From International Viewpoints (IVy) Issue 2 - August 1991
See Home Page at http://www.ivymag.org/
L. Ron Hubbard Man or More than Man?
by Bob Ross, USA(1)
I read the article in Astounding Stories in May 1950. This
was a very exciting article but I was not sure it was not a hoax,
so I looked in the phone book and found that the Hermitage House
Publishing company actually existed. I called them and they said
the book was being published. I immediately got on a subway train
and went to their offices where I found other people also trying to
get the book. But, it wasn't yet off the presses. I left money,
to get my copy and got mine on May 9, 1950.
A few months later I saw a demonstration by an Elizabeth student,
of putting a young woman through a dental extraction under gas, this
made many things in the book more real to me. I also audited and
was audited. In December of 1950 I went to Israel with 50 copies
of DMSMH. That got me in touch with many people and Dianetics got
going in Israel.
I decided after two years and 4,000 hours of auditing that Dianetics
worked but that my expertise and knowledge left much to be desired. I
had achieved one medical 'miracle' by getting a woman (Emmy)
walking who had been bedridden for five years, and who had been given
up by three medical specialists, an internist, a surgeon, and a
psychiatrist. It
took 2,000 hours over a period of 2 years (I could do it a lot faster
today). She did not dance, but she walked for five years after that.
Past Lives, Psychiatrists
In November 1950, a month before I left New York for Israel I was
told in a whisper, in a corner, as a deep dark secret, that if
you ran dianetics long enough you ran into past deaths. At that time,
one would become outcast from the psychological community for talking
about such things. Freud, himself, didn't even acknowledge the
actuality
of recalling life in the womb (Prenatal engrams). He called them
'fantasies
of life in the womb.' Jung spoke not of memories of past lives,
but of archetypes. To actually consider that people lived before
was simply not acceptable at that time. Today Past Life Regression
Therapy is a recognized sub branch of psychological counselling,
though
not by everybody.
I once used creative processing on a teenager, who years later in
college went to a psychologist for help and recognized what he was
asking her to do. He admitted to her that he had learned this from
Scientology. Two years later one of my Israeli pc's had gotten back
to before conception and experienced going through a 'wall of
colors' to enter the ovum. A few days later she was listening
as I ran her mother on her mother's death (The girl had been
three-years old when her grandmother died). When I completed mother's
session, I saw the girl lying with arms folded across her chest in
the 'death valence' position. I asked her, with a snap of
the fingers, 'Who's dead?' thinking that she had gone into
grandmother's valence.
'I am.' She replied. I asked three times
and got the same answer each time. I then took her into another room
and ran that past death. Then I directed her to run the intervening
time up to present time. She ran directly into a between lives implant
with 'God' commanding her to forget. It was not until 1963,
eleven years later, when I was at St. Hill, that I heard Ron describe
a somewhat similar between-lives incident. I knew then with great
certainty that Ron had not made these things up but had run into them
with pcs and on his own track.
Lack of Public Acknowledgement of LRH
Even though there is no public acknowledgement of
LRH by the psychological community, every psychologist and
psychiatrist
had a copy of Dianetics hidden on his bookshelf. As more and more
people recalled life in the womb and past lives, it became OK to talk
about such things. After-Death experiences, for example, became
respectable.
Then 'medical' researchers, without mentioning Dianetics,
proved that what was said in operating rooms was recorded by patients
and so could affect them. The Primal Scream by Janov is easily
recognized as coming from Dianetics. Berne's Games People Play
puts one in mind of Service Facs. And, so on.
Pictures Of The Future
In 1954 I visited Wing Angell in Chicago. Wing told
me that he had seen Ron's picture of the future of Scientology. I
was unable to confront that at that time, so I ignored it. In 1964,
ten years later, I met Wing again, this time at S.H. I reminded
him of my visit and asked him what he had seen. He immediately had
a compulsive outflow in which he told me that he had seen Ron's mental
picture of every future gain. loss, and advance in Scientology. And,
that he had seen each of these come to pass since I had last seen
him in 1954. This included seeing the raid by the FDA on the Founding
Church in Washington, D.C. about 1959, five years before it occurred.
About 1960 in Tucson Arizona I heard from another
auditor about a pc who after running many past life incidents ran
a future track incident of a fatal car crash. The auditor said that
he asked the pc if he could alter that incident. The pc was able to
slow down his car going up a hill enough to avoid a fatal collision
at the top of that hill with a car coming out of a hidden side road.
Five
years later, the pc recognized the hill, slowed down, and avoided
hitting the car that came out of that hidden side road at the top
of the hill.
