Scientology Rare Book Library Dr. Christopher Evans - Cults of Unreason
Table Of Contents

Thought Has Mass

JUST OVER TWO years after its sensational beginnings, a critic attempting to survey the status of Dianetics and Scientology might at first be inclined to the view that it was in a sturdy condition. The name of the founder was known all over America and in many other parts of the world. Literally hundreds of thousands of people - perhaps as many as a million - had had some first-hand experience of auditing and were familiar with the principles of Dianetic therapy. Many claimed to have received some positive benefit from it. Furthermore, the philosophy (as expounded through Scientology), with the concepts of the Thetan and its limitless past lives, its immortality and potential omnipotence, and also the strange but imaginative idea that life was a game played by Gods - ourselves - who had temporarily lost their God-like powers, had struck a spark in many quarters.

On closer inspection everything in the garden was revealed as anything but lovely. True there were numerous claims of the successes of Dianetics therapy - but there is nothing remarkable about this. It is well known to any qualified medical practitioner or psychologist that neurotic symptoms - often quite spectacular ones - may dramatically yield as soon as the sick individual acquires a strong faith in something. This faith may be in magic, in spiritual healing, in Christian Science, in some quack doctor, in herbal remedies or whatever. Provided it is strong enough, neurotic symptoms will yield, temporarily. And such was turning out to be the case with the first Dianetic cures, and with the inevitable relapses came the inevitable disillusionment.

Furthermore, through his constant claims that the therapy worked, and that it could be made to work even better, Hubbard seems to have got himself into the difficult position of having constantly to supply marvels in order to simply stay in one place. Hence the repeated announcements of dramatic new techniques `hundreds of times more effective' than the previous ones, etc., etc. But at each step, of course, the time between the making of the claim and the request for explanations as to why it didn't work, became shorter and shorter.

Even Hubbard's most solid converts, Campbell and the physician, Dr Joseph Winter, fled the field - the former by turning quietly back to science fiction of the space-ship variety, the latter by a public renunciation of Hubbard in his interesting book A Doctor Looks at Dianetics. Winter had been wildly enthusiastic in the early days, and for a medical man showed himself to be quite credulous. After the split with Hubbard which came partly, as we have said earlier, because Hubbard was `prescribing' his weird mixture of vitamins - GUK - to accompany auditing, and partly, perhaps, because of Hubbard's rooted disinclination to have anyone in his entourage who might constitute a rival, Winter set up in practice with his own version of Dianetics. This he persisted with until his death a few years ago.

Another man to fall out with Ron was his fellow science fiction writer, A. E. Van Vogt, who also set up to practise a modified version of Dianetics in California. Van Vogt and Hubbard later made it up for a while, the former writing a fantastic science fiction novel, The Universe Makers, in which a man gradually acquires super powers through various Scientological insights and ends up creating and destroying the Universe at will. At the time of writing Van Vogt is still true to the principles of Dianetics and still practising them on a professional basis.

The story ot the association between Purcell and Hubbard and its ultimate demise is worth telling for it helps one to understand the abrupt transition between Dianetics and Scientology which took place in the early fifties, and which is otherwise so puzzling. There are several versions of the tale each with minor variations, but most agree on salient points. In 1950, after the first raving runaway success of Dianetics when, briefly, orthodox medicine and psychology turned curious eyes on the cult and its techniques, there were signs of important rifts in the upper echelons of the movement. These, it appears, were occasioned by the conflict of goals and interest between Hubbard himself and the numerous intelligent, and often very well-educated, professional men who had become involved in Dianetics. Some of these, like Frederick Schuman, Professor of Government at Williams College, Massachusetts, who, in a letter to the New York Times declared that `History has become a race between Dianetics and catastrophe', went completely overboard on the topic. Others, like Winter, gradually cooled their enthusiasm. All were united however at one time with the aim of getting Hubbard `organized', in other words moulding his personality and ideas into some sort of traditional or establishment form, and thereby making Dianetics and its practice academically and professionally `OK'. In this enterprise they were doomed, for if there is one person on earth who dislikes being organized by others it is L. Ron Hubbard. Tensions grew steadily, with matters complicated by the fact that Hubbard's second marriage was hitting the rocks. He had been divorced from his first wife, Margaret Louise Grubb, in 1947, and married his second, Sarah Northrup, somewhere about this time - and she had become enthusiastically involved in Dianetics. For some reason or another, and quite possibly with some justification, Hubbard began to suspect that his wife and other Dianeticists, including Dr Winter, were planning to take control of the organization out of his hands. According to his son Nibs, he even entertained the notion, altogether less plausible, that the red hand of Communism was at work attempting to steal the secrets of Dianetics from the West and, after a peculiar incident in his New York apartment when he believed he had been drugged and `brainwashed', Hubbard packed a few belongings and, with characteristic decision, left for Puerto Rico. A great flap arose in the Dianetic Research Foundation when it was discovered that the leader had departed, and press interest was also considerable. It was at this point that the millionaire Purcell intervened. After tracking down L. Ron in San Juan he persuaded him to return with the promise that Dianetics would be put on a business footing - which in Purcell's eyes meant establishing it along formal company lines. This Hubbard agreed to, though with what alacrity is not known. In return Purcell launched and partly financed the Hubbard Dianetic Foundation at 211 West Douglas Avenue, Witchita, which now replaced Elizabeth, NJ, as the focal point of Dianetic activity. There was a big snag, however. Convinced that Hubbard needed `organizing' Purcell had persuaded him to assign the rights of his books, recorded tapes, techniques and all the titles and paraphernalia of Dianetics over to the Foundation. Hubbard's stake in the whole business was no longer that of the autocratic creator, but rather that of something equivalent to a company director. According to acquaintances of his this proved too much for his roving intellect, and in February 1952 he did another disappearing trick and, grabbing a typewriter and not much else, moved to Phoenix, Arizona, to start all over again. But alas he now found himself in the maddening position of being legally unable to practise or even write about his very own brainchild - Dianetics!

