Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (March 13, 1911 – January 24, 1986) was an American author and the founder of Scientology. A prolific writer of pulp science fiction and fantasy novels in his early career, in 1950 he authored the pseudoscientific book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health and established organizations to promote and practice Dianetics techniques. Hubbard created Scientology in 1952 after losing the intellectual rights to his literature on Dianetics in bankruptcy. He would lead the Church of Scientology – variously described as a cult, a new religious movement, or a business – until his death in 1986.
Born in Tilden, Nebraska, in 1911, Hubbard spent much of his childhood in Helena, Montana. While his father was posted to the U.S. naval base on Guam in the late 1920s, Hubbard traveled to Asia and the South Pacific. In 1930, Hubbard enrolled at George Washington University to study civil engineering but dropped out in his second year. He began his career as an author of pulp fiction and married Margaret Grubb, who shared his interest in aviation.
Hubbard was an officer in the Navy during World War II, where he briefly commanded two ships but was removed from command both times. The last few months of his active service were spent in a hospital, being treated for a variety of complaints. After the war, he sought psychiatric help from a veteran's charity hospital in Georgia. While acting as a lay analyst, or peer counselor, in Georgia, Hubbard began writing what would become Dianetics. In 1951, Hubbard's wife Sara said that experts had diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia and recommended lifelong hospitalization. In 1953, the first Scientology organizations were founded by Hubbard. In 1954, a Scientology church in Los Angeles was founded, which became the Church of Scientology International. Hubbard added organizational management strategies, principles of pedagogy, a theory of communication and prevention strategies for healthy living to the teachings of Scientology. As Scientology came under increasing media attention and legal pressure in a number of countries during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Hubbard spent much of his time at sea as "commodore" of the Sea Organization, a private, quasi-paramilitary Scientologist fleet.
Hubbard returned to the United States in 1975 and went into seclusion in the California desert after an unsuccessful attempt to take over the town of Clearwater, Florida. In 1978, Hubbard was convicted of fraud in absentia by France. In the same year, 11 high-ranking members of Scientology were indicted on 28 charges for their role in the Church's Snow White Program, a systematic program of espionage against the United States government. One of the indicted was Hubbard's wife Mary Sue Hubbard; he himself was named an unindicted co-conspirator. Hubbard spent the remaining years of his life in seclusion, attended to by a small group of Scientology officials.
Following his 1986 death, Scientology leaders announced that Hubbard's body had become an impediment to his work and that he had decided to "drop his body" to continue his research on another plane of existence. The Church of Scientology describes Hubbard in hagiographic terms, though many of his autobiographical statements were fictitious. Sociologist Stephen Kent has observed that Hubbard "likely presented a personality disorder known as malignant narcissism."
Contents
Life
Before Dianetics
Lafayette Ronald Hubbard was born on March 13, 1911, the only child of Ledora May Waterbury, who had trained as a teacher, and Harry Ross Hubbard, a low-ranking United States Navy officer. Like many military families of the era, the Hubbards repeatedly relocated around the United States and overseas. After moving to Kalispell, Montana, they settled in Helena in 1913. Hubbard's father rejoined the Navy in April 1917, during World War I, while his mother worked as a clerk for the state government. After his father was posted to Guam, Hubbard and his mother traveled there with brief stop-overs in a couple of Chinese ports. In high school, Hubbard contributed to the school paper, but was dropped from enrollment due to failing grades. After he failed the Naval Academy entrance examination, Hubbard was enrolled in a Virginia Preparatory School to prepare him for a second attempt. However, after complaining of eye strain, Hubbard was diagnosed with myopia, precluding any future enrollment in the Naval Academy. As an adult, Hubbard would privately write to himself that his eyes had gone bad when he "used them as an excuse to escape the naval academy".
