Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

working as an auditor at Saint Hill for nearly three years. Virginia was never entirely sure why she
had been honoured with an invitation to join the project, unless it was because she came from a
sailing family and knew a little about ships and knots. 'At that time the sea project was just a few of
us who would get together in the garage and learn how to tie knots and read a pilot. I bought a little
sailing boat and sailed it at weekends, but that was about it. Ron always worked way down the line
- he knew what he intended to do, but he never laid it out for us.
'After he had gone I was given a sealed envelope with his initials on. Inside were my orders. I had
to go to Hull, get the Enchanter ready for sea and sail her to Gibraltar for a refit. Ron gave me a list
of things he wanted from Saint Hill, mainly personal possessions and clothes, which I was to bring
with me. I left for Hull next day.'
Scientologists were in the habit of following Ron's orders unhesitatingly, no matter how difficult the
task, or how ill-equipped they were to carry them out. Virginia Downsborough held a masters
degree in education and had run a child development department in a New York school before
coming to Saint Hill; nevertheless she set out for Hull without a second thought. 'A lot of things
needed to be done before the Enchanter was ready to sail,' she recalled, 'so I lived on the Avon
River, which was moored alongside and was absolutely filthy, for a couple of weeks while the work
was being carried out.'
The Enchanter sailed in the New Year with a hired skipper and a novice crew of four Scientologists,
including Downsborough. In the light of forthcoming Sea Org voyages, it was a comparatively
uneventful trip, apart from losing most of the fuel at sea somewhere off the coast of Portugal. After
putting in briefly at Oporto, the Enchanter arrived safely in Gibraltar, only to discover there was no
room in the ways. A message arrived from a Hubbard aide in Tangier saying that Ron was ill and
they were to continue to Las Palmas, in the Canary Islands.
'We got the Enchanter on the ways in Las Palmas,' said Downsborough, 'and we had not been
there very long before Ron turned up. Bill Robertson - another Scientologist - and myself went to the
post office to post some letters and discovered a telegram there from Ron saying that he was
arriving in Las Palmas almost at that minute and wanted to be met. We jumped into a taxi and got
to the airport just in time to pick him up as he was coming through Customs. We found him a hotel
in Las Palmas and next day I went back to see if he was all right, because he did not seem to be
too well.
'When I went in to his room there were drugs of all kinds everywhere. He seemed to be taking
about sixty thousand different pills. I was appalled, particularly after listening to all his tirades
against drugs and the medical profession. There was something very wrong with him, but I didn't
know what it was except that he was in a state of deep depression; he told me he didn't have any
more gains and he wanted to die. That's what he said: "I want to die."'
It was important for Hubbard to be discovered in this dramatically debilitated condition at this time,
for it would soon be announced to fellow Scientologists that he had completed 'a research
accomplishment of immense magnitude' described, somewhat inscrutably, as the 'Wall of Fire'.
This was the OT3 (Operating Thetan Section Three) material, in which were contained 'the secrets
of a disaster which resulted in the decay of life as we know it in this sector of the galaxy'.[3]
Hubbard, it was said, was the 'first person in millions of years' to map a precise route through the
'Wall of Fire'. Having done so, his OT power had been increased to such an extent that he was at
grave risk of accidental injury to his body; indeed, he had broken his back, a knee and an arm
during the course of his research.