L. Ron Hubbard Man or More than Man?
byBobRoss,USA (I    B. Robert Ross (B. for Bernard) H.S.S. Cl VI (1964), Founding Saentologist, 1950 born 4/30/21 Bachelor of Electrical Engineering, 1944, Licensed Professional Engineer, N.Y. State, U.S.A. 1947, Servo systems Engineer, E-Meters designer. Old timer — May 1950, brought Dn to Israel 1951, Led Dn group 1951-3, HCA/HPA D.C. 1957, 18th ACC, 2 Isl ACC, Briefing course D.C. under Dick and Jan Halpern 1961, SHSBC (18 months) 1963-4, Full Cl VI auditor trained to run R6 on PCs. (Knowledgeable on running GPM’s by R3M2), Staff member NY Org 65-7, D ofT, Discern Sec, Distrib Sec, E/O, Review Auditor, Cram Off, Qual Sec., Staff D.C. Oi-g 1976. Author, lecturer, auditor, engineer.)
I read the article in Astounding Stories in May 1950. This was a very exciting article but I was not sure it was not a hoax, so I looked in the phone book and found that the Hermitage House Publishing company actually existed. I called them and they said the book was being published. I immediately got on a subway train and went to their offices where I found other people also tlying to get the book. But, it wasn’t yet off the presses. I left money, to gel my copy and got mine on May 9, 1950.
A few months later I saw a demonstration by an Elizabeth student, of putting a young woman through a dental extraction under gas, this made many things in the book more real to me. I also audited and was audited. In December of 1950 I went to Israel with 50 copies of DMSMH. That got me in touch with many people and Dianetics got going in Israel.
I decided after two years and 4,000 hours of auditing that Dianetics worked but that my expertise and knowledge left much to be desired. I had achieved one medical “miracle” by getting a woman (Emmy) walking who had been bedridden for five years, and who had been given up by three medical specialists, an internist, a surgeon, and a psychiatrist. It took 2,000 hours over a period of 2 years (I could do it a lot faster today). She did not dance, but she walked for five years after that.

Past Lives, Psychiatrists In November 1950, a month before I left New York for Israel I was told in a whisper, in a comer, as a deep dark secret, that if you ran dianetics long enough you ran into past deaths. At that time, one would become outcast from the psychological community for talking about such things. Freud, himself, didn’t even acknowledge the actuality of recalling life in the womb (Prenatal engrams). He called them “fantasies of life in the womb.” Jung spoke not of memories of past lives, but of archetypes. To actually consider that people lived before was simply not acceptable at that time. Today Past Life Regression Therapy is a recognized sub branch of psychological counselling, though not by everybody.
I once used creative processing on a teenager, who years later in college went to a psychologist for help and recognized what he was asking her to do. He admitted to her that he had learned this from Scientology. Two years later one of my Israeli pc’s had gotten back to before conception and experienced going through a “wall of colors” to enter the ovum. A few days later she was listening as I ran her mother on her mother’s death (The girl had been three-years old when her grandmother died). When I completed mother’s session, I saw the girl lying with arms folded across her chest in the “death valence” position. I asked her, with a snap of the fingers, “Who’s dead?” thinking that she had gone into grandmother’s valence. “I am.” She replied. I asked three times and got the same answer each time. I then took her into another room and ran that past death. “Then I directed her to run the intervening time up to present time. She ran directly into a between lives implant with “God” commanding her to forget. It was not until 1963, eleven years later, when I was at St. Hill, that I heard Ron describe a somewhat similar between-lives incident. I knew then with great certainty that Ron had not made these things up but had run into them with pcs and on his own track.
Lack of Public Acknowledgement ofLRH Even though there is no public acknowledgement of LRH by the psychological community, every psychologist and psychiatrist had a copy of Dianetics hidden on his bookshelf. As more and more people recalled life in the womb and past lives, it became OK to talk about such things. After-Death experiences, for example, became respectable. Then “medical” researchers, without mentioning Dianetics, proved that what was said in operating rooms was recorded by patients and so could affect them. The Primal Scream by Janov is easily recognized as coming from Dianetics. Berne’s Games People Play puts one in mind of Service Facs. And, so on.
