L. Ron Hubbard
Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (March 13, 1911 – January 24, 1986) was an American author and the founder of Scientology. A prolific writer of pulp science fiction and fantasy novels in his early career, in 1950 he authored Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health and established organizations to promote and practice Dianetics techniques. Hubbard created Scientology in 1952 after losing the rights to Dianetics in bankruptcy proceedings, and would manage the Church of Scientology until his death in 1986.
Born in Tilden, Nebraska, in 1911, Hubbard spent much of his childhood in Helena, Montana. While his father was posted to the U.S. naval base on Guam in the late 1920s, Hubbard traveled to Asia and the South Pacific. In 1930, Hubbard enrolled at George Washington University to study civil engineering but dropped out in his second year. He began his career as a prolific writer of pulp fiction stories and married Margaret Grubb, who shared his interest in aviation. Hubbard was an officer in the Navy during World War II, where he briefly commanded two ships but was removed from command both times. The last few months of his active service were spent in a hospital, being treated for a variety of complaints.
In 1953, the first churches of Scientology were founded by Hubbard, and in 1954 a Scientology church in Los Angeles was founded, which became the Church of Scientology International. He also added organizational management strategies, principles of pedagogy, a theory of communication and prevention strategies for healthy living to the teachings of Scientology. Scientology became increasingly controversial during the 1960s and came under intense media, government and legal pressure in a number of countries. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Hubbard spent much of his time at sea on his personal fleet of ships as "Commodore" of the Sea Organization, an elite quasi-paramilitary group of Scientologists.
Hubbard returned to the United States in 1975 and went into seclusion in the California desert after an unsuccessful attempt to take over the town of Clearwater, Florida. In 1978, Hubbard was convicted of fraud after he was tried in absentia by France. In the same year, eleven high-ranking members of Scientology were indicted on 28 charges for their role in the Church's Snow White Program, a systematic program of espionage against the United States government. One of the indicted was Hubbard's wife Mary Sue Hubbard, who was in charge of the program; he himself was named an unindicted co-conspirator. Hubbard spent the remaining years of his life in seclusion in a luxury motorhome on a ranch in California, attended to by a small group of Scientology officials. Following his 1986 death, Scientology leaders announced that Hubbard's body had become an impediment to his work and that he had decided to "drop his body" to continue his research on another plane of existence. Though many of his autobiographical statements were fictitious, the Church of Scientology describes Hubbard in hagiographic terms and says its account of his life is factual.

Life
Hubbard was born to a Navy family that repeatedly relocated throughout the United States and overseas. After numerous academic difficulties, Hubbard dropped out of university, taking a wife and beginning a career as a pulp fiction author.  He joined the Navy but amid poor performance reviews, he began reporting health complaints and spent the remainder of the war in hospital.  After the war, Hubbard conducted occult rituals with California rocket scientist Jack Parsons and bigamously married a second wife, Parsons's former girlfriend. After requesting psychiatric treatment from the Veterans Administration, Hubbard traveled to Georgia where he was associated with a charity psychiatric ward for veterans and claimed to have worked as a "lay analyst" (or peer counselor), listening to indigent African-Americans who couldn't afford professional psychoanalysis.
Inspired by the science-fiction of his friend Robert Heinlein, Hubbard announced plans to write a book which would claim to "make supermen". In 1950, Hubbard published "Dianetics", which offered readers a chance to reach a superhuman state of "Clear".  Hubbard began writing, lecturing and training others in Dianetics.  Citing abuse and kidnapping, Hubbard's wife Sara told press that Hubbard had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia by doctors who concluded he was 'hopelessly insane' and should be committed to a sanatorium. Having lost the copyrights of Dianetics to his creditors, Hubbard formed a new organization, this time organized as a religion called Scientology which offered followers a chance to achieve the god-like state of "Operating Thetan". The church spread throughout the United States and United Kingdom, with a large percentage of its income going to Hubbard. After the loss of tax-exemption in the US, Hubbard purchased and moved to Saint Hill Manor in England, but by 1968, Britain banned foreign Scientologists from entering the country and declared Hubbard an "undesirable alien".Seeking to avoid further legal troubles, Hubbard founded the "Sea Org", a private navy of dedicated Scientologists, and took to the sea, spending the next eight years touring the Atlantic aboard a repurposed passenger ferry that Hubbard dubbed the Apollo.  In 1975, the sixty-four-year-old Hubbard suffered a heart attack and pulmonary embolism that left him hospitalized for three weeks. In response to mounting health concerns, Hubbard secretly returned to the United States, hiding in various locations across the country.  After the July 1977 raids on Church of Scientology locations by the FBI, Hubbard was named as an unindicted co-conspirator and disappeared further into hiding. He spent the last years of his life in a luxury motor home on a California ranch, cared for by high-ranking Sea Org members. In December 1985, Hubbard reportedly attempted suicide by electrocution. On January 17, he suffered a stroke and died on January 24, 1986.

Before Dianetics
L. Ron Hubbard was born in 1911, the only child of Ledora May, who had trained as a teacher, and Harry Ross, a low-ranking United States Navy officer. Like many military families of the era, the Hubbards repeatedly relocated around the United States and overseas.   After his father was posted to Guam, Hubbard and his mother traveled there with brief stop-overs in a couple of Chinese ports.  In high school, Hubbard contributed to the school paper, but was dropped from enrollment due to failing grades.   After he failed the Naval Academy entrance examination, Hubbard was enrolled in a Virginia Preparatory School to prepare him for a second attempt. However, after complaining of eye strain, Hubbard was diagnosed with myopia, precluding any future enrollment in the Naval Academy. As an adult, Hubbard would privately write to himself that his eyes had gone bad when he "used them as an excuse to escape the naval academy".Hubbard was sent to the Woodward School in D.C., as graduates qualified for admission to George Washington University without having to take the entrance exam.  Hubbard graduated in June 1930 and entered the University.    Academically, Hubbard did poorly and was repeatedly warned about bad grades,  but he contributed to the student newspaper and was active in the glider club.  In 1932, Hubbard organized a student trip to the Caribbean, but amid multiple misfortunes and insufficient funding, the passengers took to burning Hubbard in effigy and the trip was canceled by the ship's owners. Hubbard did not return to the University the following year.

For much of the 1920s and 30s, L. Ron Hubbard lived in Washington D.C., and he would later claim to have interacted with multiple psychiatrists in the city.  Hubbard described encounters in 1923 and 1930 with navy psychiatrist Joseph Thompson. Hubbard credited Thompson with inspiring Hubbard's interest in the mind and cited Thompson as teaching him  the adage "If it's not true for you, it's not true.", a purportedly-Buddhist maxim which was later incorporated into Scientology. Thompson was controversial within the American psychiatric community for his support of lay analysis -- the practice of psychoanalysis by those without medical degrees. 
Hubbard also recalled interacting with William Alanson White, supervisor of the D.C. psychiatric hospital St. Elizabeth's.  According to Hubbard, both White and Thompson had regarded his athleticism and disinterest in psychology as signs of a good prognosis.  Hubbard later claimed to have been trained by both Thompson and White.  Hubbard also discussed his interactions at Chestnut Lodge, a D.C.-area facility specializing in schizophrenia, repeatedly complaining that their staff misdiagnosed an unnamed individual with schizophrenia:

There's a place by the name of Walnut Lodge...  They don't see anything humorous in that, by the way... They sent three people to see me and every one of them was under treatment -- and this was their staff!   But anyway, very good people there, I'm sure... Didn't happen to meet any. Have some fine patients though! Anyway, they treat only schizophrenia. And so they take only schizophrenics. Now how do they get only schizophrenics?  Well, anybody sent to Walnut Lodge is a classified schizophrenic. And they take somebody who is a dementia praecox unclassified or a more modern definition, a mania-depressive and they take him from Saint Elizabeth's and they take him over to Walnut Lodge and he goes onto the books as a schizophrenic. Why? Because Walnut Lodge takes only schizophrenics.

