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Journal article: A Paper On The Difficulties Of Researching In The Humanities A Summary Of Scientology For Scientists (1969)

FREEDOM

[LIBERTY-FRANKNESS-OUTSPOKENNESS. THE RIGHT OF AN INDIVIDUAL OR GROUP TO BE. TO DO, TO HAVE. FREEDOM FROM . . . FREEDOM TO . . .]
March 1969

The Independent Journal Published by the Church of Scientology

A PAPER ON THE DIFFICULTIES OF RESEARCHING IN THE HUMANITIES

A SUMMARY ON SCIENTOLOGY FOR SCIENTISTS 1

For about thirty-eight years at this writing (1969) I have been engaged upon basic research into life and the humanities.2 This is basic or pure research and has the same genus as the effort of the early philosophers–to attempt to establish the identity of life as independent from matter and as associated with the material world and forms, which subjects are embraced by basic and developed sciences. The difference is that the research has been done from the viewpoint of scientific methodology in which I am trained.

The subject was, in fact, sufficiently unknown and insufficiently nomenclatured to have a clear-cut name. I say it was unknown because it has so markedly failed to keep pace with the natural or physical sciences and is in fact threatened by physical science. For example, we find physical scientist protests are based on life violations or the misuse or abuse of life by incautious physical applications (“Science and Survival,” by Barry Commoner).

To protect something one has to know what it is, scientifically know what it is. The DNA biological theories apply to life plus matter and all efforts to cause matter to produce life have, so far, failed.

This common denominator to all interests, to all efforts to protect, to all “scientific benefits” had not been studied and had no name connected with any rationale which led to a pure and predictable identification or result. Bergson’s* “elan vital” and other philosophic hazarding was not in keeping with what we think of in this century as orderly, controlled scientific methodology3. Supposition and authority is a poor rock on which to base all predictions.

Not having any real name embracing the study itself, it was of course impossible to take courses in it. It could not have its answers in known fields since it itself was unknown in not only its identity, but its characteristics.

I took whatever mathematics and physics were offered at a university. But then was stopped largely by lack of further academic subjects to study. I recall that my mind crystallized on the project when I found that the psychology and philosophy courses taught were inadequate to the research task I had in mind, as in neither one could I find any students or professors who had studied modern

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*Bergson, Henri: (1859-1941) French philosopher. Awarded Nobel Prize for literature (1927).

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mathematics or physics or who used what I had been trained to regard as scientific methodology4 and who as far as I could find would admit to the errors in logic (mathematics) I found in them. In his own orderly world, the physical scientist would not credit the confusion which existed in the humanities. So I went off on an expedition and began to study life. Primitive cultures seemed to be a place to start.

Never was any modern researcher confronted with so many conflicting data or subjects and so little result amongst them.

Yet obviously the past century of sprint by the physical sciences, which was even then speeding up, would overreach what were known as the humanities and even overwhelm them. And so it has proven.

Burdened by researching during the prewar period’s utter lack of research grants and funds, I had to solve the economics of it all. I did so mainly by writing and movies and did very well at it, at least enough to finance what else I was doing.

I wrote a book in the late nineteen-thirties after a breakthrough on the subject but the book was never published.

Eventually I had gone back through all the mirror mazes and plain fog of the humanities and worked with cytology. I had to study the subject in the fleeting moments left in a life overworked and overstressed. I found some clues to cellular memory and retention of patterns and originated and abandoned as impossible a theory you still see around about memory storage in molecules.

Rumors of the book and some papers brought me to the attention of Russia (via Amtorg) which made me a research offer. As it unfortunately was conditional upon going to Russia (which was still fashionable) and required of me a system of measuring the work potential of workers there, I had to decline. This was fortunate as the date was 1939.

Ideological considerations and requirements of better control or subservience of people was not on my work schedule.

The second World War and service was a long interruption. But in 1945 I was back at research again, using the library and facilities of Oak Knoll Naval Hospital.

In under a year, by use of endocrine experiments, on the basis that the endocrines are a switchboard of stimulus-response, I found that function seemed to monitor structure in living forms.

As the reverse had been held to be true (and had not provided a breakthrough) I was therefore able to proceed now in a new direction. I found eventually that life increased in potential by the stripping away of additives. This meant I could possibly be on the road to isolating life as a pure force.

Working with small energies, I eventually found the mental energy seemed to be a band between life and emotion and what might be a pure life essence.

