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When Hubbard established the Sea Org he publicly declared that he had relinquished his management responsibilities. According to Miller, this was not true. He received daily telex messages from Scientology organizations around the world reporting their statistics and income.
- Overview
- Hubbard’s early life and beliefs
Scientology, international movement that emerged in the 1950s in response to the thought of L. Ron Hubbard (in full Lafayette Ronald Hubbard; b. March 13, 1911, Tilden, Nebraska, U.S.—d. January 24, 1986, San Luis Obispo, California), a writer who introduced his ideas to the general public in Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (1950). H...
Hubbard attended George Washington University, Washington, D.C. (1930–32), but left to pursue other interests without completing his degree. He married in 1933 and settled down to a career as a writer. His writing spanned various genres—from westerns to horror and science fiction—and he was a popular contributor to pulp magazines. Hubbard had also developed an interest in exploring. In 1940 he was elected to the Explorer’s Club and during the winter of 1940–41 was awarded his licenses as a Master of Steam and Motor Vessels and Master of Sail Vessels; ships would later play a critical role in the operation of the Scientology church.
During World War II Hubbard served in naval intelligence in Australia and aboard several vessels off the U.S. coast. Hubbard ended the war as a patient at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California, apparently suffering from several war-related ailments, and it was during his hospital stay that he gave systematic consideration to his earlier ruminations on the human problem. After the war he began a personal quest for a “science of the mind.” His initial conclusions appeared in The Original Thesis (1948), prior to a more mature presentation in Dianetics. These and Hubbard’s other Scientology writings, both published and unpublished, are considered scriptures by the church.
Like many thinkers before him, Hubbard believed that the basic principle of human existence is survival. Even before the publication of Dianetics, Hubbard wrote, “I suddenly realized that survival was the pin on which you could hang the rest of this with adequate and ample proof…[and] that life, all life, is trying to survive.” Actions that support survival are good and yield pleasure, he argued; countersurvival actions are destructive and perpetuate negative states. Each individual, he believed, possesses a mind that under normal conditions operates analytically to make survival-oriented judgments. However, when the mind is not fully functioning, a part of it, the reactive mind, takes over. It stores images of experiences, called engrams, which contain not only strong negative emotional content but also unrelated elements of the experience. A later encounter with these unrelated elements may bring forth negative emotional reactions from the stored engram and lead to countersurvival actions.
To help people bring engrams to their consciousness, confront them, and thereby eliminate them, Hubbard developed auditing, a one-on-one counseling process in which a counselor, or auditor, facilitates individuals’ handling of their engrams. A key aspect of this process is use of an E-meter, an instrument that measures the strength of a small electrical current that passes through the body of the person undergoing auditing. According to church teachings, E-meter readings indicate changes in emotional states that allow the identification of stored engrams. In Dianetics the goal was to rid the mind of engrams, and individuals were said to have reached a major goal when they became “clear.”
What pushed Hubbard from Dianetics to Scientology was his understanding, among other things, of the experience of “exteriorization,” the separation of individual consciousness from the body. This experience allowed him to see the spiritual self, the thetan, as the true self that can exist apart from the body. He also came to believe that thetans had inhabited other bodies before their present one, a concept not unlike that of reincarnation in Eastern religions. The new focus on the thetan led Hubbard to postulate a comprehensive vision of the cosmos that had much in common with Eastern faiths and closely resembled the western Gnostic tradition.
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When Hubbard established the Sea Org he publicly declared that he had relinquished his management responsibilities over the Church of Scientology. In fact, he received daily telex messages from Scientology organizations around the world reporting their statistics and income.
While much of the reaction to HBO's new documentary "Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief" has been focused on the shocking allegations of abuse and manipulation within the church,...
- Jason Guerrasio
Criticism against Scientology in England caused Hubbard to try Rhodesia for a while, until he was forced to leave there. Returning to England, Hubbard acquired three ships. In 1968, foreign Scientologists were prohibited from entering the United Kingdom and Hubbard was ejected from the country.
Sep 12, 2024 · He eventually moved away from Dianetics’ focus on the mind to a more religious approach to the human condition, which he called Scientology. After founding the Church of Scientology in 1954, Hubbard struggled to gain recognition of it as a legitimate religion and was often at odds with tax authorities and former members who accused the church ...
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This Element surveys the history and practice of Scientology studies over the past sixty years and offers resources for scholars and students moving forward. Section 1 reviews the history of academic research on the subject from 1958 to the present day.
