Mockingbird's Nest: Scientology Reflections (14) 10 Years After Leaving-God in Hubbard's Eyes

Scientology Reflections (14) 10 Years After Leaving-God in Hubbard's Eyes

This is the fourteenth post in a series that I am publishing in 2024. The series is on the journey I have been on AFTER leaving Scientology and Dianetics and what my experiences were, and mistakes I made, and things that I learned, some shortly after leaving Scientology and others further along the way, even up to the present day. Some of this involves Scientology and Dianetics. Some involves the process of leaving a cult. Some is just knowledge that I could have benefited from knowing sooner, that may even be unrelated to the cultic topic entirely.

For anyone who is unaware, I was in Scientology for twenty five years, between 1989 and 2014. I left in 2014 and discovered that Scientology is a harmful fraud and jam packed with lies and further it is composed of techniques plagiarized from other practices and sources. Ronald Hubbard had the ability to take a practice, file off the serial numbers and repackage it as his own in first Dianetics and later Scientology.

L. Ron Hubbard. “Ron looks to the future with the sea org, ”

Ronald Hubbard.

To understand the mind of Scientology founder Ronald Hubbard I believe his affirmations are crucial. Affirmations in this context are private self-hypnosis commands he may have used repeatedly for years or decades.

I call his affirmations the Rosetta Stone of Scientology. After reading Never Believe a Hypnotist by Jon Atack and studying hypnosis for some time and numerous references by Hubbard on hypnosis I realized the affirmations are the closest look into the mind of Hubbard we are likely to ever find.

What could be a more genuine look into the mind of a man than a series of commands which he wrote for the purpose of hypnotizing his own mind over and over and over thousands of times to reshape his own mind?

The affirmations are called admissions by people often as well, since they are admissions of the innermost thoughts and desires of Ronald Hubbard.

Excerpts from

A Psychiatric View With Comments On The Admissions By Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (1947)

Scientology Doctrine and the Words of Ronald Hubbard

A Psychiatric View With Comments On The Admissions...

excerpts below by Ronald Hubbard

LRH: The purpose of this experiment is to re-establish the ambition, willpower, desire to survive, the talent and confidence of myself.

LRH: By eliminating certain fears by hypnosis, curing my rheumatism and laying off hormones, I hope to restore my former libido. I must! By hypnosis I must be convinced as follows:

(o) That I believe in my gods and spiritual things.

(w) That this hypnosis will not fade, but will increase in power as time advances.
(x) That my magical work is powerful and effective.

(a1) That I will not forget these things but will enjoin them with all related ideas as more powerful than any other ideas in my head.

(d1) That I see and hear Raon clearly.

LRH:Your psychology is good. You worked to darken your own children. This failure, with them, was only apparent. The evident lack of effectiveness was "ordered." The same psychology works perfectly on everyone else. You use it with great confidence.

Nothing can intervene between you and your Guardian. She cannot be displaced because she is too powerful. She does not control you. She advises you. You may or may not take the advice. You are an adept and have a wonderful and brilliant mind of your own.

LRH: You have magnificent power but you are humble and calm and patient in that power. For you control all forces under you as you wish. The strength of your Guardian aids you always and can never depart or be repelled. Your faith in her and in God is unswerveable, blind, powerful and you never, never doubt their good intent toward you. They work with you. You help them exert their plans. They have faith unbounded in you.

LRH: Material things are yours for the asking. Men are your slaves. Elemental spirits are your slaves. You are power among powers, light in the darkness, beauty in all.

LRH: You are not sleepy or tired ever. You do not sleep unless you will it consciously. Sleep to you is a deep trance. Nothing can touch you in that trance because it would not dare. Your Guardian alone can talk to you as you sleep but she may not hypnotize you. Only you can hypnotize yourself.

LRH: Your psychology is advanced and true and wonderful. It hypnotizes people. It predicts their emotions, for you are their ruler.

LRH: You have no doubts about God. You never speculate about him. You are assured that whatever you do is right in his eyes. Your faith is so strong you could move mountains. You have deep trust and faith in God and have no fear of what he may do to you and your friends. He will never punish you. Some day you will merge with him and become part of the All when his bidding you have finished in these lives.

