From Wikipedia

The Secret Lif e Of L. Ron Hubbard

L. Ron Hubbard was born in 1911 in Tilden, Nebraska to Ledora May Waterbury and Harry Ross Hubbard. Since Harry Hubbard was in the Navy, the family had to move as Harry was reassigned to new posts. While living in Kalispell, Helena, and on the family ranch in Montana, Hubbard claims to have befriended medicine man Old Tom and undergone a ceremony to become a blood brother to the Blackfeet Indians. While living on the Puget Sound in 1923, L. Ron Hubbard joined the Boy Scouts of America and became an Eagle Scout at age 13. In 1930, Hubbard was reported in the Washington Evening Star as having been the youngest Eagle Scout in the United States. According to the Boy Scouts of America, their documents at the time were only kept in alphabetical order with no reference to their ages and thus there was no way of telling who was the youngest.

Between 1927 and 1929, Hubbard traveled twice to the Far East with his parents during his father's posting to the United States Navy base on Guam. While in Guam, Hubbard was befriended by Commander Joseph "Snake" Thompson (1874–1943), who had recently returned from Vienna studying with Sigmund Freud, and was stationed as a member of the Naval Medical Corps. Through the course of their friendship, the commander spent many afternoons teaching Hubbard about the human mind.

Church biographies published from the 1950s to the 1970s stated that with "the financial support of his wealthy grandfather" Hubbard journeyed throughout Asia, "studying with holy men" in northern China, India, and Tibet. Although Hubbard said on several occasions that he visited India, Jon Atack, an ex-Scientologist and prominent Scientology critic, disputes the possibility that this ever took place. Hubbard said that he was made a lama priest by Old Mayo the Beijing magician in the Western Hills of China after a year as a neophyte. According to Atack, Hubbard's diaries were used as evidence in the Armstrong trial and make no mention of Old Mayo or Eastern philosophy.