Pre-war fiction
In 1933, Hubbard renewed a relationship with a fellow glider pilot, Margaret "Polly" Grubb and the two were quickly married on April 13.
The following year, she gave birth to a son who was named Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, Jr., whose nickname was "Nibs". A second child, Katherine May, was born two years later.Hubbard began a writing career and tried to write for mainstream publications. Hubbard soon found his niche, however, in the  pulp fiction magazines, becoming a prolific and prominent writer in the medium.  From 1934 until 1940, Hubbard produced hundreds of short stories and man novels Hubbard is remembered for his "prodigious output" across a variety of genres, including adventure fiction, aviation, travel, mysteries, westerns, romance, and science fiction. His first full-length novel, Buckskin Brigades, was published in 1937.  The novel told the story of "Yellow Hair" a white man adopted into the Blackfeet tribe, with promotional material claiming the author had been a "bloodbrother" of the Blackfeet.  The New York Times book review praised the book, writing "Mr. Hubbard has reversed a time-honored formula and has given a thriller to which, at the end of every chapter or so, another paleface bites the dust."
On New Year's Day, 1938, Hubbard reportedly underwent a dental procedure and reacted to the anesthetic gas used in the procedure. According to his account, this triggered a revelatory near-death experience. Allegedly inspired by this experience, Hubbard composed a manuscript, which was never published, with working titles of The One Command and Excalibur.  Hubbard sent telegrams to several book publishers, but nobody bought the manuscript. Hubbard's wrote to his wife:

Sooner or later Excalibur will be published... I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it will take a legendary form even if all books are destroyed. That goal is the real goal as far as I am concerned.
Hubbard found greater success after being taken under the wing of editor John W. Campbell, who published many of Hubbard's short stories and serialized novelettes that in his magazines Unknown and Astounding Science Fiction.   Hubbard's novel Final Blackout told the story of a low-ranking British army officer who rises to become dictator of the UK.  In July 1940, Campbell magazine Unknown published a psychological horror by Hubbard titled Fear about an ethnologist who becomes paranoid that demons are out to get him -- the work was well-received, drawing praise from Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, and others.  In November and December 1940, Unknown serialized Hubbard novel Typewriter in the Sky about a pulp fiction writer whose friend becomes trapped inside one of his stories.

Military career
In 1941, Hubbard applied to join the United States Navy. His application was accepted and he  was commissioned as a lieutenant junior grade in the United States Naval Reserve on July 19, 1941. The day after Pearl Harbor,  Hubbard was posted to the Phillipines and departed the US bound for Australia. But while in Australia awaiting transport to the Philippines, Hubbard was suddenly ordered back to the United States after being accused by the US Naval Attaché to Australia of sending blockade-runner Don Isidro "three thousand miles out of her way".

In June 1942, Hubbard was given command of a patrol boat at the Boston Navy Yard, but he was relieved after the yard commandant wrote that Hubbard was "not temperamentally fitted for independent command". In 1943, Hubbard was given command of a submarine chaser, but only five hours into the shakedown cruise, Hubbard believed he had detected an enemy submarine. Hubbard and crew spent the next 68 hours engaged in combat. An investigation concluded that Hubbard had likely mistaken a "known magnetic deposit" for an enemy sub.   The following month, Hubbard unwittingly fired upon Mexican territory and was relieved of command.  In 1944, Hubbard served aboard the USS Algol before being transferred.  The night before his departure, Hubbard reported the discovery of an attempted sabotage.In June 1942, Navy records indicate that Hubbard suffered "active conjunctivitis" and later "urethral discharges".  After being relieved of command of the sub-chaser, Hubbard began reporting sick, citing a variety of ailments, including ulcers, malaria, and back pains. In July 1943, Hubbard was admitted to the San Diego naval hospital for observation—he would remain there for months. Years later, Hubbard would privately write to himself: "Your stomach trouble you used as an excuse to keep the Navy from punishing you."  On April 9, 1945, Hubbard again reported sick and was re-admitted to Oak Knoll Naval Hospital, Oakland.  He was discharged from the hospital on December 4, 1945.

After the war
After Hubbard chose to stay in California rather than return to his family in Washington state, he moved into the Pasadena mansion of John "Jack" Whiteside Parsons, a rocket propulsion engineer and a leading follower of the English occultist Aleister Crowley. Hubbard befriended Parsons and soon became sexually involved with Parsons's 21-year-old girlfriend, Sara "Betty" Northrup.   Hubbard and Parsons collaborated on "Babalon Working", a sex magic ritual intended to summon an incarnation of Babalon, the supreme Goddess in Crowley's pantheon.During this period, Hubbard authored a document which has been called the "Affirmations", a series of statements  relating to various physical, sexual, psychological and social issues that he was encountering in his life. The Affirmations appear to have been intended to be used as a form of self-hypnosis with the intention of resolving the author's psychological problems and instilling a positive mental attitude.
Parsons, Hubbard and Sara invested nearly their entire savings — the vast majority contributed by Parsons and Sara — in a plan for Hubbard and Sara to buy yachts on the East Coast and sail them to the West Coast to sell. Hubbard had a different idea, writing to the U.S. Navy requesting permission to undertake a world cruise.  Parsons attempted to recover his money by obtaining an injunction to prevent Hubbard and Sara leaving the country or disposing of the remnants of his assets, but ultimately only received a $2,900 promissory note from Hubbard. Parsons returned home "shattered" and was forced to sell his mansion.
On August 10, 1946, Hubbard married Sara, though he was still married to his first wife Polly.  Hubbard resumed his fiction writing to supplement his small disability allowance. In August 1947, Hubbard returned to the pages of Astounding with a serialized novel "The End is Not Yet", about a young nuclear physicist who tries to stop a world takeover by building a new philosophical system.  In October 1947, the magazine began serializing Ole Doc Methuselah, the first in a series about the "Soldiers of Light", supremely skilled, extremely long-lived physicians.  In February and March 1950, Campbell's Astounding serialized the Hubbard novel To the Stars about young engineer on interstellar trading starship who learns that months about ship amounts to centuries on Earth, making the ship his only remaining home.   During his time in California,  Hubbard began acting as a sort of amateur stage hypnotist or "swami".Hubbard repeatedly wrote to the Veterans Administration (VA) asking for an increase in his war pension. Finally, in October 1947, he wrote to request psychiatric treatment:

After trying and failing for two years to regain my equilibrium in civil life, I am utterly unable to approach anything like my own competence. My last physician informed me that it might be very helpful if I were to be examined and perhaps treated psychiatrically or even by a psychoanalyst. Toward the end of my service I avoided out of pride any mental examinations, hoping that time would balance a mind which I had every reason to suppose was seriously affected. I cannot account for nor rise above long periods of moroseness and suicidal inclinations, and have newly come to realize that I must first triumph above this before I can hope to rehabilitate myself at all. ... I cannot, myself, afford such treatment.  Would you please help me?
The VA eventually did increase his pension, but his money problems continued. In the summer of 1948, Hubbard was arrested by the San Luis Obispo sheriff on a charge of petty theft for passing a fraudulent check.Beginning in June 1948, the nationally-syndicated wire service United Press ran a story on an American Legion-sponsored psychiatric ward in Savannah, Georgia, which sought to keep mentally-ill war veterans out of jail.  In late 1948, Hubbard and his second wife Sara moved from California to Savannah, Georgia, where he would later claim to have worked as a volunteer in a psychiatric clinic. Hubbard claimed he had "processed an awful lot of Negroes" and wrote of having observed a psychiatrist using the threat of institutionalization in a state hospital to solicit funds from a patient's husband.  In letters to friends sent from Savannah, Hubbard began to make the first public mentions of what was to become Dianetics.

