All the Scientologists who subscribed to or read the SPOTLIGHT were not necessarily good and loyal to the corporations that control Scientology. This particular author appears to have some insight not only into the backgrounds of Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology, but he is also aware "that much of the criticism of what Scn has become is based upon fragmentary knowledge, and that if people - including Scientologists - knew some of the background, it might become a valid religion."

This astute observation may serve to show the importance of having well-balanced data at hand when examining a controversial topic.

Dec. 28, 1993

According to your Advt. on p. 25 of the 1/3 Spotlight, you want to know something about Scientology. I can categorically state that seldom in the History of Mankind has something which is capable of such great good been used to create such havoc.

That statement needs explanation, which I shall be more than glad to furnish; I have no axes to grind, either pro or anti Scientology, but I lived through the very interesting times of its inception, and you simply cannot understand Scientology (hereafter referred to as Scn) without understanding what went on forty years and more ago.

Lafayette Ronald Hubbard was one of my favorite pulp fiction authors. To call him a "Science Fiction Writer" somewhat sneeringly as many people do, is to do an injustice to the man's eclectic abilities. He wrote Adventure fiction under his own name and that of Rene Lafayette; he wrote Western fiction under the name of Winchester Remington colt; he wrote True Confessions and love stories for the steamy women's magazines, and I hear that he wrote a lot of soft-core pornography for the "Spicy" rags, although I think he may have been a bit young for that. He was, quite simply, a very good pulp fiction author. There was a darker side to his nature. As a young man, he had studied with Aleister Crowley, and it is my understanding that he actually stole Crowley's yacht, although that may be apocryphal. He had also long been interested in what made people tick, and he formulated a bunch of theories about that. He finally took the plunge, publishing in the May, 1950, Analog Science Fact / Science Fiction, an article entitled "Dianetics." His then wife later claimed that the sole research he actually did for the development of the "Modern Science of Mental Health" was a half hour with a couple of dictionaries developing a name for it.

Be that as it may, he apparently created out of whole cloth a philosophy, theory, and therapy which not only worked, but - for the common run of neurotics (90% of the population) - worked far better than conventional psychotherapy, and was light-years ahead of the Psychiatry of its day! (It was not so red hot on real psychotics, Hubbard's claims to the contrary notwithstanding, but it was absolutely marvelous as psychosomatic medicine!) It could, and did, cure every nameable disease which was not genetic in origin, and relieved those, to some extent - but not always; that was the stumbling block. I solved that problem, to the satisfaction of the field and the annoyance of the zealots; in a paper I published, I had this to say; "In order for a psychosomatic disease to exist, there must, somewhere, be a real disease for it to imitate. While with Dianetic processes you can aid the pre-clear in eliminating or ameliorating the former, there is little that can be done about the latter." That statement, true though it may have been, did not increase my popularity among the "All disease is psychosomatic" set, but I didn't care; my point was that if ALL disease was psychosomatic, why did animals get sick?

Thus Hubbard got his first shock; something which had either been designed as a spoof or a con, (I believe the former; most everyone else of my acquaintances believes the latter), not only worked, but worked as he - the inventor - SAID it would work! So, whether he had intended it or not, he was stuck with writing "The Book." Again, his wife claimed it was entirely fiction; but fiction or not, it got a lot of people started, and a lot of people got a lot saner practically overnight. Neuroses vanished; people got well from an astounding array of diseases. A friend of ours whose back was completely ankylosed into a question mark, so that he had to walk with two canes, after fifteen hours with my father straightened up and went back to leading a dance band. An M.D. we knew lost his peripheral neuritis, endocarditis, and diabetes! (He gave himself a routine injection of Insulin, went into shock, and nearly died before he could eat a candy bar!) His hair, which had been snow white for over ten years, came back in as a honey blond. Speaking of hair, I worked with a man who was egg bald. After ten hours, he had a tonsure, and after thirty nearly a full head of hair. Harrison Angel had a mouth full of bad teeth, so he had them all pulled and grew a new set, using techniques he had developed from Dianetic theory; the new set came in crooked, so he had them pulled and grew another set, this time doing it right! A friend of my wife's had been born with a deformed toe. During one of her sessions, the crooked toe straightened out!

But Miracles, in the early days, were commonplace. Never in the History of Mankind had so many fine minds been allied in an effort to help others, with a believable framework on which to hang their efforts. It was all very chivalrous and idealistic in those days.

Hubbard started three "Foundations," one in Elizabeth, N.J., one in Los Angeles, and one in Honolulu. Some brilliant people came to work for him; people whose own lives had been materially aided by Dianetics, and who wanted to give something back. Miracles occurred daily. People went to the Foundations to be trained as "Auditors," but far more people read the book, rolled up their figurative sleeves, and went to work. These were referred to as "Book Auditors," with a sort of lofty condescension from the "Professional Auditors" who carried the seal of approval of the Hubbard Dianetic Foundation. Here was the first inkling we in the field had that the great man didn't quite have all his tiles fastened down. The "Degree" he granted was "HDA," which was short for "Hubbard Dianetic Auditor." Since there wasn't any other form of Dianetics around to compete with it, the "H" seemed to be a bit out of place, not to say redundant, smacking somewhat of self aggrandisement; but, as I said to someone who questioned it, "The man's got a lot to be arrogant about." The fact was that GOOD "Book Auditors," which I modestly admit we were, were every bit as good as, and in many cases better than, any Foundation-trained Auditors.

