ARS Literati $10,000 Challenge

From: waterlily1999@my-deja.com
Subject: ARS Literati $10,000 Challenge-- Patricia Krenik
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 02:59:29 GMT
Message-ID: <7pqdec$7rr$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

ARS Literati $10,000 Challenge-- Patricia Krenik

Disclaimer: This essay talks about Dianetics, Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, LRH and possibly uses other words that may have been copyrighted, trademarked, or registered by the Religious Technology Center and/or other corporations of Scientology. Wherever these words are used in this document it is to be recognized that the proper ® or © follows the use of those words.

The Beginning

It was Christmas Eve in Seattle, WA; the year was 1951. I unwrapped the book my uncle had sent me, Dianetics the Modern Science of Mental Health, by L. Ron Hubbard.

Earlier I had seen it in a bookstore, but couldn't part with the $4.00. After all, I had a small daughter to care for, was attempting to get a divorce from my first husband, and at twenty-one years old was picking up odd jobs to make ends meet.

It is an understatement to say that the book changed my life --- for better and for worse! As in marriage, bonding with Dianetics and/or Scientology rarely becomes "lives happily ever after." Of course, I didn't know that then. I was one of the first wave of new auditors, excited about book auditing and helping promote the new evolution to the state of clear. I was involved--heart, mind, soul and body.

Before I go any further, let me introduce myself. My name is Patricia Krenik and I am currently on the Church of Scientology's SP list. SP means Suppressive Person, which means (at least in their eyes) that I'm a bad ass. I have committed the "high crime" of speaking out against some of the practices of the Church, and letting others know that I am no longer a member, having resigned about thirteen years ago. That is a big "no-no" in the Church. Those who speak out and say anything that doesn't make Scientology well known and well thought of can have their name wind up on the SP list. My name is there, even if it is misspelled.

You might ask, why would I care if they put my name on a SP list since I am no longer a member of the COS that is, Church of Scientology? Ah ha, now we are getting to basics. The Church practices "disconnection", requiring that members in good standing disconnect from any of the ex- members or other so called bad guys who are on the SP list. That means if you have a family member who is a member of said Church they can't talk or write to you if your name is on that list. Gee, not even e- mail. Or they won't communicate for fear of losing their rights to have auditing and training. Currently I have a daughter who is still willing to pay the Church over $300 an hour for either her or my grandson's services. She and Rory have been told to disconnect from me, and she has written me two letters of disconnect.

Would she have disconnected from me without the influence of this church? I doubt it. We were reasonably friendly. My grandson and I are fond of each other. Does it effect my life? Yes. The COS claims to want to make people more able, yet it advocates cutting communication lines.

Contrary data? You bet! Does disconnection help or hinder our family relationships? Hinders. No question about it.

Let's take this a step further. In the Creed of the Church they state that people should have the right to free speech, but in actual practice free speech is only for those who are positive about Scientology. If you are negative about Scientology or its Founder, L.

Ron Hubbard, or criticize it publicly in any way, you may very well wind up on the SP list. So much for free speech.

In the beginning when I first read Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health, I was Patricia Stevens. Excited about this information I made many new friends in the Pacific Northwest, and we had much fun discussing the technology, trading free auditing, and listening to the latest LRH rumors. Did he really fly out of the country and take Alexis with him? Did the State of California really have a warrant for his arrest? But the PABs, Professional Auditor Bulletins--Ron Hubbard's early tech stuff--continued to arrive in our mailboxes, so we knew he was still "there" for us, out of country or not.

Off the wall humor like the "Two Little Thetans" cartoons arrived in the mailbox, too. In one cartoon a thetan, represented by a circle with little lines flowing outside it, was drawn in the same spot as a yellow traffic light, apparently blinking. In the balloon where his thought is expressed he says to another thetan, "It doesn't pay much, but it is steady." This humor was not popular with the Hubbard Communications Office, if that is what it was called back then, and I received a newsletter telling me in effect that auditors should ignore those communications which made fun of the subject.

Now I'm talking about the year 1953, so you can see how early we were introduced to the idea of disembodied thetans, either through lectures or through the antics of the jokers and <snip> --- need I say more? Perhaps I should explain since this is an inside joke. There is an LRH policy that talks about "jokers and degraders" and since I have made this little comment it is now something else the Church can add to my list of suppressive acts and high crimes.

So, who were the auditors of those days? In its first year of publication, one hundred thousand people had read his DMSMH, commonly referred to as "first book" even though it wasn't his first on the subject. Out of that came a few hundred that streamed into early Dianetic Foundations and paid to be trained and a lot of us who just book audited or attended lectures. The world at large had not heard of us as an organization, certainly not heard of us as a religion, and most certainly not heard of us as a rich man's religion.

Now comes the sixty-four dollar question. Did we care about any wrongdoing that LRH was involved in or had been involved in? No, I think not. I believe I can speak for the large majority of LRH followers of the early days, later referred to as "old timers." We didn't care because we believed that with auditing a person improved, became more sociable, committed less overt acts against his fellow man. Ron was a man to us, not a god, and perfectly capable of wrongdoing just as any other person is. Would we have thought any differently if we had known the extent of his misrepresentations?

Harder to answer, but probably most of us would still not have been too upset about it. As long as LRH kept writing and giving us new processes we were happy.

In early 1954 Stanley Sage, who had received his Doctorate Degree in Scientology in Phoenix AR a couple of months or so earlier, told me about Ron Hubbard's incorporating Scientology into a Church. Whoops, sudden change of direction! I wrestled with myself--did I really want a religion? Able to say the Lord's Prayer verbatim at the tender age of four, I then suffered being dragged or forced to attend Sunday school. This went on week after week, year after year as my mother tried to instill good Christian values into my recalcitrant head.

