The basic purpose of this book is to inform members and auditors of the Hubbard Association of Scientologists, International about the fundamentals of Scientology and its organization.
It is expected that a member of the HASI will know the contents of this book, and the substance of this book should become the source material of a basic course in Scientology.
The hope of this book is to bring order into any confusion concerning Scientology, its purposes, its organizations, and the various grades of auditors. The emphasis of this book is upon purposes of organization. It is quite one thing to have an orderly science of life, and quite another thing to have an orderly organization to keep that science of life in such a form as to be utilized by life.
Whereas it is all very well to envision the ideal — that everyone in possession of the materials of Scientology would utilize them with good heart and in an orderly manner to the improvement and betterment of mankind, it is quite another to have had years of experience with this science in action. It has been discovered that unless an auditor or a person interested in Scientology is part of a group which expresses this ideal, that the individual will be lost in the turbulent mass of the society and will thus become ineffective.
Scientologists everywhere, when an organization of force and purpose was, to a large extent, lacking, were victimized and brought into disrepute by persons who could express vast opinions about Scientology, yet who knew nothing about Scientology; by vested interests in the society which were bent upon the suppression of anything which might be seen to have the potential of supplanting their peculiarity. And, in particular, the auditor was victimized in his practice by the existence of persons who, untrained in Scientology and uninformed, yet practiced upon others with it, producing few, poor, or harmful effects.
However, once this organization existed and began to function, another thing came into view: the failure of the auditor and member to understand the purposes and actual operation of the organization of the Hubbard Association of Scientologists, International, and a failure to understand how Scientology should be communicated. The fact that one was an auditor of the HASI or a member of that organization did not immediately presuppose an understanding of the formation of the organization, its purposes or activities.
This publication, The Scientologist: A Manual, is designed for use by members and auditors to inform them of the formation and function of the HASI, and the dissemination of Scientology itself — these two subjects being more or less synonymous.
This book is the product of experience and agreement. The HASI is organized as it is because those auditors working with it have agreed that it should work this way, and the various provisions and divisions of the HASI exist by reason of the first years of experience of the HASI or other disrelated organizations which existed before it.
We know that Scientology cannot progress in the society unless it is done by a group effort. We know that it can best progress as individuals banded into groups, and these groups banded together into a larger group. In other words, the HASI is built like a life organism is built. If everyone knows his subject and does his job we will have here a smoothly running and progressive organization which can by its existence and activities bring a better civilization to man.
Although this is the avowed purpose of many organizations, those in Scientology have come to discover over and over that Scientology contains answers which man has lacked in his progress until now. Parts of these answers have been represented in many places under many names, but the organized whole has not been in his possession. As this is, at this time, in his possession, an organization to carry it forward is vitally necessary, and the subject itself and its gains would perish or be altered to such a degree as to be unrecognizable in the absence of a strong, firm organization.
When a member or auditor supports the HASI, he is supporting himself. If the HASI fails, he will fail. There are two things which could occur in the life of any individual. By Scientology he could be processed into the state of a complete static, and in that state he might find life, as represented by that state, pleasant. The other existence would be that of a well balanced individual operating with the forms and spaces of life itself, still in communication with existence, still carrying forward to make that existence better. As, so far, those who have attained the state of complete static have again returned by their own choice to the business of life itself, we can assume that even the processes of Scientology in making a totally cleared individual are not enough. Life, its spaces and forms, must be added to existence in order to make it interesting. Thus, Scientology and life itself as represented by the forms and spaces make a workable combination. The forms and spaces by themselves are too complex and confused at this stage and in this civilization to make a usable panorama with the absence of Scientology. Scientology AND life, which is to say life broadly understood and changeable at will, can create an existence close to an ideal. Scientology and its organization, the HASI and its affiliated organizations, represent a living of life with an understanding of its goals and purposes and the ability to change it.
Scientology is the science of knowing how to know answers. It is an organized system of Axioms and Processes which resolve the problems of existence.
A Scientologist is a specialist in spiritual and human affairs.
Scientology is organized from the viewpoint of the spirit and contains a precise and usable definition of the spirit, and charts and studies and is capable of changing the behavior of the spirit.
