Decoding the Gurus - L. Ron Hubbard: Sleeping with Bandits, Hunting with Pygmies And So On

Episode Date: May 31, 2026

The Decoders wrap up cult season by dissecting a titan of the cult scene, the founder of Scientology, Lafayette Ronald Hubbard or L. Ron for short. A prolific science fiction author, L. Ron founded an alternative self-help movement and then developed it into his cosmic self-help 'religion' of Scientology.Scientology has now been the subject of multiple documentaries and even a fairly detailed South Park parody episode, so it feels like many are aware of the general 'deal' of Scientology. But how about L. Rob Hubbard as a guru... how many people have actually taken the time to sit down and just hear the guy out? Here at DTG HQ, we are all about the good-faith deep dives, so we decided to devote some time to analysing a 1966 Rhodesian TV interview with L. Ron Hubbard, in which a friendly Scientologist interviewer (not identified as such) politely tees up Hubbard to explain Scientology.So join us to find out how L. Ron invented a “workable science,” a “religion of religions,” and a self-help machine that raises IQ, fixes life problems, and proves life after death. By modern standards L. Ron can seem a bit quaint, but because of that, he serves as a useful primer in the core techniques of Guru manipulation, including narcissistic invented biographies, disdain for materialism, a persecution complex, flattery of followers, and anti-establishment disparagement. All of the classics are on display!So get ready to wake up to your true potential, process your engrams, and so forth.LinksSource Material Interview: Interview with L. Ron Hubbard in ZimbabweBehind the Bastards: L. Ron Hubbard SeriesGoing Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief (Documentary)My Scientology Movie: Louie Theroux

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus, the podcast. We're an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer. And we try to understand what they're talking about. I'm Matt Brown, the psychologist from Australia. And with me, the Clippy to my opus 4.7 is the esteemed Chris Kavanaugh, anthropologist from Japan, formerly Northern Ireland. Go ahead, Chris. Wow.

Clippy, I like him. Clippy's cool. It's always ready to help. Always ready to help. That's right. Whether he did help or not, you know, who could say. It looks like you're writing CV. Would you like some help with that?

What did Clippy do? What was his thing? Because I never used Clippy for anything. I made it go away. But what could... I think he could just activate templates. I think that's what he primarily did. was actually the templates.

That makes sense. That makes sense. Why you needed him to pop up and do that instead of just a prompt, you know, oh, do you want to activate the template? I don't know what. Microsoft. Headed time.

Well, agentic assistance have come a long way, I think, since Clippy. I was listening to Paul Simon's song. Have you ever heard it? I forget the name of the song, but it's got the lines in it. Like, this is the age of miracles and wonder, don't cry, baby, don't cry.

You've heard that one. But it's kind of all about the kind of amazing things, the technological wonders in the modern world. And like one of his prime examples is the long distance call, making a long distance phone call. So I feel like that sort of needs to be updated. I think new technologies of, you know, there's more impressive things than a long distance phone call now.

You could do the, we didn't start the fire update as well. I bet there is. I bet there's millions. some parodies online about that. I don't like that song. I don't like a song to just list a whole bunch of things. It's ridiculous. I don't know.

I'm not as puritanical as you, so it's fine. It's fine for me. I like gimmick songs as well, Matt. You probably like 500 miles as well, don't you? 500 miles is okay. That's a very gimmicky song. Gimicky. Is it?

If it wasn't, if it was a couple less, 100 without the okay. That wouldn't help. Anyway, enough of this, enough of this chit-chat. Why are we here today, Chris? Why have you convened this Congress of Gura Matricians?

Good question with a simple answer. And that simple answer is that we are here to draw close to cult leaders. And we have covered various cult leaders. You know, we don't do every episode. in the season where it's the same thing. We grew around, but since it is the last episode, we're going to look at one of the most well-known, high-profile cult leader figures. Elron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, Lafayette, Ronald Hubbard, if you want his

full name. So Lafayette, that's a cool name. He should have, it should have. Well, he did do something with it. He did. He did. He did. And he was a guy born in 1911 and died in 1986. Yep. That sounds right. That sounds right. Yeah, El Ron Hubbard, The Scientologist, our white whale, he's been out there. His name has come up from time to time, but we've always hesitated to cover him, haven't we?

But he's been out there beckoning. Not really, no. Yeah, I feel like, you know, with the cult leaders in general, that it feels like they've been documented quite well. And Scientology has a lot of material about it. But as I pointed out to you, Matt, there is a lot of material. There's a South Park episode on Zinu. There's Louis Faroo's documentary. There's going clear, all sorts of things.

But actual material where people listen to El Ron Hubbard, less of that for, for, We're lots of legitimate reasons, but I think for that reason, we can provide something a little bit new to the space. Like, let them speak. Let them. Why don't you listen to what he said? Hear him out. Hear him out, everybody. Well, that's right.

I mean, all the other coverage, all the other research, all the books and all the report has. All that. I mean, have any of them put them through the Gorometer, Chris? Has any of them done that? I know. Have they considered that? Well, to be fair, I've listened to a whole bunch of other stuff in preparations. there was a five part behind the Bastards series separated out into two sections.

And I listened to that was a good summary of information, you know, but like many other people I had went down the rabbit hole in Scientology material before. I do recommend, though, if you want caught up on Elron's background, that behind the Bastard series is pretty good on that. You just have to ignore a couple of insider gags about Doritos and throwing bagels. Set that aside and the information is pretty good. Okay. Okay, good.

That's it. But since we're going to look at some material and since this is the end of the cult season, you know, we will have another season. It'll come by them. We have to end with a lament. So if you would allow me Grooos are the reason for the season So don't listen to the leader

Come with us And fire up your Gurameter It's time for cold season Get out to your decoderings Hey hey hey this is called season on the DTG. It's time for cold season. It's time for decoding. This is cold season. Chris and Matt on the DTG. There you go. That was nice. That was nice. So silly. It can't help but raise a smile. That's true. Do you find it disturbing that your people's culture can be parodied so easily?

Parodied? Don't detect a note of parody there. I feel this is honoring the spirit of my people. But no, as we've barely mentioned, we're self-deprecated culture. Yeah, that's quite all right. You have thick skins. Yeah, no, no, no. Things are the same. We love it when, like, The Simpsons or anyone really does a, does a mention. You.

Yeah, just, if anyone just is mentioning of us or thinking of us in any context that makes us happy. Yeah, it doesn't happen that often. Not since Crocodile Dundee movies finished. No, yeah, that has been quite a while. Didn't they make like an update a couple of years ago, I thought like. Oh, I think they did where he's incredibly old and it's not quite the same. I haven't watched that. Yeah, it didn't get the same buzz.

But, well, we're not here to talk about Crocodile Dundee or Australians. We're here to talk about Lify at Ron Hubbard. And in this case, Matt, we're looking at an interview he did in 1966 in Rhodesia. the country which doesn't exist anymore. He was there briefly. He tried to offer his services to that country shortly after it was declared, and they kicked them out after a couple of months. So he couldn't even get the racists.

If you're white and the Rhodesian government doesn't want anything to do with you, then, yeah, that says something. That's crazy. That's crazy. Okay, so I didn't realize that. I just assumed that he was in England. Oh, no, no. He's a Rhodesia.

And the guy that's interviewing him, from what I could find out about this, it's done like a interview with a just a journalist who's asking him. Mr. Hubbard has been said this and this, right? But the guy interviewing him is a TV host, but Rhodesian. like one of the figures they had there. But he was also a Scientologist. So this is a Scientologist interviewing a Scientologist for Rhodesian TV. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So if you hear a bunch of incredibly softball questions that sound like they are merely opening the door for Aaron Hubbard to... It's postern. Anyway, whatever the word is. You can make a bit of a word. He does. Yeah, he does. So maybe it's not a word.

Es postulate. Yes, that's exactly what's happening. Yeah, and you mentioned before we recorded, Matt, you know, that you know all about Scientology and stuff, but it might be good to provide just like a little pot of history. I won't go into great detail except to say that Elron Hubbard was a science fiction writer, kind of pulp science fiction writer, noted for writer's life to be a fantasist. He did have various adventures where he went sailing around and, you know, tried to find treasure and whatnot. But like they all feel.

And then afterwards he just declared that they were successful. But, you know, he's a bit like, you know, the Dr. Evil person, you know, his dad that claimed he invented the question mark and stuff. He would do that. And before he founded Scientology, he founded a kind of self-help movement. Dionetics, his first book, I mean, his first, like, kind of Scientology fiend book, if you like, was this like self-help movement, 1950s style. And that led to him getting, like, attention, setting up centers and all this kind of thing. And then there were controversies with people that were running it.

And then he created Scientology afterwards and positioned that as not a therapy. it's a religion, right? Because it's legally distinct from dionetics under this view. So at this period, he has created Scientology. And he's already faced various problems and legal issues and so on. But he's going to, in the year after this interview,

set sail on the... The high seas. Yeah, the high seas. to avoid legal entanglements in various countries. So he sails wound in the ocean for like eight years after this with a small fleet of boats where he's the captain issuing mad punishments and doing things. And then at the end of his life,

he returns in disguise to America. And they try to infiltrate the IRS. Well, they successfully infiltrate the IRS. He was not a fan of paying taxes. I know that about him. No, not that, but in general, just deeply, deeply paranoid and all this. And then Scientology throughout is becoming hugely successful widespread. So he's extremely rich.

That's how he bought the boats, the, you know, sail around and a lot. But but a crazy, crazy, crazy person. And, I mean, he does so many terrible things that are covered in behind the bastards things quite well, including kidnapping his own child and taking it. away from his wife, a newborn child, and putting it in the care of random strangers while he got drunk and wrote like Scientology type material. So he's just a very bizarre individual. He is, you know, the kind of charismatic, crazy cult leader figure that is parodied in media. Now, it's not really the subject of our decoding, but are you aware of his magnum opus in

in science fiction, mission earth. Mission earth? Is that his magnum opus? I thought he has battlefield earth and he has... Oh, sorry. Battlefield Earth. That's the one I'm thinking of. Yeah.

Battlefield Earth. Is that this magnum opus? It's a 10 volume. I'm pretty sure it's 10. Right. So it is a 10 thick. Each volume is thick, Chris. And here's a fun fact.

I've read seven of the 10 books that comprise Battlefield Earth or Mission Earth or whatever it's called. I did that when I was a kid. And before people just questioned everything about me, my judgment, my taste, everything, there's a reason. I like science fiction.

There was nothing in this school library. Someone had apparently donated this. And so I read it, not knowing anything, realized it was shit, but just kept reading anyway for, for whatever reason. I don't know. I read a lot.

My brother said he caught me reading the phone book once. But I persevered. I eventually gave up at book seven. But it is the most tremendous piece of shit. It is probably one of the worst books ever written. But I'm kind of glad I read it because it gives you an insight

into just the crazy mind that would invent all of the nonsense that is the law of science. that is the law of Scientology. And you can see that the boundaries between fact and fiction for him are pretty vague. Well, I'll just inform you, Matt, that you were correct. By the way, Battlefield Arf was a separate book. I was a bit confused because I was like, that wasn't a series.

It was a one-off book, which was correct. It was, but there was a separate Mission Earth series with 10 books that he published afterwards. kind of like close to his death. So there you go. Absolutely awful. Absolutely awful. Well, the one thing that he did have, that seems to have been a superpower that is recognized

as he wrote an insane amount in various points of his life. Like at the start of his career, he was just pushing out like huge amounts of pop fiction, you know, short novellas and stuff. So he does seem to have been able to just write a load of shit prolifically. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Like, you cannot, you don't understand how long Mission Earth is, Chris. If you put all those 10 books, it takes up an entire bookcase. Like, it's ridiculous.

