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Excalibur

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Article: A Note on Excalibur (n.d.)

Long before the advent of either Dianetics or Scientology, those at all familiar with L. Ron Hubbard had come to expect he would eventually make a remarkable entrance into the philosophic realm. That entrance, largely conceived through the course of an extraordinary week in early 1938, is remembered today as Excalibur. In the simplest terms, the work may be described as a first philosophic statement. Previously (and as we shall see in forthcoming articles) he had traveled far and established much as regards a philosophic foundation. Yet here, at the age of twenty-six, came his earliest formal summary, “to align my own ideas,” as he modestly termed it, “for my own particular benefit.” Given all the manuscript eventually inspired, however–two copies were actually stolen by agents of foreign intelligence services who wished to appropriate those ideas for political ends and only sections remain–such a description seems hardly enough.

At the core of Excalibur is Ron’s revelatory statement on survive as the single common denominator of existence. That all life forms are attempting to survive is, of course, a known datum. But that life is only attempting to survive–this was new. Moreover, how he interpreted the datum was new, i.e., a “finite measuring stick,” as he elsewhere terms it, with which whole fields of knowledge might be coordinated. Those at all familiar with the works of Herbert Spencer (Ron himself apparently waded through at least the principal ten volumes of Synthetic Philosophy) may recognize the concept:

“The proper field and function of philosophy lies in the summation and unification of the results of science. Knowledge of the lowest kind is un-unified knowledge; science is partially unified knowledge; philosophy is completely unified knowledge. Such complete unification requires a broad and universal principle that will include all experience, and will describe the essential features of all knowledge. Is there a feature of this kind?”

To which, of course, Excalibur replies unequivocally with Survive!

How Ron actually arrived at survive is a fairly monumental story, but particularly involves a pivotal sequence of 1937 cytological experiments wherein he was able to demonstrate a cellularly inherited response to toxic substances.2 That is, having cultured a strain of bacterial cells, the culture was exposed to jets of steam, which affected the cells not at all. Next, applying jets of inherently toxic cigarette smoke, he keenly observed the culture both reacting and retreating from the threat. After continued “taunting” with smoke, he then substituted steam to observe the cells now misidentifying the steam as toxic and similarly retreating. Finally, culturing second and third generations of cells from the first, he found that when these later generation cells were exposed to steam, they likewise misidentified the steam for toxic smoke, and retreated in the name of survival.

If the point seems academic, it is not; for according to Darwinian theory, and hence the foundation of all biological and behavioral thought, learned responses cannot be inherited.1

By the last day of 1937, Hubbard wrote to fellow author Russell Hays giving no hint of significant research breakthroughs: “I speak bitterly, without any humor, without any relieving lightness. But I am Rip, awake to the fact that I have been in the half-death of sleep for five years. Know that I have enjoyed myself only twice in that span because I was able to embattle my wits without fear of sullen silence or lack of understanding. Encinitas, for a while, and then New York for a very short time. . . .” 2

Notes

  1. In 1937, Hubbard’s wife Polly and their children lived in South Colby, Washington.   Hubbard was writing stories such as “The Baron of Coyote River,” “Loot of the Shantung,” and “The Blow Torch Murder.” Toward the end of 1937, he sold “The Buckskin Brigades,” and bought the sailboat the Magician. During this time, Hubbard’s closest friend in Bremerton was an insurance salesman by the name of Robert MacDonald Ford.[1. (BFM pp. 70-75) ↩
  2. A Note on Excalibur (n.d.). ronthephilosopher.org. Retrieved 28 April 2010 from http://www.ronthephilosopher.org/phlspher/page06.htm ↩

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TV: Secret Lives (1997)

secret06FORREST ACKERMAN – Hubbard’s literary agent:
“He said that he had died on the operating table, and that he rose in spirit form, and he looked at the body that he had previously inhabited and he shrugged the shoulders he didn’t have any more and he thought ‘well then, where do we go from here?’ Off in the distance he saw a great ornate gate, and he wafted over to it, and the gate, as they do in supernatural films, just opened without any human assistance. He floated through and on the other side he saw an intellectual smorgasbord of everything that had ever puzzled the mind of man – you know, how did it all begin, where do we go from here, are there past lives, and like a sponge he was just absorbing all this esoteric information and all of a sudden there was a kind of swishing in the air and he heard a voice, ‘no, not yet, he’s not ready’ and like a long umbilical cord he felt himself being pulled back, back, back and he lay down in his body and he opened his eyes, and he said to the nurse, ‘I was dead, wasn’t I?’. Then he bounded off the operating table – I don’t know how you die, then you bound off an operating table. He got two reams of paper, and a gallon of scalding black coffee, and at the end of two days he had a manuscript called ‘Excalibur’ or ‘The Dark Sword’. And he told me that whoever read it either went insane or committed suicide. And he said that the last time he had shown it to a publisher in New York, he walked into the office to find out what the reaction was, the publisher called for the reader, the reader came in with the manuscript, threw it on the table and threw himself out of the skyscraper window.”