Pictures Of The Future In 1954 I visited Wing Angell in Chicago. Wing told me that he had seen Ron’s picture of the future of Scientology. I was unable to confront that at that time, so I ignored it. In 1964, ten years later, I met Wing again, this time at S.H. I reminded him of my visit and asked him what he had seen. He immediately bad a compulsive outflow in which he told me that he had seen Ron’s mental picture of every future gain. loss, and advance in Scientology. And, that he had seen each of these come to pass since I had last seen him in 1954. This included seeing the raid by the PDA on the Founding Church in Washington, D.C. about 1959, five years before it occurred.
About 1960 in Tucson Arizona I heard from another auditor about a pc who after running many past life incidents ran a future track incident of a fatal car crash. The auditor said that he asked the pc if he could alter that incident. The pc was able

to slow down his car going up a hill enough to avoid a fatal collision at the top of that hill with a car coming out of a hidden side road. Five years later, the pc recognized the hill, slowed down, and avoided hitting the car that came out of that hidden side road at the top of the hill.
Communicating With Ron Like all graduates from S.H. I had the privilege, in 1964, of an hour with Ron before leaving. He said, “Ask me anything you want.” I asked him how he had arrived at the decisions he had made with regard to South Africa when Peter Greene was denounced (I think about 1960). He said, “I lacked detailed information and when I lack detailed information I take broad measures.” In that instance his broad measure was to replace all the executives. He also said “When I chop heads off, I later sew them back on. This isn’t always noticed.”
I remember in the 1960’s Ron made some changes in the tech which seemed at the moment as though they were only for the purpose of getting more money out of people. It took me two years to recognize the technical validity of that change.
I remember on the 18th A.C.C. I wrote a note to Ron about my course pc. Shortly afterward Ron issued a broad public announcement in Ability magazine saying that he was making a change in research direction because of a letter he had received from Bob Ross. That reference and another both appear in the Red Volumes.
Ron’s Physical Appearance I have seen Ron many times. Once I was standing in front of 1810 19th St., N.W. when he came barrelling up the steps of 1812 past a group of students about 15 feet away from me. He seemed shorter than most of them, about 5’6" or 7", (167-170 cm). I saw him very clearly another time toward the end of an after Congress party, about 1960. I went up to him to say “Good Night,” and noticed that he was so tall (about 7' or 2.13M) that my outstretched hand would barely have reached the top of his head. I took his hand, to shake hands and noticed that his hand was ex-
trerncly large and that I could see the pores of his skin as though under a magnifying glass.
At Saint Hill I saw him often on the grounds, where he talked occasionally with students. I met and spoke to him once as he was being picked up by his chauffeur at the East Grinstead Public Library. He seemed to me to be having some trouble physically getting into the car. I went over to him to say “Hello.” I had just come back after taking a week’s unauthorized leave to go to Paris. He said to me, “I told them you would be back.” I saw him again at a performance of a Gilbert and Sullivan Operetta starring Jenny Edmunds, course supervisor and Reg Sharpc’s girl friend. Ron was standing surrounded by many students and was a full head taller than most of them.
Missed Witholds
To me one of the most important and least predicted discoveries of Scientology was the discovery of the anatomy and effects of the missed withold. It took 13 years to discover it and of all things in Scientology it remains perhaps the hardest to explain to a psychologist. Ron could be acclaimed a genius on that one point alone.
Ron’s Plans For The Church Having failed to ask Wing Angell for what else he had seen in Ron’s plans for the future of Scientology (that had not yet taken place as of 1964) I have had to guess at what they might have been, based upon what has occurred since. When people left the church in droves in 1982-85 I came lo the conclusion that Ron had planned it that way.
I am convinced that the church would have gotten far bigger than it has, if Ron had not set things up to keep it relatively small and weak, to prevent it from totally dominating the planet. As the church exists today, it serves to spread knowledge through books into society. It remains relatively small because as people come up tone and become more capable they become able to recognize the lies and suppression that the church uses.
I have been asked for my view on why the church went sour and whether this had any connection to LRH. Some people, of course, think it went sour
because Ron became paranoid. However, in 1954 on the Philadelphia Doctorate Course Ron spoke of the possibility of a church of Scientology developing and turning into a monster which should be destroyed.
My opinion is that he set it up to self destruct. I deduce this from the following policies known or inferred which he put into place.
Keys To Church Self Destruction
1) Taking non-auditor’s on staff. — I personally know people on staff who were highly unethical, did not have the goals of an auditor and didn’t know that auditing works. I am sure that some of these were infiltrated agents of the FBI, the Army, the Navy, the CIA, the U.S.S.R., the Mafia and no doubt others. I feel that I, myself, was driven out of the church by false reports and out-ethics actions by persons who were afraid that I would see what they were doing. However, as early as 19561 had heard that the most capable auditors never seemed to last on staff. At that time, I decided that Ron wanted them out in society spreading the tech.
