Dianetics 75 countdown: New Scientology song from the original volcano ad genius!
We’ve said many times that one of the main reasons Scientology reached its greatest height — around the year 1990 with about 100,000 active members around the world — was the success of a late 1980s ad campaign for Dianetics that was the brainstorm of Sea Org member Jefferson Hawkins.
Scientology has never had the “millions” of members that it always claims, and it’s been steadily losing people since that high-water mark and probably has fewer than 20,000 members planetwide at this point.
But the TV ad dreamed up by Hawkins in the 1980s was so successful at selling copies of L. Ron Hubbard’s turgid 1950 volume of pseudoscience, it became a bestseller again.
If you’ve seen Jefferson’s ad you can understand why it was so compelling to TV audiences at the time. Not only did it start out with a mysterious set of questions and page numbers, the book then burst into view, seeming to emerge from an erupting volcano. And it was also set to an eerie sci-fi soundtrack that was way ahead of its time.
It was Geoff Levin who came up with that theme music, and there’s little doubt that it was as important as Jefferson’s words in making the ad a success.
Geoff was ex-Sea Org by that time, and you’ve read about how Scientology came between him and his People! bandmate, his brother Robbie Levin, the subject of their forthcoming documentary Brothers Broken.
And Underground Bunker readers have also enjoyed new songs from Geoff that he’s written for us about the subjects we cover here, with “Deadbeat Dad,” for example, a great send-up of Tom Cruise.
Now, as part of our countdown to May 9, the 75th anniversary of the publication of Dianetics, Geoff has sampled his original volcano ad and put it into another of his very clever parody tunes for your enjoyment.
As usual, his lyrics are on point, and we think you’ll dig this creative mashup!
Geoff in 1970 with People! and flipping off Scientology today.
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Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history
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Incredible song, goosebumps here!
Proves that artists and pro ad people sold the Hubbard "Dianetics" quack prenatal trauma "therapy."
Just brilliant, and goose bumps, thankyou Geoff Levin and Jeff Hawkins and Jeff's untouched "team" who COB didn't stop. (Some of the team of Jeff's are alive, and their stories are fascinating too, and I look forward to Geoff's boo, reading Geoff's Wikipedia article and accomplishments is staggering.)
But then, the sad result is pro artistry, pro marketing, can sell even the Hubbard crap quack prenatal trauma talk therapy that is so bogus even Scientology does not "run" the prenatal Dianetics techniques, instead only a few tidbits of the quack "Dianetics" are today still in modern "New Era Dianetics" and even those remaining tidbits are also bogus.
Hubbard in one tidbit, the "earlier -similar" talk therapy aiming for the "basic basic" trauma incident of a particular "chain" of similar trauma in a person's life, goes into past lives, and even in 1963, in the 3rd time track bulletin, Hubbard said the "basic basics" were found hundreds of millions of years ago. (If a person read ALL of the discarded Hubbard "tech" quackery principles and Hubbard discoveries, you find endless bizarre discarded ideas and rules, meaning Hubbard was nonstop discarding his earlier quackery with modified quackery.)
Hip Hip Xenu to Hubbard.
Jeff and Geoff and their cohorts prove outside pros sold Scientology, not the Hubbard hard to digest quackery which is what Scientology is, it's quackery crock.
Chuck Beatty
cult dupe staffer, Sea Org, 1975 to 2003.
I remember those days and that campaign well. Thank you for putting the madness to music!