It was then that some strange things began to happen. Liz Byall and Judge Street developed a technique for rapidly straightening out a case which they called "Lock scanning."

(A "Lock" is a lighter incident somehow connected to the heavier stuff, but not terribly "charged" in itself;) unloading these wholesale tended to bring people upscale (later!) faster than a lot of other techniques. Hubbard came down on it like a ton of broken brick! It was "Dangerous," "Unauthorized," and a whole host of pejorative adjectives. Six weeks later, it came out as "Chain Scanning," "by" L. Ron Hubbard, and was not only Okay, but was touted as the newest and best technique from the fertile mind of the founder. Byall and Street were given no credit, although we who had their original paper found few differences other than the title, between it and the newest Foundation-blessed Hubbardian technique. In other words, our noble leader was - to put it politely - a plagiarist, or to be blunt, a thief. A little later, a friend of ours, Donald L. Sterling, or "D. Lyn Sterling" as he called himself, in unconscious imitation of Hubbard, wrote a right scholarly work entitled "Sex in the Basic Personality." For the time, and of its type, the book was good.

So good, in fact, that he told us, later, that he had been offered quite a deal. "If I had allowed the book to be published as being authored by Hubbard, I was offered a $25,000.00 advance and ten per cent. royalty on ALL sales! Naturally, I told them to get lost." (The book was later published by the Dianetic Foundation of Wichita, Kansas, after Hubbard severed his connection with it, as being "BY" "D. L. Sterling." He didn't make $2,500.00 from its total sales, and there was no advance.)

Hubbard made a practice of claiming the work of others as his own; in his view, it wasn't plagiarism; after all, if it hadn't been for him, whatever the work, it would not have even been conceived. Well, maybe; "How to Live Though an Executive," the Scientologists' Management Manual, was written by Richard de Mille, (Cecil B.'s son), although LRH claimed authorship, and the Scientological manifesto "Have You Lived Before This Life?" was obviously staff written, and rather carelessly put together. Had I been Hubbard, I'd have disclaimed having anything to do with it, but he calmly claimed Authorship in order to guarantee sales. (If you're a Scientologist, you're expected to have at least ONE copy of everything Hubbard ever wrote! (Or allegedly wrote.)

But I digress. According to A. E. van Vogt, two wronger people for each other than Hubbard and his then wife were hard to imagine. They were continually at loggerheads, and a messy divorce was inevitable. She won custody of Alexia, Hubbard's brilliant little daughter, of whom it was said that "She's the only person in the World that Ron cares more for than he does for himself." At the same time, the Foundation was in the process of going bankrupt, Hubbard being no businessman, although he tried to claim that he was one; he consistently spent more than he earned, and unless you're a government, you can't do that too long without damaging the exchequer.

The double whammy of losing his daughter and his Foundations literally destroyed him. He flipped. There is no kinder term for it. He vanished. Several concerned Dianuts (as we laughingly called ourselves) set out in search of him. Don Purcell, a Kansas Oil man, and Jack Maloney, the Foundation's Accountant, finally found him hiding under a bed in a hotel room in Cuba! (Remember, this was in 1951) He spun a fanciful, unbelievable yarn, about how he had been kidnapped by the Communists who wanted to know all the secrets of the human mind, and forced him, under torture, to reveal advanced techniques of brainwashing.

He also warned that the Communists planned to take over Cuba as an advance base for the conquest of the west, and that Batista's days were numbered. In retrospect, maybe someone should have listened to him! In any event, Don and Jack brought him to Wichita, gave him "Good present time" and a lot of Auditing, (the term 'processing' had not yet come into vogue), and cleaned him up to the point where he was his old arrogant self. Don told me, very seriously, "Never do Hubbard a favor; he'll not only never forgive you, he'll do his best to destroy you!"

Purcell bought all the assets of the bankrupt Foundations and moved them to Wichita, where he reincorporated into two Foundations, the Hubbard Dianetic Foundation, (HDF) which was the money-making arm of the outfit, selling training and auditing, and the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation, (HDRF), which was to take the profits (hopefully!) of the HDF and funnel them into new and improved processes for improving Mankind generally. Everyone was hung up on the first sentence of Book One. Then, with much fanfare and self-congratulation, Book 2 was published, with the "Complete" (up to then) "Tone Scale Chart." It still "Only" went from 0.0 (Dead) to 4.0, Dianetic "Clear." (A "Clear" was a person all of whose aberrations from any source had been removed. It was a theoretically perfect goal, unreachable in finite time, but still a useful concept.) What we mostly sought were "Releases," another Dianetic term, meaning "People whose major aberrative circuits had been resolved." We no longer sought "Erasures;" That not only took too long, but had a tendency to backfire, since nothing ever really erased; it was always there, ready to plug back into the board if Survival dictated. I published, in the "Arc Light," an independent Dianetic Journal published by Bill and Dee Swygard in Florida, a paper on how to get around that; imagine my chagrin not too long thereafter, to find that it was one of the latest Hubbardian "Discoveries." Oh, well, at least it was out into the field, and could help people; I really didn't NEED the credit, did I?

Apparently Don Purcell noticed what I, and some other members of our group in Fair Oaks, Calif. were doing, but of that more later.

Things went well at Wichita for a while. Self Analysis, a great help for individual work, and Handbook for Pre-clears, were published. In the latter was the first mention of the word "Scientology."