Absolutely. And the thing is, all the characters change and nothing connects from one to the next. It's like reading a schizophrenic meandering through whatever. up. Anyway, so, but yes, prolific, certainly. Wow. So, anyway. One of your favorite offers, we got it. So let's hear a little bit about the mind and insights of the man who penned that series, that played a pivotal role in your intellectual development.

So the first question in the interview is about a quite straightforward one. What is Scientology, Mark? Mr. Hubbard, many millions of words have been said and written about Scientology. But I think there's still quite a lot of doubt in many people's minds as to exactly what it is. What is Scientology? How would you describe it? Well, it's very interesting. You've just asked a question like, what are the contents of the Encyclopedia Britannica answer in one word?

Well, Mr. Hubbard, it's obviously something that's very wide-ranging. And if you can't describe it overall, perhaps we can begin at the beginning. How did you get into Scientology? How did it all start? Well, that is fairly easy. When I was a very young man, I spent most of my teams in Asia. And that is an area of the world where human misery and want are very visible. where man has reached perhaps the lowest states of degradation.

And a young man, moving into that scene, begins to ask the question, why all this, what is this, what depths can man fall to? And what is he anyway? And I began to ask this question, what is man? And I found oddly enough that nobody could tell me what man. man was. What did he consist of? Where was he going? What was he doing? I became very fascinated with this particular line of research, and I made it my life's work. Yeah. So already, Chris, I think we're hearing notes familiar from other cultish leaders. Man, what's it all about?

Why are we here? What's our purpose? The big question. It sounds like a meaning crisis. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sounds like a lot of things. So yeah, makes sense. This is the correct positioning for a cult leader guru.

They're going to solve those existential problems. They've divided themselves to studying it and they have the solutions. Well, there's already that note there. about that they're dealing with the big issues here. There's the like a grandizing note that you've just asked to like summarize the Encyclopedia Britannica in a single word, right? There's the promise that there's so many layers

and depths to it. And there's also just lies, Matt. He said he spent most of his teens in Asia. That's not true. His dad was stationed in China and he made a couple of trips that are during that time, but it was like over two years. Yeah.

And they have the notes or diaries or stuff that he wrote while he was there. And, you know, he was a fairly racist person like many people in that era. But he, as he mentioned there, right, his kind of notion about Asia from those trips was that Asia is the most wretched place where people living terrible lives. So that's his kind of presentation about Asia, that he's the lowest that you could imagine there. And he makes other outlandish claims that, like, during this time in Asia, he studied or met with a figure from the court of Kublai Khan and all this kind of stuff. He doesn't do it here, right? But it's just, none of it is true.

Like, his dad was just, you know, in the military. And, yeah. Yeah, I mean, he is, was a complete fantasist. And a liar, as you said. So, you know, like we see this pattern with a lot of the characters we cover to stop to this extent. Like almost all of the gurus we cover tend to embellish self-agrand eyes. You know, there's often a grain of truth in what they're claiming, but they puffed up.

Elaborate. Yes. Then they puffed themselves up. So, yeah, Elron Hubbard is that and more so. Yeah, he's a fantasist like Eric Weinstein. but he's just got more ambition. Eric completely over-dramatizes his past and achievements and all that as well. But Eric is, Aubrey, are more constrained by what actually happened, right?

Like, Aaron Hubbard is unleashed. Yeah. He's unconstrained by much. Yeah, so the same intuitions are there, but this is what happens. if you just let your flag fully unfurled. So let's hear a little bit more about, you know, things that he's got up to and how he developed his study of Scientology. Did you read widely of philosophy?

Yes, but the philosopher, of course, has spent most of his working years in his ivory towers, and he was pretty insulated from life. To really know life, you've got to be part of life. You must get down and look. You must get into the nooks and crannies of existence. You have to rub elbows with all kinds and types of men before you can finally establish what he is. And you, in fact, did this.

Yes, I've slept with bandits in Mongolia, and I've hunted with pygmies and the Philippines. As a matter of fact, I have studied 21 different... primitive races including the white race and my conclusions were that man regardless of state of culture and so forth was essentially the same that he was composed of he was a spiritual being and he was a spiritual being that was a spiritual being that was pulled down to the material the fleshly interests or the to interplay in life that was in fact too great for him to confront.

And I concluded finally that he needed a hand. So there's a lot there, isn't there, Chris, but one of the things that's there and very familiar to us at this point is the positioning of himself with respect to other institutional knowledge, other kinds of wisdom. In this case, the different philosophers or the different religions and so on he studied. And in this case, he understands it all. He's studied it all. He's read it all. But it's limited. They're there and their ivory tower, a bunch of nerds scribbling away, whereas you need to experience it. You need to live it. You need to get those revealed stuff by getting out there with the pygmies and the bandits in Mongolia.

And that's what he's done. Yeah, and this did give me notes of Eric. You know, when Eric was asked his life advice on Dari of a cartoonist, and he was like, you know, you've got to get out there. You've got to try and eat durian fruits in the mountains of Singapore. You've got the dance in the forest lights of New Guinea. You know, it's this notion that you're an adventurer who's out sleeping in the wilds with bandits in Mongolia, right, or hunting with pygmies. It's kind of funny because he's from a different era.

Like, this sounds incredibly silly, at least it should sound, I hope, to people incredibly silly. But that's the kind of pulpy way that people imagined adventurers in the period that he grew up. So he's presenting themselves in that way and, of course, studying the primitive cultures and this little joke there, but including the white. Yes. So that, yeah, that notion that he's a swashbuckling adventurer, it is often something that the gurus want to make clear. Like Jordan Peterson as well, you know, he's a rough and tumble guy that is out there, hard drinking and playing and land. nothing with the men in the factories. They like to invent that they are these Duff and Temple types.

Now, at least Elron Hubbard, to his credit, he did go on and sail a boat on the sea for eight years. There's, yep, like various legal issues. So he does have a bit more of the adventure. Like he did, well, he did organize several expeditions. to find treasure. They're in countries. And they all feel.

But he, you know, he does undertake a bunch of them and convince people to go along. So yeah. Yeah. It is pretty funny. I mean, look, we'll hear more self-aggrandizement there,

but it's a really important part of who Hubbard is. You know, there he's just making it clear that he's an adventurer and explorer. Yeah. But, you know, also like a philosopher. Christopher and a scholar. And I saw in some little bit of background research. He also presented himself as a war hero.

Oh, yeah. He also had the power to heal his own wounds, if I understood that correctly. And obviously, a great scientific discoverer as well of great, you know, many new technologies. So it just made me think how, you know, he's an extreme case, but it is the guru thing. where you want to present yourself as peeking on every different axis of what can make the most fascinating man. To use Ron Hubbard's words to describe humans, you know, that could possibly exist across every dimension. You are just absolutely fascinating and amazing.

Yeah, and actually his military career is a story of its own, right? He did serve in World War II. But he, like, some of the reports from his commanding officers have been preserved, right? And they basically peg him quite quickly as a dangerous fantasist who like needs to be kept control. So he gets dismissed from various things. But he manages to talk himself to command of a relatively significant ship, like a submarine chaser. West Coast subchaser. So he did get command of a boat

and then he claimed to have sunk to submarines. But the subsequent military investigation indicated that he just dropped depth charges on like mineral deposits that were rebounding for two days. So he was relieved of command or he was he bombed.

Like he was taken a, away or something and then he got another command and then he attacked an island that was owned by Mexico and then he was relieved of command because like Mexico so he he seems that kind of impressive thing is that he talked

himself into like command of a naval vessel and then he did various stupid things and was relieved of command but of course in the subsequent Scientology retelling he's doing all sorts of adventures and important stuff.

But his military records are just like that. He didn't see combat and he was just basically did nothing, really. Not nothing, but he just fucked the wrong in the military and then eventually left. Yeah, discharged. Yeah. I mean, but if there's one genuine skill that gurus have is being able to talk themselves into things that they're unqualified to do. Yeah, a lot of our gurus, you know, manage to get themselves on panels,

you know, speakers at conferences and so on. So they, you know, they do have one skill, and it's connected with their incredible self-aggrandizement. Yeah. And he also, like the end of his military career was him claiming various elements and getting sick leave and all sorts of. stuff like that. So there's that element, you know, the kind of Jordan Peterson, mysterious ailments besetting the gurus. So yeah, I mean, just worth noting that that occurred.

And here, Matt, you'll hear a little bit more about, this actually reminded me of Dr. Kay. Now, what was the first step in the formulation of Scientology? What was the first piece of knowledge that you uncovered? Well, that, that is an interesting question. Because when I first entered a university, I took science, science and mathematics. I was forced to take this rather than philosophy, which was my natural bent. And I learned the rules of logic and the scientific approach. These things, by the way, are generally known to philosophers. And my first effort was to find a common denominator to all men.

And I had seen him in his more primitive states, and I'd seen him in his highly cultured states. And I said somewhere one can isolate a common denominator that embraces all men. And perhaps from that we can unlock this riddle. So did you pick up the Dr. K. Motif I detected there? Well, I guess you're referring to him studying the harder disciplines, maths and science. But, you know, going beyond that, and his true calling is philosophy, which I think is true true to some extent. But, you know, again, this is just other disciplines that he's mastered and is fully

understands. Maths of logic, it's all subsumed within him, his great thing. But I like how, like, he's after the, he's after the biggest question. the biggest question is how to solve the riddle that is man? What is the common denominator that connects us all? Yeah, like this is to me is the galaxy brainless, the all-purpose system that subsumes all the other disciplines and cuts to life, the universe and everything.

Yeah, I guess this is a common motif that this kind of big existential question is, you know, what occupies the minds of gurus. But for me, the way, that they just before advancing strong spiritual positions, right?

They will almost always declare that they really respect science or they understand science and it's just because they understand it so well, they therefore see the limitations with it. And it struck me like, you know, the way Dr. Kay will make reference to,

oh, I was an arch materialist and I was completely purpooing all this mystical mumbo-jumbo, when I was studying medicine. But when you look at the actual career, like he's always had an interest in mysticism and alternative medicine and so on. So like El Ron Hubbard,

I mean, he dropped out of university, but they all like basically presented that they, you know, they mastered science or they understand science. It's just that science doesn't tell you everything. And this is when we were talking to sense makers. the strong feeling that I get from them as well, which is like, oh, right, yes, you approach these topics from like a reductionist materialist.

And I understand that because, you know, I once thought like you, but like in reality, not really. Like when you look at it, they've always been these big galaxy brain thinkers. So yeah, anyway, just a note. Interesting you thought of Dr. Kay. Actually, it was Chris Langan, who was in my mind when,

he was talking about that stuff because he's obviously someone else who, you know, presents himself as a technologist and a scientist and a mathematician type theoretician. But of course, his real interest is in, you know, God and the standard guru stuff. Plus real science. Plus the race science. So, yeah, they have that in common too. But yeah, so, you know, that's very much in keeping with Scientology and Dianetics. and his whole cosmology too, right? Like the 1950s and the 60s,

even more than today, it was an era which fetishize, you know, the modern age, the power of the atom, you know, speed and technology. And Dianetics and his thought is often presented sometimes as a new technology as much as it is presented as a religion

or therapeutic method. So, yeah, very much, very much in accordance with our with our thesis, Chris. Yeah, well, he's made the pivot here to presenting it as a religion, but you do pick up the notes about it being a technology and all. I think a part of that is legal to make it clear. It's separate from Dionetics.

