This silly promo piece touches on a subject that is sensitive to many scientologists.
The SO #1 line and the illusion that was created for decades that “Ron” was in fact communicating with people from all over the world.
It was a great public relations move to have people believe they were communicating with “Source”, but it was a lie. It was also the source of valuable for information (intelligence).
I assure you that though this letter is signed “Ron” and is on his letterhead, it was absolutely NOT seen, written, signed or anything else’d by him. In 1980 he was in seclusion out of fear that that US Government was going to arrest him and turn him into an indicted co-conspirator, and that civil litigants were going to drag him into deposition (the same fights to prevent his deposition were being waged then on his behalf as those being waged today on Miscavige’s behalf). A letter from the staff in Miami did NOT get to “Ron.” He was not in touch with the most senior people in the church, let alone the staff in Miami.
It is somewhat ironic that this is in Miami because that is where Alethiea Taylor is from. She was “LRH Personal Secretary” on the Apollo, and oversaw the “SO #1 Unit” (she has long since left the Sea Org — her husband Luten was the trombone player in the Apollo Stars). The SO #1 Unit handled all mail to LRH, corresponded with his family in his name and provided him with summaries of “situations” based on “sour SO #1’s.”
From when I was on the Apollo in 1973 until his death, LRH did NOT comply with his own policy: Standing Order No. I “All mail addressed to me shall be received by me.” At some point on the Apollo I think he may have seen some of the letters that came in along with the replies that were being proposed to go out from SO #1 people, and he received weekly reports showing the total number of letters in and percentage of “sour” letters. The “sour” letters stat was turned over to management to evaluate “bad” orgs. But from very early on this was at best a sleight of hand — he “received” the letters because they went to a unit designed by him to handle them; and at worst it was a lie — the fake letters with his signature on them signed or stamped by someone else, it could just as easily have been set up to send responses to people from a secretary “on behalf of Ron.”
The SO #1 unit had specific direction how to handle all incoming mail — acknowledge people and keep it “good roads, good weather”, tell them how much they were appreciated, if appropriate give them a quote from some reference and if there was a real problem tell them that someone had been directed to “look into it.”
Anyone who got a “letter from Ron” after 1973 (I cannot speak to it before that date as I was not there, but suspect it was the same for many years previously) it was NOT written by LRH. It was written and signed by a secretarial pool.
This is not hard to understand. Orgs PROMOTED “write to Ron” and there were hundreds of letters a week. If he DID read and respond to them there would have been no time to do anything else. Politicians and leaders of large organizations cannot handle all their mail, but it is very unusual for them to not indicate that someone else is responding on their behalf. And especially when scientologists are supposed to take the word of LRH as source. A written document from Ron is an almost holy document, and I am sure there are people out there who still cherish their “SO#1 letters” as “my letter from Ron.” ASI took this some steps further in later years, selling “LRH signed books” that were NOT signed by him.
But in this day and age to put an #SO 1 letter on a promo piece and pretend it is “from Ron” is really ridiculous.
After LRH died, the “SO #1” Unit was turned over to “ED Int” and it became “You can write to ED Int”. The same personnel that had done “Ron Letters” now did “Guillaume letters” and in fact when Guillaume ended up in the Hole, Rae Chase and her secretarial “SO #1” unit handled incoming MANAGEMENT communications (from CO’s of Conts and ILO and orgs) to maintain the illusion that he was “still on post.” They did the same for communications that came in to the “Exec Ints” (as there was not a SINGLE ONE ON POST even though “LRH promised” that he had established the “international executive strata” so all staff could write to them for advice about their specialty).
UPDATE:
Someone just sent this to me. Note the date. He died on 24 January. It would NOT surprise me if there are “SO 1” letters AFTER 24 January 1986 as nobody informed the people in the SO #1 Unit right away.
“…but even if you were lead to believe they were from him, consider how that made you feel, the good that it did…
Like the Tooth Fairy. Or a letter from Santa Claus. That’s great for 5-year-olds. Which pretty much sums up the problem with Scientology.
Gus Cox, I don’t disagree with you. But I suppose I consider it trivial. Not because it is not important but because It is a problem, that there is no current solution for. It happened and it was done. Certainly it is relative to the fact that they are using this in the current day. But again, where is the solution. One thing that is almost certain, is that most active Scientologist’s can barely hear of bad things to be said about Miscavige. We are more likely to scare them even further away, aiming at anti LRH post’s. If they cannot confront that which is currently happening around them, how do you expect them to deal on confronting something that too many people can make up excuses for?
