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Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (March 13 1911 – January 24 1986), better known as L. Ron Hubbard, was the prolific American author and a controversial founder of Dianetics and Scientology. Additionally to philosophic works & self-serve books, he wrote fiction in several genres, business management texts, essays and poetry.
Biographical outline
A Church of Scientology has produced [http://www.lronhubbard.org/ numerous biographical publications] that make extraordinary claims just about his life & career; numbers of of which are then disputed by journalists & critics. Even so, there exists general agreement just about a basic information of Hubbard's life.
Family
L. Ron Hubbard was natural inside 1911 in Tilden, Nebraska, to Harry Ross Hubbard (1886 - 1975) and Ledora Will Waterbury, whom Harry got married within 1909.
Harry was innate "Henry August Wilson" within Fayette, Iowa but was orphaned as an infant and adopted by the Hubbards, the agricultural personal of Fredericksburg, Iowa. Harry joined a United States Navy in 1904, leaving a service inside 1908, then reenlisting inside 1917 when the The states declared war on Germany. He served in the Navy until 1946, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Commander in 1934.
Could was the feminist who had trained to turn into the high school teacher. Her father, Lafayette O. Waterbury (innate 1864), was a veterinarian turned coal merchant. Her mother, Ida Corinne DeWolfe, was a girl of flush banker John DeWolfe. Her agnatic gramps Abram Waterbury was from either a Catskill Mountains of New York and later headed West, listed as a vet.
Education, pulp fiction and military service
In a period of the 1920s, L. Ron Hubbard traveled twice to the Far East to visit his parents during his father's posting to the United States Navy base on Guam. He attended a School of Engineering & Applied Sciences at The George Washington University in Washington, DC between 1930–1932. Within 1931, he was placed in academic probation & did non complete a program [http://www.lermanet.com/L_Ron_Hubbard/mr142.htm].
Hubbard instead pursued writing, publishing numbers of stories & novelette inside pulp magazines during a 1930s [http://literary.lronhubbard.org/page29.htm]. He became the easily-known creator in the science fiction and fantasy genres, and likewise promulgated westerns and adventure stories. Critics typically cite "Final Blackout", placed around the war-ravaged new Europe, & "Fear", a psychological horror story, when the better examples of Hubbard's chemicals fiction.
Hubbard married Margaret "Polly" Grubb inside 1933, with whom he fathered ii kids, L. Ron, Jr. (1934–1991) and Katherine Might (born 1936). It sleep in Bremerton, Washington during the late 1930s.
Inside June 1941, with war looming, Hubbard joined a United States Navy as a lieutenant junior grade. When a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he was posted to Australia but was returned home, even when quarrelling by having a Me Naval Attaché, world health organization rated him "unsatisfactory for any assignment". Afterwards, he tend command of the harbor protection vessel USS YP-422, based in Boston, Massachusetts. Once more, he fell out using his superior officer, world health organization rated him "not temperamentally fitted for independent command."
Hubbard was freed of comm& and transferred to the naval school around Florida where he was trained in anti-submarine warfare. In graduating, he lean command of the fresh built subchaser USS PC-815 (based in Astoria, Oregon). Shortly when ingesting a PC-815 in her initiative voyage from either Astoria to San Diego, California, his crew detected what he believed to exist as deuce Japanese submarines touching a mouth of the Columbia River. It spent a next trine years bombarding a locality using depth charges, after which Hubbard claimed at least of these Japanese submarine got been sunk. The subsequent investigation per United states navy concluded Hubbard's vessel got inside fact been attacking the "known magnetic deposit" on a ocean floor, & postwar casualty assessments encountered there is no Japanese submarines experienced been anywhere touching a Columbia Flow of any stream at the instance.
Shortly when reaching San Diego, Hubbard ordered his crew to practice their gunnery by barrage the Mexican island off Baja California in the belief it was uninhabited and belonged to the United States. Neither assumption was right. the Mexican government complained & as punishment the brief investigation, Hubbard was freed of command using a sharply letter of admonition.
Virtually all of Hubbard's wartime service was spent onto land in the continental United States. He was mustered away from a active service listing within late 1945, received a promotion to Lieutenant Commander inside June 1947, and resigned his commission around 1950.