This science is formed in the tradition of ten thousand years of religious philosophy and considers itself a culmination of the searches which began with the Veda, the Tao, Buddhism, Christianity, and other religions. Scientology is a Gnostic faith in that it knows it knows. This is its distinguishing characteristic from most of its predecessors. Scientology can demonstrate that it can attain the goals set for man by Christ, which are: Wisdom, Good Health, and Immortality.
By spiritual means, but means which are as precise as mathematics, a host of bad conditions of life may be remedied in Scientology. Illness and malfunction can be divided into two general classes. First, those resulting from the operation of the spirit directly upon the communication networks of life or the body, and those occasioned by the disruption of structure through purely physical causes. Unhappiness, inability to heal, and psychosomatic illness (which include some seventy percent of the illnesses of man), are best healed by immediate address of the human spirit. Illness caused by recognizable bacteria and injury in accident are best treated by physical means, and these fall distinctly into the field of medicine, and are not the province of Scientology, except that accidents and illness and bacterial infection are predetermined in almost all cases by spiritual malfunction and unrest. And, conditions in accidents are definitely prolonged by any spiritual malfunction. Thus we have the field of medicine addressing the immediate injury, such surgical matters as birth and acute infection, and such things as contusions and abrasions resulting from accidents, as well as the administration of drugs and antibiotics to prevent the demise of the patient in a crisis. This is the role of medicine.
Where predisposition to disease or injury exists, or where disease or injury is being prolonged, or where unhappiness and worry causes mental or physical upset, or where we desire to better and improve communications or social relationships, we are dealing, if we are efficient, in the realm of Scientology. For such things are best healed, or best prevented, or best remedied by immediate and direct recourse to the spirit and its action and determinism of the course of the body.
The only truly therapeutic agent in this universe is the spirit. In Scientology this has been demonstrated with more thoroughness and exists with more certainty than the physical sciences or mathematics. A Scientologist CAN make an individual well, happy, and grant him personal immortality, simply by addressing the human spirit.
For more than ten thousand years man has been accumulating material toward this goal, but it required a wide understanding of the philosophies and processes of Asia and a thorough indoctrination in the Western physical sciences and mathematics to bring about the precision existing in Scientology when practiced properly by a trained Scientologist. It could be said that with Scientology we have entered The Second Age of Miracles.
It is a discovery of Scientology, a discovery susceptible to the most arduous scientific proofs, that people are not bodies, but that people are living units operating bodies. The living unit we call, in Scientology, a thetan, that being taken from the Greek letter theta [.], the mathematical symbol used in Scientology to indicate the Source of Life and Life itself. The individual, the person, the actual identity, is this living unit. It is modified by the addition of a body, and by the addition of a body it is brought into a certain unknowingness about its own condition. The mission of Scientology is to raise the knowingness of this spirit to such a degree that it again knows what it is and what it is doing, and in this state the thetan can apply directly to his own body, or to his environment, or to the bodies of others, the healing skill of which he is capable. It is the thetan which builds and constructs, it is the thetan which forms actual forms and organisms.
Amongst the capabilities and potentials of the thetan is immortality in full knowingness of his own identity. The amount of time which he has spent on earth, and the number of deaths through which he has gone, have brought him into a state of forgetfulness about who and where he has been. This material is recovered in Scientology, if the Scientologist specifically processes toward it.
The dissemination of materials of Scientology is a problem of comparable stature to the use of techniques on a preclear in an auditing session. Just as you would not process a preclear with heavy processes when all he could take might be ARC Straight
Wire, thus you would not issue Scientology materials of considerable weight to people incapable of assimilating them.
The immediate result of the issuance of materials not intended for that audience is to produce a state of confusion in the minds of that audience regarding Scientology. Here we have no question of talking down to people. Here we have no question of “watering” our material, but we do have a question of disseminating Scientology. If we do it properly, then Scientology will be very broadly known. If we do it improperly it will stop in its tracks, and be known, if at all, as a confusion.
When materials are issued above the acceptance level of an audience, a confusion results. A confusion is the antithesis of a flow. Any communication resulting in a confusion then brings about an eddy or tumbling of particles rather than their spread. And a confusion at length becomes a mystery.
Part ten of the Code of a Scientologist says: “I pledge myself to engage in no unseemly disputes with the uninformed on the subject of my profession.” This is an immediate injunction not to start an eddy of confusion. The employment of Scientology to the greatest good of the greatest number of Dynamics does not include using it knowingly or unknowingly to confuse hearers.
