Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

On 15 August he wrote again, pleading with her to make sure the machine was finished by the time
he arrived back in the United States in mid-September. He added that he had been working with
children very successfully: 'I can make kids walk in a few minutes who were crippled . . . I can solve
any case and teach people to solve any case without failure. I know the mind like a surveyor knows
a map. That sets me free, like the genie of the uncorked bottle.'
The 'genie' returned to Philadelphia at the end of September in time to address the three-day
International Congress of Dianeticists and Scientologists at the Broadwood Hotel. With more than
three hundred delegates attending, the event was a great success, but by this time the organizers,
Helen O'Brien and her husband, were exhausted and disillusioned. They had been at Hubbard's
beck and call for most of the year, receiving little in return. 'As soon as we became responsible for
Hubbard's interests,' Helen O'Brien recorded, 'a projection of hostility began, and he doubted and
double-crossed us, and sniped at us without pause.' They had no desire to take it any more and
resigned. Helen O'Brien would forever recall her parting, regretful words to Hubbard: 'You're like a
cow who gives a good bucket of milk, then kicks it over.'
In October and November, Hubbard lectured to the Hubbard Association in Camden, New Jersey,
just actress the Delaware River from Philadelphia. Mary Sue would normally have been present at
every lecture, but she was forced by her pregnancy and the endless demands of an active toddler,
to spent most of the time at home - yet another rented house, this time at Medford Lakes, about
twenty miles from Camden. Nibs, who had recently married his long-time girlfriend, Henrietta, in
Los Angeles, came to visit and was given a job in the Camden 'org', a Scientology abbreviation for
organization.
The Hubbards returned to Phoenix for Christmas, to the house near Camel Back Mountain, and on
6 January 1954, Many Sue gave birth to her second child, a son, Geoffrey Quentin McCaully
Hubbard.
Deprived of the services of Helen O'Brien, Hubbard tried to entice Richard de Mille back into the
fold, only to discover that he, too, had become disillusioned. 'I wanted to find the true answer to
everything,' de Mille explained, 'but I didn't like all the contradictions and I was becoming more and
more sceptical of the whole thing. There was a constant pyramiding of claims, but the performance
was always deficient. The answer to the deficiency was that we didn't have a particular step quite
right, but now we had another step and this time it's going to be right.
'When Hubbard called me and said, "I miss you. Why don't you come back?" I was somewhat
critical and expressed my scepticism. His reaction was typical. "Who's gotten to you, Dick?" he
asked. To him, there was no such thing as simply being unconvinced.'
Despite the defections, Scientology prospered in Phoenix, so much so that in April 1954, the HASI
moved into sumptuous new premises on a corner site at 1017 North Third Street. Formerly an
apartment building, the new headquarters had wide Spanish-style colonnaded porches offering
shade from the fierce Arizona sun on both first and second floors. Outside there was a large
parking lot lined with palm trees and inside an auditorium with the latest recording facilities, more
than twenty auditing rooms, comfortable offices for the executives and a swimming pool. In a
brochure printed to celebrate the move, a picture of a beaming L. Ron Hubbard, C.E., D. Scn., D.D.
could be found on the inside front cover and a similarly beaming L. Ron Hubbard Jr., H.G.A., D.Scn.,
on the inside back cover. 'Ten thousand years of thinking men have made this science possible,'
the introduction proclaimed. 'L. Ron Hubbard has spent more than 30 years perfecting Dianetics
and Scientology to the point of practical application .'