Hubbard was sent to the Woodward School in D.C., as graduates qualified for admission to George Washington University without having to take the entrance exam. Hubbard graduated in June 1930 and entered GWU. Academically, Hubbard did poorly and was repeatedly warned about bad grades, but he contributed to the student newspaper and was active in the glider club. In 1932, Hubbard organized a student trip to the Caribbean, but amid multiple misfortunes and insufficient funding, the passengers took to burning Hubbard in effigy and the trip was canceled by the ship's owners. Hubbard did not return to GWU the following year.
For much of the 1920s and 1930s, Hubbard lived in Washington D.C., and he would later claim to have interacted with multiple psychiatrists in the city. Hubbard described encounters in 1923 and 1930 with navy psychiatrist Joseph Thompson. Thompson was controversial within the American psychiatric community for his support of lay analysis, the practice of psychoanalysis by those without medical degrees. Hubbard also recalled interacting with William Alanson White, supervisor of the D.C. psychiatric hospital St. Elizabeths. According to Hubbard, both White and Thompson had regarded his athleticism and lack of interest in psychology as signs of a good prognosis. Hubbard later claimed to have been trained by both Thompson and White. Hubbard also discussed his interactions at Chestnut Lodge, a D.C.-area facility specializing in schizophrenia, repeatedly complaining that their staff misdiagnosed an unnamed individual with the condition:
In the Dianetics era
Inspired by the science fiction of his friend Robert Heinlein, Hubbard announced plans to write a book which would claim to "make supermen". Hubbard announced to the public that there existed a superhuman condition which he called the state of "Clear". He claimed people in that state would have a perfectly functioning mind with an improved intelligence quotient (IQ) and photographic memory. The "Clear" would be cured of physical ailments ranging from poor eyesight to the common cold, which Hubbard asserted were purely psychosomatic.
To promote his upcoming book, Hubbard enlisted his longtime-editor John Campbell, who had a fascination with fringe psychologies and psychic powers. Campbell invited Hubbard and Sara to move into a New Jersey cottage. Campbell, in turn, recruited an acquaintance, medical doctor Joseph Winter, to help promote the book. Campbell wrote Winter to extol Hubbard, claiming that Hubbard had worked with nearly 1000 cases and cured every single one. The birth of Hubbard's second daughter Alexis Valerie, delivered by Winter on March 8, 1950, came in the middle of the preparations to launch Dianetics.
The basic content of Dianetics was a pseudoscientific retelling of psychoanalytic theory geared for a mass market English-speaking audience. Like Freud, Hubbard wrote that the brain recorded memories (for Hubbard, "engrams") which were stored in the unconscious mind (which Hubbard restyled "the reactive mind"). Past memories could be triggered later in life, causing psychological, emotional, or even physical problems. By sharing their memories with a friendly listener (or "auditor"), a person could overcome their past pain and thus cure themselves. Through Dianetics, Hubbard claimed that most illnesses were psychosomatic and caused by engrams, including arthritis, dermatitis, allergies, asthma, coronary difficulties, eye trouble, bursitis, ulcers, sinusitis and migraine headaches. He further claimed that dianetic therapy could treat these illnesses, and also included cancer and diabetes as conditions that Dianetic research was focused on.
Accompanied by an article in Astounding's May 1950 issue, the pseudoscientific book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health was released on May 9. Although Dianetics was poorly received by the press and the scientific and medical professions, the book was an immediate commercial success and sparked "a nationwide cult of incredible proportions". Five hundred Dianetic auditing groups were set up across the United States, and Hubbard established the "Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation". Financial controls were lax, and Hubbard himself took large sums with no explanation of what he was doing with it.
Pivot to Scientology
Having lost the rights to Dianetics, Hubbard created Scientology. At a convention in Wichita, Hubbard announced that he had discovered a new science beyond Dianetics which he called "Scientology". Whereas the goal of Dianetics had been to reach a superhuman state of "Clear", Scientology promised a chance to achieve god-like powers in a state called Operating Thetan. Hubbard introduced a device called an "electropsychometer" (or e-meter), which called for users to hold two metal cans in their hands to measure changes in skin conductivity due to variance in sweat or grip. In 1906, Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung had famously used such a device in a study of word association. Rather than a mundane biofeedback device, Hubbard presented the e-meter as having "an almost mystical power to reveal an individual's innermost thoughts".
