I read the article in Astounding Stories in May 1950. This was a very
exciting article but I was not sure it was not a hoax, so I looked in the phone
book and found that the Hermitage House Publishing company actually existed. I
called them and they said the book was being published. I immediately got on a
subway train and went to their offices where I found other people also trying to
get the book. But, it wasn't yet off the presses. I left money, to get my copy
and got mine on May 9, 1950.
A few months later I saw a demonstration by an Elizabeth student, of putting
a young woman through a dental extraction under gas, this made many things in
the book more real to me. I also audited and was audited. In December of 1950 I
went to Israel with 50 copies of DMSMH. That got me in touch with many people
and Dianetics got going in Israel.
I decided after two years and 4,000 hours of auditing that Dianetics worked
but that my expertise and knowledge left much to be desired. I had achieved one
medical "miracle" by getting a woman (Emmy) walking who had been
bedridden for five years, and who had been given up by three medical
specialists, an internist, a surgeon, and a psychiatrist. It took 2,000 hours
over a period of 2 years (I could do it a lot faster today). She did not dance,
but she walked for five years after that.
Past Lives, Psychiatrists
In November 1950, a month before I left New York for Israel I was told in a
whisper, in a corner, as a deep dark secret, that if you ran dianetics long
enough you ran into past deaths. At that time, one would become outcast from the
psychological community for talking about such things. Freud, himself, didn't
even acknowledge the actuality of recalling life in the womb (Prenatal engrams).
He called them "fantasies of life in the womb." Jung spoke not of
memories of past lives, but of archetypes. To actually consider that people
lived before was simply not acceptable at that time. Today Past Life Regression
Therapy is a recognized sub branch of Psychological counselling, though not by
everybody.
I once used creative processing on a teenager, who years later in college
went to a psychologist for help and recognized what he was asking her to do. He
admitted to her that he had learned this from Scientology. Two years later one
of my Israeli pc's had gotten back to before conception and experienced going
through a "wall of colors" to enter the ovum. A few days later she was
listening as I ran her mother on HER mother's death (The girl had been
three-years old when her grandmother died). When I completed mother's session, I
saw the girl lying with arms folded across her chest in the "death
valence" position. I asked her, with a snap of the fingers, Who's
dead?" thinking that she had gone into grandmother's valence.
"I am." She replied. I asked three times and got the same answer
each time. I then took her into another room and ran that past death. Then I
directed her to run the intervening time up to present time. She ran directly
into a between lives implant with "God" commanding her to forget. It
was not until 1963, eleven years later, when I was at St. Hill, that I heard Ron
describe a somewhat similar between-lives incident. I knew then with great
certainty that Ron had not made these things up but had run into them with pcs
and on his own track.
Lack of Public Acknowledgement of LRH
Even though there is no public acknowledgement of LRH by the psychological
community, every Psychologist and psychiatrist had a copy of Dianetics hidden on
his bookshelf. As more and more people recalled life in the womb and past lives,
it became OK to talk about such things. After-Death experiences, for example,
became respectable. Then medical researchers, without mentioning Dianetics,
proved that what was said in operating rooms was recorded by patients and so
could affect them. The Primal Scream by Janov is easily recognized as coming
from Dianetics. Berne's Games People Play puts one in mind of Service
Facsimiles. And, so on.
Pictures Of The Future
In 1954 I visited Wing Angell in Chicago. Wing told me that he had seen Ron's
picture of the future of Scientology. I was unable to confront that at that
time, so I ignored it. In 1964, ten years later, I met Wing again, this time at
S.H. I reminded him of my visit and asked him what he had seen. He immediately
had a compulsive outflow in which he told me that he had seen Ron's mental
picture of every future gain, loss, and advance in Scientology. And, that he had
seen each of these come to pass since I had last seen him in 1954. This included
seeing the raid by the FDA on the Founding Church in Washington, D.C. about
1959, five years before it occurred.
About 1960 in Tucson Arizona I heard from another auditor about a pc who
after running many past life incidents ran a future track incident of a fatal
car crash. The auditor said that he asked the pc if he could alter that
incident. The pc was able to slow down his car going up a hill enough to avoid a
fatal collision at the top of that hill with a car coming out of a hidden side
road. Five years later, the pc recognized the hill, slowed down, and avoided
hitting the car that came out of that hidden side road at the top of the hill.
