Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.

Dismiss

The Story of Scientology - Part I

2 views

Skip to first unread message

Jeremy H. Donovan

unread,

Dec 31, 2005, 11:00:16 PM12/31/05

Series From the Los Angeles Times

***

.
.
.

The Mind Behind the Religon

>From a life haunted by emotional and financial troubles, L. Ron Hubbard
brought forth Scientology. He achieved godlike status among his
followers, and his death has not deterred the church's efforts to reach
deeper into society.

By Joel Sappell and Robert W. Welkos
Times Staff Writers

June 24, 1990

It was a triumph of galactic proportions: Science fiction writer L. Ron
Hubbard had discarded the body that bound him to the physical universe
and was off to the next phase of his spiritual exploration -- "on a
planet a galaxy away."

"Hip, hip, hurray!" thousands of Scientologists thundered inside the
Hollywood Palladium, where they had just been told of this remarkable
feat.

"Hip, hip, hurray! Hip, hip, hurray!" they continued to chant, gazing
at a large photograph of Hubbard, creator of their religion and author
of the best-selling "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health."

Earlier that day, the Church of Scientology had summoned the faithful
throughout Los Angeles to a "big and exciting event" at the Palladium.
They were told nothing more, just to be there.

As evening fell, thousands arrived, most decked out in the
spit-and-polish mockNavy uniforms that are symbolic of the
organization's paramilitary structure.

The excited assemblage was about to learn that their beloved leader, a
man who dubbed himself "The Commodore," had died. Yet, death was never
mentioned.

Instead, the Scientologists were told that Hubbard had finished his
spiritual research on this planet, charting a precise path for man to
achieve immortality. And now it was on to bigger challenges somewhere
beyond the stars.

His body had "become an impediment to the work he now must do outside
of its confines," the awe-struck crowd was informed. "The fact that he
... willingly discarded the body after it was no longer useful to him
signifies his ultimate success: the conquest of life that he embarked
upon half a century ago."

The death certificate would show that Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, 74, who
had not been seen publicly for nearly six years, died on Jan. 24, 1986,
of a stroke on his ranch outside San Luis Obispo.

But to Scientologists, the man they affectionately called "Ron" had
ascended.

The glorification of L. Ron Hubbard that brisk January night wasnot
surprising. Over more than three decades he had skillfully transformed
himself from a writer of pulp fiction to a writer of "sacred
scriptures." Along the way, he made a fortune and achieved his dream of
fame.

"I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that
it will take a legendary form, even if all the books are destroyed,"
Hubbard wrote to the first of his three wives in 1938, more than a
decade before he created Scientology.

"That goal," he said, "is the real goal as far as I am concerned."

>From the ground up, Hubbard built an international empire that started
as a collection of mental therapy centers and became one of the world's
most controversial and secretive religions.

The intensity, combativeness and salesmanship that distinguish
Scientology from other religions can be traced directly to Hubbard.
For, even in death, the man and his creation are inseparable.

He wrote millions of words in scores of books instructing his followers
on everything from how to market Scientology to how to fend off
critics. His prolific and sometimes rambling discourses constitute the
gospel of Scientology, its structure and its soul. Deviations are
punishable.

Through his writings, Hubbard fortified his clannish organization with
a powerful intolerance of criticism and a fierce will to endure and
prosper. He wrote a Code of Honor that urged his followers to "never
desert a group to which you owe your support" and "never fear to hurt
another in a just cause."

He transmitted to his followers his suspicious view of the world -- one
populated, he insisted, by madmen bent on Scientology's destruction.

His flaring temper and searing intensity are deeply branded into the
church and reflected in the behavior of his faithful, who shout at
adversaries and even at each other. As one former high-ranking member
put it: "He made swearing cool."

Hubbard's followers say his teachings have helped thousands kick drugs
and allowed countless others to lead fuller lives through courses that
improve communication skills, build self-confidence and increase an
individual's ability to take control of his or her life.

He was, they say, "the greatest humanitarian in history."

But there was another side to this imaginative and intelligent man. And
to understand Scientology, one must begin with L. Ron Hubbard.

In the late 1940s, Hubbard was broke and in debt. A struggling writer
of science fiction and fantasy, he was forced to sell his typewriter
for $28.50 to get by.

"I can still see Ron three-steps-at-a-time running up the stairs in
around 1949 in order to borrow $30 from me to get out of town because
he had a wife after him for alimony," recalled his former literary
agent, Forrest J. Ackerman.

At one point, Hubbard was reduced to begging the Veterans
Administration to let him keep a $51 overpayment of benefits. "I am
nearly penniless," wrote Hubbard, a former Navy lieutenant.

Hubbard was mentally troubled, too. In late 1947, he asked the Veterans
Administration to help him get psychiatric treatment.
Defining the Theology
By Joel Sappell and Robert W. Welkos
Times Staff Writers

June 24, 1990

What is Scientology?

Not even the vast majority of Scientologists can fully answer the
question. In the Church of Scientology, there is no one book that
comprehensively sets forth the religion's beliefs in the fashion of,
say, the Bible or the Koran.

Rather, Scientology's theology is scattered among the voluminous
writings and tape-recorded discourses of the late science fiction
writer L. Ron Hubbard, who founded the religion in the early 1950s.

Piece by piece, his teachings are revealed to church members through a
progression of sometimes secret courses that take years to complete and
cost tens of thousands of dollars. Out of a membership estimated by the
church to be 6.5 million, only a tiny fraction have climbed to the
upper reaches. In fact, according to a Scientology publication earlier
this year, fewer than 900 members have completed the church's highest
course, nicknamed "Truth Revealed."

While Hubbard's "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health"
typically is one of the first books read by church members, its
relationship to Scientology is like that of a grade school to a
university.

What Scientologists learn in their courses is never publicly discussed
by the church, which is trying to shake its cultish image and establish
itself as a mainstream religion. For to the uninitiated, Hubbard's
theology would resemble pure science fiction, complete with galactic
battles, interplanetary civilizations and tyrants who roam the
universe.

Here, based on court records, church documents and Hubbard lectures
that span the past four decades, is a rare look at portions of
Scientology's theology and the cosmological musings of the man who
wrote it.

Central to Scientology is a belief in an immortal soul, or "thetan,"
that passes from one body to the next through countless reincarnations
spanning trillions of years.

Collectively, thetans created the universe -- all the stars and
planets, every plant and animal. To function within their creation,
thetans built bodies for themselves of wildly varying appearances, the
human form being just one.

