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INSIDE SCIENTOLOGY/DIANETICS |
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PART II: The HillOne does not look for such enslavement to occur, for you are reading the pages and the technologies which can and will defeat it.
L. RON HUBBARD
The ManorI took the train from London to East Grinstead, a modest-sized town about halfway to Brighton, and from there a cab five miles through country to Fyfield Manor, the Scientology habitation where the Lancias had stayed. Fyfield was a large dun-colored house hidden from the road by trees and wild-growing hedges, with a backdrop of heights about half a mile beyond. The man who answered my knock had a kind, homely, boyish face and looked to be in his late 50s. Introducing himself in an Australian drawl as Edward Douglas, a resident of the manor, he invited me in to wait for the landlord, who was in town buying provisions. I immediately felt an authoritative presence behind Edward Douglas' cozy appearance. As we chatted, his childlike hazel eyes peered levelly into mine as though we shared a deep understanding. He showed me around the ground floor of the old house, guiding me through the various rooms as though presiding at a mystical initiation. In the main hallway I noticed his clear and OT I success speeches on a bulletin board. The living room was large, sparsely furnished and ill-heated. Edward Douglas and I spent the rest of the afternoon huddled near the fireplace with an American named Sam Veach, who appeared to be recovering from an illness. The two of them talked softly to each other or wrote letters while I waited. Through the large windows on three sides I saw in the dull late-afternoon light portions of the manorhouse grounds and green fields extending off to the distant heights. The quiet house and its surroundings were in a suspended state. I felt drugged by the heat of the fire. People began to arrive for dinner. About twelve of us sat down to soup, salad, roast beef with potatoes, something called "summer greens," and a dessert concoction I'd never encountered before. Contrary to everything I had heard about English cuisine, the dinner was excellent. I was pleased that table conversation didn't dwell on news events or other "inconsequentials." Richie Blackburn, a rough-edged young Australian, filled me in on Sam Veach, who hadn't shown up at table. Sam had been classified at the Hill as PTS-3, a difficult-to-handle and sometimes violently disturbed type of Potential Trouble Source. He had a history of shock treatment back in the States, and had cracked up just after going clear a few days ago. If I'd arrived at the manor one day earlier, I would have witnessed the climax of the drama. Sam had thrown a fit in the dining room and smashed some soup plates. He was now under twenty-four hour surveillance until he could be taken to the Hill and given a Search and Discovery to find his suppressive. By the time I'd met him he had calmed down and, PTS-3 or not, seemed mild-mannered and likable. After coffee, most of the diners went to the living room to sing, dance, and play the piano. The gaiety reached a high pitch, partly, I supposed, as a way to keep warm. Edward Douglas and a gray-haired lady hurled themselves from corner to corner in a wild tango while onlookers giggled and clapped. The highjinks at the manor ran far into the night, except for a ten-minute hiatus when the lights blew out. By the time I went upstairs to bed, somewhat warmed by the exertion and conviviality, I'd lost the feeling that I'd entered a strange alien world. The landlord, Ralph Wilkins, had put me in a room with two brothers, also Australian, and in those cramped quarters there was barely space to stash my clothes. I managed to squeeze my suitcase between two of the beds, placed my coat and bathrobe over it and draped my jacket, shirt and pants over a chair. It was freezing cold in bed, and after a few minutes I jumped out and donned my clothes once more, including the coat. The warmest way to sleep was on my side, knees drawn up in the fetal position. The Power ProcessBut this isn't attained by holding one's breath or thinking "right" thoughts or voting Republican ... At eight a.m. Richie Blackburn came in and shook our beds. It was time for me to put in an appearance at the Hill. A big English breakfast was served. Edward Douglas and I poured each other several cups of Nescafe. Juanita Wilkins, the landlord's pretty wife, sat with Sam Veach, PTS-3, stroking his hands tenderly while peering deeply into his eyes. I'd rarely seen anyone talking so sweetly and soothingly to someone so in need of such care. Watching her lovely dark face, I considered "going PTS" myself. The drive to the Hill wound through pleasant woods and pastures. Six of us were taken in a van by Ralph Wilkins, including Sam Veach, who was going in for his Search and Discovery. The college grounds were dominated by the manor Hubbard had occupied before moving to his yacht. I went directly to Reception, where I was handed a printed form to take around to various offices to be checkmarked as I completed each step of enrollment. This procedure was known as going through lines. Reception sent me to Registration, Registration sent me back to Reception, who then sent me to Accounts. The cost for Power Processing had just been raised. I gave Accounts the equivalent of $1,200 in pounds. At the Director of Processing Office I was given a slip to pin on my lapel bearing the words I Am On Power Processes. Please Do Not Ask Me Questions, Audit Me, or Discuss My Case With Me. A petite young American lady who had picked up an English accent led me to a cubicle that contained two chairs, a table, an E-meter, an English dictionary and a Scientology dictionary. She told me to pick up the tin cans and she would ask some questions to prepare me for the Power Process. One of the first questions was "Is there a withhold?" Immediately I was aware that I had god knows how many! The regimented going through lines carrying a checkout form, each step beginning and ending at Reception, had given me some trepidation. It made all the poking fun at the organization come to mind, and now I wondered if I would have to tell the auditor about the hilarity at the franchise such a short while ago. "There's a read on that. Is there an ARC break with the environment?" "I guess I'm nervous. Everything is so different here." "Thank you. Any more on that?" "I almost froze to death in bed last night." This cleaned the needle, at least temporarily. "Have you come here with any hidden standards?" "No." "That reads. What do you consider that could be?" "I still can't take my eyes off women's asses." "Thank you. In regard to `I still can't take my eyes off women's asses,' have you failed to experience a gain?" "Nothing has changed." "All right. That reads. Any more on it?" I winced. The needle was probing deeper. "I want to rub my organ there and come all over it." "Thank you. That's clean. What would have to happen to make you think Scientology works?" "Oh, it works." I got through the remaining questions, some of them about "money," without having to go into my major withholds. She ended the procedure and directed me to wait near Reception for another auditor. During the wait, Reception put me to work in a small canteen across the walkway, stuffing envelopes addressed to people all over the world with the latest Scientology advertisements. The woman directing the project told me to "Put in your Postulates with each one." My next auditor, this time a young Englishwoman, led me through a procedure she called "clearing the commands." She asked me to define "source," "tell," "no," "condition," and "existing," one word at a time, and to feel free to consult the English dictionary if I was unsure about a definition. When she was satisfied that I understood the words, I was taken to a third auditor, another young Englishwoman, who administered the "Power commands." "This is the process," she said. "Tell me a source." "The sky." "Thank you. Tell me about it." "Rain falls from it." "Fine. Tell me a no-source." "Nothing is a no-source." "Thank you. Tell me about it." "Everything is a source." "No-source" bothered me. Clearing the commands hadn't satisfied me as to its meaning. "Tell me a source." "A cow." "Thank you. Tell me about it." "It gives milk." I was running out of responses to the alternating questions, especially "no-source." "Tell me a source," repeated the auditor. At that moment I got a "buzz" in my head and an intuition that I was going to say something crucial and inevitable. "Myself," I replied. "I'm a source." The auditor indicated a floating needle. I got quick floating needles on the other Power commands: "Tell me an existing condition. How have you handled it?"; "Where have you been?"; "Whom have you known?"; "What subjects would you like to know more about?" As I was listing subjects, the auditor informed me that I was a Power Release. The whole thing had taken an hour and a half. I was proud of that, and having sped through the process, not in the least irritated over the cost, as Renzo had been. However, I was loath to spend money on possible "extras." On my way back to Reception I gave wide berth to a truck, parked near The Castle, that several times a week brought vitamins from an East Grinstead pharmacy. On the bulletin board at the manor I had seen Ron Hubbard's warning to preclears to take daily dosages of vitamin E and a mixture of several other vitamins he called a "GUK bomb," to counteract the effect of charge being blown off the reactive bank. Vitamins seemed an unnecessary expense. Reception sent me to Success, where a young man with an intense TR-0 asked me my gains from Power. I didn't wish to tell him there weren't any as yet. "I feel real good about it," I said. "I anticipate many gains, and that in itself is a great gain." "Beautiful," he exclaimed, and recorded my words in his ledger. He directed me to the next desk, where another young man wanted to sign me up as a Field Staff Member -- which would entail my agreement to bring in a certain quota of recruits, for which I would receive commissions or credits. I felt an ARC break looming. Felicia and Gerald had warned me to avoid anything to do with staff. I told the young man I'd rather hold off decision until I had read some literature on the subject. He gave me the Field Staff Member Manual, but seemed unhappy with me and didn't want me to leave with my checked lines slip until I promised to return soon with my decision. On my way to Reception I thought over the situation. Should I go back next day and refuse him, or just let it go? I was furious with him for provoking these thoughts at the very moment I had wanted to start enjoying my Power Release. I had also noticed