Now, I must backtrack a bit. "Our" HDA was a Medicolegal Expert for the State of California; Marshall Trout, PhD, MD, ScD, LID. A brilliant man, a fine legal and medical scholar; he had been a Superior Court Judge at one point, and preferred to be referred to as "Judge Trout," rather than "Doctor Trout." His opinion of the Medical profession was not high. Scientology can really be blamed on him. One afternoon, while in conference with Hubbard, he being one of the two or three people for whom Ron had any real respect, he told Ron as follows; "If you in Dianetics go on curing Asthma and Arthritis and Bursitis and Cancer and Diabetes and all the other psychosomatic ills to which Humans fall prey, the AMA is going to come down on you for practicing medicine without a license, and we'll all end up in jail; the only way you'll be safe is to make a Religion out of it! Also, the primary, stated goal of the Religion can be Spiritual Healing, but not Physical Healing; that can come as a result of your "Worship Sessions," but cannot be a stated purpose. Look into incorporating as a Religion." The rest, as they say, is History.

The other tribulations of the Foundations got in the way, but apparently Hubbard never forgot. Anyhow, the Tone Scale suddenly expanded; now, we could get clear up to tone 40, but tone 22 was the preferred reachable goal. (Things were getting complex).

Meanwhile, in Wichita, Hubbard made two million dollars, and spent three million. He had purchased, not one, not two, but three formula 1 cars, and was tuning them up for racing; (he was going to enter the races himself, but Purcell talked him out of that, on the basis that he was too important to Dianetics to risk his life thus). He also devised the "Scientists of the World" scheme, about which I know little; Purcell never gave me any details, but merely said that it was a barefaced con, and it cost him a LOT of money to keep Hubbard out of jail. Every week, on Wednesday night, Hubbard would give, to students and staff, a lecture on the subject of the latest techniques he had developed from the ongoing research program (although Waldo Boyd said, "I don't know where he's doing the research; I never catch him doing any!") Wally was the Editor of Foundation Publications, and, as Jim Pinkham called him, "A Good Boy Scout."

Eventually, things came to a head; Purcell called a meeting of the Foundation Board of Directors, which included him, Hubbard, Boyd and Maloney, and explained that Hubbard was putting the new Foundation into bankruptcy faster than his penchant for profligate spending had put the old. He said that, from now on, Hubbard would not be able to dip into the Foundations' tills as he had been up to that time; that he would be put on a straight salary ($10,000.00 a month was the figure mentioned - surely not a mere pittance.) That for this he would be expected to give his usual Wednesday Night lecture. He would be free to conduct any research he wanted to, and his writings would, of course, continue to be published by the Foundation, at a standard 25% royalty, no advances. That he would be allowed to use the Foundation's facilities for private Auditing sessions, the proceeds of which he would keep. Surely a good deal, for any really sane individual, though not one calculated to make Hubbard a millionaire overnight, which was his stated goal. Hubbard screwed himself right into the light socket. Wally Boyd said, "You have not heard inventive swearing until you have heard Ron in a rage." When he came down, he said, "I QUIT !!!") and stormed off. I suppose he figured that the Foundations could not do without him. Had that been all, Dianetics would have survived his loss without a qualm. But later that night, he came back; he still had his keys, after all, and he stole all the tape recorders (twelve Ampexes!) all the tapes, not only session tapes (every Auditing room was wired), but also all his lecture tapes, which the Foundation rented to groups around the country; he also took three electric typewriters and the Addressograph; also the address files of every Dianeticist in the World! Really a clean sweep. You can't call it either burglary or breaking and entering, since he entered with his own key. He, Jim Elliott, and Mary Sue Whip were up most of the night carting stuff from the Foundation into a rented truck.

When Purcell arrived the next morning, he felt like he'd been kicked. "Okay, " said he to himself, "He wants to play hardball, we'll play hardball." He called his attorney, got Hubbard restrained six ways from Sunday, and sued for recovery of the Foundations' property. An apparently very contrite Hubbard brought back all but one typewriter and two tape recorders, and all of the tapes, but he kept copis of the mailing lists. After he left, Jack Maloney, being a suspicious soul, played a tape. Total hash. Have you ever tried to listen to a tape over which has been run a fairly powerful magnet? In one action, Hubbard had destroyed years' worth of lectures, some of which represented valuable contributions to Human knowledge, and all of which had represented a strong source of revenue to the Foundations, Hubbard's rental tapes being always in demand. Fortunately, a number of them were out circulating, and Hubbard was not able to destroy those. But the tape library was, to say the least, sorely depleted.

Two of the tapes were of signal importance; they were called "Black Dianetics I and II" They consisted of a discussion of things that you should, as an Auditor, NEVER EVER even think of doing. They ranged from elementary Mind Control techniques to advanced Brainwashing and enslaving techniques, and were totally vicious in concept and execution. Hubbard explained his presenting these techniques as "Things no Dianetically-oriented person will ever do, even by accident. They are presented in order that you may be warned; if anyone you encounter is using these techniques, get away as fast as you can, and notify the Foundation." I have no idea what he intended the Foundation to do about it, but I presume he had some means of punishing people set up; he certainly did later.

Anyway, Hubbard disappeared from Wichita and resurfaced in Phoenix. There followed a most interesting (in the ancient Chinese curse sense of the word), time. Jim Elliot speaking for Hubbard, (Reminiscent of "Helmuth speaking for Boskone" of E. E. Smith's Lensman series), wrote a whole lot of wild stuff, accusing the Wichita Foundation of everything but baby rape, and promising startling new developments from the newer researches of the Master, which would totally revolutionize all concepts of mental function. Rumors were afloat that Ron was working with two paranoid schizes who had contact with "The Whole Track," whatever that was. I think he was reading Dr. Victor Lindlahr's book, "The Fifty-Minute Hour," with particular reference to the chapter entitled "The Jet-Propelled Couch." He may also have been dipping into OAHSPE, a strange, "Channeled" work which alleged to explain the origin of all Universes and contain the underpinnings of all religions. It was full of "Space Warfare."