An outline of the communication lines of Scientology follows:
There are several things we would like the general public to say to the general public about Scientology. The first of these is that we would like the general public, when it sees an individual or group problem, to be quite certain that the proper thing to do is for that individual or group to consult a Scientologist. For instance, if somebody is having headaches, we would like his friends to come to the obvious solution that this person should see a Scientologist or should join a group undergoing processing.
The next on this communication line is that Scientology does not pose any threat, that Scientologists are good citizens, and that they can be trusted with problems of a private and confidential nature, or with problems dangerous to other people, such as the problem of criminality. Another frame of mind we would like to see the public have and register is that people attacking Scientologists have something wrong with them (and if you could meet any such people personally you would see that this is no more than truth). As a subdivision of this, the actual substance of communication about what Scientology is, from the general public to the general public, should be that Scientology says that good health and immortality are attainable. That it is something compounded out of all man knows of the subject of man, and that people are living units operating bodies, rather than bodies, and that this living unit is the human soul. Given this much communication line, the general public can embroider enormously, and unless a person in the general public can express his opinions, and unless the subject gives him a chance to express his own opinions, and so let HIM be interesting, he will not talk about the subject. Thus the data in the general public should give individuals a chance to be interesting, by knowing no more and no less than the above. We are not interested in sensationalism, personalities, or the complexity of Scientological methodology being discussed by the general public. As a subdivision of this, we do not want Scientology to be reported in the press, anywhere else than on the religious page of newspapers. It is destructive of word of mouth to permit the public presses to express their biased and badly reported sensationalism. Therefore we should be very alert to sue for slander at the slightest chance so as to discourage the public presses from mentioning Scientology. What the newspapers say is not word of mouth. As an example of this, how many minutes today have you spent in discussing current events? NEWSPAPER REPORTERS WRITING ARTICLES ON SCIENTOLOGY DO NOT EXPRESS SCIENTOLOGY. Scientologists should never let themselves be interviewed by the press. That’s experience talking!
As a subdivision of general public to general public we have the problem of the professions which might consider Scientology to be antipathetic to them, amongst these would be psychologists and medical doctors as well as psychiatrists. These persons are entirely in error when they express the opinion that Scientologists are against them. Scientology does not consider them sufficiently important to be against. Flour-pills or any incantation or system will produce in 22% of the public, benefit. Therefore, any practice or art can always achieve 22% recovery in their patients. It is when we better this 22% that we are being efficient. We have no more quarrel with a psychologist than we would have with an Australian witch doctor. We have no quarrel with a psychiatrist any more than we should quarrel with a barbarian because he had never heard of nuclear physics. And as for the medical doctor, we know very well that modern medical practice, having lately outgrown phlebotomy, has come of age to a point where it can regulate structure in a most remarkable and admirable way. In Scientology we believe a medical doctor definitely has his role in a society just as an engineer has his role in civil government. We believe that a medical doctor should perform emergency operations such as those made necessary by accidents; that he should perform orthopaedics; that he should deliver babies; that he should have charge of the administration of drugs; that his use of antibiotics is beneficial; and that wherever he immediately and curatively addresses structure he is of use in a community. The only place we would limit a medical doctor is in the field of treatment of psychosomatic medicine, where he has admittedly and continuously failed, and the only thing we would ask a medical doctor to change about his practice is to stop taking money for things he knows he cannot cure, i.e. , spiritual, mental, psychosomatic, and social ills.
With regard to psychologists, medical doctors, and psychiatrists, then, what would one say in talking with them? But again we have section 10 of the Code of a Scientologist. You wouldn’t expect this psychologist, or psychiatrist, or medical doctor to get into an argument with you on how to get rats to find their way through mazes, how you would set a tibia, or what voltage you would put on an electric shock machine. Therefore, and equally, do not permit yourself to be put in the situation where you are discussing privately or in public the methodologies of your wisdom. The attitude of a Scientologist toward people in these professions should be: “I have my techniques. It took me a long time to learn them just as it took you a long time to learn yours, and I am not going to try to make a minister out of you, and you are not going to try to make a medical doctor (psychiatrist, psychologist) out of me. I am an expert instructor only where it is intimately involved with the human spirit. I can produce my effects. You can produce yours. In view of the fact that you do not pretend to operate in the field of the human spirit, and I do not pretend to operate in the field of structure, I do not see how there can be any discussion. But things that I can’t handle in structure when called upon I will be very happy to refer to you, and I shall expect that when matters of the spirit come into question you will have enough understanding of life, where we are all specialists, to refer them to me.” A quiet explanation of this character will do a great deal to place you as a professional man in their realm of understanding of professional men.