Could I really have Scientology as a religion? It was obvious to me why LRH had switched to a Church; most of us who wanted to audit did not have a degree in psychology, could not get a state license to practice, and it would be illegal for us to charge any money for our services. I had dreamed of hanging out a shingle as a Dianetic Auditor. So I struggled with the idea and finally accepted it.

I had never thought about Scientology as having any sort of God connection. In Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health there were four dynamics, that is, urges to survive as self, sex/family, groups and mankind. There weren't eight dynamics until the book Science of Survival was introduced. There the eighth dynamic included the urge to survive as or through a Supreme Being. I could grant the urge was present in people as evidenced by history as well as present time, but an urge to survive as or through is not the same as stating "There is a God." It did not say "as or through the Supreme Being."

Even though I could differentiate between religion and religious practices, I found it very strange that this subject, heretofore referred to as an applied philosophy or even a sort of rudimentary science could suddenly become a religion. Yes, as Stanley had explained to me, Ron had elatedly pointed out that he, Ron, had had this huge cognition, that we were dealing with the spirit and therefore Scientology belonged in the field of religion; that it would solve many problems including taxes. To keep pace with his new approach LRH changed his definition of Dianetics, which had been broadly publicized as "The Science of Mind," to Dianetics, "The Science of Soul."

It felt like play-acting. I had never wanted to be a Minister, but a Minister I was soon to be. I'd hoped my mother would be happy with this, but as it turned out later, she was not. In 1955 I challenged the test for the Hubbard Certified Auditor's certificate, which was the first level of professional auditor at that time. I made 100% on the exam, which included the Axioms verbatim, and then was further examined and certified by Richard Steves, Qualification Secretary. So far in Scientology I had wracked up hundreds of co-auditor hours, had my first professional certificate, and hadn't spent one cent. The tech was free, wasn't it?

All HCA's were Ministers. No special course had to be taken at that time. It wasn't until many years later that a special course was devised for Minister status that included Ordination. Once I held a certificate I could audit in the field and charge money for the sessions if I wished. I didn't even have to send a percentage to the Church of Scientology. In those days, auditors had rights. I believed that I could earn a good living with the skills I was obtaining in Scientology, and had a strong interest in continuing my training.

Of course, I still wanted to go clear, so in l957 Ron Arnold, my then husband, and I packed up the four kids and drove cross-country in our Ford toWashington D.C. We didn't really know what we expected; just thought we'd survey the scene. We had no money to attend the Congress Lectures, so we just hung out in the foyer after the doors to the hall where LRH would lecture were closed, as it was done in those days, exactly on time. We chatted with the door guards, and later with Mary Sue Hubbard. We had even considered joining staff and living in D.C., but quickly changed our minds as we saw the living conditions of some of the staff. We were poor, but at least so far, we hadn't had to be hungry.

After returning to Washington State, we sold the Ford, put a down payment on a new Renault, farmed out the kids to relatives for a couple of months, and once again took off for Washington D.C. It never dawned on us to arrange for payments for the Advanced Clinical Course in advance. We arrived, put up $100 each and expected to be accepted.

The registrar was not a happy camper. Finally, realizing she was getting no more cash, she went to consult with LRH. About fifteen minutes later she returned with an OK to sign a payment contract. We were in!

It was the 19th ACC, taught by LRH, assisted by Nibs, (LRH Jr.) and by Dick and Jan Halpern. It was an experimental clearing ACC. It was during one of Ron's lectures where I learned about the "Frankenstein monster effect." As Ron described it, it was creating a machine that eventually operated automatically. It then takes on a sort of life of its own, out of the creator's control. Even as he described the Frankenstein monster effect, I thought of the Church of Scientology and wondered if it would ever wind up on automatic, for it was obvious to me that LRH was building a machine that he intended to have last for a very long time. It was only later that we heard of the billion-year Sea Org Contracts.

The $100 down we placed on each of our $800 courses wasn't our only expense. We each had to purchase an E-meter, a rectangular blue box that cost $100 each. I believe Joe Wallace designed it. Of course, the E-meters were never designed by LRH. Every auditor had to have an electropsychometer because we could not clear others without it.

I'm going to take a moment here to ride my favorite hobbyhorse. If you are a member of Hubbard Association of Scientologists, Int., and you want clears and OTs, then you need to have an E-meter priced so that most people can afford to purchase one, otherwise you will never have enough auditors to "clear a planet". It makes mockery of the goal to charge over $4,000 for something that costs less than $200 in parts, and, to use the language of Scientology, it is suppressive. It defeats Scientology's own stated purposes. . Why it isn't listed as a "High Crime" is beyond me.

Let's assume one had an automobile factory, and wanted to have a new car in the hands of every person in the world. Now this factory is different from other car factories in that each person, before he receives the car, must learn how to build it, just as anyone going clear and/or OT must learn how to audit. Would it make sense to require each potential technical owner to spend $4,000 on meters that cost the company only $200 to produce, before he can learn to build the car? How many techs do you think you will get this way? Granted, you will get a few that have the funds and really want that new car, but you won't get the droves of people needed so the goal of every person owning that model can be accomplished. The rest of the people will say hey, for that price I'll buy and drive a used one. The factory loses it's long range goal, but of course, it does pocket some money that it can spend in advertising to promote the idea to the next potential techie.