But each thetan is vulnerable to painful experiences that can diminish
its powers and create emotional and physical problems in the individual
it inhabits. The goal of Scientology is to purge these experiences from
the thetan, making it again omnipotent and returning spiritual and
bodily health to its host.

The painful experiences are called "engrams." Hubbard said some happen
by accident -- from ancient planetary wars, for example -- while others
are intentionally inflicted by other thetans who have gone bad and want
power. In Scientology, these engrams are called "implants."

According to Hubbard, the bad thetans through the eons have
electronically implanted other thetans with information intended to
confuse them and make them forget the powers they inherently possess --
kind of a brainwashing procedure.

While Hubbard was not always precise about the origins of the implants,
he was very clear about the impact.

"Implants," Hubbard said, "result in all varieties of illness, apathy,
degradation, neurosis and insanity and are the principal cause of these
in man."

Hubbard identified numerous implants that he said have occurred through
the ages and that are addressed during Scientology courses aimed at
neutralizing their harmful effects.

Hubbard maintained, for example, that the concept of a Christian heaven
is the product of two implants dating back more than 43 trillion years.
Heaven, he said, is a "false dream" and a "very painful lie" intended
to direct thetans toward a non-existent goal and convince them they
have only one life.

In reality, Hubbard said, there is no heaven and there was no Christ.

"The (implanted) symbol of a crucified Christ is very apt indeed,"
Hubbard said. "It's the symbol of a thetan betrayed."

Hubbard said that one of the worst implants happens after a person
dies. While Hubbard's story of this implant may seem outlandish to
some, he advanced it as a factual account of reincarnation.

"Of all the nasty, mean and vicious implants that have ever been
invented, this one is it," he declared during a lecture in the 1950s.
"And it's been going on for thousands of years."

Hubbard said that when a person dies, his or her thetan goes to a
"landing station" on Venus, where it is programmed with lies about its
past life and its next life. The lies include a promise that it will be
returned to Earth by being lovingly shunted into the body of a newborn
baby.

Not so, said Hubbard, who described the thetan's re-entry this way:

"What actually happens to you, you're simply capsuled and dumped in the
gulf of lower California. Splash. The hell with ya. And you're on your
own, man. If you can get out of that, and through that, and wander
around through the cities and find some girl who looks like she is
going to get married or have a baby or something like that, you're all
set. And if you can find the maternity ward to a hospital or something,
you're OK.

"And you just eventually just pick up a baby."

But Hubbard offered his followers an easy way to outwit the implant:
Scientologists should simply select a location other than Venus to go
"when they kick the bucket."

Another notorious implant led Hubbard to construct an entire course for
Scientologists who want to be rid of it.

Shrouded in mystery and kept in locked cabinets at select church
locations, the course is called Operating Thetan III, billed by the
church as "the final secret of the catastrophe which laid waste to this
sector of the galaxy." It is taught only to the most advanced church
members, at fees ranging to $6,000.

Hubbard told his followers that while unlocking the secret, he "became
very ill, almost lost this body and somehow or another brought it off
and obtained the material and was able to live through it."

Here's what he said he learned:

Seventy-five million years ago a tyrant named Xenu (pronounced Zee-new)
ruled the Galactic Confederation, an alliance of 76 planets, including
Earth, then called Teegeeack.

To control overpopulation and solidify his power, Xenu instructed his
loyal officers to capture beings of all shapes and sizes from the
various planets, freeze them in a compound of alcohol and glycol and
fly them by the billions to Earth in planes resembling DC-8s. Some of
the beings were captured after they were duped into showing up for a
phony tax investigation.

The beings were deposited or chained near 10 volcanoes scattered around
the planet. After hydrogen bombs were dropped on them, their thetans
were captured by Xenu's forces and implanted with sexual perversion,
religion and other notions to obscure their memory of what Xenu had
done.

Soon after, a revolt erupted. Xenu was imprisoned in a wire cage within
a mountain, where he remains today.

But the damage was done.

During the last 75 million years, these implanted thetans have affixed
themselves by the thousands to people on Earth. Called "body thetans,"
they overwhelm the main thetan who resides within a person, causing
confusion and internal conflict.

In the Operating Thetan III course, Scientologists are taught to scan
their bodies for "pressure points," indicating the presence of these
bad thetans. Using techniques prescribed by Hubbard, church members
make telepathic contact with these thetans and remind them of Xenu's
treachery. With that, Hubbard said, the thetans detach themselves.

Hubbard first unveiled his Scientology theories during a series of
often breathless lectures he delivered in Wichita, Kan., Phoenix and
Philadelphia in 1952.

His talks were sprinkled with tales of interplanetary adventures he
said he had experienced during earlier lives.

There was the time, for instance, that Hubbard said he was resting in a
peaceful valley on a barren planet in some remote galaxy, and decided
to spruce up the place. He said he "fixed up a lake" and "managed to
coax into existence a few vines."

Then, "all of a sudden -- zoop boom -- and there was a spaceship,"
Hubbard recalled, saying "I got pretty mad about the whole thing."

"I remember bringing a thunderstorm," Hubbard said. "Moved it over the
ship. ... And then (I) let them have it."

Hubbard told associates that he had been many people before being born
as Lafayette Ronald Hubbard on March 13, 1911, in Tilden, Neb. One of
them was Cecil Rhodes, the British-born diamond king of southern
Africa. Another, according to a former aide, was a marshal to Joan of
Arc.

After Hubbard's death in 1986, a Scientology publication described him
as "the original musician," who 3 million years ago invented music
while going by the name "Arpen Polo." The publication noted that "he
wrote his first song a bit after the first tick of time."

Hubbard realized that his accounts of past lives, implants and
extraterrestrial creatures might sound suspect to outsiders. So he
counseled his disciples to keep mum.

"Don't start walking around and telling people about space opera
because they're not going to believe you," he said, "and they're going
to say, 'Well, that's just Hubbard.' "

"Toward the end of my (military) service," Hubbard wrote to the VA, "I
avoided out of pride any mental examinations, hoping that time would
balance a mind which I had every reason to suppose was seriously
affected.

"I cannot account for nor rise above long periods of moroseness and
suicidal inclinations, and have newly come to realize that I must first
triumph above this before I can hope to rehabilitate myself at all."

In his most private moments, Hubbard wrote bizarre statements to
himself in notebooks that would surface four decades later in Los
Angeles Superior Court.

"All men are your slaves," he wrote in one.

"You can be merciless whenever your will is crossed and you have the
right to be merciless," he wrote in another.

Hubbard was troubled, restless and adrift in those little known years
of his life. But he never lost confidence in his ability as a writer.
He had made a living with words in the past and he could do it again.

