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More hokum from guru Hubbard

Title: More hokum from guru Hubbard
Date: Sunday, 14 April 1991
Publisher: Daily Yomiuri (Japan)
Author: Mark Wilkinson
Main source: link (102 KiB)

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CLEAR BODY, CLEAR MIND: The Effective Purification Program, by L. Ron Hubbard; Bridge Publications; 306 pages.

After years of polluting your body, there's hope: L. Ron Hubbard's Clear Body Clear Mind. It gives insights into the horrible toxins in all of us and provides home remedies for flushing our bodies.

And if you're an utter rube, you may find comfort in the evangelical, condescending tone of this astounding example of self-promotion.

Claiming to have discovered the presence of impurities in our bodies, Hubbard goes on for too many pages giving us "his" ideas on how to cleanse our bodies of toxins. In truth, "his" ideas are only old home remedies and common sense, but like his other books, they are packaged to dazzle and amaze us with Hubbard's intelligence.

Hubbard starts by meticulously explaining why it's so important for the reader to understand every word of his 306-page, double-spaced book, which could easily be condensed to less than 50 pages. To help the reader, he provides footnotes on almost every page for such difficult words as "vying" and "dormant," footnotes that on some pages take up more space than the main text.

After the lecture on comprehension, he goes into the toxins, which, according to him, could be anything. Drugs, pesticides, even perfumes could get into your body, he says, and lie "dormant" (better check your dictionary before continuing) until released.

Once released, all hell breaks loose, as the toxins start "vying" (better grab your dictionary again) for control of your psyche.

Yes, remember that cologne you stopped using several years ago? Well, it's in you, waiting for a chance to escape and TAKE OVER YOUR BODY!!! according Hubbard.

To help every feeble-minded one of us—because, of course, only Hubbard had the mental ability to understand his insights—the book contains drawings showing drugs embedded in body tissues. And in case you can't figure out how those drugs got there, the book has drawings of people taking drugs.

Having scared the bejesus out of us, he introduces his Purification Program.

OK, here it is . . . Ready? Here, we go: First, exercise. Second, sweat. Third, eat a balanced diet. Fourth, drink plenty of liquids. And finally, maintain a regular schedule.

That's it. Three hundred and six pages spent telling us what every mother tells her children, what every doctor tells his patients and what every teacher tells her students. And get this, he claims to have discovered this Purification Program. He claims that scientific research has only confirmed what he has known all along.

Where did Hubbard get the gall to lay claim to authoring the Purification Program? Why, he was the grand pooh-bah of Scientology.

What's Scientology? In Hubbard's own words, Scientology is "the broad science of life."

In 1956 he wrote, "If you knew what life was doing, you would know what many sciences and activities are doing." And with these words, says a Scientology brochure of his works, L. Ron Hubbard went from pulp-novel science fiction writer to author of self-help books and founder of Scientology.

Ask people from the United States about Scientology and you're liable to hear strange stories. They'll talk of kidnappings, surgery without instruments and rituals involving snakes. But if you press them for details, they'll probably shrug and claim ignorance.

The truth is that Scientology is one of those U.S. phenomena that most Americans seem to know little about. According to the brief bio in Clear Body Clear Mind Hubbard dropped out of college in the 1930s and became a science fiction writer. During World War II lie was injured, and while rehabilitating, found himself thinking about his body. It was during this period of convalescence that he came up the "basic tenets of Dianetics technology."

In 1950 Hubbard released the tenets in Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, breaking ground for the modern genre of self-help literature. Suddenly thousands of Americans had guidance, and Hubbard was their guru.

Building on the success of Dianetics, Hubbard cranked out more self-help literature and established the Scientology organization to manage his following and legitimize his writings.

Actually, Scientology and Dianetics stem from a bet made at a science fiction convention in the 1940s. During a discussion on how religions can be created in science fiction, Hubbard bragged that he could create a religion and dupe people into following it.

Using his success and considerable writing talent, he contrived Scientology. Today it is a cult with thousands of members, the most devoted of whom work promoting Hubbard's teachings.

Judging from the success of his works, it can only be guessed that many have derived inspiration from his works. However, as Clear Body Clear Mind was released after Hubbard's death in 1986, it can only be assumed that it was published to keep Hubbard's name alive. If so, we may have to suffer through more of his never-before-published books.