Since I attended the 19th ACC perhaps you might be interested in my impression of LRH. He was beefy, friendly, red-haired and near- sighted. Some of us students once argued over his height, with guesses that ranged from five foot nine to six foot tall. There were even some who believed he had the ability to change his height! He had a highly developed sense of humor, and a remarkable ability to recognize faces and names. He was accessible to his public. Students sometime shared his table when he ate at a restaurant, or he would stop on the street and talk to you and tell you that your child is "a bright one."

I think it is time to throw in some Ron stories. It will help in picturing the social side of LRH, back in the days when he truly had a social side. Needless to say, his communication skills were excellent, and he had a fine family. Katie, his older daughter, was in the area, as was his son, Nibs. Mary Sue was very loyal, and loved him. His oldest daughter by Mary Sue, Diana, was about eight years old then, used to play in the front yard around the Washington D.C. Org. Quentin must have been about three or four. Ron used to call him "twinkle toes" because of the way he would walk down the stairs on his tiptoes.

There was a lot of chitchat going on when I first arrived in Washington D.C. to sign up for the ACC. The rumor was someone had gone clear in the HGC (Hubbard Guidance Center). The story was that he went into session as an ordinary human being, and came out of session with no memory as to who or what he had been in this life, or what this society and its standards were about. His name was Ralph, and I talked to him at that time, but he didn't admit to being clear, and he was never declared to be clear. He spoke his English as if highly educated, but claimed that as a being he had been stuck in a spaceship and suddenly came to Earth. When he arrived he found his body surrounded with mental image pictures. Deciding he didn't need or want them, he just erased them. The problem was that his orientation was from a different planet. He was surprised that the "atmosphere was condensing", that we didn't have climate control and that the sidewalks did not move.

He hung out with LRH, who had to teach him simple things like eating again. Whatever had happened, it was spectacular. Later, Ralph was the source of two of my favorite Ron stories. In both stories a colorful fellow named Johnny Farrell, who vanished from Scientology about 1959, starred. In the first story, there was a Congress, (gathering of Scientologists) and LRH was dutifully saying goodbye to the crowd one by one as they stood in line. "Good, glad to hear you could come," the usual small talk as he shook each hand. Johnny was standing near Bert Belknap, waiting a turn, when he suddenly noticed that Ron was on "automatic." LRH had a habit of sort of leaning his body forward a bit when he really wasn't paying attention, or, as we would have thought then, was exterior. So Johnny and Bert got this great idea, and Johnny decided when Ron shook hands with Bert he would introduce him as Johnny Farrell instead of Bert. Bert moves up in line and holds out his hand as Johnny says clearly into Ron's ear, "Ron, I would like you to meet Johnny Farrell." Ron starts with the "How do you do", then suddenly straightens up and says in a loud voice that could be heard throughout the auditorium, "Johnny Farrell, you son-of-a- bitch."

The other story was at a Congress Party (Ron always called his semi- yearly public events "Congresses") where Ron was playing bartender.

Johnny was having too many drinks, and he approached Ron with a slur in his voice, and said, "Hey, Ron, what would be a good game?" A popular process back then was "Invent a game." Ron poured him another drink as he commented like, "Not now, Johnny, this is a party." But Johnny, recently trained on repeating a question until it was answered, kept at it. "Hey, boss, what would be a good game?" Again Ron sidestepped the question, said something about not the time to do auditing, and tried to avoid the question and fill some people's glasses again, including that of Johnny's. Time goes on, but Johnny doesn't give up. "What would be a good game, boss?" and Ron doesn't answer and keeps filling Johnny's glass. Finally Johnny, drinking down the last drink Ron had poured, started slowly sliding onto the floor. In one last slurred effort he said, "Whass would be a good game?" and as he fell, LRH cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled, "Getting Johnny Farrell drunk!"

The 19th ACC that I attended was the first ACC to have TRs, and for two weeks we did the communication drills, yelled or intended the ashtray to "stand up" and body routed other students around the room as we told them to "walk over to that wall." Twice a day Ron Hubbard gave a lecture. My then husband, whose name also was Ron, had been in Phoenix at the same time LRH had been, and was so impressed with him at that time that he had died his hair red. A few years later he had the occasion to write to LRH, so he wrote, "I don't know if you remember me, but --- " The letter from Ron returned a couple of weeks later. It said, "Of course I don't remember you, I particularly don't remember your bright red hair."

So during the ACC Ron Arnold came to me and said, "You know, I don't think Ron remembers me. He always calls everyone else by name when they raise their hand, and he doesn't do that when I raise mine." So I watched, and sure enough, Ron Arnold raised his hand and LRH leaned toward him near-sightedly and said, "yes --- ?" As an observer I could tell LRH was putting him on. At graduation when the certificates were handed out LRH called him by name. "I guess he knows who I am after all," Ron Arnold said.

Even though the supervisors did much of the work in class, LRH was very much present. Besides the daily lectures, he kept track of all the students and, as we went into the second phase of the ACC, personally walked around every few days to observe the sessions. At that time we were in a large rooms with six or so auditor/preclear teams in each.

As a student I did TRs with Ron. He was walking through checking out the student's TRs. He came and confronted me, and being new to TRs, I stopped looking at my coach and confronted him back. We just looked at each other for a couple of minutes, then I decided it was my coach I should be confronting and shifted my attention back. Apparently that was a "pass" because I never heard anything more about it.

He was there when I had a sudden upset with my auditor, Peter Green.

Ron moved over to me, put his hand on my shoulder, and said, "How do you like this guy?" With all of that affinity LRH was projecting I could afford to let go of my upset and replied, "He's OK." We continued the session without further problem.

Half of us in that Clearing ACC went clear; the other half did not.

