Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

second birthday - he bestowed a general amnesty on his followers, in the fashion of some middleeastern
potentate: 'Any and all offences of any kind before this date, discovered or undiscovered,
are fully and completely forgiven. Directed at Saint Hill, on March the thirteenth, 1963, in the 13th
year of Dianetics and Scientology. L. Ron Hubbard.'
The amnesty was followed in May by the foudroyant revelation that Hubbard had twice visited
heaven, 43 trillion and 42 trillion years earlier. In a four-page HCO Bulletin - dated 11 May AD 13
(meaning 'After Dianetics') - he claimed the first visit had taken place 43,891,832,611,177 years,
344 days, 10 hours, 20 minutes and 40 seconds from 10.02pm Daylight Greenwich Mean Time 9
May 1963. Nit-pickers might have pointed out that 'Daylight Greenwich Mean Time' was a term
unknown in horology and that, in any case, at 10.02pm on a May evening in Britain it would be dark,
but this was a trifling matter compared with what was to come.
The first surprise was that heaven was not a floating island in the sky as everyone imagined, but
simply a high place in the mountains of an unnamed planet. Visitors first arrived in a 'town'
comprising a trolley bus, some building fronts, sidewalks, train tracks, a boarding house, a bistro
in a basement and a bank building. Although there seemed to be people around - in the boarding
house, for example, there was a guest and a landlady in a kimono, reading a newspaper - Hubbard
quickly discovered they were only effigies and probably radioactive, since 'contact with them hurts'.
However, he was able to report he saw 'no devils or satans' [perhaps because he was supposed
to be in heaven].
The bank was the key point of interest in the town. It was an old-fashioned corner building of
granite-like material with a revolving door. Inside, to the left of the door, was a counter and directly
opposite was a flight of marble stairs leading to the Pearly Gates! 'The gates . . . are well done, well
built,' Hubbard wrote. 'An avenue of statues of saints leads up to them. The gate pillars are
surmounted by marble angels. The entering grounds are very well kept, laid out like Bush Gardens
in Pasadena, so often seen in the movies.'
On his second visit to heaven, a trillion years later, Hubbard noticed marked changes: 'The place is
shabby. The vegetation is gone. The pillars are scruffy. The saints have vanished. So have the
angels. A sign on one side (the left as you "enter") says "this is Heaven". The right has a sign "Hell"
with an arrow and inside the grounds one can see the excavations like archeological diggings with
raw terraces, that lead to "Hell". Plain wire fencing encloses the place. There is a sentry box beside
and outside the right pillar . . .'
Hubbard's visits to heaven would become something of an embarrassment to Scientologists in
future years and they would strive to explain that he had intended his description to be allegory, but
Hubbard himself attached a note to the bulletin seeming to deny its contents were allegorical.
The Church of Scientology now apparently refuses to admit the existence of the bulletin; it is no longer included in its
otherwise comprehensive lists of Hubbard books and materials, although esoteric material such as 'HCOB 24 Aug -
The Marcab Between Lives Implants' is still shown. -- Chris Owen
'This HCO Bulletin', he stressed, 'is based on over a thousand hours of research auditing . . . It is
scientific research and is not in any way based upon the mere opinion of the researcher.'[2]
In August, Hubbard turned his attention to more temporal issues by re-defining Scientology policy
towards the media. Typically, he did not mince words. Almost all Scientology's bad publicity, he
asserted, could be blamed on the American Medical Association, which wanted to cause maximum
harm to the movement in order to protect its private healing monopoly. 'The reporter who comes to
you, all smiles and withholds, wanting a story,' he said, 'has an AMA instigated release in his