Communicating With Ron
Like all graduates from S.H. I had the privilege, in 1964, of an hour with
Ron before leaving. He said, "Ask me anything you want." I asked him
how he had arrived at the decisions he had made with regard to South Africa when
Peter Greene was denounced (I think about 1960). He said, "I lacked
detailed information and when I lack detailed information I take broad
measures." In that instance his broad measure was to replace all the
executives. He also said "When I chop heads off, I later sew them back on.
This isn't always noticed."
I remember in the 1960's Ron made some changes in the tech which seemed at
the moment as though they were only for the purpose of getting more money out of
people. It took me two years to recognize the technical validity of that change.
I remember on the 18th A.C.C. I wrote a note to Ron about my course pc.
Shortly afterward Ron issued a broad public announcement in Ability magazine
saying that he was making a change in research direction because of a letter he
had received from Bob Ross. That reference and another both appear in the Red
Volumes.
Ron's Physical Appearance
I have seen Ron many times. Once I was standing in front of 1810 19th St.,
N.W. when he came barrelling up the steps of 1812 past a group of students about
15 feet away from me. He seemed shorter than most of them, about 5'6" or
7". I saw him very clearly another time toward the end of an after Congress
party, about 1960. I went up to him to say "Good Night," and noticed
that he was so tall (about 7' or 2.13 Meters) that my outstretched hand would
barely have reached the top o his head. I took his hand, to shake hands and
noticed that his hand was extremely large and that I could see the pores of his
skin as though under a magnifying glass.
At Saint Hill I saw him often on the grounds, where he talked occasionally
with students. I met and spoke to him once as he was being picked up by his
chauffeur at the East Grinstead Public Library. He seemed to me to be having
some trouble physically getting into the car. I went over to him to say
"Hello." I had just come back after taking a week's unauthorized leave
to go to Paris. He said to me, "I told them you would be back." I saw
him again at a performance of a Gilbert and Sullivan Operetta starring Jenny
Edmunds, course supervisor and Reg Sharpe's girl friend. Ron was standing
surrounded by many students and was a full head taller than most of them.
Missed Withholds
To me one of the most important and least predicted discoveries of
Scientology was the discovery of the anatomy and effects of the missed withhold.
It took 13 years to discover it and of all things in Scientology it remains
perhaps the hardest to explain to a psychologist. Ron could be acclaimed a
genius on that one point alone.
Ron's plans For The Church
Having failed to ask Wing Angell for what else he had seen in Ron's plans for
the future of Scientology (that had not yet taken place as of 1964) I have had
to guess at what they might have been, based upon what has occurred since. When
people left the church in droves in 1982-85 I came to the conclusion that Ron
had planned it that way.
I am convinced that the church would have gotten far bigger than it has, if
Ron had not set things up to keep it relatively small and weak, to prevent it
from totally dominating the planet. As the church exists today, it serves to
spread knowledge through books into society. It remains relatively small because
as people come up tone and become more capable they become able to recognize the
lies and suppression that the church uses. I have been asked for my view on why
the church went sour and whether this had any connection to LRH. Some people, of
course, think it went sour because Ron became paranoid. However, in 1954 on the
Philadelphia Doctorate Course Ron spoke of the possibility of a Church of
Scientology developing and turning into a monster which should be destroyed. My
opinion is that he set it up to self destruct. I deduce this from the following
policies known or inferred which he put into place.
Keys To Church Self Destruction
- Taking non-auditor's on staff. I personally know people on staff who were
highly unethical, did not have the goals of an auditor and didn't know that
auditing works. I am sure that some of these were infiltrated agents of the
FBI, the Army, the Navy, the CIA, the U.S.S.R., the Mafia and no doubt
others. I feel that I myself, was driven out of the church by false reports
and out-ethics actions by persons who were afraid that I would see what they
were doing. However, as early as 1956 I had heard that the most capable
auditors never seemed to last on staff. At that time, I decided that Ron
wanted them out in society spreading the tech.
