The London Daily Mail feature editor, John Hall, took it upon himself on December 13, 1955, to personally interview me, and write exactly what he found. He published in the Daily Mail, a first run paper published in London, Edinburgh, Manchester and Paris, a very long and friendly story which will probably do us more good in the British Isles and France than anything which has happened for a long time. Time Magazine has written eight pages, there have been about 80 columns in U.S. magazines such as Life, Liberty, Look, and there has been untold press released on the subject of Dianetics and Scientology. But aside from one young communist who spent about three minutes talking to me on the stairs, at Elizabeth, and a fellow who wandered in, from Life he said, and never wrote anything, in Los Angeles, there has been no press reporter near me since before the publication of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.

That feature editor, John Hall, did take it upon himself to actually do an interview, and that the results were favourable caused me to make a little investigation concerning how press has been operating before, and on what it has been operating. Evidently the total activity of press has been to pick up slanted and hearsay information. So I was interested to find out how this information came into being. Apparently it works this way: to make some sort of “face”, somebody who met me at a cocktail bar then pretends a considerable knowingness on the subject of all of my life and activities, and gives forth at a considerable pace not handicapped in the least by the possession of no data, and this by and large whether done by Scientologists or casual acquaintances has been the total sum of information which has been circulated about myself since the late ‘30s.

As even John Sanborn can tell you, I have been very chary about releasing any actual information about myself. I had a rather large collection of old-time photographs which I thought we might put into Ability, and at the last moment made John put in something else. I have not been anxious, in other words, to put up a big show of myself, thinking that Scientology was enough for its own sake. In this I have apparently made an error. I look over possible available sources of unbiased information concerning my own past, and discover that while it could be traced down on official records in libraries and other places and confirmed, there is no one who even knows enough about it to do that job of coordination. Thus it is necessary that I release some accurate biographical information to supplant some of this rumour and hodge-podge which has been spread around in the name of information. There is plenty of authenticating and documenting material if one cares to look for it.

Now I know that it is extremely bad taste to put out any data concerning oneself, or to talk about oneself, but if people see fit to talk about one and, having nothing to talk about, therefore lie about one, and if this rebounds as widely as it has, through presses, books, plays and motion pictures, certainly one has some responsibility for putting out something like an accurate biographical narrative to say the least, and so we are doing so at this time, and then I can forget about it and go on doing something more important.

For sure, however, the tide has turned on the subject of press, which doesn’t mean, however, that we should give the technical materials of Scientology to press. The best way to talk to press is to sort of two-way comm process them, and show them stacks of case histories, and let the deeds speak.

In our studies of brainwashing it has been necessary to procure what information existed on the subject. Fortuitously, in Phoenix there came into our hands two manuscripts on the subject; as well as I can recollect, they were left there at the front desk with the request that they be mailed back to their owner. We are not sure exactly from whom these came, but we understand now that this is unimportant since the subject is broadly rather well known in a book on Psychopolitics. It is to be found in the Library of Congress. It is in German, but we suppose it is the same manual. As we needed this material for research, we read it off onto a tape, compiling the two manuals and removing from them some of their very verbose nomenclature, substituting for it more common English terms, and we have had a few copies of this struck off for use in our research.

It is necessary if one is confronted by a case of brainwashing to understand the motives and general procedures of the people who did it. I must say an inspection of this manual does not make for much respect for the motives of people who brainwash other people. In the early pages of this manual, there is a letter from the person who purportedly gave these manuals to the organization, “Charles Stickley”, supposed to be a professor at Columbia University in New York City. This letter, included in the manuals as printed, makes it definitely and adequately clear that these manuals were reprinted for study by research workers. However, in handing out a copy of one of these manuals to one of our own people who had not heard of it, he made several wrong estimates of the manual itself. At first he thought it was a piece of communist propaganda. Then he thought it was something the organization had composed. Then on further inspection, he did not know what to think and it had to be pointed out to him very specifically that this was a synthesis of a Russian instruction book on the subject of brainwashing, and it had to be pointed out to him that it was reprinted for the benefit of people working to remedy and heal brainwashing. It had to be pointed out to him additionally that there was a cover letter in it which explained these things. Thus if you have one of these copies and it gets away from you which it might, you may find it necessary to explain exactly what it is.

We certainly have the right to have in our possession materials covering something as intimately connected to mental research as brainwashing. We have the right to know why and where and who. Furthermore, this material is evidently well known to various governments and is not classified, since the subject “Psychopolitics” (which is the technical name for brainwashing) is to be found in the major libraries of the world.