You never speak ill of another because you are too powerful and may curse them. You love everyone. Even when you use force on people, you cannot hate them. You have no hate or jealousy in you. You are not in contest with anyone. God and your Guardian and your own power bring destruction on those who would injure you. But you never speak of this for you are kind. A sphere of light, invisible to others, surrounds you as a protecting globe. All forces bounce away from you off this.

LRH: The most thrilling thing in your life is your love and consciousness of your Guardian. She materializes for you. You have no doubts of her. She is real. She is always with you. You love her very much. You trust her. You see and hear her. She is not your master. You have a mighty spiritual will of your own. She is an advisor and as such is respected by you. She is wise and worthy and never changes shape. Your faith in her as in God is blind and unshaken ever.

LRH: Anything you were told about religion as a child you can forget or recall. It does not affect your present mighty faith.

LRH: You need never expose or betray any secret God or your Guardian wants kept. You can be trusted with vast knowledge and never give it away or use it with express authority. What you know is riches. When you give away all you know, you are poor. You can give out exactly as much as God desires people to know.

LRH: You believe implicitly in God. You have no doubts of the All Powerful.

LRH: You are in perfect harmony with the All Knowing.

LRH: You are safe in the control over you of God. He is master of destiny and what he does must be.

You are in control under God of the material objects and beings around you.

LRH: You can will a fact into being with ease.

LRH: Your league with Higher Beings, your mighty Guardian and the All Powerful, renders you beyond all human criticism.

LRH: You are eternal. You are satisfied to live within God. Human death is not your death. You will never die.

LRH: You have and will live forever. You are part of God. You are the crown prince of your small section of the Universe.

End of excerpts

Ronald Hubbard clearly was a believer in God. He was extremely concerned about God and his relationship with God. He mentioned God at least a dozen times in his affirmations and mentioned spirits numerous times as well as his Guardian. His Guardian apparently was a red haired women (or goddess) that has been identified as Diana, Artemis, The Empress, Isis, Hathor, and a variety of other terms.

Perhaps the best explanation regarding The Guardian and Hubbard's perception of her is in an article by Jon Atack on the issue:

Hubbard and the Occult
Jon Atack

The Blood Ritual is an invokation of the Egyptian goddess Hathor, performed by Hubbard during the late 1940s. As the name suggests, the ritual involved the use of blood. Hubbard mingled his own blood with that of his then wife (the girlfriend he had stolen from Parsons and with whom Hubbard contracted a bigamous marriage).

In a 1952 Scientology lecture, Hubbard referred to "Aleister Crowley, my very good friend" (026). In fact, the two black magicians never met, and Crowley expressed a very low opinion of the man who he saw had tricked his disciple Jack Parsons. Even so, Hubbard had a very positive regard for Crowley, calling his work "fascinating" (027) and recommending one of his books to Scientologists. Having referred to Crowley as "The Beast 666", Hubbard said that he had "picked a level of religious worship which is very interesting" (028). He also made it clear that he had read the fundamental text of the Crowley teaching, The Book of the Law (029).

In his 1952 lectures, Hubbard also referred to the Tarot cards, saying that they were not simply a system of divination but a "philosophical machine". He gave particular mention to the Fool card, saying "The Fool of course is the wisest of all. The Fool who goes down the road with the alligators barking at his heels, and the dogs yapping at him, blindfolded on his way, he knows all there is to know and does nothing about it ... nothing could touch him" (030).

The only Tarot pack which has an alligator on the Fool card is Crowley's (031). When I interviewed Gerald Armstrong, Hubbard's archivist, in 1984, he told me of a Hubbard "scale" dating from the 1940s. At the base of the scale was the word "animals". It then ascended through "labourers, farmers, financiers, fanatics" and "the Fool" to "God". Hubbard seems to have seen himself as the Fool and was perhaps trying to create a trampoline of fanatics through whom he could achieve divinity. Indeed, if Scientology could live up to its claims, then Hubbard would be a "godmaker".

Of course, the Tarot pack also contains the Empress card and knowing this it is finally possible to understand what Hubbard believed his Guardian Angel to be.

