In Memory of L.Ron Hubbard
By Leonard Dunn .England ( Leonard Maurice Dunn, born London 1 1. September 1913. Bought up in the faith of the Congregatinal Church. Entered the Public Library service in 1930. Became a spiritualist early 30’s where introduced to positive Iliinlong. Entered Scientology summer 1953. Clear in spring 1954. HPA a year later. Left C of S spring 1983. Wrote articles for Reconnecnon and the Danish magazine Uafhangtge Synspunber. Audited to AA7 and L rundowns. Currently auditing a natural clear on Filberts lower levels.)
The Romans had a saying — “De mortuis nil nisi bonum”, which roughly translates as — Speak only good of the dead. Mark Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar proclaimed that “lhe evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones”.
There are too many these days who delight in revealing his faults and his failings whilst ignoring the good that he did. Is this not, perhaps, an indication of a less than optimum Tone Level?
How I saw him as a being I much prefer to remember him from the early days but one writer, Jon Atack, whose book I reviewed in the last issue, shows how he steadily declined in a way that was similar to Adolf Hitler. They both suffered from the same type of mental disorder. This caused him to act very irra-tionally indeed as the illness progressed. I refer to this in more detail in the review of Jon’s book with the information given by Geoffrey Filbert which explains many things. Even from my earliest days in the Movement I regarded him as a man and not as a Deity. I still do but as a man who has done more lo help humanity than most. I can only think that his most virulent one-sided critics cannot have achieved the gains from Scientology that I have.
Early lectures and processes The early days stand apart from much of the laler developments. The lectures and the tech of the early days were quite shattering in their impact on those who were able to benefit from them. I was fortunate enough to be one of them. Whilst I was doing Group auditing on a Basic Course I encountered that really great process in which one reaches out with one’s beingness to find and hold the comers of the room. It was during this process that I first exteriorised and had the strange experience of seeing the one wall of the room with my physical eyes and perceiving the wall at right angle to it with my Theta Perception. This was certainly a convincing experience of being something other than my body. I already knew this in theory, of course, but now it became a reality.
Individual auditing in Scientology It became even more so in my first professional auditing which soon followed when I had the experience of going into a wall and experiencing the “brickiness” of it . Later I found myself high above the Underground Station at Netting Hill Gate and looking down at the people below. Even stranger was when my body was still in the auditing room and I was in the street looking into a shop window. I was told to move along a little and in doing so experienced a feeling of moving in a series of short jerks. I had felt nothing like this before but when my auditor asked me if I had felt this and I had answered in the affirmative he told me that was how the Thetan makes short moves.
In under 25 hours I achieved the state of Clear, although this was not realised until many years later but the effect upon me was the opening up of a new and lovelier world. As a result of a loving and well-intentioned but actually repressive upbringing I was in a state of very considerable inferiorily. I had got rid of some of this by the use of Positive Thinking but this was nothing to what I achieved after becoming Clear.
After clear
After this good start the processes that I ran, once the Bridge was brought into being, were largely a matter of emphazising what I had already achieved. In those early days there was none of the standardisation that the Bridge later introduced since that runs on the idea that all people need to be run in the same way. In the early days we were treated as individuals which meant that ones individual needs were handled from the very start. In consequence of this good beginning I was later able to run processes that I shouldn’t have been able lo do without any great trouble from doing so, although this was not the case for many others. This was in the later sixties when the decline of the C of S began, and the Orgs were actually running Dianetics on Clears when this had been forbidden.
Lectures
Outstanding amongst the early lectures were the justly famous Philadelphia Doctorate Course series. These, in my opinion, are worth anyone’s time to listen to since they are almost unique — there are a few supplementary lectures which were given soon after in London.
