Scientology scripture: Your problem is that you're stuck in this universe, loser

One of the things we do here at the Underground Bunker is to actually examine Scientology’s “scripture” — the millions of words left behind by its founder, science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard (1911-1986).

Scientology is a fundamentalist movement, and its members are not allowed to be theologians: There is only one interpretation allowed in this organization, and it is Ron’s.

But what was he talking about? We ran across this excerpt from a 1952 lecture Ron gave that showed up in a later Scientology magazine. And we thought it was a pretty interesting look at what the Great Thetan was going on about, time and again: That without his “technology,” we’re all a bunch of losers unaware of our true natures and forever stuck in this current universe.

Wait, there are other universes? And we can go there? Well, that’s what Hubbard repeatedly held out as a possibility if you just followed his convoluted instructions.

Here, take a look at this glimpse into his cosmology as he shared it with an audience on December 8, 1952. We look forward to your own reflections on what this guy is talking about, and how it would manifest in the way Scientologists are expected to act and speak.

When we talk about this universe we’re talking about energy. The only way an individual can be held in to this universe is by a conviction that he cannot handle energy. Because this is a universe full of energy, and is composed only of energy, which operates in a thing called MEST universe space. If you cannot handle energy in its fullest extent don’t think you can be free of this universe or any other one.

Force begets force, and he who lives by the sword will die by one. I promise you! But, funny thing is, you have to be able to have enough force to use an unlimited quantity of force, before you can pass over into a higher band of ethics. One cannot retreat from and cower back from force, under any pretext whatsoever, and still have a beingness above the level of this universe.

When you stop and think right now, perhaps, of being hit in the face, in the MEST body, with a hundred thousand kW lightning bolt, it possibly is not a comfortable thought. But I assure you that that is a small amount of juice, compared to what you as a thetan can take. You ought to be able to pick your teeth with a million kW lightning bolt, theta wise.

If you have ever seen the mercy of the very strong, compared to the sympathy and fear of the very weak, if you’ve ever watched these two things, you will see the mockery of bottom scale trying to echo the top of the scale. A person has to be very, very strong before he can be ethical and completely merciful of his own free will.

At the bottom of the scale a person has been forced to be, and everything affects him. He has been an effect of this and an effect of that, and so on. He’s still carrying along with him some of his capability; there’s still theta there at the bottom of the scale, but not much of it.

He has crossed over, you might say, crossed over the span of force on the band, successfully. But bluntly, nobody ever crawled out of this universe through the bottom of the hole. Nobody ever got out that way. That’s a grave. The only way out is through.

You have to be able to conquer the full use and control of any factor of the first dynamic, and having conquered that, the full use, control, of the factor of the second dynamic, and the third and so forth. You have to be willing and capable, and in full control of those dynamics, before you are free of them. Because always lingering in the back of your mind, no matter how esoteric you may think your ambitions may be, always lingering in the back of the mind is something you can’t do. Which is always a disability.

The capability of a thetan is not simply force. You take every Saint on the calendar as represented as having a big bright aura. What do you think that aura was representing? That was representing something very interesting. Raw energy. Now whether or not these boys could wield energy or not, I don’t know. But they certainly represented them that way, and have continued to do so ever since.

I’ll tell you something interesting: Right there. Force. You want to be able to heal somebody at a distance, you have to have the capability of charring them into charcoal at a distance. And don’t mistake that one, either. Because the ability to produce force is the ability to make a strong postulate. And the ability to make a strong postulate alone is capable of controlling the health and beingness of others.

So all force is, is the shabbiest shadow of what can be done. But unless you can make a postulate strong enough to handle force, it is highly unlikely that you can make a postulate strong enough to pervade all through the beingnesses which you would like to help.

This is a force universe. And don’t EVER make a mistake about that. And if it was the only universe there was, God help all of us! It is a force universe. It’s built on trickery, and it’s built on force. Every single item that you see in a store is condensed energy, existing in space. Every single brick that you see out on the street is a condensation of energy. Any action you see on the part of a MEST object is some manifestation of force at work in this universe. And don’t think for a moment that a low, low scale action in this universe will be greeted by anything but force.

You can protest, reason, agree, grovel, beg, it does not matter. Force is there, heavily and solidly, to greet the BEST of intentions to help. This universe does not care anything for brightness, for aesthetics. You could go out and make the prettiest planet that ever existed in this whole universe, solely by your hard work, and application and genius. And the force that is this universe could simply roll it up and blow it away. Without the least tremor.

The strong man who uses force as his sole criteria of existence is nothing but a brute. He is nothing but a brute. Nevertheless, the strong man who is able to make something in this universe must be able to protect it. Because this universe doesn’t care.

And that’s what breaks the heart of man. It doesn’t care. He looks around, no matter what he does for anybody, no matter how much he tries to help, or anything else, in this universe with MEST force on the loose, and relatively uncontrolled, it makes no difference whatsoever. It is that remorselessness, that crushing capability, without discernment as to a finer quality, that breaks him at last.

He thinks in this universe there ought to be such things as love, and goodness, and he thinks these things ought to repay. And you find somebody working himself to the bone, trying to be a good guy. Trying to be a straight guy and so on. What do you find around him? You’ll find pitfalls waiting for his tiniest error. And he will go crashing down. And who will push him? The people he helped the most. It’s a great universe.