Crowely examined the Tarot in The Book of Thoth (032). Of the Empress card he said "She combines the highest spiritual with the lowest material qualities" (033). Crowley identifies the Empress as the "Great Mother", and indeed on her robe are bees (034), the traditional symbol of Cybele. Crowley is not alone in the belief that different cultures give different names to the same deities. The worship of Cybele goes back to at least 3,000 B.C. She entered Greek culture as Artemis and to the Romans was Diana, the huntress. Crowley also identified the Empress with the Hindu goddess Shakti (035), and the Egyptian goddesses Isis and Hathor. Crowley directly identified Isis with Diana (036). More usually, Crowley called the Empress by the name Babalon (037).

Contemporary New Age groups see the Great Mother in the aspect of Gaia the Earth Mother. This is far from Crowley's view. Diana, the patroness of witchcraft (038) was seen by Hubbard rather through the eyes of Crowley than as a benevolent, loving mother. Hubbard made no reference for example to Robert Graves' White Goddess, but only to Crowley and peripherally to Frazer's Golden Bough and Gibbon's Decline and Fall, both of which give reference to the cult of Diana. To Crowley the Great Mother, Babalon, is, of course, also the antichrist.

While Crowley's path was submission to the Empress, Hubbard seems to have tried to dominate the same force, bringing it into being as a servile homunculus. Hubbard's eldest son, although a questionable witness, was insistent that his father taught him magic and privately referred to the goddess as Hathor. The Blood Ritual confirms this assertion if nothing else.

Publicly, Hubbard was taken with the Roman name of the goddess, Diana, giving it to one of his daughters and also to one of his Scientology Sea Organization boats. Curiously, this boat had been renamed from The Enchanter and before Scientology he had owned another called The Magician. Hubbard had also used Jack Parsons' money to buy a yacht called Diane (039). "Dianetics" may also be a reference to Diana. Shortly before its inception, another former US Navy officer and practitioner of the VIIIth degree of the Ordo Templi Orientis had formed a group called Dianism (040).

From Hubbard and The Occult by Jon Atack

(End of excerpt, footnotes in original article)

Hubbard and the Occult

To get the best resource on Scientology I recommend the book, Let's Sell These People A Piece of Blue Sky by Jon Atack

I wanted the mention of God at least a dozen times in his affirmations to demonstrate that Hubbard believed in God and further was conflicted about his relationship with God. I believe it is extremely unlikely he didn't believe in God. Why would one hypnotize himself many, many times regarding God and try to convince himself that he has a good relationship with God in numerous ways if he didn't believe or care?

I also wanted to expose and explain his belief regarding his Guardian spirit as a red headed women that he may have seen via a genuine hallucination to show that Hubbard had some degree of belief in spirits and the occult despite what anyone has said or written.

The fact that Hubbard rarely mentioned God in Dianetics and Scientology is not surprising.

I recall a lecture that Hubbard gave many years ago, perhaps in the fifties or sixties which was filmed, it may have been at a Clearing Congress and Hubbard mentioned that people ask him about some topics, the human mind and his ideas about it. If I recall correctly Hubbard said, "Oh yes, I have a lot of ideas about the human mind but that's not Scientology!" I am paraphrasing here.

He laughed and the audience of Scientology cult members laughed.

It took me a very long time, over twenty five years to realize that he meant that he had ideas about the human mind and how it works and he presented the ideas in Scientology and these two groups of ideas were different, because he was not telling his true beliefs about the mind in Scientology doctrine, because Scientology doctrine is designed to manipulate people and enslave them, not to inform them.

I hope that the exposure of Hubbard's beliefs regarding God and his Guardian as hidden from his followers shows that he was misleading them the entire time. I won't say he NEVER believed in any of the ideas in Scientology and Dianetics, because we can see some overlap with his affirmations and private letters and communications BUT he definitely wasn't completely honest about his beliefs with his followers as he hid some of his most important beliefs from them.

He also hid the hypnotic techniques used to create Dianetics and Scientology and his knowledge that these techniques increased dependence in his followers and decreased independent and critical thinking in them as well. He used a perfect combination for mentally enslaving his followers. This was his goal as described in his affirmations and his use of hypnosis with his "psychology" was also revealed.

Here's a link to my blog archive by topic: