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The following first appeared in the private email list IVy-subscribers,
which was available to all those who subscribed to the
printed magazine, International Viewpoints.
Posted with permission. See Home Page: http://www.ivymag.org/
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Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 11:59:11 +0100
To: ivy-subscribers@lightlink.com
From: Antony Phillips
Subject: IVySubs: An essay - Pleading and a plea
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** ivy-subscribers relaying **
Dear ivy-subscriber,
I had my first Scientology auditing in March 1954, but my first real
reality on Scientology as a subject was from March to September 1957. At
that time I worked in Dublin, Ireland, teaching what was known as the
Personal (not Personnel) Efficiency course. for 26 weeks. Five nights a
weeks, I "drew out" of people Scn basics like ARC, tone scale,
Communication start, change and stop, create, survive, destroy, etc. Twenty
six times I taught the same material, in new units of time (with different
people). It was taught in a special way, which probably could be said to be
based on Socrates, with the addition of Scientology data, like the
havingness scale (getting each person to contribute), the reality scale
(writing things "solid" on the black board), Reality (looking for agreement
by asking one person if they agreed with another person's contribution). My
inspiration to this was a lecture Ron gave earlier at a conference held in
the Royal Festival Hall, The London Congress on Human Problems, lecture on
the 7th October entitled Personal Efficiency.
Teaching PE in Dublin gave me my first major reality on Scientology, as I
worked on making these things real to ordinary people so they could use
them in their everyday life. Actually it was my first major clarification
on what life was about
Since then I have had lots of processing, with certificates ranging up to
OT IV. But the auditing I get now can best be categorised as Life Repair
(handling things bothering the preclear in life at the moment). A few years
ago, I worked with my two auditors, Vibe and Claus, investigating John
Mace's Upset and Identity processes, with the John Mace's help via
telephone and email. The result is that I mostly get run on the identities
that cause the unwanted conditions I want handled (one to many a week).
Recently I went to Vibe for the usual weekly meeting, feeling really down
in the dumps. Perhaps you know the condition, really down tone where the
willingness and ability to talk are very low, but at the same time with the
"urge" to hide (withhold) ones unhappiness, and appear a good example of
Scientology. My problem was (again) feeling overwhelmed with too much work.
Usually when I get that feeling, auditing leads to the period (1967 to
1970) when I worked at Saint Hill, England, and Pubs Org, and life was very
chaotic, working hours were long, and one was fairly frequently yanked away
from ones own overwhelmed area to do an "all hands" on somebody else's
area, often something one was not familiar with.
When Vibe realised what a state I was in she tentatively suggested we run a
Knowledgism process, instead of the Identity process. Having some great
admiration for some of the processes Alan Walter came up with, I agreed.
And they were good questions. Imagine my surprise when my attention was not
on the 67-70 period, but continually went much earlier to the1957 period.
The period I regarded as my first great win in Scientology.
Here is the fuller story. In early '57, unemployed after taking the
precursor (trial run) to the comm course around Christmas, I was painting
the staircase of the HASI premises at 37 Fitzroy Street, London. The
Association Secretary (highest post in the London Org) Jack Parkhouse
called me in to his office. Would I take the job of running the Dublin Org
and teaching the PE course there? Ridiculous, I thought. I was in extremely
bad case shape, had no reality that processing worked on me, and when it
later did work, my communication improved a lot without the OCA graph
rising out of its -100% position. But if Jack asked me, he must think I
could do it. And who was I to pit my judgement against his? So (shades of a
brief period in the Christian Church) if Jack (God) called me, who was I to
refuse. So after sitting in on a PE Course run by John Noble (but not doing
any teaching or being coached in it). I went to Dublin on the night train
and ferry (not a pleasant journey at any time).
When I got there I found that the man I was replacing had the previous
Monday utterly failed to run a PE course, and the 15 or so people who had
attended were told to come back next Monday (when I would take it). So
Monday night I had something like thirty people, and no experience of
lecturing, let alone doing "teaching by agreement" which the method was
called. I stood up, I think on a stage, unaware of the audience, and some
how (to my mind extremely slowly and with much fumbling) told of Create,
Survive and Destroy. The rest of the week I got through somehow, and the
rest of the 26 weeks, getting better, and actually having fun, learning and
giving others data. That is the positive side of the story.
Dublin at that time, I understood, had 25% unemployment. There were (I was
told) two classes, the poor Catholics, and a minority of well to do
Protestants. Can you imagine which class came to the free PE course to
improve their chances in life? The finances of the American College of
Personal Efficiency, as it was called, were based on students of the free
course, which I taught, signing up for the four week, two or three nights a
week, Advanced Course. Can you imagine that I found it easy to get the
requisite minimum number of people to sign up?
We got students by classified advertisement in the two Dublin Newspapers.
When I arrived, neither paper would take more advertisements from us unless
we paid in advance, due to the debt we had with them.
Being responsible for making such a thing go right was way above of my
ability. I soon wanted out, but had the responsibility I had accepted of
running the place. Every week I wrote a report to Ron and Jack Parkhouse,
_pleading_ to be replaced. Over the six months Jack sent two auditors out
to audit me (but I had asked to be replaced!). They were not much good, so
I will not name them. Once, at midsummer, we had failed to pay the
electricity bill, and electricity was cut off. Fortunately it was
midsummer, and we were able to finish both evening courses before it became
dark and students would have become aware of lack of artificial lighting.
And when Jack read of it, in my weekly report, I immediately got the money
and the question "why did I not tell him earlier?".