Lesser men might here have given up and turned to cactus growing or to Christian Science, but not Mr Lafayette Ronald Hubbard. With magnificent aplomb he launched, from its new headquarters in Phoenix, the latest brand new science to supersede Dianetics - Scientology. Before long this was issuing its own journal replete with such headlines as `Source of Life Energy Found!', photographs of his `Desert Research Laboratory', and warnings about something called `Black Dianetics'.

What exactly went on in this scholarly haven is not absolutely certain, but there is little doubt that some remarkable thoughts passed through L. Ron's head. One discovery that he seems to have made at this time was that it was relatively easy for the Thetan to leave the physical body at will. This could be accomplished by the simple expedient of the auditor saying to the preclear: `Be three feet back of your head'. One didn't need even to be a sensationally advanced Scientologist to do this and Hubbard claimed that sixty per cent of humanity could achieve `exteriorization', as the trick was called, on the first attempt. This is still one of the basic features of any sustained period of auditing today, and most Scientologists will tell you that they can achieve it. Unfortunately they never seem to be able to do anything useful or interesting when exteriorized. It is no good, for example, asking them to read something written on a bit of paper in another room or even to describe an object hidden behind their backs, for you will be told loftily that such tricks can't be done to order or, more maddeningly, `I could if I wanted lo, but right now I don't want to'. Exteriorization may have been going on since the early 1950s but, to be frank, it seems to be one of Man's most useless metaphysical accomplishments.

It was also in this period of hiatus that Hubbard, or one of his organizations, is reputed to have offered for sale the typescript of a work called Excalibur. This allegedly contained data so staggering that it was `not to be released during Mr Hubbard's stay on earth' and would-be purchasers would be sworn `not to permit other readers to read it'. `Gold-bound and locked', individually typed and retailing at fifteen hundred dollars, it is hard to say, without reading it, whether it was worth the money or not. Nor can it have been a joke, for the blurb for Excalibur warned that `four of the first fifteen people to read it had gone insane'.

Meanwhile back in Wichita, the Hubbardless Dianetic Foundation pottered slowly on, feebly attempting to quantify the ephemeral phenomena of the cult, desperately hoping to achieve academic and professional recognition. Within two years, despite its hold on Hubbard's earlier books and the world famous name of Dianetics, it was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Purcell and his colleagues learned the hard way that whatever the cult was called and however professionally it was organized, it was nothing without L. Ron.

With supporters melting away and no new Clears to speak of, things in Scientology were beginning to look almost dull. Fortunately there appeared on the scene a simple but impressive piece of gadgetry which has caused as much controversy as any of the stunts connected with Scientology and which is now perhaps one of the most important features of any standard Scientological auditing session. I am referring of course to the magnificently styled `electropsychometer' - or more simply, the `E-meter'. In modern cults quasi-scientific gadgets often play an important role, as we shall note in later sections of this book. Because of the importance of the E-meter to Scientology theory and practice and because of the muddled image - a mixture of witchcraft, brainwashing and electronic hocus-pocus - which the press publicity has unfairly created for it we shall take a close look at the device. Before doing so, however, it will also be necessary to take a brief refresher course on the techniques of auditing.