Before the financial and emotional problems that consumed him in the
1940s, Hubbard had achieved moderate success writing for a variety of
dime-store pulp magazines. He specialized in shoot'em-up adventures,
Westerns, mysteries, war stories and science fiction.

His output, if not the writing itself, was spectacular. Using such
pseudonyms as Winchester Remington Colt and Rene LaFayette, he
sometimes filled up entire issues virtually by himself. Hubbard's life
then was like a page from one of his adventure stories. He panned for
gold in Puerto Rico and charted waterways in Alaska. He was a master
sailor and glider pilot, with a reported penchant for eye-catching
maneuvers.

Although Hubbard's health and writing career foundered after the war,
he remained a virtual factory of ideas. And his biggest was about to be
born.

Hubbard had long been fascinated with mental phenomena and the
mysteries of life.

He was an expert in hypnotism. During a 1948 gathering of science
fiction buffs in Los Angeles, he hypnotized many of those in
attendance, convincing one young man that he was cradling a tiny
kangaroo in his hands.

Hubbard sometimes spoke of having visions.

His former literary agent, Ackerman, said Hubbard once told of dying on
an operating table. And here, according to Ackerman, is what Hubbard
said followed:

"He arose in spirit form and looked at the body he no longer inhabited.
... In the distance he saw a great ornate gate. ... The gate opened of
its own accord and he drifted through. There, spread out, was an
intellectual smorgasbord, the answers to everything that ever puzzled
the mind of man. He was absorbing all this fantabulous information. ...
Then he felt like a long umbilical cord pulling him back. And a voice
was saying, 'No, not yet.' "

Hubbard, according to Ackerman, said he returned to life and feverishly
wrote his recollections. He said Hubbard later tried to sell the
manuscript but failed, claiming that "whoever read it (a) went insane,
or (b) committed suicide."

Hubbard's intense curiosity about the mind's power led him into a
friendship in 1946 with rocket fuel scientist John Whiteside Parsons.
Parsons was a protege of British satanist Aleister Crowley and leader
of a black magic group modeled after Crowley's infamous occult lodge in
England.

Hubbard also admired Crowley, and in a 1952 lecture described him as
"my very good friend."

Parsons and Hubbard lived in an aging mansion on South Orange Grove
Avenue in Pasadena. The estate was home to an odd mix of Bohemian
artists, writers, scientists and occultists. A small domed temple
supported by six stone columns stood in the back yard.

Hubbard met his second wife, Sara Northrup, at the mansion. Although
she was Parsons' lover at the time, Hubbard was undeterred. He married
Northrup before divorcing his first wife.

Long before the 1960s counterculture, some residents of the estate
smoked marijuana and embraced a philosophy of promiscuous, ritualistic
sex.

"The neighbors began protesting when the rituals called for a naked
pregnant woman to jump nine times through fire in the yard," recalled
science fiction author L. Sprague de Camp, who knew both Hubbard and
Parsons.

Crowley biographers have written that Parsons and Hubbard practiced
"sex magic." As the biographers tell it, a robed Hubbard chanted
incantations while Parsons and his wife-to-be, Cameron, engaged in
sexual intercourse intended to produce a child with superior intellect
and powers. The ceremony was said to span 11 consecutive nights.

Hubbard and Parsons finally had a falling out over a sailboat sales
venture that ended in a court dispute between the two.

In later years, Hubbard tried to distance himself from his embarrassing
association with Parsons, who was a founder of a government rocket
project at California Institute of Technology that later evolved into
the famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Parsons died in 1952 when a
chemical explosion ripped through his garage lab.

Hubbard insisted that he had been working undercover for Naval
Intelligence to break up black magic in America and to investigate
links between the occultists and prominent scientists at the Parsons
mansion. Hubbard said the mission was so successful that the house was
razed and the black magic group was dispersed.

But Parsons' widow, Cameron, disputed Hubbard's account in a brief
interview with The Times. She said the two men "liked each other very
much" and "felt they were ushering in a force that was going to change
things."

In early 1950, Hubbard published an intriguing article in a 25-cent
magazine called Astounding Science Fiction. In it, he said that he had
uncovered the source of man's problems.

The article grew into a book, written in one draft in just 30 days and
entitled "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health." It would
become the most important book of Hubbard's life.

The book's introduction declared that Hubbard had invented a new
"mental science," a feat more important perhaps than "the invention of
the wheel, the control of fire, the development of mathematics."

Hubbard himself said he had uncovered the source of, and the cure for,
virtually every ailment known to man. Dianetics, he said, could restore
withered limbs, mend broken bones, erase the wrinkles of age and
dramatically increase intelligence.

Not surprisingly, the nation's mental health professionals were
unimpressed.

Famed psychoanalyst Rollo May voiced the sentiments of many when he
wrote in the New York Times that "books like this do harm by their
grandiose promises to troubled persons and by their oversimplification
of human psychological problems."

But "Dianetics" was an instant bestseller when it hit the stands in
May, 1950, and made Hubbard an overnight celebrity. Arthur Ceppos, who
published the book, said Hubbard spent his first royalties on a luxury
Lincoln.

Hubbard had tapped the public's growing fascination with psychotherapy,
then largely accessible only to the affluent. "Dianetics," in fact, was
popularly dubbed "the poor man's psychotherapy" because it could be
practiced among friends for free.

In the book, Hubbard claimed to have discovered the previously unknown
"reactive mind," a depository for emotionally or physically painful
events in a person's life. These traumatic experiences, called
"engrams," cause a variety of psychosomatic illnesses, including
migraine headaches, ulcers, allergies, arthritis, poor vision and the
common cold, Hubbard said.

The goal of dianetics, Hubbard said, is to purge these painful
experiences and create a "clear" individual who is able to realize his
or her full potential.

Catapulted from obscurity, Hubbard decided in the summer of 1950 to
prove in a big way that his new "science" was for real.

He appeared before a crowd of thousands at the Shrine Auditorium to
unveil the "world's first clear," a person he said had achieved a
perfect memory. Journalists from numerous newspapers and magazines were
there to document the event.

He placed on display one Sonya Bianca, a young Boston physics major.
But when Hubbard allowed the audience to question her, she performed
dismally.

Someone, for example, told Hubbard to turn his back while the girl was
asked to describe the color of his tie. There was silence. The world's
first clear drew a blank.

"It was a tremendous embarrassment for Hubbard and his friends at the
time," recalled Arthur Jean Cox, a science fiction buff who attended
the presentation.

More problems were on the way for the man whose book promised miracles
but whose own life would move from one crisis to the next until his
death.

He became embroiled, for instance, in a nasty divorce and child custody
battle that raised embarrassing questions about his mental stability.