his minor panic when he saw he was failing at his assignment. His anxiety was contagious; I was beginning to feel it. I knew that the Saint Hill staff worked all day and into the night for a pittance, trying to earn enough credits to get their first release or two. Perhaps I had dimmed his modest hopes by holding out. I had to get the Field Staff Member business out of my mind for a while, because the next item going through lines was a security check. A business-like woman scanning an E-meter asked me intimidating questions such as, Are you here to sell confidential materials? Having just attained Power with no hitch, I wasn't nervous and got through the check in time to get back to the manor for dinner. Sam Veach came to the table in a lighthearted mood. He had had a successful Search and Discovery and now knew for certain that he was a Clear. His eyes moistened when he told me that he was flying back to America to propose to the woman he had loved for many years. His victory over a troubled past and the affection he exuded were touching. After dinner he embraced each of us and left in a taxi. I got off a quick letter to Felicia and Gerald asking them if I had done the wrong thing with the recruiter. By nightfall I had put the episode out of my mind. Curled up in bed in my igloo sleeping position, I felt the presence of something new, the Power coursing through my body, connecting with greater sources in the dark sky and forests out in the Sussex night. Solo Audit ClassLines. Reception, for the checkout form. Accounts, to pay over $700 for the Solo Course. Housing, where I told the Housing Officer that I had already found accommodation at a Scientology dwelling. The bookstore, where I bought an E-meter for $150. The clerk persuaded me to also buy some of Ron's writings that I had already purchased in New York. As he handed me the receipt my "money considerations" screamed inside. He had talked me into buying the books just to raise his stats. Director of Training, a matronly woman with an Eastern European accent, asked me if I knew why certain materials were classified "confidential." "Because," I stumbled, "if non-Scientologists get ahold of them they'd misuse them?" "More than that," she said. "Seeing these materials can severely damage anyone not ready to confront them through proper auditing preparation. Such a person can get mentally and physically sick just looking at them." A staff member ushered me into the Solo classroom. The Instructor gave me the course checksheet and a small stack of bulletins called "Saint Hill Orientation Pack," and told me to find a vacant spot at one of the folding tables. A bulletin listed "Formulas for Ethics Conditions." The "Conditions" are Hubbard's system of classifying everything in the universe. They apply to individuals, organizations, governments, households, even animals or objects -- but most crucially to oneself. Each Condition is defined by a Formula, a succession of steps leading to the next higher Condition. One's Ethics Condition is determined by the Formula he appears to be following. For example, when one starts a new job, he is in Condition of Non-Existence: (1) find a comm line; (2) make yourself known; (3) discover what is needed or wanted; (4) do, produce and/or present it. The execution of this Formula leads up to the Condition of Danger, where the key step is by-pass the junior normally in charge. Above Danger are Condition of Emergency (basically, promote), and Normal Operation (don't change anything). Higher Conditions are Affluence and Power. Below Non-Existence are the Lower Conditions: Liability, Doubt, Treason and Enemy. Even people in the Lower Conditions are not beyond redemption, through declaring their allegiance and making reparation. The checksheet called for students to make clay demos of the Ethics Conditions which had to be passed by the Instructor. A bulletin described clay demos as extremely beneficial to students, as they give physical reality to Scientology words and concepts. Demos show the "glib student" for what he is: one who talks convincingly in the abstract but doesn't really comprehend. When confronted with the clay and directed to make a demo, the glib student "generally panics." The meaning of a clay demo must be easily graspable. Each component of a demo is labeled, and another label for the whole demo is turned face down. If the Instructor knows immediately from the demo what the concealed label is, he passes the student on it. The Instructor, a short English OT I, announced coffee breaks by shouting "That's it!" and resumption of study with "All right -- START!" He exhibited his dry English humor whenever he came by to check out demos. If he couldn't identify a demo he would, straight-faced, ask slyly ridiculous questions about it. A demo of a Condition of Ethics has to illustrate each step of the particular Formula. Since there are as many as eight different steps to a Formula, we had to mould forms so tiny they were almost unidentifiable. It taxed my resourcefulness to render in clay a concept such as "Don't Change Anything." It took me the better part of two days getting checked out on the demos. The TapesMornings, I generally got a ride to Saint Hill with Max Dinmont, who was an OT VI, the highest Level then available. Max always left right after breakfast, and had no sympathy for those who missed their ride. Two women on course were resentful whenever he drove off without them. There would then be squabbling and name-calling -- "Dimwit Dinmont" -- in the evening. Ralph Wilkins, the landlord, drove another shift over in a small panel truck a few minutes after Max, but this meant sitting scrunched up in the van with at least six other people. One way or another we would get to the Hill and scramble for tape machines. A dozen machines had to serve the entire class of around thirty people. If I was lucky enough to get a machine that worked, I would listen to tapes all day, with a half hour sandwich break at the canteen at noon. Ron Hubbard's presence was all-pervasive in the classroom: in his books and pamphlets lying on tables, his slogans on the bulletin board, and his large portrait on the wall near the Instructor's desk. Most of all, Ron was a voice on tape. Among the forty or more tapes on the checksheet were eight on Study. Hubbard's simplistic teachings had me enthralled. "To study something is to look at it, observe it, find out about it." Ron advised that when learning about, say, tractors, "one should have a tractor on hand to study." Why hadn't that basic concept ever occurred to me before? It was so simple, so direct. Ron scorned traditional schools' ignorance of the true purpose of education: to teach a person to be able to apply data. Of course! All those years I had wasted in school! But now with this clear presentation in mind I could remedy the error. According to Ron, there was nothing complicated about knowledge. Even his own methods, which were based on laws of physics and engineering, boiled down to this type of formulation: "If we take a brick and put another brick on top of it, we then have two bricks, one brick on top of another brick." From time to time, the lecture audience could be heard in the background on the tape guffawing as Ron toppled idols to the ground. Ron was by turns rambling and succinct. On some tapes he chatted for ninety minutes on subjects seemingly unrelated to his lecture topic or even to Scientology, and suddenly whipped everything together on the last few feet of tape. I marveled at his broad scope as he held forth on subjects as far-flung as small boat navigation and the city morgue. He began each of his lectures with the date "In the Year of Dianetics." For example, "1963" came out as "AD 13." This had a strange effect on me and I would find it difficult to concentrate on what immediately followed. Then he would pull my attention back with a comic anecdote. In one sequence, on the herd-like quality of the masses, Ron made his point by uttering the word like a sheep: "The MA-A-A-SSES." In another, he told of a man he had known in New York in the good old days who had a phobia about being seen naked in public. One morning Ron saw him on the subway rushing down to Times Square to pull off all his clothes. There was a lesson here, a cosmic law: You get what you resist. I tended to remember these sections more than the others. Occasionally I heard the chuckles of classmates at nearby machines, and once several students in a row broke into laughter simultaneously at Ron's remarks on their respective tapes. The class was often interrupted. Once a week the room was darkened for the showing of Ron's film-lecture on the reactive mind, and students working with tapes, bulletins or clay had to move to other rooms or out onto the lawn near the tennis courts. A good part of every Friday afternoon was taken up by a Success program that everybody had to attend, held in the Chapel, which was actually the ground floor of the Castle, called "the Chapel" once a week for the occasion. And during each day students who had completed their Solo Audit entered the classroom to receive our collective acknowledgment. The Instructor would shout "THAT'S IT!" and we would drop our work for a moment while the new Releases gave their Success Speeches. Then our applause, "START!", and we would attack our studies again. Once we were interrupted by a woman coming in to make a special announcement: The Scientology organization was going to be much stricter about nameplates. All persons on the grounds were expected to wear one, including visitors and taxi drivers coming in to pick up fares. It was everyone's responsibility to report persons not wearing nameplates, even the taxi drivers. Students and staff members might incur Ethics penalties for being caught either not wearing a nameplate or for failing to report someone else not wearing one. I decided to keep my nameplate on at all times. This was somewhat oppressive, but would save a lot of pinning and unpinning. What with the lack of decent facilities and the numerous interruptions, it was impossible to stick to the schedule I'd set out for myself. Many of the machines were defective, and the tapes had worn thin. Even with much jiggling of the start-stop button, whole sentences remained elusive. Some of the headphones were broken and had to be held manually. The incessant straining to hear Ron's message left me groggy. As an escape, I would plan my Success Speech or look around the room to see if my eyesight was improving. Sometimes I would start to nod; then the noise of the headphone hitting the table would bring me around again. On and on I listened. It seemed as if even when I dozed off I could hear Ron's voice, a rich baritone that was gravelly yet mellifluous, at once ingratiating and commanding.
