I have taken lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) twice some time before one of their booksellers got to me on the street and put me on the downward spiral into scientology. Lately I've been thinking about why it is that people who have ever taken LSD are not eligible to join the sea organization. (If people involved with scientology knew what goes on in the sea organization who would want to join it?)

(As a somewhat amusing (to me anyway) aside, there was type of LSD going around at the time referred to as "crystal light.")

L. Ron Hubbard has written a great deal about LSD, what it is, how it works, its after effects and so on. Most, if not all, of what he has written is incorrect, which can be borne out by checking out the findings on LSD by the scientific community or by talking about the subject with someone who has actually taken LSD. Whether or not L. Ron took it is a matter of conjecture.

Where did L. Ron get his information about LSD? L. Ron got his information on LSD and almost everything on every other subject he wrote about in his research room. L. Ron Hubbard had a research room on his ship, Apollo.

Ron's research room was mentioned quite often among the staff when I was on staff. It was mentioned in scientology's magazines and other literature published by scientology.

Ooh! Ron's research room!

It conjures up images of lab equipment and other assorted research equipment along with a very extensive research library. Back then desktop computers did not exist. If you wanted anything near the computing power of what sits on your desk right now you were looking at something that was enormously expensive and would take up at least three or four hundred square feet of floor space. L. Ron didn't have one of those. What we know of as the internet was in its very early stages as the ARPANET and most people didn't know about it at that time.

After years of hearing about Ron's research room a mission from the Apollo arrived at our org. Now here's the thing about sea org missions. The staff in the org didn't like them. Four times out of five sea org missions arrived to do a shake up and assign lower conditions on a scatter gun basis. One of them just involved a white glove inspection routine. Those that didn't involve ethics handling usually involved redging or recruiting, which some of the ethics missions also included.

This mission was a little different. We were told that there would be no ethics handling and no redging. These two moderately attractive young women showed up in their civilian uniform and told us all about L. Ron Hubbard. Did you know he was a member of the National Geographic Society? (He subscribed to the magazine.)

Somewhere in their presentation the two young sea org staff members showed us photographs of Ron's research room. One of them pulled a photo out of a folder with its back to us and said, "This is Ron's research room." Her little setup had a frisson of anticipation running among her rapt audience. Then she turned the photograph around to reveal . . . an office.

There was a large desk, on which there was a lamp, an ashtray, a desk blotter, an e-meter, a typewriter and some office supplies. Opposite the desk there were some chairs that were significantly cheaper than L. Ron's chair. Behind the desk there was a bookshelf with maybe twenty or thirty books in it. There was probably a reel to reel tape recorder there, too, but I don't remember seeing it in the picture.

"This is the room where Ron does all his research," the girl went on with her smiling vacuous face. That would have been the facility where L. Ron found out everything about LSD that he put in his Hubbard Communcations Office Bulletins (HCOBs) and his other writing and lectures.

You have to understand something about L. Ron's communication of the "facts" he was so proud of calling "facts" especially in his song, L'Envoi. He never backed up anything he ever stated as a fact. Whenever he arrived at any of his conclusions he never included any information as to what he did or how he went about coming to any of his conclusions.

Now, back to why you can't join the sea organization if you have ever taken LSD.

First of all, let me say this. If you have taking LSD on your to do list, I highly recommend that you cross it off and write in some other activity. If you want to know what an "acid trip" is like you will find many descriptions of them from a number of sources in the literature out there. There's no need for you to waste about three days of your life on something that does have risk attached to it.

Once starting on an "acid trip" there is no sleep possible for twenty-four hours. After that the taker usually sleeps for about twelve hours and during the next thirty-six to forty-eight hours there is a "coming down" period that feels very much like being clinically depressed. That's from my experience and comparing notes with a few other people.

There is one thing that happened the first time I took LSD that gives me a clue as to why a person can't join the sea org if they have done LSD. At one point about three or four hours after taking the LSD the person I was "tripping" with and I decided to watch some TV. Well, we tried. Neither of us could, to put it in slang terms, "get into it." We could not watch television while we were "tripping." It was, however, very entertaining to watch the other people in the room watching television.

Whenever I have contemplated why a person can't join the sea org if they have done LSD the memory of trying to watch television comes to mind. So how does that relate?

I think it takes some energy and some work on the part of the viewer to watch television. I think when a person watches television to some extent they go into a very mild hypnotic trance state. I think the reason we could not watch television while "tripping" on LSD was because, whatever else that chemical does, it breaks all of a person's hypnotic trance states and prevents them from going into a hypnotic trance state while under the influence of the chemical. That's hypothetical on my part but I think that's what happened with us on that "trip." Other people I talked to afterward said they experienced the same thing.

Scientology depends heavily on putting its practitioners into hypnotic trance states. It is highly likely that a person involved in scientology remains in a trance state to varying depths of trance during the entire time that they are involved in scientology. This is more the case with a person who is a staff member in scientology and even more so with someone who is in the sea organization.