His wife, Sara Northrup Hubbard, accused him of subjecting her to
"scientific torture experiments" and of suffering from "paranoid
schizophrenia" -- allegations that she would later retract in a signed
statement but that would find their way into government files and
continue to haunt Hubbard.

She said in her suit that Hubbard had deprived her of sleep, beaten her
and suggested that she kill herself, "as divorce would hurt his
reputation."

During the legal proceedings, Sara placed in the court record a letter
she had received from Hubbard's first wife.

"Ron is not normal," it said. "I had hoped you could straighten him
out. Your charges probably sound fantastic to the average person -- but
I've been through it -- the beatings, threats on my life, all the
sadistic traits which you charge -- 12 years of it."

At one point in the marital dispute with Sara, Hubbard spirited their
1-year-old daughter, Alexis, to Cuba. From there, he wrote to Sara:

"I have been in the Cuban military hospital, and am being transferred
to to the United States as a classified scientist immune from
interference of all kinds. ... My right side is paralyzed and getting
more so.

"I hope my heart lasts. I may live a long time and again I may not. But
Dianetics will last ten thousand years -- for the Army and Navy have it
now."

Hubbard, who had earlier accused his wife of infidelity and said she
suffered brain damage, closed his letter by threatening to cut his
infant daughter from his will.

"Alexis will get a fortune unless she goes to you, as she then would
get nothing," he wrote.

He also wrote a letter to the FBI at the height of the Red Scare
accusing Sara of possibly being a Communist, along with others whom he
said had infiltrated his dianetics movement.

The FBI, after interviewing Hubbard, dismissed him as a "mental case."

In one seven-page missive to the Department of Justice in 1951, he
linked Sara to alleged physical assaults on him. He said that on two
separate occasions he was punched in his sleep by unidentified
intruders. And then came the third attack.

"I was in my apartment on February 23rd, about two or three o'clock in
the morning when the apartment was entered, I was knocked out, had a
needle thrust into my heart to give it a jet of air to produce
'coronary thrombosis' and was given an electric shock with a 110 volt
current. This is all very blurred to me. I had no witnesses. But only
one person had another key to that apartment and that was Sara."

After months of sniping at each other -- and a counter divorce suit by
Hubbard in which he accused his wife of "gross neglect of duty and
extreme cruelty" -- the couple ended their stormy marriage, with Sara
obtaining custody of the child. In later years, Hubbard would deny
fathering the girl and, as threatened, did not leave her a cent.

Not only was Hubbard's domestic life a shambles in 1951, his
once-thriving self-help movement was crumbling as public interest in
his theories waned.

The foundations Hubbard had established to teach dianetics were in
financial ruin and his book had disappeared from The New York Times
bestseller list.

But the resilient self-promoter came up with something new. He called
it Scientology, and his metamorphosis from pop therapist to religious
leader was under way.

Scientology essentially gave a new twist to the Dianetics notion of
painful experiences that lodge in the "reactive mind." In Scientology,
Hubbard held that memories of such experiences also collect in a
person's soul and date back to past lives.

For many of Hubbard's early followers, Scientology was not believable,
and they broke with him. But others would soon take their place,
conferring upon Hubbard an almost saintly status.

But as Hubbard's renown and prosperity grew in the 1960s, so, too, did
the questions surrounding his finances and teachings. He was accused by
various governments -- including the U.S. -- of quackery, of
brainwashing, of bilking the gullible through high-pressure sales
techniques.

In 1967, Hubbard took several hundred of his followers to sea to escape
the spreading hostility. But they found only temporary safe harbor from
what they believed had become an international conspiracy to persecute
them.

Their three ships, led by a converted cattle ferry dubbed the "Apollo,"
were bounced from port to port in the Mediterranean and Caribbean by
governments that wrongly suspected the American skipper and his
secretive, clean-cut crew of being CIA operatives.

While anchored at the Portuguese island of Madeira, they were stoned by
townsfolk carrying torches and chanting anti-CIA slogans.

"They (were) throwing Molotov cocktails onto the boat but they weren't
lit," a crew member recalled. "Fortunately, this was not an experienced
mob."

The years at sea were a watershed for Hubbard and Scientology. He
instituted a Navy-style command structure that is evident today in the
military dress and snap-to behavior of the organization's staff
members. Hubbard named himself the "Commodore," and subordinates
followed his orders like Annapolis midshipmen.

As former Scientology ship officer Hana Eltringham Whitfield put it:
"Scientologists on the whole thought that Hubbard was like a god, that
he could command the waves to do what he wanted, that he was totally in
control of his life and consequences of his actions."

Chapter Two

Creating the Mystique: Hubbard's image was crafted of truth, distorted
by myth.

To his followers, L. Ron Hubbard was bigger than life. But it was an
image largely of his own making.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge put it bluntly while presiding over
a Church of Scientology lawsuit in 1984. Scientology's founder, he
said, was "virtually a pathological liar" about his past.

Hubbard was an intelligent and well-read man, with diverse interests,
experience and expertise. But that apparently was not enough to satisfy
him. He transformed his frailties into strengths, his failures into
successes. With a kernel of truth, he concocted elaborate stories about
a life he seemingly wished was his.

There was his claim, for example, of being a nuclear physicist. This
was an important one because he said he had used his knowledge of
science to develop Scientology and dianetics.

Hubbard was, in fact, enrolled in one of the nation's early classes in
molecular and atomic physics at George Washington University, in
Washington, D.C., where he unsuccessfully pursued a civil engineering
degree. But he flunked the class.

Church of Scientology officials deny that Hubbard claimed to be a
nuclear physicist and point to a taped lecture in which he admits
earning "the worst grades" in the class. But they fail to mention
contradictory statements Hubbard made when it suited his needs.

Perhaps Hubbard's most fantastic -- and easily disproved -- claims
center on his military service.

Hubbard bragged that he was a top-flight naval officer in World War II,
who commanded a squadron of fighting ships, was wounded in combat and
was highly decorated.

But Navy and Veterans Administration records obtained through the
federal Freedom of Information Act reveal that his military performance
was, at times, substandard.

The Navy documents variously describe him as a "garrulous" man who
"tries to give impressions of his importance," as being "not
temperamentally fitted for independent command" and as "lacking in the
essential qualities of judgment, leadership and cooperation. He acts
without forethought as to probable results."

Hubbard was relieved of command of two ships, including the PC 815, a
submarine chaser docked along the Willamette River in Oregon. According
to Navy records, here is what happened:

Just hours after motoring the PC 815 into the Pacific for a test
cruise, Hubbard said he encountered two Japanese submarines. He dropped
37 depth charges during the 55 consecutive hours he said he monitored
the subs, and summoned additional ships and aircraft into the fight.