But was Hubbard’s extraordinary story true? Excalibur became the stuff of mystery. Hubbard told friends it was too dangerous to publish. But forty years later, a treasure trove from Hubbard’s early journals and manuscripts, believed to have been long lost, was discovered by his staff.

secret07 GERRY ARMSTRONG – Hubbard’s household manager:
“There were two and a half versions of Excalibur. I read them and I didn’t go mad and didn’t die. They also include the information within related writings, that these came out of a nitrous oxide incident. Hubbard had a couple of teeth extracted, and it was while under the effect of nitrous oxide that he came up with Excalibur.”

Hubbard’s ‘death’ was in fact an hallucination under the effects of anaesthetic. So what was the intellectual dish he’d fed on?

GERRY ARMSTRONG:
“It was not anything particularly revolutionary. The key to Excalibur was this great realisation, by Hubbard, of ‘Survive’ as being the one command that all existence, and all life and all people, have. That became the basis for a lot of Dianetics and a lot of Scientology.”

This idea had a profound impact on Hubbard. In a letter to Polly he wrote ‘I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it will take a legendary form.’

The Second World War brought a new dimension to the Hubbard legend. He said that while serving in the U.S. Navy he had been blinded, but that inspired by the insights he had first glimpsed when he died on the operating table he had dramatically been able to cure himself.

secret08 HUBBARD IN 1968:
“By 1948 through my own processing, and use of the principles I had isolated up to that time, was able to pass a 100% combat physical, which was very mysterious to the government, how had I suddenly become completely physically well, from being blind and lame.”

It was an odd story, because Hubbard’s war record shows his recurring problem was a stomach ulcer. There are mentions of conjunctivitis, but none of blindness. Indeed, none of his medical reports, before, during, or after the war, contain any suggestion of blindness, only shortsightedness and astigmatism.

After the war, Hubbard went to Hollywood. As a successful science fiction author he was a welcome visitor to the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Association. Its members recalled that there was one power over the mind he undoubtedly did possess – hypnotism.

FORREST ACKERMAN:
“Ron Hubbard came to our club and he hypnotised all of the members except me. I wanted to remain in present time and watch what was going on. I remember it was fascinating, he told one boy he had a little kangaroo in the palms of his hands, and the boy was going all around the room showing everyone this little kangaroo that was hopping around.”

In writings and conversations, Hubbard began to speak of his new science of the mind. As Scientology’s literature would later depict, Hubbard claimed that in addition to himself, he cured eleven other war veterans and restored sanity to forty mental patients. […] 1

Notes

  1. Secret Lives, (1997, 19 November). Retrieved on 28 April 2010 from http://www.xenu.net/entheta/entheta/media/tv/secret/secret.html ↩

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Lecture: Case Analysis – Rock Hunting – Q & A Period (3) (1958)

Male voice: I’ve heard a lot of fabulous stories about the book “Excalibur.” Could you tell us a little about that?

It still – it still exists. I got a carbon copy of it. The original’s been stolen.

Male voice: Will you ever put it in print, Ron?

The original… No. The original was stolen by the Russians a long time ago. They offered me a hundred thousand dollars to go to Russia and work exclusively in Russia – all laboratory facilities – and actually offered me any facility and pay and equipment that Pavlov had ever had and they almost had me on the boat, you know? That was back with Amtorg [Amerikanskaya Torgovlya – A Russian – American trading company]. And a few years later, why, my apartment was raided, doors smashed in and so forth, and the only thing missing in the whole place – papers were all thrown about and so forth – and the only thing missing (there were very many valuables there) and the only thing missing was the original copy of the book “Excalibur.” Still gone. I do have a carbon of it, however. I didn’t know I had the carbon. The carbon is the first writing. The book that was stolen had been rewritten somewhat. That answer it?