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In handling this I found the mental energy was made up of mental image pictures and that these became jammed together into masses until the commodity known as life became nearly extinguished.

By unburdening these (by a method of erasure), I found the potential increased.

This became Dianetics (Dia–through, noos–mind).

As it had a connection with psychosomatic illness, I offered the discoveries and papers on them to leading healing societies and was rebuffed! They had nothing to do with basic research!

A medical associate5 and a psychiatric publisher told me I had only the public left, so I wrote a book and it became surprisingly popular.

Just before this publication, the US Navy’s Office of Naval Research approached me and made a threatening offer that I must go to work for them as a civilian or be recalled to active duty. The project was to make people more suggestible. I was able to resign before they could complete the threat. While I had no complaint about real active service, I had already done a prewar tour of duty in Washington offices and knew I could get little done there and I had no ambition to make people more suggestible.

This was the second and last contact regarding any research aid.

I had applied earlier for funds to foundations and none were available for basic research. Few understood at that time that basic research had any value. Only specific projects for specific products qualified.

A group formed to handle the popularity of the book, Dianetics. Yet it provided no research assistance beyond testing vitamins.

I had been willing to leave the project at that time. In fact I had another expedition scheduled. But the impact of the book carried along with it one of those savage parallel attacks sometimes experienced by researchers which threw my life into chaos. An attempt was made on my life, I narrowly escaped kidnapping and I was loudly berated for misdeeds I have never committed. Seldom has there ever been such a heavy change in a man’s life. I was a well-liked writer on Monday and on Tuesday was a horrible beast. Same man.

A scientist releasing his material to the public or seeking to advise his fellows of some discovery sometimes finds a poor ally in the press.

For years the most unusual and imaginary charges were hurled at me. Reporters never came near me. They just wrote about me.

It was hardly an atmosphere in which to continue research but at great stress and out of responsibility to a public who supported me, I did so.

Fifteen years after that first public release I was able to develop the full technology that would isolate a being as a pure life force. It was the person himself. And far stronger and more capable.

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In the following two years, despite the heavy stresses of administration and the same unseen force that kept striking at me on public lines, I was able to stably attain the result uniformly for people in technology known as Scientology processing.

Slightly less than nineteen years after the first book, I found the what and why of the attacks.

While they could have been motivated and financed by a church or the state, they were not.

The hidden secret of the attacks of nineteen years was research funds. None had been available in my day. But after the war the psychologist and psychiatrist groups, in 1948, organized a research fund activity through international organizations. Governments contributed unbelievable sums to them with incredibly small and even illegal or dishonest results of human experimentation.

My work, as I now patch it together, was considered, I do not know how, a threat to such fund appropriation. It was also considered a threat to healing income. For years I supposed the latter predominated. But this is not true. I have seen the appropriations and the lists of those to whom such funds were given.

There was nothing wrong with granting research funds. But to do this as a scientific activity to men untrained in any scientific methodology or mores, has been a serious mistake. Unlike the biologist, the chemist and other scientists, the psychologist and psychiatrist know nothing of the scientific method, know little or no mathematics and share none of the basic discipline which holds scientists together. They are trained in authoritarian subjects and their approach is entirely authoritarian.

The funds are not used for actual research but are simply paid out to their friends. I have the documents on this.

For nineteen years this multimillion-dollar river over the world has been used to attack any independent researcher and to forward the most mad plans for political control I have ever perused. I would not make such a statement without the documents being close to hand, sent to me by medical doctors who also do not like them.

Therefore I conclude it is a serious mistake to finance untrained and unskilled persons with unlimited research finance which in itself can become a small individuated area ferociously self-defensive and very fatal to have around.
The humanities have not tracked along with physical science because there were no real scientists in the humanities. The basic rules and mores of physical scientists were missing.

Yet the entire social order, for progress, depends upon the humanities catching up their lost time. Yet the atmosphere in which the research must be done has not changed much from Hegel’s time.

I have been working seriously and productively in this field, denied any funds and combating fantastically over-financed opposition.

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The society at large does not oppose advance in this field. The churches do not. But governments at the urgings of the incompetent “authority” have attacked all advance by serious basic researchers.

Few have the courage or stamina to stand up to such opposition and still carry on their work.

The campaign of discrediting any such work discredits as well its possibility and discourages actual scientists.