In the Dianetics era
Inspired by science-fiction of his friend Robert Heinlein, Hubbard announced plans to write a book which would claim to "make supermen".   Hubbard announced to the public that there existed a superhuman condition which he called the state of "Clear". He claimed people in that state would have a perfectly functioning mind with an improved IQ and photographic memory. The "Clear" would be cured of physical ailments ranging from poor eyesight to the common cold, which Hubbard asserted were purely psychosomatic.
To promote his upcoming book, Hubbard enlisted his longtime-editor John W. Campbell, who had a long-standing fascination with fringe psychologies and psychic powers ("psionics"). Campbell invited Hubbard and Sara to move into a New Jersey cottage. Campbell, in turn, recruited an acquaintance, medical doctor Joseph Winter, to help promote the book. Campbell wrote Winter to extol Hubbard, claiming that Hubbard had worked with nearly 1000 cases and cured every single one.  The birth of Hubbard's second daughter Alexis Valerie, delivered by Winter on March 8, 1950, came in the middle of the preparations to launch Dianetics.  
The basic content of Dianetics was a rehash of Psychoanalysis. Like Freud, Hubbard taught that the brain recorded memories (or "engrams") which were stored in the unconscious mind (which Hubbbard restyled "the reactive mind"). Past memories could be triggered later in life, causing psychological, emotional, or even physical problems. By sharing their memories with a friendly listener (or "auditor"), a person could overcome their past pain and thus cure themselves.  Through Dianetics, Hubbard claimed that most illnesses were psychosomatic and caused by engrams, including arthritis, dermatitis, allergies, asthma, coronary difficulties, eye trouble, bursitis, ulcers, sinusitis and migraine headaches. He further claimed that dianetic therapy could treat these illnesses, and also included cancer and diabetes as conditions that Dianetic research was focused on.
Accompanied by an article in Astounding's May 1950 issue,  Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health was released on May 9.  Although Dianetics was poorly received by the press and the scientific and medical professions, the book was an immediate commercial success and sparked "a nationwide cult of incredible proportions".  Five hundred Dianetic auditing groups were set up across the United States,   and Hubbard established the "Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation".  Financial controls were lax, and Hubbard himself took large sums with no explanation of what he was doing with it.Dianetics lost public credibility on August 10 when a presentation by Hubbard before an audience of 6,000 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles failed disastrously. He introduced a woman named Sonya Bianca and told the audience that as a result of undergoing Dianetic therapy she now possessed perfect recall, only for her to forget the color of Hubbard's necktie.  A large part of the audience walked out, and the debacle was publicized by popular science writer Martin Gardner.    By late 1950, Hubbard's foundations were in financial crisis.  Hubbard's publisher Arthur Ceppos, his longtime promoter Joseph Campbell, and medical doctor-turned-Dianetics endorser Joseph Winter all resigned under acrimonious circumstances.In late 1950, Hubbard began an affair with employee Barbara Klowden, prompting Sara to start he own affair with Miles Hollister.  On February 23, 1951, Sara and her lover consulted with a psychiatrist about Hubbard, who advised that Sara was in grave danger and Hubbard should be institutionalized.  The trio telephoned the head of the Elizabeth foundation, to request funding for the hospitalization -- that individual, Jack Maloney, informed L. Ron Hubbard of the plans to institutionalize him.  That night, L. Ron Hubbard and two trusted aides kidnapped Hubbard's year-old daughter Alexis and wife Sara and attempted unsuccessfully to find a doctor to examine Sara and declare her insane. He let Sara go but took Alexis to Cuba. Hubbard denounced Sara and her lover to the FBI, portraying them in a letter as communist infiltrators -- an agent annotated his correspondence with the comment, "Appears mental".
On April 12, Sara's story was published in the press, leading to  headlines such as "Ron Hubbard Insane, Says His Wife". Hubbard's first wife Polly evidently saw the headlines and wrote to Sara on May 2 offering her help.  In June, Sara finally secured the return of her daughter by agreeing to a settlement in which she signed a statement, written by Hubbard, declaring that she had been misrepresented in the press and that she had always believed he was "fine and brilliant man."

The Dianetics craze "burned itself out as quickly as it caught fire", and the movement appeared to be on the edge of total collapse. However, it was temporarily saved by Don Purcell, a millionaire who agreed to support a new Foundation in Wichita, Kansas.   In August 1951, Hubbard published Science of Survival. In that book, Hubbard introduced concepts as the immortal soul (or "Thetan") and past-life regressions (or "Whole Track Auditing"). The Wichita Foundation underwrote the costs of printing the book, but it recorded poor sales when first published, with only 1,250 copies of the first edition being printed.  The Wichita Foundation became financially nonviable after a court ruled that it was liable for the unpaid debts of its defunct predecessor in Elizabeth, N.J. The ruling prompted Purcell and the other directors of the Wichita Foundation to file for voluntary bankruptcy in February 1952.  Hubbard resigned immediately and accused Purcell of having been bribed by the American Medical Association to destroy Dianetics.  Hubbard emptied the Wichita foundation's bank accounts, in part through forgery.

Pivot to Scientology
Having lost rights to Dianetics, Hubbard switched to Scientology. 
At a convention in Wichita, Hubbard announced that he had discovered a new science beyond Dianetics which he called "Scientology". Whereas the goal of Dianetics had been to reach a superhuman state of "Clear", Scientology promised a chance to achieve god-like powers in a state called Operating Thetan.  Hubbard introduced a device called an "electropsychometer" (or e-meter), which called for users to hold two soup-cans in their hands to measure changes in skin conductivity due to variance in sweat or grip. Roughly similar devices had been in experimental use by psychologists for decades. Rather than a mundane biofeedback device, Hubbard presented the e-meter as having "an almost mystical power to reveal an individual's innermost thoughts".Hubbard married a staff member, 20-year-old Mary Sue Whipp, and the pair moved to Phoenix, Arizona. Hubbard was joined by his 18-year-old son Nibs, who become a Scientology staff member and "professor".  Scientology was organized in a very different way from the decentralized Dianetics movement — The Hubbard Association of Scientologists (HAS) was the only official Scientology organization. Branches or "orgs" were organized as franchises, rather like a fast food restaurant chain. Each franchise holder was required to pay ten percent of income to Hubbard's central organization.  In July, Hubbard published "What to Audit" (later re-titled Scientology: A History of Man),  which taught everyone has subconscious traumatic memories of their past lives as clams, sloths, and cavemen which cause neuroses and health problems.  In November 1952, Hubbard published Scientology 8-80, followed up in December with Scientology 8-8008, which argued that the physical universe is the creation of the mind.: 103 

In December, Hubbard gave a seventy-hour series of lectures in Philadelphia that was attended by 38 people in which he delved into the occult.  In the lectures, Hubbard connects rituals and the practice of Scientology to the magickal practices of Aleister Crowley,  recommending Crowley's book The Master Therion.    During the Philadelphia course, Hubbard jokes that he is "the prince of darkness", which is met with laughter from the audience.  On December 16, 1952, Hubbard was arrested in the middle of a lecture for failing to return $9,000 withdrawn from the Wichita Foundation; He eventually settled the debt by paying $1,000 and returning a car belonging to Wichita financier Don Purcell.In April 1953, Hubbard proposed setting up a chain of "Spiritual Guidance Centers" as part of what he called "the religion angle".  On December 18, 1953, Hubbard incorporated the Church of Scientology in Camden, New Jersey. The religious transformation was explained as a way to protect Scientologists from charges of practicing medicine without a license.  The idea may not have been new; Hubbard has been quoted as telling a science fiction convention in 1948: "Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion."