It is so debased and degraded, really, that the better capabilities of theta, the better capabilities of beingness, almost can’t exist in this universe. They are here in the flimsiest possible form.

Let’s take an aesthetic. What does this universe care for an aesthetic? You’re going out and looking at the beautiful sunset; it’s… that’s… that’s… very amusing. Expecting a sensation of aesthetic from this universe? Have you any idea what composes that beautiful sunset? It is dust hanging in the air from some old volcanic explosion, where the earth convulsed and vomited and shot rock and ash into the air. And it’s a sun of such a violent temperature that it is shooting sheets of fire out two hundred and forty thousand miles. Radioactive fire which if you even vaguely approached it and got a tiniest burn you would thereafter rot. Beauty in this universe?

You go out and look at the butterfly, and you watch him flying around through the grass, and you… so forth, and uh… you say: Isn’t that pretty? Did you ever follow the fate of a butterfly? It’s an interesting game. But it doesn’t have any room in it for the beingness called man, really.

Here you have an unlimited universe, of force, and debased force, and the solidified results of force, and man and thetans in their small way try to add into it the ingredient of love, of beauty, of appreciation, of fair play. Nothing happens, really, just more force.

So don’t go moaning and moping around and saying, “There is no goal for this universe,” and don’t go moping around saying “Nobody appreciates what I’m doing,” because the truth of the matter is this universe is too strong and too forceful and too powerful from the standpoint of MEST force, to permit it to happen. The only thing which you see out here in this universe that is worth seeing, is what you and people like you have put into it to perceive back.

And if you have ever counted the number of beautiful cities which have gone by the boards here on this earth, and which are no more, the hopes with which they were built, and the ardures and depths of their fall, and the plight and agony of their final days, you would no longer sit around and worry about “Let’s make this a good universe.” That’s how you got trapped into it in the first place. Trying to make this thing a good universe. You’ve got lots of universes, and you can make one of your own. We’re not worried about it any further than that.

But don’t try to tell anybody, and don’t let your preclear tell you, that at any moment all he has to do is simply rise to the high and beautiful plane of pure thought without anything ever having any effect on him again in the line of energy. Bull!

He’s got to be able to handle that energy; otherwise, the energy can command him. That’s the trick of this universe: you command energy, or it commands you. This is a universe of space and energy, and if you want to command it, you’ve got to be able to command space and energy.

A universe of your own might also come down to a manufacture by space and energy. It might do that. It doesn’t have to, but if it did you’d certainly better know how to control space and energy.

The reason your preclear thinks he needs all sorts of things has something to do with the body, down at the lower band of the scale. It’s not that he cannot use ideas. It is simply that he is, you might say, like infantry — pinned down by enemy fire. He’s really pinned down. In a most adequate sense, he’s pinned down by flows. (Now when I say “flows,” I’m being too narrow in that terminology. I should say “ridges,” “dispersals” — all those things that constitute manifestations of energy, including objects.)

Homo sapiens, in viewing energy, views his ideas as an energy form. You take any thought, almost any thought he has, and you can start working with it, and it will turn into effort. In other words, his thinkingness is at the effort band, and therefore he’s having a rather rough time of it.

You can run down the track on my aberrated idea a person has, and find that idea all wrapped up in energy for which he is taking no responsibility, and which therefore has command value over him.

Therefore, I hope you get this much more clearly on why energy stands as the sinister barrier between aberrated thought and being free to do anything you please with thought.

Now it’s an easy barrier to cross, extremely easy to cross, as long as you actually cross it.

The mystics talk about the “abyss,” and so on. And what is the abyss? What are you trying to bridge? Very clearly, you’re trying to bridge the necessity of energy.

You’re not going to do it by saying, “I don’t want anything to do with energy. I’m going to deny myself sensation. I’m not going to use this, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to back off from this whole thing.”

The fact of the case is that you have to — not necessarily partake of action or really even engage in action — but you’re certainly got to be willing to handle action.

This is an experiment: If you were just suddenly to make the statement to yourself, “I’m going to use this body for everything it’s possibly good for. I don’t care whether I wear it out or not. I’m going to get everything out of it that could be gotten out of it and I’m not going to make it do anything a body can do, and there’s nothing going to stop me doing these things with this body,” all of a sudden the darndest little surge will go through you.

You’ve just consented to the first step on the road, which is to use it.

— L. Ron Hubbard

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Today: The decision on the Saint Hill application

Alex Barnes-Ross will be on the scene when the Mid Sussex District Council today votes on Scientology’s application for the development of a car park and more at its UK headquarters, Saint Hill Manor in East Grinstead, England.

As we reported earlier, the council has already indicated that it will approve the application, but we’re looking forward to Alex’s report.

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More tickets! More tickets!

As first heard on the Group Therapy podcast…

In response to popular demand, we are pleased to announce more tickets are now available for those of you who missed out last time. This second release has extremely limited availability and once they’re sold out, there won’t be any more, so please head to howdycon2026.com to get yours before they’re gone!

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Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history

Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea

Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time

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