Thankyou Caroline. It hit me in a flash, the day after my query about the 'name' of Hubbard's guardian angle. I realized it was the
Empress...with her red hair. Thank goodness for the 'file clerk' or whatever phenomena it is. The answers to our trivial questions drop down out of the ethers like gumballs, but
unlike Caroline, supply no docs.
Aw, thanks. Re: gumball warning:
It seems that hair color was very important to Hubbard, but I hadn't really focused on the hair color of Flavia/Empress until we started talking about the angel. Hubbard made his own red hair famous, including in
Hymn of Asia, as Hugh Urban points out in
The Church of Scientology: A History of a New Religion:
But perhaps the most audacious claim for his ties to Eastern religions appeared in a poem of Hubbard's entitled "Hymn of Asia," said to have been composed on the occasion of the Buddhist convention of 1955-1956 celebrating the 2,500th year of the Buddhist era. The poem centers on the Buddhist prophecy of the future Buddha, Metteyya or Maitreya, who will come to restore the Buddhist teaching at the end of the age. The introduction to the poem begins with an alleged Tibetan prophecy about the coming of Metteyya/ Maitreya (the origins or authenticity of which I have been unable to establish) that proclaims: “When he shall be seen in the West, seated in the Western fashion, his hair like flames about his noble head, discoursing, then shall the inhabitants of the Three Worlds rejoice.” The “hair like flames" is clearly meant to be a reference to Hubbard’s own famous red hair. The poem then begins with the question “Am I Metteyya?” and then proceeds to answer in the affirmative:
I come to bring you all that Lord Buddha would have you know life, Earth and Man.
I come to you with Freedom
I come to you with science.
I come to teach you
I come to help you.112
[Hugh Urban continues with a very insightful comment about the direction of Scientology processing, which we were talking about a bit earlier in this thread:]
Yet significantly, despite his many claims about the links between his philosophy and that of the Buddha, Hubbard also clearly distinguishes
the final goal of Scientology from that of Buddhism. Whereas Buddhism—as he understood it at least—aimed to extinguish the individual in the nothingness of nirvana, Scientology has the technology that can liberate the thetan into a state of individual freedom, autonomy, and unlimited power to do anything it chooses: “We are Scientologists. We won’t fall into the abyss. And we won't join Nirvana. We have meters and a map. . . . Nirvana is choked with the overwhelmed. . . . We are Scientologists. We have won.”113 In contrast to Hindu and Buddhist holy men, Hubbard wrote in 1952, the Scientologist does not seek to become “one with the universe but maintains his own individuality” and ultimately becomes capable of doing anything he desires:
Thetans are individuals. They do not... merge with other individualities. They still have the power of becoming anything they wish while still retaining their individuality. . . . There is evidently no Nirvana. . . . When he goes upscale, he becomes more and more an individual capable of creating and maintaining his own universe.114
__________
112. Hubbard, Hymn of Asia (Los Angeles: Golden Era Productions, 2009), n.p.
113. Hubbard, "What Are You Trying To Do in Clearing," HCO Bulletin, April 6, 1993. Scientology's Advance! magazine from 1980 features an image of the Buddha meditating on the front cover. Inside, the cover story recounts the teachings of the Buddha, concluding that they are now fulfilled with the birth of Scientology: Gautama Siddhartha Buddha predicted that in 2500 years the entire job would be finished in the West.... Well, we finished it" (Descent from Vulture Peak," Advance! 84 [1980]:14).
114. Hubbard, Scientology 8-8008, 48.
The church of scientology: A history of a new religion. (2011). Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. [Google Books]