Then again, this is not my blog, It is Mike’s and I certainly trust him to to post information under good intentions and directed towards his goals on dealing with Scientology.
The Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, The Tooth Fairy, The Boogey Man …
All are children’s mythical characters. LRH was a living human being, who as a real person is accountable for his own life and actions. As we all are.
She’s not well-known, but at least she’s a pro – she had (or maybe still has – I don’t know much about soap operas) a good run on The Young and the Restless. Soaps are good-paying gigs! As for Michael, I didn’t make that seminar up – I actually saw the sign by the CCI parking lot. The Duffs are nice enough, well, except for that thing where they went to Texas to harass Mark Rathbun…
But Michael has nothing to offer about success as a musician. Actually, nobody does, except for moi. I’ll clue you in on the easy, 3-part formula:
1. Have a lot of talent (or lacking that, charisma). 2. Have a lot of luck. 3. Boom.
There! And you don’t have to sit in the Garden Pavilion for a couple hours and get regged outta your kid’s college fund! 🙂
Old School,
You capitalized the word FELONIES very dramatically, but, again, no further details.
Are you saying that locking a child in a chain locker would be considered to a felony in the 1950’s, 1960’s or early 1970’s? I don’t think so.
I know for a fact that even locking a child in an out-house was not considered to be a felony in the US (it was considered humorous), nor was beating them with objects that left welts. This type of behavior was, unfortunately, accepted by society as appropriate discipline. For that matter sending a minor to a psych ward to receive electro-shock was acceptable too. I once met someone in the 1960’s to whom that had happened.
The detail you mentioned was not a felony back then or even a crime. Were you thinking of some other act which you did not mention that “LRH did to kids”?
As for my confront of criminality, you really don’t know me and you might be quite surprised as to how much evil I can confront and have confronted as well as what my personal values are (particularly with regards to children). I even see and confront petty crimes like the old trick of emphasizing only the negative aspects of a person in order to paint them as being all bad. I think that I have a good perspective as to what kind of person LRH was (and is) with no whitewash applied.
My admittedly un-asked-for advice to you is to take a look in the mirror.
Old School,
Accusing someone “child abuse” without further detail can, by the definition of “child abuse”, infer sexual abuse. Thank you for clarifying that you did not mean that LRH was involved in child abuse of that nature. That’s what I initially thought you might have been hinting at since you gave no details.
What constitutes child abuse has changed over the decades.
Today it is possible for a person to be arrested for giving a child a spanking.
In the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s giving a child “a good whuppin” or “taking them out to the woodshed” was socially acceptable as you may or may not know.
My personal view is that any kind of corporal punishment of a child is abusive, should never be done, and is not a legitimate part of parenting. Adults are supposed to simply love children and help them to find their place in the world.
And, Old School, I am not madly trying not to look. In fact, I am looking and I am seeing what I look at. I am also evaluating importances and judging what the purpose of communications I receive are. I am not interested in covering up Ron’s moral errors and transgressions any more than I am interested in covering up or obscuring or failing to acknowledge his monumental discoveries and developments in the fields of the mind and the spirit.
Espiritu, What LRH did to kids on the Apollo would have landed him in prison for committing FELONIES even then. Once your confront of criminality rises to what is considered a par minimum for living in a civilized society, you’ll start to see what Hubbard was.
Thanks, Mike, so much for clearing this up. It is a small part of the rat’s nest that I have not seen discussed anywhere.
Old School,
If you make a startling accusation about someone, such as them being a “child abuser” it might behoove you to at least give some sort of evidence. Not doing so does nothing for your own credibility and is not fair to the accused.
“Everybody” doesn’t know this to be true.
I mean what if I said that you pimped out young children on the street without stating that I had personally witnessed such activity, or without giving credible documentation from other witnesses. Should that be considered to be a fact?
Espiritu putting a child in a chain locker is child abuse, especially when it is for long hours. and that’s just one example. the whole freaking CMS is child abuse. the evidence that LRH was a child abuser is overwhelming.
i understand your point, but in this case the evidence is widely known.
Espiritu. It is WELL documented. It was on the Apollo. Staff from the ship have spoken out. That is REALLY old data about LRH that is documented on MANY websites. It DOES show that you are madly trying not to look
Regarding LRH owning Sequoia University, I got the information from a well-cited Wikipedia article about Sequoia University.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoia_University
The statement regarding LRH owning the school is in the very first paragraph.