But yes, so here's him discussing the religious nature of Scientology. You mentioned just now that you discovered for yourself that man was a spirit. Are you here comparing Scientology with a religion, any religion in fact, that also sees man as a spirit? Well, man has conceived man to be a spirit for many more years than he has conceived man to be an animal or a materialistic thing. We have a 2,000-year history of man as a spirit, whereas we only have less than a century of considering simply mud. And therefore, my study is more traditional than most philosophies. Now when you get most modern renditions and so forth, but man poses a great many problems, and he is so varied from culture to culture, from type to type, race to race, that when I discovered

the common denominator of existence and so forth, I was away and I could go forward from that point. And I did discover that. And so forth. That's his verbal tick, by the way. We all have them, but you probably haven't clipped it a great deal, but he says it about 40 times in this. And so forth.

Okay, that's quite neat. That's like an old-timey thing. So on and so far. He's very old-timey, that's for sure. Hey, so the thing I'm picking up there is, something we hear a lot, which is that references to ancient wisdom. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, if you look at our sense makers or if you look at, oh, what's his name? He's the Dark Enlightenment guy. Curtis Arvin or whatever. In different ways, all of them, Jordan Peterson, for instance, when they are getting into their more spiritual, out there philosophical stuff, they'll take care to to reference Greek or Roman philosophy or classical scholars or Renaissance scholars or, yeah, or ancient wisdom in its various forms. And so I think borrowing some of the credibility from that ancient lineage. So you'll see them borrowing credibility from science, right, with the demonstrative ways in which

they will cite studies and so on or present things as a new technology. But you see them at the same time borrowing credibility from ancient wisdom. Yeah, yeah. And you hear the distaste, which is, again, very common to the guru sphere about any like endorsement of materialism as a system, right? You know, and just it echoed to me of Ian McGilchrist's presentation about, oh, it's so silly that people imagine themselves these materialistic beings when the great philosophy have known for centuries that were so much more than that.

Yeah, excellent. Yeah, Michael, Chris, obviously, I can't believe I missed him, but that's exactly right. And, you know, maybe a lot of what our gurus are doing, Chris, is actually capitalizing on, I think, a natural folk distaste for thinking of ourselves as material things. Did you describe it as like mud? Like we were like mud? Is that how the word he used? I don't have the transcript on front of me,

but it wouldn't surprise me if he said that. He does talk about flesh and stone and, you know, bone and this kind of thing. Oh, yeah, considering, there we go, only less than the century of considering simply mud. Yeah, so he didn't make you clear there, but that's what he was getting at, right? I, you know, it's a modern conceit and clearly wrong to think of ourselves as merely mud. That's the alternative is to understand ourselves as these spiritual beings and which I think is an appealing thing to probably the majority of people. Yeah, it's like, you know, as he says, the drab mud worldview of science contrasted with their, you know, vibrant technical or of religion and philosophy.

And Ian McGilchrist would completely agree with him. So actually, there's another clip where I heard more reverberations of McGilchrist fought. But first, you're going to hear the standard. Nobody wants you to hear this. The universities are lying. But at the end, you'll get to the McGilchrist part. So enjoy this, Matt. Could I just stop you here?

Did I understand you to say that a person's IQ can be raised through Scientology. Oh, yes, yes. This is the one thing that Scientology has upset the world's universities with. They used to say that IQ never, never changed. Nobody could ever change. Nobody could be any different than anybody ever was. And this was quite interesting because when we finally demonstrated this with their own IQ

tests, why they became very, very upset and began to test much more widely. And they tested people before Scientology processing and after Scientology processing. and after Scientology process, and uniformly found that their IQ had raised. Who's there? The professors, the schools of philosophy, schools of psychology, and so on. But surely you've only got as much brain as you're born with.

Oh, no, and well, brain has nothing to do with it. Brain is a sort of a, well, I don't know, brain is brain. What it does, I'm never quite sure. And I don't think anybody else is. but the person as a spiritual being is capable of using his brain or so on the brain is a sort of a switchboard and if you said that a telephone switchboard then was the intelligence of the corporation it served this is about the same statement that the brain is the uh establishes the IQ of the human being It's just not true.

A being is a being. He is a spirit, and he actually can exist in the tenet of his body. This is one of the more interesting discoveries in Scientology. The brain, you see, is a switchboard. It actually makes the Imacrochus model of the brain look good. But, yeah. Well, but, I mean, the funny thing is that, like, to me, it's just a slightly different analogy.

Like, Ian McGrunkress talked about the brain being, the banks of the river, which is not containing the water, right? The water is flowing from elsewhere. So it's just a thing that channels, right? And he was very clear as well, but this is a mistake. It's the exact same mistake that he's suggesting here. It's just that his delivery is more like, well, of course, that's false. His delivery here actually, you know, sounds like a man of his time.

later when he's been out sailing on the boat and interviewed, there's the interview that's quite famous that he did. I think he's with the BBC. But he sounds like the penguin, more like, you know, the Batman villain, like the penguin, eh, they'll never catch me.

Here he's quite. And also, like, this bloody Scientologist with his feet questions, but surely you've only got as much brain as you're born with, Mr. Howard. No, no, no. No, no. Yeah. And they're all, all the,

psychologists and philosophers, Matt, the various fields, the disciplines, they've all been very upset as they've discovered IQ increases for their own tests. Yeah, that's right. Dianetics training can increase your IQ. Probably makes you more virile as well. And it made them very upset. Yeah, this is all stuff that definitely, definitely happened, Chris. It's all totally true. It's uniformly. So it's very easy to demonstrate how successful Scientology is empirically. That's definitely. It's very easy when you just commit yourself to just make things up. Yeah.

So, you know, that's one thing. But so you've got Im McElchristy, you know, the brain is, he doesn't even know. Well, a brain is a brain map. What is it even a brain for? It seems, you know, like ridiculous that people think that's of much use to people. And the universities are full of people that are bamboozled. just before you move on, I just want to make the point that you see there, and there's nice connection that he makes between the secular realm,

and they love IQ, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, he likes IQ as well. He likes IQ as... Yeah, but for them, they see IQ and the stuff that psychologists do with studying the brain and what have you. That's in the secular realm. That's science from... Yeah, that's science.

That's what we're all interested in in science. Yeah. But, you know, that gets immediately connected to their main thing, which is the spiritual realm. And again, you know, your Ian McGilchrist analogy is exactly right because I guess the performative mentioning of the sciencey sounding stuff and linking it to their spiritual program is an important part of the narratives that they build. Yeah. Yeah, indeed.

And it kind of, as we'll see, it ties into self-help stuff. But this clip, I think, is a nice follow-up to that because it talks about, you know, the mistake it is to see man as a creature of flesh and bone, as opposed to a being of spirit. And you mentioned then that man is a spirit. Can you define this spirit in terms of Scientology? Oh, yes. a man that's been interested for a very long time in what was a spirit and so on. He was very, very mystified as to what a spirit was.

And he talked about ghosts and places being haunted and so on. This is a whole line of approach. He talked about the human soul and it went to heaven and it went to hell and so forth. And he was very much adrift about this thing. He was both afraid of it and otherwise. And it was rather amusing to find out. that he is it. He is a spirit.

And the early Greek, for instance, worked along this line. They wanted to know what man was. They concluded that he was a spirit clothed in flesh. And that happens to work out and so forth. The reason Scientology's assumptions can be considered to be true is because they work. And Scientology is totally a workable science.

It is only workable. We're not interested in ultimate or absolutes. We're interested in what produces results. And if you know certain things and you apply them, and that then increases a man's IQ, increases his ability to handle the world around him, why he naturally then is able to do better and to do more, to make more money,

to be happier in his environment and so forth. And if you approach it, as though he were a spirit, then you succeed. if you approach it as though he were just a mechanical monster of some kind or another or ten-tone stones of flash or something like that while you don't increase his IQ and so on so we of course prefer maybe we are novel in this but we prefer the tactics which work not the tactics which are merely stylized or which we're supposed to have tremendous stuff there tremendous stuff so so it's a

all worked it together, right? So it's a, it's a science, but it's a science of the spirit. And it is absolutely a self-help regime, which is all about getting results. You're going to raise your IQ. You're going to be happier. You're going to be a man who's better able to handle the situations he finds himself in. Like if you even need to bed down with pygmies, you'll be able to do it with Samoa Fair of Scientology. So yeah, you know, it's. it's all encompassing. And one thing we're not, Matt, is very clear. We're not mechanical monsters, 12 stones of flesh, right?

There, Ian McGilchrist, he might not agree with the general Scientology approach, but he's absolutely on board with that. That's a category error that is just made by so many. So, and by the way, now you've mentioned it might, I kind of help fucking hearing him say, and so on, and so on, and so forth. And so on. He says it nearly every sentence. Look, I can never judge a man for his verbal tics.

I'll judge him on other things, but none of us. And so on. Yeah, his verbal tics and so on. Yeah, well, you heard a connection there to self-help and the promises of realization. You know, actually, Jordan Peterson, just to invoke another guru figure, remember when he says, you know, we don't know what a fully, realized, fully verticalized human can actually achieve. You know, whenever he's asked about Jesus and did he reincarnate, he's like,

well, we don't know what somebody who's completely perfected the vertical orientation, what they can achieve. So just there, a note of that about, you know, IQs will be reused and you'll become, like, more interesting in parties and all sorts of good things will occur. Yeah. I think we know what a fully actualized person. can achieve and they can achieve the Sea Org. Small fleet of ships avoiding the IRS.

Yeah. Now, well, you might say, okay, that's all good and ground. Scientology has found all this information out, but can it help people solve the problems of modern life? Now, how can Scientology help man, universal man, to overcome the problems he faces? Very simple. You see, we live in a world where,

where we have governments and we have societies and so forth who are desperately trying to help them they are trying however to solve his problems for him and their efforts to solve his problems for him and so forth have not really resulted in any great advance for man now the real the real work here is to put man in a mental condition where he can solve his own problems. And the aim and goal of Scientology is to take an individual or a group and by taking the individuals in the group, put them in a position where they can confront their own problems and solve their own problems and so bring themselves up by their own bootstraps. No amount of, well, let me see for it this way. Have you ever had a friend that you try to

to give advice to who then took it and went along fine or have you had friends that when you gave advice to them and so on why they rather resented it and didn't take it have you ever had such a condition yes well very good let's put this on a much broader basis if if we take a man and we keep giving him advice and giving him help and pushing him along and so on we don't necessarily wind up with the resolution of his problems. But if, on the other hand, we put him in a position where he had higher intelligence, where his reaction time was better, where he could confront life better, where he could identify the factors in his life more easily, then he's in a position where he can solve his own problems. So he looks around, he starts solving his own problems,

and so he betters his own life. That is the difference between Scientology and other efforts to help man. Give a man a fish, Chris. He'll eat for a day. Well, you... Yeah, you managed to summarize that long two minutes feeling like 10 seconds. I will say that in general, it was refreshing. Part of it is just the format of this interview and limitations of technology at the time, right? Because this could not be like a six hour back and forth. But as you're hearing, it is the case where the guy's like, here's a question, Mr. Hubbard.

and then he's like, here's my two minute, two one minute for the answer. Next question. And sometimes the questions don't actually connect the previous ones. So it's just like a list of questions. I'm sure they worked it out in advance. But this is very different than the contemporary guru sphere, where when I'm trying to get clips, often the monologues are seven to eight minutes long.

And you have to like just take out. in the middle of their story. So this is unusually restrained. I'm not saying it was restrained in all places, but this was refreshing for me in terms of clipping. Yeah, that's unusual. So you get more, I can play any number of clips about, once you treat people as spiritual beings,

as they do in Scientology, they start to make significant improvements and becoming self-realized and all this kind of thing, right? self-promoting the success of Scientology. But there are some bits where, you know, because he compares it to religion, that the hard-nosed interviewer, Matt, raises the question, well, well, what about the other religions?