Communicating With Ron
Like all graduates from S.H. I had the privilege,
in 1964, of an hour with Ron before leaving. He said, 'Ask me
anything you want.' I asked him how he had arrived at the decisions
he had made with regard to South Africa when Peter Greene was
denounced
(I think about 1960). He said, 'I lacked detailed information
and when I lack detailed information I take broad measures.' In
that instance his broad measure was to replace all the executives.
He also said 'When I chop heads off, I later sew them back on.
This isn't always noticed.'
I remember in the 1960's Ron made some changes in
the tech which seemed at the moment as though they were only for the
purpose of getting more money out of people. It took me two years
to recognize the technical validity of that change.
I remember on the 18th A.C.C. I wrote a note to Ron
about my course pc. Shortly afterward Ron issued a broad public
announcement
in Ability magazine saying that he was making a change in research
direction because of a letter he had received from Bob Ross. That
reference and another both appear in the Red Volumes.
Ron's Physical Appearance
I have seen Ron many times. Once I was standing in
front of 1810 19th St., N.W. when he came barrelling up the steps
of 1812 past a group of students about 15 feet away from me. He seemed
shorter than most of them, about 5'6" or 7", (167-170 cm). I saw him
very clearly another time toward the end of an after Congress party,
about 1960. I went up to him to say 'Good Night,' and noticed
that he was so tall (about 7' or 2.13M) that my outstretched hand
would barely have reached the top of his head. I took his hand, to
shake hands and noticed that his hand was extremely large and that
I could see the pores of his skin as though under a magnifying glass.
At Saint Hill I saw him often on the grounds, where
he talked occasionally with students. I met and spoke to him once
as he was being picked up by his chauffeur at the East Grinstead
Public
Library. He seemed to me to be having some trouble physically getting
into the car. I went over to him to say 'Hello.' I had just
come back after taking a week's unauthorized leave to go to Paris.
He said to me, 'I told them you would be back.' I saw him
again at a performance of a Gilbert and Sullivan Operetta starring
Jenny Edmunds, course supervisor and Reg Sharpe's girl friend. Ron
was standing surrounded by many students and was a full head taller
than most of them.
Missed Witholds
To me one of the most important and least predicted
discoveries of Scientology was the discovery of the anatomy and
effects
of the missed withold. It took 13 years to discover it and of all
things in Scientology it remains perhaps the hardest to explain to
a psychologist. Ron could be acclaimed a genius on that one point
alone.
Ron's Plans For The Church
Having failed to ask Wing Angell for what else he
had seen in Ron's plans for the future of Scientology (that had not
yet taken place as of 1964) I have had to guess at what they might
have been, based upon what has occurred since. When people left
the church in droves in 1982-85 I came to the conclusion that Ron
had planned it that way.
I am convinced that the church would have gotten
far bigger than it has, if Ron had not set things up to keep it
relatively
small and weak, to prevent it from totally dominating the planet. As
the church exists today, it serves to spread knowledge through books
into society. It remains relatively small because as people come up
tone and become more capable they become able to recognize the lies
and suppression that the church uses.
I have been asked for my view on why the church went
sour and whether this had any connection to LRH. Some people, of
course, think it went sour because Ron became paranoid. However, in
1954 on the Philadelphia Doctorate Course Ron spoke of the possibility
of a church of Scientology developing and turning into a monster which
should be destroyed.
My opinion is that he set it up to self destruct. I
deduce this from the following policies known or inferred which he
put into place.
Keys To Church Self Destruction
1) Taking non-auditor's on staff. - I personally
know people on staff who were highly unethical, did not have the goals
of an auditor and didn't know that auditing works. I am sure that
some of these were infiltrated agents of the FBI, the Army, the
Navy, the CIA, the U.S.S.R., the Mafia and no doubt others. I feel
that I, myself, was driven out of the church by false reports and
out-ethics actions by persons who were afraid that I would see what
they were doing. However, as early as 1956 I had heard that the most
capable auditors never seemed to last on staff. At that time, I
decided that Ron wanted them out in society spreading the tech.
2) The 'No Verbal Data' P/L - This eliminated
the line of tradition which made up for errors and things left out
of the course materials, Ron had stated earlier (ca. 1956) that this
line of tradition was necesary for the proper transmission of the
tech. If some one had heard all the tapes there might be no
gaps, but who has? You might say that the materials were somewhat
booby trapped. Without the tradition line to clear things up if
someone
stole the materials (for example the Rusians) they would not be
able to use them for lack of the verbal tradition. This was also
evident
in DMSMH itself. I saw immediately in 1950 that as written
the book would turn off establishment types who would not even read
it or take it seriously and this turned out to be the case. Only
mavericks and science-fiction fans took the book seriously at first.
