Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief(22)

You have no fear if they conceive. What if they do? You do not care. Pour it into them and let fate decide.

You can tell all the romantic tales you wish.… But you know which ones were lies.… You have enough real experience to make anecdotes forever. Stick to your true adventures.

Money will flood in upon you.

Self pity and conceit are not wrong. Your mother was in error.

Masturbation does not injure or make insane. Your parents were in error. Everyone masturbates.

The most thrilling thing in your life is your love and consciousness of your Guardian.

She has copper red hair, long braids, a lovely Venusian face, a white gown belted with jade squares. She wears gold slippers.

You can talk with her and audibly hear her voice above all others.

You can do automatic writing whenever you wish. You do not care what comes out on the paper when your Guardian dictates.


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The red-haired Guardian Hubbard visualizes so vividly is a kind of ideal mother, who also functions as his muse and is the source of his astoundingly rapid writing. Hubbard loves her but reassures himself that his Guardian does not control him. In all things, he is the controlling force. She seems to be an artifact of the influence of Aleister Crowley. Jack Parsons had said that Hubbard called his Guardian “the Empress.”

His fear of hypnotism is quite striking. He was an accomplished stage hypnotist, a skill he displayed at a meeting of a group of sci-fi fans in Los Angeles, when he put nearly everyone in the audience into a trance, and persuaded one of them that he was holding a pair of miniature kangaroos in the palm of his hand. He also once tried to hypnotize Sara’s mother, after she had a stroke, to persuade her to leave her money to him. But then he would accuse Sara of hypnotizing him in his sleep.

If one looks behind the Affirmations to the conditions they are meant to correct, one sees a man who is ashamed of his tendency to fabricate personal stories, who is conflicted about his sexual needs, and who worries about his mortality. He has a predatory view of women but at the same time fears their power to humiliate him.

The third and final section of this document is titled “The Book.” It contains a checklist of personal goals and compliments he pays to himself, but it is also a portrait of the superman that he wishes to be. He does make mention of an actual book—he calls it One Commandment—that seems to be a reference to Excalibur. “It freed you forever from the fears of the material world and gave you material control over people,” he writes.

You are radiant like sunlight.

You can read music.

You are a magnificent writer who has thrilled millions.

Ability to drop into a trance state at will.

Lack of necessity of following a pulp pattern.

You did a fine job in the Navy. No one there is now “out to get you.”

You are psychic.

You do not masturbate.

You do not know anger. Your patience is infinite.

Snakes are not dangerous to you. There are no snakes in the bottom of your bed.

You believe implicitly in God. You have no doubts of the All Powerful. You believe your Guardian perfectly.



The judge in the Armstrong suit, where this document was presented as evidence, offered his own amateur diagnosis of Hubbard’s personality in a crushing decision against the church:

The organization is clearly schizophrenic and paranoid, and this bizarre combination seems to be a reflection of its founder LRH. The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background, and achievements. The writings and documents in evidence additionally reflect his egoism, greed, avarice, lust for power, and vindictiveness and aggressiveness against persons perceived by him to be disloyal or hostile. At the same time it appears that he is charismatic and highly capable of motivating, organizing, controlling, manipulating, and inspiring his adherents.… Obviously, he is and has been a very complex person, and that complexity is further reflected in his alter ego, the Church of Scientology.




IN 1948, ten years after his first attempt to establish himself as a screenwriter, Hubbard had returned to Hollywood, setting up shop as a freelance guru. “I went right down in the middle of Hollywood, I rented an office, got a hold of a nurse, wrapped a towel around my head and became a swami,” Hubbard later said. “I used to sit in my penthouse on Sunset Boulevard and write stories for New York and then go to my office in the studio and have my secretary tell everybody I was in conference while I caught up on my sleep,” he recalled on another occasion. He painted a far different picture in a letter to the Veterans Administration, which was demanding reimbursement for an overpayment: “I cannot imagine how to repay this $51.00 as I am nearly penniless and have but $28.50 to last me for nearly a month to come,” he writes. “My expenditures consist of $27 a month trailer rent and $80 a month food for my wife and self which includes gas, cigarettes and all incidentals. I am very much in debt and have not been able to get a job.” Instead of repaying the VA, he boldly asks for a loan.

In Hollywood, Hubbard began perfecting techniques that he first developed in the naval hospital and that later became Dianetics. He boasts to Hays, “Been amusing myself making a monkey out of Freud. I always knew he was nutty but didn’t have a firm case.” He adds that he has been conducting research on inferiority complexes: “Nightly had people writhing in my Hollywood office, sending guys out twice as tall as superman.” For the first time, he floats the idea of a book, which he tentatively titles An Introduction to Traumatic Psychology. He thinks it will require about six weeks to write. “I got to revolutionize this here field because nobody in it, so far as I can tell, knows his anatomy from a gopher hole.”