You know, how do you distinguish yourself or what is your relationship with other religions? He does have answers to that. So here's the first clip where he deals with that issue. All religions would seem to have a dogma, a discipline. Now, how disciplined is Scientology? The discipline is entirely the limitation of the conduct of the auditor. That is to say an auditor is a practitioner in Scientology.

He listens and he computes. So, therefore, we call him an auditor. And he is not permitted to evaluate for the person he's working with He's not permitted to do certain things. He is governed by a code of ethics like the medical field is governed by the Hippocratic Oath. Only we, of course, do not treat the body. We are not interested in illness and so forth. You have to neglect illness and the body and so forth to improve man.

And this is quite remarkable. But the whole point here is that the more you handle man as a spiritual being, the more you recognize his spirituality, the more you recognize that he is basically good and that his evil is simply additive to him, the more progress you make with the individual man. So Scientology's central dogma is auditing, basically, is in part what that answer is saying.

Yeah, so it's an interesting thing, Scientology, isn't it? Like, it's got all these different angles, and one of the angles is the therapeutic angle. therapy with technology and a whole spiritual cosmology and cult, frankly, attached to it. It really covers all the bases. Yeah, it is a self-help religion, and I'll have a couple more clips that speak to that nature of it. But before I get off the religion theme, Matt, so there was some talk there about dogma

and what is Scientology's dogma? But what about religious people? How can they interact with Scientology? From what I can gather, you do see the spirit as being the most important factor in the overall life of man. But is this the same sort of spirit as a very religious person might see?

Pretty much so. Pretty much so. Are Scientologists religious people? Yes, a matter of fact, the Hubbard Association of Scientologists International is a religious fellowship. and in America particularly, Scientology is used widely in religion. I remember Archbishop Odo Barry here uses Scientology in most of his sermons he used to, and so on.

When you have discovered that man was a spirit, you, of course, had invaded the field of religion, and you are religious. But remember this, that religion has come uniformly from philosophy. Philosophy is senior to religion. Do I understand from what you say that you can be not only a Scientologist, but a Roman Catholic and an Anglican as well? Oh, yes. As a matter of sober fact, we have many, many denominations in Scientology, and it's one of the principles of Scientology that one can be a Scientologist regardless of his race, color, or creed anywhere in the world. And Scientology itself is not exactly a religion.

Scientology could be called, well, you could call it a religion of religions. I see a lot of that is very practical recruitment strategizing, right? Yes, you don't want to rely people that belong to all the traditions. No, that would really restrict your recruitment drives. You want to be compatible with other religions. So you're not telling someone from, I don't know, wherever, the Midwest of the United States. Oh, no, you're not a Christian anymore. You've got to tell your parents that you can't go to church and stuff like that.

That would create problems. Much better to position yourself as what he said, a religion of religions. It subsumes them and encompass them and can sit, coexist quite happily beside them. Yes, the other religions might not entirely agree with that. But that is how he's positioned it. And as a religion of religions, Matt, you're at the tippy top. This is an interesting thing that the gurus like to do, including, you know, Ken Wilver we covered recently as well, that they, they devise these systems and they often will pay lip service to science or religion or previous philosophical systems. But the key thing is they're all limited or earlier attempts that have value but are not really getting things.

and the thing which combines the insights of all of them, just so happens to be spiral dynamics or Scientology or sense-making, whatever the case might be, or Nixium insights or whatever. So anybody that presents it, that I've developed a system, and it's like a system of systems, this should be a concern for you.

It should raise a warning flag because it's usually the case that it's accompanied by, yeah. an exploitative cult. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and the common denominator is that self-justifying cosmology. So within the cosmology, you have this hierarchy of debased men and fully actualized men. And who sits at the top of that? El Ron Hubbard does.

Yeah. He's the best man. He's the best man. He's like the Pope. He might not look at what you see him. Yeah, he might just look like a. ordinary man with a grin like a cheshire cut. But no, that would be focusing on the flesh, mat.

The spirit underneath, that's the thing that's there. As a truly great man, he's invented the greatest movement and the greatest philosophy, which comes above and precedes all of the other philosophies and all of the other sciences and all of the other strains of thought that have existed in human history. It's a small claim. I mean, it's, you know, it's fine. Yeah, fine. Yeah, well, it is worth noting there that, you know, again, so he is clear Scientology is a religion and is entitled to tax breaks along those lines.

But actually, like philosophy is above religion, right? And all religions come from philosophy. And ultimately, he is the ultimate philosopher, right? As well as the ultimate religious authority. So just, yeah, he's the top. I think the clear message is that Scientology, yes, I know for legal reasons it has to be. be religion, but it's really also a philosophy, and it's also a scientific system of self-improvement. So, you know, it's everything. It's everything. It's a little bit of everything. That's right.

So, well, specifically on the subject of religion, though, Matt, he's quite clear about that. Are you saying then that any specific religion is rather narrow and it's outlook? No, no, no. Any man is entitled to believe what he wishes to believe. I have no. I have no. quarrel with man's beliefs and so on but religion has has had so many facets that its main point of dispute in life is the fact that so many people in so many different places have so many different views of what life and god are all about and if scientology could reconcile these views it would be doing a great service to man do you think it can I not only think it can, I know that it does.

We have, in many instances, have been able to bring a great deal of knowledge or relief or light into various situations of a religious nature without, for a moment, disputing the tenets which were held. After all, religion is basically an effort to make man good,

an effort to give him a better society and so forth. And Scientology does all those things. So naturally it aids and evats the effort of any religionist or any minister anywhere to achieve his own purposes. There you go. There you go. Very confident. Confidence is important to be a guru.

Yeah. You know, do you think it can? I not only think it can. I know that it does. Yeah. But he's also clear, you heard the disclaimers, you know, that of course, since religion is ultimately just about helping people to live good lives and improve society, that obviously adopting these kind of wonderful techniques in Scientology could help people from any religion

to improve their ability to achieve those ends. It is, does remind me whenever Jordan Peterson is, when he claims everyone is religious, And then he says, well, but I define religion as belief that there is any truth in the world. So therefore, anyone doing science or trying to find out if things are correct are ultimately religious. And it's kind of like you define it in such a broad way that means, you know, who's going to object to that, right? That's a nice description. And then you avoid any of the foreign issues, you know, like there are quite a lot of theological components which would not accord with Scientology. But if it's just about do good,

then what's the issue? Yeah, it's hard enough to view things like Scientology and these other things that we've covered like color theory or spirology, whatever it's called, as they're highly optimized frameworks. Like they're optimized to maximize recruitment and to minimize resistance. and I think being all encompassing, but also avoiding those thorny issues, it's all very clever. Like you're a student of religion. Like the history of it is, isn't it true? It's commonly held that one reason that Christianity was a very successful cult of men of religion is that it sort of admitted all comers, right?

It wasn't restricted to a particular ethnic group, whatever. It had this sort of universalizing attitude and was actively proselytelizing rat. That's one explanation, isn't it, for. Yeah, and this is a common thing that, like, lots of religious movements do this. And the ones that emphasize more exclusivist restrictions tend to have difficulties, right? Of course. Spreading. Yeah.

So you can see that, like, Christianity is kind of more optimized for recruitment than Judaism, for instance, right? So, but things like Scientology go beyond that. in that by avoiding having any specific doctrine, at least doctrine that would conflict, at least on the surface, when they're presatellizing and stuff, who knows what goes on at the higher thesis? Oh, yeah, I would imagine there's much more life.

Yes, I would imagine once you get in there, yes, it's all very different. But certainly at the recruitment phase, all are welcome. You don't need to change your current religion. There's nothing stopping you from signing on the dog line and signing up with Scientology. Yeah, and actually this is a short bit, but this is like the disclaimer to just meet that absolutely.

Absolutely clear. There's no need for religious people to be concerned. Mr. Hubbard, do you find any opposition coming towards Scientology from the organized religions? Not really anything that I would call opposition. Naturally, these people feel that we are challenging their particular sphere of action or something like that. Well, they read about Scientology and they understand what we're trying to do

and the opposition really fades away. Are you in fact challenging the sphere of authority? No. In no way to know. No. A man is free to believe what he believes. Yeah. There you go.

There's occasionally misguided opposition, but it's not. Once they understand, everybody's like, yeah, that's fine. Thank you guys. Yeah. No, no problems. The reports of problems are greatly. That's right. That's right.

All the traditional religions, they understand that people want to increase their IQ and learn how to better handle situations. You could still do that. Yeah. Stay a Catholic or whatever, no problem. Yeah. And another pubis thing for Scientology

is that it's like quite strongly opposed psychiatry. This is one of the hallmarks of modern Scientology. And you can understand why when it's basically presenting itself as an alternative therapeutic treatment, one that is better than all other approaches. But actually, in this period, Matt, I think this is slightly to do with the desire to present Scientology in the least controversial form in this interview. and also because of the legal issues around the dionetics self-help movement and that this is a distinct thing from that. So there's a couple of times in this interview where he's invited to talk about like the differences between Scientology and psychiatry. And he does, but he also wants to carve out that there's like a separate field, but they're not addressing.

And it's quite interesting what it is. So listen to this. This sounds, Mr. Hubbard, in a sense, like an extension of psychology or psychiatry. Can you comment on that? Oh, no. Psychology. Psychology is 1870-something, 1879, once decided that men were all animals. As Professor, Watt, Leipzig, Germany, and relatively a Germanic concept, that man is just an animal.

He's a sort of a machine, and he adjust the nuts and bolts, and he runs more. Well, psychiatry has to do with the insane, and we have nothing to do with the insane whatsoever. The insane, well, they're insane. So this is a final, it's integration and deterioration of the spirit. That's all the psychiatrists. But psychology, no, I'm afraid we don't have anything to do with psychology. After all, psychology long since stated that their own term, Psychology

meant nothing. And they say in their textbooks, they don't know what a psyche is. And of course, psyche is Greek for spirit. So theoretically, they have preempted the name the study of the spirit. But they do not study the spirit. They regard man as an animal. We are the only ones who study the spirit.

So we have to use the word Scientology. Scientology means knowledge or truth, study of. the study of knowledge or truth. Or if you use it as a Greek sentence, it says, I know the word, is what it works out to be, according to Oxford. I asked them one day up at Oxford,

what does Scientology mean? And they said it means really the study of knowledge or I know the word. Yep, yep, yeah. Well, it makes sense. It all makes sense, right? Like, on one hand, they, you know, they like to borrow credibility from wherever they can,

but the same time the anti-institutional stuff is important as well because you have to position your cult as providing something unique that is being completely missed by the more orthodox approaches and psychology and psychiatry because we just treat people as animals. We're fundamentally missing the human spirit, Chris. And look, I think Jordan Peterson and Bigelchrist would agree. Yeah, yeah, they would. There's quite a lot that they would find themselves in alignment when it comes to Elron.

So psychiatry is for dealing with insane people, and well, they're in seeing. They've already failed. Oh, yes. But this is the classic self-help type model, right, which is that they present modern medicine, and including psychiatry and psychology, as being concerned with sickness, right? And just treating the symptoms of sickness. So it's fundamentally a negative kind of thing rather than promoting the flourishing and elevating, you know, healthy people to level 11.

