Prevarication

L. Ron Hubbard thought that "handling the truth is touchy business". While much of what Hubbard describes below as "lying" is exaggeration or telling a "tall tale", notice that it is a subtle redefinition, so that "lying" becomes innocuous. This excerpt is from a lecture entitled "How to Talk to Friends about Scientology", given on 18 December 1952 as part of the Philadelphia Doctorate Course.

"The Scientology religion is based exclusively upon L. Ron Hubbard's research, writings and recorded lectures —
all of which constitute the Scriptures of the religion"

You cannot have a game unless you pretend there's a game. And then if you say, "The game is serious," and "The game is all," and "We're not pretending anymore, and therefore this is not a game," oh, boy, how grim can we get?

Now, you say, "We have to be absolutely truthful and sincere; and sincerity is the main thing, and truthfulness is the main thing, and don't lie to anybody, and never…" and so on, "and you'll get ahead." You — brother, you sure will. You'll get ahead right on that cycle of action right toward 0 .

Did you notice one day, I think it was — where is he? Yeah, there he is.

[from audience] Yeah.

Yeah. He told me up here on the stand he couldn't tell me a lie! Well, that isn't because of me; it's just because he's got to believe that the MEST universe is that way. Now, you'll find pcs are like this. It's a trap not being able to prevaricate. You don't have to have a reason to prevaricate; it's when people have to have a reason to prevaricate that it becomes lying. Before that time it's just ornamentin'.

You say, "You know, I was downtown the other day, and I — there was this yellow taxi there, and I started to step into this yellow taxi and I'll be a son of a gun if there wasn't a big ape sitting in the back of it smoking a cigar. And I closed the door and walked on down the street." This makes life more colorful.

You would be surprised what it would do for you if you suddenly threw one of those in every once in a while. The finest way in the world people can put you up tone scale   is to find out that you're lying. Yeah, you go around being afraid you'll be found out you are lying.

I made a preclear one day — I just gave him one process only. Every once in a while I'll hand out a process to some preclear that I don't want to process very long, I just give him a couple of straightwire   questions; I've only got me two minutes, and I say, "Now, look. You say what's your trouble? Oh? Well now, look, I want you to go out and tell somebody a lie so they will find out that you are lying — that you were lying. And then do that several times and tell it 'in such a way that they can discover you're lying."

And this guy says, "Oh, no."

I said, "Well, go ahead, do that."

"I'll do it if you say so. I…"

"Okay, now we're all set." And he went out and he did it, and it cracked his case of course. He was so afraid people would find out the truth, that is to say that he was lying, that he wouldn't lie. And so he had to assign everything as truth, and he was having a really rough time with the whole deal. All he had to do was tell somebody a lie so that they'd find it out, and then, of course, what did he expect would happen? The walls would sort of start to creak, you see, and he could brace himself, because this person was bound to do what? Criticize him, and criticizing, when they do criticism artistically, they do it with a club. So he's afraid of being hurt, afraid of having his space collapsed around him and afraid of becoming matter. And therefore he's afraid of criticism because he has it identified with force, which it is.