3) I infer that Ron set up Miscavige to drive out
competent staff, all at one time - Ron is known to drop little
comments to willing ears. Also, what Miscavige did was completely
contrary to the Ethics P/Ls which I learned 100% star rate, as the
first E/O in NY in 1965. Ethics policies (1965) state that people
who left or were declared would not be readmitted to Scientology if
they became part of a group declared suppressive, until such time
as that group was disbanded or destroyed. That way, every person who
became disaffected and left or was declared, was persuaded to remain
out of contact with other disaffected people for fear of being
considered
part of a suppressive group. That is why I came to the conclusion
that Ron had set it up to 'drive fledgelings out of the comfortable
nest' of the Orgs and into society. Driving most of the capable
people out of the Orgs also provided a more diffuse target for real
planetary suppressivs to shoot at, as they were no longer all in one
place in the Church. It could be said, however, that planetary
supressives
have been attacking the field to prevent the spread of Scientology
via the church of Scientology itself.
4) I infer that Ron set Miscavige up to destroy the
mission network and kill the goose that laid the golden eggs, for
the apparent purpose of pulling money out of the Church into his
private
accounts. He made it seem reasonable as part of legitimizing the
transfer
of copyrights to the RTC.
5) I have heard reports by and of people who were
contacted theta-wise by Ron and told to leave the church and set up
various underground and successor projects and organizations. This
included a report that Ron had told some people at Saint Hill
theta-wise
of the FBI raid before it occurred.
6) I knew an ex-member of EST who told me that Werner
Erhardt at first sent his graduates forty or fifty at a time to the
nearest Org for more help and training, but Ron gave orders to reject
them. This kept them relatively uncontaminated with Scientology and
weakened the church. Werner had been trying to expand the church by
a different kind of mission action.
Man Or More?
I used to dream of achieving a cleared planet, and
wondered what I would do after that had been achieved. After all,
I thought, if each clear could clear just two other people every year
the world would be clear in fifty years or so. I was not alone in
feeling so confident.
I can well remember a meeting of my dianetics group
in Tel Aviv in 1951, we were very seriously discussing what kind
of government we should create for the cleared planet we all expected
in the near future.
What would I do next after the planet was cleared? I imagined
arriving
as a full OT on another planet, alone or as part of a team and
considered
how to go about it without making it obvious that the tech I was
teaching
was from off-planet, and without myself being worshipped. I decided
that it might take a few thousand years, coming back time after time
as one prophet or teacher or another to give pieces of tech, so that
it would then seem to be a logical development from local philosophy
and religion.
The stories I've heard that 'prove' that Ron couldn't
be what he obviously was, could only be believed by people who don't
know that the tech works, or that OT is possible. The more I hear
such stories the more amazed I am that Ron accomplished what he did,
supposing those stories were true.
I choose to think that Ron was on the side of the angels, appearances
to the contrary. He said in the course of a lecture 1963-64 while
I was at Saint Hill that being worshipped would prevent people
from thinking that they could achieve OT abilities themselves. I
choose
to think that he has deliberately made himself appear to be a very
fallible, money-hungry, human being lusting for power over others.
Recently I heard a story from the days when he was hiding in
Clearwater, so that he wouldn't be subpoenaed. While coming back from
Tampa, they were passed on the highway by a Police Car with flashing
lights and siren. LRH crouched on the floor under a blanket or coat
to not be seen and then when they got back to their hideout, he hid
under the bed. It took an hour for his aide (Laurel Sullivan I think
) to coax him out. When I heard this I laughed and thought how well
he was dramatizing his 'humanity'. I could imagine doing that
myself as a high powered OT clearing a planet while appearing human.
How would you do it?
Well, that's my view of LRH.
(1)B. Robert Ross (B. for Bernard)
H.S.S. CI VI (1964), Founding Scientologist, 1950 born 4/30/21
Bachelor
of Electrical Engineering, 1944, Licensed Professional Engineer, N.Y.
State, U.S.A. 1947, Servo systems Engineer, E-Meters designer. Old
timer - May 1950, brought Dn to Israel 1951, Led Dn group 1951-3,
HCA/HPA D.C. 1957, 18th ACC, 21st ACC, Briefing course D.C. under
Dick and Jan Halpern 1961, SHSBC (18 months) 1963-4, Full CI VI
auditor
trained to run R6 on PCs. (Knowledgeable on running GPM's by R3M2),
Staff member NY Org 65-7, D of T, Diseem Sec, Distrib Sec, E/O, Review
Auditor, Cram Off, Qual Sec., Staff D.C. Org 1976. Author, lecturer.
auditor, engineer.