From: cultxprt@indirect.com (Jeff Jacobsen)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: CofS critique part 2
Date: 24 May 1994 15:36:24 GMT
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                           THE HUBBARD IS BARE        

PART 1
                            by Jeff Jacobsen
                               PO Box 3541
                               Scottsdale, AZ  85271

     copyright 1992 by Jeff Jacobsen
     may be reprinted so long as it is kept in its entirety and not 
     edited.
          
      
     
     
     
     REVIEW OF HUBBARD'S THEORIES
     
     
        First I must tell you that there is NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE for
     most of Hubbard's theories, despite his claim that they are
     "scientific facts".  Secondly, Hubbard had no academic background
     to come up with theories of the mind, despite his false grandiose
     claims of world travel and incredible education.  Finally, the
     actual scientific community and in fact the real world all
     dispute with credible evidence almost all of Hubbard's theories. 
     Despite this, Hubbard still has a following.  And since he and
     the Church of Scientology have placed his teachings into the
     marketplace of ideas, it is useful to all interested parties to
     have these ideas critiqued.  But first, a brief overview of those
     ideas.
       If you already understand dianetics and Scientology doctrine,
     you may wish to skip this chapter as it is a general overview of
     these.  Most of this booklet deals with the teachings from the
     book Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health and the basic
     ideas that sprang from this work.  If you are not clear on
     dianetics, you should read this section in order to follow large
     portions of this booklet.  I will be brief yet concise enough for
     the reader to follow the deeper discussions.  Words underlined
     are Hubbard's terms that you should familiarize yourself with. 
     It is of course helpful to read the book Dianetics before
     continuing.
        L. Ron Hubbard, author of the book Dianetics: The Modern
     Science of Mental Health and founder of the Church of
     Scientology, was a science-fiction writer before penning the book
     that would launch his fame.  Dianetics is a self-help book
     published in 1950 which claimed to include new and unique
     theories on how the mind works.  Hubbard claimed that this work
     was totally unprecedented;  "...Dianetics was the bolt from the
     blue."1  Mankind was destroying himself by various means "without
     any idea of what caused Man to behave as he did or what made him
     sick or well.  THE answer was, and still is, Dianetics."2  
           So there would be no doubt as to the originality of his
     ideas, Hubbard wrote that "dianetics borrowed nothing but was
     first discovered and organized; only after the organization was
     completed and a technique evolved was it compared to existing
     information."3  According to Hubbard, some philosophers of the
     past helped provide the foundation of dianetics, but the
     remaining research had been done "what the navigator calls, 'off
     the chart'."4
        Dianetics became a New York Times Best seller in 1950, and has
     since sold many millions of copies.  
        Dianetics is a "science of mental health" as the full title of
     Hubbard's 1950 book declares.  The main theory of dianetics is
     that the human has two minds, the Analytical mind and the
     Reactive mind.  The Analytical mind is a perfectly working
     device, and life would be wonderful were it not for the Reactive
     mind lousing up the workings of the Analytical mind.  The
     Reactive mind stores memories of events in our life when we were
     unconscious and in pain.  These memories are perfect recordings
     of the events, but the problem occurs because they are not stored
     in the Analytical mind.  These memories can be triggered or
     restimulated by events in our environment that the Reactive mind
     interprets as similar to one of its memories.  When the Reactive
     mind spots such a similarity, it attempts to take over from the
     Analytical mind.  This is a problem because the Reactive mind is
     "moronic" and screws things up horribly and disrupts the proper
     activities of the Analytical mind.
        The goal of dianetics is to re-file these memories, called
     Engrams, into the Analytical mind, where they can be properly
     indexed and utilized.  The Reactive mind is an evolutionary
     throwback to how animals think, and is therefore a weaker area of
     the mind in the human.  
        An example of an Engram in the book Dianetics is of a child
     whose father beat his mother while the child was still in the
     womb (Engrams can be recorded from conception on in dianetics). 
     The child was knocked unconscious from the beating and was in
     pain when the father yelled "Take that!  Take it, I tell you! 
     You've got to take it!"5  When the child grew up and something
     (perhaps the sound of the father yelling) occurred within the
     child's surroundings that was similar to the recordings in the
     Engram, this keyed in or triggered the Engram, and the Reactive
     mind would take over, effectively shutting down the Analytical
     mind to a degree and controlling actions based instead on the
     moronic interpretation of statements made in the Engram.  Thus
     this child, because of the "Take it!" statements in the Engram,
     becomes a kleptomaniac.
        The goal of dianetics is to remove all Engrams from the
     Reactive mind and clear them out, transferring these memories
     into the Analytical mind where they can be properly utilized and
     processed.  When the Reactive mind is emptied, or cleared, of all
     Engrams, the person is declared a CLEAR, and from then on the
     person is able to utilize his or her mind to the utmost,
     operating on a heretofore unknown level of abilities.
        Engrams are found through auditing, where one person asks
     another questions about his past until an event with potential
     for an Engram is encountered.  If an Engram seems to exist, the
     event is then gone over several times until the auditor is
     satisfied that the Engram memory has now left the Reactive mind
     and has been filed in the Analytical mind (see the section on
     Clear for more details).
        Auditors are the practitioners that take you throught the
     dianetics process.  They search your past by asking you
     questions, looking for engrams to eradicate.  Auditors do not
     have to be trained much at all, according to the book Dianetics.6 
     So long as a person is reasonably intelligent and communicative,
     he can audit after reading Dianetics.
        After Dianetics was written, Volney Mattheison introduced
     Hubbard to a galvanic skin response meter.  Hubbard decided to
     use this device as a tool to find Engrams.  This device, which
     appeared in 1941 as a "new fun-provoking stunt for parties,"7
     simply registers the differing conduction of a weak electrical
     flow through the body which can differ by how hard a person
     squeezes the cans held in each hand or how much the person is
     sweating.  Hubbard called this device an E-meter.  In any event,
     the goal was still to re-file all memories in the Reactive mind
     to the Analytical mind.
        The goal of dianetics is to Clear the Planet, i.e. to process
     everyone on earth to the state of Clear.
        This, however, is not the end of it.  While your mind may now
     be running at an optimal level, your soul, known in Scientology
     as a Thetan, is still troubled.  Dianetics has supposedly fixed
     the problems of our mind, but now the religion of Scientology
     must enter to cure the problems of our soul.  Every person is not
     just a person with a mental problem, but is also a reincarnated
     spiritual being who has lived at least millions of years.  Each
     of us has experienced an identical horrible event whereby other
     Thetans were fused on to our own Thetan, and these interfere with
     the optimum activities of the main Thetan (our own soul). 
     Scientology processing teaches the Thetan how to rid itself of
     these Body Thetans that are attached to us somewhat like leeches,
     and also how to operate on a more efficient level.
        L. Ron Hubbard claims to have been the first person to
     discover the truths of both dianetics and Scientology.  Without
     his Tech, or methods to eradicate these hitherto undiscovered
     impediments to life, there is no hope for mankind.
     