In the original text of this book there was a warning to psychopolitical operatives that they must stamp out Dianetics, Christian Science, and practical psychology, as these alone represented a menace to the brainwashing programmes. This reference in the text to Dianetics (which has been known to the Russians since 1938) makes the matter very much our business, quite aside from research. Yet if most of the vagaries and upsets from which we have been suffering have stemmed from a desire on the part of some political group attempting to accomplish a political coup and in the road of which we have been standing, then we certainly have the right to know why we have been knocked around by press and governments to the degree that we have been. Hardly a word uttered against Dianetics and Scientology has had any truth in it. The prevalent official but not the public opinion regarding Dianetics and Scientology is that they are phony sciences, tricked up to hoodwink people. Contrast this with the fact that in Dianetics and Scientology alone in all the world of mental healing lie the answers to increased intelligence and ability, and not very incidentally, in Dianetics and Scientology and in Dianetics in particular, we have the total antidote for the eradication of brainwashing. In other words we could unbrainwash them with Dianetics as fast as they are being brainwashed, given enough staff. Furthermore we can put troops and persons in a condition where they cannot be brainwashed. This we can do in Scientology.

Thus if brainwashing is being counted upon heavily to accomplish a great deal inside and outside the nations under attack, there would be only one organization which would be standing thoroughly in the road of that programme, and if that programme inside a country had advanced to a point where officials could be influenced, then you would discover of course this odd official opinion of Dianetics and Scientology, that they are quack sciences.

We are not planning to use this reprinted manual for purposes of propaganda. However, to prevent any misunderstanding from occurring, the highest police in England and America have both received copies and have been told that this is a reprint manual, and that we do not wish to cause them any extra labour in case another one of them falls into their hands. Actually, however, it is my belief that they have had the original, which is to say the communist version of these manuals, in their possession for years, and have simply been unable to credit it or unable to do anything about it. Thus our reprinted version should come as no shock to them.

It has been my experience with Anglo-Saxon governments that where idea propaganda line attacks were concerned they couldn’t care less. They do not believe that propaganda is effective. Otherwise they would themselves engage in more propaganda activities. The Anglo-Saxon traditionally depends upon force in order to accomplish his ends.

This is one of the reasons why communism has made such vast progress across the face of the world. It is an idea advancing against arms, and the arms of course will never be able to stop an idea. An idea will be necessary to stop the idea. We may very unfortunately be those persons in possession of the idea that will stop the other idea. Certainly the way things are going, if we don’t use our ideas to stop the incoming ideas across the face of earth, we are going to wind up one of these days in the middle of a total communism, living in a totally brainwashed society, the way I look at it.

My very best wishes to the Congress and my hopes for a highly successful time by all. I have made several recent tapes on material of some interest and value which have been sent swiftly and rapidly across so that the latest material would be available at the Congress. I have not made, however, a welcoming tape as I ordinarily would, and take this opportunity to thank those people who came, and hope that they go away feeling better, and feeling happier about things. There is no doubt that the Washington operation is on the steep upgrade and my principal communication in Scientology is between myself and the Washington operation where Bill Young, Julia Lewis, Ken Barrett, Don Breeding have things pretty well in hand. The silver ministers’ crosses are ready now and are supposed to be a knockout. The Co-Auditor’s Manual is ready, the “Brainwashing” pamphlet is being released to those who are interested in the subject, and it should be with all a very successful Congress indeed. I wish I were there.

I am tabling up all those processes which have been successful in starting low toned cases. These have amounted to about 24 new processes in the last three or four months. This table will be available in the near future with an analysis on it. However, I wish to call to your attention the singular success of Waterloo Station in handling low-ordered cases. Not-knowingness is time. If a person cannot not-know he becomes the slave of time.

One of the more interesting late developments is a process called “‘Orrible Fates”. You ask the preclear to tell you some ‘orrible fates. The theory of this is very simple and will probably become Axiom 55, which will be to the effect that the cycle of action of the physical universe is create, change, destroy. Thus, anyone trying to make things better and in very close agreement with the physical universe, in reversing this cycle, will bring upon himself some regret. We have a wild example of this in the cycle of action imposed upon us by Christianity in the good works, the hounding and the death of Christ. This mechanism, also handled in Fac One, gives us the oddity that we are trying to put create forward in time, whereas destroy lies forward in time. One then either masters the subject of time, by running not-knowingness processes, or he puts into the future inventions of horrible fates for various persons and himself and this universe, until he runs out the considerable regret which is accumulated every time he has envisioned a good action. Naturally the final solution of this is the solution of agreement with the physical universe. When one breaks this and it is no longer disagreement or agreement, he has really done something, and the keynote of doing this thing is, of course, in “not-knowingness”.