In the Church of Scientology era
By 1954, the IRS recognized the Church of Scientology of California as a tax-exempt organization and by 1966, the Washington, D.C. 'Founding Church of Scientology' received tax-exempt status nationwide. The Church of Scientology became a highly profitable enterprise for Hubbard, as he was paid a percentage of the Church's gross income. By 1957 he was being paid about $250,000 (equivalent to US$2,604,858 in 2022).  His family grew, too, with Mary Sue giving birth to three more children—Geoffrey Quentin McCaully on January 6, 1954; Mary Suzette Rochelle on February 13, 1955; and Arthur Ronald Conway on June 6, 1958.

Hubbard was notorious for his policies of attacking his perceived enemies.   Nibs recalled that Hubbard "only knew how to do one thing and that was to destroy people."  Hubbard told Scientologists to "Don't ever defend, always attack.", encouraging them to find or manufacture evidence and to file harassing lawsuits against enemies.  Any individual breaking away from Scientology and setting up his own group was to be shut down.  Most of the formerly independent Scientology and Dianetics groups were either driven out of business or were absorbed into Hubbard's organizations. Hubbard finally achieved victory over Don Purcell in 1954 when the latter, worn out by constant litigation, handed the copyrights of Dianetics back to Hubbard.After dealing with Parcel, Hubbard turned his attention to attacking psychiatrists, who he blamed for the backlash against Dianetics and Scientology.  In 1955, Hubbard authored a text titled: Brain-Washing: A Synthesis of the Russian Textbook on Psychopolitics which purported to be a secret manual linking Psychiatry and Communism written by a Soviet secret police chief. Hubbard founded the "National Academy of American Psychology" which sought to issue a "loyalty oath" to psychologists and psychiatrists. Those who opposed the oath were to be labelled "Subversive psychiatrists", while those who merely refused to sign the oath would be labelled "Potentially Subversive".  Hubbard denounced psychiatric abuses, writing that psychoanalysis had been "superseded by tyrannous sadism, practiced by unprincipled men".  Wrote Hubbard:

Today men who call themselves analysts are merrily sawing out patients' brains, shocking them with murderous drugs, striking them with high voltages, burying them underneath mounds of ice, placing them in restraints, 'sterilizing' them sexually and generally conducting themselves much as their patients would were they given the chance. 

In 1956, Hubbard released Fundamentals of Thought, which teaches that life is a game and divides people into pieces, players, and game-makers. 
The following year, Hubbard published All About Radiation, which falsely claimed that radiation poisoning and even cancer can be cured by vitamins. In 1958, inspired by the success of Bridey Murphy, Hubbard authored Have You Lived Before This Life?, a collection of past life regressions.In 1958, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service withdrew the Washington, D.C., Church of Scientology's tax exemption after it found that Hubbard and his family were profiting unreasonably from Scientology's ostensibly non-profit income. In the spring of 1959, Hubbard purchased Saint Hill Manor, an 18th-century English country house formerly owned by the Maharaja of Jaipur. The house became Hubbard's permanent residence and an international training center for Scientologists.
That year Hubbard learned his son Nibs had resigned from the organization, citing financial difficulties.  Hubbard regarded the departure as a betrayal.  Hubbard introduced "security checking", a structured interrogation using the e-meter, to identify those he termed "potential trouble sources" and "suppressive persons". Members of the Church of Scientology were interrogated with the aid of E-meters and were asked questions such as "Have you ever practiced homosexuality?" and "Have you ever had unkind thoughts about L. Ron Hubbard?"Since its inception, Hubbard marketed Dianetics and Scientology through false medical claims.  On January 4, 1963, US Food and Drug Administration agents raided American offices of the Church of Scientology, seizing over a hundred E-meters as illegal medical devices, thousands of pills being marketed as "radiation cures", and tons of literature that they accused of making false medical claims.  In November 1963 Victoria, Australia, government opened an Inquiry into the Church, which stood was accused of brainwashing, blackmail, extortion and damaging the mental health of its members.   Its report, published in October 1965, condemned every aspect of Scientology and Hubbard himself.  The report led to Scientology being banned in Victoria, Western Australia and South Australia, and led to more negative publicity around the world. Public perceptions of Scientology changed from "relatively harmless, if cranky" to a "evil, dangerous" group that performs hypnosis and brainwashing.  Scientology attracted increasingly unfavorable publicity across the English-speaking world.Hubbard took three major new initiatives in the face of these challenges. By 1965, "Ethics Technology" was introduced to tighten internal discipline within Scientology. It required Scientologists to "disconnect" from any organization or individual—including family members—deemed to be disruptive or "suppressive". Scientologists were also required to write "Knowledge Reports" on each other, reporting transgressions or misapplications of Scientology methods. Hubbard promulgated a long list of punishable "Misdemeanors", "Crimes", and "High Crimes".  At the start of March 1966, Hubbard created the Guardian's Office (GO), a new agency within the Church of Scientology that was headed by his wife Mary Sue. It dealt with Scientology's external affairs, including public relations, legal actions and the gathering of intelligence on perceived threats. As Scientology faced increasingly negative media attention, the GO retaliated with hundreds of writs for libel and slander; it issued more than forty on a single day. Hubbard ordered his staff to find "lurid, blood sex crime actual evidence  [sic] on [Scientology's] attackers". The "fair game" policy was codified in 1967, which was applicable to anyone deemed an "enemy" of Scientology: "May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed."
Newspapers and politicians in the UK pressed the British government for action against Scientology.  In April 1966, hoping to form a remote "safe haven" for Scientology, Hubbard traveled to the southern African country Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe). Despite his attempts to curry favour with the local government, Rhodesia promptly refused to renew Hubbard's visa, compelling him to leave the country.: 80–81  Finally, at the end of 1966, Hubbard acquired his own fleet of three ships.  In July 1968, the British Minister of Health announced that foreign Scientologists would no longer be permitted to enter the UK and Hubbard himself was excluded from the country as an "undesirable alien".  Further inquiries were launched in Canada, New Zealand and South Africa.