It will be recalled that engrams and hang-ups of various kinds evaporate when the individual `confronts' them and shows that he can control or manipulate them at will. The auditor directs the patient or preclear along the track of his past lives and zeros in on any point where the memory seems either particularly acute or resistant. Once the incident is spotted, the preclear is ordered to control it by suitable fantasies - he may be invited to `destroy it' or `recreate it' a large number of times, and make it smaller or bigger by suitable use of his powers of imagination until he feels able to `handle it' and reduce or erase its oppressive hold on him.

For example, let us suppose that the auditor has discovered that his preclear is `stuck' with an incident involving a dead crow - it may have been the last thing he saw before he died in the Battle of Hastings, or something along those lines. Now one way of eliminating this incident would be for the preclear to acquire mastery over the mental images of dead crows, and the auditor can help achieve this by requiring him to manipulate, in his mind, various mental pictures - they are called `mock-ups' in Scientology jargon. He may be asked to destroy dead crows, `burn' them, imagine himself eating them, watch other people eating them, etc., etc. When he has done this many times and he begins to seem a bit blase about it all, the incident is reckoned to be erased and eliminated as a debilitating engram. In the early days of Dianetics many dramatic cures were reported to have arisen as the result of processing of this kind.

It is important to realize that to Scientologists the mental images which most of us can observe and manipulate in our mind's eye, so to speak, are not just fantasy creatures of the brain, but have a real and objective existence in their own space time continuum where the Thetan with his omnipotent powers has created them. In principle it should be possible to create such an image to be so `real' that other people could see it as well as oneself. At this point the object has `reality' for them as well as for you. The universe we inhabit at the moment, according to the Scientologists, is simply the result of a whole bunch of Thetans - you, me and everyone else - at some time agreeing to share reality on a number of these mock-ups and these now constitute the world around us.

This explains the great weight attached in Scientological processing to the ability to handle these mental images with skill, and it is tough luck on those members of the human race who don't have the necessary vivid visual imagination, for they can be slow to advance in Scientology.

Returning now to the point from which we digressed, even those familiar with the marvels of auditing will appreciate that in the early days it was one thing to talk about identifying the points in the memory track where the significant or repressed incidents occurred, and another thing to actually find them. At best an auditor would have to rely on getting some signal - such as a twitch or gasp from his preclear - when he got near some critical point and it might be all too easy to be misled by such unreliable incidents. Then, in late 1950 or early 1951, an individual named Volney Mathison turned up in Elizabeth, NJ, bearing a strange but intriguing box, equipped with wires, handles, a dial, etc., which he claimed was capable of measuring thought.

To anyone engaged in the tricky business of tracking down thoughts and memories, Mathison's device would seem to be just what was wanted, but Hubbard, who never seems to care for developments in Scientology which are not his own, was at first rather suspicious of it. However, the staff at the Research Foundation felt sufficiently curious to look into the matter further and sought a demonstration of its worth.

The trick, Mathison explained, was to hold one handle in each hand, set the meter needle at zero, and then start to think of something. When any unpleasant or dramatic thought occurred, lo, the needle would swing dramatically across the dial. To many people the electropsychometer was a truly marvellous device, and its potential for auditing was not lost on the group present. On the other hand, anyone who had ever tinkered with electronics or taken a course in experimental psychology, would immediately have recognized it as a device for measuring what is known as the galvanic skin response - a change in the electrical conductivity of the skin which occurs during periods of even slight excitability or emotional stress.

The basic principle is that the individual, by taking one of the two terminals of the set-up in each hand, becomes part of an electrical circuit via a little amplifier and recording meter - in scientific jargon, the psychogalvanometer. Changes in the resistance of this circuit will cause deflections of the needle on the meter

Now there are various ways in which this resistance can be varied, as the first psychologists working with the `galvanic skin response' in the nineteenth century discovered. In the first place, if the terminals are held in the hands of the individual and the grips gently squeezed, this will produce a better contact between metal and skin surface, thus lowering the resistance and inducing a corresponding change in the reading on the meter. Another cause of reduction in the resistance of the circuit is the production of sweat, even in minute amounts, on the surface of the skin, for the saline acts as a conductor which again causes needle deflection. Since both these effects, particularly the first one, are under the voluntary control of the individual linked to the galvanometer, the device in its simplest form is more or less useless as an objective measure of his psychological state. Obviously anyone wishing to induce a needle change may do so simply by squeezing the terminals, and with a little practice one can soon cause the needle to do just what one wants it to.