Should anyone challenge you for having suddenly secured a relief in a hospital or an institution from some dire malady which balked the efforts of the professional men in charge of it, and should you ever be “called upon the carpet” for having “interfered” with the progress of a case, you should be extremely dismayed, and act it, to find yourself in the presence of barbarians who do not believe in the power of prayer, in the will of God, or the promises of Jesus Christ. And you should point out that, whereas the body was in their keeping, they did not at any time care to take purview of the human soul. And if anything has occurred because the soul, in your province, then reacted upon the body, you believe that they are unwilling to admit the will of God in their treatment of human beings, and if this is the case, you now, while you are being addressed by such people, discover yourself to be in a strange place where men pretending to be Christians doubt God, the Son of God, and the power of prayer. Your entire address to such people, in such a situation, publicly or privately, should be entirely overt, accusative, and not at any time apologetic. And you should immediately make it your business to place this matter before the proper authorities, that people are in charge of an institution here, are not Christians, and do not believe in God, and you should inform your accusers that you are going to do so.
Should you ever be arrested for practicing Scientology, treating people, make very sure, long before the time comes, that you have never used drugs or surgery, and that you have never prescribed a diet, or vitamins, and when that time might come, make very sure that you immediately and instantly, within two or three hours after your receipt of the warrant, have served upon the signer of that warrant, a personal civil suit for $100,000.00 damages for having caused the arrest of a Man of God going about his business in his proper profession, and for having brought about embarrassing publicity and molestation. Place the suit and WIRE THE HASI IMMEDIATELY. Make the whole interest during the entire time of such an unfortunate occurrence the fact that the signer of such a warrant, who would ordinarily be a medical doctor in charge of the medical department of some city, had dared fly in the teeth of religion. And use what is necessary of the earlier passage above to drive the point home. DO NOT simply fall back out of communication if you are attacked, but attack, much more forcefully, and artfully and arduously. And if you are foolish enough to have an attorney who tells you not to sue, immediately dismiss him and get an attorney who will sue. Or, if no attorney will sue, simply have an HASI suit form filled out and present it yourself to the county clerk in the court of the area in which your case has come up.
IN ALL SUCH CASES OF ARREST FOR THE PRACTICE OF SCIENTOLOGY, THE HASI WILL SEND A REPRESENTATIVE AT ONCE, BUT DO NOT WAIT FOR HIS ARRIVAL TO PLACE THIS SUIT. THE SUIT MUST ALREADY HAVE BEEN FILED WHEN THE HASI ATTORNEY ARRIVES.
In other words, do not, at any moment leave this act unpunished, for, if you do you are harming all other Scientologists in the area. When you are attacked it is your responsibility then to secure from further attack not only yourself but all those who work with you. Cause blue flame to dance on the courthouse roof until everybody has apologized profusely for having dared to become so adventurous as to arrest a Scientologist who, as a minister of the church, was going about his regular duties. As far as the advices of attorneys go that you should not sue, that you should not attack, be aware of the fact that I, myself, in Wichita, Kansas, had the rather interesting experience of discovering that my attorney, employed by me and paid by me, had been for some three months in the employ of the people who were attacking me, and that this attorney had collected some insignificant sum of money after I hired him, by going over to the enemy and acting upon their advices. This actually occurred, so beware of attorneys who tell you not to sue. And I call to your attention the situation of any besieged fortress. If that fortress does not make sallies, does not send forth patrols to attack and harass, and does not utilize itself to make the besieging of it a highly dangerous occupation, that fortress may, and most often does, fall.
The DEFENSE of anything is UNTENABLE. The only way to defend anything is to ATTACK, and if you ever forget that, then you will lose every battle you are ever engaged in, whether it is in terms of personal conversation, public debate, or a court of law. NEVER BE INTERESTED IN CHARGES. DO, yourself, much MORE CHARGING, and you will WIN. And the public, seeing that you won, will then have a communication line to the effect that Scientologists WIN. Don’t ever let them have any other thought than that Scientology takes all of its objectives.