LRH checked us out personally, after making us wait for quite awhile in a waiting room at the Wash. D.C. Org. Marilyn Routsong popped her head out of Ron's office and said, "Ron says to tell you that if anyone isn't sure he is clear he is to leave now." We stood and looked at each other, no one budged. One by one we came in and sat in front of Ron, and he had us pick up the e-meter cans and he asked us questions.

The supervisors and certain other staff sat in a row against the wall, watching the proceedings. At one point when Ron asked me a question, I decided to look it over, and didn't answer right away. I could hear the intake of breath from Jan Halpern behind me, otherwise the silence could be cut with a knife. Finally I made up my mind as to how I wanted to answer the question, and did so. LRH was comfortable thoughout the examination. So was I.

Of course as we all left we were told that the results of IQ and personality tests would count, and they would have to be a "pass" if we were to be certified as clear. As far as I know, everyone who made it to Ron's office for Exam that day did eventually get declared clear.

Ron Hubbard, I do believe, was not satisfied with the results of that ACC. He was either hoping for something more spectacular or for something that worked on 100% of the people 100% of the time, or both. Some of the students, who didn't make clear, had their cases go more solid. His next ACC was a completely different approach to clearing. They ran engrams and searched for "the rock". He wrote a bulletin that stated that no one who had not run the rock was clear.

Interesting because he himself had checked me out, and I had not, at that time, run the rock. Rather than to be invalidated, I promptly did locate and run "the rock". Wasn't very hard since I was already clear. It just wasn't true that one had to run "the rock" to go clear. It was only one way.

Nibs, Ron's son who had helped teach the course I took, had a reputation of being an excellent auditor and an effective instructor.

So it was shock to hear the rumors. He and Henrietta had left staff.

The cover story was that the Communists had gotten to him and brainwashed him. I didn't believe it. Last I had heard is that Nibs had wanted a raise, he couldn't live with his wife on the wages he was receiving, and he had asked his father for one. Part of his father's mind that no one could get into had to do with money. If that weren't true Nib's asking him for more money would not have been the catalyst that set the two of them apart for the rest of their lives.

Nib's relationship with his father must have been very difficult for him. After all, Nibs was born premature, and, according to his sister Katie, was kept in a shoebox with Ron tending to him day and night. He was so small that with his head in his father's hand his whole body stretched out to the tip of his toes bearly reached the crook of Ron's arm. The bonding process must have been deep. Ron Hubbard Jr. simply could not fathom what made his father tick, and he felt shut out.

Probably no one ever mentioned to him that LRH was very low on trust.

He had even taught us that as auditors we should be very high on our emotional tones, but low on trust. He did not trust psychiatrists, and taught us to distrust them also. It was taught as a generality, he never presented it as if some were ok and others were not so good.

Today, a good psychiatrist might have a proper label for the mental condition that LRH had, but if any had described it in the past they certainly did not publish it broadly.

Like a lot of public figures, Ron was "on stage" almost all the time.

He acted out his roles, but he preferred a role as Commodore of a ship. There he had total say; total control. His friends he could afford to treat kindly, but he gave no quarter for the smallest slipup. He forwarded the idea of "unreasonableness" giving it the opposite meaning to which it was intended, making "reasonableness" into a bad word.

In the early days Ron Hubbard kept his identity and that of the Church separate. There was one point when he felt the Church owed him money, why I'm not sure. Royalties, perhaps? He wanted us to know how much he had contributed to the Church, and I sensed that he wasn't really happy with the fact that the Church had been unable to pay its bill to him.

Later he wrote how he had forgiven the Church its debt to him, in the amount, to the best of my recollection, of $100,000.

The auditing procedure done in the 19th ACC, called Step VI Clearing, was quickly dropped out of the lineup as a recommended clearing procedure. While the information can still be found in the technical material, it wasn't used or promoted. Ron went on to other lines of possible clearing techniques. He knew he was experimenting, and to help make up for any damages he later wrote a policy letter that let all of us who had paid for the ACCs in full have the Saint Hill Special Briefing Course for free.

A lot happened between the time I left the HGC's exam room and the next time I saw L. Ron Hubbard. I heard that my instructor in the ACC, Dick Halpern, had committed suicide not too long after the ACC was completed. Unbelievable. Dick was a happy fellow with a fancy red car, the kind where the doors came up like batwings. As an instructor he was lively and funny, sort of like Tigger, bouncy, bouncy, fun, fun, fun. I couldn't even imagine what had happened to him.

Another baby was born, this one at home. I moved to Renton WA and Ron Arnold was doing architectural drafting. We had a part-time franchise, and rented the space from the Seattle Church in order to help them with finances, instead of renting from the hotel where we started. We co- audited a lot, and I was being run on some pretty hot whole track stuff, when something went wrong. Very wrong. I had a nervous breakdown in session, gained a phobia, and spent my hours being terrified and suffered nightmares. I was a cleared wreck. Of course, now we know better than to audit major processes on a clear, but we didn't know it then. We also didn't have any repair lists. Nothing to fix the wreck. My poor auditor tried and tried to help me recover. We spent hours redoing processes that which had already been flattened, like stop-change-start, and "you make that body sit in that chair."

Nothing worked. Nothing. The walls still moved in on me; I still had trouble standing still, and looking in a mirror gave the wrong image in reflection.

My marriage fell apart, and I was at my wit's end when Ralph walked into my life. He was visiting in Seattle. I told him of my case trouble, and he referred me to a field auditor, Smokey Angell.

Apparently she had helped him throw away his crutches after polio some years ago, and he highly recommended her. Smokey did a good job, and I experienced the first release of affect I had had in over a year.