He claimed to have so severely crippled the submarines that the only
trace remaining of either was a thin carpet of oil on the ocean's
surface.

"This vessel wishes no credit for itself," Hubbard stated in a report
of the incident. "It was built to hunt submarines. Its people were
trained to hunt submarines."

And no credit Hubbard got.

"An analysis of all reports convinces me that there was no submarine in
the area," wrote the commander of the Northwest Sea Frontier after an
investigation.

Hubbard next continued down the coast, where he anchored off the
Coronado Islands just south of San Diego. To test his ship's guns, he
ordered target practice directed at the uninhabited Mexican islands,
prompting the government of that neutral country to complain to U.S.
officials.

A Navy board of inquiry determined that Hubbard had "disregarded
orders" both by conducting gunnery practice and by anchoring in Mexican
waters.

A letter of admonition was placed in Hubbard's military file which
stated "that more drastic disciplinary action ... would have been taken
under normal and peacetime conditions."

During his purportedly illustrious military career, Hubbard claimed to
have been awarded at least 21 medals and decorations. But records state
that he actually earned four during his Naval service: the American
Defense Service Medal, the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific
Campaign Medal and the World War II Victory Medal, which was given to
all wartime servicemen.

One of the medals to which Hubbard staked claim was the Purple Heart,
bestowed upon wounded servicemen. Hubbard maintained that he was
"crippled" and "blinded" in the war.

Early biographies issued by Scientology say that he was "flown home in
the late spring of 1942 in the secretary of the Navy's private plane as
the first U.S.-returned casualty from the Far East."

Thomas Moulton, second in command on PC 815, said Hubbard once told of
being machine-gunned across the back near the Dutch East Indies.

On another occasion, Moulton testified during the 1984 Scientology
lawsuit, Hubbard said his eyes had been damaged by the flash of a
large-caliber gun. Hubbard himself, in a tape-recorded lecture, said
his eyes were injured when he had "a bomb go off in my face."

These injury claims are significant because Hubbard said he cured
himself through techniques that would later form the tenets of
Scientology and Dianetics.

Military records, however, reveal that he was never wounded or injured
in combat, and was never awarded a Purple Heart.

In seeking disability money, Hubbard told military doctors that he had
been "lamed" not by a bullet but by a chronic hip infection that set in
after his transfer from the warm tropics of the Pacific to the icy
winters of the East Coast, where he attended a Navy-sponsored school of
military government.

Moreover, his eye problems did not result from an exploding bomb or the
blinding flash of a gun. Rather, Hubbard said in military records, he
contracted conjunctivitis from exposure to "excessive tropical
sunlight."

The truth is that Hubbard spent the last seven months of his active
duty in a military hospital in Oakland, for treatment of a duodenal
ulcer he developed while in the service.

Hubbard did, however, receive a monthly, 40% disability check from the
government through at least 1980.

Government records also contradict Hubbard's claim that he had fully
regained his health by 1947 with the power of his mind and the
techniques of his future religion.

Late that year, he wrote the government about having "long periods of
moroseness" and "suicidal inclinations." That was followed by a letter
in 1948 to the chief of naval operations in which he described himself
as "an invalid."

And, during a 1951 examination by the Veterans Administration, he was
still complaining of eye problems and a "boring-like pain" in his
stomach, which he said had given him "continuous trouble" for eight
years, especially when "under nervous stress."

Significantly, that examination occurred after the publication of
"Dianetics," which promised a cure for the very ailments that plagued
the author himself then and throughout his life, including allergies,
arthritis, ulcers and heart problems.

In Hubbard's defense, Scientology officials accuse others of distorting
and misrepresenting his military glories.

They say the Navy "covered up" Hubbard's sinking of the submarines
either to avoid frightening the civilian population or because the
commander who investigated the incident had earlier denied the
existence of subs along the West Coast.

Moreover, church officials charge that records released by the military
are not only grossly incomplete but perhaps were falsified to conceal
Hubbard's secret activities as an intelligence officer.

To support their point, a church official gave the Times an
authentic-looking Navy document that purports to confirm some of
Hubbard's wartime claims. After examining the document, though, a
spokesman for the Naval Military Personnel Command Center said its
contents are not supported by Hubbard's personnel record.

He declined further comment.

Hubbard's biographical claims were not confined to the events of his
adult life.

He claimed, for example, that as a youth he traveled extensively
throughout Asia, studying at the feet of holy men who first kindled in
him a burning fascination with the spirit of man.

"My basic ordination for religious work," Hubbard once wrote, "was
received from Mayo in the Western Hills of China when I was made a lama
priest after a year as a neophyte."

Hubbard did, in fact, tour China while his father was stationed in Guam
with the Navy. However, a diary of that period makes no mention of his
spiritual awakening. Rather, it portrays him as an intolerant young
Westerner with little understanding of an unfamiliar culture or race.

He described the lama temples he toured as "very odd and heathenish."

After visiting the Great Wall of China, Hubbard remarked: "If China
turned it into a rolly coaster it could make millions of dollars every
year."

He described the "yellow races" as "simple and one-tracked." Wrote
Hubbard: "The trouble with China is there are too many chinks here."

Hubbard also claimed that he spent many of his childhood years on a
large cattle ranch in Montana, where he grew up.

"Long days were spent riding, breaking broncos, hunting coyote and
taking his first steps as an explorer," according to a Hubbard-approved
biography issued by the church.

But Hubbard's aunt laughed when asked whether he had been a pint-sized
cowboy.

"We didn't have a ranch," said Margaret Roberts, 87, of Helena, Mont.
"Just several acres (with) a barn on it. ... We had one cow (and) four
or five horses."

Hubbard's biographical claims took center stage during the 1984
Superior Court lawsuit in which the church accused a former member of
stealing the Scientology founder's private papers. Ex-member Gerald
Armstrong said he took the documents as protection against possible
church harassment.

Judge Paul G. Breckenridge Jr. found in Armstrong's favor and, in his
ruling, issued a harsh assessment of the church's revered leader.

"The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar
when it comes to his history, background and achievements. ..."

"At the same time," Breckenridge continued, "it appears that he is
charismatic and highly capable of motivating, organizing, controlling,
manipulating and inspiring his adherents."

Hubbard, the judge said, was "a very complex person."

The church and Hubbard's widow, Mary Sue, have appealed Breckenridge's
decision, saying that it was based on "irrelevant, distorted and, in
many instances, invented testimony" of embittered former
Scientologists.