Hubbard married a staff member, 20-year-old Mary Sue Whipp, and the pair moved to Phoenix, Arizona. Hubbard was joined by his 18-year-old son Nibs, who had become a Scientology staff member and "professor". Scientology was organized in a different way from the decentralized Dianetics movement — The Hubbard Association of Scientologists (HAS) was the only official Scientology organization. Branches or "orgs" were organized as franchises, rather like a fast food restaurant chain. Each franchise holder was required to pay ten percent of income to Hubbard's central organization. In July, Hubbard published "What to Audit" (later re-titled Scientology: A History of Man), which taught everyone has subconscious traumatic memories of their past lives as clams, sloths, and cavemen which cause neuroses and health problems. In November 1952, Hubbard published Scientology 8-80, followed up in December with Scientology 8-8008, which argued that the physical universe is the creation of the mind.
In December, Hubbard gave a seventy-hour series of lectures in Philadelphia that was attended by 38 people in which he delved into the occult. In the lectures, Hubbard connects rituals and the practice of Scientology to the magickal practices of Aleister Crowley, recommending Crowley's book The Master Therion. During the Philadelphia course, Hubbard joked that he was "the prince of darkness", which was met with laughter from the audience. On December 16, 1952, Hubbard was arrested in the middle of a lecture for failing to return $9,000 withdrawn from the Wichita Foundation. He eventually settled the debt by paying $1,000 and returning a car belonging to Wichita financier Don Purcell.
In April 1953, Hubbard proposed setting up a chain of "Spiritual Guidance Centers" as part of what he called "the religion angle". On December 18, 1953, Hubbard incorporated the Church of Scientology in Camden, New Jersey. The religious transformation was explained as a way to protect Scientologists from charges of practicing medicine without a license. The idea may not have been new; Hubbard has been quoted as telling a science fiction convention in 1948: "Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion."
In the Church of Scientology era
By 1954, the IRS recognized the Church of Scientology of California as a tax-exempt organization and by 1966, the Washington, D.C. Founding Church of Scientology received tax-exempt status nationwide. The Church of Scientology became a highly profitable enterprise for Hubbard, as he was paid a percentage of the Church's gross income. By 1957 he was being paid about $250,000 per year (equivalent to $2.87 million in 2025). His family grew, too, with Mary Sue giving birth to three more children—Quentin on January 6, 1954; Suzette on February 13, 1955; and Arthur on June 6, 1958.
Hubbard was notorious for his policies of attacking his perceived enemies. Nibs recalled that Hubbard "only knew how to do one thing and that was to destroy people." Hubbard told Scientologists to "Don't ever defend, always attack", encouraging them to find or manufacture evidence and to file harassing lawsuits against enemies. Any individual breaking away from Scientology and setting up his own group was to be shut down. Most of the formerly independent Scientology and Dianetics groups were either driven out of business or were absorbed into Hubbard's organizations. Hubbard finally achieved victory over Don Purcell in 1954 when the latter, worn out by constant litigation, handed the copyrights of Dianetics back to Hubbard.
After dealing with Purcell, Hubbard turned his attention to attacking psychiatrists, who he blamed for the backlash against Dianetics and Scientology. In 1955, Hubbard authored a text titled: Brain-Washing: A Synthesis of the Russian Textbook on Psychopolitics which purported to be a secret manual linking Psychiatry and Communism written by a Soviet secret police chief. Hubbard founded the "National Academy of American Psychology" which sought to issue a "loyalty oath" to psychologists and psychiatrists. Those who opposed the oath were to be labeled "Subversive psychiatrists", while those who merely refused to sign the oath would be labeled "Potentially Subversive". Hubbard denounced psychiatric abuses, writing that psychoanalysis had been "superseded by tyrannous sadism, practiced by unprincipled men". Wrote Hubbard:
Today men who call themselves analysts are merrily sawing out patients' brains, shocking them with murderous drugs, striking them with high voltages, burying them underneath mounds of ice, placing them in restraints, 'sterilizing' them sexually and generally conducting themselves much as their patients would were they given the chance.
