Ant's Scientology Story Part IV

London Org in the Late 50s

WITH SOMETHING LIKE 55 years of Scientology experiential track, it can be difficult to remember all details, and also to get an overall picture of trends. In thinking about this article I came to think of one subject which I experienced differently at different times, and that is the subject of stress in doing one's job as a staff member.

Stress
As an ordinary staff member I had two experiences of stress; one before and one after a certain date around 1965. In the period before, my experience was that the ordinary staff member experienced no stress. One had a job which was within one's limits (or one thought it was - I do not think I was as good an auditor as I thought I was). One did that job, working the set numbers of hours, or a little over if one felt so inclined. Presumably stress was left to seniors, of which I unfortunately was one in the six months I was in Dublin. The ordinary staff member had a job which he or she knew how to do, had a place to do that job, and had set working hours, as did the organisation as a whole. Also, in the time I am talking about, there was no pressure to work extra hours and the wage was adequate, so, if one was reasonably thrifty, one didn't have money problems. (When I say that, it should be remembered that most of the time I worked in London, I had two Scientology jobs, one on the five weekdays and one on the weekend, which gave me a little more income than the others).

At the time (Saint Hill, 1965), the division secretary and the three department heads in a division, (of which there were seven), met once a week, and discussed the working of our departments, problems we had, and ways of handling. The meetings concerned things we were interested in, and I was a member of the Advisory Council (Ad Council) for HCO (Division one).

The fateful day was when a Policy Letter came out saying that henceforth an individual's condition was to be judged by his statistics alone. Each post had to have a statistic, and it was the AdCouncil that assigned the condition, and I think in many cases, also worked out the statistic for individual posts in the Division. From then on AdCouncil meetings became unpleasant to me.
Instead of looking forward to them, I dreaded them. The statistics were based merely on one week's work and seldom represented the person as a whole. (If there were not so many Policy Letters to look through, I'd give you the date!)

What I saw was an attempt to make each individual staff member responsible for the whole organisation. After this came in, statistics, and the urgency of getting one's statistic up by the end of the statistic week (14.00 on Thursday), occupied people's attention.
I do not know what happened with Franchises (later called Missions), but my "gut feeling" is that they had a leader (who usually owned the Franchise lock, stock and barrel) who took responsibility for the whole thing, rather than trying to get individuals lower in the hierarchy, to somehow take responsibility for the whole.

Two staff intensives
In the 50s it was normal to sell auditing in 25 hour blocks, which we called an intensive. Most common was to do it in a week, Monday to Friday, less common was to do 12 1/2 hours in two weekends or evenings for two weeks. It was a requirement of those having auditing, that they attended the Personal Efficiency course in the evenings.

While I was on staff in London I had two intensives at staff rates. We had moved to the unit system of wages, where staff members wages were calculated as a proportion of the income for the past week. I suppose people paid for their auditing in advance, for the weeks where there were not many preclears, and thus the individual staff wage was low, staff were encouraged themselves to get auditing, and the cost to staff for auditing was merely the wage the auditor would have got under the unit system. Thus if you wanted auditing and took it that way, you got no wages for that week, and paid the low wage of your auditor.

The first of these two intensives was by a young Irish auditor, Dennis O'Connor (not to be confused with Dennis O'Connel, my first auditor in 1954). What we ran was I think called the succumb problem. The auditor got the preclear to name a problem. The problem was reworded until it became a succumb problem according to a certain definition, and the auditor ran that.
I can't remember a subjective result. During those later 1950s years preclears always took an Intelligence test and an OCA (Oxford Capacity Analysis, similar to the APA, America Personality Analysis in the USA, and the South African Analysis in South Africa) both before and after a 25 hour intensive. For this intensive both my before and after communication character was minus 100 (the lowest). The other nine characteristics formed a very jagged up and down line (which I cannot remember) and each point had risen nearly the same amount (about 30 points). I can't remember how this was evaluated to me, but the general datum was that if the graph moved up equally on all points, this indicated that a valence had been improved, rather than that the preclear had been freed of a dominant valence.

