Tony Ortega had a blog piece on September 21st, 2019 wherein he posted an essay written by L. Ron Hubbard for Freewinds magazine.
Tony writes “In this case, he seems to be claiming that Scientology offers them a literal escape from the universe, whatever that could possibly mean. We thought you’d want to see it, and we’d like to hear your interpretations of it.”
Yes Hubbard was a crackpot.
He was also a deeply disturbed man who fought to control the world around him instead of living in it.
L. Ron Hubbard spent his entire life trying to escape.
His inadequacies, his faults, his disappointments, his relationships, his responsibilities. He allowed no one to get too close because emotion was weakness. He abused his wives, neglected his children, turned on his friends and was careless toward his followers.
He was the flamboyant, fearless hero of his own fantasy stories. Whether breaking broncos at age three or pretending to be Commodore of his own, personal navy everything he did was an attempt to escape reality.
Those closest to him, so fraught with untidy emotions and foolish hopes and dreams, were treated as adversaries to be controlled. He wanted their unquestioning adulation and obedience, not the uncomfortable demands and responsibilities that come with making connections.
Hubbard was an angry, cruel man who wanted life to be an illusion that could be reshaped to his liking. Through Dianetics he began a futile attempt to separate everything that is life into something cold, clinical and itemized.
His promise; to remove any negative emotions so one can be free. But freedom doesn’t come through the repression of one’s emotions nor can one progress and grow without adversity.
Scientology is simply the continuation of Hubbard’s attempt to stifle and repress anything he didn’t want to face and it cannot work.
It isn’t working right now.
LRH would have people believe that life is an illusion that Man has created. That it is a trap to be escaped. He promised impossible achievements if only his followers forsake reality and embrace emotional numbness. The SeaOrg was to dedicate themselves to duty at the expense of everything else including family and friends. There is no joy in such an existence. This is not living but it is certainly a reflection of Hubbard’s idea of what life is.
None of Hubbard’s promises have born fruit and tellingly the reason why is found in his essay.
“What do we really want out of Dianetics and Scientology? What could I really give you that you want?
Escape.
Is there anything wrong with escape? Is a man mad who seeks to leave a fire that chars him, a mass that crushes him, a world that laughs at his dreams and scolds him for his stupidity.
Escape.
Why not escape?
Why not let a few others escape? After all we’re not all only ones. We can feel and we can cry.
Tell me why Christianity won so well. Wasn’t it because of promised escape.
Tell me why Buddhism won so sweepingly. Because it promised escape.”
What he calls escape has another name.
Hope.
This is the key to why Scientology can not sustain itself; because it was created by a man who had no hope and it in turn offers none to his followers.
He says that people turned to Dianetics and Scientology because they were looking for an escape. But this just shows how little he understood people.
They were not looking for an escape, they were seeking what they believed was a way to better themselves and the world around them. This desire for improvement doesn’t indicate a longing for escape, rather it shows just how deeply people need to connect and be a part of life.
“Is a man mad who seeks to leave a fire that chars him, a mass that crushes him, a world that laughs at his dreams and scolds him for his stupidity.”
The fact is that rather than running from the fire, man’s drive is to discover how to extinguish it so that neither he nor others will again be burned.
Dianetics promised it’s followers that it would teach man how to overcome the mass that crushes him. This is what drew so many people to Hubbard’s foundations and his conferences.
But Dianetics and Scientology were created by a man who was driven by a need to avoid life, who never learned how to live and so in the end neither are capable of providing the tools people seek to better themselves or the world.
Life is about striving for something better. It’s about building up, growing, sharing, communicating and connecting. Even if one doesn’t believe in an afterlife, one still wants to live in a world where people try to contribute, to create something better.
Scientology tears down relationships, destroys families, attempts to audit a person into emotional numbness, sets impossible goals and offers imaginary powers.
All of this for what, in the end?
There is no hope, no raison d’etra.
Why bother clearing the planet when everyone is just going to keep returning over and over world without end, amen?
Hubbard calls life a trap and his version of it absolutely is.
Scientology is Hubbard’s reality in microcosm where people are trapped, used and broken down.
For him life was something to be fought, a disappointing illusion, something to escape from. His life was an existence of denial along with a denial of existence.
Life is not something to escape, but rather something to embrace. Man wants more than just to survive, he wants to thrive.
Hubbard says he can offer his followers an escape.
But to where?
What alternative did he actually offer?
There is no Heaven, no Nirvana or final reward for all the struggle and sacrifice. For those who do not believe such things there is, at least, an ending. But for Scientology there is no escape, no ending, rather an unending Hell of eternal living with no justification or explanation for it all.
There is no alternative because LRH had no understanding of what living means.
Hubbard hid from life behind his façade of lies and he snuffed out hope by shackling Mankind to the same mountain Sisyphus endures.
The reality is that Hubbard’s world is a dark and hopeless place filled with stoic, grim, dutiful minions controlled by fear, lies and anger with nothing else to look forward to but endless lifetimes of the same.
There is no hope of anything different in this lifetime and nothing to look forward to for the next.
His utopian world, his cleared planet, is one of everlasting return to an emotionless, sterile existence.
Hubbard’s greatest handicap is that he spent so much time trying to escape life he never truly lived.
He offers not an afterlife but rather life ever after which is much, much different.
“Why not escape?”
Because there IS no escape from the created reality of L. Ron Hubbard.
A crackpot is someone given to lunatic notions.
Yes, Hubbard was a crackpot.
Confront And Shatter 
Great again- your posts are always so spot on!
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His life was ” an existence of denial and a denial of existence “. Astute summation!
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Another comment: After reading Hubbard’s Affirmations, one could argue that he basically wanted to create a Hell on earth that he was master of. No love, no hope, no equality, no rewards, just…fealty to El Con Hubbard, forever. He talked about the ” maker of games ” in his pompously titled “Philadelphia Doctorate Course Lectures”. Scientology was the game he coceived to enslave humankind( “ALL MEN AND ELEMENTAL SPIRITS ARE YOUR SLAVES”), with him as master and collector of all benefits, riches, and rewards. EVERYONE ELSE IS RELEGATED TO BEING A PIECE
ON HIS GAME BOARD, TO BE USED OR DISCARDED AS HE SAW FIT.
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I find his reference to Havelock Ellis both interesting and telling. It gives a glimpse into his mind and, when taken together with his insistence that children are really adults in small bodies as well as his comment about passionately kissing a 7 year old girl, speaks to his dark character. “You have forgotten the case histories of Havelock Ellis. They did not surfeit you. You have forgotten them.”
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Good point, I forgot about that!
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