In my time I have seen Dr. Wilhelm Reich, MD, who was researching in small energies in the mind, killed by the FDA of the US at the urgings of over-financed interests. I have seen others viciously attacked for attempts to advance knowledge of the humanities.

I am not requesting and have not needed research funds for some time. I have made a breakthrough in this field. It has taken thirty-eight years of hard work. It is successful. It can be subjected to the usual scientific proofs and controls. It has been tested over and over by competent persons. There are fifty-five axioms, there is a considerable body of application data, there are over sixteen million words of gathered materials.

I am sometimes accused of keeping the data back. It is there for public and professional use. But in offering it to the US to increase scientist IQ and halve pilot reaction time, our Washington office was raided by longshoremen with drawn guns posing as federal marshals and a Wheatstone bridge we use was seized along with books.

I have been pressed to the most unusual means of forwarding research.

This is a short case history of why there had not been any real scientific activity in the field of the humanities. A scientist in the physical sciences would not believe the chaos, incompetence, dishonesty and opposition to be found in these subjects.

There was no field before Scientology for basic pure scientific research into the humanities. There were no university subjects beyond mathematics and the physical sciences which also contained a scientific approach. The literature of philosophy is interesting and can be brought into a sensible alignment, however, only if not approached in the authoritarian manner it is offered. I once resigned a doctorate in protest of this atmosphere.

Authoritarianism, professionalism and dogma obscure the humanities to such a marked degree that it requires extraordinary resolution to research in them. The recoil on the individual researcher is financed by research funds which are looked upon as profit, are not gainfully applied to the subject and are granted to persons insufficiently grounded in science to embrace its ethics or methodology.

If most actual scientists are trying to safeguard, improve or protect life, then it is time that they give heed to the field of the humanities.

This field has been completely unorganized. There has been no place to publish or discuss or exchange actual data without colliding with the lines of over-financed research interests which have said to me regarding a graph of improvement, “If you publish that in our journal it would revolutionize psychology.” “All right, publish it.” “Oh, we couldn’t do that. We have finance coming from Congress to explore that area.”

Thus, you have the story of how Scientology had to develop, some of the reasons it was released as it was and is as it is.
No journals, no society, no other contacts–these were its hazards. Alone in the humanities it produces uniformly a predicted result in many areas.

It is now well known and used in aerospace programs by hundreds of its people, I am told by one of their leaders. Bits of it (earlier bits) are being released from time to time as new discoveries by others.

Man needs this subject. He needs, with his wars and pollutions and growing dominance of the physical sciences, a grasp of the humanities not perverted by greed, professionalism and authoritarian but untested nonsense.

Man is a spiritual being, not a vegetable or animal. And that is susceptible to scientific proof.

The data of Scientology was derived by and stands up to scientific methodology. It contains a workable system regarding life.

It has not yet begun to be applied broadly to any of the fields where the humanities are losing out. It probably has good application in biology. It can shed, possibly, some small light in physics and chemistry.

The data was very hardly won. Whole governments have crushed down on me to halt it. I do not exaggerate.

It would be a great shame and possibly a great loss in knowledge if it were not reviewed by other fields in the humanities and physical sciences. It has been a lonely road.

L. RON HUBBARD
Founder

Notes

  1. Hubbard, L. R. (March 1969). A Paper on the Difficulties of Researching in the Humanities A Summary on Scientology for Scientists. The Technical Bulletins of Dianetics and Scientology (1991 ed., Vol. VIII, pp. 336-341). Los Angeles: Bridge Publications, Inc. ↩
  2. In 1931, Hubbard dropped out of George Washington University. ↩
  3. See Astounding fiction editor Jack W. Campbell’s “Scientific Method” published as an appendix in DMSMH. ↩
  4. At least one early edition of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health contained an appendix written by John W. Campbell, “nuclear physicist” and editor of Astounding Fiction, titled “Scientific Method.” ↩
  5. Hubbard probably refers here to Dr. J. A. Winter. Wikipedia: A Doctor’s Report on Dianetics. ↩

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Lecture: The Purpose of Human Evaluation (3) (1951)

In 1930 I knew a fellow by the name of Commander Thompson. I had known him before, actually; he was a friend of the family. He had studied under Freud in Vienna. Old Commander Thompson trained cats. He had a cat named Psycho, a black cat with a crooked tail, and he had Psycho trained to sit up and do other things. He taught me how to train cats—I have never had any luck with it, but he taught me how.

