[religious brainwash] The Total Freedom Trap Scientology, Dianetics and L. Ron Hubbard #9/27

One of his associates stole the mailing lists of the Wichita Foundation, and Hubbard started to send out ridiculous attacks upon the Foundation and increasingly pathetic requests for money.

He also gave the Hubbard College lectures to a tiny audience, and within six weeks had created a new subject apparently out of thin air. He was later to admit his admiration for Aleister Crowley ("my very good friend") and in fact the fundamentals of Scientology have much in common with Cowley's "magickal" ideas—mixed in with a large helping of science fiction.

With Scientology, Hubbard asserted that we are all spiritual beings ("thetabeings", and later "thetans"), who have lived for trillions of years, incarnating again and again. He claimed that through the use of his new techniques, anyone could achieve supernatural powers. In 40 years, no scientific evidence has been provided for these claims.

During the Hubbard College lectures, Hubbard also introduced the Electrometer, or E-meter, designed by Dianeticist Volney Mathison. The E-meter is actually a lie detector, closely related to the machine used in police polygraphs in the US.

In Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health, Hubbard claimed "Dianetics cures, and cures without, failure". Two years later, he dismissed these earlier techniques as "slow and mediocre". He now claimed that with Scientology, "the blind again see, the lame walk, the ill recover, the insane become sane and the sane become saner".

MENTAL SCIENCE BECOMES RELIGION

"l'd like to start a religion. That's where the money is." -L. Ron Hubbard to Lloyd Eshbach, in 1949; quoted by Eshbach in Over My Shoulder.

In several conversations in the late 1940s, Hubbard had assured listeners that the best way to get rich was to start a religion. By the time of his death, in 1986, it is alleged that Hubbard had amassed a personal fortune of over $640 million through Scientology (despite claims that he didn't even take a royalty from his books).

In April 1953, Hubbard wrote to one of his deputies asking what she thought of "the religion angle". Later that year, he incorporated the Church of Scientology, which was licensed by his Church of American Science. The incorporation was kept secret, so that Hubbard could distance himself from it.