2) The “No Verbal Data” P/L — This eliminated the line of tradition which made up for errors and things left out of the course materials, Ron had slated earlier (ca. 1956) that this line of tradition was necesary for the proper transmission of the tech. If some one had heard all the tapes there might be no gaps, but who has? You might say that the materials were somewhat booby trapped. Without the tradition line to clear things up if someone stole the materials (for example the Rusians) they would not be able to use them for lack of the verbal tradition. This was also evident in DMSMH itself. I saw immediately in 1950 that as written the book would turn off establishment types who would not even read it or take it seriously and this turned out to be the case. Only mavericks and science-fiction fans took the book seriously at first.
3) I infer that Ron set up Miscavige to drive out competent staff, all at one time — Ron is known to drop httle comments to willing ears. Also, what Miscavige did was completely contrary to the Ethics P/Ls which I learned 100% star rate, as
the first E/O in NY in 1965. Ethics policies (1965) state that people who left or were declared would not be readmitted to Scientology if they became part of a group declared suppressive, until such time as that group was disbanded or destroyed. That way, every person who became disaffected and left or was declared, was persuaded to remain out of contact with other disaffected people for fear of being considered part of a suppressive group. That is why I came to the conclusion that Ron had set it up to “drive fledgelings out of the comfortable nest” of the Orgs and into society. Driving most of the capable people out of the Orgs also provided a more diffuse target for real planetary suppressivs to shoot at, as they were no longer all in one place in the Church. It could be said, however, that planetary supressives have been attacking the field to prevent the spread of Scientology via the church of Scientology itself.
4) I infer that Ron set Miscavige up to destroy the mission network and kill the goose that laid the golden eggs, for the apparent purpose of pulUng money out of the Church into his private accounts. He made it seem reasonable as part of legitimizing the transfer of copyrights to the RTC.
5) I have heard reports by and of people who were contacted theta-wise by Ron and told to leave the church and set up various underground and successor projects and organizations. This included a report that Ron had told some people at Saint Hill theta-wise of the FBI raid before it occurred.
6) I knew an ex-member of EST who told me that Wemer Erhardt at first sent his graduates forty or fifly at a time to the nearest Org for more help and training, but Ron gave orders to reject them. This kept them relatively uncontaminated with Scientology and weakened the church. Wemer had been trying to expand the church by a different kind of mission action.
Man Or More?
I used to dream of achieving a cleared planet, and wondered what I would do after that had been achieved. After all, I thought, if each clear could clear just two other people every year the world would be clear in fifty years or so. I was not alone in feeling so confident.
I can well remember a meeting of my dianetics group in Tel Aviv in 1951, we were very seriously discussing what kind of government we should create for the cleared planet we all expected in the near future. What would I do next after the planet was cleared? I imagined arriving as a full OT on another planet, alone or as part of a team and considered how to go about it without making it obvious that the tech I was teaching was from off-planet, and without myself being worshipped. I decided that it might lake a few thousand years, coming back time after time as one prophet or teacher or another to give pieces of tech, so that it would then seem to be a logical development from local philosophy and religion.
The stories I’ve heard that “prove” that Ron couldn’t be what he obviously was, could only be believed by people who don’t know that the tech works, or that OT is possible. The more I hear such stories the more amazed I am that Ron accomplished what he did, supposing those stories were true.
I choose to think that Ron was on the side of the angels, appearances to the contrary. He said in the course of a lecture 1963-64 while I was at Saint Hill that being worshipped would prevent people from thinking that they could achieve OT abilities themselves. I choose to think that he has deliberately made himself appear to be a very fallible, money-hungry, human being lusting for power over others.
Recently I heard a story from the days when he was hiding in Clear-water, so that he wouldn’t be subpoenaed. While coming back from Tampa, they were passed on the highway by a Police Car with flashing lights and siren. LRH crouched on the floor under a blanket or coat to not be seen and then when they got back to their hideout, he hid under the bed. It took an hour for his aide (Laurel Sullivan I think ) to coax him out. When I heard this I laughed and thought how well he was dramatizing his “humanity”. I could imagine doing that myself as a high powered OT clearing a planet while appearing human.
How would you do it? Well, that’s my view of LRH.