In the Sea Org era
Hubbard purchased a ship in Las Palmas and founded the "Sea Org", a private navy of elite Scientologists. Hubbard set out to take command of the ship. Enroute, he wrote OT III, the esoteric story of Xenu. In a letter to his wife Mary Sue, Hubbard said that, in order to assist his research, he was drinking alcohol and taking stimulants and depressants. In OT III, Hubbard wrote of alleged secrets of an immense disaster that had occurred "on this planet, and on the other seventy-five planets which form this Confederacy, seventy-five million years ago". It teaches that Xenu, the leader of the Galactic Confederacy, had shipped billions of people to Earth and blown them up with hydrogen bombs, following which their traumatized spirits were stuck together at "implant stations", brainwashed with false memories and eventually became contained within human beings.
When Hubbard established the Sea Org he publicly declared that he had relinquished his management responsibilities over the Church of Scientology. In fact, he received daily telex messages from Scientology organizations around the world reporting their statistics and income. The Church of Scientology sent him $15,000 a week (equivalent to $132,000 in 2025) along with millions of dollars that were transferred to bank accounts. Church of Scientology couriers arrived regularly, conveying luxury food for Hubbard and his family or cash that had been smuggled from England to avoid currency export restrictions. Hubbard's fleet began sailing from port to port in the Mediterranean Sea and eastern North Atlantic, rarely staying anywhere for longer than six weeks, as Hubbard claimed he was being pursued by enemies whose interference could lead to global chaos or nuclear war.
Though Scientologists around the world were presented with a glamorous picture of life in the Sea Org and many applied to join Hubbard aboard the fleet, the reality was rather different. Most of those joining had no nautical experience at all. Mechanical difficulties and blunders by the crews led to a series of embarrassing incidents and near-disasters. Following one incident in which the rudder of the Royal Scotman was damaged during a storm, Hubbard ordered the ship's entire crew to be reduced to a "condition of liability" and wear gray rags tied to their arms. The ship itself was treated the same way, with dirty tarpaulins tied around its funnel to symbolize its lower status. According to those aboard, conditions were appalling; the crew was worked to the point of exhaustion, given meager rations and forbidden to wash or change their clothes for several weeks. Hubbard maintained a harsh disciplinary regime aboard the fleet, punishing mistakes by confining people in the Royal Scotman's bilge tanks without toilet facilities and with food provided in buckets. At other times erring crew members or students were thrown overboard with Hubbard looking on and, occasionally, filming. One member of the Sea Org recalled Hubbard punishing a little boy by confining him to the ship's chain locker.
In hiding
After suffering a heart attack, Hubbard decided to relocate back to the United States. In October 1975, Hubbard moved into a hotel suite in Daytona Beach while the Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Florida, was secretly acquired as the location for the Sea Org "land base". According to a former member of the Sea Organization pseudonymously named "Heidi Forrester", in late 1975 she met with a man fitting Hubbard's description who apparently performed a Crowleyite sex magick ritual called Dianism using her.
On June 11, 1976, the FBI apprehended two Guardian's Office agents inside the US Courthouse in D.C., prompting Hubbard to move cross country to a safe house in California, and later a nearby ranch. On October 28, 1976, Las Vegas police discovered Hubbard's son Quentin Hubbard unconscious in his car with a hose connected to the tailpipe. L. Ron Hubbard was furious at the news, shouting, "That stupid fucking kid! Look what he's done to me!" Scientologists were told that Quentin had died from encephalitis.
