Inside Scientology (5 page)

Hubbard also seemed enamored of Parsons, though self-interest motivated him as much as a sense of fellowship did. Soon after he arrived at the Parsonage, Hubbard succeeded in stealing away Parsons's mistress, Sara Northrup, a seductive and spirited twenty-one-year-old blonde known by house members as "Betty." Just about every man at 1003 South Orange Grove Avenue was in love with Betty, recalled Nieson Himmel, but only Hubbard had the audacity to act on it. Hubbard was still married to Polly, though he'd seen her only sporadically since the late 1930s and had left his family behind upon settling in Pasadena. "He was irresistible to women, swept girls off their feet," said Himmel. "There were other girls living there with guys and he went through them one by one." Finally he set his sights on Betty, and the two began a passionate affair. Parsons did nothing; challenging Hubbard and making a stand against free love would have defied his own Thelemic principles.

Nieson Himmel recalled that Hubbard, on at least one occasion at the Parsonage, talked about his desire to start his own religion. Certainly many others had done it. During the 1920s and 1930s in particular, Los Angeles teemed with new or offbeat religions, from the Theosophists to the Mighty "I Am" to the Church of Divine Science and the yoga-inspired Vedanta Society. There were also many prophets in residence, notably the evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, whose International Church of the Foursquare Gospel was one of the country's first mega churches—at its peak, McPherson's Angelus Temple in Echo Park attracted crowds of well over five thousand people, and it had its own Bible school, radio station, and publishing house, as well as numerous bands and choirs. It was also a lucrative business. H. L. Mencken once called McPherson "the most profitable ecclesiastic in America."

As Hubbard kept scant records during this time, we will never know his precise ideas on the matter, nor what he might have learned or assimilated from Aleister Crowley's Thelema. But Hubbard would later refer to Crowley as a "good friend,"
even though the two never met. Seizing upon this statement, numerous critics of Scientology have tried to establish a definite link between Crowley and Hubbard; religious scholars, however, differentiate Thelema from Scientology, pointing out that unlike Thelema, Scientology does not believe in "sex magick" or in many other occult practices. But certain tenets of Scientology echo Crowley's belief system, including the emphasis on finding "who, what, and why" one is and the assertion that "suppressives" of various sorts are hostile to one's success. Similarly, Scientology, like Thelema, is drawn from the Western esoteric tradition, which is also true of faiths like Theosophy or Rosicrucianism, in which secret knowledge and secret levels of enlightenment are core principles.

In September, Hubbard left the Parsonage and entered the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California, to be treated for a recurrence of a duodenal ulcer. There, Hubbard would later claim, he healed himself of not just ulcers, but of war wounds that had left him "crippled and blinded."
^*
He also, according to his later statements, did groundbreaking research into the workings of the human mind.

No evidence of this research has ever been found in Hubbard's hospital file.
Instead, his chronic ulcers gave the navy cause to discharge him. This was not welcome news, as the navy had provided Hubbard with a steady income, the first he'd ever had. He sent an anxious telegram to his superiors, trying to downplay the seriousness of his ulcer—"Have served at sea with present symptoms much worse ... without prejudice to duty and did not leave that duty because of present diagnosis,"
he said, imploring to be kept on—but it was to no avail. Two months later, on December 5, 1945, Hubbard was discharged from Oak Knoll and officially "detached" from the navy. Then, hitching a trailer to the back of his Packard, still dressed in his navy uniform, Hubbard drove south to Pasadena, where the next stage of his transformation awaited him.

During the months that Hubbard was gone, Parsons immersed himself in the practice of magic. He was set on conjuring up a woman—he would refer to her as his "elemental"—to be his new mate. Parsons was pleased when his friend returned to the Parsonage and asked him to be his assistant during a prolonged ritual that Parsons called his "magical working." Hubbard agreed, and after several weeks of their combined efforts, Parsons claimed to have summoned his elemental, who appeared at his door a week later in the form of a very attractive young redhead named Marjorie Cameron (an artist, Cameron moved into the Parsonage almost immediately; soon after, the couple married).