"Any controversy about him (Hubbard) is like a speck of dust on his
shoes compared to the millions of people who loved and respected him,"
a Scientology spokesman said. "What he has accomplished in the brief
span of one lifetime will have impact on every man, woman and child for
10,000 years."

Chapter Three

Life With L. Ron Hubbard: Aides indulged his eccentricities and egotism

L. Ron Hubbard enjoyed being pampered.

He surrounded himself with teen-age followers, whom he indoctrinated,
treated like servants and cherished as though they were his own
children.

He called them the "Commodore's messengers."

" 'Messenger!' " he would boom in the morning. "And we'd pull him out
of bed," one recalled.

The youngsters, whose parents belonged to Hubbard's Church of
Scientology, would lay out his clothes, run his shower and help him
dress. He taught them how to sprinkle powder in his socks and gently
slip them on so as not to pull the hairs on his legs.

They made sure the temperature in his room never varied from 72
degrees. They boiled water at night to keep the humidity just right.
They would hand him a cigarette and follow in his footsteps with an
ashtray.

When Hubbard's bursitis acted up, a messenger would wrap his shoulders
in a lumberjack shirt that had been warmed on a heater.

Long gone were those days when Hubbard was scratching out a living.
Now, in the early 1970s, he fancied silk pants, ascots and nautical
caps. It was evident that the red-haired author had enjoyed many a good
meal.

It was a high honor for Scientologists to serve beside Hubbard, even if
it meant performing such dreary tasks as ironing his clothes or
ferrying his messages. But, for some, it was also disconcerting. The
privileged few who worked at his side saw personality flaws and quirks
not reflected in the staged photographs or in Hubbard's biographies.

They came to know the man behind the mystique.

They said he could display the temperament of a spoiled child and the
eccentricities of a reclusive Howard Hughes.

When upset, Hubbard was known to erupt like a volcano, spewing
obscenities and insults.

Former Scientologist Adelle Hartwell once testified during a Florida
hearing on Scientology that she saw Hubbard "throw fits."

"I actually saw him take his hat off one day and stomp on it and cry
like a baby."

Hubbard had been hotheaded since his youth, when his red hair earned
him the nickname "Brick."

One of Hubbard's classmates recalled a day in 11th Grade when the husky
Hubbard, for no apparent reason, got into a fight with Gus Leger, the
lanky assistant principal at Helena High School in Helena, Mont.

"Old Gus was up at the blackboard," recalled Andrew Richardson. "He
taught geometry. He was laying out this problem and Brick let loose
with a piece of chalk and he missed him. Leger whirled and threw an
eraser at Brick, who ducked, and it hit a girl right behind him in the
face."

Hubbard wrestled with the teacher, then stuffed him into a trash can,
said Richardson.

"We all got to laughing and he (Leger) couldn't get up," Richardson
said, chuckling at the memory.

Richardson said that, while the students helped their teacher, Hubbard
stormed out and never returned. He left to be with his parents in the
Far East, where his father was stationed with the Navy.

In later life, one thing that could throw the irascible Hubbard into a
rage was the scent of soap in his clothes. "I was petrified of doing
the laundry," one former messenger said.

To protect themselves from a Hubbard tirade, the messengers rinsed his
clothes in 13 separate buckets of water.

Doreen Gillham, who had who spent her teen years with Hubbard, never
forgot what happened when a longtime aide offered him a freshly
laundered shirt after he had taken a shower.

"He immediately grabbed the collar and put it up to his nose, then
threw it down," said Gillham, who died recently in a horseriding
accident. "He went to the closet and proceeded to sniff all the shirts.
He would tear them off the hangers and throw them down. We're talking
30 shirts on the floor."

He let out a "long whine," Gillham said, and then began screaming about
the smell.

"I picked up a shirt off the floor, smelled it and said, 'There is no
soap on this shirt.' I didn't smell anything in any of them. He
grudgingly put it on," said Gillham, who added: "Deep down inside, I'm
telling myself, 'This guy is nuts!' "

Gillham said that Hubbard had become obsessed not only with soap smells
but with dust, which aggravated his allergies. He demanded white-glove
inspections but never seemed satisfied with the results.

No matter how clean the room, Gillham said, "he would insist that it be
dusted over and over and over again."

Gillham, formerly one of Hubbard's most loyal and trusted messengers,
said his behavior became increasingly erratic after he crashed a
motorcycle in the Canary Islands in the early 1970s.

"He realized his own mortality," she said. "He was in agony for months.
He insisted, with a broken arm and broken ribs, that he was going to
heal himself and it didn't work."

According to those who knew him well, Hubbard was neither affectionate
nor much of a family man. He seemed closer to his handpicked messengers
than to his own seven children, one of whom he later denied fathering.

"His kids rarely, if ever, got to see him," Gillham said, until his
wife Mary Sue "insisted on weekly Sunday night dinners."

Hubbard expected his children to live up to the family name and do
nothing that would reflect badly on him or the church. And for that
reason, his son Quentin was a problem.

Quentin had once tried suicide with a drug overdose and was confused
about his sexual orientation -- a fact that was quietly discussed among
his friends and at the highest levels of the church.

"He thought Quentin was an embarrassment," said Laurel Sullivan,
Hubbard's former public relations officer, who had a falling out with
the organization in 1981. "And he told me that several times."

In 1976, Quentin parked on a deserted road in Las Vegas and piped the
exhaust into his car. At the age of 22, he killed himself.

When Hubbard was told of the suicide, "he didn't cry or anything,"
according to a former aide. His first reaction, she said, was to
express concern over the possibility of publicity that could be used to
discredit Scientology.

Hubbard also had problems with another son, his namesake, L. Ron
Hubbard Jr.

Hubbard feuded with his eldest son for more than 25 years, dating back
to 1959 when L. Ron Hubbard Jr. split with Scientology because he said
he was not making enough money to support his family. In the years that
followed, he changed his name to Ronald DeWolfe and accused his father
of everything from cavorting with mobsters to abusing drugs.

For his part, Hubbard accused his son of being crazy.

Although Hubbard cast himself as a humble servant to mankind, former
assistants said he was not without ego. He craved adulation and coveted
fame.

Sullivan, the former public relations officer, recalled how after an
appearance he would ask: "How many minutes of applause did I get? How
many times did they say, 'Hip, hip, hurray!'? How many people showed
up? How many letters did I get?"

"If you remained in awe of him ... he was great," said Sullivan, who
had a falling out with the church in 1981. "If you crossed him, or
appeared to cross him, he would lash out at you, scream at you, accuse
you of things."