On July 8, 1977, the FBI carried out simultaneous raids on Guardian's Office locations in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. They retrieved wiretap equipment, burglary tools and some 90,000 pages of incriminating documents. On July 15, a week after the raid, Hubbard fled with Pat Broeker to Sparks, Nevada. On August 18, 1978, Hubbard suffered from a pulmonary embolism and fell into a coma, but recovered. Hubbard summoned his personal auditor, David Mayo, to heal him.
In August 1979, Hubbard saw his wife for the last time. Hubbard was facing a possible indictment for his role in Operation Freakout, a campaign of attacks against journalist Paulette Cooper. In February 1980, Hubbard disappeared into deep cover in the company of two trusted messengers, Pat and Annie Broeker. For the first few years of the 1980s, Hubbard and the Broekers toured the Pacific Northwest in a recreational vehicle, later residing in Southern California. Hubbard returned to science fiction, writing Battlefield Earth (1982) and Mission Earth, a ten-volume series published between 1985 and 1987.
In OT VIII, dated 1980, Hubbard explains the document is intended for circulation only after his death. In the document, Hubbard denounces the historic Jesus as "a lover of young boys" given to "uncontrollable bursts of temper". Hubbard explains that "My mission could be said to fulfill the Biblical promise represented by this brief anti-Christ period." This was corroborated by a 1983 interview where Hubbard's son Nibs explained that his father believed he was the Anti-Christ.
Sources and doctrines
Hubbard has been described as an "eclectic and ingenious" religious innovator who cobbled together ideas from a diverse array of sources and traditions. Hubbard explicitly cited Freud's psychoanalysis as a source for Dianetics and Scientology, renaming some terms. Hubbard's wife Sara recalled him discussing biologist Richard Semon, who had coined the term "engram" which became a centerpiece of Dianetics. Hubbard incorporated the 1920s psychoanalytic theory of birth trauma and taught his followers to maintain total silence during the birth process. Hubbard explicitly credited Social Darwinism pioneer Herbert Spencer who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest", and taught that the 'one command' given to all life is to "survive" and later authored a book called Science of Survival.
Hubbard cited author Alfred Korzybski as an influence; after two years observing patients at St. Elizabeths Hospital in D.C. in collaboration with superintendent William Alanson White, Korzybski published a tome titled Science and Sanity outlining a doctrine he called "General Semantics". After Korzybski founded an "Institute" to promote his teachings and began offering seminars, his ideas were incorporated into the science-fiction of Hubbard-associates Van Vogt and Heinlein, who envisioned futures where research into General Semantics had transformed some individuals into superhumans; Hubbard cited this fiction in a letter announcing the central principles of Dianetics: a book that promises to "make supermen".
Through his exposure to both psychoanalysts and occultists, Hubbard drew inspiration from Eastern religions. Hubbard cited psychiatrist Joseph Thompson as teaching him the adage "If it's not true for you, it's not true", a purportedly-Buddhist maxim which was later incorporated into Scientology. Reincarnation, originally a dharmic doctrine, entered Western occultism through the works of Blavatsky and numerous others. Fifteen years after Blavatsky followers unveiled "The Bridge to Freedom", Hubbard announced "The Bridge to Total Freedom".
Hubbard's son Nibs said that Aleister Crowley was his father's most important source of inspiration, and scholar Hugh Urban has written extensively about the occult roots of Scientology. Nibs Hubbard said in an interview in 1983: What a lot of people don't realize is that Scientology is black magic that is just spread out over a long time period. To perform black magic generally takes a few hours or, at most, a few weeks. But in Scientology it's stretched out over a lifetime, and so you don't see it. Like Crowley, Hubbard identified himself with diabolical figures from the Book of Revelation. Just as Aleister Crowley taught a soul could temporarily leave its body through astral projection, Hubbard taught a thetan could journey outside the body by "going exterior".
Hubbard and psychiatry
Hubbard's views on psychiatry evolved over time.