Another point directly in the interest of keeping the general public to the general public communication line in good odor: it is vitally important that a Scientologist put into action and overtly keep in action Article 4 of the Code: “I pledge myself to punish to the fullest extent of my power anyone misusing or degrading Scientology to harmful ends.” The only way you can guarantee that Scientology will not be degraded or misused is to make sure that only those who are trained in it practice it. If you find somebody practicing Scientology who is not qualified, you should give them an opportunity to be formally trained, at their expense, so that they will not abuse and degrade the subject. And you would not take as any substitute for formal training any amount of study.
You would therefore delegate to members of the HASI who are not otherwise certified only those processes mentioned below, and would discourage them from using any other processes. More particularly, if you discovered that some group calling itself “precept processing” had set up and established a series of meetings in your area, you would do all you could to make things interesting for them. In view of the fact that the HASI holds the copyrights for all such material, and that a scientific organization of material can be copyrighted and is therefore owned, the least that could be done to such an area is the placement of a suit against them for using materials of Scientology without authority. Only a member of the HASI or a member of one of the churches affiliated with the HASI has the authority to use this information. The purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather than to win.
The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he is not authorized, will generally be sufficient to cause his professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly.
A D. Scn. has the power to revoke a certificate below the level of D. Scn. but not a D. Scn. However, he can even recommend to the CECS of the HASI that D. Scns. be revoked, and so any sincere Scientologist is capable of policing Scientology. This is again all in the interest of keeping the public with a good opinion of Scientology, since bad group processing and bad auditing are worse than bad publicity and are the worst thing that can happen to the general public to general public communication line.
The best thing that can happen to it is good auditing, good public presentation, and a sincere approach on the subject of Scientology itself. Remember, we are interested in ALL treatment being beneficial, whether it is Scientology or not. For bad treatment in any line lowers the public opinion of all treatment.
In addressing persons professionally interested in the ministry, we have another interesting problem in public presentation. We should not engage in religious discussions. In the first place, as Scientologists, we are Gnostics, which is to say that we know that we know. People in the ministry ordinarily suppose that knowingness and knowledge are elsewhere resident than in themselves. They believe in belief and substitute belief for wisdom. This makes Scientology no less a religion, but makes it a religion with an older tradition and puts it on an intellectual plane.
Religious philosophy, then, as represented by Scientology, would be opposed in such a discussion to religious practice. We are all-denominational rather than nondenominational, and so we should be perfectly willing to include in our ranks a Moslem, or a Taoist, as well as any Protestant or Catholic, while people of the ministry in Western civilization, unless they are evangelists, are usually dedicated severely to some faction which in itself is in violent argument with many other similar factions. Thus these people are ready to argue and are practiced in argument, and there are more interpretations of one line of scripture than there are sunbeams in a day. Beyond explaining one’s all-denominational character, explaining that one holds the Bible as a holy work, one should recognize that the clergy of Western Protestant churches defines a minister or the standing of a church by these salient facts: Jesus Christ was the Savior of Mankind, Jesus Christ was the Son of God.
We in Scientology find no argument with this, and so in discussing Scientology with other ministry one should advance these two points somewhere in the conversation. Additionally, one should advance to the ministry exactly those things mentioned earlier as what we would like the general public to believe. Christ, if you care to study the New Testament, instructed his disciples to bring wisdom and good health to man, and promised mankind immortality, and said the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand, and the translators have not added that “at hand” possibly meant three feet back of your head. We could bring up these points but there is no reason to. You are not trying to educate other ministry. A friendly attitude toward other ministry in general, and fellow ministers in particular, is necessary.
The way to handle an individual minister of some other church is as follows: get him to tell you exactly what HE believes, get him to agree that religious freedom is desirable, then tell him to make sure that if that’s the way he believes, he should keep on believing that, and that you would do anything to defend his right to believe that.
None of these people as individuals are antipathetic. They know a great deal about public presence, and can be respected for such knowledge. However, engaging in long discourses, or trying to educate a minister of some Protestant church or a priest of the Catholic faith into the tenets of Scientology is not desirable and is directly contrary to Article 10 of the Code of a Scientologist.
You will find you have many problems and people in common with other ministers. They’re alive too. Also you will see a campaign to place only ministers in charge of the mind and mental healing. Talk about these things.
The Christian Church has been hurt by factionalism. We stand for peace and happiness. Therefore, let us carry it forward by example, not by unseemly discussions.