Getting Old...

[Lexar]

One of those things that Hubbard seems to have been unaware of was that he, too, was aging, getting physically old. Aging deteriorate a person's physical agility and temporal resolution. Early on, Hubbard defined the instant read as an E-meter reaction occurring within 1/20 of a second after a command or an item has been voiced. The average human temporal resolution is roughly 1/20 of a second and some e-sport players are said to have a resolution as good as 1/60 of a second. Hubbard used to be probably fast, much faster than his preclears. As he grew older, he, too, got slower and to him then, 1/20 of a second later was no longer distinguishable from the exact end of a voiced command or item. So he had to redefine the instant read. As he grew even older, he came to be slower than most preclears. It appeared to him that some preclears reacted on the meter prior to the end of something voiced.
(I am still running some solo processes but I no longer audit others. My eyeballs, nerves and brain are much slower than before, despite my case gains if any.)

 

[programmer_guy]

Yes, there are various old age symptoms mental and physical.
They are not always exact in every detail between all individuals but there are a lot of similarities.

 

[Lexar]

In 1951, in a document titled «TEACHING», Hubbard says, "Treat subjects as variables of expanding use which may be altered at individual will. Teach the stability of knowledge as resident only in the student’s ability to apply knowledge or alter what he knows for new application." Hubbard was still young and well ..., mentally healthy.
The older some people get, the less they tend to listen to others. Hubbard is a typical example.

 

[TheSneakster]

. Early on, Hubbard defined the instant read as an E-meter reaction occurring within 1/20 of a second after a command or an item has been voiced.

From E-Meter Essentials (1961):

The only needle reactions in which you should be interested are those which occur
INSTANTLY, i.e., within one-tenth to one-half of a second after you have asked a question of
the preclear.

Your figures seem rather off. If you have an exact citation to back up that 1/20th of a second number, do please post it.

 

[lotus]

^^^^^^
Jesus,
Is the accuracy of 1/20th sec
so important in regard to the topic of aging he wanted to talk about ???
Is it a Scientology course final check out ???

 

[Barile]

Jesus,
Is this detail so important in regard to the topic of aging he wanted to talk about ???
Is it a Scientology course final check out ???

I'm beginning to suspect that Tony Robbins lied about everything.
nothing changes.
wow. I just realized... nothing fucking changes.

 

[Lexar]

From E-Meter Essentials (1961):

I haven't read that old E-Meter Essentials. If my memory is correct, my figure, 1/20 of a second, is from an HCOB, but I don't remember its date or title. I am reading through the Red Vols again, and I will probably run into that HCOB sooner or later. Thanks for your comment.

 

[La La Lou Lou]

I don't think Hubbard spent much time auditing anyone in his latter years. He was otherwise engaged.

 

[Lexar]

In THE DIANETIC AUDITOR’S BULLETIN Volume 2, No. 2 August, 1951, Hubbard says, "Men were prone to measure the excellence of management in how many dollars a company accumulated or how much territory a country acquired. These are, at best, crude rules of thumb. Until there was another and better measure, they had to serve. To understand that these are not good measures of the excellence of management one has only to review the history of farms, companies and nations to discover that few have had any long duration and almost all of them have had considerable trouble."
Not a few feel that the young Hubbard was, the brighter he was.
I remember the time when Tokyo Org had 47 refund/repayment cycles. They had earned a lot of money but later had to work so hard only to pay a huge sum back to people leaving. Management by stats graphs isn't very effective.
We as well as Hubbard might have been smarter when younger.

 

[Lexar]

I don't think Hubbard spent much time auditing anyone in his latter years. He was otherwise engaged.

He must have been watching session videos when he trained class VIII's and above.

 

[pineapple]

Hubbard used to be probably fast, much faster than his preclears

He had to be, otherwise they'd have caught him.

Hubbard was still young and well ..., mentally healthy.

Hubbard mentally healthy? Compared to what? I doubt that a sociopath like Hubbard was ever mentally healthy.

Numerous examples of Hubbard's poor mental health have been posted here (and on ESMB 1), reaching back to the late 1940's at least. I'm not going to search for all of these now, but just off the top of my head, there's:

1. He wrote the VA asking for psychiatric help in, I believe, 1947.

2. His disastrous demo of "clear" Sonya Bianca in summer 1950 at Shrine Auditorium was a fiasco.

3. In 1951 he wrote to the FBI claiming second wife Sara Northrup and boyfriend Miles Hollister were Russian spies. (The FBI dismissed him as "mental.")