Hubbard reported many encounters with psychiatrists from the age of 12 onward. Hubbard spoke positively of his childhood and teen encounters with psychiatrists in the 1920s and 30s. At the age of 12, Hubbard, his father, and his mother were accompanied by Navy psychiatrist Joseph Cheesman Thompson on an ocean trip from Seattle to Washington, D.C. Hubbard likewise wrote positively of teenage/young-adult encounters with D.C.-based psychiatrist William Alanson White. Some of Hubbard's later works included acknowledgements of both Thompson and White, and Hubbard would later claim to have received clinical training from both Thompson and White.
In contrast, Hubbard spoke more critically of his later encounters with psychiatrists and psychiatric institutions. Although Hubbard had written positively of psychiatric hospital superintendent William Alanson White, White's successor Winfred Overholser was singled out for criticism. Hubbard likewise spoke critically of his encounters with a Washington, D.C., institution for the treatment of schizophrenia called "Walnut Lodge" (presumably Chestnut Lodge). :
there's a place by the name of Walnut Lodge. I... I... They don't see anything humorous in that, by the way; it's Walnut Lodge. [...] They... they... they sent three people to see, to... to see me and every one of them was under treatment. And this was their staff. But anyway, very good people there, I'm sure, didn't happen to meet any. Have some fine patients though. Anyway, they... they treat only schizophrenia. And so they take only schizophrenics. Now how do they get only schizophrenics?
Well, anybody sent to Walnut Lodge is a classified schizophrenic. And they take somebody who is a dementia praecox unclassified or a more modern definition, a mania-depressive and they take him from Saint Elizabeth's and they take him over to Walnut Lodge and he goes onto the books as a schizophrenic. Why? Because Walnut Lodge takes only schizophrenics.
During the Second World War, Hubbard was hospitalized at Oak Knoll Military Hospital. In 1947, Hubbard wrote a letter to the VA requesting psychiatric treatment. The following year, Hubbard and his wife Sara moved to Savannah, Georgia, where Hubbard would later recall having been associated with a charity mental health clinic. According to Hubbard, he worked as a "lay analyst" or volunteer peer counselor, listening to charity patients during his time in Savannah. While in Savannah, Hubbard began working on a "book of psychology" about "the cause and cure of nervous tension"; the next year, he published Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.
False biographical claims
Throughout his life, Hubbard made grossly exaggerated or outright false claims about himself. His estranged son Nibs reported that "Ninety-nine percent of what my father ever wrote or said about himself" was false. An acquaintance who knew Hubbard in Pasadena recalled recognizing Hubbard's epic autobiographical tales as being adapted from the writings of others. In October 1984, an American judge issued a ruling, writing of Hubbard that "the evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background and achievements." In his private "Affirmations", Hubbard wrote to himself: You can tell all the romantic tales you wish... you know which ones were lies... You are gallant and dashing and need tell no lies at all. You have enough real experience to make anecdotes forever. Stick to your true adventures. Or if you wish, as you will, tell adventures which happened to others – People accept them better.
Hubbard described his grandfather as a "wealthy Western cattleman", but contemporary records show that Hubbard's grandfather, Lafayette Waterbury, was a veterinarian, not a rancher, and was not wealthy. Hubbard claimed to be a "blood brother" of the Native American Blackfeet tribe, but Hubbard lived over a hundred miles from the Blackfeet reservation and the tribe did not practice blood brotherhood. Hubbard claimed to have been the youngest Eagle Scout in Boy Scouts history, but in fact the organization kept no records of the ages of Eagle Scouts.
Hubbard claimed to have traveled to Manchuria, but his diary did not record it. Hubbard claimed to be a graduate engineer, but in fact he earned poor grades at university, was placed on probation in September 1931 and dropped out altogether in the fall of 1932. Hubbard used the title "Doctor", but his only doctorate was from a diploma mill. Hubbard claimed to have been crippled and blinded in combat, but records show he was never wounded and never received a Purple Heart (a decoration given to all US servicemen wounded in action). Hubbard's Navy service records indicate that he received only four campaign medals rather than the twenty-one claimed by Church biographies.