Later the article delves into the history of S.U., But who knows, maybe the whole article was total bull shit, too. After all these years it is difficult to determine the truth for oneself from documents…..maybe that will change in 2019 when more documents are scheduled to be de-classified according to the citations.
I guess the moral of this whole story is that just because someone pronounces something as fact doesn’t make it true or false.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoia_University
Espiritu the wiki article you refer to has on one VERY poor cite from a newspaper. A “well cited” article would require PRIMARY documentation of said ownership.
One reason that most college Prof’s auto fail any paper handed in by a student that cites a wiki article…
So what? Exactly what was the damage in this situation. I’m all for uncovering truths but this just seems a little bit like stones are being thrown at an already broken window. The whole concept of this seems a little bit childish. Like finding out the letter from your childhood role model was really from Mom and Dad. I don’t want to invalidate anyone who considered their letters very important to them but even if you were lead to believe they were from him, consider how that made you feel, the good that it did.
Also, if I understand correctly, wasn’t this a common thing to do in 70’s and previous years? I don’t personally believe that Ron was some perfect above human existence but the past is the past. What good comes out of this? Is there not a much larger task at hand of what is currently happening in Scientology and what needs to be done about it? Consider how you might appear to others, if you were dead and someone chose to weigh all the bad or not so great things you did, I highly doubt you would look so great either. Does that make you a bad person? No it makes you Human. It is those unable to acknowledge, confront or amend those wrongs that have been done. Those completely incapable of seeing their own faults that need the attention… and perhaps need letters from US.
I wish the past WAS the past.
This only came to my attention because it is a CURRENT promotional item being used to persuade people to give MORE MONEY.
That makes complete sense Mike, I was not aware of this, I try to keep up with the blogs and news but things certainly do pass my notice. It is sickening to me that this is now being used to this day. Is there any possible way to challenge the Church to proving their sham is worthy of Donation? Not to sound as innocent as a new born babe but… Isn’t that illegal? Lol. Is it perhaps something that brought to light of the law would at least aid in spreading the word further? I assume as per usual their tracks are well covered, but many small cracks can bring down a foundation just as good as one large one at times.
ArianaBlack You doth protest too much. ALSO, after I’m dead. No one will truthfully be able to say that I was a child abuser. Scam artist. Committed felony tax evasion.. Someone who lied to people who trusted me in order to scam millions of dollars from them. A kidnapper.
ALL those things are true about LRH. What a weird justification you have for him being a criminal…
Well now you are typing words into my Keyboard Old School. I never actually said he was good or bad in either direction. I said the comments from people whom had received letters expressed happiness and joy out of having received them and thinking they were from him.
I was simply and very directly addressing this particular post. However you do see where you negated yourself by saying “No one will truthfully be able to say that I was a child abuser. Scam artist. Committed felony tax evasion.. Someone who lied to people who trusted me in order to scam millions of dollars from them. A kidnapper.” Then followed it by saying that it is certainly true of LRH. How exactly is it so true and known, if no one knows?
This is most certainly a challenge to your statement, but I am not saying you are wrong. Simply curious as to why and how you have come to this conclusive, perhaps there is something I do not know or have overlooked. I am not closed to other views, but currently I don’t agree with yours. Dare you enlighten me without assuming I’m against you?
I protest. LRH was not a criminal… It’s black and white thinking. I do not agree with LRH’s hater. I’m not as well thinking LRH is god, it’s church’s thinking and I’m against it. But I think the good outweight tremendously the bad on Hubbard.
ArianaB, you manage to convey a refreshing honesty, without the usual trashing of LRH, that is becoming so commonplace these days. And my guess is, that long after the trashers have passed on, the workability of the AXIOM-backed auditing tech, will still be firing away on ‘all four cylinders’, for the self same original purpose of delivering people from their travails, and lifting them upward to new abilities. 🙂
Thank you, racingintheblood39. That is what I was aiming for and I completely agree with you.
Personally, I will not judge anyone for their views on Scientology or any religion for that matter. But we must not forget, Pro Tech or not. Pro LRH or not. We are all united by one view and one common purpose. Which is that there are people, at this time, causing damage and harm with a hand that reaches far across the globe and we want it to stop. Directing our attention to where our views change from that common point is exactly the kind of distraction David Miscavige wants. Once we have stopped the church from being able to cause harm, by all means people should commence to discuss/debate/argue their views and intentions.