So that's something you see in alternative health when they talk about how modern medicine treats illnesses. And it's something you see with the self-help when they can be. pair themselves to, you know, orthodox disciplines, which are, they're just merely treating symptoms, Chris. They're just putting band-aids on symptoms of illness rather than, you know, dealing with the fundamental issues at hand, which is, you know, fundamentally the spirit. Yes. And I did like the brief appeal to authority at the end. You know, I asked the folks at Oxford, what does Santagogy mean? And they said, blah, blah, like, oh, shut. Shut up. So let's hear a little bit more about this.

disciplinary boundaries and the positioning exactly what unique benefits Scientology is bringing to this phase. And a little bit more about those dirty psychologists, Matt, what they're up to. Processing is the principle of making an individual look at his own existence and improve his ability to confront what he is and where he is. to make him look at his own existence and confront where he is and what he is how is this brought about

you just ask the person to look actually of course you're asking a very very technical question an auditor has to be able to get his questions answered and the individual who's being processed finally has to answer the question The question is asked until it is totally answered and the person is totally aware that he has answered it.

Is this a form of psychoanalysis? No, psychoanalysis, they lay back. Don't associate Scientology with such people. That's terrible. That's bad manners, you know? I mean, that business about sex and all that sort of thing. These people, you know, in psychoanalysis, they worked on somebody for a year just to find out if they could help. help him and then they charged him about 9,000 quid for having not helped him and so forth.

But that's psychotherapy. That's for the neurotic or the person who is insane or something like that. That has nothing to do with Scientology. Scientology is for an able guy like you or like me, able to function in life, able to make his own way, does his work and so forth. All right, that's the man that should be helped. That's the man you should help out because that fellow is having a hard time. And he's got his problems. Now, if you put him in a position where his intelligence is up to handling his problems, where his ability to confront life is increased,

you'll find out that he is better. He can better his environment. He can take care of his family better. He can do his job better. He can live better and so forth. And that's all we want in Scientology. The insane and so forth, somebody else can help. haven't. They've already failed.

I feel like they've, you know, Scientology have pivoted away from this harsh dismissal of, like, people with mental illnesses. They're not interested in them. There's a slight difference in tone from before where Hugh was out there in Asia, looking at the suffering and the degradation and thinking, we need a system that can help people. But now it doesn't seem so interested in helping these troubled people,

really what they're about is taking like normal, healthy, well-functioning people and ratcheting them up to level 11, make them Superman. That's the idea. So kind of similar to Nixium, right? Nixirum was kind of targeted more towards successful people to enhance your functioning, you know, above and beyond what normal people can do, right? Yeah, well, there's a kind of dual thing that you see a lot across the, the guru sphere and the manosphere as well, which is like, you have this dual message,

which is you guys, you know, you are the people that are capable. And the fact that you're even listening to this material, it puts you in a good position. You know, we heard it when in the Matthew McConaughey sphere, right, the Tony Robbins patter, where there's this thing that like, everybody has problems and you aren't a bad person or whatever. you're just like being held back from your true potential. And it's got this praising element of the audience where it's like, you guys are actually quite capable.

You're quite intelligent. But you're also being held back. And there's problems. And nobody's willing to look at you and offer you a helping hand. And that's what we are here to do. You know, we're not here to help like everybody. We can't solve all of the problems.

And there are people who are just, absolute insane maniacs. We can't help them. He suggested psychoanalysis is just Freudian sex talk, and it costs 9,000, and it doesn't help anything. He's like, but that's for the insane and the neurotics. That's for the sickos and freaks, Chris.

That's whatever happens to them, that's their business. We're here for the intellectual pioneers. And it does just strike me like, you know, the gurus are constantly telling their audience. that they are the people that are actually interested in science, that are actually willing to listen to like the real thing. I'm constantly saying that the mainstream institutions, the mainstream alternatives to what they're offering,

you know, other existing therapies and whatever, they're all looking down at you or just offering snake oil and that kind of thing. So it is interesting. Like I think it's related to some of the legal woes because there's all sorts of other material where Scientology and Elwyn Hubbard is directly claiming. They can cure illnesses and make you better. But here he wants to make it, and he does it a couple more times as well, like that

they're not claiming. They can cure medical illness. But they do make it clear that you will get cured for medical problems by doing the practices. It's just that they're not directly claiming. That's what they're about. But you did say that people. coming into Scientology should have this desire to help. Oh, yes.

Cannot Scientology go out of its way to help these people who are perhaps not completely safe? Scientology could do things like that. When you know the basics of human existence and so forth, you could apply them in almost any sphere. For instance, great many people think that Scientology does medical treatment and so forth, simply because people who are processed and so on tend to get well and recover from certain illnesses. that's a secondary action.

A person who is able, of course, is more able physically also. However, when a person turns up who is ill and so forth, we just send him to the doctor. We're not interested in treating human illness. You said it could help certain illnesses there. What kind of illness is? Oh, it is not, in actual fact, medical treatment. So to say what illness is it helped and so forth would be,

well, if a person has psychosomatic illnesses and that sort of thing, and they tend to fall away as he increases his ability. But this is no treatment of those illnesses. Let me be legally completely clear. Start a medical treatment. That's right. You can see him sort of, what's the word, just squaring the circle there. Like, it is a religion for legal purposes, but it's really not a religion. religion in all the other purposes. And it will make you healthier and protect you from all kinds of physical ailments and make you better.

But it is not a medical treatment to be clear. We don't make that direct, Liam. But he can't help himself because he still says, you know, when people realize they're kind of like spiritual beings, they can, of course, heal themselves. And it leads to, you know, in all elements of life, things get. better and all that kind of thing. So like he says, you know, if it's psychosomatic that we can deal with it. But like in his model, all illnesses derive from this failure to appreciate the true

nature of man, right? So like that disclaimer, it is just a disclaimer. Like this is just a very clear, like ask me about this so I can say that we don't, we do not claim to treat illnesses in any way that could be legally actionable. yeah i mean we're listening to this interview you have to remember this is basically a promotional video and and it's one in the context of him being very much aware of all of the controversies and legal things that are swirling around and being very careful at the same time so yeah yeah he he's trying to make a pitch in as it's for this to become the state religion of rhodesia

That's quite the context that he's going there. But the next clip, Matt, it will raise a bunch of familiar motifs that you will hear regarding the media. And what about the naysayers, Matt? What about the people that say Scientology is full of crap? What about those people? I wonder what you'll say about the mainstream media and medical authorities and whatnot. Now, if this is correct, why don't the medical profession use scientists? They do. They do in many parts of the world.

In matter of fact, the doctor in Michigan the other day told somebody that Dionetics was totally owned by the medical profession now and didn't belong to Hubbard anymore. Scientology has attracted a lot of publicity in the press, and the press has said that it tends to be something of a racket to make money for those people who are around. No, that, of course, most press is motivated by vested interests, as anyone knows. And they merely say what they're told to say. And when you realize that the medical psychiatric world have an investment which brings a return of two to three billion pounds per annum over the world, they try to protect that. And that is the source of criticism of Scientotivocal. this is with Scientology. These statements about this, that, and the other thing,

any new movement gets these things. And in Scientology, those are not based on any fact at all. As a matter of fact, I don't make any money out of Scientology, and it cost me, I don't know how much of my own personal fortune, to do the research, and I've not been recompensed for it ever. There you go. There you go. What a great guy. He hasn't made a cent from Scientology.

just cost him money. Yeah. Makes it seem terribly unfair that Scientology is being criticized as a racket, given that it's basically an act of charity on his part. Well, yeah, but you know the media, they all get their marching orders. They just say whatever they're told to say,

and everybody understands how the media works, right? Indeed, indeed, indeed. So it's a very familiar motif. criticism was received from mainstream sources. Wow, they would say that because they're all corrupt. They're all beholden to special interests. They're only criticizing me because I threaten the status quo. And I'm not corrupt. I'm not beholden to anyone. And I'm not making, I don't have any, you know, mean financial interests at all. He's motivated purely by wanting to raise man up from his base state. Yeah, yeah, very clear, very clear gerometer.

I can hear the gorometer digging in the distance, Chris. Can you hear that? We haven't even fed him in, but it kind of knows. Yeah, yeah. So it's just, like, I mean, the motifs echo across the guru sphere, as you note, Matt. Because, like, I understand that El Ruan Hubbard is more of a scam artist, guru, you know, like a cult leader, right? But this presentation that, well, the media is just interested in attacking me and they're motivated by ill incentives by their masters, you hear that all over the place like Gary Stevenson, Hassan Piker, Eric Weinstein, Brian Johnson.

That is how they frame criticism. Russell Brandt, right? And it's kind of impressive to me that it works so well. because it's such a predictable, you know, deflection. Like here it's very clearly a deflection. There's a lie, another common lie. I have no interest in money. Actually, you do.

And Scientology made him into an extremely wealthy person, right? So it's just like direct lies, but claims to be persecuted constantly and only motivated by good things. And it's just something that we see. over and over again. And like here, it's pretty straightforward. But yeah, it is a motif that you just endlessly here recycled in the guru sphere. Yeah, and you really can't overestimate this power of simply lying, often completely.

Like, it's a superpower. Like Trump is well known for this as well. And just being able to do it in a confident, bare-faced way, allows them to basically do all of this stuff. Yeah. And so, you know, most of these systems, especially cults, but it applies to non-cult settings as well. They have these systems that you can progress up, right,

and become more enlightened, better processed, the more fully realized individual, right? This is also a familiar motif in like self-help world. And one of the things, is this auditing process, which is quite infamous about Scientology, where they use a device called an e-meter, which is a kind of skin-conductive detector, right, like a version of a simplistic lie detector, right? I'm doing the quotation things, but you hold that and you're asked questions and a little needle moves around in response to physiological signals, and only trained

auditors can interpret, you know, exactly what the movement means. And this is him talking a little bit about auditors, right, and what they go through to be capable of playing their trade. Now to this person you mentioned, the auditor, the practitioner in Scientology, just how much training does this person get? He goes through very intensive training, usually in a city somewhere in the world he attends an academy and he is trained there upwards to well it actually isn't fair to say the total time of training because he's trained very intensively and so on he's trained there sometimes a year sometimes more and then his training is normally finished off by coming to a

higher level organization and so forth and he is trained there for more than a year. But the overall training of an order to compares to the same number of class hours in college of about 12 years. And it's not an easy thing to do. It's not easy to study in this particular field. You're handling the raw stuff of life. And his case, his being this, of course, must advance proportionately to his study. and he has to become better and better.

In other words, his IQ has to go up, up, up. The higher the level that he has qualified to audit at, why the more improved his own case has to be. I'll take that Jordan Peterson Academy. That's some serious intensive training. Twelve years, 12 years equivalents. Condensed in a single year. Wow, that's intense.

That's intense. Yeah. Yeah, and I like, you know, the presentation that, you know, university, if you try to get the same kind of level at the university, it will, in class hours, and the amount of information packed, it's probably about 12. That's quite inefficient. Just imagine all the high-level ideas coming at you, Chris. It's just the rate. It must be incredible. Okay, so auditors, very highly trained people.

you know, this means you're ascending the hierarchy, right? You're becoming clearer, becoming clearer, and you're able to take on a role to, like, recruit new people and train other people to also ascend the Scientology hierarchy. A bit like Dr. K's system of training people to become amateur therapists via the Healthy Gimmer Gigi system,

and then you can go help other people. And I think there as well, Well, you can take quite intense courses, Matt. It's not university qualifications, but in a way, that makes them even better because they're more flexible, the more attuned to modern needs and so on. But one concern, Matt, is, you know, if you're going to give people that kind of power, if you're going to let them in on the knowledge of auditing and Scientology tech, what kind of people are allowed to become?

Scientologists. An auditor in Scientology must have being this and a good IQ. What other talents does he require to be a good auditor? Well, a person has to have very, very good moral, moral fiber, you might say. You can't, and we will not take anybody who has even faintly bad background and so forth as an auditor. He has to be pretty well educated, his general education certificate, something like that. He has to have a desire to help people. And this is not everyone.

