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From:PJSpickler@aol.com
Subj: All the world's a stage; or, Planet Hollywood
Date: 22 Aug. 1998


Dear friends,

     Over the many long years since L. Ron Hubbard startled the sleeping
planet Earth with his book about Dianetics, I've heard it claimed that Earth
was a  prison planet, or my own favorite, that it was an intergalactic insane
asylum, or a combined dumping ground for all the riff-raff and troublesome
folks in the immediate sector of our galaxy, sort of like the way England used
to send her naughty folks to places like Australia and various ports along the
east coast of the United States.  Anyhow, I should like to submit to you out
there that Earth is none of these; that even a casual glance at its history
would quickly make known its true and actual postulated reality, which is that
it is an entertainment center.  In fact, it is the Hollywood of the immediate
universe, and just about everybody here could best be described, as
Shakespeare once said,  as a poor struggling actor.  Some folks, though, have
actually made it big in the entertainment extravaganza that is Earth, and
their names are well-known to everyone.  On the so-called "good" side we have
folks like Jesus and Moses and Buddha and Mohammed, and on the so-called "bad"
side we have folks like Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun and Napoleon and Adolf
Hitler and Joseph Stalin, just to name a few of the more villainous parts that
some folks have had to play.    And so where does the entertainment
spectacular go?  Well, unless I miss my guess, quite a few places in the
immediate universe are tuned in to Planet Hollywood, as the ongoing soap opera
that is Earth plays out its episodes.  The flying saucer people, of course,
are just advanced video technicians who have to drop in on Earth to adjust the
signal.  But enough of this.  What I really wanted to talk about was/is: Ron
Tells the Truth, or, the Winter of '57-'58.     

    In response to some well-framed questions by M. Sandor and others
regarding the state of Clear that was being produced in the year 1958, some
memories from this interesting period on the Scientological whole track have
revivified from the dim recesses of my failing mind.   And so to begin.

        The winter of '57- '58, as historical almanacs will testify, was a
fairly brutal winter in the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., with large
amounts of snow and exceedingly cold temperatures embellishing the fact that
stats at the then-worldwide capital of Scientology, namely the Founding Church
of Washington, D.C., were abysmally low; so low, in fact, that under the unit
system of salary payment, I can recall a week just preceding Christmas, that
yielded a grand total of something like $18 as the combined salaries of myself
and wife of that time.  Morale was low, and a flu-like somatic had swept
through the little church on 19th Street, and things looked very, very grim.  

     Well, Ron, in his time-honored and inspirational fashion, called a staff
meeting.  It was somewhat late in the day, after the regular business of the
church had ceased (in those days there was no evening org), and we, the staff,
trudged our rather low-toned bodies into the assigned room in hopes of finding
out just what the heck was going on. Well, a very vibrant and high-toned Ron
appeared before us, walking back and forth in front of his devoted followers,
and asked of this group with great intensity, "What is it that always sold
well?"  Well, a whole lot of answers came forth from different sectors -- some
of it made no sense to me, since I was a bit of a newcomer to the inner
workings of finance at that time -- but anyway, Ron waved off all of the
answers and finally said something to the effect of "How could we forget the
most popular thing of all, and that is CLEAR!  Yes, that's right, Clear.  It
was, and always will be, the most popular hope and promise that we can
deliver.  But the truth is that although we promise Clear, what we really want
to deliver is OT.  That's right, OT -- Operating Thetan.   That's what we
really want to get the guy to."

    Well, there it is, folks.  What a dazzling simple explanation and
understanding was contained in those few words.  Clear is what sells, Clear is
what is popular, Clear is what people want to be;  but what we of Scientology
really wish to deliver to these hopeful Homo sapiens is Operating Thetan.
Well, to you out there hearing these words from the past, there is great
possibility of having great big cognitions about all of this.  And what did
the old redhead really mean?  Was he saying in effect that Clear was no big
deal, even though it was extremely popular?  Was it "pie in the sky," and the
really important thing was finding out just how operational you could help a
fellow thetan to become?  And does that mean that Operating Thetan has very
little to do with the idea of "no case"?  Is one's degree of operation the
really important factor here in Life on the dynamics, rather than how free is
the guy's needle?  For the moment, I, the teller of this tale, shall not make
any effort to evaluate these possibilities for you.  But I do recommend to you
that you look over the history of the State of Clear, the different techniques
that have yielded it, and what became of those who seemingly possessed it.
Being in the Methuselah-hood of my connection with Scientology and Dianetics,
I'm in a pretty good position, using myself and the folks that I've known
since 1952 (October) to take a pretty good look at this history, and possibly
a bit later in this paper to share a bit more of it with you.

