Any government these days is terribly interested in how the mind works, but dead against
anybody that knows more about it than they do. The commie doesn't like us, not because they wouldn't be happy to
use the information, not because they're against anything we believe in, but I said no.
We have kicked in the teeth the Russian government and the American government.
It goes right back to that engram, Office of Naval Research, "Hubbard said no. To hell with him." That's an important point. They didn't make up their minds
that we were no good until we had said no.
We have not made friends or influenced people in those departments.
But it has left us free and we are today probably the only free organization on the face of Earth. And
that is saying something. We float free of political committments. This is the one organization on Earth
that isn't owned and owes no favors.
They have to think of their jobs or the party line or something of the
sort, they have to be alert to what they say, they can never be totally honest.
If we are for something, we simply think it's a good thing to be for.
If we're against something, we just think they're no good. We can be honest.
(1960, The Genus of Dianetics and Scientology, Lecture: 6012C31)
Just before the publication of DMSMH, the US Navy's
Office of Naval Research approached me and made a threatening offer that I
must go to work for them or be recalled to active duty. The project was to
make people more suggestible. I was able to resign before they could
complete the threat. I had no ambition to make people more suggestible.
An attempt was made on my life, I narrowly escaped
kidnaping, and I was loudly berated for misdeeds I had never committed. I
was a well-liked writer on Monday and on Tuesday, I was a horrible beast.
Seldom has there been such a heavy change in a man's life.
For years, the most unusual and imaginary charges were
hurled at me. Reporters never came near me. They just wrote about me. It
was hardly an atmosphere in which to continue research but, at great
stress and out of responsibility to a public who supported me, I did so.
Slightly less than 19 years after the first book, I
found the what and why of the attacks - Research Funds. In 1948, the
psychologist and psychiatrist groups organized a research fund activity
through international organizations.
Governments contributed unbelievable sums to them with
incredibly small, and even illegal or dishonest, results of human
experimentation. My work, I do not know how, was considered a threat to
such fund appropriation.
Unlike scientists, the psychologist and psychiatrist
know nothing of the scientific method, little or no mathematics, and share
none of the discipline which holds scientists together. They are trained
in authoritarian subjects and their approach is entirely authoritarian.
For nineteen years, this multi-million-dollar river
over the world has been used to attack any independent researcher and to
forward the most mad plans for political control I have ever perused.
The data was very hardly won. Whole governments have
crushed down on me to halt it. I do not exaggerate. It has been a lonely
road. (A Paper on the Difficulties of Researching in the
Humanities)
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