The Wichita Foundation, meanwhile, was endeavoring to put the pieces back together. It created the position of Director of Training (which had never existed before, Hubbard having fulfilled that function himself), and hired Gene Benton, a well-respected psychologist, who had done yeoman work for the L.A. Foundation. Imagine how Purcell felt when he discovered that Benton was teaching - not Dianetics, but Gestalt Psychology! So he was discharged, and Wayne Dunbar, a fairly well respected L.A. Auditor, was hired. That was another mistake, for which the Foundation paid dearly, but more of that in its proper place.

About this time, N.A. (Art) Coulter, M.D., an Endocrinologist in Columbus, Ohio, who had developed an idea he called "Semantic Telepathy," which was an early, crude, but effective means of reading "Body Language," surfaced with a technique for clearing psychological problems he called "Analytical Procedure." He gave it to the Foundation with the idea that they'd research it and determine its validity if any. Purcell named me as a member of the research team, and I went to work with the "newer" ideas, to see what was good about them. I will state unabashedly at this time, "Yes, I went with Wichita. In the face of ever wilder and more confusing stuff coming out of Phoenix, and the pronouncements from Wichita showing the probity of a group of sane individuals attempting to make a go of something they felt was good, of course I went with Wichita. Too bad about Hubbard, but he had refused to act in a businesslike manner, and besides, he'd given us enough to go on with. I did the research and found the newer techniques to be good; they did not replace Dianetics, but they DID help in refiling garbage without incident running. In later years, these techniques became "Synergetics" and their practitioners "Syngeneers," but they are not germane to this narrative, and will not be mentioned further.

Now, we must go back in time to the original (Elizabeth, N.J.) Foundation. Hubbard had done something Freud refused to do. In his work with people, Freud occasionally found them attempting to work in the area before birth. He believed this to be aberrant, and refused to work the area, calling it imaginary, and of small or no value. Hubbard, on the other hand, believed this material to be of prime importance; the Source of all Aberrant behavior. He called painful or painfully emotional incidents in this area "Prenatal Engrams" and declared that erasing the trauma associated with them would aid in removing a whole host of troubles to which Human beings were heir. He was right. Unfortunately, at the Elizabeth Foundation, when people were "Sent Earlier," to find the "First incident on the Chain," once in a while they ran into a past existence; this was okay by Hubbard, who felt that the cellular memory could be transmitted with the germ plasm, and indeed might be very powerful, since that particular aberrant memory would be a built-in part of every cell. Unfortunately, people were not only experiencing "Past Lives," they were experiencing "Past Deaths," and "Between Lives" periods as well. This particular class of phenomena was not one that Hubbard, with his Engineering training, could stomach. He actually "Fired" students and staff-members who Insisted" on running 'garbage' like this. We, in Fair Oaks, were rather more pragmatic. After one very unfortunate early experience in which the client, having run into a prior existence which was running in full color, sound, and other elements of reality, INVALIDATED the episode, saying it must be a "Lie Factory" and terminated the session. This particular person thereupon shut down all perceptics and was never again able to "Run" an "Engram" "Properly." So we made it a solid rule, "No matter what material the person is working on, if he appears to be discharging trauma from it, regardless of how outlandish it may seem, RUN IT RIGHT INTO THE GROUND! If the material is brought up, it must be for a reason; maybe it is symbolic of material which is too highly charged to work with; maybe it is valid. We have no criteria by which to judge."

Hubbard was not that generous. He simply could not accept the existence of the Human Soul - at first. Fortunately, being of an Engineering mind, he eventually came to the same conclusion we had, "If it works, use it, whether you believe it or not." I am, quite frankly, not sure he EVER believed it, but BOYOBOY did he ever USE it!

About this time, Volney Matheson, a Chiropractor in Los Angeles, invented a gadget called an "Electropsychometer." Hubbard got hold of it and promptly claimed he invented it; I don't understand why Matheson never sued, but maybe there was some "Quid pro Quo" involved; not knowing, can't say. In any event, Hubbard claimed it was the absolute final word in uncovering hidden trauma. Actually, it was a reasonably sensitive skin galvanometer. If you insist on doing things like this, you can get all the same effects using a $35.00 multimeter, and test circuits, too; but this was supposed to be the last word in detecting "Psychic Charge." Myself, I believe the E-meter, as it is now called, would make a better boat anchor than an instrument for detecting anything about the state of the person's mind, and since it only weighs a couple of pounds, you can imagine what a good anchor it would make. However, Hubbardian Auditors have abdicated the first function of what Hubbard originally proclaimed were the attributes of a good Auditor; namely, that he/she should continually observe the actions of the client, getting clues as to what to do next from those actions. Now, they don't even look at the client; they look at the dial of the machine, and make judgments based on what the benighted and possibly misbegotten machine "says."

Since I can make the machine "Say" anything I want it to, by merely varying the pressure with which I am holding the tomato sauce cans they use for electrodes, and my son, who is a fairly powerful telekinetic, can make it "say" anything he wants it to without even touching the cans, I really have strong doubts as to the validity of anything the machine may "Say."