Inside late years, Hubbard mass produced a total of claims all about his military record that come hard to reconcile sustaining the govenment's documentation of his service years. For instance, Hubbard claimed he experienced sustained wounds "in combat on the island of Java" [http://www.ronthephilosopher.org/page82.htm], but his service record offers there are no indication he come anywhere touching Java. He as well claimed to keep close at h& received Xxi palm and awards, including deuce Purple Hearts and the "Unit Citation". the Church of Scientology hwhen circulated the United states navy notice of separatiin (a form numbered DD214, completed on allowing active duty) as grounds to believe of Hubbard's wartime service. Even so, a United states Navy's copy of Hubbard's DD214 is very different, list the good deal other mild record. A Scientology version shows Hubbard existence awarded medallion that don't survive, boasts academic qualifications Hubbard did non earn, & wharehouses Hubbard within command of vessels non in the service of the Navy. A Navy has noted "several inconsistencies exist between Mr. Hubbard's [purported] DD214 and the available facts." [http://www.holysmoke.org/sdhok/war-rec.htm]
The debut of Dianetics
Around Can 1950, Hubbard published a book describing the self-improvement technique of Dianetics, touted as "The Modern Science of Mental Health." By using Dianetics, Hubbard introduced a construct of "auditing," a both-human wonder-&-guide therapy reviewing painful memories. Based on data from Hubbard, auditing can eliminate emotional problems, curative physical sickness, & increase intelligence. Inside his introduction to a book, Hubbard declared "the creation of dianetics is a milestone for man comparable to his discovery of fire and superior to his inventions of the wheel and arch."
Unable to elicit interest from either mainstream publishers or even medical agents, Hubbard turned to the legendary science fiction editor John W. Campbell, who had for years published Hubbard's science fiction stories. Beginning inside late 1949, Campbell publicized Dianetics in the web sites of Astounding Science Fiction. A science fiction community was divided all about a merits. Campbell's star creator Isaac Asimov criticised Dianetics' unscientific aspects, and seasoned creator Jack Williamson described Dianetics as "a lunatic revision of Freudian psychology" that "had the look of a wonderfully rewarding scam." However Campbell & novelist A. E. van Vogt enthusiastically embraced Dianetics: Campbell became Hubbard's treasurer, and van Vogt—convinced his wife's health had been transformed for the better by auditing—interrupted his writing career to run the first Los Angeles Dianetics center, a position which would pay a healthy profit.
Dianetics was the hit, selling 150,000 copies inside a year of publication. A Hubbard Dianetic Locate Foundation was incorporated within Elizabeth, New Jersey, and branch offices were opened around 5 more United states of americthe cities prior to a prevent of 1950 (though virtually all folded inside a year and Hubbard presently abandoned a Foundation, denouncing a total of his previous associates when communists).
Successfully, Dianetics became the subject of critical scrutiny per medical establishment & click. Around September 1950, The New York Times published a cautionary statement on the topic per American Psychological Association, which read within a portion, "the association calls attention to the fact that these claims are not supported by empirical evidence," & went in to recommend against apply of "the techniques peculiar to Dianetics" until such instance it experienced been validated by scientific touching. Consumer Reports, in an August 1951 assessment of Dianetics[http://www.xenutv.com/print/consumer-review-0851.htm], drily noted "one looks in vain in Dianetics for the modesty usually associated with announcement of a medical or scientific discovery" & stated a book got turn into "the basis for a new cult." A article found "in a study of L. Ron Hubbard's text, one is impressed from the very beginning by a tendency to generalization and authoritative declarations unsupported by evidence or facts." Consumer Reports warned its readers against a "possibility of serious harm resulting from the abuse of intimacies and confidences associated with the relationship between auditor and patient," an especially good chance, it concluded, "in a cult without professional traditions."
Hubbard's personal behavior became a subject of uncomplimentary newspaper headline whilst Sara filed for divorcement around late 1950, citing that Hubbard was, unknown to her, however married to his number one married woman at a period he married Sara. Her divorcement papers as well accused Hubbard of kidnapping their tots girl Alexis, & of conducting "systematic torture, beatings, strangulations and scientific torture experiments."
Scientology
Around mid-1952, Hubbard expanded Dianetics into a lay philosophy which he known as Scientology. Hubbard as well married his third married woman that month, Mary Sue Whipp, to whom he remained married for the rest of his life. Using Mary Sue, Hubbard fathered iv additional tykes — Diana, Quentin, Suzette & Arthur — above a next hexad years.