OTs and Other SuperhumansThe body is a vegetable ... and, like any vegetable, one way or another, it gets used by others. Hubbard had made it known from Dianetics on that persons who had been audited, especially Clears and OTs, could not be judged by "human" standards. Superhuman or not, the Upper Level people at Fyfield Manor impressed me in strikingly different ways. Edward Douglas and Max Dinmont -- respectively OT I and OT VI -- were kind, unostentatious gentlemen with evident strong inner qualities. Edward was like a large, benevolent elf. Never in enough funds for all available processing, he had over the years steeped himself in Hubbard's writings with such scrupulousness that even people on higher levels than his respected his authority on Scientology fundamentals. Somehow Edward wordlessly conveyed to me the feeling that he surveyed the manor and its surroundings from a non-physical vantage point. Certain other OTs made it a point to be all too human after all. Richie Blackburn referred to one of them, a voluptuous OT VI named Olga O'Brien, as "an easy lay." The afternoon Olga arrived at the manor with her eleven year old daughter, she made a "between the bodies agreement" with another new arrival, a Sea Org recruit enroute to Ron's yacht, reported to be off the coast of Spain. The daughter disliked her mother's lover, and the three of them, indifferent to others present, hashed it over the next day in the dining room. This dispute over Olga's amours seemed to be only the latest in a series. Olga upheld her end of it with Scientological-sounding principles of Self Determination and Personal Responsibility. There was something spiteful and vindictive towards the little girl in Olga's carryings-on, but I tried to take her remarks at the table at face value. The recruit was around for only a day or so. Then Olga moved into the room of Mike Glassman, a recently attained OT VI, a fleshy, pompous man of about fifty who gave off no spiritual waves whatsoever. Richie Blackburn told me that Olga had managed to fit him, Richie, in for a between the bodies agreement also, between her bouts with the others, and "Why doncha get in on the fun, Bob? All's you got to do is say `Hallo' to her." Richie's credibility got a boost early the next morning when I went downstairs to find Olga on the living room couch with Juanita Wilkin's steady lover, whose frequent presence at the manor didn't seem to disquiet Juanita's husband, Ralph, the landlord. Juanita's "human" behavior was not so puzzling, however. She was only a Grade IV Release. Ralph Wilkins, OT I, tall, rangy, and thirtyish, didn't act superhuman either. Some of his lodgers looked down their noses at his apparent vicarious delight in the naughty bedtime frolics at the manor, his wife's included. They put it that "His Ethics Are Out." Within recent years, Hubbard himself, concerned over reports of Second Dynamic Out-Ethics (sexual promiscuity), had issued a Policy Letter directive prohibiting such activities amongst staff members and students. However, it was then reported to him that people were still doing it anyway; and as they showed no sign of ever stopping, Hubbard revoked his order and fornication was reinstated at Saint Hill. Ralph Wilkins was scraping to finance his next Upper Level with profits from the manor, but he was extremely disorganized about it. The house was deteriorating, especially the plumbing, so that Ralph had to keep his rents at rock bottom, hoping to make up for it in volume. Some nights he had an overflow crowd sleeping on the living room floor and down in the basement, rather sinisterly called "the Dungeons." An inexplicable but pleasing aspect of Ralph's mismanagement was his over-generosity about food. Snacks were available round the clock for a pittance in the makeshift kitchen canteen. For breakfast guests could enjoy cereal, eggs and bacon. For dinner Ralph unvaryingly provided plenty of red meat or poultry and vegetables, and enough butter to smear on every morsel in sight. At one meal, I noticed a boy of eight or nine eating at a small table off to one side. At first I thought he was alone; then Richie told me he was one of the children of an American couple who were on the long Special Briefing Course, who acked (acknowledged) everything said to them as though they were conducting an auditing session, with sonorous "Okays" and "Thank yous." His mother had found in a Search and Discovery that their son was suppressive to her -- perhaps she didn't want him in the first place -- and she had then had to disconnect from him, so he was placed away from her at his own table. Now and then she ran over and gave him a love-pat, because, as she explained, "I can really only half-disconnect from him." He was the saddest little boy I'd ever seen, his pinched, bewildered features in complete contrast to those of his sunny little sister, who always sat with her parents. There was also a teen-aged girl who stayed in the attic and showed up for meals only on rare occasion, humming to herself. Richie described her as the Planet's First Dianetic Baby, the result of Ron's experiments with "engram-less birth." "I'm not so sure it worked out all that right, mate," he said. "She's really a bit weird, ya know." Students and staffers at the Hill were predominantly from England, America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the Scandinavian countries, where English was a second language. Men and women were in about equal ratio. Their ages ran from twelve to octogenarian, though most were young adult to middle-aged. Many of them were in great haste to get through. Pressure from the organization to ascent the Scientology ladder, and the attendant general financial pinch, tended to make the students' self-interest aggressive and unconcealed. I had first observed this during the backbiting rides over to the Hill and the daily stampede for tape machines. I also sensed their fear. Something could happen to Scientology before Ron pulled us out of the Trap he had languished in for billions of years. Scientology had been attacked in the press and by several governments. It had survived for almost twenty years; Ron was confident about "the next billion." Yet the total picture was hardly reassuring, and the bustling surface at Saint Hill did not hide the fear. Despite these undercurrents, there was much that pleased me about Saint Hill. I was learning to crack down for the first time in my life. The discipline would be in the long run as beneficial as clearing. It was a relief for a while not to have to make constant decisions involving several variables. My route was set out for me, and I could put all my energy into following it. Here was purpose, goal, intention. At this point, I was closer to becoming one of them than I would have thought possible just two weeks previous. Solo Packs A-D
The bulletin packs were kept in a locked drawer. Students logged them out and carried them around in locked briefcases. Several of the packs were not considered confidential, and dangerous. Those dealt with auditing in terms I was already familiar with -- with one crucial difference: When eventually I audited myself on the Solo Process I would be my own preclear and accountable for carrying out the detailed instructions ... on myself. Dozens of bulletins gave the rules of correct auditing, and their infractions. All auditing is based on the Comm Cycle: ask a question, get an answer, and ack (acknowledge) the preclear. Comm Cycle additives -- an auditor's extraneous words, inflections or gestures -- are infractions. Also chopping the preclear's comm -- acking (acknowledging) before the preclear has completed his response. Chopped comm might not offend wogs (non-Scientologists) -- who are thoroughly used to it -- but in auditing it disturbs the ritualistically measured flow of the Comm Cycle. Auditors should never Q and A with preclears while in session, that is, engage in a series of questions back and forth without acking. Q and A is auditing Out Tech, reminiscent of much of the conversation in the wog world. "Hi, Charlie. How are you?" "Fine, Bill. How's your wife?" "Swell. Hey, I went fishing Sunday." "Yeah? I saw the game on TV. Say, I like your tie. Do you think it looks like rain?" Warnings about chopped comm and Q and A would not apply to self-auditing, I surmised. However, other bulletins, describing Auditor's Goofs and Difficult Preclears, made the self-auditor in his dual role doubly culpable. Overwhelmed by the tremendous inflow of material, I cross-referenced terms and instructions as a study aid, and made up two hundred questions to test my memory. On a Saturday night a dozen of us from the manor sat at a table at a roadhouse near East Grinstead. Juanita Wilkins was in the local annual beauty contest. I thought her a shoo-in for first. Juanita was not only blessed with the dark beauty of an Arabian Nights princess and a bubbly personality, but she was also a Communications Release. During the floorshow, which featured a comedian perhaps hired from London, Juanita giggled nonstop and seemed as relaxed as she was around the manor. But when it came her turn at the mike she was shy and awkward. "And where d'ya work, me lovely?" asked the MC. "Ahh ... umm ... oh yes," she gulped, "in East Grinstead -- uh, at a stationer's." She came in only fifth out of a field of eight. "I cawn't understand it. She must've been a trifle nervous," said a deflated Ralph Wilkins. "Anyway, we all know she was far and away the best." The sun shone the next morning, and I took my bulletin packs and list of questions out on the terrace in back of the manor. David, one of my roommates, sat on the flagging, studying his Special Briefing Course material. I sat down a few feet away from him. After taking notes for a while, I made a trip inside to the toilet. When I returned, Richie Blackburn was pacing up and down the terrace. He approached me, glowering. "D'ya know watcha just did, mate? Ya left your confidential materials laying around out here. Ya should know better'n that!" He thumped a truncheon-like fist against his thigh. "If I were you I'd go straightaway to Ethics and report it." I gaped at him. "But Richie, Dave's right here and I was only gone a moment." "Ya 'eard me. Davy's on Special Briefin'. 