Furthermore, the early machines, on which the original "Research" was done, had two 12AT7 tubes in the circuit, only half of each of which were being used. The other half constituted an untuned transmitter, with a range of about fifty yards. Several times, to skeptical Scientologists, I demonstrated that you could put a high resistance shunt across the cans on one machine, put a person across the cans on the other machine, and watch BOTH machines react as you questioned the person! As I kept saying, "Okay, you've got a building full of these pieces of junk, all of which are operating at the same time, and each of them affecting all the others; just how much validity can you ascribe to the actions of ANY ONE of them?" They never got the message. With the modern transistorized machines that problem may - or may not - have been corrected, because I still believe it to be possible that they can pick up signals from Radio Stations, Cellular 'phones, and God alone knows what; at least, the last one I saw, a neat little transistorized model, still "hunted," "froze," and "bopped," when I put a 4 megohm resistor across it and centered it. Maybe that's been corrected by now, but the sloppy way the Scientologists do everything else causes me to doubt it. The point is that if the instrument is suspect, all of the data you gather using it are also suspect. For that reason alone, ALL of Scientology as it is currently practiced, can be scrapped. It may be totally true, although I have some difficulty in believing aberrations caused by something that happened eighty seven Octillion years ago, give or take a few quintillion. We barely have time to alleviate the traumata of THIS lifetime! And taking as gospel anything an instrument "says" is not only suspect, but dumb, on the order of scrambling jets on the radar return from a high-flying flock of swallows. However, I am categorically willing to state that if Scientology as it is currently practiced, and as it has been practiced for the past thirty years were simply abolished, the World would be a better place. However, back to Phoenix.

The Phoenix gang at that time consisted of Hubbard, Elliot, Mary Sue Whip, (whom Ron later married), Alphia Hart, and Ross Lamoureaux. Hubbard later destroyed, or tried to destroy, them all, except Mary Sue. It did not pay to help Hubbard when he was down, because your presence later on reminded him of how things were. (If you think I am painting a picture of a severely aberrated individual, I am. He was. He was also a major genius, in developing ways to contact (or create) psychological phenomena. Genius is frequently mad.

The first two totally "Scientological" works appeared. They were "Scientology 8-80" and "Scientology 8-8008." It hadn't become a church, just yet. Elliot also said that in order to raise some cash, Hubbard was offering for sale the only existing copy of the book "Excalibur," which, it was alleged, contained everything there was to know about the operation of the mind, but which was too much for most minds to handle; it was supposed to have driven insane the few people who had read it. Anyone who wanted it could have it for the payment of $15,000.00 cash. The way it was advertised was not exactly calculated to make anyone buy it, and indeed, I suspect that it never existed. I am, however, fairly certain that for $15,000.00 he'd have written it!

At this point, I gave up on Scientology. True or not, it was too unsane, insane, illogical, and unbusinesslike for me to swallow. I corresponded at length with Purcell, and continued working on the research with Analytical Procedure. As a sort of valediction, it was then I wrote

The Scientologists' Prayer
Our Father, which art in Phoenix,
Hubbard be thy name.
Thy hair be red, Thy books be read,
In Kansas, as in Arizona,
Give us each week,
A new technique,
And forgive us our faults, As we mess up our clients.
And lead us not into bankruptcy, But deliver us from MONEY,
For thine is the Thetan, And the Engram,
And the writings forever, Amen.

(I was not dearly beloved in Phoenix, but I didn't become a non-person until a LOT later.)

Don Purcell apparently liked the things I was telling him, about my own philosophy, etc., and so he invited me to come to Wichita to be his own personal Auditor for a while.

I found out later, (much too late, actually), that he was dissatisfied with what Dunbar was doing, and was grooming me to become Director of Training, if I was as represented. I was, but it didn't do me any good. As it was later pieced together from what Alphia Hart told me, Dunbar was Hubbard's Man in Wichita, with the prime goal of destroying the Wichita Foundations (which had reorganized, leaving the name "Hubbard" off the title). One of my first jobs after arrival in Wichita was to devise the letterhead for the Foundations. (Everyone who COULD do something, DID it; no Prima Donnas need apply). The Foundation also changed its procedures; the degrees now granted were "DA" and "CDA" for "Dianetic Auditor" and "Certified Dianetic Auditor," the one for graduates of the training course, the other for HDA's who had some experience, came back and got retreaded in the newer techniques, and got the "H" removed. Anyway, Don liked my style, and things were going along swimmingly; I was even commissioned to write a book for the Foundation concerning some techniques my father and I had developed. Then the roof fell in. Wayne Dunbar and one of the students did as neat a job of sabotage on me as has ever been done. Using some Hubbardian techniques, he got the student to claim that I had used "Pain-Drug-Hypnosis" on him, and committed certain unspeakable acts. Of course I was innocent, and demanded the right to confront them, but Don felt that the student was in too psychologically delicate a state to take a confrontation. I demanded the right to confront Dunbar and ask him just what the HELL he thought he was doing, but Purcell said that MY psychological state was such that I would probably beat the crap out of Dunbar, and the Foundation couldn't stand for that. In retrospect, he was probably right. Alphia Hart told me later that Hubbard had orchestrated the whole thing; not that he had anything against me, personally, but that since Dunbar was his agent in Wichita, he was to use any means necessary to destroy or discredit anyone whom he saw as a threat to his continued existence as Hubbard's point man. He gave Dunbar several means of doing it; using a student as a hypnotic subject and later having him "Run" the material installed was only one such means, but it was the one used on me. Of course, naming me as Director of Training was out of the question, since regardless of my guilt or innocence, the FACT of the accusation was always there. I suppose I have the right to be annoyed with Hubbard, but I have accepted what happened to me as just another one of his ways of doing business. After all, it was nothing personal.

