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injury is held in suspension and in place in the area by restimulation
of the environment which contains some of the factors present when that
area was injured. It is a condition of such an injury, in order to be in
suspension sufficiently to cause arthritis, that the sufferer himself
must have administered a like injury to another person. (19)
And in another curious bulletin on eyesight and eyeglasses, Hubbard
writes:
It is interesting to know that a thetan doesn't look through his
eyeballs. He has two little gold discs, one in front of each eye lens.
These are not the lenses of the eyes, but, as you might say, mocked-up
energy. They are little gold discs that are superimposed over the eye
and he looks through these. The eyeballs merely serve to locate these
discs. (20)
By auditing the person on these discs, Hubbard claims to produce
fantastic changes in eyesight. In the same bulletin, Hubbard explains
astigmatism:
Astigmatism, a distortion of image, is only an anxiety to alter the
image. You get an astigmatic condition when a person is trying to work
it over into a substitute, if he possibly can. Here again it is a case
of not enough -- he didn't have enough.
Is that clear?
Hubbard claimed that auditing could eliminate a person's
vulnerability to radiation, and he claimed that Scientologists would, as
a result, be the only persons to live through World War III. He first
wrote:
As cosmic rays, gamma, x-rays, et al, apparently move through solids
without encountering resistance, they then invalidate solids. This is a
direct invalidation of the solidity of anything including a mock-up.
Thus it tends to say a thing is not there -- thus that a creation has
not been made....
Radiation, then, is the proof that a thing solid is not solid. This
is an invalidation that one has created. Thus Radiation is seen to hit
at all creativeness. Its irresponsibility factor is also this -- one
cannot be responsible for things which are proven not to exist....
This also tells us that time began on an invalidation of solids....
In actual proof Procedure CCH [a Scientology auditing procedure] ...
resolves Radiation. (21)
A year later he wrote:
I have been conducting a series of experiments, one of them almost
fatal to myself, on the auditing of radiation burns. I have found that
we can make an enormous effect upon radiation burns and can cure them in
a milder form. That means we are the only agency, the only people on the
face of the Earth who can cure the effect of atomic radiation. I expect
to make further progress in this direction and the whole answer is not
yet gained, for the whole answer would be to actually proof a body
against radiation itself. (22)
Hubbard later "solved" this problem, claiming that a body could be
"proofed against radiation" by taking megadoses of the vitamin niacin.
Hubbard's insights into the illnesses of human beings were also
aided by his innovative work with plants. An example of this follows:
Recently I have been studying life sources and reactions in plants.
I have gained data now which, on preliminary look, indicates that a
plant becomes ill only pursuant to a series of shocks which make "it
decide" it cannot survive. Only after that does it "cooperate" with a
disease. Up to that time it cannot seem to get ill....
This bears itself out in human beings more obviously than in plants.
Illness follows postulates to die. (23)
These are just a few examples of the writings of Hubbard re: the
"science" of Dianetics, the "milestone for Man comparable to his
discovery of fire and superior to his inventions of the wheel and the
arch...."
Other than being an adventure in fantasy for those so inclined, is
there any harm to Dianetics? Yes, say two researchers who have looked
into Scientology in some depth: Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman believe
that "prolonged auditing can cause people to experience 'increasingly
realistic hallucinations' so that eventually the individual can no
longer 'distinguish between what he is experiencing and what he is only
imagining'." (24) This, indeed, is the true danger
of Dianetics.
Hubbard poses a final question for his followers:
Up there are the stars. Down in the arsenal is an atom bomb.
Which one is it going to be? (25)
The book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health can
still be found on the shelves of most bookstores today, its yellow cover
beckoning yet another person to pick it up and discover the "Road to
Total Freedom."
Or could it be the road to nowhere?
Notes
- Miller, p. 155
- Hubbard, Evolution of a Science, p. 11
- Ibid, p. 57
- Ibid, p. 57
- Ibid, p. 66
- Ibid, p. 67
- Ibid, p. 75
- Jacobsen, p. 1-3
- Hubbard, Dianetics: Modern Science of Mental Health, p. 1
- Hubbard, from the original Dianetics bookjacket
- Hubbard, Evolution of a Science, p. 95
- Jacobsen, p. 4
- Hubbard, Have You Lived Before This Life?, p. 1
- Ibid, p. 19
- Hubbard, Dianetics: Modern Science of Mental Health, p. 8
- Hubbard bulletin, "Psychiatry"