4. In 1952 he went full retard with the preposterous drug-inspired fantasy of "History of Man."

5. And, too good to miss: In this 1953 letter to Helen O'Brien, Hubbard wants the "electronic eager beavers" to build him a device that will enable him to walk into insane asylums, hypnotize the insane, exteriorize and audit them. He says, "The Japanese have registered many patents on such devices and have even, I think, killed a goat with one at 300 yards."

Letter from L. Ron Hubbard to Helen O’brien

There's a link at the end to a handwritten version of the letter, in LRH's handwriting.

 

[Zertel]

^^^^^^^
There are numerous stupidities which came from Hubbard which you only find out about after you leave scn. On the other hand he offered written and spoken ideas and opinions about hundreds of areas of human endeavor and behavior. Every time I sat down for a study session I looked forward to learning something new which I usually did. I'll give him credit for being "a thinker".

The unabridged tech dictionary was first published in the mid 1970s and contained well over 2,000 entries. How many of those words/concepts were new ideas for a new student to consider who knows. And that's just the tech dictionary.

 

[Lexar]

Asking for psychiatric help does not seem to be an insane idea at all.
A failed demo just shows his ideas did not produce desired results.
Thinking that Sara Northrup and Miles Hollister were Russian spies might have been wrong, but that does not prove Hubbard was already insane. Anyone makes mistakes.
A History of Man is a bizarre book, maybe comparable to the resurrection stories of Jesus Christ and ancient Xiandao practitioners in China. I do not think Christians and Taoists tody are insane even if they still believe in such stories.
In 1952 or 1953, Hubbard could have gone really insane because he wrote a letter making a really weird order.
Insanity shows up in behaviors, not in beliefs. Buddhists, Christians, strong-form materialists differ widely from each other in world view, but none of them are insane by belief alone.

 

[Zertel]

Asking for psychiatric help does not seem to be an insane idea at all.
A failed demo just shows his ideas did not produce desired results.
Thinking that Sara Northrup and Miles Hollister were Russian spies might have been wrong, but that does not prove Hubbard was already insane. Anyone makes mistakes.
A History of Man is a bizarre book, maybe comparable to the resurrection stories of Jesus Christ and ancient Xiandao practitioners in China. I do not think Christians and Taoists tody are insane even if they still believe in such stories.
In 1952 or 1953, Hubbard could have gone really insane because he wrote a letter making a really weird order.
Insanity shows up in behaviors, not in beliefs. Buddhists, Christians, strong-form materialists differ widely from each other in world view, but none of them are insane by belief alone.

Oops - Now you're your getting a bit too apologetic for me. My Genetic Entity does get a bit stirred up when I think about being a clam.

 

[Lexar]

Oops - Now you're your getting a bit too apologetic for me. My Genetic Entity does get a bit stirred up when I think about being a clam.

That's my favorite one, the clam episode. Talking about that episode causes a lot of people to touch their jaw ...

 

[TheSneakster]

I haven't read that old E-Meter Essentials. If my memory is correct, my figure, 1/20 of a second, is from an HCOB, but I don't remember its date or title. I am reading through the Red Vols again, and I will probably run into that HCOB sooner or later. Thanks for your comment.

OK. Well I use searchable electronic copies of Hubbard's materials (including lecture transcipts) from a well-known archive site. I'll see what I might dig up further.

 

[lotus]

I don't think Hubbard spent much time auditing anyone in his latter years. He was otherwise engaged.

Correct!
He was engage in a few perpetual wars
with his hair scissors, nail clipper and tootbrush;
wars which he obviously lost

However, he made good use of his spared time, writing bulletins and policies on upstat people, vs degraded beings, and how to get rid of the latest..;
He had a great win on the latest, and was sent to target 2...

 

[pineapple]

Asking for psychiatric help does not seem to be an insane idea at all.

You're right, asking for help is good. But it shows self-perception that his mental health was NOT good. (Assuming the request was sincere and not part of a plan to get his VA benefits increased, or to get the attention of psychiatrists whom he could "wow" with his ideas about how the mind worked.)

A failed demo just shows his ideas did not produce desired results.

I see two possibilities about the Shrine demo:

1) Hubbard knew Sonya Bianca really wasn't clear, but thought he could fool the audience into thinking she was, or 2) Hubbard really believed she WAS clear.

If 1), certainly he would have set something up. But the incident appears to have been unrehearsed, and the demo failed miserably when Sonya displayed none of the superhuman abilities Hubbard claimed for a clear in DMSMH.

So, I think he must have believed she really WAS clear. Since as I said she did not have the abilities described in DMSMH, this shows a tremendous capacity for self-delusion on Hubbard's part, indicating that he was already significantly out of touch with reality.