Until then, let us keep our focus on the task at hand. Being unable to accept others views as their own only breeds for the mindset we accuse the Church of.
Yes, it was impossible for Ron to answer all that mail. No time.
Back to the late seventies, I once said it to some fellow scientogists.
They looked at me like if I did a blasphemy. One guy (a Sea Org) “handled” me, very nicely, with ARC (like if I was a cute ignorant wog).
“LRH is cause over Time. None of us could handled such a randomity, but Ron is full OT.”
And it was good to believe, i was feeling good… of course Ron is OT, and we will all be OT once.
All the other people on the table (we were having a drink) felt good, their stable data were not shaken by the obvious fact that one man could not answer so much mail. They had to be lied to or they would collapse.
Probably when LRH started with SO 1, he really answered, then it was impossible, so he “phased 2”.
He didn’t think anything was wrong. How could he have said : “please don’t write me, I cannot answer.”
Now, I still want to say something on that.
About the end of the seventies, I went to an advanced org to do my OT levels. And it all went sour. CS didn’t duplicate what i was saying, wrong indication. I landed to ethics, more wrong indications, they finaly route me off with a threat of being declared type 3. Off auditing lines with a shit program. I was really upset.
Back to my org, I went to the examiner, made a statement, spoke the Dof P, to my auditor… They understood (they certainly thought that they flub me in AO) but could only comply with CS order from AO.
I had nobody who could help me to correct the wrong indics.
So I wrote Ron, telling all.
Got an answer, very disapointing “Please do your program…”.
I wrote him back explained that the program was wrong. Got an answer quoting CS 78. He indicated me there was an out list. I felt much better. Wrote again. Got an answer “Ok, i’ll chase your folder and we will sort it out.”
Not longer later, got a call from the Dof P from my org saying : “we just received your folder. You are expected for a session.”
When I arrived on the org, they were all so nice and smiling. I got the session. A very standard handling of out list and wrong indications, life could be lived again.
Sometime later, someone did an FES of my folder, actually a friend of mine. And he couldn’t refrain himself from telling me. “You know, on your folder, there is a cramming order written by LRH on the CS and Ethics officer of the AO”
So at some point, my comm arrived to LRH.
That’s a cool story. Thanks for sharing the good, too. I also got results writing on the SO#1 line regarding a bad situation – not my personal situation, but a bad situation in another org at that time involving children. (I don’t want to get too specific.) Whether or not LRH ever saw it – I don’t know. I had a responsible executive position, but from my hat I had no power to order any fix for the situation, and I knew no one at my continental level would/could handle. So, I wrote it up on SO#1 – detailing the danger. It took a month or so for things to be remedied, but ultimately a reorganization did come through and things improved significantly – at least for that time.
It’s kind of disappointing to hear this, Mike, but it is most likely true. I too have cherished my “letters from Ron”. I guess I was sucked into the illusion like everyone else.
Ron did a lot of great things, but he did have a bit of flim-flam about him, too.
For instance, that doctorate of philosophy which he actually did receive from Sequoia University, a small private university ….a small private university which he had previously purchased personally. He owned it! But I do try to keep things like this in perspective. Is that any worse than some of our recent presidents whose daddies endowed major universities which then made sure that the wayward sons and other relatives of the whales “got a good education”? No. But it is still deceit. Behavior like this doesn’t take away from actual accomplishments, but it’s always disappointing.
No, he didnt purchase it. It was run by a chiropractor and he handed out “degrees” to people he “felt were worthy”. LRH asked to get one to help his PR in the UK and had one of his associates in the US organize it. It is covered quite well in Russell Miller’s book.
Mike,
Per what I was told, this person was one member of a whole unit that had this task as their hat. Like I said, I don’t know if what was said was true, but that is what I was told by the person who told me. The way I heard it Ron took just a few seconds to read each letter and its proposed reply, and he then approved most of them.
Also, as you mention, I do remember when Guillaume took over the line after LRH hit the road. I wrote to him a couple of times and his replies seemed to have a much different flavor. Later I think that line petered out and I didn’t notice letter writing stations placed prominently in the orgs any more after a while. It does seem as if this would have to have taken hours per day.
I have no idea how many letters came in for Ron per day so it’s hard for me to figure out how large a staff would have been needed to do this if or how feasible it would have been for LRH to do this. But if he received 1000 letters per day and he spend 30 seconds on each letter, then he would have had to spend about 8 hrs per day answering his mail. I doubt that he did that given his other activities as a writer, doing technical research, managing the COS ‘from above’, etc.
