L. RON HUBBARD
L. RON HUBBARD
FOUNDER OF SCIENTOLOGY
Author, philosopher and Founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard’s romance with Ireland, however brief, will forever remain. Originally landing in the early winter of 1956, he and Dublin were perfectly matched; for if ever was a man who appreciated Irish literature it was L. Ron Hubbard.
An internationally acclaimed novelist with 30 bestsellers to his credit, Mr. Hubbard was indeed a man of letters. In point of fact, among other stated aims for his Irish sojourn were prospective tales drawn from a 4th and 5th century bardic tradition. (That Mr. Hubbard further scripted Hollywood blockbusters through the latter 1930s explains his fascination with a filmic project entitled “Green Heaven.”)
“If the weather is cold, the Irish heart is warm.”
But, of course, what finally rooted L. Ron Hubbard to Ireland were the stated aims of his Dublin Office in Merrion Square. That is, to pioneer Scientology in a land where Scientology was little known and so determine ways of uplifting people all over this world.
That he sought to employ Scientology principles for increasing efficiency in the workaday world is apt. For if nothing else, Dublin was then a working class city filled with clerks, stenographers, shop girls, longshoremen and cabbies.
And if they were honest and frugal by necessity, they were nonetheless oppressed—even if subtly so.
And so came L. Ron Hubbard with a message that shall never be forgotten:
“A workman is not just a workman. A laborer is not just a laborer. An office worker is not just an office worker. They are living, breathing, important pillars on which the entire structure of our civilization is erected. They are not cogs in a mighty machine. They are the machine itself.”
To which he privately added:
If the Irish are beautifully sad, let them lose their sadness but never their beauty—and certainly not their poetry.