Male voice: Well, I was wondering if it would be something that you might ever put in print or…

Highly doubtful.

Male voice: Was it dangerous to read, I mean, the subject.

Very, very.

Male voice: How about Scientology?

Terrifically introverting.

No. Scientology offers some hope. “Excalibur” simply was nothing on worlds, Earth – without any understanding at all on the subject of why. Or it simply said exactly what he was looking at and it evidently produced the mechanism, making him confront immediately and intimately all of the brain mechanisms. And, “Excalibur” is actually devoted to brain mechanisms as well as many of the principles which led to the research line. But it described brain mechanisms, and so forth, and guys read those things and they actually were sitting there just looking at them and they go up the spout.

Now, in Scientology you ask a man to confront why, you ask him to confront thinkingness, you ask him to confront reason and supposition. You don’t give him the hard rock-bound object, you know? And he gets along all right. You can write too brutally on the subject evidently.

Scientology – I’ve never known anybody to do anything with Dianetics and Scientology or any book thereof, but after reading in one, to feel better, even though they were sometimes worried, or something of the sort. And I have had instances of people just reading the first article and stepping out of a hospital bed, and so forth.

So this is not true of “Excalibur” and “Excalibur” comes under the heading of a dangerous weapon.

Male voice: Would it still be dangerous for a Scientologist to read it?

Oh no, no. Matter of fact from that aspect I wouldn’t publish it for another reason and that is that a modern Scientologist would laugh at it. It’s the only book, too, by the way, that contains any nomenclature straight off my case. Many of the descriptive words in it are straight out of my own engrams. I’d had no auditing at the time; I’d had no broad look at the track, or anything of the sort; and I just picked up the handiest stuck phrase on the bank. Right. 1

Notes

  1. Hubbard, L. R. (1958, 4 August). Case Analysis – Rock Hunting – Q & A Period. Twentieth American Advanced Clinical Course,   (20ACC-28). Lecture conducted from Washington, DC. ↩

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Book: Dianetics: The Original Thesis (1) (1950)

INTRODUCTION

In 1932 an investigation was undertaken to determine the Dynamic Principle of Existence in a workable form which might lead to the resolution of some of the problems of Mankind. 1 A long research in ancient and modern philosophy culminated, in 1938, in the heuristically discovered Primary Law. A work was written at that time which embraced Man and his activities.2 In the following years further research was undertaken in order to prove or disprove the axioms so established.

Certain experiences during the war made it necessary for the writer to resolve the work into applicable equations and an intensive program was begun in 1945 toward this end.3

A year later many techniques had been discovered or evolved and a nebulous form of the present refined work was formulated. Financed chiefly by a lump sum disability compensation, that form of Dianetics was intensively applied to volunteer subjects, and the work gradually developed to its present form.4

Dianetics has been under test by the writer, as here delineated, for the past four years. The last series of random volunteers (numbering twenty) were rehabilitated, twenty out of twenty, with an average number of work hours of fifty-two per subject. Dianetics has been found to successfully resolve migraine headaches, ulcers, arthritis, astigmatism, bursitis, stammering, glandular imbalance, asthma, allergies and other psychosomatic ills. It has also successfully removed any compulsions, repressions, neuroses, and psychoses to which it has been applied. 5

L. Ron Hubbard
19486

Notes

  1. See Bare-faced Messiah timeline . ↩
  2. Excalibur The Dark Sword. ↩
  3. Hubbard was hospitalized at Oak Knoll hospital in Oakland, CA for much of 1945. He took a convalescent leave in August and visited Agape Lodge of the O.T.O. in Pasadena, CA, where he met Jack Parsons and his future wife, Sara “Betty” Northrup. ↩
  4. There is no record of a lump sum disability compensation. However in 1946, Hubbard ran a confidence scheme on Jack Parsons, making off with Jack’s girlfriend Betty and $10,000 of Jack’s money. See, e.g., Carter, John. Sex and Rockets, Venice, CA. Feral House 1999; Miller, Russell, Bare-faced Messiah, Chapter 7 ↩
  5. Hubbard was an accomplished stage hypnotist and took research credit for hypnotizing Hollywood party-goers during this period. See also: www.lermanet.com/excalibur/index.html ↩
  6. Hubbard, L. R. (1948). Dianetics, the original thesis (2007 ed.). Los Angeles: Bridge Publications, Inc. ↩