Legacy
Hubbard was survived by his wife Mary Sue and all of his children except his second son Quentin. His will provided a trust fund to support Mary Sue; her children Arthur, Diana and Suzette; and Katherine, the daughter of his first wife Polly. He disinherited two of his other children. L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. had become estranged, changed his name to "Ronald DeWolf" and, in 1982, sued unsuccessfully for control of his father's estate. Alexis Valerie, Hubbard's daughter by his second wife Sara, had attempted to contact her father in 1971. She was rebuffed with the implied claim that her real father was Jack Parsons rather than Hubbard, and that her mother had been a Nazi spy during the war. Both later accepted settlements when litigation was threatened. In 2001, Diana and Suzette were reported to still be Church members, while Arthur had left and become an artist. Hubbard's great-grandson, Jamie DeWolf, is a noted slam poet.
Opinions are divided about Hubbard's literary legacy. One sociologist argued that even at Hubbard's peak in the late 1930s, he was regarded as merely "a passable, familiar author but not one of the best", while by the late-1970s "the [science fiction] subculture wishes it could forget him" and fans gave him a worse rating than any other of the "Golden Age" writers. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction argues that while Hubbard could not be considered a peer of the "prime movers" like Asimov, Heinlein, and Sprague de Camp, Hubbard could be classed with Van Vogt as "rogue members of the early Campbell pantheon". Hubbard received various posthumous awards, having a street named after in him in Los Angeles and recognition of his birthday in Utah and New Jersey.
Hubbard's teachings led to numerous offshoots and splinter groups. In 1966, two former Scientologists founded the Process Church of the Final Judgement which mixed Hubbard's teachings with Satanism. In 1969, a group led by former Scientologists Charles Manson and Bruce M. Davis was arrested and later convicted for their role in a series of high-profile murders. In 1971, former Scientologist Werner Erhard founded EST, a notable large group awareness training. In 1998, Keith Raniere drew upon Hubbard's writings and Erhard's techniques to create the large group awareness training ESP, a forerunner to the group NXIVM. Raniere offered students a chance to reach a superhuman state called "Unified" and taught Hubbard's doctrine of "suppressive persons"; Raniere was ultimately sentenced to 120 years for a pattern of crimes, including the sexual exploitation of a child, sex trafficking of women, and conspiracy to commit forced labor. In 2010, the Nation of Islam began introducing its followers to Hubbard's teachings, with leader Louis Farrakhan proclaiming "I thank God for Mr. L. Ron Hubbard!"
In Scientology
After his death, Scientology leaders announced that Hubbard's body had become an impediment to his work and that he had decided to "drop his body" to continue his research. The copyrights of his works and much of his estate were willed to the Church of Scientology. According to the church, Hubbard's entire corpus of Scientology and Dianetics texts are etched onto steel tablets in a vault under a mountain, on top of which a Hubbard-designed logo has been bulldozed, intended to be visible from space.
Hubbard's presence pervades Scientology, and his birthday is celebrated annually. Every Church of Scientology maintains an office reserved for Hubbard, with a desk, chair and writing equipment, ready to be used. Hubbard is regarded as the ultimate source of Scientology, and is often referred to as simply "Source", and he has no successor. Scientology has been described as "a movement focused on the figure of Hubbard". Hubbard is presented as "the master of a multitude of disciplines" who performed extraordinary feats as a photographer, composer, scientist, therapist, explorer, navigator, philosopher, poet, artist, humanitarian, adventurer, soldier, scout, musician and many other fields of endeavor. Busts and portraits of Hubbard are commonplace throughout Scientology organizations, and meetings involve a round of applause to Hubbard's portrait. In 2009, the American Religious Identification Survey found that 25,000 Americans identified as Scientologists.
Scientology's sacred texts are inextricably linked to L. Ron Hubbard. According to Scientology's official doctrine, "Hubbard is the sole author or narrator of each and every one of the religion's sacred books; indeed he is considered to be the single orchestrating genius behind everything Scientological." Scientologists consider everything Hubbard ever said in verbal or written terms as "scripture".