In the sea organization immediate compliance to command intention without doubt or reservation is required of the sea organization staff member. In order to maintain a state of mind without doubt or reservation a continuous hypnotic trance state is required.

When a person has taken LSD at sometime in their past they have experienced for a period of two or three days a time without any possibility of entering a hypnotic trance state. Once having experienced that state of mind without a trance state in effect a person can occasionally return to that state of mind, either willingly or because of triggers in the environment.

A sea organization staff member who has taken LSD at some time may find themselves, at times, in the sea organization and out of the hypnotic trance state that is so necessary to keep them complying with command intention.

This is still all hypothetical on my part but I think that if someone were to conduct experiments with all of what I have posited here in mind they would likely arrive at a similar conclusion.

In the sea organization it is very likely that the reason for disallowing membership for taking LSD probably comes from keeping records on people and correlating that to the number of their "ethics cycles" and the number of such people who have blown. The people in the sea organization at the executive level likely can see that they have had more trouble with former LSD users than from those who have never done LSD but they don't really know why.

Interesting theory, Wieber. If true, the number of LSD trips one has had would be proportional to the difficulty the mind control operation has had in inducing an hypnotic trance in the victim.

There is an account of the "why" on LSD in the Bent Corydon book, by Hanna Eltringham(?) about how the HubTurd decided that LSD was the reason that his orders were not being duplicated. In fact, that psychotic old fart couldn't remember what orders he gave or didn't give.

Meanwhile ... I tried LSD twice, and found it to be the most miserable drug around, period. It is one of the few drugs where the downside is do terrible that it outweighs any of the good feelings of the high, which, to be honest, were not all that good anyways. That crap was so miserable that I actually gave away the remainder of my stash ... those two time was simply enough, I have never been even remotely interested in trying the stuff again. Booze, weed, toot, smack, and tweak are mellow by comparison.

Pete

I agree. Based on my experience with it, I would say LSD, if it's a "good trip," is about 1/3 high, 1/3 waiting to go up and then coming down and about 1/3 depression from coming down. If it's a "bad trip," which is what happened to me the second time I took it, then there is no up side to it (no pun intended but you can take it that way if you want.) From what I have read and seen about it, taking LSD can be extremely risky.

As for Hubbard, as "scientologists" go he was probably one of the worst with Davey being the other one.

When I imagine a Hubbard research room, I imagine one of those pill boxes with the days of the week on each pocket -- except the box is the size of laundry baskets.

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Interesting theory, Wieber. I've never tried LSD and I fully intend to keep it that way. (I've enough innoculation against the cult as it is, lol.) He probably saw it as competition!

ROFL.

Perhaps there was a color-coded research schedule?

Pink = Monday
Gray = Tuesday
Blue = Wednesday
Green = Thursday
Yellow = Friday
Pink and Gray = Saturday
Sunday = CD (Coma Day)

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Ohnoes! Someone in the Org is a Spai!

LOL. Nice picture. I do hope the folks @ Herman Miller will not be offended. Pill dispensing furniture. You may be on to something.

PleaseStayoutofmyflashback

He got his information about LSD where he got all of the other information he wrote about: he pulled it out of his ass. In other words, he made it up, just like he made up all of the other "technology" of his pulp fiction Scientology religion.

As far as LSD takers not being able to be in the trance-like state required for Scientology to be effective. I took acid (LSD) quite a bit between 1968 and 1971 (dozens of times). I ended up on mission staff as an executive and was as entranced and dedicated as the many non-LSD takers who were on staff. There were quite a few of us on staff who had taken quite a bit of LSD in the late 60's -- it didn't seem to hamper our ability to effectively pull the wool over our eyes.

From acid to cult member. Tell me more.

The way I see it, it is really very simple. So many of us in the late 60's were taking drugs, including LSD, to expand our minds and gain new insights into the meaning of life. At that time, I read Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley, all of the Carlos Castaneda books covering his tutelage of a Yaqui shaman, a number of books by J. Krishnamurti, and various other books on mysticism and philosophy. My favorite read at that time was Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, which I would recommend to anyone (I couldn't see it at the time, but the Siddhartha novel was a warning not to get involved in Scientology). I was, as were many of my contemporaries, thirsting for an explanation of the spirituality that was welling up inside of us. It was at this time that a follow high school senior told me all about Scientology and gave me the book Scientology: A New Slant On Life. Being already well primed, I was immediately hooked, and spent a dozen years very involved in the cult.

Hmmm. Fascinating Interesting how Huxley met Crowley @ one time, then Hubbard was an actual adherent to Crowley's black magicpalooza. Glad that Huxley got it right! Now about that window pane.

Wow, talk about old cobwebbed memories! Yes, I ingested some of that in the day (that is, if you are referring to the Window Pain LSD available around 1970).