Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

Chapter 12
Phoenix Rising
'Many awards and honors were offered and conferred on L. Ron Hubbard. He did accept an
honorary Doctor of Philosophy given in recognition of his outstanding work on Dianetics and, as an
inspiration to the many people . . . who had been inspired by him to take up advanced studies in
this field.' (Mission Into Time, 1973)
• • • • •
At the beginning of April 1952, Hubbard packed his belongings into the back of his yellow Pontiac
convertible and headed out of Wichita on the Kansas Turnpike with his teenage bride of four weeks
beside him on the front seat. Their destination, one thousand miles to the west, was Phoenix,
Arizona, where loyal aides had already put up a sign outside a small office at 1405 North Central
Street, announcing it as the headquarters of the Hubbard Association of Scientologists.
Phoenix was so named because it was built on the ruins of an ancient Indian settlement on the
Salt River, which had risen like the legendary phoenix. Hubbard, who had had more than enough of
Wichita, could not think of a more appropriate location for the rise of his astounding new science
from the still-smoking ruins of Dianetics.
The word Scientology was derived from the Latin scio (knowing in the fullest sense) and the Greek
logos (study). Hubbard erroneously believed it to be his own invention: but curiously and
coincidentally, almost twenty years earlier in 1934, a German scholar by the name of Dr A.
Nordenholz had written an obscure work of philosophical speculation titled Scientologie,
Wissenschaft und der Beschaffenheit und der Tauglichkeit des Wissens (Scientology, the Science
of the Structure and Validity of Knowledge). It was unlikely, however, that Hubbard was plagiarizing
Dr Nordenholz - the book had not been translated into English and Hubbard's knowledge of
German was rudimentary.
Hubbard would introduce Scientology as a logical extension of Dianetics, but it was a development
of undeniable expedience, since it ensured he would be able to stay in business even if the courts
eventually awarded control of Dianetics and its valuable copyrights to 'that little flatulence', the hated
Don Purcell. The difference between Dianetics and Scientology was that Dianetics addressed the
body, whereas Scientology addressed the soul. With his accustomed bombast, Hubbard claimed
that he had 'come across incontrovertible, scientifically-validated evidence of the existence of the
human soul'.[1]
To underpin his new science, Hubbard created an entire cosmology, the essence of which was
that the true self of an individual was an immortal, omniscient and omnipotent entity called a
'thetan'. In existence before the beginning of time, thetans picked up and discarded millions of
bodies over trillions of years. They concocted the universe for their own amusement but in the
process became so enmeshed in it that they came to believe they were nothing more than the
bodies they inhabited. The aim of Scientology was to restore the thetan's original capacities to the
level, once again, of an 'operating thetan' or an 'OT'. It was an exalted state not yet known on earth,
Hubbard wrote. 'Neither Lord Buddha nor Jesus Christ were OTs according to the evidence. They
were just a shade above Clear.'[2]