I didn't even know about the lost opportunity until nearly a year later. Meanwhile, Dunbar messed up a case something fierce, which gave Purcell the excuse to fire him. He named Dick Weigand, a Staff Auditor, to the position, and things were never the same thereafter. I have often thought that had I actually been given the position, the Wichita Foundation would have lasted a lot longer than it did, because I am something Dick, with all due credit to his skill as an Auditor, never was; I am a capable Manager. People who work for me are fiercely loyal to me, and I can see as far through a ladder as most people. Anyway, I had become totally disenchanted with the Wichita Foundation's way of doing things, and I could not, in good conscience, go with Hubbard, who was sounding less and less sane, and more and more strident all the time. Shortly after the Second Dianetic Conference (in Denver), which I attended, the first "Dianetic Clear," who had been announced with much fanfare, was revealed to be a fraud. The man was brilliant, no doubt about that, and he took his Auditor in completely. That's a long story, and has nothing in particular to do with Scn, so we'll skip it. I had the opportunity to go to Morocco as the chief Chemist for a major Air Force Materiel Depot, with an Area of responsibility considerably larger than the Continental U.S., so I went. I severed all ties with Dianetics and Scientology; the idols in that field had proven, (in Alphia Hart's felicitous phrase), "To have Feet of Clay and Heads to match," and I had no desire to continue my association with either. Instead, my wife and I engaged in our own research, and came up with several signal advances. Of course, there was no escaping the news; I followed Hubbard's career 'from afar,' so to speak. He apparently got up to some of his old tricks in Phoenix, selling a few intensive auditing sessions for $1500.00 each, (an intensive was forty hours of Auditing in a week), doing a case evaluation, and turning the case over to a student. A few people, who felt defrauded by this process, sued. Hubbard left Arizona a half jump ahead of the Process server, but not before he did his customary hatchet job on Ross Lamoreaux and Alphia Hart. It took Alphia a couple of years to recover, Lamoreaux never did, and nobody ever heard of Elliot after Hubbard left. He and Mary Sue went to Spain, to England, to Australia, to Sea, and, (some people averred), to Hell. At least, some of the methods he came up with were definitely NOT made in Heaven!

Someplace in here Scientology declared itself to be a Religion, and Hubbard awarded Himself the "Degree" of D. Scn. (Doctor of guess what?) Of course, he was kind about it; for a mere $2,500.00 or so, you, too could get the Doctorate in Scientology, after submitting yourself to certain "Processes," which is what they were being called. Saint Hill, East Grinstead, England, became international headquarters on land, while the SEA ORG, which was what Hubbard's yacht was called, was Universal Headquarters.

Scientology was one of the two living religions which proclaimed that its titular deity was a living man. Sun Myung Moon didn't get away with it, either. At least Hubbard was smart enough to stay at sea, where the Authorities could not get hold of him, although warrants for his arrest on sight were sworn out in several Countries. He did not, as far as I know, set foot on land for the last ten years of his life. Of course, those last ten years were somewhat scandalous. In the first place, he quit writing, researching, or doing anything else Dianetic or Scientological. Those last ten years were devoted to writing the World's greatest Science Fiction Story. Great or not, it was certainly the longest! While people on land were sweating Hubbard's delay in coming up with the details for O.T. VII and VIII, he was living the life of a Roman Emperor, which is nice work if you can get it, and writing when he felt the urge. Frankly, I found "Battlefield Earth" to be all but unreadable, but lots of other people liked it, or said they did...

Anything Scientological written during that time was mostly Staffed, and then signed off by the Great Man, usually without even being read. After all, these people were all varying degrees of Operating Thetan, and therefore were theoretically the equal, in practice, of Hubbard Himself, as long as they didn't try to take credit for anything they did. Actually, Hubbard had worked himself into the position of being the World's greatest Scapegoat; since he insisted on taking all of the credit unto himself, guess where the blame was affixed when things started to unravel?

A few terms need to be clarified, here. No longer could one speak of "Releases" and "Clears." Now, one was a various "Stage" Release, up through 8, if memory serves, then one became a MEST clear, one whose Theta was no longer enturbulated by being messed up with Matter, Energy, Space, and Time, then one became a theta clear, then a cleared theta clear, then a grade 1 through 8 theta clear.

Then, if one's money held out (each one of these "states" cost about $1500.00 plus room and board), and if one exhibited a slavish adoration of Hubbard, one might get into the Operating Thetan category, at prices ranging from $2500.00 up, the higher the fewer. It was estimated that if you owned a quarter of a million dollars free and clear, that was just about enough to carry you from "wog" or "aberree" through O.T. VI. Well, unfortunately, I have met a few of these people. A more totally screwed up bunch you'd never want to encounter. Not ONE of the various grades of "Clear" I have encountered would meet the criteria for a decent Book 1 "Release!" Also, every Scn-ist I have ever met has what is called, by outsiders, "The Look." It is a fixed maniacal stare that would make Jesus Christ Himself nervous. But that was later.