You said just now a bad background. In Scientology, what is good and bad? Does it conform to the normal model standards of society? Oh, yes, very much so. very much so same okay only only the best people only good people the cultish binary like santology simply couldn't have bad people in it Matt because they wouldn't allow bad people to VN no only people with very high IQs and people of extraordinarily high moral character come out the other end I get it yeah a little a little a little

Little on the nose, El Ron. Little on the nose. But it is the common refrain of other gurus as well. The people in my community are willing to look at things with critical, with an open mind and critical evaluation. So there you go. That motif, that studying Scientology, by definition, means that you're a good person because you wouldn't be allowed to do it if you weren't.

And now, Matt, you brought up earlier, Dianetics. his kind of predecessor to the full Scientology cult, which was a psychotherapy alternative. And he's asked about that in his other books here and make some interesting statements. You mentioned books. You yourself have written a lot of books. Oh, yes. Could you give me some titles? Well, the earliest book, the earliest book on the subject, of course, is not Scientology, but Dianetics through mind. And this book, that's the background of all of this.

That's what started all the trouble. Psychiatric textbook publisher knew that I had been studying in the field of man, knew I'd been studying ethnology and anthropology, two very tough words, which merely mean study of what man does and has done. And he asked me if I wouldn't please write a textbook that gave the various things which I have found and discovered. And we expected this to sell about 6,000 copies. And I was, in actual fact, going to go to Greece to head an expedition.

And I was all set to go and so on. And this textbook was published. And it hit the top of the bestseller list of the New York Times, and it just stayed there, month in, month out. And that was 15 years ago. And this book still sells as a bestseller every year. What was this called? Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health.

Yeah, so Mission Earth didn't get a mention. That's a shame. Well, it wasn't published at this time. Oh, wasn't it? No. No. It's a big right. Oh, okay.

End of his life. Oh, right. I assumed you read it during his pop fiction career. No. No, it was it the till end of his career. It's like he accumulated all the best writing skills for the book series. Okay, how about that? All right, so Dianetics, Chris, what do you know about Dianetics?

I don't know much. Do you know much? Yeah, well, it's basically the precursor of Scientology, and it very much folds into the self-help milieu at the time. Like, as you pointed out, you know, psychotherapy and psychoanalytic approaches and whatnot were also popular in this period. So there were various like booms around particular approaches. And when his diionetics came out, it did gala a bunch of momentum and people were setting up little

institutes to practice dionetics. And it was a bestseller. So, yeah, he was just like, kind of like the secret, maybe a bit more involved than the secret, but just a popular self-help thing. It kind of reminds me a little bit, although he's kind of more entrepreneurial than Jordan Peterson. But what he's talking about is like, I wrote a book, it got a lot of attention. You know, that's what trusts me into the mainstream. And he takes that as indicating that, you know, it's related to the depth of understanding he had about mankind. And that's the same kind of message

that people like Jordan Peterson take about 12 rules for life becoming popular, right? That like, the fact that it becomes a bestseller is evidence that it contains valid and important wisdom rather than there can be fad. Something if you tell people particular kinds of messages that appeal with the cultural vibe at the time, you can have success. So, yeah, Dianetics was his first attempt. And he set up these institutes and then there ended up being legal and administrative issues. And he got in a legal battle with somebody that was helping him organize them.

and then he moved on to Scientology, right, as the progression of that. And conveniently, the system that allowed him to draw a legal boundary with that and diomedics. So, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, it's interesting progression. I mean, there isn't much in it, is there, really. I mean, on one hand, you've got Scientology, nominally a religion, but it's basically like a weird self-help, cultish, a group with its own science fiction cosmology and its pyramid scheme as well and then you have dionetics which i suppose was his less ambitious thing where i suppose he wasn't he was probably more

thinking of selling a lot of books more than actually creating an organization perhaps oh no i i think it was like kind of both uh at the same time like he always was a megalomaniac like imagining that he's going to, you know, revolutionize scientific fields and make archaeological discoveries and all this. Like his general thing is just that he's a like megalomaniacal phantacist, right? So I don't think he ever had points where his ambitions were not extremely grand, right? Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. But I guess the point I wanted to make is that there's not really not much of a distinction. Yeah, theoretically, one is a self-help, secular, you know, pseudo-psychological thing. And the other one is a cult slash religion. But I don't see

much difference in it in practical terms. This is, this is, you see the subtext of what I'm saying, Chris, supporting our thesis around secular gurus. Yeah. Well, you also heard the, the kind motifs, you know, about, like, I was recognized as a influential figure studying the nature of man in anthropology and ethnology, widely recognized, right? And it's, the gurus all like to imagine that they're these great men astride disciplines, you know, sometimes their insights are, are being ignored by the academics and their ivory towers, but there's always the implication that even though that is happening, there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of, you know, of people that are recognizing their brilliance, right, in those fields. It's just that maybe they're

being persecuted for that or whatever, you know, the powers that be are trying to keep their insights out. So I just appreciate him adding that in. Yeah, it was widely recognized for my study of man. Yes. And in terms of Dianetics and its approach, Matt, he is on. He is on, asked about, you know, where did that develop from? And he gives two answers here. So I think contradictory answers, but here we are. Now, when was this book published? 1950, May the 9th, 1950. And is that as old as Scientology or Scientology Dietic's? Yes, yes. Well, actually, no. Researches on this really started in University in

1930, 1931, and moved on forward. The first major discovery, that life, all forms of life, behaved according to the principle of survival and so forth was made in 1938 and after the war, after some years of study, I was able to move it up into a publishable form. But I was actually known for many years for working in this particular field, but I never wrote anything about it, never published anything, never told anybody about it to amount to anything. And when I did, it was like I started an avalanche. Chris, I think it's useful to pay attention to the phraseology that he uses when he describes himself and his activities. So he's not like a certain kind of influence or a preacher. He might rely on a certain vibe,

a certain crazy wisdom or something. He's very keen to present himself as a researcher, as a scholar. You know, he talks about his work and his program of study, working towards publications. Yeah, like collecting data and like the framing of it is that he is, he may be an independent researcher. But he is, you know, operating outside of the normal institutions. But that's because he's undertaking so grand and so epochal that he can't be contained. But he's still borrowing very much from the, I guess, guess the stereotype that the people have of a serious, serious, learned scholar, diligently pursuing a program of research.

Yeah. And like even in this clip, right, he's asked, when did this research program, does it derive from when you first published about Dianetics? And he's like, yeah, yeah. Well, no, actually, they were studying it in university. in the 19th Fridays. But I think he's referencing some other people working on stuff that he, you know, draws from there. But then he mentions, like at the end of this clip, that he was working in the field for many

years and he was known, right? But he never wrote anything, never published anything, never told anyone. And it's like, well, how would you mean known if you were like completely not talking in any public forum about the things that you were researching. So it's, you know, it's kind of contradictory. It's like at once they are acknowledged as insightful people by those in the know, but also they're toiling away in secret. It's kind of like Eric, you know, Eric is working on geometric unity for decades, constantly toiling away on his theory. And lots of people are interested in it in academia. but also nobody's paying it attention and it's been oppressed and he can't remember what the theory is.

And anyway, he doesn't need academia's rotten to the core. Anyway, so it's just like this, yeah, like constant, like love and hate of academic institutions. Or the kind of image of academia, like the prestige of it more than anything to do with the actual, like, day-to-day worker of research or anything. like that. Yeah, and certainly in terms of the self-presentation, it's a feature not a bug, because they've got the twin challenges of firstly borrowing as much credibility as they can in terms of positioning themselves as an incredibly serious, incredibly respectable and respected, I don't know, savant. And at the same time, they need to explain why they don't seem to have any formal kind of roles or connections or outputs in the conventional sphere.

And they're also not really, you know, talked about or recognized, frankly, as well. So you see the different gurus squaring that circle in their own ways, but they definitely want to have their cake and eat it to vis-à-vis the institutions of particularly academia and science. Yeah. Now, illustrating another prevalent tactic, this next thing made me think about the pseudo-profound bullshit approach, but it's a much less sophisticated version than you find in the contemporary crop of gurus. I don't, but I think this plays more like sort of profound bullshit in the 1960s. So let me play it for you and see whether you agree that there's a connection here. Or am I drawing too long of a pole? Let me give you an example here of something of a sort. Let us say here is not a very good example.

Oh, here's something. Here's something. Now we speak of a body. Here we speak of a body. And there is a body. And now there's an invisible thing, somewhat invisible, but nevertheless, containing mass and space, and energy, electrical potential and so forth, which surrounds this, which you call a mind.

And in that mind is recorded every experience the person has ever had. They are recorded continuously and so on. And then within all that, centralized in all that, you have the spirit. And it does not have mass, it does not have a body, and so on. all it has is being a sense of identity, the ability to create, the ability to be. And that is the spirit. That is you. You ask somebody, what is a spirit?

And the fellow, you might as well ask, how are you? You get the same response. So, but anyway, there is this mind, and then there's a body. So actually, a spirit is wearing a mind. and is wearing a body. And when you audit or process a person, he then is able to confront this mind, which hitherto has been totally invisible to him.

Are you talking here about the unconscious mind? Well, yes, there's the conscious mind, the unconscious mind, any kind of mind is simply a composite of mass which contains experience and pictures of experience and so forth. traumatic experience, pleasant experience, and so forth. This is a record of his experience.

I like when the interviewer asks. So you mean the subconscious mind? It's like, sure, whatever. Well, subconscious, unconscious, yeah, it's all. But I feel like I know this doesn't sound as technical as an Eric Weinstein or even Scott Adams. But I think this is technical for the time period, talking about masks and mind and energy potential and so on. Like if you look at the science fiction of the era and when they were wanting to be science-y and sound-sci in a TV show or something like that, a B-grade one, they would talk a bit like that. You know, you must understand that the mind is just a concentration of mass and electrical potentials and in it is recorded every experience.

You know, and it's the kind of thing you could see on a really bad, you know, the kind of science fiction show with cardboard cut out framing and stuff. So, yeah, I agree with you. For the time, it's definitely that kind of, yeah, pseudo-profound bullshit, borrowing, again, borrowing the legitimacy of, you know, oh, yes, my theories are incredibly scientifically grounded. They're building on everything we know, all the latest discoveries of physics, and then immediately segues into the spirit and this. fluffy-duffy pseudo-philosophical stuff.

So again, reminds us very much, just in a more primitive, basic pitch form, you know, of our current Kropper gurus who, to give them credit, you know,

come across as a fair bit more sophisticated, but are often doing very much the same thing. You have Chris Langen, well, he's not very sophisticated, but, you know, he builds this whole mathematical thing so he can just jump off that into crazy stuff about religion

and these metaphysics, right? And of course, and race and other things. And also McGilchrist, I have to say also, right? Yeah. It's that scientific foundation gets those points on the board, right? This is science. Then you take a leap into the big dark pool of pseudo philosophy. Yeah.

And, you know, what kind of insights you can gain from this. Some are related to self-help that we'll talk about. but there also are insights that you can learn about the universe, Matt, from this. And good news, good news. Scientology has discovered something quite important. But doesn't Scientology have any dogma at all? For instance, life after death. The life after death is life after death.

And you can't lay down a dogma where you're dealing with fact. And it's very interesting that an individual does survive life after death, but I'm afraid that's too technical and a question to go into in a program of this nature. Are you saying that Scientology has proved this? Yes, proven it definitely. Has it proved anything else in the spiritual field? Well, yes, it's proved that man is basically capable of spiritual betterment. And this question has been in point for some time.

time and it's one of the attack points of psychology. They say that man is the same. He never changes. Of course, the church exists to physically, pardon me, to spiritually better man. And man can be bettered spiritually. Do you think that man is basically good? Man is basically good, yes. His experiences have led him into evil, and he very often solves his problems from his own point of view only. And when he solves a problem from his own point of view, of course he gets other points of view into trouble. What is good for a duck hunter is not good for the duck.