While I still had a long way to go to recover, at least I was on the road.

So Ralph and I were married, and we were visiting Washington D.C. in 1961. It had been nearly three years since I had last spoken with Ron Hubbard, but Ralph was his friend, we had no trouble getting in for a visit. The two of them passed the time of day in a friendly, comradely way. Ralph pulled out his dogtags to show the word Scientology on it as his religion. To my knowledge he was the first person to get the Army to accept Scientology as a religion. Mission accomplished, he was AWOL as he was visiting Ron, and came limping in with a leg that had suddenly become bad again, and told Ron he was trying to get out of the army on a medical discharge. Ron laughed. Then Ron mentioned something about how he was able to get out of the Navy reserves by going to a little known place to file his papers. At one point LRH pulled out his forty-five revolver to show it to Ralph, who took it, turned it over, admired it, and gave it back. Guy talk.

But I was different than I had been before, and Ron noticed it.

Before I was clean, clear, with a comfortable confront. Then I was sort of rushed and nervous for no reason except I hadn't fully recovered from my mental crash--also I was pregnant again. As we left, LRH said to Ralph, "She's got overts on me. Take her into session and pull them."

I never doubted that I had an overt, after all, Ron was the ultimate tech authority. The only problem was, I thought Ron was just great. I had never said or done anything derogatory against him. He was like a mentor. So I went to session, and tried very hard to find something.

Finally I either made up something or dubbed-in, or maybe I really had known him in another life in Africa. I really worked at finding an overt so that Ron could be right about his assessment of me. To this day I don't know if there is any truth in the mental pictures I was mocking up. My point is, I never had an overt on Ron Hubbard, at least in this life. It was his own ego that led him to believe that my apparent change in attitude had something to do with him. It did not.

It was his own suspicious mind that made him think I had an overt against him. Of course I didn't realize this until many years later.

That was the last time I saw Ron Hubbard. I hoped and expected that he would return again and deliver a lecture at a Congress and maybe shoot that toy machine-gun again like he did in Dec. l957, but he never did.

Others did too, and every Scientology organization had an Office of LRH, a space set-aside for him with a desk and his favorite cigarettes, Kools, in case he arrived unexpectedly.

Ron stood by his friend though, and in 1965 when Ralph was in legal trouble, LRH wrote a hand-written supressive person ethics declare on the person who had made the complaint. Ron Hubbard lived his life in a manner that he later set down as policy in his "Simon Bolovar" and other power policies. It didn't matter if Ralph was guilty of the offense, Ralph was his friend and the other guy was not a Scientologist. The declare was written on goldenrod. Ralph survived his trial with a "not guilty" verdict, and I was blinded by hand- written goldenrod, which helped obscure much of the truth. I believed Ralph, I believed LRH, and my daughters grew up wondering how mom could be so blind.

Ralph talked with Ron on the telephone in 1966 when he was in Johannesburg, and Ron sent Ralph a postcard in 1968, with a picture of a ship and saying that maybe someday he and Ralph could go fishing.

That was the last personal communication I saw from LRH. Of course, I did get some SO#1 letters, with Ron's signature on it. Some of those were his, and some weren't. There was always the PR going around in the 70's that Ron signed all the SO#1 letters himself. I guess the staff believed it. It wasn't true. While I was sure myself that I could tell the difference in his signatures, someone once admitted to me that for several months he used to sign LRH's signature on the letters.

The Churches of Scientology struggled financially for years. In 1966 LRH came out with the Ethics Policies, which basically stated that if things weren't going well, a suppressive person was actively causing statistics to drop. The witch-hunts started. In Seattle alone, there were about nineteen people declared suppressive. Considering there really weren't very many active Scientologists in 1966 in Seattle, that was a lot of people. My ex-husband Ron Arnold was declared. People connected to the declared people were labeled PTS, potential trouble sources, and weren't permitted any auditing except a Search and Discovery action to find the suppressive person on their case. Since my case had not fully recovered from the earlier nervous breakdown, and I was obviously unstable, the S and D was required for me. My mother wouldn't loan me the $100 it cost (prices were still reasonable in those days) so she was declared a Suppressive Person. When I finally got my S and D it went on and on and on, hundreds of items. The auditor kept trying to clear the word unmock. Who or what has attempted to unmock you? Unfortunately any read the auditor may have seen was probably reading on the misunderstood. I eventually solved the problem by finding my grandmother, who, even though she didn't try to unmock me, certainly indulged in mocking me, an action which I hated. I was happy with my grandmother for my item, even if it didn't have much to do with the question. And I wrote my letter of disconnect to my dead grandmother, as required.

Finding the SP's in the area was supposed to help the statistics recover. Maybe the auditing statistics did improve. I wasn't the only one to buy an S and D.

It didn't resolve my case however. Soon Ralph became the target, and was declared Suppressive, and I was considered PTS and not permitted any auditing or training. Maybe if Dorothy, who was handling Ethics in Seattle, had written the SP declare and at the same time had indicated something real, I might have listened. One thing Ralph did not want to do was work. He never joined any staff or Sea Org. His idea of OT was you postulate it and it happens. Well, sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't. Somehow his ability to slam windows shut from a distance and knock a purse off of a dresser onto the floor as a demonstration of his OT talents was supposed to be the same ability as the one that brought in the money for groceries. It wasn't, and it didn't. I could not understand how a person who could make a match jump back into the ashtray after it had inadvertantly landed on the floor (like look ma, no hands) could have such utter disregard for the normal everyday needs, like housing and food. He handmade a beautiful plywood boat, steaming the curves with a steam iron to get the wood to bend, and painted it red, only to have it be lost to a landlord who copped it in place of back rent.