In the Sea Org era
When Hubbard established the Sea Org he publicly declared that he had relinquished his management responsibilities over the Church of Scientology. In fact, he received daily telex messages from Scientology organizations around the world reporting their statistics and income. The Church of Scientology sent him $15,000 a week along with millions of dollars that were transferred to bank accounts. Church of Scientology couriers arrived regularly, conveying luxury food for Hubbard and his family or cash that had been smuggled from England to avoid currency export restrictions.Hubbard's fleet began sailing from port to port in the Mediterranean Sea and eastern North Atlantic, rarely staying anywhere for longer than six weeks, as Hubbard claimed "many people were after him" and if he were unable to continue his work, "there would be social and economic chaos, if not a nuclear holocaust".Hubbard wrote OT III in late 1966 and early 1967 in North Africa while on his way to Las Palmas to join the Enchanter, the first vessel of his private Scientology fleet (the "Sea Org").  In a letter from that time to his wife Mary Sue, Hubbard said that, in order to assist his research, he was drinking alcohol and taking stimulants and depressants. In 1967, Hubbard announced the release of OT3, the "Wall of Fire", revealing the secrets of an immense disaster that had occurred "on this planet, and on the other seventy-five planets which form this Confederacy, seventy-five million years ago". Scientologists were required to undertake the first two OT levels before learning how Xenu, the leader of the Galactic Confederacy, had shipped billions of people to Earth and blown them up with hydrogen bombs, following which their traumatized spirits were stuck together at "implant stations", brainwashed with false memories and eventually became contained within human beings. The discovery of OT3 was said to have taken a major physical toll on Hubbard, who announced that he had broken a knee, an arm, and his back during the course of his research. A year later, in 1968, he unveiled OT levels 4 to 6 and began delivering OT training courses to Scientologists aboard the Royal Scotman.
Scientologists around the world were presented with a glamorous picture of life in the Sea Org and many applied to join Hubbard aboard the fleet. What they found was rather different from the image. Most of those joining had no nautical experience at all. Mechanical difficulties and blunders by the crews led to a series of embarrassing incidents and near-disasters. Following one incident in which the rudder of the Royal Scotman was damaged during a storm, Hubbard ordered the ship's entire crew to be reduced to a "condition of liability" and wear gray rags tied to their arms. The ship itself was treated the same way, with dirty tarpaulins tied around its funnel to symbolize its lower status. According to those aboard, conditions were appalling; the crew was worked to the point of exhaustion, given meager rations and forbidden to wash or change their clothes for several weeks. Hubbard maintained a harsh disciplinary regime aboard the fleet, punishing mistakes by confining people in the Royal Scotman's bilge tanks without toilet facilities and with food provided in buckets. At other times erring crew members were thrown overboard with Hubbard looking on and, occasionally, filming. David Mayo, a Sea Org member at the time, later recalled trying to avoid negative thoughts about Hubbard, as routine security checkin asked "Have you ever had any unkind thoughts about LRH?" and "you could get into very serious trouble if you had. So you tried hard not to."  One member of the Sea Org recalled Hubbard punishing a little boy by confining him to the ship's chain locker.A Scientology biography states that "free of organizational duties and aided by the first Sea Org members, L. Ron Hubbard now had the time and facilities to confirm in the physical universe some of the events and places he had encountered in his journeys down the track of time."On two separate occasions, orders to use R2-45 (killing them with a .45 pistol) on specific individuals were published in a prominent Scientology magazine. On March 6, 1968, Hubbard issued an internal memo titled "Racket Exposed", in which he denounced twelve people as "Enemies of mankind, the planet and all life", and ordered that "Any Sea Org member contacting any of them is to use Auditing Process R2-45."  The memo was subsequently reproduced, with another name added, in the Church of Scientology's internal journal, The Auditor. Another four people were named in a second R2-45 order published in The Auditor later in 1968. Stephen A. Kent of the University of Alberta characterises such orders as demonstrations of "the manifestation of Hubbard's malignant narcissism and, more specifically, his narcissistic rage." The Santa Rosa News-Herald reported in 1982 that "attorneys have uncovered evidence to suggest that between 1975 and 1977, during the FBI's investigation of the cult, meetings of Scientology executives were held in which there were discussions relative to 'auditing' high-level FBI members with auditing process R2-45."Hubbard taught that the problems of this period were due to "vicious, covert international attacks" by the United States government, "all of which were proven false and baseless, which were to last 27 years and finally culminated in the Government being sued for 750 million dollars for conspiracy." Behind the attacks, stated Hubbard, lay a vast conspiracy of "psychiatric front groups" secretly controlling governments: "Every single lie, false charge and attack on Scientology has been traced directly to this group's members. They have sought at great expense for nineteen years to crush and eradicate any new development in the field of the mind. They are actively preventing any effectiveness in this field."From about 1970, Hubbard was attended aboard ship by the children of Sea Org members, organized as the Commodore's Messenger Organization (CMO). They were mainly young girls dressed in hot pants and halter tops, who were responsible for running errands for Hubbard such as lighting his cigarettes, dressing him or relaying his verbal commands to other members of the crew. In addition to his wife Mary Sue, he was accompanied by all four of his children by her, though not his first son Nibs, who had defected from Scientology in late 1959. The younger Hubbards were all members of the Sea Org and shared its rigors.
Along the way, Hubbard sought to establish a safe haven in "a friendly little country where Scientology would be allowed to prosper", as Miller puts it. The fleet stayed at Corfu for several months in 1968–1969. Hubbard renamed the ships after Greek gods—the Royal Scotman was rechristened Apollo—and he praised the recently established military dictatorship. The Sea Org was represented as "Professor Hubbard's Philosophy School" in a telegram to the Greek government. In March 1969, however, Hubbard and his ships were ordered to leave.
The practice of prominently displaying the cross in Scientology centers was instituted in 1969 following hostile press coverage in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, when Scientology's status as a legitimate religion was being questioned. In response, Hubbard ordered that, "Any staff who are trained at any level as auditors (but not in AOs) are to be  clothed in the traditioned ministerial black suit, black vest white collar silver cross for  ordinary org wear."In October 1969, The Sunday Times published an exposé by Australian journalist Alex Mitchell detailing Hubbard's occult experiences with Parsons and Aleister Crowley's teachings.  The Church responded with a statement, claiming without evidence Hubbard was sent in by the US Government to "break up Black Magic in America" and succeeded.In mid-1972, Hubbard again tried to find a safe haven, this time in Morocco, establishing contacts with the country's secret police and training senior policemen and intelligence agents in techniques for detecting subversives. The program ended in failure when it became caught up in internal Moroccan politics, and Hubbard left the country hastily in December 1972.In 1972,  French prosecutors charged Hubbard and the French Church of Scientology with fraud and customs violations. At risk of being extradited to France,: 94   Hubbard left the Sea Org fleet temporarily at the end of 1972, living incognito in Queens, New York. Hubbard's health deteriorated significantly during this period. A chain-smoker, he also suffered from bursitis and excessive weight, and had a prominent growth on his forehead. Hubbard returned to his flagship in September 1973 when the threat of extradition had abated.Hubbard suffered serious injuries in a motorcycle accident on the island of Tenerife in December 1973. In 1974, Hubbard established the Rehabilitation Project Force. Quentin Hubbard reportedly found it difficult to adjust and attempted suicide in mid-1974.  Also in 1974,  L. Ron Hubbard confessed to two top executives, Bill Franks and David Mayo, that "People do not [leave Scientology] because of [their unconfessed sins], they leave because [they stop liking Scientoloy or stop believing it in]". Hubbard warned "If any of this information ever became public, I would lose all control of the orgs and eventually Scientology as a whole."
Throughout this period, Hubbard was heavily involved in directing the activities of the Guardian's Office (GO), the legal bureau/intelligence agency that he had established in 1966. He believed that Scientology was being attacked by an international Nazi conspiracy, which he termed the "Tenyaka Memorial", through a network of drug companies, banks and psychiatrists in a bid to take over the world. In 1973, he instigated the "Snow White Program" and directed the GO to remove negative reports about Scientology from government files and track down their sources. The GO was ordered to "get all false and secret files on Scientology, LRH  ... that cannot be obtained legally, by all possible lines of approach ... i.e., job penetration, janitor penetration, suitable guises utilizing covers." His involvement in the GO's operations was concealed through the use of codenames. The GO carried out covert campaigns on his behalf such as Operation Bulldozer Leak, intended "to effectively spread the rumor that will lead Government, media, and individual SPs to conclude that LRH has no control of the C of S and no legal liability for Church activity". He was kept informed of GO operations, such as the theft of medical records from a hospital, harassment of psychiatrists and infiltrations of organizations that had been critical of Scientology at various times, such as the Better Business Bureau, the American Medical Association, and American Psychiatric Association.Members of the GO infiltrated and burglarized numerous government organizations, including the U.S. Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service.Paulette Cooper, a freelance journalist and author, had begun researching Scientology in 1968 and wrote a critical article on the church for the British magazine Queen (now Harper's Bazaar) in 1969. The church promptly sued for libel, adding Queen to the dozens of British publications that it had already sued.  Undeterred, Cooper expanded her article into a full-length book, The Scandal of Scientology: A chilling examination of the nature, beliefs and practices of the "now religion"; it was published by Tower Publications, Inc. of New York in the summer of 1971.  The Church of Scientology filed at least 19 lawsuits against Cooper throughout the 1970s and 1980s, which Cooper considered part of "a typical Scientology dirty-tricks campaign" and which Cooper's attorney Michael Flynn said was motivated by L. Ron Hubbard's declaration that the purpose of a lawsuit was to "harass and discourage". Cooper discontinued her legal actions against Scientology in 1985 after receiving an out-of-court settlement.