Well, you can't argue with that, Chris. It's true. Well, there was a metaphor at the end. So I have to worse that purpose. I just, I kind of, I know, on the one hand, it's good that we have this hard-nosed interviewer there to ask the hard questions. Like, has Scientology proved this? Yes.

Oh, wonderful. What else have you proven? No need to challenge that. It's just claimed that they've proven the afterlife, but no. I like how it's very clear, as you mentioned at the beginning, it's very clear that this is like a, this is Scientology promotional material. And the interviewer is a Scientologist. All the questions would have been prepared in.

You know, probably by of Ron Hubbard himself. So the questions are kind of presented as challenging questions. You know, what about people who say this? But what else? And then the answers are accepted. Oh, great.

Yeah. And the familiarity in there. Well, it would be too technical to get into it in this conversation. But trust me, we've done the work. We've established. Well, all of them. that. And I did think it's interesting, a Freudian slip, if you like, that he said, you know,

the church exists to physically, oh, pardon me, spiritually, better people. Because I think that's just highlighting, you know, he just exchanged a word to try and avoid like trouble, right, around the medical claims that we talked about earlier. So he doesn't want to say physically help people, but spiritually, then you can get away with it. Yeah, indeed. Indeed. Apparently, you can also get away with promising to increase people's IQ. That's not covered by. Well, and a controversy at the time, speaking to the setting, is, is this just a form of hypnotism? There is an answer to that.

You said that for Scientology processing, a person was able to look at the problems, to confront the problems that they were facing in their everyday life. Is this some form of hypnotism? Oh, no. That's very funny. Man is asleep. He is hypnotized. He is made to fixate on certain things, you see,

and the process that you normally know is brainwashing and that sort of thing is hypnotizing man. It's forcing him into certain values. It's crowding him by various duress into these values. And he eventually becomes a person who has no awareness. Now, in Scientology, reverse the problem. process and you make him wake up and he gradually gets more and more alert and he's more and more wide awake and his IQ rises higher and higher and he is more and more capable of knowing what's going on about him it's quite the reverse any any any any ideology that wants to hypnotize

man into believing while take commonness of friends I want to hypnotize man into believing he's this or that or the other thing and so forth it it comes a terrible proper uh with Scientology because he becomes such a man becomes unbrainwashed you might say he becomes unhypnotized and that was the first thing one of the first things I discovered about processing it was actually the basic discovery of processing that man was asleep and he had to wake up and then I went about trying to find out ways and means of how to make him do this and that became processing do you use drugs in any way no never once the

while, Scientologists will take vitamins or something like that to, well, just like anybody else does, but otherwise no drugs. That's an interesting question just pop in there. Do you take drugs in any way? And again, I feel like these questions have been prepared very carefully, and I think that would be one of the random accusations that would have been thrown at them, which is these are a bunch of deranged hippies or something like that. you know. Yes. Yes. So get that question in there so he can settle, set things straight.

I do believe that one of the Scientology approaches and involves vitamin megadocin as well. So when he says, you know, we just take vitamins like everyone else. Well, I suppose because many people do that, right, megalosine in vitamins. But I agree. It is set up as, you know, what about this accusation and what about that one? And, Like, this speaks to, you know, it may be picked bad of, is this some form of mesmerism? Is this mesmerism masquerading as a science? No, no, no, no.

The charges of mesmerism and hypnotism are completely unfounded. But I feel like this should be a signal to people that, when people frame what they're selling you as weaking you up to the real world, I mean, Andrew Tate does that now, so do pretty much all of the people we can. cover, they present themselves as like, they're not providing you of an ideology. They're like making you a more aware person. You know, Alex Jones does it as well. Like it just presenting people as being asleep. You're not telling them what to think. You're just showing them

how this, you know, rig system works. So you should be wary. Whenever anybody tells you they're waking you up, like, just like be careful. Maybe they're not. Yeah, yeah. It's a common trope now, isn't it? So you have the rest of us, which are sheeple, NPCs, just blundering around, sleepwalking through life, believing all the pap that the mainstream media is feeding us. And then you have the select few that have their eyes wide open.

Oh, Russell Brand. This is what probably is most common trope. And obviously, yeah, this is the appeal. of conspiracy theories. It's not a conspiracy theory. It's not a very ridiculous cosmology where you're being asked to accept a whole bunch of things on blind faith. No, no, no. It's just, once you investigate and think for yourself, you'll wake up and you'll see through the veil of lies that is the conventional world. That's all right. Now, Matt, would you galler from all of this that Elron Hubbard himself is an auditor?

Just out of curiosity, what do you think about that? I'd be guessing, yes, but I wouldn't be surprised as to no. That seems like too low a level for him. Seems like he should be many levels now. Let's hear about that. How would you describe the mental state of a patient during processing? Well, I've never processed a patient, so I wouldn't know, you see, because patients are people who are sick and in mental institutions and that sort of thing

and all the white work with such people just in the normal experience of existence. This is nothing to do with Scientology. But how is he? He's wide awake, right alert, quite interested, and he is examining things which he had never examined before and he becomes quite happy about it. Doesn't he get introverted looking into his unconscious mind? Yes. but he introverts in order to extrovert.

In other words, he is actually handling the things which cause him to be introverted. And when he has handled those things, he extroverts. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So, well, there, at least, he doesn't process people. Oh, not patience, ma. I think that is the thing that he wants to be clear. He's never dealt with patience, right?

Because it's not about treaty nail this, right? We've established that. That's very clear. Yeah. Again, it's the optimization thing. Yeah, we mentioned it. Again, very popular. It's about optimizing yourself going from normal to Excelsior.

And it's flattering too. Like, this isn't a refuge for disturbed, troubled, you know, seekers who have lost their way and are desperately looking for something to cling on to. No, no. This is designed for, you know, smart, successful, healthy people who want to go up to S-tier. And, you know, Nixirme was like that too, wasn't it? Yeah. And you know, so it's, so it's very flattering to, to the people who are joining, they're not, you know, low-level members who are going to be manipulated and controlled and exploited and being told what to do. No, no, no, no, no.

That's, no, that's, that's not what's happening here. And you might want to, like, but does it work? Does it actually work? So don't worry, the, the interviewer's got you covered. People do change Does this happen very quickly? Very, very quickly. After, say, a certain number of hours of processing. Yes, yes. There's no telling how long it will take. Sometimes it's 20 minutes for a certain level. And can you register their progress?

Oh, yes. Well, of course, there are tremendous batteries of tests which register this. The sort of thing is reaction time. The man's reaction time changes, is IQ changes, as... all kinds things change there's tremendous numbers of things which which alter in a person and the odd part of it is is they alter for the better and that's where the hope before he is for man there is hope for man he is not just an evil beast who will get worse and worse and worse and worse and worse with scientology he can get better and he can get kinder and more decent and more tolerant of his fellow man And perhaps some of the basic goals of religions of the past can be attained for Scientologists.

Quick and easy results, fast results. That's what you want to hear when you're buying any product, I think. Well, it can be any amount of time. But the good news is that it's only positive changes. And it can all be measured by a battery of scientific tests, which can quantify progress. reaction time, IQ, everything is getting better and better if you do Scientology. So that's good. And, you know, as noted, it might even let you realize the insights that religion has been promoting for centuries, right? Like if you do it well.

So there you go. Scientology can change you. But, okay, let's take that for granted. But what is the practical impact of following Scientology? Mr. Hubbard, what you said is all very well in theory, but what is the practical application of Scientology for the average man in the street? Well, the average man is up against certain problems. He's asking himself certain questions.

How can I make more money? How could I make my wife faithful to me? How can I make my children grow up? How can, well, in other words, how can I live a better life? How can I make things more even more stable for my family? How, how, how, how? And what am I up against? What is happening to me in my life?

What is my purpose in life and so forth? These questions, in actual fact, absorb a tremendous quantity of his energy. And he himself is not able to go out. and do anything very progressive about it. So the best thing for him to do is to go out and do something about it. But he can't do anything about it because he is so immersed in this. So actually, in Scientology processing, he resolves these questions. He understands what he's doing. He knows what he wants to do. He makes up his mind and he goes ahead and does it. And he turns from a man who is simply a puzzled, static being into somebody who's more dynamic or is able to accomplish something.

Yeah. So one of the, I think, important principles when you're trying to sell snake oil or recruit members to a call is that you're looking to sell it by promising to solve something. You're promising new good things. But everyone's got problems, Chris. We've all got problems. And the trick is you want to recruit as widely as possible. So you want to be as vague as possible and you want to hit the things that everyone feels. deals a little bit, you know, oh, you know, what does everyone want to do? I want to take care of my family a little bit better. In his words, I want to be able to know how to handle things better. You know, you like to have more powers. I'd give you Sparta, stronger, more successful, make more money, you know, just everything, you know, make your life better, solve the problems that you have. So it's so vague and so general that it's designed to appeal to virtually anyone. So it makes sense, right?

That's what you would do if you were designing some sort of cult or some sort of pyramid scheme. Or a self-help product, for instance. Like the self-help thing we covered Chris with McConaughey. Very similar, right? Very, very similar thing. What's your problem? You know, you don't know what you're doing. You're here and it's all confusing and, you know, this isn't where you want to be.

You want to be over there. it's the same product that's being sold every single time. Yeah, it's like linking it to actual problems that people have, but it's just vague enough that it can accommodate basically anything, right? Like existential, NUE, marriage, difficulties, concerns about career progression, it's all within their real house, right? And that's by design. And, you know, one of the things that strikes me, Matt,

is how much it promises that it will, you know, it will resolve all those problems. It will give you the tools. It'll make you a better integrated person. It'll make you kinder. The thing that Scientologists are not really noted for is like being particularly kind or very high functioning selfless people, right? That's not the image of Scientology.

The image of Scientology is something that will extract a lot of resources from you and will engage in very, like, aggressive attacks on anyone deemed to be, like, a critic of the movement or whatever. It does have charitable wings and all that kind of thing, but it's just not the association with Scientology that people have. You know, like, another example would be, like, Mormonism, for example, has a lot of critics, right? There's a lot of cultish elements within the Mormon church. but Mormons by and large do you have the image of being very friendly, at least in the way that they interact with people. Now, if you're actually a Mormon within the church, I think there are difficulties and concerns there. But I'm just talking about like the general public perception.

You know, there's a South Park episode that they do about Mormons and they kind of play up that the main distinguishing feature of people that practice Mormonism tends to be that they have. like a very sincere approach to things and they want to promote their religion but in part by being kind of model individuals. So

that's not the image. Scientology is known for projecting so yeah. No. Yeah. So a lot of overlap with the self-help thing and there's two final

clips that I think make this clear. One, the overlap and through the general, you know, progress up the system. But also that there is an end goal, you know, just like with the prismatic color spectrum or whatever it was called spiral dynamics with Ken Wilbur. There is technically, you know, like the highest level that you can reach. And Scientology has this as well with going clear. But before we get to that, just higher things going with Scientology in general at this point of time. It's a, it's a good. It's done great.

It looked great. What is the main advantage of Scientology over all the other creeds and all the other religions and ideas that have been formulated since man began? Why is it that you go for Scientology? Why do you support this particular thing? Because it works. And that is really the only reason. It works.