He was not happy with the Suppressive Person Declare however, and we eventually migrated to California, modern Grapes of Wrath. The old ex- postoffice truck was filled with carefully built plywood boxes which contained all our belongings, and on top of the boxes the kids and I rested while the truck headed to California. Actually, it was headed to Texas where work had been promised Ralph, but the truck broke down in LA, and he never went to that job. Sometimes postulates do work.

One postulate worked for me --- I had been dreaming of going to St. Hill in England for my next auditing, but that was financially inconceivable.

Shortly after the truck broke down in Los Angeles, ASHO, the American St. Hill Organization was established within walking distance of where I was living. Somehow the Declares of SP and PTS were lifted (thanks to Julia Salmen of the LA Org, an old friend) and I was free to attend the St. Hill Special Briefing Course, at no charge, of course. About the same time the first Class VIII courses were held aboard the Flagship, when it really was a ship.

I continue to throw in comments about free and low prices because I feel that the information on how it was needs to be known to be able to properly evaluate how it is currently. Like a train headed down one track, it somehow became derailed. It split into an entirely different direction.

Now let's talk about the tech. The tech was really changing. In the early days of Dianetics and Scientology we ran the processes in each book and PAB and bulletin as it came out. It was the experimental track. Lots of good stuff, but organized differently. We didn't have word clearing, we read the bulletin and applied it to the preclear. We didn't do drugs (of course there was always someone who was an exception) so we didn't need drug rundowns and purification rundowns.

We also didn't have repair lists to fix up auditor goofs; we did an unremarkable thing and ran out the last bad session. We didn't even have Case Supervisors. Written worksheets were a later invention. The tech worked when it did because some auditor did something right --- his best guess on what to run on a preclear turned out OK. There were a few cases no one knew what to do with. Like Bill Fisk, who had only one main needle pattern, a rockslam. He ran the Seattle Org in 1963, and someone shot him. You can say he got shot because he was a rockslammer, you could say he got shot because he was messing with Johnson's wife, but the truth of the matter is he had an unhandled case and no one, but no one, knew how to break through it. If we could have cracked his case the whole scenario might not have been played out.

Bill wasn't a bad guy, in the last letter I received from him a couple of months or so before he was killed, he said he thought he was doing a little better. That was 1963, thirteen years after the "science" of making clears was first presented. We still didn't have a uniform way to make clears, and we still didn't have the technology to resolve a "tough case." Those that had gone clear were not acknowledged, they were actually stripped of the recognition in 1966 when the new "first clear", John McMasters was publicly announced. But after 1966 when the Ethics Policies came out we no longer had a "tough case" problem. They were quickly labeled PTS something-or-other and no one was permitted to audit them. That is still true today.

Any problem with auditing, the preclear is first routed to the Qualifications Division, and if Qual can't find the technical problem, the preclear is routed to Ethics. Ethics checks to see if he is connected to a SP or a psychiatrist, or if he is receiving disability funds.

It is a workable system, except it doesn't work 100% of the time. The preclear could be on a wrong auditing program, Qual could miss it, Ethics could decide that the reason for the tech failure was a connection to an uncle in the IRS or something. Human errors. If you ask for your money back for auditing hours used up, it must be given to you, but it is considered a High Crime and you will not be permitted future auditing and training.

So came the year 1968 and we had repair lists, and ways to rehabilitate past gains so they fit with the present gradation chart. There was really some very good tech out at that time, but there must have been more problems than met the eye. LRH was busy trying to solve technical problems. We had blinkless TRs, then easy TRs. We had simple, easily run processes to handle the grades, and then we had long, long, many grade processes. Ron sent the Word Clearing technology into ASHO with a crash--as if the reason we weren't getting more auditors, more clears, and more preclear successes was because we couldn't read.

Everything changed instantly. It probably did in other parts of the Scientology world too, but ASHO was where I was at the time. Each new tech became a panacea, and everyone had to incorporate the new tech, which often was poorly understood by the people applying it, into the old line up. I discovered there were many wrong ways to use the word clearing tech. Would you believe one time someone wanted me to say the alphabet, a, b, c, d, etc?

Either just before that or just after, I don't recall which, the drug rundown came in to solve all our ills. The reason the tech wasn't working as well as it should be was because now we had a drug culture, which we didn't have when Dianetics was first written, and drugs made resistive cases. The drug rundown became such a marvelous solution that even OT's had to have drug rundowns, first before they went OT, and then after OT III. I'm not knocking the tech here, I'm pointing out the frenzy of changes that continued to occur, all being called "standard tech." For example, there were no less than five different rundowns presented at separate times, all under the same mysterious level called OT I., each one being standard tech. At one time OT VII was run after OT III and before OT IIIx --of course I'm talking about the earlier OT VII, not the newer Nots OT VII. You get the picture.

Pre-OTs (all OT is pre-OT --- that is our excuse for not living up to the idea of the thetan who knocks off hats at 50 paces) of course were/are not allowed to discuss the materials or even their cognitions with other pre-OTs. Paying public and most of the staff hardly ever realized how many changes were made on the upper sections. It isn't that changes are necessarily bad, it is just that the term "standard" gives the impression that it is uniform, that it is all the same for each person. Auditors learn the definition of standard tech, but maybe others didn't learn it quite the same way I did. I quote here from memory the words I had to say to my Supervisor before receiving permission to go to the bathroom, "Standard tech is a definite level or degree of quality that is proper and adequate for a specific purpose."