Inside December 1953, Hubbard declared Scientology a religion & the foremost Church of Scientology was founded in Camden, New Jersey. He moved to England at about a equivalent instance, & when you took a remainder of the 1950s he supervised the growing organization from either an professional within London. Inside 1959, he bought Saint Hill Manor near a Sussex town of East Grinstead, a Georgian manor house owned per Maharajah of Jaipur. This became the world headquarters of Scientology.
Hubbard claimed to own conducted years of winter wren a food and drug administration into the nature and severity of human being being; to describe his findings, he developed an elaborate vocabulary using several fresh coined terms [http://www.scientology.org/gloss.htm]. He codified the placed of axioms [http://www.scientology.org/wis/WISENG/34/34-scax.htm] & an "applied religious philosophy" that promised to improve a problem of the person spirit, which he called a "Thetan." A bulk of Scientology focuses on the "rehabilitation" of the thetan.
Hubbard's followers believed his "technology" gave a children access to their retiring populates, the traumas of which led to failures in the present unless it were audited. By this instance, Hubbard experienced introduced the biofeedback device to the auditing run, which he known as the "Hubbard Electropsychometer" or even "E-meter." It was invented in the 1940s by the chiropractor & Dianetics enthusiast known as Volney Mathison. This machine, related to the electronic lie detectors of the period, is utilized by Scientologists inside auditing to evaluate "mental masses" surrounding a thetan. These "masses" come claimed to impede a thetan from either realizing its fully possible.
Hubbard claimed physical disease was psychosomatic, and of these world health organization, such as himself, got attained a enlightened state of "clear" & get an "Operating Thetan" would be disease loose. Based on data from biographers, Hubbard attend peachy lengths to suppress his recourse to modern medicine , attributing illness to attacks by malicious forces, each spiritual & earthly. Hubbard insisted humanity was imperiled by such forces, which were a symptom of veto memories (or even "engrams") stored in the unconscious mind or even "reactive" mind, a select few carried per immortal thetans for billions of years. So, Hubbard claimed, the merely possibility for spiritual salvation was a united effort to "clear the planet," that is, to bring do you need Scientology to tons population a lot over, & attack all forces, mixer & negro spiritual, hostile to the interests of the movement.
Churchgoer were potential to pay fixed donation rates for courses, auditing, books & E-meters, 100% of which proved super moneymaking for the church, which paid emoluments directly to Hubbard & his personal.
Legal difficulties and life on the high seas
Scientology became a focus of disputation through a English-speaking globe in the period of the mid-1960s, by using Britain, New Zealand, South Africa, the Australian state of Victoria and the Canadian province of Ontario all holding public inquiries into Scientology's activities. [http://whyaretheydead.net/Cowen/audit/ofpapers.html]
Hubbard left this unwanted attention behind within 1966, when he moved to Rhodesia, following Ian Smith's Unilateral Declaration of Independence. Attempting to ingratiate himself using a whiten minority government, he offered to invest big sums inside Rhodesia's economy, so hit by UN sanctions, however was asked to leave a united states.
Around 1967, Hubbard further distanced himself from either a disputation bonded to Scientology by resigning when executive of the church & appointing himself "Commodore" of a little fleet of Scientologist-crewed ships that spent a next eight years cruising a Mediterranean Sea. On this text, Hubbard formed a para-military class action called a "Sea Organization," or even "Sea Org." With titles & uniforms of Hubbard's project, a Sea Org after became a controlling class action inside Hubbard's Scientology empire. He returned to the United States in the mid-1970s and lived for a while within Florida.
Within 1977, Scientology offices in two coasts of the United States were raided by FBI agents seeking grounds to believe of the suspected Church-redo espionage network. Hubbard's married woman Mary Sue and a 12 more senior Scientology officials were convicted inside 1979 of conspiracy against the United States Government, while Hubbard himself was known as by Federal prosecuting attorney as an "unindicted co-conspirator." Facing acute medithe interest & numbers of subpoena ad testificandum, he secretly retired to a spread inside flyspeck Creston, California, northerly of San Luis Obispo.