The second of these two staff intensives was given by Carl Jensen, and it was given just before the 6th London ACC, using the processes of the 5th London ACC. I think they had rather mellowed in choosing the engram. What Carl found on me was an incident 1000 years ago, when I, as a ten year old boy, had been eaten by a lion (and lioness) close to an African village where there (for a reason I never found out) were no other children. Apparently I had been out alone, innocently amusing myself. I had fallen asleep after masturbating, when the lions came across easy prey. The auditing took place in a large first floor front room at 7 Fitzroy Street (the extra building which had been hired to hold the 5th London ACC). I ran a few sessions on this. I remember clearly that the incident unfolded as I ran it and I had it (the incident) on the wall over the fireplace (the north wall of the room). On probably the third day of the intensive I ran into trouble. I had always been regarded as a "black case" - a person who did not see pictures, which was regarded in Scientology as something rather terrible (which would make NLP people laugh!). And on that day I could not really get the incident to run as it had on that wall over the fire place. I must have made big fuss ("I can't see pictures!! Poor me!"), for after some sort of a break the auditor worked on various remedies for helping a person see pictures (Scientology has lots of these). None worked (not surprising!)

After that the incident running was given up, and I was put on open air objective processes. I remember that we walked from the Tottenham Court Area to Richmond, (Looks like 8 miles, or 13 kilometres as the crow flies on a small scale map! We came back by Underground train.)
Which I now regard as an impossible feat (my feet were sore!) In late 1968, after I had (with a lot of solo work!) gone clear by the Clearing Course, I was on what was called OT4 at the Advanced Org in Edinburgh. One of the points was to rehab when I had gone clear. That intensive where I had run being eaten by the lion and lioness was found, rather than the "official" clear in May 1967!

Staff co-audit
We are talking of the time I was a staff member at the London Organisation (we called HASI London) which was from September 1957 to some time in 1959 (I think).

That staff got auditing was important. The two staff intensives I have just mentioned were examples of this, but there was also some emphasis on co-auditing amongst staff, and I had a number of examples of this.

Lensworth Small was one person I co-audited with.
He was of Jamaican lineage, black, and was (if I remember correctly) studying law. In this case we audited each other. I audited him on SCS on the body (start, change and stop on the body). I was pretty dispersed and undecided at that time, and I can remember that when we were doing stop (he would be moving his body, and I would say "stop", at which point he (not me in his reality) had to stop the body. My indecisiveness showed up in that I would decide to tell him to stop the body, but then change my mind before I emitted the words. He picked up the intention, and stopped the body before I said the words. I also ran a subjective process on him (I forget which), and this I found particularly unpleasant. My feeling was that he was not in session, but observing me and trying to give answers that keyed me in. At any rate I got more and more confused, with the feeling of things flying around my head.

There was a time when I audited a fellow staff member who made no secret of the fact he had homosexual tendencies.
I ran him on the CCHs, which included tone 40 processes. There was at that time a lack of understanding of the tone 40 processes, of what tone 40 was. The idea was that the auditor must not be the effect of the PC, and in a session with him this pc opened my fly buttons and started examining my genitals, and making comments on them. Of course he was wildly out of session, but I had not really much grip on the most fundamentals of auditing, with my main emphasis on applying the mechanics (and miracles would happen). So I ignored his action and remarks, and continued saying "Give me that hand - Thank you". It should be mentioned that at this time auditor admin was down to a minimum. Mainly just the process run, time started and finished, and perhaps some other comments. So no one else knew of what went on until now!

I had Noel West (a South African, with a small Greek wife, Nina West) as a co-auditor at one time, but nothing to report there.
On another occasion I had an auditor, who, in my eyes did something he should not have done (something like not understanding me) and I got so cross at him that I threw the E-meter cans at him, something very much against my propitiative nature, which I was most sorry for.