'Ow d'ya know 'e's reached your stage yet? What if 'e saw that stuff? I could do something about it, but it's your responsibility. Ya's better go clean it up at Ethics tomorrow. It'll all come out on your next sec (security) check anyway, that's for dead cert." As Richie turned and strode back into the house, I felt an ominous gnawing in the pit of my stomach. "Don't worry," said David. "'E gets a little gung-'o at times." "But did I do anything wrong?" "That's up to you, Bob. It's all the way you feel about it. If you think it was okay for you to leave your stuff around and go take a leak, then it's okay. You 'ave to 'ave your own certainty on the matter. BruceI didn't report my possible wrongdoing to Ethics. The incident bothered me for a couple of days; then I forgot about it. My roommates left to rent a flat in town. One bed was immediately filled by an unhappy-looking man in his early forties who perpetually wore on his sweater the sign I Am On Power Processes. Please Do Not Ask Me Questions, Audit Me, or Discuss My Case With Me. Bruce Perkins was a short Englishman with heavy ape-like shoulders, sensitive features and thick eyeglasses. He felt he was being taken for a ride at the Hill and was eager to talk to me about it. Bruce had left a soured marriage to give Scientology a try, having saved up the necessary funds during two years work on construction jobs in Africa. After several weeks at the Hill he still hadn't gotten through Power. Bruce was a Difficult Preclear. He had no rapport with certain of the auditors, and the Hill's practice of changing auditors for no apparent reason kept him ARC-broken, necessitating review sessions at extra cost and further auditor changes, causing further ARC breaks, a Catch-22 catastrophe. Bruce had moved to the manor from a flat in East Grinstead to cut his living expenses. He was nearly out of cash and thinking of selling his car. Bruce doubted and resented Scientology but still considered it his final hope. Playing the role of helper, I tried to persuade him to brave things through and complete his Power, limiting my encouragement to generalities, because discussing case was an infraction that would put us both in line for Ethics penalty. I was worried that I had let Bruce say too much already, and cut him short whenever he started going into the details of his review sessions. The sign he wore at all times made me jumpy. I was afraid I would forget and ask him a question. In class one morning my heart took a leap when I realized I'd said the wrong thing at breakfast; I had asked Bruce, "Would you like more coffee?" Surely the question was innocuous, and yet the sign unmistakably forbade asking its bearer any questions. Ron Hubbard must have a specific reason for the injunction. I had erred, and would have to stay more on my guard with Bruce in the future. One evening when I went up to our room, Bruce was sitting on his bed strumming feebly on a guitar. He told me of his lifelong sorrow at not being able to make music or express himself in any other way. For the next hour he related -- most expressively, I thought -- stories of his life in Africa. Filled with the wonder of exotic places, I was also saddened at how wrong Bruce was about himself. Not only could he transport me to the Dark Continent in a flash; he was also a caring and considerate gentleman. Communications Release that I was supposed to be, I never told him how highly I thought of him. Twin CheckoutsStudents formed pairs, called "checkout twins," to test each other on tapes and bulletins. The Solo class went by attestation system. After a checkout the "coach" attested with his initials and the date on the checksheet, that his twin understood a tape or bulletin. Ron's checkout procedure was almost as regimented as an auditing session. TRs had to be In, and the coach announced "Start!" at the beginning and "That's it!" to take a break or end the checkout. I covertly thought all this unnecessarily burdensome. With the wrong person coaching, checkouts were more of an inquisition. To make swift progress one needed the right twin. Some individuals got quickly to what seemed to be main points; others bogged down the procedure with apparent trivia, expecting verbatim knowledge of potentially useless material, that is, not germane to the Solo Process -- despite Ron's admonition to select only salient passages in starred bulletins. But on the longer bulletins it was hard to tell what was salient. The dozens of bulletins were in no obvious order. Silly questions might be confused with nattering; if students were perplexed they kept it largely to themselves. But I overheard a heated argument about whether we were supposed to memorize all material in capital letters or only what was grouped into numbered sentences. In the checkout procedure bulletin, Hubbard demanded that whatever material was picked by the coach to examine on had to be mastered one-hundred percent for a pass. But one never knew exactly what was required. There was a sign on the Solo classroom wall: ONE OF THESE DAYS YOU ARE GOING TO RUN INTO RON ON THE SAINT HILL GROUNDS AND HE MAY CHOOSE TO ASK YOU A QUESTION. Two Danish ladies, new on Solo, asked me to coach them on the study tapes. They picked me up in their car at the manor one night and drove me to their hotel in town, where they treated me to a steak dinner with wine. We got chummy and slightly giddy, and went upstairs to their room to do checkouts. The prettier of the two was the brighter one also and I quickly passed her on the tapes. The other had less command of English and couldn't retain the material. I took her slowly along a gentle gradient, practically feeding her the right answers. She continued to falter. I got impatient with her and tried to prod her into the correct responses. My voice became edgy. As I pounded away at her I saw that she was flustered, reeling from the questioning, her eyes glazed and her normally rosy cheeks pale, and I realized what I was doing to her. "That's it!" I exclaimed. "Let's take a break." The three of us sat looking at each other dumbly, in stunned embarrassment. "I'd love to pass you on this," I said, "but I can't. You know I wouldn't be a good coach if I let you through without the data." The BankThis work is honest research, done with considerable care. After two week of listening to tapes in class and studying bulletins in my room at night, I began to suffer the cumulative effect of what the Scientologists called "too much in-flow." Ron talked on and on about everything from pipe organs to obscure photographic techniques. I respected the man's range of knowledge and experience, but could relate little of what he said to the Solo Course, and had become somewhat addled by the voice ringing in my ears day after day. Finally I got to see Ron in action in his film on the reactive mind. There was the familiar pouchy face, now in animation on the screen, breaking into quick smiles at intervals, as if its owner thought the whole thing a big joke. Ron stood over a clay table on which rested a model of a chain of barge-like objects each packed tightly with clay balls in two rows of about six balls each. Parts of the soundtrack were inaudible.
I was growing excited about Ron's unfolding of the inner structure of the mind; the deepest mysteries would soon be revealed. But I was caught between elation and bewilderment. Ron had imparted that the structure of the bank was orderly, and identical in each person -- an apparent revision of the original Dianetics theory -- but not how many GPMs and Reliable Items comprised it. It was a part of my own mind I was about to erase. I turned to Hubbard Bulletin Packs E and F, which were classified secret. These bulletins gave figures between one- and three-hundred. There were also instructions for several complicated processes, with no explanation for their being in the pack, and diagrams called line plots began appearing, consisting of many coined words, unheard-of nouns ending in "ness." These "ness" words stood for the Goals of the GPMs (Goals-Problem-Mass). There were hundreds of them connected by zigzag lines, with crossovers where the "plus Goals" became the "minus Goals." "Opposition terminals" were at either end of each diagram. I glanced through page after page covered with verbs turned into grotesque nouns. It was a nightmarish word-game. I spent several fruitless evenings trying to figure it out, and developed a bad headache. Some of the E-F Packs bulletins were of a different nature.