As for Hubbard, when he wasn't serving as the sorcerer's apprentice, he was holed up in his bedroom, contending with what appeared to be a massive bout of writer's block. Having purchased a new Dictaphone, which he hoped would help speed his productivity, he'd written reassuringly to his agent that he was about to experience "a flood of copy"
over the next few weeks. "You will have to hire squads of messengers just to get it around and an armored car just to pick up checks," Hubbard said. But he spent day after day staring at the wall.

It was during this period that Hubbard convinced Parsons that they should go into business together, with Betty as a silent third. The idea was to pool their resources in a venture called Allied Enterprises and then profit jointly off the "capabilities and crafts of each of the partners,"
on projects yet to be determined. Parsons put up most of the capital, investing nearly his entire savings of $21,000. Hubbard put in all of his money too—about $1,200—but his primary job was to come up with ideas.

As their first venture, Hubbard suggested that Allied Enterprises go into the yachting business. He and Betty would withdraw $10,000 from the partnership's account and go to Miami, where they'd use the money to secure the boats. Then, he told Parsons, they would sail them back to California to be sold at a profit. Excited by the adventure of the business and confident that Hubbard's proficiency as a sailor and sea captain would stand them in good stead, Parsons readily agreed to the plan. Hubbard had meanwhile written to the chief of naval personnel,
^*
requesting permission to leave the country in order to sail around the world collecting "writing material"
under the patronage of Allied Enterprises. But Parsons had no knowledge of that proposal, and so it was that in April 1946, L. Ron Hubbard left Pasadena for Miami, spiriting away both Jack Parsons's onetime mistress and his money.

Parsons finally began to worry when a month went by without hearing from his business partners. Chastened after several members of his household, and Aleister Crowley, warned him that he had been the victim of a confidence trick, Parsons flew to Miami in June, where he found that his fears were justified. Hubbard and Sara—she was called Betty only at 1003 South Orange Grove—had taken out a $12,000 mortgage and purchased the boats: two schooners, the
Harpoon
and the
Blue Water
II,
and a yacht named the
Diane.
Now, having hired a crew with Parsons's money, they were preparing to sail away on the
Harpoon.
Quickly, Parsons secured an injunction to prevent them from leaving the country, and a week later, Allied Enterprises was formally dissolved. In exchange for Parsons's agreement not to press charges, Hubbard and Sara agreed to pay half of Parsons's legal fees and relinquish their right to the
Diane
and the
Blue Water II.
They were allowed to keep the
Harpoon,
which they ultimately sold, but they paid Parsons $2,900 to cover his interest in the ship. Parsons returned to Pasadena "near mental and financial collapse,"
as he said, and soon afterward sold 1003 South Orange Grove.
^*
The era of the Parsonage was over.

But the era of L. Ron Hubbard had just begun. L. Sprague De Camp, Hubbard's colleague in science fiction, had attended Caltech and knew Jack Parsons. De Camp was aware of Hubbard's friendship with the scientist and also knew of his most recent escapade in Miami. De Camp, skeptical from the beginning, saw in Hubbard's activities a familiar pattern. Sometime soon, De Camp predicted in a letter to Isaac Asimov, Hubbard would arrive in Los Angeles "broke, working the poor-wounded-veteran racket for all it's worth, and looking for another easy mark. Don't say you haven't been warned. Bob [Robert Heinlein] thinks Ron went to pieces morally as a result of the war. I think that's fertilizer, that he always was that way, but when he wanted to conciliate or get something from somebody he could put on a good charm act. What the war did was to wear him down to where he no longer bothers with the act."

