Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

Chapter 17
In Search of Past Lives
'USIS OFFICER STATES HUBBARD RUNS FLOATING UNIVERSITY OF QUESTIONABLE MORAL CHARACTER,
NOT ACCREDITED ANY US UNIVERSITIES AND POOR REPRESENTATIVE FOR US ABROAD . . . FLOATING
COLLEGE PROBABLY PART OF CHARLATAN CULT.' (CIA cable traffic, June/July 1968)
• • • • •
Soon after the Royal Scotman docked in Valencia a group of students flew in from Saint Hill to take
a 'clearing course' on board the ship. One of them was a pretty, dark-eyed New Yorker called Mary
Maren:
'I had a friend in dance class in New York who was into Scientology and he told me about it. They
sounded like an interesting group of people and I thought it would be useful to have this exact
scientific technology at my disposal. I read Dianetics and it made a lot of sense to me.
'By 1967 I was doing the briefing course at Saint Hill and I saw some people who had come back
from this mysterious sea project. One of the guys was terrified, really scared; I had no idea why he
was in such a state. Two weeks later more came back. They had lost a lot of weight and looked
overwhelmed, as if they had seen some kind of monster in the sea. Later I discovered that they had
been cleaning cattle dung out of the ship's hold for two weeks, but I didn't know it at the time. I said
to my husband, Artie, I'm never going to join the Sea Org.
'I forgot all that when we all got on a plane to do the clearing course. It was called the New Year
Freedom Flight. I'd never been to Spain before and it all seemed very exciting. At that time the ship
looked clean, kinda nice. The stateroom I was given was very small and cramped, but everything
looked kinda spiffed up. The atmosphere was very congenial.
'LRH was on the ship and in a real jolly mood. He used to stay up late at night on the deck and talk
to us into the wee hours about his whole track adventures, how he was a race-car driver in the
Marcab civilization. The Marcab civilization existed millions of years ago on another planet; it was
similar to planet earth in the 'fifties, only they had space travel. Marcabians turned out later not to be
good guys so it wasn't a compliment that their civilization was similar to ours. LRH said he was a
race driver called the Green Dragon who set a speed record before he was killed in an accident. He
came back in another lifetime as the Red Devil and beat his own record, then came back and did it
again as the Blue Streak. Finally he realized all he was doing was breaking his own records and it
was no game any more.
'People would stand around listening to these stories for hours, very over-awed. At the time it
seemed a privilege and honour to share these things, to hear him talking about things that went on
millions of years ago like it was yesterday. It was usually entertaining, but I sometimes found it very
stressful to take it all in, this powerful, booming outflow, and it was hard to get away. One night I
was getting dizzy and dared to ask if I could leave early. I could hear my voice echoing in the
cosmos as I said, "If you'll excuse me, I have to go to bed, sir." He said, "OK, sure."'[1]
Talking about his past lives to an adoring, captive audience was one of Hubbard's favourite
recreational activities. His stories, no matter how outrageous, were always treated seriously, for