Thinking that Sara Northrup and Miles Hollister were Russian spies might have been wrong, but that does not prove Hubbard was already insane. Anyone makes mistakes.

Oh come on. Does turning your wife and her boyfriend in to the FBI as Russian spies sound like the act of a sane man? Especially during the McCarthy era, when paranoia about communists was at peak level and such suspicions could have very serious consequences? Calling that a mere "mistake" is ridiculous.

A History of Man is a bizarre book, maybe comparable to the resurrection stories of Jesus Christ and ancient Xiandao practitioners in China. I do not think Christians and Taoists tody are insane even if they still believe in such stories.

I might agree that believing such things doesn't necessarily mean you're insane, but coming up with this stuff in the first place and believing it's true -- or trying to get others to believe it -- might.

Hubbard may not have even really believed it himself . I don't think we should assume that he believed everything he said. It's impossible to know what he really believed and what was just what he wanted US to believe, i.e. what was just part of the con.

KSW = Keep the Suckers Wondering

 

[HelluvaHoax!]

You're right, asking for help is good. But it shows self-perception that his mental health was NOT good. (Assuming the request was sincere and not part of a plan to get his VA benefits increased, or to get the attention of psychiatrists whom he could "wow" with his ideas about how the mind worked.)

I see two possibilities about the Shrine demo:

1) Hubbard knew Sonya Bianca really wasn't clear, but thought he could fool the audience into thinking she was, or 2) Hubbard really believed she WAS clear.

If 1), certainly he would have set something up. But the incident appears to have been unrehearsed, and the demo failed miserably when Sonya displayed none of the superhuman abilities Hubbard claimed for a clear in DMSMH.

So, I think he must have believed she really WAS clear. Since as I said she did not have the abilities described in DMSMH, this shows a tremendous capacity for self-delusion on Hubbard's part, indicating that he was already significantly out of touch with reality.

Oh come on. Does turning your wife and her boyfriend in to the FBI as Russian spies sound like the act of a sane man? Especially during the McCarthy era, when paranoia about communists was at peak level and such suspicions could have very serious consequences? Calling that a mere "mistake" is ridiculous.

I might agree that believing such things doesn't necessarily mean you're insane, but coming up with this stuff in the first place and believing it's true might.

Assuming of course that Hubbard even really believed it. I don't think we should assume that he believed everything he said. It's impossible to know what he really believed and what was just what he wanted US to believe, i.e. what was just part of the con.

KSW = Keep the Suckers Wondering

..

I like your take on it.

But I would add that Hubbard, being a sociopath, neither BELIEVED or DID NOT BELIEVE in what he was saying, claiming, promoting and/or selling.

Sociopaths simply don't even care about "beliefs" one way or the other—as it would be viewed as an intellectual impediment to their amoral indifference and unlimited opportunities to get what they want.

I would suggest that Hubbard's mindset might be closer to this:

"Hey, if I promote that I found the secret of the universe in the 75M year old Xenu story, it might give people supernatural powers and immortality. However, if it's not true and they get nothing out of it, at least I get hundreds of millions of dollars. So for me it's a win-win scenario!"​

..

 

[pineapple]

..

I like your take on it.

But I would add that Hubbard, being a sociopath, neither BELIEVED or DID NOT BELIEVE in what he was saying, claiming, promoting and/or selling.

Sociopaths simply don't even care about "beliefs" one way or the other—as it would be viewed as an intellectual impediment to their amoral indifference and unlimited opportunities to get what they want.

I would suggest that Hubbard's mindset might be closer to this:

"Hey, if I promote that I found the secret of the universe in the 75M year old Xenu story, it might give people supernatural powers and immortality. However, if it's not true and they get nothing out of it, at least I get hundreds of millions of dollars. So for me it's a win-win scenario!"​

..

I've also conidered the possibility that Hubbard may have believed he could will his postulates into reality, whether they were previously true or not. So if he said there were clears, there were clears. If he said there were thetans, there were thetans, etc.

If he said "I never had a second wife," then he never had one.

In the occult, the two essential forces are WILL and IMAGINATION. If your imagination is strong enough and your will is strong enough, you can make things happen just by "mocking them up." Of course you have to be a "true adept" to do this, like Hubbard said he was in The Affirmations.

If you believe this, then objective reality is only a consideration. You can modify apparent reality just by postulating strongly enough. Any failure to make this work isn't because the theory is wrong -- it's because your WILL and IMAGINATION aren't strong enough. So you must make them stronger ...