Is that just a fancy way of saying, "auditing is what you can get away with"?

One-step forward, two steps back. Take the purification rundown. It was introduced to help with the drug culture. It isn't even a process in the same way that auditing is. It is a body process, a sweat-out and running process. It is there to help people who have taken drugs make it through the grades. Yet, it doesn't matter in the Church if you have already successfully made it through the grades and up the gradation chart. If it is missing as a completed item on your preclear folder summary, you are going to pay for it and do it or you don't move onto your next level, even if your next level is OT umpteen. I know this is true because it was done to me. Apparently "standard tech" is painting everyone with the same brush, whether they need that coat of paint or not. And let us not forget, charging very high prices for it.

There were a few wonderful bits of tech that came out in the late 60's and early 70's, like not running things that don't read, and not running any major processes on people who are already clear until they are through OT III, (I can vouch for the danger if that one is neglected), and f/n everything. As an auditor trainee you would have lived through The Hubbard Dianetic Auditor course being revised and given a new name, the HSDC. The Hubbard Standard Dianetic Course was a more modern, faster way to run Dianetics. Of course, within a year apparently LRH didn't think his new HSDC was good enough, as he revised that course once again. Students were encouraged to retrain--I believe 1/2 price was offered to those who had completed HSDC. The checksheet for the SHSBC, the Class VI auditor training course, was changed, and almost all of the confidential tapes were removed.

Aboard ship the Class VIII's were having a new experience, called overboard. Dorothy Broaded was thrown a drop of about 50 feet. Years later she was reputed to say, "It was the most fun I had in my life."

Right. Things don't look so bad in retrospect. I'm sure Dorothy doesn't think it was wrong for Ron to order her overboard. He was just trying to get tech in, right? It is difficult for me to understand how people can condone or justify abusiveness. That process of throwing auditors overboard was abusive treatment and it passed on down to other auditors. I have seen auditors hosed down with cold water out back of the old ASHO for minor infractions. Need I point out that it is crazy to hold up auditors as the senior beings on the planet on one hand, and degrade and punish them on the other hand? "Auditors are the most valuable beings on the planet," I believe the quote is, although I am saying it from memory. Do they really become more valuable when they get wet?

Sometime abusive treatment works. Toss a child into the water over its head --- this is abuse if the child cannot swim and would not have chosen to be thrown in. Some children might actually learn to swim that way, and those that do will probably not stay traumatized for long. But what of the others, the ones that were sure they were going to drown?

The ones who never learn to swim under that method? Just because abuse sometimes works doesn't mean that it is right to do. This goes for all overboards, hosing downs, and locking people up. Those methods of control don't belong in a civilized society. They are barbarian methods reminiscent of old pirate days. Abuse can be subtle, too.

Depriving people of sleep is abusive. Yes, if one chooses to stay up all night and fight fires, even though he is deprived of sleep, he isn't abused. Power of choice is the key. Most of us are willing to give up sleep to help handle a real emergency, but when a person is ordered to Rehabilitation Project Force, and put on short sleep night after night with no fire to put out, that is abuse. I don't know if that practice is still going on in the RPF in present time. I only know that tigers don't change their spots easily.

It is easy to accept the idea that rewarding up-statistics and penalizing down-statistics is a workable idea that will bring about more production. It even has some truth in it, but it is Pavlovian.

You can train dogs that way. Humans can be trained that way, too, especially if they agree to the idea. For example, you worked really hard last week, but your stats are down, so you "deserve" a diet of rice and beans. That is what happens in the Sea Organization. The staff members accept the condition of rice and beans as a normal penalty. Their children are raised into that environment and that is what their children are going to believe is how the world works.

Unfortunately, it doesn't.

While this statistic/conditions control method might be good for the organizational machine to keep it operating and producing, it is horrid on the individual. He is in a rat race, struggling to get his statistics up, suffering through penalties if he fails. He pressures other people. Other people pressure him. The problem is that the individual may not realize that it is horrid on him. He is conditioned. He thinks it is OK. Take an example of children in China working long hours for low pay, we think it is awful, but do they? Or have they accepted it as the way life is?

The whole matter of rewarding upstats and penalizing downstats might be different if the rewards were high enough to make it all worth while, but $50 a week? Your stats drop and you get rice and beans and a 20% pay-cut? You are living in substandard living quarters or crowded space and you just accept this? You don't even feel suppressed? Bevis and Butthead rescue me. I need my sense of reality restored.

When I first joined the Sea Org there wasn't enough birthing for all the new recruits. One girl who had just joined slept in a shower stall her first night. I was shocked. I'd been really poor all of my life, but I had never seen anyone so bad off that they had to sleep in a shower stall until I joined Sea Org.

Staff members work long hours at very low pay. If you are part of the Sea Organization and the rice and beans and reduced paycheck doesn't work to motivate you to get your statistics up, you are a prime candidate for the RPF, that is, Rehabilitation Project Force. There you will not be permitted to communicate with other members of the group. (Oops, there is that freedom of speech issue again). If that doesn't cure you, you could even be sent to the RPF's RPF, intended, supposedly, for rehabilitation, but there are many stories of sleep deprivation being common as a practice in the RPF's RPF. Quite a turn around from the Scientology I knew in its early days of development, when the Auditor's Code said, as I remember it, "Do not audit a pre- clear who has had insufficient sleep or is physically tired." We knew you could not rehabilitate anyone who was not well rested. Sleep deprivation is just a method of brainwashing...of getting compliance, not a method to free people. So on one hand we have the lure of the worthwhile purposes of a better world, while on the other hand mind control is practiced within the ranks. Is this schizoid, or what?