The funniest occasion (looking back!) was with a large and fat cockney staff member (I think he only worked at weekends, running something like group processing). He came in from the east end of London one evening and audited me on the process "Look at me. Who am I?" I understood that this was done to establish one of the rudiments, in this case that he was the auditor. However, I was a bit of a devil for taking commands and questions literally. And he had heard something about tone 40 auditing, and that you should never let a preclear get away without answering a question, or complying with a command. We started off sitting in chairs opposite each other, but I ran into trouble. I knew he was really a thetan, and I could not figure out how you looked at a thetan, and I also knew he was an immortal being, nameless. So I was unable to look at him, or answer his question.
And I wanted to end the session. This was not OK with him. I tried to leave the room, but it was definitely not in order for an auditor to let the preclear end the session, so he prevented me from leaving the room, and we came to a position were I was lying on the floor with him crouching over me saying "Look at me. Who am I?" with me protesting my inability and trying to get away.
It ended by my kicking him in his most delicate body area, which kind of deflated him.
I was assigned to another auditor.

Those were the notable (rememberable) points about my co-auditing as a HASI London staff member. Dramatic, and they really take attention away from the fact that there was a staff co-audit going, and an active concern that staff got auditing.

Staff auditor in the HGC
I was Director of Training (and with it Communication Course Instructor, Comm Course was reckoned to be the most important part of the HPA course, so the Director of Training was Comm Course Instructor) for some time. There came a day when Ron swapped me over with the Lead Auditor (the same Carl Jensen who had audited me). I was somewhat miffed at this, and in a conversation (I think in the street between 7 and 37 Fitzroy Street) I mentioned it to Rhona Swinbourne (Earnshaw) who was Ron's Secretary. She tended to agree with me, but it was Ron's order. Looking back, I suppose we did not get many new people signing up for the Academy, so some change was needed somewhere.

So I became lead auditor - which was a title, and did not seem any different from the other auditors.

I held this post for many weeks. Looking back, I feel my auditing was very mechanical, and I had no clue, really, about the basics of auditing, which I came to understand much latter on the Happiness Rundown Course and Internship in about 1981.

It was rather mechanical auditing, on most days three hours in the morning and three in the afternoon. The admin was down to an absolute minimum - on the auditors report we wrote times of start and finish of process and what the process was. We ended session at noon and 4.00 P.M. with no thought of end phenomena (EPs) although when you could and must end a process was taught on the HPA course.

E-meter
At one point, when Nibs, Ron's eldest son (L. Ron Hubbard, Jr.) was director of processing, the e-meter was introduced. We were told a little about it in the late afternoon and were loaned an e-meter, and went into session with it the next morning (in the middle of an intensive). I remember my preclear saying to me something like "I feel much more confident when you have the e-meter there".
I did not tell him that I felt quite confused by having it there and did not have a clue how to use it.

While I was in HGC we really did not know anything about the e-meter, and I remember that one preclear I had began to get to talk (possibly on a recall process) about a number of girls he had contacted in the far east, and the e-meter made a most erratic back a forth slashing, which I looked at in some amazement and continued the process. (We did have a stable datum of "Always continue a process as long as it produces change"). That is the only time I have witnessed what came to be called a rock slam.

During the time I was HGC auditor, a procedure was introduced whereby each preclear at about the midpoint of the 25 hour intensive, was called in to the Director of Processing and received a rudiment check and had his/her rudiments put in if they were out. I do not recall any corrective actions on auditors. We just audited repetitive processes (questions or commands) in my case rather mechanically. It now feels as though I had far less interest in my preclears than I have now.

Two memorable cases
Most of the pcs I audited were not memorable, I just ran the latest process on them. One time when I had finished the days auditing, I found in my in basket a bulletin, saying we should never use the process I had just run, which was the marvellous new process we had been told to run.

One memorable case was a fellow I audited who I found most unpleasant. He was in something like a state of apathy and unhappiness, which I found most restimulative. In other words, at the end of the day I felt really keyed in [This was still the time when my communication level on the OCA (200 questions) test was still at -100 (but rising!)]. He was booked for 25 hours, which I managed to get through. But what do you know? He booked a second 25 hours, and requested me for auditor! At that time it was policy that an auditor could refuse a preclear, Ron explained that certain auditors might have difficulty auditing certain people, for example old people.
I refused. Consternation. Apparently they had never had any one use that policy! But I was adamant, for I had gone through a sort of minor hell in being restimulated by the preclear. In the end my position was accepted, and I understand that the preclear was told that I was booked for some one else.

