Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

financial affairs in the most optimum manner. But for six years I have managed to provide, at least
the basic necessities, in some manner. In doing so I have depleted all my reserves and have
become deeply in debt . . .'
Hubbard, who was not exactly a pillar of rectitude in fiscal matters, was nevertheless furious with
his son. Nibs had been in and out of debt ever since he had first turned up on Hubbard's doorstep
in Phoenix. The problem was that he had his father's casual attitude towards money, but none of
his talent for making it and none of his luck. In his resignation letter, Nibs said he was going to look
for a full-time job, but hoped to be able to continue practising Scientology in his spare time. He
failed to take into account the fact that his father would automatically view his defection as an act of
treachery. Hubbard would never have allowed Nibs to continue trying to make money out of
Scientology. He quickly scribbled an airmail letter to Marilyn Routsong on 25 November: 'Nibs was
trying to get more money by loans from us. This may make a field upset but we'll survive. If he goes
into practice anywhere or starts up a squirrel activity have HCO cancel all certificates and awards of
his. He won't ever be hired back.'
A few days later Hubbard received more, equally unwelcome, family news when his Aunt Toilie
telephoned from Bremerton to say that his seventy-four-year-old mother had had a stroke, was very
ill and not expected to live. Hubbard had had little contact with his parents, or the Waterbury family,
since the end of the war. Toilie was the only one who tried to keep in touch, writing to him once or
twice a year, and it fell to her to find Ron when May was taken to hospital. Hubbard told her, over a
crackling inter-continental telephone line that he could not get away, he was too busy.
Toilie was quite as forceful a personality as a grey-haired old lady as she had been as a young
woman. 'You're coming home,' she told him. 'I want you to catch the next flight out. That is orders,
Ron. You owe that much to your mother and I pray to God you get here before she's dead.'
By the time Hubbard arrived in Bremerton, his mother was in a coma. He went in to see her, held
her hand and talked to her; he told the family afterwards he was sure she knew he was there. She
died the following day. 'Ron didn't stay for the funeral,' said his Aunt Marnie. 'He organized the
burial, ordered the stone, paid all the expenses and made arrangements for a man from the
Church of Scientology to come up and accompany the body with Hub and Toilie to the funeral in
Helena. Then he flew back to England from Bremerton. I thought he should have stayed for the
funeral. I don't know what could have been so pressing that he had to get back to England.'[5]
In March 1960, the gentle burghers of East Grinstead learned a little more about their Road Safety
Organizer when he published a book titled Have You Lived Before This Life? in which were
described a number of startling 'past lives' revealed during auditing. One case history concerned a
previous existence as a walrus, another as a fish, a third had witnessed the destruction of Pompeii
in AD 79 and a fourth had been a 'very happy being who strayed to the planet Nostra
23,064,000,000 years ago'.
The Courier reported that the book caused a 'storm of controversy' in the town, as might have been
anticipated, and Hubbard was prompted to issue a statement seeking to explain something of
Scientology: 'Scientific research work on Dianetics and Scientology has been carried out by Dr L.
Ron Hubbard, and skilled persons employed by him, over the past 30 years. Only since 1950 has
the knowledge gleaned from this exacting and penetrating work into the functions of the mind been
released to the general public in the form of special and skilled treatment . . . In connection with Dr
Hubbard's book Have You Lived Before This Life? the contents are merely reported from an
observer's point of view . . .'
In an internal memo to his press officer, Hubbard stressed the need to emphasize constantly that