These lectures were given to the students in conjunction with a typescript of the book which eventually became 8-8008 and dealt with the type of processing just being introduced and becoming called Creative Processing. This was the method used in my first Professional Auditing. When I heard the cassettes of these lectures some 20 years later they gave me a very clear insight into why I had achieved the results I did. One Lecture in particular, entitled “Memory — not Human”, allowed me to realise why so many things that I had encountered in Scientology where more a remembering of things past rather than something that was entirely new to me, as it seemed with so many other students who encountered difficulties when we were on the evening HPA Course in 1954-1955.’
It was whilst we were doing this course that the Axioms of Scientology were first made public and while many of the class were perplexed by axiom 11 — the four conditions of existence — they seemed obvious to me and I found myself explaining them to fellow students. On the other hand I found difficulty in coming to terms with “space is a viewpoint of dimension”. Another student referred me to The Factors, and then this became clear.
LRH on facts and opinions The very first of the PDC Lectures was when LRH told his students that he would present them with facts and opinions. The facts were the way that the processes must be run. Anything else was to be considered as opinion and not accepted simply because he held that view but should be considered and accepted only if one found it to be workable.This was very different from the dog-malic attitude he later adopted as his mental disoder took a greater bold on him.
These were exciting and adventurous days when research and development were going on apace. At this time Ron was not working solely on his own but in cooperation with his close associates who would work out better ways of handling cases that could be reached by the processes currently being used.
OT III was another major turning point in my life since it increased my awareness of what responsibility really entailed and increased my tolerance of others quite unbelieveably.
His writing
I have found his writings very lucid and, in comparison with those of other philosophers, arriving at the point of the matter in a very short space of
( 1    HPA (Hubbard Professional Auditor — in USA HCA, Hubbard Certified Auditor, but in Britain, ‘certified’ meant certified insane). When the grades came out in about 1965, this was replaced by the Academy. Ed.)
time whereas so often philosophical writers just go on and on whilst still leaving one wondering what they are really getting at. I know that some intellectual snobs found his work put too simply. Personally I like a writer to get to the point without a lot of fuss and bother. He did just this.
In 1953 I was introduced to the ‘Book One’ — Dianetics, Modern Science of Mental Health. I read it in three days, at times when I wasn’t at work and on the fourth day I started to use it on my wife who achieved results from it. Personally I find the modem method of using the process known as R3R to be much easier to handle.
His sense of humour
One must never forget this great sense of humour which is found especially in his lectures where a joke after a spell of great seriousness tends to make the serious part more readily acceptable. An example of this is to be found in one of his Phoenix Lectures in their original taped form — it was deleted in the printed version. He had been speaking at great length on the subject of things existing because we consider they exist. It was in the constantly repeated form “We have a ... because we consider we have a ...” Finally came “We have a First Dynamic because we consider that we have a First Dynamic. We have a Second Dynamic — but some people don’t!” Loud laughter which relieved the tension and emphasised the points that he wanted to establish. That was 35 years ago and I still remember it, which rather establishes the point I am making. He was a really good speaker.
Seeing him “live” I never had the chance to speak to him but I saw him on a number of occasions. The first time was soon after I qualified as an HPA in 1955. We auditors were called to a “special” meeting at the London Org not knowing just why we had been called then. When we were settled down in came this largy red-haired man exuding friendship and cheerfulness. The closest I came to him was when my wife and I were going to the box office to get tickets for the first of a series of lectures that he gave in a hall at Notringhill Gate. He passed us and gave a friendly greeting. The warmth of feeling that emanated from him was something that I have never forgotten.
He conducted several congresses in London and I went to all of them. His personality was tremendous and I have always been glad to have had the experience of hearing him live as it was so different from recorded lectures which couldn’t convey his personal magnetism.
My summary
Summing up, my personal experience of him and of his work has brought the greatest possible benefit to me, and my whole life has become vastly fuller and happier because of what I was able to receive from him. That there is much more still to be learnt cannot be denied but he said in the early days that Scientology would, in course of time, be replaced by something better. He set me on a very effective road to personal awareness and self-confidence. I found a new freedom that I had not previously dreamed of and he inspired me ever so much with bis ideal of helping others. No matter what his detractors may say, he started me on a path of success.