He got me very interested in the subject of the human mind. He taught me why it is that somebody starts to say one thing and says something else—but the something else the person has said is a clue to his character or what he is trying to hide—and other interesting gimmicks like this. That is just a gimmick; it has no vast importance.

I never got inside a high school; I went into engineering school first off. My father had said,“You’re going to engineering school,” and I had said, “Oh, no, I’m not. I’m going to write.” So I went to engineering school! In engineering school they had an interesting little subject called atomic and molecular phenomena, and there were those of us in that class who believed that the mystic and secret forces and powers of the universe were somehow hidden in atomic and molecular phenomena. There were fellows there— wild-haired, wild-eyed radicals, these students—who believed that a few pennyweights of some mysterious element, exploded in a certain fashion, could wipe out an enormous city. Of course, nothing would ever come of this; naturally nothing like that could happen! Not until Hiroshima would anybody really believe it. Up until that time, the atom bomb was a science fictioneer’s dream. Then all of a sudden the bombs were dropped on Japan. That validated the men who had struggled forward from 1930 on the track of atomic and molecular phenomena up to the atom bomb.

I was very radical—even more radical than they were. I said, “Atomic and molecular phenomena is very interesting. It must have something to do with the energy of life. Somewhere in here is life energy. We have described it somehow and the description is here, but we don’t know quite where. Now, it’s possible that with this new branch of nuclear physics we might be able to locate the energy of life.” And people said, “Oh, heavens! Everybody knows everybody is dead. What do you mean, ‘the energy of life’?”

So I went to work in the laboratory, and I found out that there was no way to store memory. Atomic and molecular phenomena did not describe an energy which would store in the neurons and act as memory. The latest theory on this was a Viennese theory which was fantastic. This theory was in a very thick book—all in German, with adverbial and participial clauses appended to the genders!— and it described how the mind thinks up a thought or sees something or feels something or hears something, and then stores it in a hole in a punched protein molecule.

Now, a protein molecule is so small you can’t see it in a microscope, but he figured out that there were ten holes in one of these molecules and that each hole took about what he called a thousand shots. In other words, a thousand memories were stored in each hole in one of these little protein molecules. That would make ten thousand per molecule, and there are ten to the twenty-first power binary digits of neurons. That is a big number: if you started writing that number, it would practically cover a wall, column after column. So there are ten to the twenty-first power binary digits of neurons, and these memories store at the rate of ten thousand specific memories per molecule. This Viennese had done the whole job all the way through except for one thing: he had never looked over into atomic and molecular phenomena and found out what wavelength was. There is no wavelength that small. If it were that minute, it would be so far above the range of ultra light that it would be unimaginable—something like how far away is an island universe? It is so microscopic that it will not register on any known instrument. Therefore the theory is suspicious.

But accepting the theory, believing that this theory works, we figure this thing up and we find out that the human brain does not have enough storage space to store the memories of three months. And those are not the minor observations of three months, but just the major observations of three months. This was a mathematical job. I guess the fellow could speak very beautiful German, but he couldn’t do very good mathematics.

That was the ne plus ultra of all the theories of memory storage and human energy. I took it around and showed it to Dr. William Alanson White. He was head of St. Elizabeth’s, where they sent the naval officers after they had received their fifth contradiction from the Navy Department.  And old Dr. White said, “Gosh!”

I said, “Well, what do you think about it?”“Well, naturally, not very much is known about structure.” This understatement practically blew my stack. And I realized suddenly for the first time that I had been looking for something all this time that I thought people knew about! There was a psychology department, there were doctors—all these people certainly must know. They all acted like they did! After Dr. White gave me this blank stare and so forth and sort of a “So what?” and “This is just another puzzle on top of all these other puzzles,” I went over to the psychology department and I said, “What are you guys doing over here?”

“Oh—ha! You see this electric plate? Well, if a rat runs along here and he hasn’t been fed for three days—pop!” I said, “Gee, that’s fascinating. Now, what do you know about memory storage?”“Erk! Well, uh . . . look, this rat . . .” (Very anxiously they went back to the rat.)

I found out in the course of about a week, actually, that I was Alice in Wonderland. I didn’t much like being Alice in Wonderland and I went on trying against all odds to believe that there was some rationale in the field of epistemology, human thought and human behavior. In spite of all contradictions, I clung to this belief.