The Sea OrgThe Sea Org descended upon Saint Hill. They wore white sweaters, white slacks or skirts, white shoes and stockings. They came to see that Ethics was In and stats (statistics) were not lagging. Many of the Hill staff began wearing dirty gray rags tied around their upper arms, denoting that they were in Condition of Liability and working their way through the Liability Formula. Staff members were placed in Liability for breaking a rule, showing poor stats, or making a clerical error. They were at such time considered a deficit to the organization, and made amends by working a straight twenty-four hour shift. This meant their not leaving the grounds for one or two nights. If they ran out of work to do, they could grab some sleep on an office or classroom floor. Such was the case with the Instructor, who was penalized on enough counts to have red-rimmed eyes for days on end. Sea Org officers placed an order for students to send out several dissemination letters each week. Blue airmail stationery was provided by the Instructor. We had to leave the letters unsealed in a basket on his desk. I wondered if they were read by the officers to see if their tone was enthusiastic enough. I had plenty of people to write to. One was Renzo, whom I still hoped to persuade to come to England before his vacation was over. I wrote to Dag Lildberg, who taught yoga: "Man! You won't find enlightenment sitting on a mountain top in the lotus position. Come to Saint Hill. It's all here! With ARC ..." I entreated other friends as well to get their Grade IV Release at the franchise so that they could witness, as I was about to, the total unveiling of the human mind. The Sea Org threw all staff members into a frenzied book-selling campaign. Staffers were ordered to lug heavy book crates to East Grinstead after finishing work at night, to catch trains for neighboring towns. Some were put on two- and three-day missions. Hekla, a Swedish woman staying at the manor, was dejected. She wasn't making enough money to live on doing clerical work at the Hill, and was afraid she would be put in Liability for not selling her quota of books or for letting her other stats drop while she was out canvassing (pay was automatically lowered during a Liability penalty). Hekla had received no auditing whatsoever as yet. She had hoped to return to Stockholm a Grade IV Release, better equipped to cope with an unhappy marriage, and wept to see her goal slipping out of reach. Dexter, a likeable, long-haired guitar player from the North of England, was working around the clock at the Hill to collect credits for Grade O. He had been in and out of Liability for minor offenses, and had had to take a Joburg, a sec (security) check that dug deeper than the other checks, devised by Ron when members of the Johannesburg, South Africa Org mutinied against him several years back. One was lucky to get through a Joburg in three hours. Each of its 150 questions had to read clean several times -- questions such as "Are you a pervert?"[*]
I was saddened to see my new-found friends under penalty, and I encouraged them to try to hold their lowly stations until they received processing. I was spared their heartache only because I had the funds. My involvement with the Sea Org wold remain peripheral. I would get what I had come for and leave.
I realized what I had done. There was nothing about line-plotting or Gorilla or other implants in the process instructions, and the hours I had spent on the E-F Packs were wasted time. Evidently, the E-F Packs had been supplanted, their inclusion in the course materials for historical completeness only. I had to forewarn my other new roommate, a South African wool dealer named Radcliff Jones, who had a deadline to meet and couldn't afford to waste any time. Carefully avoiding the slightest hint about the process itself -- Radcliff hadn't yet seen the confidential packs -- I reminded him that he need spend his time only on starred bulletins. How stupid I had been to exhaust myself to the point of illness in the labyrinth of confusing diagrams and nonsense words! It occurred to me that the Solo Course was poorly organized, yet some students breezed through it in a couple of weeks. There was some trick to finding the pertinent data amidst the millions of words Hubbard had written and spoken through the years. But why was it necessary? Did Ron deliberately place obstacles in our path? There was another possibility. Ron might not know everything that was going on at the Hill. He might be shocked to hear of the punishments being meted out. In fact, Ron himself might not have made up the Solo Course. Somebody else had put together the tapes and bulletins. And included the E-F Packs. I continued to knuckle down hard on the bulletins I thought were crucial, never going anywhere on weekends -- not to London to visit my friends there, or to Brighton for a look at the beach. I got no exercise, not even much walking; my legs felt weak. The lovely terrain abutting the manor house grounds was a forbidden delight, receding into the distance in enchanting patterns like the chessboard Through the Looking Glass. I had had no sexual urge since my arrival in England, though I didn't have to stray from the manor to find attractive lonely women. "If I'm still like this when I get back to New York I'm going to have to start worrying," I told myself. At last on a Sunday I took a break to walk around the manor and admire the trees and the fields. Then I spent a couple of hours playing the grand piano in the living room, and happily discovered that my fingers still worked. Richie Blackburn was captivated by a Strauss waltz arrangement -- which put me in solid with him again. He spoke of his home town in Australia, where women were called "Sheilas" and the black aborigines "boongs." He wanted to hear the waltz again. Curvy and available Olga O'Brien sat near the piano gazing dreamily into space as though she was sharing in a mystic ritual. After dinner Edward Douglas joined us as I played the waltz for Richie for the fifth time. "Oy used to love to sing," he said. "But somehow it just didn't seem to work out. Oy haven't stretched me vocal cords for twenty years." Once again I was in the encourager's role, and insisted he start singing again -- immediately. He went to his room and brought down a pile of quaint old Australian sheet music. What he did with these songs was barely discernible as singing, but I was rather moved by it, applauding each selection: "That's great, Edward! Keep it up, you really must" -- while inwardly surprised that with all his years in Scientology he needed such validation. After a while tears came to his eyes and I let him stop. A pleasant young lady from California was my checkout twin. We took two afternoons away from the Hill for the bulletins, under an old shade tree on the back lawn of the manor, making trips back to the kitchen to refill our teacups. The first day we went over some material I had already been exposed to on the Dianetics Course in New York and passed over lightly in England, including the Characteristics of the Suppressive. Next day we examined each other on the End-Words Process, firming our knowledge of the data as we went along. We finished our checkouts aglow with the feeling of mastery, and set out, briefcases in hand, on the pathway over the soft meadows. I had never been this way in my life. My body was a vehicle with me in control, making it step along in any manner I liked, shedding my glasses to marvel at the tiny blue and lavender flowers near our feet with eyes that seemed to get sharper with step, and speaking to my companion in a voice so relaxed it seemed an octave lower than usual. I knew that this was it. The words sang through my being: To be clear is just this ... all the time! Albert WardA raving made thetan is far more sane than a normal human being. But then as you audit, observe it for yourself. A sinister-looking man of about fifty sat down to dinner with us one night at the manor. I got the story on him from Richie Blackburn. A PTS-3 (an extreme case of Potential Trouble Source), Albert Ward had cracked up while doing the Clearing Course and was under twenty-four hour watch. Richie and two staff members from the Hill had been assigned to guard him in shifts. Albert Ward was not a tractable PTS-3, like Sam Veach. He sat quietly at the table, not talking to anyone and not looking at anything in particular, his mouth fixed in a smugly defiant expression, as though he were confirming to the world, "I was right all along." He appeared to be insane. Richie told me that Albert Ward wished to return to America, but the organization were loathe to let him leave in his present condition. Ralph Wilkins wanted Albert to move to a hotel in town, but hadn't been able to arrange for a place where he could be guarded. Ralph was sick of the organization imposing PTS-3s on him for their own convenience, and some of his boarders were disgusted at seeing the place used as a dumping ground for the mentally disturbed. After dinner I sat with several of the others in the kitchen while Richie prowled the corridor near Albert's room or tagged along behind him in the woods when Albert went out for a walk. There in the kitchen I heard OT VIs Olga O'Brien and Mike Glassman discussing the OT III process, the third level above clearing. They referred to it as The Wall of Fire. "It's like walking a tightrope over Hell," said Olga. "One slip and you're in it." "I bet when Albert Ward was doing the Clearing Course he kicked in something from up ahead on OT III," Mike said. "Ron softened the original process because so many people were freaking out on it. Even the one we did was a revised version. There's still enough on it to drive some people insane." The following night, Ralph Wilkins wanted to take Albert Ward to town but couldn't get the PTS-3 to leave his room. Mike Glassman stepped confidently down the hallway and gave Albert commands in a Tone-40 voice, a penetrating bark used by auditors to express Ultimate Intention to troublesome preclears. Albert wouldn't budge. Olga tried soft cajolement. But neither she nor anyone else could make Albert get into Ralph's van, and no one wished to use physical force on him, though Richie had a baseball bat ready if clubbing proved necessary. Richie was red-eyes and irascible after two sleepless nights on guard duty, and felt that Albert or the organization or both had some sort of vendetta against him. Next morning I was informed that Albert Ward had left in a taxi by himself at one a.m. I never found out what became of him. To conclude the theoretical part of the checksheet, we did clay demos of the End-Words