Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

a minute. It just poured out - I have seen typists working at that speed, but never a writer. I was in
his apartment a couple of times when he said he had to finish a story and he would sit typing
steadily for twenty minutes without a break and without looking up. That would have been totally
impossible for me.
'When he was out in the evenings, he would begin to think of a plot for a story and throw ideas
around, asking people around the table what they thought of this or that. By the end of the evening
he would have it worked out in his mind and when he got home he would spend the night writing,
tearing the pages out of the typewriter and throwing them all over the floor. Sara told me it was her
job when she got up in the morning to collect the pages and put them in order. He left a note to tell
her where to send it and he never looked at it again.
'He never told me where he learned hypnotism, but he was certainly a great hypnotist. There were
certain people he could hypnotize instantly. He would talk to them for a few moments, take their
mind in a certain direction, then just say "Sleep!"'[13]
Hubbard's efforts to use his facility in a more constructive fashion at the science fiction society were
somewhat less successful. He once hypnotized a member who was taking a college examination
the following day and ordered him to get straight A's, without that happy result. Another attempt to
help someone who felt he had a 'block' about spelling similarly failed. By the time a fan approached
Ron to ask if hypnosis could help with his emotional problems, Ron could only lamely suggest he
tried reading Dale Carnegie's How to Make Friends and Influence People.
That summer, 1948, Hubbard ran into a spot of bother with the law. A trifling misunderstanding over
a cheque led to the embarrassment of his being arrested by the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff,
fingerprinted and charged with petty theft. He was released on bail of $500 while the Sheriff's
Forgery Detail investigated the circumstances of the offence. On 19 August 1948 he was arraigned
at San Gabriel Township Justice Court where he entered a plea of not guilty and waived trial by jury.
However, by the time the trial date came around on 31 August, Hubbard changed his plea to guilty
and was fined $25. Remarkably, he did not need time to pay.[14]
Ron never mentioned the incident to his friends and the court files were destroyed in 1955, so it will
never be known precisely what he had done wrong. He was also fortunate that none of the local
newspaper reporters was a science-fiction fan and so no one realized that the L.R. Hubbard
charged with petty theft at San Luis Obispo was a famous sci-fi writer.
Shortly afterwards, Ron and Sara left California for Savannah, Georgia, where, Ron would claim
later, he embarked upon another important stage of his pioneering research into the unexplored
recesses of the human mind.
Within a couple of years it would become imperative for L. Ron Hubbard to play down his career as
a pulp writer and establish for himself a rather more sober reputation as a scientist, philosopher
and guru. Lesser men might have hesitated to undertake such a radical metamorphosis, but not
Ron Hubbard, who effortlessly contrived to make it appear as if his whole life had been dedicated
to unravelling the mysteries of the psyche.
The story of his childhood in the 'wilds of Montana' and his adoption as a blood brother of an Indian
tribe presented a picture of a boy unusually in tune with nature and primitive cultures. His tutelage
by a 'personal student' of Freud, his 'wanderings' in the mystic East and his expeditions as an
explorer all suggested an upbringing and career of extraordinary dimensions, constantly directed
towards a quest for deeper understanding of life's mysteries. Writing science fiction was