http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/NOTs/origins/mayo-history.html

David Mayo on the Origin of NOTs

David Mayo worked with L. Ron Hubbard to create the NOTs levels. In early 1996 he wrote a letter introducing himself to the alt.religion.scientology community, in which he summarized his history with the Church. In this excerpt from his (never published) letter, Mayo describes how he came to co-author the NOTs material.

In late 1978, I was hurriedly and secretly whisked off to California and driven blindfolded in the night to a secret location in the desert at La Quinta, near Palm Springs. Hubbard's health had deteriorated. I was told that his blood pressure, breathing rate and heartbeat were low, a medical doctor who was also a Scientologist, Gene Denk, was in attendance, standing by to restart his heart with electric shock. I was told he had been like this for about a week, was getting worse and over the past day had been slipping into and out of a coma. When I first saw him he was lying on his back, unmoving, neither speaking nor responding when spoken to, with his eyes open staring at the ceiling and not moving. The doctor told me that there was nothing he could do for Hubbard and now it was up to me. I started with techniques that required no verbal response, then minimal verbal response doing short but frequent sessions, changing to techniques that required more participation on his part as his condition improved, which happened rapidly. Within a week he was getting out of bed, walking and beginning to yell again. Hubbard and others said that I had saved his life. Skeptics might say that it was not due to the techniques I used and was mere co-incidence but it would be difficult to convince me of that.

I continued to audit Hubbard developing procedures and later co- authoring the descriptions and theoretical explanations of what would later be called `NOTs'(tm). That started out to be a write up of what I found to be wrong with Hubbard's past auditing and how I repaired it. In my mind that was a remedy for what had been done incorrectly, rather than a new `OT' level or levels. In this auditing, I found that much of his case trouble came from his NED auditing and his OT III solo auditing --though there were also errors in some other levels. The case manifestations that I found, (errors and charged areas) how I found them and what I did to repair and correct these matters would require a lengthy explanation. For now, suffice it to say that this auditing that I did on Hubbard (and later tested on a some other persons) using the e-meter and scientological theory and methods and the phenomena I observed, demonstrated --at least to me-- that the information in the OT III story was at least inaccurate and possibly completely incorrect. In view of the awe in which I held Hubbard and his theories about the mind and the spirit at that time, that discovery required a giant mental leap and change of viewpoint for me. It was not the first time that I had had such an heretical thought. I distinctly recall my momentary disbelief when I first opened an OT III pack and began to read the galactic story. Hubbard's statement that `reality is proportional to charge off' and my strong belief in his rightness in other matters, forestalled deeper skepticism for the time being.

When I started to write up the discoveries, phenomena and procedures developed during that auditing the above is more or less what I initially had in mind to describe in regard to the repair (remedial) auditing that I had done that assisted Hubbard's recovery. I felt that these observations and methods would be valuable to other scientologists who had been run extensively on Dianetics and on OT III and so would likely need the same repair that Hubbard had needed. Furthermore, there was a new discovery and positive technique that I had begun developing in those sessions which I thought would be of general benefit in improving a person's ability to think logically. Neither of these two points is adequately described in the final rendition.

Hubbard has always thought that his case was representative of other people's cases and that what had been run on him in his auditing should be run on others. I recall him once saying that he had a `standard case'. This is one factor that influenced the presentation of the NOTs materials. There were other factors and there is a lot more to this story none of which is necessary to include here.

During the 1978, 1979 time period I also became involved in supervising Mary Sue Hubbard's auditing and sometimes auditing her myself. At some point, Hubbard decided to keep me at there (La Quinta, California) to continue auditing him and overseeing Mary Sue's auditing, in stead of returning to the position I had in Clearwater, Senior Case Supervisor Flag. He created a new position and appointed me `Senior Case Supervisor International.'

From 1979/1980 forward into 1982, I began to develop and release new technical procedures and began a long term project of `studying and researching, reviewing and correcting and possibly replacing the existing levels and developing new ones,' (a near paraphrase of how Hubbard described my work in a memo he wrote on or about April 14, 1982, in which he outlined what he expected me to continue to do in the event of his death). Until that time and even for a few months after, Hubbard thought highly of my work, frequently commended me and considered me to be his replacement for `technical' (i.e., relating to auditing techniques) matters. He went further in that memo, to say that it would be up to me to develop OT VIII (which contrary to PR statements, did not exist at that time) and subsequent levels. I was rather dismayed by this news as I had really been expecting him to do that; I wondered, if he as `The Founder' of the subject had not managed to develop these OT levels and the OT powers he had claimed for them, how could he expect me to able to fulfil his obligation --he had just tossed me the ultimate Hot Potato!

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