There was one song I heard over and over again, about every two or three years at the L.A. orgs. Whatever the complaint it was handled with, "Oh, we don't do that any more."

Sometimes it was true. Postulate checks (writing a post-dated check when you didn't have money to cover it) actually did stop as a practice in the L.A. org in the early 1970's.

Can you imagine going to see a Sea Org recruiter and saying, "Are staff members sometimes put into chain lockers?" Either the recruiter is new and never heard of it, is unaware of the practice, or will tell me, "Oh, we don't do that any more." Well, I would want to see the policy that cancels whatever policy exists that allows punishment of a person by locking him in a dark closet for a week. They did that at ASHO to my friend Artie Bacon. True, I have never personally seen a policy that says, "Put them in a chain locker, or dark closet substitute," yet nothing happens within the Church structure that isn't the result of either a LRH policy or direct order, at least when he was living. Now that he has passed on I don't know who writes the LRH EDs (executive directive), but the point is that just because I hadn't seen such a policy or ED doesn't mean it doesn't exist somewhere. If I were person considering joining staff, I would want to see that cancellation in writing.

If you think "Big Brother" is watching over you, you haven't seen anything yet. The Ethics Depts. of the Churches of Scientology love reports. If you have knowledge of a Crime in Scientology you must write up the report and turn it into the Ethics Officer. So what constitutes a crime by Scientology definition? It includes things normally considered a crime, like murder or seducing a minor, then a number of items that have to do with Scientology and Scientologists, like placing Scientologists at risk. But they also have a list of High Crimes, and herein lies the real Suppressive Acts. I can't list them here because of possible copyright infringement, but you can find them in any Introduction to Scientology Ethics book. They consist entirely of items to do with Scientology or Scientologists, such as making public statements against Scientology. Oops, there goes that freedom of speech issue again!

High Crimes are such things as continuing to stay in connection with a group labeled a Suppressive Group, or publicly announcing you are leaving Scientology. Please note here that High Crimes are considered worse than Crimes...it is worse to publicly announce you are leaving the group than it is to commit murder! It is worse to vote for legislation that would be directed toward the suppression of Scientology than is it is to seduce a minor!

What kind of value system is this teaching? Consider that the policies were written by LRH, what is the message he is sending?

What happens within Scientology when a real, ordinary crime is reported? I will tell you what happens. The American Justice System is bypassed, and if it is a Scientologist in good standing that has committed a crime the practice is that the report does not go to the local police station. The Ethics Officer handles the miscreant using the Ethics Tech available. It was a common practice when I was still in the organization for an Ethics Officer to have a person write up his overt or overts, and place them in his Ethics file. He might be assigned a condition to work through; amends may have to be made. If you think that is as it should be, just because it is under the auspices of a Church, think again.

Confessionals done by an auditor/minister during a session are one thing, but confessions given to an Ethics Officer is quite a different story. If you tell your crime to an auditor in session, the auditor does not turn you into the authorities, and this is as it should be. It is considered privileged information. However, by the rules of the Churches of Scientology the auditor must make a notation of the crime and send that information to the Ethics Officer, but it must be marked "non-actionable."

What, then, happens to the crimes that are reported directly to the Ethics Officer that are not done through auditing? They are "actionable." Ethics Officers do not give absolution, only auditors can do that. If the Church really wants to protect itself it would require that all Ethics Officers also have a Minister's Certificate, and have the EO announce to the person that his overts are safe from outside scrutiny. Maybe a bit of absolution by an Ethics Officer wouldn't be a bad idea. Of course, that couldn't be done that way, it would be duplicative functions. It wouldn't even matter if the EO already was a minister; he is not being a minister when he is doing his job as Ethics. Your secrets are really only safe with your auditors, or possibly a Chaplain. Ethics Officers have a totally different purpose;

they are there to help you get your ethics in. They are not there to absolve you.

Actionable doesn't necessarily mean turning the information over to police. I have no idea what would happen if an axe-murderer walked into Ethics to write up his overts. Granted, this is an unlikely scenario, but in that case what would the Ethics Officer do? This is a serious offence, what ethics gradient should be used? Maybe if axe- murderer is not a Scientologist in good standing, the Ethics Officer might actually turn in a police report. If he is in good standing, now the Ethics Officer has the responsibility of the details. Is this a one-time thing that happened a long time ago and hasn't been repeated?

Or something that just happened yesterday? Is he making up this story?

Or is he confessing because he is worried that he will do it again?

Ethics Officers are people. While they may have studied the same materials, they still have their own cases, their own buttons and responses. I wonder what the Ethics Officer who handled Charles Manson did? But then, perhaps Manson didn't confess to Ethics.

If you are guilty of any crime, you are not in a very good position to say anything negative about the Churches of Scientology. After all, they have fat folders in Ethics, detailing everything you ever did wrong. While the practice is in general not to turn over personal material to authorities or press and public, Scientologists who are no longer in good standing, who have been declared SP, are no longer "protected" by the rules of Scientology. That would include all the "non-actionable" reports. One last bit of advice, If you have something you really don't want your mother to know about you, then I suggest you stay in good standing with the Church once you have that fat Ethics file. Or, you could realize that you might survive mama finding out about your bad behavior, and really take a long hard look at where you want to be heading in life, and decide if the Church of Scientology is really the vehicle to help you achieve that, or not.

"30"

From: waterlily1999@my-deja.com
Subject: ARS Literati $10,000 Challenge--Pat Krenik--end
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 03:28:53 GMT
Message-ID: <7pqf5b$93i$1@nnrp1.deja.com>