Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

eading was True Confession.'
It did not take long for Hubbard to register the arrival of this attractive pre-clear from Texas and he
took a particular interest in her progress. Mary Sue was flattered by the great man's attention and
within a matter of a few weeks she had moved in with him at 910 North Yale, to the fury of the
housekeeper, who found herself relegated to more conventional duties. Mary Sue rapidly qualified
for her Hubbard Dianetic Auditor's Certificate and joined the staff of the Foundation as an auditor,
all thoughts of a career in the petroleum industry abandoned.
Auditing was the major activity at the Foundation, for staff and students alike. Everyone was auditing
everyone else and someone, naturally, had to audit Hubbard. This dubious honour was variously
bestowed and on one occasion it passed to Perry Chapdelaine, who was working as a research
assistant at the Wichita Foundation. 'I assumed I would have to stick rigidly to the techniques we
had been taught at the Foundation,' said Chapdelaine, 'but it was very different from what I
expected. He just lay down on the bed in his bedroom, closed his eyes and started to talk. I sat on a
chair by the bed and snapped my fingers a time or two, like we had been taught, directing him to go
back to the earliest moment he could recall but he opened his eyes, glared at me,closed his eyes
again and continued talking. He was relating, very vividly, what was happening to him as a clam or
a jellyfish, in terms of effort and counter-effort. It was fascinating, but I didn't know what to make of it.
I learned then, pretty well, what he meant by research - it was him talking and the auditor listening.
'The problem for many people involved in Dianetics was that they accepted every word Hubbard
said as literal truth, rather than a framework around which you could do things. I remember at a
lecture one night he told people if they did this or that they would no longer need to wear glasses
and that they would be able to throw them away forever. He pointed to a big bowl at the bottom of
the steps leading up to the rostrum and at the end of the lecture people were throwing their
glasses into this bowl. Don Purcell was one of them.
'Hubbard thought it was a great joke. He told me about it afterwards, making a snide remark about
Purcell and describing how he took off his glasses, threw them into the bowl and groped his way
out of the lecture hall. Hubbard was laughing that people would do something like that just
because of what he said. Of course, it didn't work. Like every one else, Purcell had a new pair of
glasses in a couple of days.
'There was no question Hubbard had an extraordinary ability to transmit to other people. He audited
me once in his front room in Wichita and it was the one and only time in my life I had a perfect
perception of being in embryo. I'll never forget it, it was the most amazing experience of my whole
life.'[11]
In August, Hubbard had to submit to the indignity of another medical examination to avoid losing
his pension from the Veterans Administration. 'This veteran gives a long history of three years of
sea duty,' the examining physician noted in his report. 'It was gathered from what he says that the
duty was rather strenuous, his first assignment in 1942 being with a merchant ship which was
assigned to transporting troops. Later, he states, he served with escorts in the North Atlantic. On
one occasion, in 1942, he fell down a ladder and struck his right hip, but there were no facilities
aboard ship and it was necessary for him to go on without any aid . . . He is a writer by profession
and states he has some income from previous writing that helps take care of him.'
Hubbard presented his usual laundry list of injuries and ailments, but the doctors could find
symptoms for none of them. 'This is a well nourished and muscled white adult', the examination
report concluded, 'who does not appear chronically ill.'[12]