There is in fact a third important phenomenon involved. This is a very minor change in the electrical conductivity of the skin itself which is part of the general sensitizing process occurring when a human or an animal is alerted or aroused - and this slight change, which is not under conscious voluntary control but pretty well a reflex act, can be measured by a sensitive galvanometer. In order to rule out artificial results caused by squeezing, sweating, etc., the proper use of the galvanometer requires that small electrodes, coated with a neutral jelly, are attached to the palms of the hand. When set up in this form (a standard laboratory demonstration in university psychology courses) the needle will then be seen to move about spectacularly when the subject is threatened with a pinprick, when some taboo word is spoken or a grisly photograph shown.

Now Scientologists dispense with the primary precautions outlined above and the preclear simply hold the terminals - they look like small tin cans - in his hand. Thus the significant incidents in his past life, or lives, which the E-meter is supposed to root out, can be produced pretty well at will either by conscious or unconscious effort on the part of the person being audited. Even when the meter is not being watched by the preclear himself, but is being monitored by the auditor, it is of course perfectly easy for the matter to give unconscious signals to the other as to when he wants the needle to move. (Such unconscious signals are exceedingly common and contributed enormously to the early `evidence' for telepathy when subjects under tests were not hidden from each other by screens.) Significantly, the final steps to the state of Clear are approached by a long period of `solo-auditing' in which the subject monitors his own E-meter at each stage.

When tackled on the question of using cans rather than electrodes in an effort to rule out voluntary control of the E-meter, Scientologists argue that the kind of deflection caused by a squeeze is very characteristic, and that trained auditors know how to disregard such artefacts. They even hold that the movements caused by an increase or decrease in sweat output, etc., produce responses which are detectable to the trained operator, and that there is a further class of needle activity, due to none of the above causes, which is the real meat of the matter. The important point, they claim, is that the mental images of past happenings, whether traumatic or not and whether in this or in any previous life, are real events which have an objective existence outside their representation in the memory store.

In other words, thought has mass and when an object is imagined it acquires a reality which may be sufficiently substantial to influence the circuitry of the E-meter. Changes in the circuit occur because at one moment there is just the person and the gadget, but when he creates his mental image or recalls his engram, this intrudes as an extra in the system. Sometimes the thought may have relatively low mass and needle deflections will be small or slow; on other occasions, such as in the so-called `Rock-slam' - a very important incident in the auditing and one which denotes a major traumatic incident in the past - the mass detected may be so great that the needle gives a wild and erratic kick.

True, the `Rock-slam' was a phenomenon unknown, at least by that name, to the psychologists who tinkered with the skin galvanometer a hundred years ago, but there is no reason to suppose that they were not aware of it as just another example of the gadget's capricious and unpredictable behaviour. What Scientologists seem to have done is to explore the whims and oddities of this particular box of tricks to a completely novel extent, lavishing far more attention on it than it has ever received before. This conclusion is supported by the austere British Psychological Society which, in 1970, had a long cool look at the E-meter and judged it to be no more than an unreliable version of the old GSR. To the simple- minded amateurs who hung around Hubbard's menage, however, such critical thoughts did not occur and Mathison's device was a winner from the word go - particularly when he showed how it might be used to spot blocks or engrams before the preclear himself was aware of them. For those few sceptics who had a sneaking feeling that there was something familiar about the gadget, Mathison proudly produced the US patent number on the base of the device which he considered ample authentication of his claim lo be its inventor. This should have squashed all traces of scepticism had not some unpleasantly suspicious auditor (even among Scientologists there are to be found occasional naughty fellows who won't swallow everything they're told) decided to note the number and check with the US Patents Office. He was rewarded, if puzzled, with the discovery that the patent number referred not to any device for measuring thought invented by Volney Mathison in 1950, but to a special kind of threshing machine developed in 1860 by some long-forgotten mid-west farmer. Despite this, it was agreed that the E-meter, whoever invented it, worked very nicely and ever since then we find it featuring heavily in all Scientology literature. It is also an essential prerequisite to anyone seriously thinking of a career in Scientology, and most students now proudly own one. These days they cost about £60 ($150) and are equipped with pretty dials and nice handgrips.