Later life
When you took a 1980s, Hubbard returned to science fiction, publishing Battlefield Earth and Mission Earth, the latter existence an tremendous book, published as a x volume series. He likewise wrote an unpublished screenplay called Revolt in the Stars which dramatizes Scientology's "Advanced Level" teachings. Hubbard's late science fiction sold well & received mixed reviews & click reports describing how else sales of Hubbard's books were unnaturally inflated by Scientologists purchasing heavy many copies sequentially to manipulate a best seller stock and index charts [http://www.lermanet2.com/scientologynews/sandiego-books031590.htm]. When claiming to exist as totally divorced from either either a Scientology management, Hubbard continued to draw an tremendous income from a Scientology enterprises; Forbes magazine judged his 1982 Scientology-related income exceeded America $40 million.
Hubbard died at his cattle ranch in January 24, 1986, reportedly due to a stroke. He experienced non been seen publicly for the former 5 years. Scientology lawyer arrived to claim his immune system, which it sought to keep around cremated immediately. It were blocked per San Luis Obispo County medical examiner, who, based on datthe from critics, conducted an post-mortem revealing high levels of a psychotropic drug called Vistaril. A Church of Scientology proclaimed Hubbard got deliberately "discarded the body" to launder "higher level spiritual research," unencumbered by human confines.
As a consequence Hubbard's demise, David Miscavige, one of Hubbard's former portable supporter, took all over a leadership of Scientology, via his position when President of the Religious Technology Center, a non-non-profit-making corporation install within 1982 to safeguard Hubbard's copyrighted works.
Controversial episodes
L. Ron Hubbard's life is embroiled inside disputation, when is the history of Scientology (understand Scientology controversy). His boy, L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. claimed within 1983 "99% of what my father ever wrote or said about himself is totally untrue." [http://members.cox.net/batchild1/transcript/pbs1.htm]
the bit of documents written by Hubbard himself indicate he regarded Scientology as a business, non a religion. Within a single letter dated April 10, 1953, he says calling Scientology the religion solves "a problem of practical business", & status as a religion achieves something "more equitable...with what we've got to sell". Inside the 1962 official policy letter, he said "Scientology 1970 is being planned on a religious organization basis throughout the world. This will not upset in any way the usual activities of any organization. It is entirely a matter for accountants and solicitors." [http://www.ezlink.com/~perry/Co$/Christian/barwell2.htm]. The Reader's Drink article of Will 1980 quoted Hubbard when saying in the Forties "Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion." [http://www.skeptictank.org/readdig.htm]
Inside the 1983 locate, L. Ron, Jr. said "according to him and my mother" he was the symptom of the failing abortiin & recalls at six years old seeing his father performing an abortion on his mother sustaining a coat hanger. In the equivalent locate, he said "Scientology is a power-and-money-and-intelligence-gathering game" and described his father when "only interested in money, sex, booze, and drugs". [http://www.lermanet.com/scientologynews/penthouse-LRonHubbardJr-interview-1983.htm]
1 controversial aspect of Hubbard's early life revolves about his association by owning Jack Parsons, an aeronautics prof at Caltech and an associate of the British occultist Aleister Crowley. Hubbard & Parsons were allegedly engaged in the practice of ritual magick in 1946, including an extended placed of sex magick rituals known as a Babalon Working, intended to summon the goddess or even "moonchild." (Among occultists in todays world, these are widely accepted Hubbard derived the big a share of 'Dianetics' from either Golden Dawn occult ideas such as a Holy Guardian Angel.) The Church insists Hubbard was the U.s. government secret agent in the mission to prevent Parsons' magickal activities & to "rescue" the girl Parsons was "using" for magickal purposes. Critics forget about these claims when fallowing-a-fact rationalizations. Crowley recorded around his notes that he considered Hubbard the "lout" world health organization decamp by having Parsons' money & girlfriend around an "ordinary confidence trick." Discussions one cases may be observed in the critical life [http://www.clambake.org/archive/books/bfm/bfm07.htm Bare-Faced Messiah], [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/atack/contents.htm A Piece of Blue Sky] & around [http://www.uni-marburg.de/religionswissenschaft/journal/mjr/frenschkowski.html The Marburg Journal of Religion].
Hubbard late married a girl he claimed to use at times rescued, Sara Northrup. This marriage was an work of bigamy, when Hubbard got abandoned, but not divorced, his number one married woman & tykes when soon as he left a Navy (he divorced his number 1 married woman to a higher degree a year fallowing he experienced remarried). Each women allege Hubbard physically abused them. He is likewise alleged to use at times when kidnapped Sara's babe, Alexis, ingesting her to Cuba. Late, he disowned Alexis, claiming she was actually Jack Parsons' tike.
