L. Ron Hubbard

Northrup, Joe Blitz and Winchester Remington Colt. He became a well-known author in the science fiction and fantasy genres; he also published westerns and adventure stories. Campbell's Unknown magazine, provides an amusing insight into the New York writing scene within which Hubbard worked.

The "battle" took two days and involved at least four other US vessels plus two blimps, summoned for reinforcements and resupply. After reviewing instrument data, battle reports, interviews with the various captains and taking into account the fact that Japanese submarines didn't regularly operate there, Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, Commander Northwest Sea Frontier concluded; "An analysis of all reports convinces me that there was no submarine in the area. The Commanding Officers of all ships except the PC-815 state they had no evidence of a submarine and do not think a submarine was in the area." In June 1943, Hubbard was relieved of command after anchoring PC-815 off the Coronado Islands, which is Mexican territory.

In all he had one promotion and four decorations to show for his service. However he would claim to have accomplished much more than that in the decades which followed. It would also come out that he was relieved of command twice, and was also the subject of negative reports from his superiors on several occasions.
Post war activities


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After the war, Hubbard met Jack Parsons, an aeronautics professor at Caltech and an associate of the British Intelligence occultist Aleister Crowley. Hubbard and Parsons were allegedly engaged in the practice of ritual magick in 1946, including an extended set of sex magic rituals called the Babalon Working, intended to summon a goddess or "moonchild." The Church says Hubbard was working as an ONI agent on a mission to end Parsons' supposed magical activities and to "rescue" a girl Parsons was "using" for supposedly magical purposes. In a 1952 lecture series, Hubbard recommended a book of Crowley's and referred to him as "Mad Old Boy" and as "my very good friend". Hubbard later married the girl he said that he rescued from Parsons, Sara Northrup. Hubbard also described Parsons as his friend in his Scientology lectures rather than a person he was investigating.

Her divorce papers also accused Hubbard of kidnapping their baby daughter Alexis, and of conducting "systematic torture, beatings, strangulations and scientific torture experiments."
Hubbard returned to writing fiction briefly for a few years, his best-remembered work from this period being the Ole Doc Methuselah series for Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction magazine. Campbell's star author Isaac Asimov criticized Dianetics' unscientific aspects, and veteran author Jack Williamson described Dianetics as "a lunatic revision of Freudian psychology" that "had the look of a wonderfully rewarding scam." But Campbell and novelist A.

van Vogt enthusiastically embraced Dianetics: Campbell became Hubbard's treasurer, and van Vogt—convinced his wife's health had been transformed for the better by auditing—interrupted his writing career to run the first Los Angeles Dianetics center.
In April 1950, Hubbard and several others established the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation in Elizabeth, New Jersey to coordinate work related for the forthcoming publication of a book on Dianetics. The book, entitled Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, was published in May 1950 by Hermitage House, whose head was also on the Board of Directors of the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation. With Dianetics, Hubbard introduced the concept of "auditing," a two-person question-and-answer therapy that focused on painful memories.

In his introduction to Dianetics, Hubbard declared that "the creation of dianetics is a milestone for man comparable to his discovery of fire and superior to his inventions of the wheel and arch."
Dianetics sold 150,000 copies within a year of publication. Upon becoming more widely available, Dianetics became an object of critical scrutiny by the press and the medical establishment. In September 1950, The New York Times published a cautionary statement on the topic by the American Psychological Association that read in part, "the association calls attention to the fact that these claims are not supported by empirical evidence," and went on to recommend against use of "the techniques peculiar to Dianetics" until such time it had been validated by scientific testing.

Hubbard started the Scientology religion while he was living in Phoenix. In mid-1952, Hubbard expanded Dianetics into an "applied religious philosophy" which he called Scientology. Hubbard says he conducted years of intensive research into the nature of human existence; to describe his findings, he developed an elaborate vocabulary with many newly coined terms. He codified a set of Scientology axioms and an "applied religious philosophy" that promised to improve the condition of the human spirit, which he called the "Thetan." The bulk of Scientology focuses on the "rehabilitation" of the thetan.
Hubbard's followers believed his "technology" gave them access to their past lives, the traumas of which led to failures in the present unless they were audited.