I went out of school. Nobody was interested in this fact that nobody knew; they accepted the fact that it wasn’t well known. I went into the field of writing. My father had said, “You go to engineering school,” and I had said, “No, I want to write.” So I went to engineering school and professionally I wrote in an effort to support these researches, because I kept right on researching.1

Notes

  1.   Hubbard, L. R. (1951-08-13). The Purpose of Human Evaluation. Special Course in Human Evaluation, (5108C13A ). Wichita, Kansas. ↩

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Lecture: Further Introduction To Dianetics (1950)

I was brought back by my father very summarily from my wanderings; I had neglected to go to high school. The last formal school I had attended was Grant School in Oakland and my father said I had to go to university, so he sent me to a prep school in Virginia where I studied for about four months and took the New York Board of Regents and got into George Washington University. They regretted it from there on because I never seemed to stay with the curriculum. At last they said, “Well, after all, you’re not going to practice engineering. We might as well pass you in a few of these courses.”

This was a great relief to me, since my father was bound and determined that the only measure of excellence was A. My only measure of excellence was whether or not I learned anything about what I wanted to know.

Fired initially by Commander Thompson, I took up a search for life force. This is a rather strange and esoteric thing for a young man to take up, but we had to hand Professor Brown, an excellent man. His pupil, Gomez, the man who later catalyzed the entire atom bomb project, was there too. Professor Brown was teaching, for the first time in the United States, atomic and molecular phenomena. That may sound very much of an ear-cracking subject, but we didn’t even have a textbook. We had nothing but the old rules that Halley had laid down.

People were very impressed with atomic molecular phenomena, and I took the course because atomic and molecular phenomena might possibly give us some sort of a clue to life force. After all, we were studying rock bottom energy: What was energy? What could it do? For instance, occasionally in class somebody might hazard the fact that somebody, someday, might split an atom. This was unheard of, and they called these people wild radicals.1

In just such a radical way I was trying to find out, what is the fluid flow along the nerve channels? What is the memory storage device of human cells or of any cells? Can they remember? Obviously they must, but how? I used an old Koenig photometers with a gas flame. Today they have oscilloscopes to do this work. Professor Brown thought I was utterly mad puttering around there, but another man didn’t, and that was Dr. William Alanson White.

The old man was very skeptical that a man studying atomic and molecular phenomena would ever come up with any sort of an answer about human memory storage, until I showed him one day that it was impossible for existing knowledge of structure to be accurate because the mind obviously could not store memory. There was too much memory, it required too much storage space, and there were no known sizes of waves which could, in themselves, come into the brain and be stored in some fashion.

For instance, within the last year a navy scientist was trying to figure out this problem. He was building a big electronic brain for the navy which was to figure out strategy, and he had to do some figures on the human mind to find out how much memory it stored. He found out that even if it remembered only the most important things, it couldn’t possibly store more memory than is contained in three months. In other words, every three months the whole standard bank would have to be dumped in order to make room for the new.

So, we know practically nothing about structure. In spite of the fact that in the beginning I started out trying to isolate life force, I still find myself balked. Perhaps we will be able to sense, measure or experience this thing called life force, to put it on a meter, or perhaps pump it into a corpse. Who knows? But it seems to me, the further I go into the problem however, that religion has a lot to say in its favor. I don’t know where memory is stored in the mind, I don’t know where the personality is stored, I don’t know how these things come about; but I do know the various errors and their mechanics which cause the human mind to think incorrectly, aberratedly. Thompson, Dr. William Alanson White, George Washington University, Grant School, Koenig photometer, life force, memory storage, navy scientist

In Dianetics we know, in short, the bug that gets into the machine. We can trouble-shoot the machine. The state of Dianetics at the present time falls far short of knowing all there is to know about man, but it is far in advance of what we knew before.2

Notes

  1. Isolating the life force has been a goal of magicians as early as Eliphas Levi (1810-1875.) Aleister Crowley’s yoga instructor, Charles Bennett, aka Ananda Metteyya, also did experiments on a galvanometer for registering the power of thought. See: World Buddhist Foundation In London Celebrates The United Kingdom Buddhist Day by Tilak Fernando ↩
  2. Hubbard, L. R. (1950, 23 September). Further Introduction to Dianetics. Oakland Public Lectures,   (5009C23A). Lecture conducted from Oakland, California. ↩