When we came back from Morocco, I got hold of some old dianetic friends, to find out what had been happening. Some had gone with Scn, and some had not, and they were fast enemies, which I found interesting. I did some Scn-ical "Processes," to find out what they were like. I "Put that body in that chair," for a wearisome time, and "Felt the floor with my feet," for another wearisome time, and "Held the corners of the room" forever, watched a movie Ron had recently made, in which he made the valid, but scarcely revolutionary point that communication required two people, "Terminals" he called them, who acknowledged each other's existence; he then explained "Communication" at stultifying length, but I defy anyone who listened to that speech not to know what Communication was, even if he had the sneaking suspicion that the great man didn't really do all that much "Communicating" himself. A prominent San Francisco Dianeticist, whom I shall not name because she may still be alive, and hence in some danger if her remarks became known, said, "The only problem I have with the Scientologists is that none of them knows how to confront SEX; all they can do is talk dirty." And talk dirty they do; Scatological lingo is not only normal, it is encouraged; the idea is that if LITERALLY ANYTHING can offend you, you are "OBVIOUSLY" aberrated. To the clear, everything is "flat." During our sojourn overseas, Don Purcell had died, the Wichita Foundation had folded because of the lack of a charismatic leader, Ron took back Dianetics, which he had first said that He had not invented, the credit went to a thousand generations of thinking men, then gave to the world, then sold to Purcell. He had rewritten the first book, (or, as I believe, had had it rewritten) so that it gave all sorts of credit to Scn, which was not even mentioned, except in the Handbook for Preclears, originally.

Somehow, we got back on the mailing list. Hubbard, knowing my wife, (she had been one of the few people he actually hired at the L.A. Foundation as a Staff Auditor, because she was one of the few people who knew instinctively how to Audit; Oh, yes - that was another of the early Scn publications, as was What to Audit), and knowing me by reputation as being tops in the Book Auditor line, offered us the Sacramento Scientology Franchise; It was only going to cost us $25,000.00 up front, plus ten per cent of the gross receipts. (Note that; GROSS RECEIPTS. In other words, we would take the rent, furnishings, supplies, etc., out of our share.) She countered with an offer I thought was brilliant; "You pay my way to Saint Hill, acquaint me with all the processes, give me the Franchise gratis, set me up in a building of my choosing in Sacramento, stock it and furnish it, and I'll pay you FIFTY per cent of the NET."

That was not the way Hubbard liked to do business, so we never heard from him again. The funny thing is, if he'd done that with a lot of competent people, he'd probably have made even more money, with less hassle, than he did. However, we still didn't become non-persons, even though I made no bones of saying, "As far as I am concerned, Dianetics is a valid theory, therapy, and philosophy. Scientology is a sham, a scam, and a rip-off." I suppose Ron felt that I was no danger to him, as long as I was honest about my feelings, and didn't try to compete. After all, a lot of people don't like Catholicism. But then came the Greenes. Some people named Greene took the Sacramento franchise and ran with it. We were living in Lincoln, only thirty miles away, and our daughter was going to Sierra College. One of the students - a lovely girl - who was a friend of hers, had been brutally savaged - mentally - by a Scientologist who was allegedly trying to get her over an unfortunate love affair. She was, to put it kindly, an absolute basket case, and her parents were talking Institution. Our daughter got her to us, and we, using Dianetic techniques and some of the more powerful methods we had developed while we were overseas, brought her back to reality. She developed her own mission; namely, to salvage the wreckage the Greenes were making of a lot of people. She brought them to us, and we, who still liked to help people and accepted repairing Scn's wreckage as a challenge, used everything we knew and a lot of things we invented on the spot, to clean them up and restore them to a degree of sanity they had not known since before they encountered Scn. Apparently the Greenes got wind of what was being done and who was doing it, because one day I received, in the mail, an official - looking NOTICE. E[xxx] G. R[xxx], Jr., and his wife, J[xxx] M. R[xxx], nee J[xxx] M. W[xxx], HDA, are summoned to an ETHICS hearing at -" and the address given was that of the Scientology HQ in San Francisco. The charge was "Practicing Black Dianetics."
Oh, Brother.

I replied. Boy, did I reply. I was somewhat worried that the paper might catch fire before I got it out of the typewriter, but I replied.
""EXTRA ! EXTRA ! MAN BITES DOG WHILE LATTER IS DROWNED BY FIRE HYDRANT! FORTY THOUSAND ESKIMOS FREEZE AT EQUATOR! AIRCRAFT LANDS UPSIDE DOWN, FIFTY PASSENGERS AND CREW DISEMBARK WITHOUT INJURY! SCIENTOLOGIST ACCUSES THE R[xxx]S OF BEING UNETHICAL!" Of all the above, only the last one is really UNBELIEVABLE!"

"Look, Steiner," (Bill Steiner was the signature on the letter), "I heard the two tapes, "Black Dianetics I and II" before I left the United States to go to Morocco. Can you imagine my horror and shock on my return to the U.S., to find that these two tapes were the major armamentarium of Scientology? Can you understand how I felt when I realized that the very Mind Control and Brainwashing technology which Hubbard said NO reputable Dianeticist would ever use were the means by which you bastards enslaved people and got them to release large quantities of MONEY? For you to accuse me of using Black Dianetics is tantamount to the Witches' cauldron calling the floor model of a Pyrex dish opaque. I will gladly come down to San Francisco, but not to any Ethics Hearing. For the Ethical to submit an adjudication of his Ethics to the Unethical is infra dig. I will come to San Francisco for $500.00 a day on a $5,000.00 guarantee to teach some of you people how the mind operates, which you will find useful, I am sure. I will do this provided you also pay the expenses of my son-in-law, a S.F. County Deputy Sheriff, who will act as my bodyguard, (I REALLY TRUST you people!) AND that you let me see motion pictures of you throwing all those unmentionable monstrosities called EMeters into the Bay. They are perfectly useless, as you know very well, and it is high time you admitted it. And get the Greenes off my back; if I ever hear that they have accused me or my wife of practicing 'Black Dianetics,' I shall sue them for slander, libel, defamation of character, and everything else I can think of; I'll get Scientology PUBLICITY in Sacramento like you never DREAMED of!"