      Early on in 1958, one of the great Scientologists of the past, John
Galusha, appeared in Washington, D.C., and also present was the incredible
John Sanborn.  Well, these chaps, with Ron calling the shots, started to do
some incredible auditing to see just what might be possible for a new Clear
procedure.  And one fine day, in the early spring of 1958, at a staff
auditors' conference, Ron announced the discovery of three things that thetans
all over the place were doing automatically, obsessively, and unconsciously,
and announced these three things to be, Keeping it from going away, Holding it
still, and Making it a little more solid.  And that included the entirety of
what was then called the reactive mind.  WOW!  And he further postulated that
if we got the guy to do knowingly what he was doing automatically and
unconsciously, in other words perfectly paralleled the mind, WHAM!  The guy
would cease to mock up and would be Clear -- a very simple and straightforward
idea that was very much in accordance with axioms regarding perfect
duplication.
    
     Well, dear friends, shortly after this staff auditors' conference, things
really started popping around the old org, as Spring, and a technical
springtime, burst with great beauty upon the Washington scene.  And finally
there was a whole procedure that went something like this:  set the pc up for
the State of Clear by making sure that he could run Objective Processes and
get wins doing this (this, incidentally, made sure that he could receive and
duplicate a command or question so that you could then proceed into the
subjective forms of auditing) --  anyway, a run on Objectives or control
processes  like CCH's or SCS to a good win.  And then, in order to really
soften up all the ridges and solids and heavy stuff in and around the pc, we
took up Help and subjected it to many, many different flows -- 12, 16 or even
more flows of Help (and Help is a flow process).  And as with all flow
processing, if you want stability of result, you must balance it very very
well with Havingness.  In this case, the Havingness process of choice was
Connectedness, and was run as "Get the idea of making that _____ connect with
the pc."  Well, the juxtaposition of Help and Connectedness was extremely
potent stuff, and it was nip and tuck to see if there would be anything left
to clear, after awhile, since the type of floating needle and floating tone
arm that these heavyweights could produce made the guy look pretty clear --
like "What case?"

       The Clears of this procedure were going to be subjected by Ron himself
to very serious testing to see if their state could and would maintain itself
as the Founder threw everything in the book at the person to see if he could
restimulate something.  Well, anyway, I don't want to get too far ahead of the
story -- we've got the guy in a pretty marvelous place with Help and
Connectedness, and we now go on to the famous Step 6.  

     Step 6 was a creative process.  It was run with a mock-up command, and
what you usually tried to do was find some simple solid, such as a sphere or a
cube, etc. etc., that had plenty of density and that read well on an E-meter,
and then you ran the commands as follows.  For example, indicating the pc's
body: "In front of that body, mock up a ______  and keep it from going away."
If the pc was really doing it, there was a characteristic and easily
recognized read on the meter.  You would then carry on, a command at a time,
and do it in six positions around the body: "Behind the body," "Above the
body", "Below the body," "To the right of the body," To the left of the body,"
occasionally checking with the pc by asking "Did you keep it from going away?"
and making sure to acknowledge as his ability to control the mockup increased.

       When that ability was flying along, you then introduced and cleared the
command for "Hold it still," which was again run in 6 positions around the
body.    Same procedure, run to improvement of ability to create and control
the mock-up.  And, if it was really doing it, you could watch the neeldle on
the meter stand perfectly still as the pc held the mockup still. And finally
into "Make it a little more solid."

     Well, if you had wisely chosen the simple object for this pc, and your
technique for running mock-ups and improving abilities was very good, and if
you could tolerate the idea of the person in front of you fairly suddenly
becoming much bigger, much freer, and more able, in other words Clear,  you
would in no time at all be looking at someone who had ceased to mock up a
reactive mind -- someone who had so thoroughly paralleled the great
automaticity for causing creation and persistence that there was now nothing
there, because nothing was being created and being caused to persist.  And if
you happened to look at your E-meter, set at its lowest sensitivity, you would
notice that the needle simply moved from one side of the dial to the other, in
beautiful long fairly slow sweeping arcs.  And if you looked up from the
meter, you would hopefully not be blinded by the brilliance that was now in
front of you, and this would now be a good point to end the session.

       Sometime later Ron would check your Clear out, and if all this stood up
to the old man's assault on it, whoever that was was now crowned Clear.  At
this point in time you had one person who was a Clear and another person who
was certainly very OT (that being the auditor).   There's quite a bit more to
say about this, and it will be said in the next communication, but in the
meantime, please note that in most clearing procedures the result is obtained
by getting rid of something -- that's right, causing something to apparently
cease to exist, which is quite a bit different than becoming able to have that
something.  

       Thank you for listening -- this stuff was and still is pretty amazing,
miraculous, and quite capable of producing that exact state.  I shall tuck
myself in tonight with a big smile and a needle perhaps that might one day
again float just that way, as the recollection of those heady times has
magnified through your interest.  Adieu, and sweet dreams -- Phil
P.S.  It is worthy of note that Ron also sent out a communique to the field in
which he stated that any person that was willing by their own hand to open up
all their own possible flows of Help could live their way to Clear without any
auditing, and I'm here to report that a few such folks did indeed present
themselves in Washington, D.C. and successfully checked out Clear.  Sweet
dreams once again.

**