Process. According to Ron, demos sharpened knowledge in an almost magical way, but I never got much out of them; a verbal exposition would have saved a lot of fuss. However, it felt good to be in a standing position for a change, playing with the mushy clay. Models of a GPM were required. I glanced around at other students' demos. All looked similar to Ron's model in his film: clay balls loaded on barges. A demo of a Solo Audit session had to include a small figure seated at a table with E-meter and an "auditing comm line" running from the figure back to itself, since self-auditing was our context. Labels bearing auditing questions were spaced along the comm line. All of the Solo Audit demos I saw looked like clotheslines. While making up my demo, I had a dim recollection of something disturbing in the E-F Packs, one of the crazy implants of a bear or a gorilla ... or was it a spider? The material eluded me. I left the clay table and signed out the E-F Packs. If I could just find the bulletin and read it a few times the thought would stop bothering me. I couldn't find it, and still feeling uneasy returned to the clay. To illustrate end-words I moulded two figures of a man, one propped up on his feet labeled Standingness, the other flat on the table, Lyingness. I motioned to the Instructor that I had a demo ready for his inspection. He took one look at the labels and blew up at me. "Man, those are highly-charged, restimulative words! They might even be in the bank! Use your head, forcrissake. Don't ever leave stuff like that lying around again!" Later that afternoon I took sick. The clay table was in a strong draft. I felt flushed and feverish, and by six o'clock I wanted only to get into bed, and retired without any dinner. I awoke early the next morning and couldn't get back to sleep. Something like a malevolent force kept me awake mulling over the coming Solo Audit. I lay shivering under the covers, thinking of all the words for what I was dramatizing. They ended in "-ness." One of them was Unhappiness. I had been in Sussex for several weeks, with perhaps moths to follow, away from city streets and old friends, subjected to discomforts and discipline which left me with no time to myself. I had denied myself what I considered "living" as a test of my determination. Now in the early morning hours it struck me that my life had become forlorn. As light began to brighten up the room and the first birds of the morning shrieked in the treetops, a vibration shot through my stomach like a charge of electric voltage. It was fear. I lay huddled around the shock, repulsed by the feel of the sheets against my body. I was aware of the sharp, antiseptic smell of the English coal-tar soap on the windowsill above my heard, and the shrill buzzing of an electric-razor converter under the bed just below my pillow, sound and smell that keyed in primitive terror from the bank. I needed a smoke and rummaged in the ashtray for a cigarette butt. I tried to sleep once more, but ended up going downstairs to the dining room, where there were unemptied ashtrays on the table from the night before. At six o'clock I got dressed and made myself a cup of tea. In my clothes and fully awake, I was able to identify the trouble. I was getting close to the reactive mind, was in fact at the very edge of its core and the chasm lay beneath me. I remembered the phrase "fighting the tiger." The words were now more deeply meaningful to me than ever. I was fighting the tiger of the reactive mind. Ron held that a thetan was basically superior to the bank. It would take a struggle to go with little sleep until Solo Audit and perhaps clearing, but eventually I would tear the claws from the beast and put an end to my fear. Practical DrillsThe Instructor gave me his permission to go to the Office of Certs and Awards and attest to checkout on the tapes, bulletins and demos. Certs put the date on my checksheet and gave me a certificate qualifying me to begin the practical drills, many of which were repeats from the Dianetics Course in New York. I found a partner, a Southerner named Jim Fergus, and we sat facing each other to do TR-0, which was simply to look at each other and be there. When we got to bull-baiting, I broke Jim up by mispronouncing his name in various dialects. He on the other hand couldn't make me laugh; I was in far too serious a mood. I began to feel sorry for him. "Do birds flah?" he intoned for the twentieth time in his East Texas drawl. "No," I responded. "All right. Do fish swi-yum?" Suddenly with cheeks sucked in, lips quivering and eyes bulging out, he thrust his face near me. Gill-like lines appeared at the corners of his mouth. "Ah'll repeat the auditing question. Do fish swi-yum?" I started to gasp. "Do fish swim?" echoed students from nearby tables. They began to drift over to me. Soon I was surrounded by a sea of gulping mouths and bugging eyes. "Stop it, Jim. You win!" I choked, as I gave in to the relieving laughter erupting from my stomach. That night at the manor, I asked Edward Douglas, who was famous for his TR-0, to coach me. Edward took me into his room and closed the door. I helped him move books, lamps and suitcases around to get table and chairs into auditing position. Edward plodded about the room for another several minutes getting things just right, his roundish elfin features set in a sober expression. Next he scrupulously adjusted his E-meter; the meter was not used in the drill but gave it the feel of an actual auditing session. Edward did not bull-bait, but focused on keeping me alert and in quiet ARC with him. "Flunk for confronting me with your left ear," he said at one point. "Flunk for letting your being leave this room." I asked him what these corrections meant. He explained that he had perceived my attention straying to a part of my body or to some other time and place, and he wanted to make me aware of it. "Misattention comes from the bank," he said. "TR-0 pulls you into present time. Oy must see that you confront me with yourself and with nothing else. Jim Fergus missed his family, was in a big hurry to finish Solo Audit, and wasn't getting much sleep either, he confided. We agreed to meet each night and on the weekend, hitching rides to the Hill for our get-togethers if necessary. Both of us were familiar with some of the E-meter drills. It was annoying to have to repeat #1, the title of which, "Touch and Let Go of the E-meter," strongly suggested its tediousness. #2, "E-meter Familiarization," was a long series of coach's commands to move the various knobs on the device, repeated until the trainee executed flawlessly. We spent an hour on a drill in which the coach playing the preclear yawned, stretched, squirmed, changed his grip on the tin cans and shifted his feet -- its purpose to teach us to distinguish body reads from bank reads. A read was defined as any change in needle action -- a stationary needle starting to move, or a moving needle changing direction or speed. Eighteen types of needle action were listed: Stuck, Null, Fall, Change of Characteristic, Rise, Theta Bop, Rock Slam, Free Needle, Stage Four, Rocket Read, Clean Needle, Dirty Needle, Tick, Speeded Rise, Speeded Fall, Slowed Rise, Slowed Fall, Stopped. These were largely related to aberrations stemming from the preclear's bank:
Withholds or charge on an item caused a network of tiny stitches on the dial known as a dirty needle. If a dirty needle wasn't cleaned, it rose slowly towards the left on its dial, requiring tone-arm knob adjustments to the right to center it; hence, the tone-arm needle also rose, passing 4 and 5 on its own dial , until the "read" needle stuck rigidly or pulsated in minuscule tics like a throbbing nerve-ending. If instead the large needle veered to the extreme right as though pulling itself off its dial, a load of charge had just blown from the bank. An adjustment of the tone-arm knob, now to the left, centered the needle again. The concomitant leftward movement of the tome-arm needle was called a blowdown. Through their absorption in the data on meter reads, tone-arm and charge, the students soon learned to identify their own and other people's mental/spiritual state with what the E-meter told them. To produce reads, the coach went down lists provided in The Book of E-Meter Drills, one of which contained Scientology terms and organizational titles. Hubbard and his wife, Mary Sue, were on the list. There were also list of countries, trees, fruits, vegetables, flowers, herbs, animals, musical instruments, nonsense phrases and creatures such as "tarantula," "silverfish," "octopus," "hookworm," and the "elephant's-trunk snake." That last item provoked me. I doubted the existence of such a creature, but got a big read when Jim Fergus read it off to me in his amiable drawl. The final meter drill was called Track Dating. One of us would write a date and time on a slip and hold the tin cans. The other then asked questions dealing with increasingly smaller "orders of magnitude" until by spotting reads he arrived at the date and time noted on the slip, down to the second. The drill was designed for past lifetimes. The dates we used were in the hundreds of trillions of years ago. During lunch break I noticed a man without a nameplate standing near the Castle. When I reminded him of the rule, he said, "I don't attend here. I'm just waiting for my mother to leave her class." I said nothing more and went to the canteen. I had hesitated before turning away from him, although I didn't think anyone was watching us. Was this out of a sense of duty, or a fear of punishment? I wasn't sure. I touched my own nameplate. I had worn it faithfully for several weeks. Something was happening to me, but there was no time to think about it. I'd be leaving soon anyway. Final Preparations and Solo AuditEach morning I awoke at three or four and lay under the covers in a state of terror. A new symptom augmented the electric tremors: pain shooting through my head and converging to a point behind the right eye, like a jabbing icepick. My broodings on dramatizations became farfetched, in keeping with these symptoms: Stabbingness ... Voltageness. I tried to stop this madness with the command "That's it!", repeating this phrase innumerable times. Occasionally I would leave my bed to forage for cigarettes. I looked forward to seven o'clock, when Marilyn, the cook, could arrive to start breakfast. Marilyn was working to support her husband through Special Briefing Course. She was from Australia, and a warm and gracious person, the only one to whom I ventured to speak about the actions of the Sea Org crew, however avoiding outright criticism. I didn't mention "fighting the tiger" to Marilyn, although