I have made a direct deliberate test, not of a process but of the auditing style itself as a helpful agent. The keynote of new auditing style is that any boil-off, somatic, anaten, swing of attention or going out of session on the part of the preclear is occasioned by some sort of error or miscomprehension on the part of the auditor, and the preclear. I used a general process not ordinarily very therapeutic, but not destructive, and starting with this process and a preclear, worked only in one direction: to keep the ARC of the preclear advancing continually throughout the session, proceeding from the level of ARC of the preclear just before he came into session — in other words, consistently and consecutively bettered him. I did this by two-way communication, and communication bridges. Every time the preclear tended to go out of session even slightly, every time any slightest sign of dropped awareness occurred, I assumed at once that something had gone wrong with the session. I assumed that something had been said which he didn’t understand, or something had been overlooked, or that something had been done in error on the two-way comm formula, and immediately researched this fact to put the session straight again. In other words, during this entire session I did nothing but put the session straight with two-way communication, and run a relatively noncommittal duplicating process on the preclear. The process I knew of old was not going to produce any grand rise in tone. However, this preclear who was usually difficult to audit finished up a half- hour session in much better condition than this preclear had been in in years.

The assumption here on the part of the auditor is that if the preclear goes into a slump, has a somatic, or otherwise drops in ARC, then a difficulty has arisen with the session. We calculate this from the following: that at the top of the tone scale we have knowingness and awareness, in the middle ranges we have ARC, in the lower ranges somatics, and in the far lower ranges, varying degrees of unconsciousness. Thus when we say that the preclear’s tone should be promoted throughout the session, we mean of course that he must not be slumping toward unconsciousness. He must be advancing toward higher levels of consciousness.

Therefore today it can be said that good auditing does not result in boil-off and somatic unconsciousness, dope-off, or pain, but results in a constant and consistent advance of the ARC of the preclear from the first moment of the session to the end of the session, when it should be much higher, and that any time there is anything wrong at all with the session, the preclear will reply by getting more unconscious. This was about the most arduous and rigorous test that could be made of new auditing style with a difficult preclear and following very solidly the precept that it would be an auditing error if the preclear dropped off in attention or consciousness. Thus when I have said that in the new auditing style we should always advance ARC, I meant exactly what I said, and have even gone so far as to run an auditing session which was nothing more than an auditing session to demonstrate that an auditing session all by itself with the two-way communication consequent to it would result in increased tone for the preclear. By the way, this type of auditing also results in increased tone for the auditor, so we are winning both ways.

Washington has recently received a stack of forms from me which they were supposed to fill out weekly and send through as reports on conditions, finances, etc. This is really not so much an effort to fill up my “vacuum of information” as it is to get the Washington operation to pay very close attention to these details themselves. The theory is that if they have to compile these data, they will then know these data, and, knowing them, they will see what the situation actually is.

I believe much of the activity which goes on in an organization is done without any real realization of what the condition of the organization is, and it may very well be that for the last five years, only myself and a few others have been actually conscious of the real condition of Dianetics and Scientology organizations with regard to their business organization and finance. This sort of situation cannot of course continue. Dianeticists and Scientologists working inside of organizations and keeping them running would be as competent as they knew what was going on in the organization, and they would know as well what was going on in the organization as they were acquainted with the problems which the organization actually faced in terms of business and finance.

Probably one of the things which has held us back more than anything else was a good working knowledge of business itself. The basic maxim of business is simplicity itself, and that is first, that there must be an organization there, and second, that it must perform its duties and functions, and third, that it must originate communications as well as receive communications, and fourth, that its income must be slightly greater than its outgo, and fifth, that persons inside the organization should know what was going on generally in the organization.

I instituted this report system when I discovered that the Washington operation could sit there and not notice that the training department itself had never originated a single letter of procurement to prospective students. Mary Sue was originating all these letters, and when she left Washington to come over to London (having stayed behind to square things away), the training department, which had the responsibility for emanating all communication on the subject of procurement of students, wrote not one single letter to anyone anywhere. Thus Washington is involved in a slump. Similar to Australia, where internecine warfare kept people from communicating out to the world at large, Washington was brought into an intensified usual Christmas slump by a failure to originate communications. Another circumstance came to my attention which was very amusing. Over a period of two weeks, I was being asked by the downtown office if Silver Spring had received a cheque for expenses. Downtown Washington was communicating with me to find out a datum about Silver Spring which if a map is inspected will be found to be eight miles away. Silver Spring was not communicating this information to downtown Washington, and downtown Washington evidently never thought of asking Silver Spring. I let it ride until they eventually got together on the subject. Interdepartmental bulletins and meetings to exchange information are absolutely necessary if an organization is going to continue in a healthy state.

It is time that the central organization of Scientology began to circulate bulletins on what it is doing. I know definitely that in each department branch of the entire Washington operation everyone, with very small exception, is doing his all-out level best to keep everything rolling and they are doing a wonderful job of it. I think, however, that from department to department the Washington operation doesn’t know this. How about meeting each other, you guys?