The other memorable case was positive. The CCHs (1-4) (and also all objectives) were recommended for all cases which had the the first four points on the OCA graph under 0 (midpoint). So I got to audit many on the CCHs, the theory of which is covered on the 18th ACC tapes, which I heard frequently on the weekend HPA course as instructor). I went through the four processes in rotation, as prescribed. The unusual thing about this person was that as well as never looking directly at me, his gaze was constantly moving round me - kind of looked very nervous. On CCH 3 he suddenly looked directly at me. Looked and looked and looked. Almost as though he had not seen a human being before. I took this to be a major change, and tried to move on to the next process, but he was too busy looking at me. He never saw the motion I made with the book. It was morning session and we went together to eat in the restaurant of the Odeon (or Gaumont) cinema on the other side of Tottenham court Road. He was still looking at me. He came from the north of England, and booked a new intensive some months later, when I was no longer auditing, requesting that I audit him.

Surveillance
In the last three or four decades, auditors in training have been used to going through a video test. A session of theirs is recorded, with the e-meter visible, and this has to be passed by the supervisor, or case supervisor. That did not exist in the late 50s. The technology did not really allow it. Video cameras were expensive things, presumably confined in their use to television and film companies and you could not record TV.

But we had something else. While I was an HGC auditor, the auditing rooms were fitted with two way communication devises.
They hung high up on the wall, visible to preclears. I think there were six auditing rooms with them, on the 2nd and third floors (top floors) of 37 Fitzroy Street, and they were connected to receivers in both the Director of Processing's Office (the post of Case Supervisor did not exist) and in L. Ron Hubbard's office.

There was very little comment on them when they were introduced. The idea, apparently, was that one could hear the Trs (communication ability) of the auditor.

HGC Routine
We HGC auditors audited 25 hours a week, usually in three hour session, from 9.00 to noon, and from 1.00 PM. to 4.00 PM. There was an hour for lunch, which was normal in England. From 4.00 to 5.30 P.M., when the working day ended, we usually wrote letters. We each got a small bundle of c/f folders (c/f = central files, where all correspondence was stored).
Mary Sue Hubbard had written a policy about it, suggesting that we looked through the file for something that interested the person writing, that they were curious about, which might be anything, perhaps to do with their surname, perhaps were they lived, and having found something, we should ask them a question about it to satisfy our curiousity. If we did not find anything, we should go on to another folder. Any replies came back to the initial writer.

During the time I was HGC auditor, Ron introduced something new which was called Project Engineer.
Some auditors had special projects to work on instead of writing letters. The one I remember was Maura Chamberlain (she had been a student on the weekend HPA course), who was assigned the project of compiling the material for the book Have you Lived Before This Life. This originally came out (1958) with the addressess, and in some cases the telephone numbers, of those who had participated in the 5th London ACC, from which the material was taken.

On Monday mornings, and Friday afternoons the preclears did not get a session, but did tests, The OCA (Oxford Capacity Analysis) and IQ (Intelligence quotient) tests. The auditors were in one of the auditing rooms (where they wrote letters in the afternoons) and marked the test, and in that situation the two way communication boxes were used both ways, between the auditors marking the test and the D of P (Director of Processing.

After having been tested, each preclear was given an interview by the D of P, where the test results were shown and explained, and the person was given an estimate. The estimates varied from 75 hours to 175 hours (as far as I can remember). A person could buy an intensive for less hours than the estimate, but were apparently told that they needed the number of hours assessed before we could be sure that they got a stable gain.

We worked on a plan where there were a certain number of staff auditors, but we never refused a preclear. If more preclears booked for a week we called in field auditors for that week, and we found places outside the premises where auditing could take place. One of these was a flat which Ron used as a residence when he was in England. I think it was a little south of the HASI premises, nearer Oxford Street.

Near the end of my work period at London HASI, I was moved to the post of Director of the Personal Efficiency Foundation. That I will talk about in the next in this series, which I will try and encourage Rolf to place in the next IVy. I also spent a period being a field auditor (or trying to) in a northern suburb of London (Pinner) and I actually got on what was probably the last Advanced Clinical Course, held at Ron Hubbard's new home, Saint Hill Manor. We never did get to hear much of where he lived in the USA.