she must have gleaned from my early-morning visits to the kitchen that I wasn't sleeping properly. At breakfast, Edward Douglas habitually downed vitamin E and a large pill called a "GUK bomb." Perhaps I had made a crucial mistake not to have done this from the first. I chose to tell Edward about my sleeplessness and ask his advice. "It's the Trap," he said, peering steadily into my eyes. "The bank puts up a stiff fight to keep from being destroyed. You're getting real close now, mate. Oy sure as 'ell want to be around when yer go clear." He broke into a smile and clapped me on the shoulders. "They'll be able to 'ear you play your pianner all the way to New York!" I began to lean on Edward. On seeing each other we would exchange significant looks, followed by smiles and pats on the back. I sensed that my struggle was very meaningful to him, that my success would be a win for him also. It was unfair, in a way, that I had the money I needed to take the Upper Levels while Edward was sweating it out, waiting for funds to arrive from Australia, where he had put his house up for sale. He was growing deaf, and there was still a chance, I thought, that when he could afford Level II or III (The Wall of Fire) his hearing would be restored. I also sought comfort from Max Dinmont, the OT VI, who drove me to the Hill most mornings. I felt that I needed someone on an even higher Level than Edward to confide in, and told Max I had been having a rough time of it in the early morning hours. He smiled and said, "All right, you haven't been sleeping in the morning." The smile was unrestimulative. It seemed to say, "I am not allowed to tell you all I went through on my way to the top, but I understand your struggle and smile knowing the higher state of being you are so close to." His smile wiped away my misery for the moment, and we hugged each other and went out to his car. That night after dinner I overheard an exchange between Max and Mike Glassman about Mike's girlfriend, Olga O'Brien. "Couldn't you wait sometimes when Olga's a couple of seconds late and give her a ride to the Hill," Mike boomed in a voice of powerful command. "I leave every morning at exactly 8:40," replied Max in quieter but equally impressive tones. "If's she's downstairs, I'll be glad to give her a ride. If she's not, she'll have to find another way just like anyone else." "I GOT THAT," acked Mike. Their statements were crisp, measured, and as incisive as speedballs, so that I could almost feel the impact of the energy and mass being hurled about the dining room. The air vibrated with the force of these OT VIs, who, though observing out-of-session auditing conventions -- TRs and acks -- plainly disliked each other. Max told me afterwards that Mike was full of bluster and good for a laugh, a sucker for Olga's charms and now playing the role of her sugar-daddy. Max made it sound as if their quarrel were merely a game they enjoyed playing with each other on occasion. Another incident that week increased my admiration for Max. He had to stop abruptly near the Saint Hill driveway to avoid hitting another car, and we received a sharp bump from the rear. A beefy, red-faced young man stuck his face up to Max's window and shouted, "Stopped a bit short, eh guv'nor?" Max waited a moment, letting the exclamation ring in the air and die down, then said very levelly, "I don't think so." This remark was so clearly etched and separated from everything around it that the young man, looking as dazed as a cow stunned by an electric concussor, turned and went back to his car. Max was quite human, in a nice way, for all his OT qualities. He liked to tell me about his daughter in California, the good ARC he had with his car, and his experiments with fad diets and fasting. One morning I asked him to check my E-meter. When he picked up the cans, I was astonished to see his tone-arm climb to 4, an area of tension. He yawned, stretched, rotated his shoulders, gulped and opened and shut his mouth convulsively. These contortions failed to bring down the tone-arm needle. After the practical drills I was on my own. I went to Certs to attest to checkout on the drills and began the final preparations for Solo Audit: making out sample auditor's reports and doing Solo Assists -- drills on cleaning my own dirty needles, present-time problems and ARC breaks. I had no trouble with the assists. To lower the tone-arm, I directed, "Get down, you motherfucker!" and the needle responded with a long fall to the right, immediately bringing the tone-arm from 4 to 2.5, a blowdown. The summer influx was well underway at Saint Hill. Fyfield Manor was crowding up more than ever. Besides housing several on course, it was a stopover for recruits heading for the Sea Org boat, still reportedly moored off the Spanish coast. One night there were a dozen people in sleeping bags or on mattresses on the living room floor. Some of the regulars were miffed at the presence of these transients, and complained to Ralph Wilkins. Also to Ethics. Ethics sent someone over to report on the Ethics Condition of the manor. And the East Grinstead Board of Health paid a call, to ascertain its Health Condition. Some news caused a stir at the Hill. An Advanced Org United Kingdom (AOUK) had just been established in Edinburgh, Scotland, operated exclusively by Sea Org personnel. Two of its white-clad officers canvassed the Hill one afternoon for advance payments on Clearing and the Upper Levels. Those students who were able unhesitatingly signed up for clearing and all eight OT Levels, though only six were currently available, at a total cost of about $4,000. I, too, signed up for the whole package, but without making payment, because I planned only to go clear -- and also OT I. Word had got around that OT I was "a must, to stabilize the state of clear." MEST beings, incapable of regaining a theta state in the absence of Dianetics, dislike theta beings. Many of the students on Solo were getting nervous as they approached the culmination of weeks of study and perhaps sleeplessness. The outer layers had been stripped from the core of the bank; the last stretch before the process was almost unendurable. Several people at the manor were sick. I couldn't tell if it was the same sickness I had; they called it "a touch of flu" or "an upset stomach." Concern over money was more pressing than ever, with the word out on OT III. Something terrifying lay ahead on The Wall of Fire, and there were people who had come to England only for clearing who now needed additional funds to brave OT III and break through their sickness. I heard muttered speculation at the manor about the outbreak of illness. It was like a curse; somebody or something must be causing it. Ron's instructions had been altered by incompetent or malicious underlings, and the group was suffering for it. Or perhaps Ralph Wilkins' Out-Ethics in taking contaminating PTS-3s into the manor, especially Albert Ward, who was a malignant omen. Proximity to East Grinstead was another Trouble Source. Felicia and Gerald, back in New York, had told me of Scientologists confronting locals on the street with books and pamphlets. Many of the citizens thought the Scientologists mental, with their hectoring dissemination, carefully guarded briefcases and signs ("Please Don't Ask Me Questions ..."). At the franchise we had had a good laugh over the story about a town wag who had managed to get "Saint Hill" entered in the local telephone directory under "Zoo." The Scientologists in turn were indifferent to the townspeople, or derisive, referring to them as "wogs" and labeling the whole town suppressive. To many Scientologists there was something defiled and diseased about these people. "Suppressive" suggested the stench of evil. I brushed aside such notions. The evil influence was not emanating from the distant town or even from suspect people who had one lived among us. The Trouble Source was now within the walls of the manor itself. I looked to the others. Simple enough. As they drew near the core of the bank, they had gotten overwhelmed and had dropped on the Tone Scale, lowering their own resistance to illness. But I was on to this; I was fighting the tiger, sick as I felt. But there was still another possibility. It might be Edward Douglas. A friend and admirer could drag one down far deeper than could the most malicious enemy. There was something ominous in our relationship. He wanted something from me and I didn't know what it was. I began watching him more closely. Now that I had allowed myself to think of it, I realized that his slowly spreading smile and meaningful staring into my eyes were contrived. He was grimly serious about Scientology, and this wasn't what Ron wanted at all -- pagan Ron, chuckling his way through the tapes. Edward must be concealing something. He was very clever about disguising his suppressive tendencies, his childlike bulbous face in reality a devil's mask... At six o'clock the morning of my Solo Audit, I walked down the dirt driveway at Fyfield. This was better than lying in bed trying to ward off the terror springing at me from unknown forces. On either side of the drive were the massive trees, solid and peaceful, with pink and white blossoms shimmering in the early morning air. Cars and trucks passed by on the highway going to London. I watched them disappear over the hill, and for a moment I thought of leaving. I could pack my bags and be out there thumbing a ride in twenty minutes -- no one would stop me. Instead, I turned and walked slowly back to the manor. I stayed on after breakfast to be alone with my meter. When almost everyone had gone I went upstairs to my room, closed the door after me, and set up the necessary articles just as I had gone over in my mind so may times: report forms and worksheets on one side of the desk near the meter; an assessment sheet, in the event of a dirty needle, on the other side; an English dictionary and a thesaurus of synonyms on the bed within easy reach. I set up and turned on the meter, filled in the heading of the report form, tested the single tin can used in Solo, centered the needle, and took the first tone-arm reading. Now for the process. "What am I dramatizing?" I asked myself. "Fear" was the immediate rejoinder. I spoke the word several times, got a flicker on the dial, and registered Fear on a card. What was its opposite, Unfear? The item didn't read. I reached for the book of synonyms, looked under "confidence," and called out several of the entries. Nothing read. I uttered "Unfear" again and this time got a small read. I registered the word on another card and clipped it to the first. For my next end-word I tried Anxiety and got a read. Again