But even the innovation of the E-meter had little effect in arresting the steady decline in interest in Dianetics which was taking place in the early fifties and the relative lack of enthusiasm for its more philosophically oriented successor, Scientology. In the meantime Hubbard began to look overseas for fresh fields to conquer. The most promising areas would seem to have been the English-speaking countries including Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, where his fame had in some measure already spread, and, of course, England.

To English people, judging by the patronizing comments published at the time of the fad's peak moments, the craze for Dianetics and the success of its effusive founder were merely another example of the American characteristic of falling for such sensational nonsense as flagpole squatting and underwater weddings. It is interesting and ironic that nowadays Americans, who have forgotten the original fuss, view Scientology, with its flock of attendant hippies and its suggestions of sexual broad-mindedness, as characteristically British and are inclined to assume that the whole thing had its roots in the market town of East Grinstead. But in 1953, at about the time Martin Gardner was writing in his Fads and Fallacies that the cult had burnt out, Hubbard looked not to traditionally staid Britain for room to start afresh, but to those far-flung remnants of the British Empire, Australia, and South Africa. Accordingly, while keeping his headquarters in Phoenix, he took off on a round-the-world trip with special long stops in Sydney and Adelaide, Johannesburg and Durban. Here he found small knots of supporters waiting to greet him, and the nucleus of branch headquarters, generally in some small rented office, either set up or just about to be.

The technique employed in establishing formal Scientology organizations across the world was straightforward and followed a similar pattern in all English-speaking countries. In the first instance local groups existing in major cities (these would generally have come about as the result of a bunch of characters, often science fiction fans, getting together to audit each other) would be visited by a member of the Phoenix staff. He would act as Hubbard's personal envoy, giving a number of lectures to the natives and perhaps doing a little paid auditing. If things looked well, he would arrange for the setting up of a formal office with a small staff and a stock of books, tape recordings of Hubbard lectures, etc. Before long the local branch would begin giving official courses in Scientology, leading to the award of certificates of proficiency which would allow the individual to practise a special kind of psychotherapy using Scientology techniques.

For those sufficiently motivated or with enough money to spend, one could even take a course leading to the `degree' of Bachelor of Scientology (B.Scn.). If you think that this abbreviation might make the unwary believe that the holder had a degree of Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.), then you are right. This qualification, which might set one back £100 or so, would allow one to set off on the greatest trail of all - the quest for the highest Scientological award, the Doctorate (D.Scn.), cheap at the price you may feel, for a further £200. The value of having a doctorate (never mind what it's in) to anyone engaged in the practice of psychotherapy is obvious, and the course was a popular one.

In 1955, after duly surveying likely parts of the Common- wealth, Hubbard arrived in England where he found the nucleus of activity centred in the `Scientology Clinic' in Notting Hill Gate. It is not certain who in the Scientology organization chose the loaded word `clinic' to describe the movement's rather poky set of offices and rooms in Notting Hill. It is hard, however, to imagine policy decisions of this kind coming from anyone other than Hubbard himself. The practice of so describing Scientology centres was not confined to Britain and in issue 34-G of the American journal Scientology, in a longish article on `Scientology Certificates', we are told that the `degree of "Doctor of Scientology" is awarded only after a person has...completed his training as a Bachelor of Scientology in the Advanced Clinical Course Units'. The `powers' of a Doctor of Scientology, the article continues, are `considerable'. He may train, examine and revoke certificates and he may `found clinics'. The maximum fee for the acquisition of the Doctorate at the time, via a mandatory sequence of lesser degrees, was fifteen hundred dollars.

In considering the motivation and orientation of Scientology and its practitioners, in its early if not its later stage of development, one is obliged to take into account the considered use of doctorates and such expressions as `clinic', `advanced clinical course', etc. (The OED defines clinic as `a private hospital to which patients are recommended by individual doctors' or as an `institution attached to a hospital'.) Both Scientology clinics and Scientology `doctors' disappeared quietly from the scene at some uncertain date in the late fifties or early sixties as the movement continued its shift from a predominantly therapeutic to a largely `spiritual' role.

One of Hubbard's first moves on his arrival in England was to give a series of public lectures at the New Lindsay Theatre Club in Notting Hill. These were attended by enthusiastic audiences who had longed for a glimpse of the man in person. The lectures attracted almost no attention, either hostile or friendly, from the press, and the audiences were almost entirely composed of committed Scientologists or fellow- travellers.

