Read Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief Online
Authors: Lawrence Wright
Tags: #Social Science, #Scientology, #Christianity, #Religion, #Sociology of Religion, #History
This disputed document has been called the
Affirmations, or the Admissions, but it is rather difficult to define. In part, the thirty pages constitute a highly intimate autobiography, dealing with the most painful episodes in Hubbard’s life. Many of the references to people and events made in these pages are supported by other documents. It appears that Hubbard is using techniques on himself that he would later develop into
Dianetics. He explores memories that pose impediments in his mental and spiritual progress, and he prescribes affirmations or incantations to counter the psychological influence of these events. These statements would certainly be the most revealing and intimate disclosures Hubbard ever made about himself.
There are three sections in this document, each of which seems to have a different purpose.
The first section is called “Course I.” This is what I have termed the secret memoir, as it contains reflections on the most embarrassing or troubling features of Hubbard’s biography. “The purpose of this experiment is to re-establish the ambition, willpower, desire to survive, the talent and confidence of myself,” Hubbard declares straightforwardly at the start. “I was always anxious about people’s opinion of me and was afraid I would bore them. This injected anxiety and careless speed into my work. I must be convinced that I can write skillfully and well.” Those who criticize his work are fools, he writes. “I must be convinced I have succeeded in writing and with ease will regain my popularity, which actually was not small.”
“My service record was none too glorious,” he admits. He also confesses his shame about his frequent
affairs. But he is intent on succeeding in his relationship with
Sara, whom he describes as “young, beautiful, desirable.” Unfortunately, he is handicapped by bouts of impotence. “I want her always. But I am 13 years older than she. She is heavily sexed. My libido is so low I hardly admire her naked.”
Sex preoccupies him. He’s worried about his “very bad masturbatory
history,” his sexual diseases, and his
impotence, which he had been treating with testosterone supplements. “By eliminating certain fears of hypnosis, curing my rheumatism and laying off hormones, I hope to restore my former libido. I must!”
Through self-hypnosis, he hopes to convince himself of certain prescriptive mantras, including:
I can write.
My mind is still brilliant.
That masturbation was no sin or crime.
That I do not need to have ulcers anymore.
That I am fortunate in losing Polly and my parents, for they never meant well by me.
That I believe in my gods and spiritual things.
That my magical work is powerful and effective.
That the numbers 7, 25, and 16 are not unlucky or evil for me.
That I am not bad to look upon.
That I am not susceptible to colds.
That Sara is always beautiful to me.
That these words and commands are like fire and will sear themselves into every corner of my being, making me happy and well and confident forever!
The second part of the document, labeled “Course II,” included the statements that have come to be called Affirmations, although Hubbard refers to them as incantations. He had recently gotten a new recorder for dictation, called a
SoundScriber. It may be that he recorded this portion and played it back to himself as a means of self-hypnosis. This section begins with the command “You are asleep.”
In this lesson, Hubbard tells himself, he will learn several important things:
You have no urge to talk about your navy life. You do not like to talk of it. You never illustrate your point with bogus stories. It is not necessary for you to lie to be amusing and witty.
You like to have your intimate friends approve of and love you for what you are. This desire to be loved does not amount to a psychosis.
You can sing beautifully.
Nothing can intervene between you and your Guardian. She cannot be displaced because she is too powerful. She does not control you. She advises you.
You will never forget these incantations. They are holy and are now become an integral part of your nature.
Material things are yours for the asking. Men are your slaves.
You are not sleepy or tired ever.… Your Guardian alone can talk to you as you sleep but she may not hypnotize you. Only you can hypnotize yourself.
The desires of other people have no hypnotic effect on you.
Nothing, no one opposes your writing.… You can carry on a wild social life and still write one hundred thousand words a month or more.… Your writing has a deep hypnotic effect on people.
You will make fortunes writing.
Your psychology is advanced and true and wonderful. It hypnotizes people. It predicts their emotions, for you are their ruler.
You will live to be 200 years old.
You will always look young.
You have no doubts about God.
You are not a coward.
Your eyes are getting progressively better. They became bad when you used them as an excuse to escape the naval academy. You have no reason to keep them bad.
Your stomach trouble you used as an excuse to keep the Navy from punishing you. You are free of the Navy.
Your hip is a pose. You have a sound hip. It never hurts. Your shoulder never hurts.
Your foot was an alibi. The injury is no longer needed.
Testosterone blends easily with your own hormones.… You have no fear of what any woman may think of your bed conduct. You know you are a master. You know they will be thrilled. You can come many times without weariness.… Many women are not capable of pleasure in sex and anything adverse they say or do has no effect whatever upon your pleasure.
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.
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.”
Hubbard was casting around for a new direction in his life. He took up acting at the
Geller Theater Workshop, paid for in part by the VA, but that didn’t satisfy him. There was a larger plan stirring in his imagination. “I was hiding behind
the horrible secret. And that is I was trying to find out what the mind was all about,” he recalls. “I couldn’t even tell my friends; they didn’t understand. They said, ‘Here’s Hubbard, he’s leading a perfectly wonderful life. He gets to associate with movie actresses. He knows hypnotism and so has no trouble with editors. He has apartments and stuff.’ ”
IT WAS THE LARVAL STAGE
of Hubbard’s astonishing transformation—from the depressed, rejected, impoverished, creatively exhausted figure he paints in the Affirmations, to his nearly overnight success as a thinker and founder of an international movement when his book
Dianetics
was finally published. He wrote his friend
Robert Heinlein, “I will soon, I hope
give you a book risen from the ashes of the old Excalibur which details in full the mathematics of the human mind, solves all the problems of the ages, and gives six recipes for aphrodisiacs and plays the mouth organ with the left foot.” He writes a little about recovering from the war, then remarks, “The main difficulty these days is getting sane again. I find out that I am making progress. Of course there is always the danger that I will get too sane to write.” He is angling for a Guggenheim grant
for his book on psychology. Meantime, he was so pressed financially that he begged Heinlein for a loan of fifty dollars
. “Golly, I never was
so many places in print with less to show for it,” Hubbard complained. “I couldn’t buy a stage costume for Gypsy Rose Lee.”
Hubbard was writing these letters from Savannah, Georgia, in the waning days of 1948 and the spring of 1949. He said he was volunteering in a psychiatric clinic at
St. Joseph’s Medical Center, “getting case histories
at the request of the
American Psychiatric Assoc.” It is a shadowy period in his life, but it was in Savannah that he began to sketch out the principles that would form the basis of his understanding of the human mind. He claimed to be getting phenomenal results on nearly every malady he addressed. “One week ago I brought in my first asthma cure,” he writes to Heinlein. “I have an arthritis to finish tomorrow and so it goes.”
It’s unclear whether Hubbard himself was receiving treatment in Savannah. “My hip and stomach
and side are well again,” he writes to Heinlein, adding that he is “straightening out the kinks that have held down production on the money machine.”