Gillham and other former aides said he would accuse even his most
devout aides of trying to poison him if he did not like the taste of a
meal that had been laboriously prepared for his table. "Somebody's
trying to kill me!" former aides said he would shout. "What have I
done? All I've tried to do is help man."

He envisioned global conspiracies designed to smash Scientology, and he
ingrained this dark view in the minds of his followers through his many
writings.

"Time and again since 1950," Hubbard said in 1982, "the vested
interests which pretend to run the world (for their own appetites and
profit) have mounted full-scale attacks. With a running dog press and
slavish government agencies the forces of evil have launched their lies
and sought, by whatever twisted means, to check and destroy
Scientology."

"Our enemies on this planet are less than 12 men," he announced in a
1967 tape-recorded message to his adherents. "They are members of the
Bank of England and other higher financial circles. They own and
control newspaper chains and they are oddly enough directors in all the
mental health groups in the world which have sprung up."

Chief among his suspects were psychiatry and government agencies that
probed his organization, including Interpol the Paris-based
international police agency, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the
Internal Revenue Service and the FBI.

Former Scientologist Hartwell told the Florida hearing that she was
present when Hubbard made a film about "bombing the FBI office."

"I was in makeup and we had so much blood on those actors, which was
made out of Karo syrup and food coloring," Hartwell said. "And we
couldn't get enough on them to suit Hubbard. We had guys' legs off,
there were hands off, arms -- I mean, it was a mess from the word go."

Even before Scientology, Hubbard believed that unseen forces were
against him.

"I watched him operate," said "Dianetics" publisher Arthur Ceppos, who
later split with Hubbard. "If he felt he was under attack, that's when
his paranoia showed."

This siege mentality led Hubbard to author a series of church policies
on how to combat suspected foes -- writings that, more than any of his
others, have worked to reinforce Scientology's cultish image and
undermine its quest for legitimacy.

He counseled his followers to discredit the opposition to "a point of
total obliteration" and to remember that "the thousands of years of
Jewish passivity earned them nothing but slaughter. So things do not
run right because one is holy or good. Things run right because one
makes them right."

In this spirit, during the mid-1970s, Scientologists launched nasty
smear campaigns and turned to criminality, burglarizing private and
government offices.

Eventually, 11 top Scientologists were jailed, including Hubbard's wife
Mary Sue, who oversaw the sweeping operation. Hubbard was named as an
unindicted co-conspirator.

At one point during this period, FBI agents raided church headquarters
in Los Angeles and Washington. Hubbard and three trusted aides, fearing
that his enemies had at long last gained the upper hand, ran for cover.
They fled a Scientology compound near the town of Hemet and drove to
Sparks, Nev., where they used false names and lived in a nondescript
apartment for six months until things cooled off.

"When the raids happened he never really knew what they (the FBI) had,"
recalled Dede Reisdorf, one of those who accompanied Hubbard.

To disguise Hubbard's appearance, Reisdorf said, she cut his red hair
and dyed it brown. He often wore fake glasses, donned a phony mustache
and pulled a hunter's cap down over his ears.

"He got to a point," Reisdorf said, "where he wouldn't even walk in
front of a window. ... He was afraid of being seen by somebody. There
was always somebody in a bush somewhere. A reporter or an FBI agent or
an IRS agent."

It was not the last time Hubbard would go into hiding. In 1980, on St.
Valentine's Day, Hubbard pulled another disappearing act. This time, he
never returned.

Chapter Four

The Final Days

Deep in hiding, Hubbard kept tight grip on the church

Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard often said that man's most basic
drive is that of survival. And when it came to his own, he used
whatever was necessary -- false identities, cover stories, deception.

There is no better illustration of this than the way he secretly
controlled the Church of Scientology while hiding from a world he
viewed as increasingly hostile.

Hubbard was last seen publicly in February 1980, in the desert
community of Hemet, a few miles from a high-security compound that
houses the church's movie and recording studio. His sudden departure
fueled wild and intense speculation.

The church said Hubbard went into seclusion to continue his Scientology
research and to resurrect his science fiction-writing career. But
former aides have said he dropped from sight to avoid subpoenas and
government tax agents probing allegations that he was skimming church
funds.

Publications throughout the world ran stories about Hubbard's
disappearance. "Mystery of the Vanished Ruler" was the headline in Time
magazine.

In 1982, Hubbard's estranged son filed a probate petition trying to
wrest control of the Scientology empire. He argued that his father was
either dead or mentally incompetent and that his riches were being
plundered by Scientology executives.

The suit was dismissed after Hubbard, through an attorney, submitted an
affidavit with his fingerprints, saying that he was well and wanted to
be left alone.

No doubt, Hubbard would have chuckled with satisfaction over the
speculation surrounding his whereabouts. For he had always considered
himself a shrewd strategist and a master of the intelligence game,
endlessly calculating ways to outwit his foes.

Hubbard took with him only two people, a married couple named Pat and
Anne Broeker.

Pat Broeker, Hubbard's personal messenger at the time, had gone into
hiding with him once before and knew how to ensure his security.
Broeker relished cloak-and-dagger operations. His nickname among
Hubbard's other messengers was "007."

Anne had been one of Hubbard's top aides for years. She was cool under
pressure and able to defuse Hubbard's volatile temper.

Hubbard and the Broekers spent their first several years together on
the move. For months, they traveled the Pacific Northwest in a motor
home. They lived in apartments in Newport Beach and the suburbs of Los
Angeles.

Then, in the summer of 1983, they decided to settle down in a dusty
ranch town called Creston, population 270, where the hot, arid climate
would be kind to Hubbard's bursitis.

About 30 miles inland from San Luis Obispo, it was a perfect spot for a
man of notoriety to live in obscurity. In those parts, people don't ask
a lot of questions about someone else's business.

Hubbard and the Broekers concocted an elaborate set of phony names and
backgrounds to conceal their identities from the townsfolk. Pat and
Anne Broeker went by the names Mike and Lisa Mitchell. Hubbard became
Lisa's father, Jack, who impressed the locals as a chatty old man,
charismatic but sometimes gruff.

They purchased a 160-acre ranch known as the Whispering Winds for
$700,000, using 30 cashier's checks drawn on various California banks.
Pat Broeker told the sellers, Ed and Sherry Shahan, that he had
recently inherited millions of dollars and was looking to leave his
home in Upstate New York to raise livestock in California.

At the time, the Shahans were suspicious. As Ed Shahan recalled, "They
were having trouble deciding whose name to put the property in."

In less than three years, Hubbard poured an estimated $3 million into
the local economy as he redesigned the ranch to his exacting and
elaborate specifications.