In hiding
In the summer of 1975, on the Caribbean island of Curaçao, Hubbard suffered a heart attack and pulmonary embolism. Hubbard spent two days in the ICU, followed by three weeks in hospital.  Hubbard decided to relocate back to the United States and to establish a "land base" for the Sea Org in Florida. In October 1975, Hubbard moved into a hotel suite in Daytona Beach while The Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Florida, was secretly acquired as the location for the "land base". On December 5, 1975, Hubbard and his wife Mary Sue moved into "King Arthur's Court", a condominium complex in a nearby city.   According to a former member of the Sea Organization pseudonymously named "Heidi Forrester", in late 1975 she met with a man fitting Hubbard's description who apparently performed a Crowleyite sex magick ritual called Dianism using her.: 126 : 127  Afterwards, "Forrester" was ordered to magically conceive a child; When she failed to do so, she was declared to be in a state of "treason" and punished.: 128 Hubbard's presence was meant to be a closely guarded secret but was accidentally compromised the following month  when Hubbard revealed his identity to a tailor who was a science-fiction fan. Hubbard's presence was soon reported in a local paper, prompting him to immediately leave Florida for Washington, D.C.On June 11, 1976, the FBI apprehended two Guardian's Office agents inside the US Courthouse in D.C., prompting Hubbard to flee the city and move cross country to a safe house in Culver City, California. He lived there for only about three months, relocating in October to the more private confines of a ranch near La Quinta. On October 28, 1976, Las Vegas police discovered Quentin Hubbard unconscious in his car. A  hose connected to the tailpipe was found in the car's window, though a postmortem test for carbon monoxide was negative.  L. Ron Hubbard was furious at the news, shouting, "That stupid fucking kid! Look what he's done to me!" Quentin died two weeks later without having regained consciousness. Mary Sue Hubbard told Scientologists that Quentin had died from encephalitis.On July 8, 1977, the FBI carried out simultaneous raids on Guardians Office locations in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. They retrieved wiretap equipment, burglary tools and some 90,000 pages of incriminating documents. On July 15, a week after the raid, Hubbard fled with Pat Broeker to Sparks, Nevada. While hiding in Sparks, Hubbard authored a screenplay titled Revolt in the Stars based on the Xenu story and by December he was prepared to begin production.  Hubbard's screenplay was passed around Hollywood in 1978.
In February 1978, L. Ron Hubbard was convicted, in absentia, by a French court for obtaining money under false pretenses. He was fined and sentenced to four years in prison.  On August 18, 1978, Hubbard collapsed while filming in the desert. Suffering from a pulmonary embolism, Hubbard fell into a coma, but later recovered. Hubbard summoned his personal auditor, David Mayo, to heal him;  Mayo recalled: "Hubbard considered the cause of illness to be some bad auditing he'd had just prior, so the idea was to find out what had gone wrong in the auditing and correct that - it would be a spiritual cure."In April 1979, Hubbard went further into hiding, moving to an apartment in Hemet, California, where his only contact with the outside world was via ten trusted messengers.  In August 1979, he saw his wife for the last time. Hubbard faced a possible indictment for his role in Operation Freakout, the GO's campaign against New York journalist Paulette Cooper.In February 1980 he disappeared into deep cover in the company of two trusted messengers, Pat and Annie Broeker.  On October 26, eleven senior people in the church's Guardian's Office were convicted of obstructing justice, burglary of government offices, and theft of documents and government property.For the first few years of the 1980s, Hubbard and the Broekers lived on the move, touring the Pacific Northwest in a recreational vehicle and living for a while in apartments in Newport Beach and Los Angeles.  Hubbard used his time in hiding to write his first new works of science fiction for nearly thirty years—Battlefield Earth (1982) and Mission Earth, a ten-volume series published between 1985 and 1987. They received mixed responses; as writer Jeff Walker puts it, they were "treated derisively by most critics but greatly admired by followers".In OT VIII, dated 1980, Hubbard explains the document is intended for circulation only after his death. In the document, Hubbard teaches that "the historic Jesus was not nearly the sainted figure [he] has been made out to be. In addition to being a lover of young boys and men. he was given to uncontrollable bursts of temper and hatred". Hubbard mentions the Book of Revelation and its prophecy of a time when "an arch-enemy of Christ, referred to as the anti-Christ, will reign". According to Hubbard, the "anti-Christ represents the forces of Lucifer". Hubbard writes "My mission could be said to fulfill the Biblical promise represented by this brief anti-Christ period."  Hubbard told his followers to preserve his teachings until an eventual reincarnation when he would return "not as a religious leader but as a political one".
On November 6, Nibs Hubbard sued for control of his father's estate, saying that his father was either deceased or incompetent. His reclusive father was proven to still be alive, although he never appeared in court. In 1983, Nibs gave an interview with Penthouse magazine.
For the last two years of his life, Hubbard withdrew from public life, prompting various rumours and media speculation. He spent his time in a luxury Blue Bird motorhome on a ranch near Creston, California. He repeatedly redesigned the property, spending millions of dollars remodeling the ranch house—which went virtually uninhabited—and building a quarter-mile horse-racing track with an observation tower, which reportedly was never used. Hubbard suffered further ill-health, including chronic pancreatitis, during his time in Creston.  He was still closely involved in managing the Church of Scientology via secretly delivered orders and continued to receive large amounts of money, of which Forbes magazine estimated "at least $200 million [was] gathered in Hubbard's name through 1982".
In September 1985, the IRS notified the Church that it was considering indicting Hubbard for tax fraud. In December 1985, Hubbard allegedly attempted suicide by e-meter. He suffered a stroke on January 17, 1986, and died a week later. His body was cremated and the ashes were scattered at sea.

