What you will read now will sound unbelievable. It will sound like an error. It sounds impossible. Yet, I have called into 2 different orgs (not Vegas) and into Bridge Publications itself to confirm this:

The e-mail that follows has been forwarded to me by a current member on the cults mailing list. It is the standard 'ground zero' hype with the addition of introducing a 'leather cover, The Way To Happiness'.

This is the first I had heard of a leather cover for these booklets, so I called into an org wanting to donate a booklet or two, and asking the "donations" price. Here is what I learned - Hard cover TWTH is $43.00 per book, this seems to vary slightly where you "donate" for it.

A box of plain soft cover TWTH is $46.00 per 320 of them. We don't know if there are 320 per box, the guy I spoke to thought it was, and I didn't really persue this.

AND NOW FOR THE LEATHER The price, the "donation", is $500.00 per book.

I thought this had to be an error, just had to be an error, so I called into a second org and then Bridge. The "donation" remained constant, five hundred dollars per book and if applicable, a 20% IAS discount.

Not mentioned in the letter that follows is that there is also a movement going, at least at that NY org, to get leather bound dianetics into the hands of Firemen. These "donate" for $100.00 per book. BTW, the NY org is open 24 hours per day these days, or as they put it, 24/7. How 'open' they are I'm not sure, but they do have a receptionist on duty 24/7 I was told.

It took several calls into the NY org to get this information, and I am convinced the monkeys are lying. The information on these Happiness booklets is not readily available. It is not that they are secretive about it, or that I had to fool them before they would tell me anything, that was not the case. What is happening is that I think that I may have been the first person ever to call in asking about the booklets. Nobody had any information available. I told them I was calling long distance, that this was costing me money, could they please get me the information. They couldn't do it, nobody knew what prices were. I had to call back in 20 minutes to get the info. I call back in 30 minutes and speak to my 'comm terminal', and still the guy doesn't know, still he hasn't been able to learn anything solid.

The other org I called, and Bridge, both had the information readily available on that leather Happiness. But not the NY org. And so the hype we read about that NY org and the booklets is just hype. Sure they might have a few cases, they probably do...

Well enough, there is more but enough for now.

(here is that letter:)


From: Ted Mayett <ted-mayett@skylink.net>
Subject: Re: Leather TWTH books
Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2001 12:21:19 -0700
Message-ID: <7576ttk7svuglfuvd5pr5102656nfo8ev7@4ax.com>

>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
>To: <asho@earthlink.net>
>Subject: ASHOF Nightly News, Issue VI
>From: "asho" <asho@earthlink.net>
>Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 15:56:15 -0700
>
>Briefing Update
>
(snip) >DRIVE-BY DISTRIBUTION. SOME VMS ARE USING CARS AND PASSING THE
>BOOKLETS OUT THROUGH THE WINDOWS OF THE CARS. THEY HAVE COINED THE
>OPERATION "DRIVE-BY DISTRIBUTION". THEY HAVE PEOPLE HAPPILY TAKING
>THE BOOKLETS FROM THEM.
>
(snip) This one is understandable, as an ex-monkey I understand monkey-hype.

This is what happened, and I'm willing to bet on it:

Two of them were in a car, and they had booklets with them. They were stopped for a traffic light or a STOP sign and one of those bums that rushes up to wash your car windshield came up to them, OR, it was simply a panhandler asking for spare change and they gave them one of the useless booklets instead. The two VM's got back to the org and laughed about the story, about how they got rid of a panhandler with a booklet. Within a few hours the story was changed to what was written above. I've seen this phenomena here in Vegas, I'm sure this is how this came about.

One time Tony M. returns to the big org here, he tells me and a few others about running a 'pleasure moment' on some women on the plane trip back to Vegas. That same evening, at the staff meeting, the story had turned into "Tony did a book-one session on the plane and ran basic-basic on a woman." It was quite embarrassing for Tony and those of us that knew the true story. So how is it I would stay involved with a group of people this convoluted? I have an answer for that - I dunno??

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