I just read the thing. I knew a guy who believed this stuff. Changed his name to Yogishwar. Claimed to have the highest IQ ever measured by the state of California. I read a text of his where he believed that we are all born with implants in our brains (Chapter 7 of the book). Suggest you watch out for beetles. Orange makes me nervous. Where did all these birds come from?
Dunno. I need to look at that book again I guess. I don’t remember Sagan saying that. I thought L. Ron was the one who went insane.
hmmm
I wonder if that little ploy increased sales?
Same here, I read it in High School before I found out what a lunatic Hubbard was.
Never trust a man who uses an first name initial with a second nickname. “L. Ron”. How stupid does that sound? My middle name is William, it’s just as if I went around calling myself “J. Bill”.
[F. Gump]
And that’s all I have to say about that.
[/F.Gump]
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Yeah. Ron discovered that creating a “religion” was a lot more profitable than writing science fiction.
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The site works now. Thanks for posting it.
He didn’t have a brother, did he? N. Ron?
I’ll have to check that out when I get home, I don’t want to go insane at work after all 
So a good present would be the book in question, a frontal lobotomy and 10 rolls of rubber wallpaper?
When I was young I read “Battlefield Earth”, I liked it. Later I tried reading “Mission: Earth”, I think I just got to fed up with the crap around book 7, too bad I’d already bought all 10.
I knew he was a crack pot but Derleth’s link linked to this,
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/OTIII/minton-essay.txt
and it also linked to the www.xenu.net place.
what a creepy bunch!
I think I’m still sane but who am I to judge.
On the other hand, if your name were “Lafayette” you might go around using your middle name (Ron) instead.
Or if your first name were Elmer, and your middle name were Mark, you might go around as Mark, or even emark – or if your last name started with a “P”, you might even use “emarkp.” But then, what do I know? 
Hey, emarkp, are you the same emarkp from over on nauvoo.com? There can’t be two of you, can there?
L. Ron wrote pretty good SF and I read Dianetics when it was first published.
I might not be quite all there, but I’m not way out.
Of course I haven’t read anything of his since.
Hmmm…my middle name is Houston…
“B. Huey”
Whaddaya think?
Yep, that’d be me. I’ve yet to run into another emarkp. It’s the one and only signon I use.
How was dianetics? Anything you’d like to share?
Hard to swallow, so I didn’t. When a claim about memories back to the womb is made I begin to lose interest.
Central point was, as I remember it, we’ve got to get those engrams in order and then we can become a “dianetic clear” which is alleged to be a solution to all problems.
Other than that I don’t remember much about it since it has now been almost 50 years and I wasn’t all that keen on it after reading maybe half of it. I finished it just for the sake of completeness, but I didn’t pay much attention to the last half.