Sources and doctrines
Hubbard has been described as an "eclectic and ingenious" religious innovator who cobbled together ideas from a diverse array of sources and traditions.Hubbard explicitly cited Freud's psychoanalysis as a source for Dianetics and Scientology, renaming some terms.  Hubbard's wife Sara recalled him discussing biologist Richard Semon, who had coined the term "engram" which became a centerpiece of Dianetics.  Hubbard incorporated the 1920s psychoanalytic theory of birth trauma and taught his followers to maintain total silence during the birth process -- the first edition of Dianetics featured a dust jacket advertisement for psychoanalyst Nandor Fodor's book on "the trauma of birth and pre-natal conditioning".  Hubbard explicitly credited  Social Darwinism pioneer Herbert Spencer who coined the phrase  "survival of the fittest" -- Hubbard taught the 'one command' given to all life is to "survive" and later authored a book called Science of Survival.Hubbard cited author Alfred Korzybski as an influence;  After two years observing patients at St. Elizabeth's psychiatric hospital in D.C. in collaboration with superintendent William Alanson White,  Korzybski published an impenetrable tome titled Science and Sanity outlining a doctrine he called "General Semantics".  After Korzybski founded an "Institute" to promote his teachings and began offering seminars, his ideas were incorporated into the science-fiction of Hubbard-associates Van Vogt and Heinlein, who envisioned futures where research into General Semantics had transformed some individuals into superhumans;  Hubbard cited this fiction in a letter announcing the central conceit of Dianetics: a book that promises to "make supermen".Hubbard's son Nibs argued that Aleister Crowley was his father's most important source of inspiration, and scholar Hugh Urban has written extensively about the occult roots of Scientology. Like Crowley, Hubbard identified himself with diabolical figures from the Book of Revelation.  Just as Aleister Crowley taught a soul could temporarily leave their body through astral projection, Hubbard taught a thetan could journey outside the body by "going exterior". Like Crowley, Hubbard taught extensively about hypnosis and recommended a 1949 book on the subject. Hubbard told of hypnotic implants, privately teaching human religions are the product of such implants.  The use of hypnosis or trance to remember past lives was an extant practice in occult circles prior to Dianetics.   Crowley and Hubbard both placed emphasis on a Goddess figure, variously called Babalon, Hathor, or Diana -- a name Hubbard gave to a ship and a daughter, and the term Dianetics may have been inspired by the Goddess.  Crowley taught a sex magic ritual called karezza or Dianism which Hubbard is believed to have practiced.Hubbard likened his own teachings about interstellar empires and invader forces to the early 20th-century fiction genre Space Opera.  Hubbard drew upon US Navy traditions in creating the Sea Org, and he once said the Commodore's Messenger Organization had been inspired by the Hitler Youth.: 323

Legacy
Hubbard was survived by his wife Mary Sue and all of his children except his second son Quentin. His will provided a trust fund to support Mary Sue; her children Arthur, Diana and Suzette; and Katherine, the daughter of his first wife Polly. He disinherited two of his other children. L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. had become estranged, changed his name to "Ronald DeWolf" and, in 1982, sued unsuccessfully for control of his father's estate. Alexis Valerie, Hubbard's daughter by his second wife Sara, had attempted to contact her father in 1971. She was rebuffed with the implied claim that her real father was Jack Parsons rather than Hubbard, and that her mother had been a Nazi spy during the war. Both later accepted settlements when litigation was threatened. In 2001, Diana and Suzette were reported to still be Church members, while Arthur had left and become an artist. Hubbard's great-grandson, Jamie DeWolf, is a noted slam poet.Opinions are divided about Hubbard's literary legacy.  The sociologist William Sims Bainbridge writes that even at his peak in the late 1930s Hubbard was regarded by readers of Astounding Science Fiction as merely "a passable, familiar author but not one of the best", while by the late 1970s "the [science fiction] subculture wishes it could forget him" and fans gave him a worse rating than any other of the "Golden Age" writers.  The Science Fiction Encyclopedia argues that while Hubbard could not be consider a peer of the 'prime movers' like Asimov, Heinlein, and Sprague de Camp, Hubbard could be classed with Van Vogt as 'rogue members of the early Campbell pantheon'.In 1996, the Los Angeles City Council renamed a street close to the Scientology headquarters "L. Ron Hubbard Way". In 2011, the West Valley City Council declared March 13 as L. Ron Hubbard Centennial Day. In April 2016, the New Jersey State Board of Education approved Hubbard's birthday as one of its religious holidays.
The City University of New York's American Religious Identification Survey found that in 2009 only 25,000 Americans identified as Scientologists.In 1966, two former Scientologists founded the Process Church of the Final Judgment which mixed Hubbard's teachings with Satanism.  In 1969, a group led by former Scientologists Charles Manson and Bruce M. Davis was arrested and later convicted for their role in a series of high-profile murders. In 1971, former Scientologist Werner Erhard founded EST, a notable large group awareness training. In 1998, Keith Raniere drew upon Hubbard's writings and Erhard's techinques to create the large group awarenesss training ESP, a forerunner to the group NXIVM.  Raniere offered students a chance to reach a superhuman state called "Unified" and taught Hubbard's doctrine of "suppressive persons".  In 2019, Raniere was convicted  of racketeering for a pattern of crimes, including the sexual exploitation of a child, sex trafficking of women, and conspiracy to commit forced labor;  He was sentenced to 120 years in prison.In 2010, the Nation of Islam began introducing its followers to Hubbard's teachings, with leader Louis Farrakhan proclaiming "I thank God for Mr. L. Ron Hubbard"

In Scientology
Scientology leaders announced that Hubbard's body had become an impediment to his work and that he had decided to "drop his body" to continue his research on another planet, having "learned how to do it without a body". The copyrights of his works and much of his estate and wealth were willed to the Church of Scientology.The Church of Spiritual Technology (CST), a sister organization of the Church of Scientology, has engraved Hubbard's entire corpus of Scientology and Dianetics texts on steel tablets stored in titanium containers. They are buried at the Trementina Base in a vault under a mountain near Trementina, New Mexico, on top of which the CST's logo has been bulldozed on such a gigantic scale that it is visible from space.
Hubbard's presence still pervades Scientology. Every Church of Scientology maintains an office reserved for Hubbard, with a desk, chair and writing equipment, ready to be used. Lonnie D. Kliever notes that Hubbard was "the only source of the religion, and he has no successor". Hubbard is referred to simply as "Source" within Scientology and the theological acceptability of any Scientology-related activity is determined by how closely it adheres to Hubbard's doctrines. Hubbard's name and signature are official trademarks of the Religious Technology Center, established in 1982 to control and oversee the use of Hubbard's works and Scientology's trademarks and copyrights. The RTC is the central organization within Scientology's complex corporate hierarchy and has put much effort into re-checking the accuracy of all Scientology publications to "ensur[e] the availability of the pure unadulterated writings of Mr. Hubbard to the coming generations".The Danish historian of religions Mikael Rothstein describes Scientology as "a movement focused on the figure of Hubbard". He comments: "The fact that [Hubbard's] life is mythologized is as obvious as in the cases of Jesus, Muhammad or Siddartha Gotama. This is how religion works. Scientology, however, rejects this analysis altogether, and goes to great lengths to defend every detail of Hubbard's amazing and fantastic life as plain historical fact." Hubbard is presented as "the master of a multitude of disciplines" who performed extraordinary feats as a photographer, composer, scientist, therapist, explorer, navigator, philosopher, poet, artist, humanitarian, adventurer, soldier, scout, musician and many other fields of endeavor. The Church of Scientology portrays Hubbard's life and work as having proceeded seamlessly, "as if they were a continuous set of predetermined events and discoveries that unfolded through his lifelong research" even up to and beyond his death.According to Rothstein's assessment of Hubbard's legacy, Scientology consciously aims to transfer the charismatic authority of Hubbard to institutionalize his authority over the organization, even after his death. Hubbard is presented as a virtually superhuman religious ideal just as Scientology itself is presented as the most important development in human history. As Rothstein puts it, "reverence for Scientology's scripture is reverence for Hubbard, the man who in the Scientological perspective single-handedly brought salvation to all human beings." David G. Bromley of the University of Virginia comments that the real Hubbard has been transformed into a "prophetic persona", "LRH", which acts as the basis for his prophetic authority within Scientology and transcends his biographical history. According to Dorthe Refslund Christensen, Hubbard's hagiography directly compares him with Buddha. Hubbard is viewed as having made Eastern traditions more accessible by approaching them with a scientific attitude. "Hubbard is seen as the ultimate-cross-cultural savior; he is thought to be able to release man from his miserable condition because he had the necessary background, and especially the right attitude."According to Donald A. Westbrook's interviews with Scientologists, it might seem that Hubbard has been deified through the placement of busts and an office reserved for him in every organization, but Hubbard is not considered God to Scientologists—he is "Founder", he is "Source", he is fondly referred to as "Ron", and he is the model Operating Thetan to which adherents aspire.: 29–30