- The "No Verbal Data" Policy Letter. This eliminated the line of
tradition which made up for errors and things left out of the course
materials, Ron had stated earlier (ca. 1956) that this line of tradition was
necessary for the proper transmission of the tech. If some one had heard all
the tapes there might be no gap, but who has? You might say that the
materials were somewhat booby trapped. Without the tradition line to clear
things up if someone stole the materials (for example the Russians) they
would not be able to use them for lack of the verbal tradition. This was
also evident in DMSMH itself. I saw immediately in 1950 that as written the
book would turn off establishment types who would not even read it or take
it seriously and this turned out to be the case. Only mavericks and
science-fiction fans took the book seriously at first.
- I infer that Ron set up Miscavige to drive out competent staff, all at one
time. Ron is known to drop little comments to willing ears. Also, what
Miscavige did was completely contrary to the Ethics P/Ls which I learned
100% star rate, as the first E/O (Ethics Officer) in NY in 1965.
Ethics policies (1965) also state that people who left or were declared
would not be readmitted to Scientology if they became part of a group declared
suppressive, until such time as that group was disbanded or destroyed. That
way, every person who became disaffected and left or was declared, was
persuaded to remain out of contact with other disaffected people for fear of
being considered part of a suppressive group.
That is why I came to the conclusion that Ron had set it up to "drive
fledglings out of the comfortable nest" of the Orgs and into society.
Driving most of the capable people out of the Orgs also provided a more
diffuse target for real planetary suppressives to shoot at, as they were no
longer all in one place in the Church. It could be said, however, that
planetary suppressives have been attacking the field to prevent the spread of
Scientology via the church of Scientology itself.
- I infer that Ron set Miscavige up to destroy the mission network and kill
the goose that laid the golden eggs, for the apparent purpose of pulling
money out of the Church into LRH's private accounts. He made it seem
reasonable as part of legitimizing the transfer of copyrights to the RTC.
- I have heard reports by and of people who were contacted theta- wise by
Ron and told to leave the church and set up various underground and
successor projects and organizations. This included a report that Ron had
told some people at Saint Hill theta-wise of the FBI raid before it
occurred.
- I knew an ex-member of EST who told me that Werner Erhardt at first sent
his graduates forty or fifty at a time to the nearest Org for more help and
training, but Ron gave orders to reject them. This kept them relatively
uncontaminated with Scientology and weakened the church. Werner had been
trying to expand the church by a different kind of mission action.
Man Or More?
I used to dream of achieving a cleared planet, and wondered what I would do
after that had been achieved. After all, I thought, if each clear could clear
just two other people every year the world would be clear in fifty years or so.
I was not alone in feeling so confident. I can well remember a meeting of my
dianetics group in Tel Aviv in 1951, we were very seriously discussing what kind
of government we should create for the cleared planet we all expected in the
near future. What would I do next after the planet was cleared? I imagined
arriving as a full OT on another planet, alone or as part of a team and
considered how to go about it without making it obvious that the tech I was
teaching was from off-planet, and without myself being worshipped. I decided
that it might take a few thousand years, coming back time after time as one
prophet or teacher or another to give pieces of tech, so that it would then seem
to be a logical development from local philosophy and religion.
The stories I've heard that "prove" that Ron couldn't be what he
obviously was, could only be believed by people who don't know that the tech
works, or that OT is possible. The more I hear such stories the more amazed I am
that Ron accomplished what he did, supposing those stories were true.
I choose to think that Ron was on the side of the angels, appearances to the
contrary. He said in the course of a lecture 1963-64 while I was at Saint Hill
that being worshipped would prevent people from thinking that they could achieve
OT abilities themselves. I choose to think that he has deliberately made himself
appear to be a very fallible, money-hungry, human being lusting for power over
others.
Recently I heard a story from the days when he was hiding in Clearwater, so
that he wouldn't be subpoenaed. While coming back from Tampa, they were passed
on the highway by a Police Car with flashing lights and siren. LRH crouched on
the floor under a blanket or coat to not be seen and then when they got back to
their hideout, he hid under the bed. It took an hour for his aide (Laurel
Sullivan I think ) to coax him out. When I heard this I laughed and thought how
well he was dramatizing his "humanity". I could imagine doing that
myself as a high powered OT clearing a planet while appearing human.
How would you do it?
Well, that's my view of LRH.
Bob Ross
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