In popular culture
In the mid-1980s, the church began to promote Dianetics with a radio and television advertising blitz that was "virtually unprecedented in book circles". In March 1988, Dianetics topped the best-seller lists nationwide through an organized campaign of mass bookbuying. Booksellers reported patrons buying hundreds of copies at once and later receiving ostensibly-new books from the publisher with store price stickers already attached. Hubbard's number of followers peaked in the early 1990s with roughly 100,000 scientologists worldwide.
On November 21, 1997, the Fox network aired an episode of X-Files spinoff Millennium titled "Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense" which satirized Lafayette Ronald Hubbard's biography in a brief opening narration about a character named "Juggernaut Onan Goopta" who dreamt of becoming a neuroscientist only to discover that "his own brain could not comprehend basic biology". The character switches to philosophy, but "while reading Kirkegaard's 'The Sickness unto Death', he became sick and nearly died"; After writing an entire book in a "single, feverish night" that changed the course of human history, the character began lecturing to standing room only crowds, "for he shrewdly refrained from providing chairs". In a satire of both Hubbard and George Santayana, the character explains that painful memories must be exterminated, saying "those who cannot forget their past, are condemned to repeat it". The character establishes an institute where patients are called 'doctors' and founds a religious order called Selfosophy staffed by an elite paramilitary inspired by the US Postal Service. We are told the character died of cancer or "molted his earthly encumbrance to pursue his Selfosophical research in another dimension".
On February 8, 1998, Fox comedy The Simpsons broadcast "The Joy of Sect", satirizing Hubbard and Scientology when the family joins a group called the Movementarians ruled over by a figure called "The Leader" who physically resembles L. Ron Hubbard. The Movementarians' use of a 10-trillion-year commitment for its members alludes to the billion-year contract and both groups make extensive use of litigation. One of The Simpsons' voice actors, Nancy Cartwright, is herself a Scientologist.
In 2000, Hubbard's novel was adapted into a film called Battlefield Earth, starring long-time Scientology celebrity John Travolta. In 2001, a film titled The Profit parodied Scientology and Hubbard. In 2005, animated comedy South Park aired the episode "Trapped in the Closet" in which protagonist Stan is believed to be the reincarnation of Hubbard. The episode broadcast the great secret behind the church—a condensed version of the Xenu story while an on-screen caption reads "This is what Scientologists actually believe". Prior to the episode, the story was almost completely unknown in mainstream culture.
Select works
Hubbard was a prolific writer and lecturer across a wide variety of genres. His works of fiction include several hundred short stories and many novels. According to the Church of Scientology, Hubbard produced some 65 million words on Dianetics and Scientology, contained in about 500,000 pages of written material, 3,000 recorded lectures and 100 films.
Early fiction
Buckskin Brigades (1937) recounts the story of a white man adopted by the Blackfeet tribe.
Slaves of Sleep (1939) features a man, cursed by an evil genie, who instead of sleeping must now enter an Arabian Nights-like world ruled over by an evil-genie queen.
Death's Deputy (1940) is the story of an accident-prone pilot who seemingly cannot be killed
Final Blackout (1940) tells the story of a low-ranking British army officer who rises to the role of dictator.
Fear (1951), a psychological thriller, follows a professor who, after an episode of missing time, becomes paranoid that demons are haunting him.
Typewriter in the Sky (1951) features protagonist Mike de Wolf who finds himself inside a story being written by friend Horace Hackett.
Dianetics and Scientology
Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (1950) introduced concepts like engram, reactive mind, and the State of Clear.
Science of Survival (1951) introduced concepts like the tone scale, the thetan, and past lives.
What to Audit (1952), later re-titled Scientology: A History of Man linked traumatic incidents throughout evolutionary history to modern health problems, for example, jaw trouble was said to result from unresolved trauma from having been a clam.