In popular culture
On November 21, 1997,  the Fox network aired an episode of X-Files spinoff Millennium titled "Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense" which satirized Lafayette Ronald Hubbard's biography in an brief opening narration about a character named "Juggernaut Onan Goopta" who dreamt of becoming a neuroscientist only to discover that "his own brain could not comprehend basic biology". The character attempts a philosophy degree, but "while reading Kirkegaard's 'The Sickness unto Death', he became sick and nearly died";   After writing an entire the book in a "single, feverish night" that changed the course of human history, the character began lecturing to standing room only crowds, "for he shrewdly refrained from providing chairs."  In a satire of both Hubbard and George Santayana, the character explains that painful memories must be exterminated, saying "those who cannot forget their past, are condemned to repeat it."  The character establishes an institute where patients are called 'doctors' and founds a religious order called Selfosophy staffed by an elite paramilitary inspired by the US Postal Service.  We are told the character died of cancer or "molted his earthly encumbrance to pursue his Selfosophical research in another dimension".On February 8, 1998, Fox comedy The Simpsons broadcast "The Joy of Sect",  satirizing Hubbard and Scientology when the family joins a group called the Movementarians ruled over by a figure called "The Leader" who physically resembles L. Ron Hubbard. The Movementarians' use of a 10-trillion-year commitment for its members alludes to the billion-year contract and both groups make extensive use of litigation.
In 2000, Hubbard novel was adapted into a film called Battlefield Earth, starring long-time Scientology celebrity John Travolta.  In 2001, a film titled The Profit parodied Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard.

In 2005, animated comedy South Park aired the episode "Trapped in the Closet" in which protagonist Stan is believed to be the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard.   The episode broadcast the great secret behind the church—a condensed version of the story of Xenu, according to the Scientology Operating Thetan III document.  During this, an onscreen caption reads "This is what Scientologists actually believe".  Prior to the episode, the story was almost completely unknown in mainstream culture.
Paul Thomas Anderson's 2012 film The Master  features a religious leader named Lancaster Dodd, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is based on Hubbard and shares a physical resemblance to him.  The film depicts a Navy washout with psychological issues who is unable to hold down steady employment after the war. Facing potential legal troubles, he flees California by stowing away on a ship captained by self-proclaimed nuclear physicist and philosopher Lancaster Dodd, leader of a movement called "The Cause".
On December 5, 2013, The Eric Andre Show aired a comedy sketch titled "Black Scientologists" where André's character proclaims "Not a lot of people know this, but L. Ron Hubbard was a black man.   His real name was L. Ron Hoyabembe!", while revealing an artist's conception of Hubbard wearing an afro.
In April 2015, following the recent release of Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief , Saturday Night Live aired a music video featuring the "Church of Neurotology", a parody of Scientology's 1990 music video "We Stand Tall".  Bobby Moynihan played a Hubbard-lookalike in the video.From 2018 to 2019, the show Strange Angel dramatized the life of Jack Parsons.   In the season 2 cliffhanger, actor Daniel Abeles played L. Ron Hubbard;  The series was cancelled after its second season.

Select bibliography
Hubbard was a prolific writer and lecturer across a wide variety of genres.  His works of fiction include several hundred short stories and many novels. According to the Church of Scientology, Hubbard produced some 65 million words on Dianetics and Scientology, contained in about 500,000 pages of written material, 3,000 recorded lectures and 100 films.
Early FictionBuckskin Brigades (1937) recounts the story of a white man adopted by the Blackfeet tribe.
Slaves of Sleep (1939) features a man, cursed by an evil genie, who instead of sleeping must now enter an Arabian Nights-like world ruled over by an evil-genie queen.
Death's Deputy (1940) is the story of an accident-prone pilot who seemingly cannot be killed
Final Blackout (1940) tells the story of a low-ranking British army officer who rises to the role of dictator.
Fear (1951), a psychological thriller, follows a professor who, after an episode of missing time, becomes paranoid that demons are haunting him.
Typewriter in the Sky (1951) features protagonist Mike de Wolf who finds himself inside a story being written by friend Horace Hackett.Dianetics and ScientologyDianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (May 1950) introduced concepts like Engram, Reactive Mind, and the State of Clear.
Science of Survival (June 1951) introduced concepts like the tone scale, the Thetan, and past lives.
What to Audit (July 1952), later re-titled Scientology: A History of Man linked  traumatic incidents throughout evolutionary history to modern health problems, for example, jaw trouble was said to result from unresolved trauma from having been a clam.
Scientology 8-80 and Scientology 8-8008 (November and December 1952) embraced the magical worldview, teaching that the physical universe is a creation of the mind.
The Fundamentals of Thought (1956) argued life is a game, describing some people as "pieces", others as "players", and an elite few as "game makers".
All About Radiation (1957) claimed radiation poisoning and cancer could be cured with vitamins.
Introduction to Scientology Ethics (1968) codified an authoritarian set of 'ethics conditions'.
Mission Into Time (1973) chronicled Hubbard's 1968 trip in the Mediterranean where he sought to find physical evidence of his past livesLate fictionRevolt in the Stars (1979), a screenplay version of the Xenu story
Battlefield Earth (1982), a novel set in the year 3000 when humanity has become an endangerous species, it tells the story of tribesman Johnny Goodboy Tyler who leads humanity in rebellion against the Psychlos, an evil alien race.
Mission Earth (1985-7), a ten book series, posthumously published, about an invasion of Earth by aliens called the Voltarian.

See also
Timeline of L. Ron Hubbard
Joseph Smith, creator of Mormonism
Helena Blavatsky, creator of Theosophy
Mary Baker Eddy, creator of Christian Science
Wallace Fard Muhammad, creator of the Nation of Islam
Ayn Rand, creator of Objectivism

References
Works cited
Further reading
External links

Official website 
Biographical documentation from The New Yorker
Operation Clambake. Critical material on Hubbard and Scientology
U.S. Government FBI Files for Hubbard via The Smoking Gun
Frenschkowski, Marco, "L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology: An annotated bibliographical survey of primary and selected secondary literature", Marburg Journal of Religion, Vol. 1. No. 1. July 1999, ISSN 1612-2941
L. Ron Hubbard at IMDb
L. Ron Hubbard at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
Hubbard, L Ron at The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
Hubbard, L Ron Archived October 4, 2018, at the Wayback Machine at the Encyclopedia of Fantasy