Finally I was relieved, and was given the shipping job at HASI London
("Shipping" meant sending out book orders) together with Memberships and
Tape Library (I had a set of master LRH tapes, people bought a copy, and
when they had heard it sent it back to me, and I copied, at a small price,
the next lecture they wanted on to the tape they had paid for. This was
five days a week 09.00 to 17.30. At the weekends I was very miserable, I
asked John Noble his advice, expecting him to say "get auditing", but he
said "get a weekend job", so I became weekend Upper Indoc instructor,
teaching/instructing) TRs 6 to 9 weekend after weekend for 18 months - my
second big win in Scientology.
But to get back to Vibes process, which led my attention continually to my
time of being "Dr. Phillips", Director of the American College of Personal
Efficiency.
I have often, in meeting people who have only recently met the present day
"Church" and complained, sometimes quite bitterly of how terrible
"Scientology" is, made a big song and dance about it not being so bad at
the beginning. And indeed, in most of my ten years on staff, I had been
paid a wage about the same or better than when I was a shop assistant.
But... read on!
The questions Vibe gave me led my attention to that area. And I realised
the following things that I had not realised before.
Probably Jack Parkhouse did not send a replacement, and made do with
auditors for a week each , because he did not have a replacement. The fact
that he fell back on me (the person originally going drew out at the last
minute as he did not want to leave his girl friend, I was told), could have
been because he was scraping the bottom of the barrel. I had not thought of
that.
In those days lots of valuable parts of Scientology were not "developed".
Thus, I, a person who had never had an executive position or run a business
(I had merely been a mediocre third optician in a shop), was thrown without
training, hatting, apprenticeship, into the "hot seat". It was only later
that Ron bought out loads of policy about organisation, including the ideas
of training, hatting, apprenticeship, checksheets, checkouts.
There were more cognitions. I would have remembered if I had written this
immediately -unfortunately I was far too busy :-)
I don't know whether the following is relevant to the first part of this
essay, but here goes.
As you will have gathered, next March I will have been 50 years in
Scientology. I am a completely different person, and owe an enormous amount
to Scientology. I believe I owe my life to Scientology, as I don't think I
would have lived this long without it (of course exercise, diet,
alternative "medicine", and much else have played a part - but the stable
data and auditing from Scientology have made the rest be used and work).
I left full time staff at Pubs Org when my contract expired (1970) but
continued with auditing in the org, including finally finishing OT III and
doing a lot of NOTs. But in March 1983, after rather a peculiar set of
circumstances/happenings, an Ethics Office in EULO (European Liaison
Office, I think) told me that I was a suppressive person, must leave the
org and not communicate with any one but her (I was a little dazed by the
affair, so cannot be certain that she said exactly that).
Fortunately in June 1983 I received a letter from John Hansen, which is now
called "the Dane Tops Letter". I believe I was the first person in Denmark
to see it. A little group (the others still officially "in" the "Church"
met weekly at my flat (secretly). We all had contacts different places
abroad, and exchanged duplicated reports and papers we had received from
these people, telling of people resigning from the "Church" and being
thrown out of the "Church". We set up something called "Det Europæiske
Informationscenter", with a box number address (Box 78, 2800 Lyngby,
Denmark) and under that name resent the papers we received to about 40
people throughout the world, and offered information packs to people in
Denmark (some one else was doing it for France, England Germany, but they
did not have addresses for Denmark).
That was 20 (twenty) years ago. About 7300 Days.
It took me time to adjust to the world outside, to re-evaluate things which
I had been sort of brainwashed (more nicely put, encouraged on a gradient
scale) to believe.
Helping me in that reevaluation was the fact that I remained some what a
centre for communication, in about 1985 being connected with a Danish "Free
Scientology" magazine, in 1991 starting the magazine "International
Viewpoints", a little later getting on a confidential computer list started
by Homer Smith, in somewhere about 1997 (I have lost the date) starting a
still running Internet list (discussion group) for those who subscribe to
International Viewpoints; taking over one for TROM and starting a few other
Internet lists.
A lot of data, opinions, views, suggestions, have passed through my
awareness in 20 /twenty) years. I have thought, and compared, and examined
and asked questions a lot.
And I want to move on. I have long ago ceased to be concerned (have charge
on) the high prices the "Church" charges. I have long since ceased to be
concerned by the fact that the "Church" requires everyone to do a
Purification Rundown. Why the tone arm is called a Tone Arm, has no
interest to me ("What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other
name would smell as sweet.", Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet). It is of
course obvious to me that those who have recently escaped from the claws of
the "Church" will have many concerns of this nature. Most of them have been
mauled, mistreated, fed false data, and "blinkered" (Blinder: either of two
flaps on a horse's bridle to keep it from seeing objects at its sides). And
it is only right that they should be allowed to "itsa" these concerns, with
the idea of getting the charge off. And I'll gladly give a free session to
those who are somewhat fixated ("have charge") on areas of bad, or peculiar
behaviour by the "Church" or its minions. It is fun auditing, getting
results, seeing people cognite, seeing good indicators, relief, happiness.
But I don't find it fun observing people repeat the same old things again
and again, apparently without relief. _Stuck_ in the past is not a
condition I wish to remain long connected to. Using experience of the past
to build a better future is something I feel really good about.
A goal of Scientology, formulated in "Fundamentals of Thought", chapter
ten, makes inspiring reading (compare it with this idea of Total Freedom
some talk about). It is something I still agree with. The goal concerned
with making a civilisation better than none, or something in that
direction, seems to me a bit too low a goal, after digesting the Pilot's
Cosmic History, and I am rearing to get going on a much larger goal which
will require my putting a good deal more attention on it, and on improving
my abilities. Which I would like to get on with, dropping some thet
time-consumers >I have at the present.
...
To be continued in about 20 (twenty) years time.
All best wishes,
Ant
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