent all this blind and disabled nonsense that could be easily disproven? Back when I was in I had to read a lot of his Congresses and in almost every one of them he had a WW2 anecdote. I used to wish that he would just keep to the point of the lecture. Looking back now at all of this mandated reading which I dutifully did its annoying to ponder the high probability that all these WW2 anecdotes were simply made up.
Perhaps he just enjoyed entertaining people.
Perhaps his presenting himself as being self-cured of blindness and lameness, etc.,after the war was just his way of entertaining people, painting himself with words as a far more vibrant, interesting, dramatic and tragic figure than his actual, rather pedestrian self. He was a story teller, after all. Maybe his real self, he considered boring…? Just a theory.
Alcoboy says
I too got nauseated listening to Hubbard’s ‘war stories’. They sounded too far fetched and somewhat grandiose. Honestly I would listen to the lectures and then I would be like “I have no idea what he was talking about “ then I would go to an event where they would do those ‘success stories’ with musical accompaniment and all the people in the videos were talking about how listening to LRH made them go exterior or enabled them to walk through walls or whatever. When they would talk about how they really understood the tech I would wonder why I couldn’t understand. Now the Scibots will tell me that I must have had an MU and that I need to Method One Word Clear the entire lecture.
I think that there are other reasons.
The Merkabian says
I like this actual man as a counterpoint from around the time: https://taskandpurpose.com/news/marine-corps-oldest-recruit-paul-douglas-world-war-ii/
JP says
If only he could have figured out how to permanently get rid of those pesky body thetans maybe he could’ve stopped smoking or having strokes
otherles says
Hubbard rejected Reality.
Alcoboy says
In other words, he was a Scientologist.