This of course has been very much the case right back to square one. Ever since the unfortunate encounter at the Shrine Auditorium he has picked his ground with great care, preferring to address conferences of Scientologists only, where fairly steep admission charges are made and dissident elements will be non-existent. This partly explains the uneven quality of Hubbard's platform talks which contain material so badly organized that only the most committed of audiences would be prepared to tolerate them. Nevertheless, with his disciples they are undoubtedly successful and tape recordings of them are listened to with great attention and devotion at special meetings and congresses which Hubbard, for various reasons, seldom attends these days.

It is a pity that a record or tape of one of these speeches is not available to go along with this book. The very highly motivated may like to know that such tapes can be purchased for about £12.50 per reel from Scientology branch shops, but most non-Scientologists will find that their value, even as humorous or historical pieces, could never approach that figure. They generally last a bit less than an hour, and for anyone not absolutely convinced that he is hearing the words of the Messiah, listening to more than one of them can be a tedious experience. Hubbard's voice, it is true, is an interesting one, rich and well-modulated. His platform timing is excellent, and he sprinkles the talk with mildly humorous anecdotes of a personal nature delivered with enough skill to raise a laugh from his eager audience.

What is really at fault is the tenuous subject matter which seldom has a consistent theme or bears much relation to the announced title of the talk. In one tape on The History of Dianetics for example - which ought to make an interesting talk whoever were to give it - all one is treated to are a lot of anecdotes about Hubbard's life in the navy, some reminiscences of the famous Commander Thompson and a lot of joking or sardonic attacks on psychiatrists, revealing a particular obsession of Hubbard's which runs like a vein through all his work and utterances.

When the title of the talk is on something like `Becomingness' or `Confrontingness' - typical Scientology jargon - the message is even more obscure and yet the audience laugh an applaud as enthusiastically as ever. The truth of the matter is probably that indoctrinated Scientologists lower their critical level below the point dictated by common sense, and one gets the feeling that were Hubbard to stand on the platform and recite the telephone directory backwards he would still receive a standing ovation.

To give Hubbard his due, he has made imaginative use of modern methods of communication and must have been one of the first people to recognize the propaganda and financial worth of the tape recorder. Since the very early days of Dianetics, he has recorded special lectures, personal auditing sessions, etc., which have then been distributed all over the world and sold or rented at considerable profit. Nowadays the high point of the year among the faithful is the release of Ron's Journal, an annual verbal message to all Scientologists. This takes a form of a kind of cosy fireside chat - recorded in fact on Hubbard's ocean-going flagship - in which details of more sensational advances in Scientology are announced. Violent attacks are also made on the world of politics and big business, which he now declares are out to crush him.

Sometime in 1955 Hubbard evidently decided to quit America and settle in England. After a brief spell in a hotel he moved to a flat in London, holding open house for the small but ardent Scientology fraternity in the city. The movement was at this time at a very low ebb and remained so for at least five years before, after a slow rise, it suddenly leapt into spectacular prominence once more.

These were the years in the wilderness. The `clinic' in Notting Hill Gate attracted only a sprinkling of visitors, a mixture of idlers, coffee-bar intellectuals, chronic neurotics, a few would-be bogus psychotherapists and the inevitable drab collection of cult-hunters who have worn and discarded in turn the garb of Christian Scientists, Theosophists, Spiritualists, Astrologists and Yogis. Hubbard himself seems to have been still fairly well off, though the London Scientology Organization itself was in a poor way. At meetings collections were made for the `building fund', which was intended to produce some day `Hubbard House', but when in 1956 about half of Notting Hill fell to the wrecker's ball, only a generous gesture by a friendly business man (neither the first nor the last of many) allowed a move to other, more spacious premises at Fitzroy Street.

More spacious accommodation was also needed for Hubbard's family by his wife Mary Sue, whom he had met and married in Wichita. By 1959 they had four children and the premises in Old Brompton Road were beginning to seem a bit squeezed. Emissaries were sent forth to scout for more suitable premises and one returned with a real catch in his net. It was Saint Hill Manor, the Maharajah of Jaipur's beautiful residence on the outskirts of East Grinstead in the green and leafy Sussex countryside. With eleven bedrooms, eight bathrooms, a ballroom, swimming pool and numerous living rooms it was spacious enough for almost anyone and its many acres of private grounds promised seclusion and isolation should they ever be needed. The selling price is stated to have been £16,000 and if so it was a bargain.


The author has made strenuous attempts to trace individuals who bought and read Excalibur without success. Is this because they were holding to their oath of secrecy, or perhaps because they went mad on finding what they had paid $1,500 for?

Scientology policy today is that D.Scn. stands for Dean of Scientology.

   
Grow New Teeth The Master of Saint Hill