On August 10, 1946, L. Ron Hubbard, then thirty-five, and Sara "Betty" Northrup, twenty-two, were married (bigamously, as Hubbard had never bothered to get a divorce from Polly).
^*
They settled into a small cottage in Laguna Beach, where Hubbard, nearly penniless, tried to resume his writing career. True to De Camp's predictions, Hubbard started filing claims with the Veterans Administration, hoping to increase his disability pension. He complained of numerous ailments, including psychological problems, and in one letter appealed to the VA to help him pay for psychiatric counseling. In that letter, dated October 15, 1947, Hubbard complained of "long periods of moroseness" and "suicidal inclinations"—symptoms that, in more recent years, might suggest a form of posttraumatic stress disorder. But he'd "avoided out of pride" seeking help, or even confiding in a physician, in the hopes that "time would balance a mind which I had every reason to suppose was seriously affected [by the war]." But now, having tried and failed to regain his equilibrium, "I am utterly unable to approach anything like my own competence," he wrote. "My last physician informed me that it might be very helpful if I were to be examined and perhaps treated psychiatrically or even by a psychoanalyst ... I cannot, myself, afford such treatment."

The Veterans Administration responded by urging Hubbard to report for a physical and ultimately did increase his pension. But Hubbard, by all accounts, never followed through with psychiatric counseling. Instead, he chose a more independent path, quietly writing a series of personal "affirmations" in his journal.
It was an experiment, as he said, to "re-establish the ambition, willpower, desire to survive, the talent and confidence of myself." It would also be the most revealing psychological self-assessment, complete with exhortations to himself, that he had ever made.

In the affirmations, Hubbard confessed to deep anxiety about his writing as well as his struggles with impotence, which he blamed on steroid treatments he had received to treat his ulcers. He also acknowledged his compulsion toward lying and exaggeration. Despite frequent exhortations to the contrary, his war record, he admitted, was "none too glorious," but he added that he must be convinced that he suffered no reaction from any disciplinary action. His service was honorable, he affirmed.

Hubbard's months under Jack Parsons's tutelage had led Hubbard to believe himself to be a "magus" or "adept," an enlightened, ethereal being who communicated through a human body. Since adepts exist on a higher spiritual plane than the rest of humanity, the standard rules of behavior, he reasoned, shouldn't apply to them. He could have anything he desired, Hubbard told himself. "Men are your slaves. Elemental spirits are your slaves. You are power among powers, light in the darkness, beauty in all."

The affirmations went on for pages, as Hubbard repeatedly avowed his magical power, sexual attractiveness, good health, strong memory, and literary talent. He would make fortunes in writing, he affirmed. "You understand all the workings of the minds of humans around you, for you are a doctor of minds, bodies and influences."

He would use his mind, in other words, to repair his soul. And soon, he would show others how to use their own minds to do exactly the same thing. "You have magnificent power," he wrote. "You need no excuses, no crutches. You need no apologies about what you have done or been.... You start your life anew."

E
A
R
L
Y
I
N
T
H
E
W
I
N
T
E
R
of 1949, L. Ron Hubbard wrote to his literary agent, Forrest Ackerman, to tell him that he was preparing a manuscript of brilliance. The book would be so powerful, Hubbard joked, that a reader would be able to "rape women without their knowing it, communicate suicide messages to [their] enemies as they sleep ... evolve the best way of protecting or destroying communism, and other handy household hints."
He wasn't sure what to title his book—perhaps something along the lines of
Science of the Mind.
"This has more selling and publicity angles than any book of which I have ever heard," he said.

Soon after, Hubbard sent a letter to the American Psychological Association, hoping to interest its leaders in his discoveries. Having studied the theories of Sigmund Freud, he wrote, he had come up with a "technology" that could erase painful experiences from one's past that were buried in the subconscious, and also help a person relive his or her own birth. Hubbard, like the Freudian disciple Otto Rank, believed that the "birth trauma" lay at the root of many contemporary neuroses and psychosomatic ills. Unlike anyone else, however, he claimed to have engineered a cure for these ills, which he had used successfully on more than two hundred people. Hubbard offered the APA a paper on his findings.
The society turned him down.

The science fiction editor John Campbell was not nearly as dismissive. Urging Hubbard to visit him, he found Ron and Sara a cottage in the genteel New Jersey beach town of Bay Head, about an hour's drive from Campbell's own home in suburban Plainfield. A few weeks later, Hubbard arrived and offered his editor a demonstration of his techniques.