There was more, but you get the idea. Strangely enough, there was no response from Steiner; but we continued to repair the Greene's wreckage, and never heard another peep from the Greenes. I guess he was happy enough that there was someone around who could clean up after him, especially since we didn't charge! That was the thing that torqued his jaws most, I guess; we didn't charge, because I made a good enough living as a Chemist so that I didn't have to squeeze the last dime out of people who couldn't afford it, whereas that was his basic Modus Operandi, AS DIRECTED FROM SAINT HILL! (Basically, I am very happy we didn't get the franchise, even on our terms! We'd have had to do violence to people's psyches that I find totally repugnant.) Amusingly enough, last summer, we met a woman who had been Greene's mistress; (Apparently he had shed his wife someplace upon the way, and had become an upper echelon wheel in Scn.) He died in her arms of a massive coronary - and he was an Operating Thetan VII, as bestowed by Hubbard Himself; you know; the kind of Entity who eats mountains for breakfast, and creates Universes on a whim. She had absolutely nothing good to say about Greene, Hubbard, Scn, or any of its adjuncts. Where I am a bit annoyed, she was rabid. She had let him know early on that she was NOT grist for Scientology's mill, and he had agreed; their relationship was strictly physical. So she got a view of the seamy underside of Scientology that would have been sickening if I had not already been knowledgeable. You see, the people who run the show are, like the Hierarchy of most religions, totally disenchanted; they know the nuts and bolts of the Religion; since they know the tricks by which they keep the Faithful faithful, some of them even become sour on God. The most devout Atheist I ever knew was a Jesuit scholar. So an Operating Thetan VII (Equivalent to a Cardinal) knows exactly what lies must be told, what tricks must be played, what brainwashing techniques must be used, to keep the cash flow coming in. Because, in the last analysis, the GOD of Scientology is, like so many other, more effete Faiths, MONEY. Scn is, however, the only Religion I know of which demands MORE than 10 per cent. Scn wants it ALL, and once you have ceased being a money cow capable of being milked, they drop you wherever you are, regardless of the shape you are in. The worst of it is that most of the people they abuse spend all their money, get left high and dry, and scramble like Hell to make more money so that they can get back on the Scn treadmill. In this respect, Scn has caused more harm than any good it has ever done can outweigh; it is more addictive than Crack, more damaging than Heroin.

Yet, at base, it is capable of doing great good, and in some isolated instances, has.

In fact, if it would ever get over its preoccupation with MONEY, get rid of the more damaging of its technology, scrap all those useless pieces of garbage called E-meters, and get back to the basic principle of people helping people that Hubbard started out with, who knows? It might become a Major World Religion, capable of REALLY helping a LOT of people, instead of contributing to the unearned wealth of a few.

If you really want to know more, from a victim's perspective, I suggest you find a copy of INSIDE SCIENTOLOGY: Robert Kaufman, Olympia Press, London and New York, 1972; ISBN 7004 0110 5 It will give you his story; I, in vastly abbreviated form, have given you mine. He went in; I stayed out. He got out, more power to him; while I played St. George to Scn's Dragon, he went to St. Hill. His work has a pretty decent bibliography which will lead you to more; I am afraid that I deep-sixed all of my Scn. publications a long time ago; I only keep Science Fiction I like to re-read.

I have, of course, heard the tales; stories of murders of "Subversives and Traitors" as performed by the "White Shirts" of the Sea Org. I know of a few suicides by people who could not take the pain of ostracism - of being declared a "Non-Person," and snapped. I can testify to the harm done by bringing a person just so far along the road, getting him hung up in some pretty heavy material, and then deserting him because he can't pay any more. Scn has done some - to my way of thinking - pretty criminal things; on the other hand, it has a dynamite way of getting people off drugs; "Alanon" is its baby, and does a lot of good. I guess, on balance, that the run of the mill Scientologist, who is not hung up on a power trip, is a pretty decent, caring person. The ones who go for the higher grades of "Clear" - and no-one has as yet shown me ONE Book One Clear - I believe that there is, and can, by the nature of things, BE no such animal, but it's a valid goal anyway - get caught up in a Power Trip that can literally drive them insane. I have no truck with such people, and when I see someone with "The Look" - (in the Middle Ages, they called it "The Evil Eye"), I head for the nearest exit.

I hope this does you some good; please tell me, if so. If you need more, or if you enjoyed this abbreviated presentation, again, let me know. Obviously, I have only scratched the surface of what I know, and I was not privy to much of what was going on; I do, however, feel that much of the criticism of what Scn has become is based upon fragmentary knowledge, and that if people - including Scientologists - knew some of the background, it might become a valid religion. As A.E. van Vogt said, "There are phenomena in Scientology which bear investigating."

Phenomena? You'd better believe it! But that's an area I don't want to enter. Let someone else tell you about that.

yours,

E[xxx] G. R[xxx], Jr.