Dianetics- Fact or Fiction?

Dianetics.

Book One.

The rib from which Scientology, was created.

In Dianetics Evolution of a Science, January 1950, page 6 he wrote

“Fifteen years ago, when the researches which culminated in Dianetics (Gr. dianoua thought) were started in earnest, no such high opinion of the human brain was held. In fact, the project was not begun to trace function and restore optimum operation, but to know the key to human behavior and the code law which would reduce all knowledge.”

Dianetics was published May, 1950.

Counting back 15 years from 1950 would mean his research began in 1935.

Scientology, on the other hand, claims that their Founder began his research in 1923, a claim that is beyond amazing considering that LRH was born in 1911 and would have been 12 years old.

Examining the years preceding the publication of Dianetics one finds little time available for the research needed to justify the claims made in this book.

Hubbard was 24 years old in 1935 and had no specialized education. Indeed he had no solid college foundation whatsoever that would enable him to engage in such an endeavor.

September 1930 saw L. Ron Hubbard enroll at George Washington University. By the end of the first semester Hubbard was placed on Scholastic Probation due to his grades. Before October of 1932 LRH had quit college never having achieved any degree or diploma in any subject.

The summer of 1932 could not have been spent in scientific research on the mysteries of the mind. Hubbard organized the Caribbean Motion Picture Expedition, an exploratory sea voyage that was supposed to last three months ending in September 25, 1932.

As usual Scientology’s dishonest spin is far from the reality.

“…Hubbard organizes and leads the Caribbean Motion Picture Expedition. He is joined on the two-and-a-half-month, five-thousand-mile journey aboard the two-hundred-foot, four-masted schooner Doris Hamlin by more than fifty adventure-seeking college students. The voyage is completed by September. The crew brings numerous floral and reptile specimens back for the University of Michigan and Ron’s photographs are sold to the New York Times.”

There was no five thousand mile journey.

Schooner Doris Hamlin left the Port of Baltimore making it as far as Fort de France, Martinique, a distance of 1693.81 nautical miles.

Despite Scientology’s insistence otherwise, the voyage was a nightmare from the outset and when the ship made its first port eleven members jumped ship for home.

Hubbard’s expedition ended in dismal failure only six weeks and three days after setting sail when the Captain of the Doris Hamlin sent a cable back to the home port of Baltimore, MD saying, “Send funds to bring the vessel home“.

Thus ended not only the expedition but Hubbard’s college attendance at George Washington University.

Desperate to force his son into some semblance of responsibility and hoping Ron would finally find his path, Hubbard’s father wrote to the Navy Department requesting permission for his son to sail to San Juan, Puerto Rico to work with the Red Cross.

Once again Scientology’s spin is less than factual for this event,

“In October, he embarks upon a voyage to Puerto Rico. As part of the West Indies Mineralogical Expedition, he not only completes the first mineralogical survey of Puerto Rico as an American territory but writes articles for the Sportsman Pilot about flying through the Caribbean Islands. “

No documented mineralogical survey of Puerto Rico by L. Ron Hubbard exists.

In fact, there is conclusive proof to the contrary.

Rather than participate in the much needed, humanitarian relief work being done by the Red Cross, Hubbard hied himself off to search for the “lost gold of the Conquistadors”. This shameful abandonment of people in need in favor of searching for gold was morphed into the aforementioned mineralogical survey.

Even Hubbard himself stated he ran off to search for gold. In Bare Faced Messiah, chapter 3, Russell Miller notes that in the 1933 edition of Adventure Hubbard wrote “‘Harboring the thought that the Conquistadores might have left some gold behind, I determined to find it… After a half year or more of intensive search, after wearing my palms thin wielding a sample pack, after assaying a few hundred sacks of ore, I came back, a failure.” Miller goes on to say “It is possible that his real motive was not so much a genuine expectation of striking gold as a desire to escape the dreary clutches of the Red Cross.”

Ron returned to Washington D.C. in February 1933, in April of the same year he married Polly Grubb.

According to Scientology’s website on their Founder, the years 1934-1936 were busy;

“Throughout this period, L. Ron Hubbard writes. Seated at his Remington manual typewriter, he easily produces 100,000 words of fiction a month.”

He was also named President of the New York Chapter of the American Fiction Guild during this time.

(A second COS website says of these years that he wrote “70,000 words of fiction a month”, but what’s a 30,000 word difference?)

This description of Hubbard further states that during this period Hubbard divided his time between New York and “a writer’s retreat in Port Orchard, Washington”.

Continuing to exaggerate and mislead, the cult ridiculously writes, “He (Hubbard) would eventually study 21 races and cultures while searching out an underlying “common denominator of existence” upon which to build a workable philosophy for the betterment of Man. In early 1938, he isolated that common denominator as Survive!”

That LRH could possibly have engaged in studying 21 races and cultures towards such a lofty end by 1938 is both laughable and impossible. He had not the time, experience, education nor wherewithal for such academic endeavors.

This statement is blatant bullshit. During this time Hubbard became one of the most prolific science fiction writers on the market in a desperate attempt to survive. Not being one overly bothered by anyone else’s needs, he left Polly and his children behind with no money but a lot of bills, while he traipsed off across country womanizing.

Finally and most importantly is the one single claim concerning the foundation for Dianetics that conclusively proves that this so-called “science of the mind” is nothing more than another piece of science fiction.

April 1938 found Hubbard needing the attentions of a dentist. During the procedure Ron apparently had a reaction to the anesthesia which resulted in what he referred to as a “revolutionary near death experience”.

Afterwards, Hubbard allegedly ran straight home and wrote the manuscript Excalibur in one sitting.

This manuscript was the basis for what would become Dianetics.

LRH referenced this in a personal letter to a friend, the whole letter can be seen on Tony Ortega’s blog, but the pertinent comment states “Wanted to tell you that Sara is beating out her wits on fiction and is having to do this DARK SWORD -cause and cure of nervous tension – properly – THE SCIENCE OF MIND, really EXCALIBUR – in fits, so far, however she has recovered easily from each fit. It will be considerably delayed because of this. Good as my word, however, I shall ship it along just as soon as decent. Then you can rape women without their knowing it, communicate suicide messages to your enemies as they sleep, sell the Arroyo Seco parkway to the mayor for cash, evolve the best way of protecting or destroying communism, and other handy house hold hints. If you go crazy, remember you were warned.”

Sara was “beating out her wits on fiction”?

But there it is.

Not years of research.

Not studying 21 races and cultures.

Just an anesthetic induced dream along with a heavy borrowing and misinterpretation of Freud, Breuer and others.

If one accepts Hubbard’s own admittance that Excalibur is so tightly tied to Dianetics then one accepts that there is nothing new, original or scientific about either.

His own timeline proves once again that there was no real research. The claims Scientology promotes about their Source are easily refuted and disproven. Contemporaries of Hubbard that he confided in confirm Dianetics‘ foundation can be seen in the earlier Excalibur document.

With this information the whole thing tumbles like dominos. Dianetics was the offspring of Excalibur something LRH created after an allergic reaction to anesthetic.

It isn’t any more factual or real than any of his other fiction.

If Dianetics is fictional and without foundation then where does that leave Scientology?

More interestingly, is it possible that Hubbard isn’t even the original creator of the ideas behind Dianetics? What if poor, beleaguered Sara, “beating out her wits on fiction”, actually started it all?