This doesn't say that other things don't work, but they are, they tend to be impository. positive that I never would criticize any other religion. I'd like to end on a more general subject and look at Scientology as it is today. Do you see it as a growing force? Yes, the actual statistic of its growth is 2.5 times per annum. And this is fairly rapid because it was already very large. Now, is it changing its ideas in any way as it gets bigger? No.

Same ideas. Same ideas, help the able, make the able more able. To this degree, it is changing its ideas. It's starting to take responsibility for the group, for society, much more responsibility for society, in addition to responsibility for the individual. There are certain evils in society which definitely should cease, and we are taking some responsibility for them.

We don't want evils. He really does emphasize that it is, Scientology is for the able. Oh yeah, and this, yeah, this is one of the messages that comes through here. But I do think this is in part because of problems of, you know, if they are classified as claiming to treat sick people. Really? Right, right, right, right. I suspect it's more of their, I mean, I could be wrong,

but isn't it, isn't it their branding? Isn't it the way that they promote themselves? Yeah, I think it's a disclaimer and a, like, a thing to say, is this for people that are not well or failures? And no, no, no, no, not at all. This is for, you know, everyone. It's, in fact, we're not interested in those people. But, you know, if you went to Scientology and said that you're suffering from depression and whatnot,

yes, they're very skeptical. You know, they have these antipsychiatric denialism as part of their approach. But basically their argument is they can resolve those issues because those are really symptoms of underlying problems that you don't recognize the true cause of. So, yeah. I think the other thing, too, is they're operating in a period kind of after those counterculture movements. And there was kind of a lot of suspicion about, you know, there were lots of cultish Eastern religion, woo stuff going on in the 60s and 70s. And it was associated with, you know, just, you know, drugs and disturbed young people and who we're getting mind controlled and stuff. And they're fundamentally a kind of socially conservative in their targeting.

And so they want to be very clear that this is for good moral people who want to help their families and who are high functioning. They're not lost and they're not looking for answers that they want to perform at a at an S-TL-level. level. So yeah, I think the branding makes sense too. Yeah, and 2.5 growth mat. That's the statistics. You can't deny that growth. That's from a very high base. They were already very large, Chris. Yeah, they're already doing great, but going better. And I'm glad the interviewer is there. Like, you know, so have the ideas changed if you got bigger? No, no, just see him. All right. Well, that's good. So next question. Yeah, it's incredible. But, you know, my aspect, promise, the final clip is also talking about the final peak, the pinnacle that you can reach

in Scientology. Where is that? As you process the individual, you find that he gets better and better and more able. But is there any end to this? Yes, it's a finite state known as clear. And that means that the individual has erased what the Freudian said was his basic illness, which is his reactive mind, his unconscious mind is gone, and he is totally alert and totally capable. And this state has been achieved,

and our program actually in this has just culminated this last few months. Research is finished at this particular time because we are making such individuals, and we're making them regularly and we're making them routinely. But it doesn't make it a difference. difference to the fact that he grows older and things of this nature. No, it doesn't make it any difference. Right.

The research program is Finnishma. They've now perfected the ability to produce like clear individuals. So there you go. Yeah, it just, yeah, it works. That's why they're doing it. So look, it sounds like a fantastic proposition. I mean, I've got to recommend this to people. I also like, I forgot to mention.

but you know what they asked them. So why did you choose Scientology? Why is this the thing that you have focused on? And like, isn't the answer because I made it? Like that's the true answer. But he's like, because it works. You know, we've demonstrated it for all the scientific tests and stuff. And it's like, no, it's because it's your.

No, no, he's just an exceptional person. He discovered one thing, Dianetics. That worked. And then he had another great idea, Scientology. And that work too. He's two out of two. Two out of two. That's why he's doing it, Chris.

Just because he thought of it. The bit that's kind of interesting to me is, you know, in summary, Matt, with listening to this, is like a lot of it feels very basic, like the kind of framing of himself as this genius revolutionary who has devised this system which will perfect you

and, you know, help you overcome models. your ailments. And yes, the afterlife exists and man is a spiritual being and blah, blah, blah. But the fact of the matter is that, like, he did create a hugely successful movement with hundreds of thousands. I don't know what the count is now. Maybe it's in the millions of Scientologists worldwide and organizations, right, made himself extremely wealthy and drove around on the sea in a like a small pletilla for nearly a decade, right?

So like the fact that this kind of message can pick up people and is appealing and like we've been highlighting for this episode, all these things that we hear and all our contemporary gurus. And I think it's just because fundamentally this kind of program works.

And that's the message to me of all the people that we've covered in the cult season. is like a lot of the techniques you do see in the modern grocery, there are stuff which is perhaps not as common, right, around like taking control of people's bodily autonomy, locking them in compounds or making them go sail on the boat with you or whatever the case might be. But like the psychological practice and the framing of criticism and so on, these are like just really kind of classical maneuvers that seem to. to work for cult leaders and work for modern gurus.

And while Elron Hubbard probably wouldn't appeal to people in the modern era using this kind of delivery, just make a few adjustments to the way you frame it. And the underlying DNA is, I think, still going to pick up a lot of people. Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. there seems to be like a huge amount of diversity on the surface between different influences and different conspiracy theories, different alternative cosmologies and health routines and so on. But, you know, it's fundamentally, that's all surface level. They're fundamentally appealing to all the same things and promising the same things and they

have the same structure. So yeah, you know, his is the template for a pseudoscientific, pseudo-religious cult and a pyramid scheme. And it turned out to be very successful, still going strong today. Yeah. So there you go. Not a big fan of them, I would say. Is that our point of message? Yeah.

Yeah. Not our favorite of the people that we've covered. But, you know. No. But no, no, not a fan of anything to do with Scientology or El Rohn Hubbard. But, you know, I think for pedagogical purposes, Chris, incredibly useful because all of the things that we talk about on the Gorometer, they are expressed in El Rohn Hubbard in vivid technic color. Big, in a big, big cartoonish shapes, right? So it's pretty hard to miss.

And, you know, to modern sensibilities, it comes across as just blatant and, you know, you know, know. It seems like it shouldn't work. HACNED. HACNED, that's right. But, you know, that's, that's just a sign of the times. That's, that's hindsight bias. There are people today doing exactly the same thing as O'Roy and Hubbard in different ways, shapes, and forms, seemingly in a more sophisticated way, but that's just because that's our milieu. So I think, I think it's good to study simple elementary examples like Elron Hubbard, because, you know, if you don't quite see it with some of the other gurus, it can help you spot the basic themes. Yeah, yeah, that's the way that cookie crumbles, Ma.

And I think, you know, the cult season has ended, but it doesn't mean we won't ever cover people that are in the cultish milieu again. It just means we're, you know, we move on. The guru sphere is wide and ever-expanding multisputed. multicolored and there are many terians to be explored by adventurous souls out there. And we're not even done with Aron Hubbard yet, either I have to say, because I think we're going to make this Goromata public. So think of this as a two-parter because I think putting Elron Hubbard through the

gorometer is a great way to explain the gorometer. It's pretty unambiguous. So I think it's a good exercise. I do feel like this is a threat to people after they've listened to two and a half hours. So you think you're finished? No, we're going to talk about it more. We'll make it fun. We'll make it fun. We promise.

Will we? Okay, we'll try. We'll try. Yes. Well, you know, Matt, one thing that we don't have to pretend to make fun is the Patreon, where people can join and sign up and take part and support our diligent efforts. There are two tiers currently. There's revolutionary geniuses, and there are Galaxy Brain Gurus.

And the main difference is the Galaxy Brain Gurus can attend the monthly live hangouts that we do on. But the revolutionary geniuses, Ma, they get access to all the bonus material, the grammaters, the coding academia, the various live streams that I do when computing. They're all there. They're all there. Right. So, yes, but we should thank them for taking part, for posting pictures of their food or their modest physical and mental activities in various threads. Yeah. So would you, would you mind if I do? Please go ahead. Absolutely. This would be a good break. Okay. Well, revolutionary geniuses. So there we have Stefan Sizes. Eizerviak, Aud Meta, Mikey Petty, Meath for Sam, Casey Denhowert-Tog, Brian O'Hara, Christopher Miller, Epistimus, Jacob Luke Cahill, Cara Pallosa, Scott Parker, Samuel Angus Beef, Naudius Maximus, Bogdan Moras, B.D., Mike Callies, Tom Caudwell, Mark Duffy, John Danny, Jimmy Nagamura, Elizabeth Snowden, Rocky R,

or Kevin Retcha, Elwig 8779, Ivy, take me to your leader, Chris O'Will Jameson, Mia McGuigan, Georgia, Arctron, Haridoyle, Yazar Webby, Nathaniel, Devonpour, and Slamo. That is our revolutionary geniuses for this month. Fantastic. Fantastic. And we'll have a live stream soon, right? Next one's due, I think, this week. Very soon. Well, it depends when people listen to this, but yes, it could be. Oh, yeah.

It could be. So, yeah, you have to get the account. This isn't released as soon as we finish. But there could be a life thing. Just check your local listings. I keep forgetting about that. Time. Yeah.

Well, thank you anyway. I'm usually running, I don't know, 70 or 90 distinct paradigms simultaneously all the time. And the idea is not to try to collapse them down to a single master paradigm. I'm someone who's a true polymath. I'm all over the place. But my main claim to fame, if you'd like, in academia, is that I founded the field of evolutionary consumption. Now, that's just a guess, and it could easily be wrong.

But it also could not be wrong. The fact that it's even plausible is stunning. Stunning indeed. Stunning indeed. It's stunning. The fact like Dianetics is plausible is stunning. It is stunning. It's a fact that it's still rich in money is amazing.

But so much, then we have GalaxyBrain gurus. The people that can join the live stream at Undetermined Diet from when you listen to this. And they are this month, Andy Coleman, Joe, Malcolm Matalca, Kieran Dun, Abbey and Madhav. There you go, are Galaxy Green Gurus for this month. Excellent, excellent. Excellent. Yes. And here's your clip.

Hello there, you awakening wonders. You may not be aware that your entire reality is being manipulated, become part of our community or free speakers, where you're still allowed to say stuff like this. Science is failing. It's failing right in front of our eyes, and no one's doing anything about it. I'm a shill for no one.

More than that, I just simply refuse to be caught in any one single echo chamber. In the end, like many of us must, I walk alone. Well, I'm not walking with him. It's going to have to walk alone. Yeah, Frank, please. Off you go, Lex. Great job.

Yeah. Well, they're all there, Matt. All of the stars are out tonight, Brussels Brand and Sabina and Lex Friedman. So Sabina was getting retreated by Elon Musk, so that will have made her year. And, yeah, there we go, Matt. Elron Hubbard, rearview, mirror.

next up undetermined. Determined that's time of recording. Oh, Professor, no it isn't. Fuck, I forgot Professor Jain. From the old to the modern. Oh, yeah. You got Professor Jain coming up.

That's right. Yeah, he's an interesting character. Okay. All right, we got that to look forward to everybody. Well, that's it. Scientology done for. You can cancel your applications to join. Yeah.

I know everyone was rushing out because it's a hot new thing, but we've said things straight. Well, some people did say when we cover them, we're being brief. And I think, no, we're not. At this stage, like, I feel after South Park has made episodes on you, and there's been several documentary released on your cult movement, that we are not big enough for Scientologists to care about.

So, yeah, don't paint, don't call us heroes, okay? We're not, a hero, it's such a strong word. I'm a little bit heroic. Come on. It's a little bit brave. No, you don't need to say we're, you know, risking our lives out here for the science of horology. You don't make to say that. That's not necessary, you know. We don't accept that. But thanks for saying that anyway.

And, yeah, we'll see you all again soon. Adios, chow. Good night and God bless. Bye-bye.