I had been reckoned amongt the transgressors and apologists!
I had listened to some of the vids of Jon Atack with Chris, but there's something like 7 of them in total - I might have missed the one when gnosticism is brought up.
Gnosticism is one of the foundations of European mysticism. So you will find traces of it in many later philosophies. Though I think it is present in Scientology to a far greater extent than it is in Crowley or Nazism or other modern movements.
For Blavatsky it was a rather peripheral part of her cosmology. For Hubbard the notion of spiritual beings who imprisoned themselves in the material world is a core concept. To me it seems Hubbard was much more in line with classical gnostics than Crowley, or Blavatsky or conteporary 1960s and 1970s new age movements.
The other guys took some parts here and there, Hubbard took the central ontological framework and then filled it out with his own details. But the key parts are all there:
- There are several layers of existence in the universe, with the material universe contained within the spiritual universe with all ultimately contained in the infinite, single undifferentiated "divine" universe (8th dynamic - God).
- God is the impersonal, passive ideal sphere on top. He's not a person or active participant who will liberate you.
- Humans are purely spiritual eternal beings
- Through a natural, but destructive process these being have trapped themselves in the material universe
- They had "forgotten/lost knowledge" of the fact that this is so.
- There are other destructive/demonic/careless beings in this universe who further help to keep the spiritual beings more and more trapped (in scn its the implant creators, Xenu bringing them down to BT etc. In gnosticism it could be Yaldabaoth, Pistis Sophia etc).
- The way to liberation is gnosis the Hubbardian "knowledge of knowingness"
- You can liberate yourself, God or other higher beings will not do it for you. Praying to God is pointless.
- The radical dichotomy - matter is all bad, spirit is the thing that is good.
- Humans are naturally good, just ignorant in their current state.
- The lower you go in the spheres of existence, the more "degraded" you are.
- You can become even more degraded than the default human state - lose even more knowledge or go down to pure matter level ("being objects" - remember this weird tone scale thing? This is where it comes from! Its a very old gnostic idea)
It is also interesting to note that out of the plethora of Neoplatonist traditions, Hubbard seems to have went with gonsticism, which is de facto a very extreme and radical version of neoplatonism. Gnostics are the "taliban of neoplatonism" so to speak.
All true.
I think Hubbard willingly dropped a lot of outright lies into the system. He also added some elements that do not fall into the "true or false" spectrum, but are merely useful ideas that help keep members controlled or helped him to secure funding.
But I also think that a lot of what he included in the system are things he himself believed in. What makes me think so is that Hubbard continued to receive auditing even in situations where he was isolated from his followers. He didn't do it "for show", he had his own purpose. I'm convinced that he believed at least in the gnostic parts of his system.
He wanted to be just a game-maker, but in the end the game clearly drew him in.
I agree with all you say here. But this not necessarily mean that he considered everything he created to be simple BS.
I think we have to take into account that he said he found all his ideas through research and auditing. The fact that he plagiarized them puts them in the lie category for me.
If you pretend to have used scientific research and found rock solid evidence that these facts are true then just stealing ideas from others then changing them a little to hide that, filing off the serial numbers makes it so you are a liar lying. That is my opinion on Hubbard.
Jon Atack has described how Hubbard had aides read books or articles on psychology and other topics then explain them to him and he would then give a lecture that night pretending to have discovered the cliff notes version of the subject his aide just told him.d
One person looked at his library in one office and was shocked to reportedly see many books on hypnosis and the occult and several by and about Hitler and his speeches. His Sea Org aides reportedly said Hubbard read them to know what others were up to. Um, no.
