Dianetics began losing popularity after the initial excitement caused by the book in 1950. Hubbard shrewdly chose to shift the emphasis from psychomatic healing (more fitting the mood of the 50's) to spiritual elevation, the obsession of a more spaced-out age. So in 1952, he renamed his movement Scientology. It was a wise decision, because the "truths" of Scientology are even less accessible to objective scrutiny than were the techniques of Dianetics. Now Hubbard flatly declares that Dianetics is merely training, a preparation for the cosmic quest of Thetanship, and Scientology.

READING the literature of Scientology, one appreciates the grandeur and intricacy of Hubbard's worldview. No longer is he offering a theory of electromagnetic memory units, complete with pseudo-scientific jargon. Now-now, we are tantalized by visions of super-beings who can perform miracles, travel without regard for space or time, direct energy flows of colossal potency, and who act out an inter-galactic drama complete with telepathy, wave guns, force fields, treachery, annihilation, and enslavement of entire planets and species.

The element of paranoia here is an integral facet of Scientology consciousness. We have the answer. They're trying to suppress us. (Anyone opposed to Scientology is a Suppressive Person.) L. Ron Hubbard's breakthroughs in the field of electronic wave theory must be kept secret, for once the vital wave lengths of the Thetans are known, any despot could jam the signal, so to speak.

Most despised by Hubbard of all are psychotherapy and Communism, actually one and the same. The International Edition No. 1 of Freedom Scientology, an 8-page newspaper, is devoted entirely to attacks upon psychotherapy. Again, Hubbard says, "The psychiatrist and his front groups operate straight out of terrorist textbooks. The Mafia looks like a convention of Sunday School teachers compared to these terrorist groups. Setting himself up as a terror symbol, the psychiatrist kidnaps, tortures and murders without any slightest police interference... Instead, these forces attack churches and peaceful, decent social groups under the direct orders of these terrorists... A psychiatrist kills a young girl for sexual kicks, murders a dozen patients with an ice-pick, castrates a hundred men. And they give him another million appropriation." The newspaper also conMankind; on the other, he envisions tained five cartoons ridiculing psychiatry, one showing the Grim Reaper carrying a scythe labeled "psychiatry" with the caption: "From Russia...

In All About Radiation (1957), Hubbard discusses brainwashing, psychiatry, and Russia in a revealing way. "Russia gave the Anglo-American world all that the U. S. and Great Britain use in the field of psychiatry, a Russian German science. Germany gave our culture all it used of psychology, a German science. Austria contributed psychoanalysis. Until Scientology, there was no Anglo-American thinking about the mind. It was all Russian, German, and Austrian. Now you don't suppose these three countries gave America and England total sciences, do you? No. They held out on us. Thus Anglo-American knowledge of the mind was fragmentary. Thus we could not hope to solve the problem posed by Russia with brainwashing with the fragment of a science Russia let us have. We had to tackle the whole thing newly in Scientology, an Anglo-American Science. By the way-don't be surprised that certain Communist elements fight Scientology and try to give us a bad name. We have undone all their tricks."

At first glance, the goals of Scientology appear very noble-the end of war, poverty, crime, insanity, and so on. Particularly appealing to many people is Hubbard's criticism of our cultural emphasis on good-evil, right-wrong duality. He advocates a view of any aberration as a case of stimulus-response, grounded in organic disturbances. He correctly observes that our prisons and asylums often do more harm than good. It warms the heart to hear him say, "The clear can be created from psychotic, neurotic, deranged, criminal or normal people if they have organically sound nervous systems. He [the Clear] demonstrates the basic nature of Mankind and that basic nature has been found uniformly and invariably to be good. That is now an established scientific fact, not an opinion."

Hubbard's teachings are full of schizoid paradoxes. On the one hand, he speaks of the good basic nature of With Love?" homo sapiens trying to enslave Thetans with "electronics." Thetans themselves are rather godlike beings, yet they are curiously prone to infantile pranks like stealing, "nipping," and "blanketing," Hubbard is here to save us, but we must pay dearly for our salvation. Scientology equals Freedom, we are told; yet one must not only pay for processing, one must join the organization. Members of Hubbard's Sea Org (organization) are required to sign a billion year contract. Security Checks, recently abolished, used to be required before gaining access to upper level material. In the March 6, 1970 issue of the L. A. Free Press, former Scientologist William Burroughs mentions his twenty-three hour ordeal of a Security Check, carried out on a lie detector-at Burrough's expense! He also describes the penalties for crimes against Scientology: "a student must wear a gray rag around his arm, may not bathe, shave or change clothes, must remain on the premises, must perform manual work, deliver a paralyzing blow to the enemy, admit his errors and petition every member of the center for forgiveness."

Burroughs, who knows more than the average layman about psychology and who studied medicine in Vienna for a while, reputedly attained Clear before becoming disenchanted. His views on Scientology are therefore particularly incisive: "The shoddy presentation, the reactionary opinions, the preposterous claims, the atrocious writing are so immediately repellent that few intelligent people can be persuaded that Scientology is worth a second glance.... As to my personal evaluation, after six months of study: I would not be writing this article unless I was convinced that Scientology is worth serious consideration. I feel that I have benefited greatly from Scientology processing. In an earlier article in Mayfair. I said that Scientology can do more in ten hours than psychoanalysis can do in ten years. For what that is worth, I still think so. Scientology is incomparably more precise and efficient than any method of psychotherapy now in use. But, unfortunately, Scientology has duplicated some of the basic errors of conventional psychotherapy." He goes on to cite the lack of anatomical correlation in Dianetics. "When I suggested that the Reactive Mind must be located in the by pothalamus my suggestion fell on unresponsive cars. Mr. Hubbard is not interested in suggestions. He states flatly that he has never known any suggestion from a student to contain the slightest value."

There can be little doubt that Scientology does have beneficial effects on many people. A friend of mine gave up drugs and stealing. He began to read more, too, and seemed much more confident when speaking. One of the first things that strikes you when you visit a Scientology center is the smiling good cheer, friendliness, and poise of the people. Something works-whether it's the techniques, the power of positive thinking, or simply a function of investing so much time and money in a project that you become determined to succeed, only Scientologists know.

Scientology is growing. According to the Cambridge Center, the worldwide movement now has over three million members and increases six fold every year. The list of prominent Scientologists includes actor Stephen Boyd, Salvador Dali, Donovan, Mama Cass. Leonard Cohen, blues singer John Hammond, the Incredible String Band, two of the Gateful Dead, science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury, and others. If Scientology is actually the bridge to a world of super-things, there seem to be some exceptional people on that bridge now. You do want to be on the winning side, don't you? It's later than you think.