        All the above has been deciphered from about 16 books by
     Hubbard, over 45 hours of taped lectures,  countless articles on
     and by the Church of Scientology, and discussions with several
     current and ex-members.  Hubbard is often times repetitive and
     undecipherable, so understanding some of his ideas is difficult. 
     Take this sample of his writing;
     
         In other words, Life, faced with a non-understanding thing, 
         would feel itself balked, for Life, being Understanding, 
         could not then become non-understanding without assuming the 
         role of being incomprehensible.  Thus it is that the seeker 
         after secrets is trapped into being a secret himself.8
     
        It is this sort of stuff that makes Hubbard exasperating to
     try to follow.
     
        The above is a brief review of a complex subject.  There are
     many more points to this teaching, but I will attempt to point
     out the intricacies when needed for the reader to follow my
     arguments.
     
     
     1 L. Ron Hubbard, DIANETICS: THE ORIGINAL THESIS (Los Angeles;
     Church of Scientology of California Publications Organization,
     1951) outside back jacket
     2 Ibid. 
     3 L. Ron Hubbard, DIANETICS, THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH
     (Los Angeles; Bridge Publications, 1987) p.340
     4 DIANETICS, p.400.
     5 DIANETICS, p.281
     6 DIANETICS, P.225
     7 Giant Home Workshop Manual, 1941.  See The Survivor, volume 8,
     p.1   P.O. Box 95, Alpena, AR  72611
     8 L. Ron Hubbard, DIANETICS 55! (Los Angeles; Bridge
     Publications, Inc.,  1955) p.41
     
     
     


--
cultxprt@indirect.com
Jeff Jacobsen
PO Box 3541
Scottsdale, AZ  85271      Here I stand - I can do no more.