He launched one project after another, some of them seemingly
senseless, according to local residents. He ordered the construction of
a quarter-mile horse-racing track with an observation tower. The track
reportedly was never used.

The 10-room ranch house was gutted and remodeled so many times that it
went virtually uninhabited during Hubbard's time there. He lived and
worked in a luxurious 40-foot Bluebird motor home parked near the
stables.

All this was done without work permits, which meant that Hubbard and
his aides would not have to worry about nosy county inspectors.

Like Hubbard's aides in earlier years, the hired help saw extreme sides
of the man who was chauffeured around the property in a black Subaru
pickup by Anne Broeker.

Fencing contractor Jim Froelicher of Paso Robles remembers asking him
for advice on buying a camera. Several days later, Froelicher said,
Hubbard presented him with a 35mm camera as a gift.

Longtime Creston resident Ed Lindquist, on the other hand, said
painters dropped by the local tavern at lunch to talk about how the
"old man" was acting eccentric. They said he had them paint the walls
again and again because they "weren't white enough," according to
Lindquist.

Scientology officials insist that Hubbard was in fine mental and
physical health during his years in seclusion. Most of his days, they
say, were spent reading, writing and enjoying the ranch's beauty and
livestock, which included llamas and buffalo.

But Hubbard was doing much more, according to former aides. Even in
hiding, they say, he kept a close watch and a tight grip on the church
he built -- as he had for decades.

As early as 1966, Hubbard claimed to have relinquished managerial
control of the church. But ex-Scientologists and several court rulings
have held that this was a maneuver to shield Hubbard from potential
legal actions and accountability for the group's activities.

Over the years, efforts to conceal Hubbard's ties to the church were
extensive and extreme.

In 1980, for example, a massive shredding operation was undertaken at
the church's desert compound outside Palm Springs after Scientology
officials received an erroneous tip of an imminent FBI raid, according
to a former aide.

"Anything that indicated that L. Ron Hubbard controlled the church or
was engaged in management was to be shredded," recalled Hubbard's
former public relations officer, Laurel Sullivan.

For more than two days, Sullivan said, roughly 200 Scientologists
crammed thousands of documents into a huge shredder nicknamed "Jaws."
Documents too valuable to destroy, she added, were buried in the ground
or under floorboards.

In his self-imposed exile, Hubbard continued to reign over Scientology
with almost paranoid secrecy.

He relayed his orders in writing or on tape cassettes to Pat Broeker,
who then passed them to a ranking Scientologist named David Miscavige,
the man responsible for seeing that church executives complied.

Hubbard's communiques travelled a circuitous route in the darkness of
night, changing hands from Broeker to Miscavige at designated sites
throughout Southern California. To mask the author's identity, the
missives were signed with codes that carried the weight of Hubbard's
signature.

Sometimes Broeker himself appeared from parts unknown to personally
deliver Hubbard's instructions to church executives.

>From his secret seat of power in the oak-studded hills above San Luis
Obispo, Hubbard also made sure that he would not be severed from the
riches of his Scientology empire, high-level church defectors would
later tell government investigators.

They alleged that Hubbard skimmed millions of dollars from church
coffers while he was in hiding -- carrying on a tradition that the
Internal Revenue Service said he began practically at Scientology's
inception about 30 years ago. Hubbard and his aides had always denied
the allegations, and accused the IRS of waging a campaign against the
church and its founder.

While Hubbard was underground, the IRS launched a criminal probe of his
finances. But the investigation would soon be without a target, and
ultimately abandoned.

By late 1985, Hubbard's directives to underlings had tapered off. At
age 74, he no longer resembled the robust and natty man whose dated
photographs fill Scientology's promotional literature. Living in
isolation, separated from his devoted followers, he had let himself go.

His thin gray hair, with streaks of the old red, hung without sheen to
his shoulders. He had grown a stringy, unkempt beard and mustache. His
round face was now sunken and his ruddy complexion had turned pasty. He
was an old man and he was nearing death.

On or about Jan. 17, 1986, Hubbard suffered a "cerebral vascular
accident," commonly known as a stroke. Caring for him was Gene Denk, a
Scientologist doctor and Hubbard's physician for eight years.

There was little Denk could do for Hubbard in those final days --the
stroke was debilitating. He was bedridden and his speech was badly
impaired.

One week later, at 8 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 24, Hubbard died.

Throughout the night, according to neighbor Robert Whaley, heavy
traffic inexplicably moved in and out of the ranch. Whaley, a retired
advertising executive, said that he was kept awake by headlights
shining through his windows.

For more than 11 hours, Hubbard's body remained in the motor home where
he died. Scientology attorney Earle Cooley had ordered that Hubbard not
be touched until he arrived by car from Los Angeles with another
Scientology lawyer.

The next morning, Cooley telephoned Reis Chapel, a San Luis Obispo
mortuary, and arranged to have the body cremated. With Cooley present,
Hubbard was transported to the mortuary.

Once chapel officials learned who Hubbard was, however, they became
concerned about the church's rush to cremate him. They contacted the
San Luis Obispo County coroner, who halted the cremation until the body
could be examined and blood tests performed.

When then-Deputy Coroner Don Hines arrived, Cooley presented him with a
certificate that Hubbard had signed just four days before his death. It
stated that, for religious reasons, he wanted no autopsy.

Cooley also produced a will that Hubbard had signed the day before he
died, directing that his body be promptly cremated and that his vast
wealth be distributed according to the provisions of a confidential
trust he had established. His once-ornate trademark signature was
little more than a scrawl.

After the blood tests and examination revealed no foul play, coroner
Hines approved the cremation. With Cooley's consent, he also
photographed the body and lifted fingerprints as a way to later confirm
that it was the reclusive Hubbard and not a hoax.

Within hours, Hubbard's ashes were scattered at sea by the Broekers and
Miscavige.

Two days after Hubbard's death, Pat Broeker stood before a
standing-room-only crowd of Scientologists at the Hollywood Palladium.
It was his first public appearance in six years, and he had just broken
the news of Hubbard's passing.

The cheers were deafening.

Broeker announced that Hubbard had made a conscious decision to "sever
all ties" to this world so he could continue his Scientology research
in spirit form -- testimony to the power of the man and his teachings.

He "laid down in his bed and he left," Broeker said. "And that was it."

Hubbard left behind an organization that would continue to function as
though he were still alive. His millions of words -- the lifeblood of
Scientology -- have now been computerized for wisdom and instructions
at the touch of a button.

In Scientology, he was -- and always will be -- the "Source."

.
.
.

***

.
.
.

Defining the Theology