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The following first appeared in the private email list IVy-subscribers,
which is available to all those who subscribe to the
printed magazine, International Viewpoints.
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Hemorrhoids and Hubbard
by Phil Spickler
23 Aug 00

Dear Friends,
        Many thanks for the kindness of my peers in writing pleasant and
acknowledging responses to the post "Why I don't trust Phil Spickler."  I
particularly wish to thank Ray Krenik for advertently or inadvertently
suggesting a great hemorrhoid process to me, which might go something like
this: "Try to keep that hemorrhoid from saying 'Hello' to you."  Thanks
again, Ray, and let us never forget, be kind to your aching hemorrhoids --
they could be thetans in disguise!  All kidding aside, I have found thetans
in some of the most embarrassing places imaginable.  And now, on to Mr.
Hubbard.

        If it were New Year's, I'd probably make a resolution not to think
about his work or his effects, good or bad, except on the first Thursday in
months that have no "R" in their name, and on the night of the full moon.
But alas, my problem with trying not to think of Ron, as well as elephants,
is similar to the problem that philosophers and scientists had in the
centuries after Aristotle, since for centuries it became almost impossible to
say anything about anything that didn't include Aristotle's thoughts or
feelings about said subject.  Let's face it, he really poked around a lot in
his time, and it's only recently in the modern era that folks have been able
to wipe their sweaty brows and breathe a great sigh of relief that they have
managed to retire that giant and look to people and ideas that have in many,
but not all, cases exceeded that wild and crazy Greek's best efforts.  And so
I have a similar problem with the one or ones called L. Ron Hubbard.

         To use a quote from one of our most untrustworthy/trustworthy
presidents here in the United States, namely the one called Richard M. Nixon,
"Let me make one thing perfectly clear."  (Nixon, of course, had some other
things to say after that that I'm not going to say.  He had the temerity to
say he was not a crook, which of course proved to be false.)

        But anyway, the thing that I'd like to make perfectly clear is that I
truly, honestly, and with all my heart and souls do not believe that L. Ron
Hubbard is an "only-one" except in the worst sense of that expression.  I
once gave a whole series of lectures (brag, brag) at my humble soul shop
called a Mission of the Church of Scientology that took most of the people
that Ron had named in the front of the original version of _Science of
Survival_ as being the giants whose shoulders he stood upon, whose wisdom and
ideas he profited from, and whose understandings he used in the formulation
of his own systems.  In other places, in such books as _The Phoenix Lectures_
and elsewhere, before he became the Commodore, at about the same time that I
became Jesus Christ and Napoleon, he gave great credit for the best of his
thought to Hindu scriptures, Buddhism, Lao Tsu and the Tao, etc. etc. etc.,
and it was only in the final stages of his madness in the late '60's when he
wrote the "Policy Letter," in the midst of a psychotic break, called "Keeping
Scientology Working," that he denied all the benefits and ideas that he had
obtained from "the past" and from some of the creative geniuses who had
appeared during the years of Dianetics and Scientology.

        Furthermore, when I speak about 1950, I am not talking about all the
things that existed long before Western notions of mental health and
treatment came to pass.  I'm talking about the mental health establishment of
1950 -- psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts.  I'm not talking about
Vedanta and Christopher Isherwood; I'm not talking about Yogananda and the
Self-Realization Fellowship; I'm not talking about Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
and Annie Besant and Theosophy and their baby Krishnamurti.  I'm not talking
about all these areas that had to do with mysterious mysticism and all of the
possibilities and disabilities one might run into in such pursuits.  I'm
talking about what was the mainstream in this country, the United States, and
perhaps elsewhere, in 1950, and not just in Southern California, either.  I'm
not talking about Rosicrucianism and the Scribe at AMORC, not Jack Armstrong,
the All-American Boy, or Captain Midnight and his secret decoder ring.  I'm
talking about the world of mental therapies and psychotherapies that really
got going probably in the 19th century, so it's very recent, even though you
can find these monstrous materialistic approaches to the human soul popping
up throughout history, cosmic and otherwise.

      And this, my friends, for the nth time, is why I say, when L. Ron
Hubbard appeared with his Dianetics in 1950 and challenged the mental health
establishment with a technology that, in spite of its exaggerations, was a
lot more humane and easier to practice that what was around at the time.
Hubbard at that time (excuse my hemorrhoids) did not go around attacking
mystical spiritual groups, to the best of my knowledge.  That may have come
much later, but not then.

         Now I hope I've made this point perfectly clear, and correctly
labeled the area and the field that I'm actually talking about, and it does
not go beyond that.  OK?  All right?

        I myself, like many others, spent some time with Theosophy, enjoyed
reading the works of Yogananda and profited from them quite a bit, thought
the world of Krishnamurti, even got to liking Aldous Huxley, and felt that I
had authentically observed a flying saucer one evening (they seemed to be
more abundant in 1950) over the water near the Port of Miami, Florida.  And I
certainly expected to find a civilization of possibly unpleasant folks living
inside the Earth, as well as enjoying an involvement with Mark Probert's
Borderland Research Associates; and in my spare time, through the services of
a trance medium, made acquaintanceship with a group called the Great White
Brotherhood, who were then located in a place called Sedelia, Colorado (I
think), high in the Rocky Mountains in the US.  In 1952 I certainly got a
great deal out of Dianetics, both in giving it and receiving it, and I don't
care if it was invented by _______ _______ (you fill in the blank).  I, and
many others, were inspired and helped, often by just reading the book and
even better doing some stuff with it.  So that's all I'm talking about, and I
hope both my hemorrhoids and Hubbard will subside at the same time, producing
that wonderful feeling that comes when pain is replaced by pleasure.

       And finally, I'd like to say that I love the IVy list and us folks that
haunt it, and I hope it goes on and on for a long, long time, and in case I
didn't make it clear, that includes Ken Urquhart, a treasured friend.

        Goodbye and so long, and write soon if you find work.
>From the pen of the one I don't trust --
       Phil
P.S.  I'd like to really thank Julie (that's Julie Spickler) for making these
postings possible in a legible and mostly comprehensible form (thank the gods
for her English major!).  She, of course, is the "J" in PJSpickler, and has
almost got me to the point of knowing when to put a period in a sentence, as
well as having a predicate and a subject.
        --P