I had trouble finding the opposite. The needle was dirtying-up -- which called for an assessment. I went down a sheet of questions such as "Have you gone past a correct end-word?" Doing an assessment on myself was nerve-wracking. I had covered too much material in a short time and couldn't remember the data on reads. Pressure started building in my forehead. I managed to get one more pair, Unhappiness and Peace, scarcely antonyms but both read. Tension read. "Relaxation," I exclaimed, and, failing to get a read, wrote up the Summary Report, packed up my things and hitched a ride to the Hill. The Instructor looked over my reports and snorted, "Damn it, man, you've got several EWs (end-words) right there! Go back and complete your pairs." When I resumed auditing myself, Unanxiety read. That gave me another pair, and I needed only a mate for Tension. I found myself somehow associating the word with "closing." "Opening," I cried, and the needle swiftly hove to the right, practically falling off the dial. When I nudged the tone-arm to center the needle, it went into a series of surging motions in which I thought I spied a floating needle. It was late in the afternoon when I got back to the Instructor's desk. I told him I was worried about Opening, since that word can be a verb form as well as a noun. Perhaps it wasn't a proper end-word; I wished I had tried "Openness." He exclaimed, "What do you want, man? The word read? Then it's an EW! Go attest and get started on out-going lines." My head was still pounding, but leaving Saint Hill would doubtless put an end to that symptom, as well as to the sleepless mornings. Reception handed me a form setting out the order of progress from office to office. This orange-colored sheet would be traveling with me to Scotland on a comm-line between the out-flow of the Hill and the in-flow of the AOUK, the new Advanced Org United Kingdom. After attesting and receiving a certificate, I went to Success to record my gains. My true gain was knowing that I would soon be leaving Saint Hill, but rather than putting things that way I stated, "Complete satisfaction with the Solo Course." Success asked me to send him more details when I got to the AOUK, and directed me out to the garbage dump to burn all the notes I'd taken while on course. That evening when I went to the manor's kitchen commissary for a cup of tea, there was Edward, looking like anything but a suppressive. When I told him of my Solo Release he gave me a bear-hug and danced me around the kitchen table. I had the impression that my release meant much more to him than it did to me. Out-Going LinesHe is guilty of more overts than he is telling the auditor ... Out-going security check was administered by Mike Glassman's young son, Danny, who was working on staff. Danny slid into his chair and revved up the meter like an air ace in his cockpit. He was unsmiling, and had a squint that unnerved me. The questions were much like those of the incoming sec check, but this time something was drastically wrong with the needle. "There's something Out," Danny snarled. "I'm going to have to check each question twice. Is there a withhold? I have a read on that. Something's wrong here and I'm going to find out what it is." With that my heart slid into my stomach. "C'mon, what is it?" Danny hammered. My brain scurried desperately for wrongs I had committed. "I was kidding around about the Sea Org." "All right. Any more on that?" "About the book-selling mission." "Right. Who with? I said WHO WITH?" "With Marilyn, the cook at Fyfield Manor, where I've been staying. But she didn't say anything, just listened to me." "Okay" -- taking it all down -- "I'll check that on the meter. Is there a withhold? That's clean. Are you here for the wrong reasons? I'm getting a read on that. Look, there's something here and I'm going to get it if it takes all day. Now GIVE! It's better you clean it up now. Do you want me to have to put you through a Joburg?" I didn't know what was causing reads at this point. I was packed and ready to leave, my friends were expecting me in London, and this teen-aged bastard had to louse it all up -- he was what was dirtying the needle. "I had a funny feeling about my Solo Audit." "Okay. What about it?" "I wasn't quite satisfied with one of my EWs." "All right. Why not?" "One of them could be either a noun or a verb. I may've made a mistake." "THANK YOU. Put down the cans. Now, you've invalidated yourself by questioning your Solo Release. You are a Solo Release, right? If I hear you invalidating yourself again I'm sending you straight to Ethics, is that understood? If there's anything else, out with it or it'll go a lot harder for you in the long run." There was something else, the question of the gruff but well-meaning Instructor's competence. Hadn't he on more than one occasion broken the rules by volunteering his own opinion, saying more about a Hubbard Bulletin than merely citing a page in the permitted way? I managed to jam that thought so far down into my system that it didn't come close to the surface again. Apparently I'd gone through enough to loosen the needle and get through the remaining questions. As I left the cubicle I was close to numbness, with only my queasy stomach to remind me that I had betrayed Marilyn. I went into lines and began the long wait for another, briefer, out-going sec check, this one at Auditing Worldwide. I stood in line while the Worldwide Ethics Officer rapidly checked preclears out at her desk. This Ethics lady's face wore a dolorous expression. She looked exhausted. In a flash of intuition, I perceived that she might be Gerald Tyber's ex-wife, who had put him through so much trouble. As I stepped up to her desk, she turned away from the E-meter for a moment to look at me. Perhaps my nervousness reminded her of her own experiences going through lines. "Pick up the cans, please." She looked into my eyes and the faint sweetness of a smile softened the corners of her mouth. "Are you here to steal confidential materials?" "No." "Thank you. That's clean," she said gently. She smiled again, ever so slightly, and a warm current ran through my body. "Are you a member of a suppressive group?" "No." "Good. That's clean. Okay, that's it." She had spotted the floating needle. The security checks were over and I was on my way to the Advanced Org in Edinburgh. The intent of other beings was to make this preclear into a willing or unwilling but at least obedient slave. When I got to my friends' house in London, where I was going to spend the night, the first thing I wanted to do was get into a warm bed for a couple of hours. Ann and Nicholas Dalmas sensed that all was not well, and gave me a hot-water bottle to take with me. After my nap we played with their two little girls and had dinner. It felt strange being with non-Scientologists. I was relieved to be away from the manor but my nerves were still jumping. I tried to act carefree. When the children were in bed, Ann, Nicholas and I sat in the living room talking. Ann was worried. "I've read about these Scientology people in the newspapers. They've got some sort of large boat and a girl who went aboard it disappeared." "Look, Ann," I said, "Scientology has always gotten a rotten press in England. These stories are based on rumors. I can probably piece together what really happened and give you a very good explanation for it. Now, this girl who `disappeared' probably left her parents to join what's known as the Sea Org, the crew on Ron Hubbard's yacht. During her training, her parents were found to be `suppressive' to her -- that is, they held her back from her own goals -- and she disconnected from them. They haven't heard from her since, and they're naturally worried. Simple enough, isn't it?" "I don't know," Ann replied. "I think it's awful -- taking children away from their parents. There's something sinister going on. This Scientology sounds dreadfully like brainwashing. Bob, I think they're trying to snatch your brain. I'm very frightened about what's happening to you." "Now, Ann," Nicholas put in, "Bob knows what he's doing, and it seems to be precisely what he wants to do." "Wait," she said, "let me read you both a story I wrote just a few weeks ago." Ann got her composition book and read us a horrific tale about beings from another galaxy who came to earth and enslaved us -- worst of all, with our own full cooperation. Parts of her story were remarkably similar to certain details in the E-F Packs. How could Ann have known of such things? In a panic, I spewed out the benefits the Lower Grades had brought me in New York. Ann impatiently waited for me to finish. "For God's sake, Bob, don't go on with this thing. Stop now while you're still safe. You can stay here with us for a while. The music life in this city is fabulous and I'm sure that Nick, with all his connections, can help you find work right away." I didn't know what to say. What did I really know about Scientology when thus far I had been only at the Hill? The people I'd dealt with were merely on the periphery of the group. In Edinburgh, I would be with members of the inner ranks who would know how to guide me in my struggle with the reactive mind. Ann was looking at me as if she were searching for the words or gestures that would reach me. I was very fond of her, yet now she was taking on the characteristics of a suppressive. The three of us went into Nick's music study, where I played a classical work and some comic improvisations on the piano. This failed to lighten the atmosphere. I could feel Ann's eyes on me. She had said she feared I was being drawn deeper into a trap, one from which I might never escape; but from what I had learned at the Hill, she was the entrapped one, seeking to pull me into the depths with her. Nicholas was quiet. He wished to be fair and impartial, but his wife's distress had unmanned him. We retired at midnight. When I awoke the sky was barely light. I smoked, and heard on the sidewalk below my window the footsteps of people on their way to early morning jobs. At breakfast, Ann was still uneasy but had given up trying to dissuade me from going to Scotland. "I guess you could tell I was in some sort of a jam leaving the Hill," I said, "but really, it's all straightened out now." "Come back to us, Bob, when you're finished with this," she said. I left for Edinburgh on the ten o'clock train with the lunch Ann had packed. Across the aisle from me sat a young woman of about twenty. I stared at her legs now and again during the five-hour train ride. She was just a wog girl with a vacant expression on her face ... probably suppressive to someone.
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