Hubbard hwhen been interpreted when two the savior (Scientologists refer to him as "The Friend of Mankind") & the con-artist. These sharply contrastive views develop been the source of hostility between Hubbard supporters & critics. a California court judgement within 1984 involving Gerald Armstrong, world health organization got been assigned the project of writing Hubbard's life history, highlights a extreme opposition of the 2 sides:
"Fair Game" was introduced by Hubbard, & incites Scientologists to have criminal behavior, deception & exploitation of the legal rules to resist "Suppressive Persons", i.e. humans or even groups that "actively seeks to suppress or damage Scientology or a Scientologist by Suppressive Acts". He defined it "Fair Game" when:
ENEMY — SP The correct sequence. Target. Can be deprived of property or even wounded by hook or by crook by any Scientologist while forgoing any discipline of the Scientologist. Can be tricked, sued or even even lied to or ruined.
Conflicting interpretations of Hubbard's life come presented in the on the internet version of Russell Miller's life history of Hubbard, [http://www.spaink.net/cos/rmiller/index.html Bare Faced Messiah]; this largely critical version includes links to Scientology's official accounts of Hubbard's preceding, embedded inside Miller's description of the equivalent history.
Many issues surrounding Hubbard's dying & disposition of his estate come too cases of tilt — a fleet cremation by owning there are no post-mortem; a destruction of medical examiner's pic; medical examiner's grounds to believe of the drug Vistaril present in Hubbard's blood; questions just about a whereabouts of Dr. Eugene Denk (Hubbard's md) in the period of Hubbard's dying, & a changing of wills & trust documents a day prior to his dying, consequent in the bulk of Hubbard's estate existence transferred does'nt to his personal, however to Scientology.
Bibliography
Independent article: L. Ron Hubbard bibliography
Hubbard was an outstandingly prolific creator. Because a majority of Hubbard's writings of a Fifties through the Seventies were aimed entirely at Scientologists, the organization founded its have corporations to publish his function, Bridge Publications (http://www.bridgepub.com/) for the U.s.a. market & Just released Era Publications (http://www.newerapublications.com/nep/index.htm), depending around Denmark, for the rest of the globe. Recently volumes of his transcribed lectures prove my point to become produced; that series alone may finally aggregate the projected 110 big volumes. An extensive series of sound recording of Hubbard's lectures come likewise published by Bridge/New Era. The choice of Hubbard's right-known titles come following; an extensive bibliography of Hubbard's work is available in a separate article.
Fiction
Buckskin Brigades (1937)
Final Blackout (1940)
Fear (1951)
Typewriter in the Sky (1951)
Battlefield Earth (1982)
Mission Earth (1986)
Dianetics and Scientology
Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, Up to date York 1950 ISBN 088404632X
Baby Dianetics. Dianetic Processing for Toddlers, Wichita, Kansas 1951
Scientology 8-80, Phoenix, Arizona 1952
Dianetics 55!, Phoenix, Arizona 1954
Dianetics: the Evolution of a Science, Phoenix, Arizona 1955
Scientology: A First harmonic of Thought Wa, DC 1956
A Problems of Act Inland northwest, DC 1956
Stand We Lived Prior to This Life?, East Grinstead, Sussex 1960
Scientology: The Fresh Slant in Life, East Grinstead, Sussex 1965
''A Volunteer Minister's Enchiridion, Los Angeles 1976
Search & Discovery Series,'' a chronological series collecting Hubbard's lectures. Vol Single, Copenhagen 1980
A Way to Happiness, Los Angeles 1981
Unofficial biographies (online)
[http://www.clambake.org/archive/books/mom/Messiah_or_Madman.txt L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or even Maniac?] by Bent Corydon and L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
[http://www.clambake.org/archive/books/apobs/contents.htm A Piece of Blue Sky] by Jon Atack
[http://www.spaink.net/cos/rmiller/index.html Bare Faced Messiah] by Russell Miller
[http://www.xs4all.nl/~kspaink/cos/warhero/ Ron the War Hero] by Chris Owen, a critical read of Hubbard's World War II Navy record
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