It is highly ironic and also somewhat bizarre that a religious philosophy which has as its most fundamental principle to confront the complete TRUTH of something in order to handle something, get rid of something or to be cause over something, has from its very start also had LIES as one of its constant component parts.
Alongside his breakthrough discoveries of how to lessen the charge of traumatic incidents on a case, LRH couldn’t keep himself from LIEING. We know now he could not possibly have observed in any “clears” the characteristics that he describes in DMSMH. It is highly doubtful that he made any of what he thought were “clears” at all. (How did we ALL miss the fact that when Ron said the most important aspect of a clear was that the clear would be rational ……… yet certainly to decide a being was rational across the dynamics, wouldn’t you have to observe that being’s life decisions for a few years at the very least? But there couldn’t have been enough time allowed for that if you check the timeline of publication of DMSMH)
LRH continued to lie as the years went on as towhat the products of auditing would be (listen to the Philadelphia lectures as he paints a VERY appealing picture of where Scientology is heading.).
And of course if LRH’s pronouncements about the E-Meter’s infallibility were true when he made them in the 50s and 60s, we never would have needed a new one, now would we?
I could write a VERY long essay on this (I won’t and will end this soon). But this is why I commented the other day on the film invitation that said you should call to reserve your seat at a showing. It could have simply TRUTHFULLY said that whenever you want to come in, the org will be sure to get the video ready for you. But …. the person COULDN’T HELP but lie, PR, whatever you want to call it.
Thus the lies about the IAS, Edy Lundeen’s rantings and ravings, and the lies here about the SO#1 line. These people collectively NO LONGER NO THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LIES AND THE TRUTH. That is how LOW SCALE they are. For DECADES, folks have been lying about how long training would take at Flag. The fact that they lie when they use the world “briefing” as in come see Joe tomorrow at 2 pm for a “briefing” is very telling. Even WORDS, which Scientology is so fanatical about in regards to meanings are lied about. So OF COURSE the SO#1 line was a lie. In retrospect, what should we have expected? The truth? C’mon now folks, please.
Yes, I meant “no longer KNOW the difference ….” More coffee please ….
Wow. I almost wrote Ron once in the 1970s. I was so naive. I’m so glad I didn’t.
Scientology: the bridge to total freedom built on myriad lies.
Such bridges will not stand the test of time.
Also, when I heard the New Year’s Eve recording that Ron sent out for staff and public in about 1982 or 83, I knew that he was moving off the line. He was talking about this stat and that stat, INCOMM was doing great and there was the new upper management org board filled with great people who are taking great care of things, etc.
Somewhere around the middle of that recording, it hit me like being hit in the stomach by a muscle ball. Oh, my God, he’s passing his hat. Hats. All of them. I knew at that moment that he was planning on really getting off the line and maybe even passing away.
Here I am, in the middle of the old, never really renovated AOLA on Berendo, looking at the staff, looking at the public, knowing that I couldn’t say anything or I would ARC break the whole room. I knew I was right.
Now that I’m out, I see, even more how right I was. As a result of this head’s up, when LRH actually died, I wasn’t so shocked. He had actually said what he was planning to do.
My question for you, Mike, if you please, is this.
I’ve been researching all of the crazy stuff that’s been going on for at least 10 years. One thing I read was that the later recordings like that New Year’s Eve recordings, were fakes. Done by impersonators.
Do you have any information about that? Thanks in advance.
Yes, that recording was done by LRH, based on information he had requested be sent to him. There was months of work to round it all up and present it.
I wish there WAS a hat write up where he actually turned over his hat. Or even a message to everyone — even if not a “Rons’ Journal” for the public (why not?) then at least something directed to management “here is what you now need to do, here is who I want in charge, these are the exact directions to follow”. It is an enormous outpoint that no such thing exists. He wrote detailed descriptions about how to wash windows and clean cars. Why was there no hat turnover? No message to reassure the people that had relied on him for so long? Nothing to deal with the inevitable upset of all the people he knew it would effect. He was ill for some time before he died. He had time to do all this.
It is one of the things that is not talked about, but if you give it 5 minutes of thought it is perhaps the biggest outpoint there is. An enormous contrary fact. Two datums that are completely opposed — he spent his entire life post 1950 writing down and recording his every thought and made a very strong pitch about how he did it all because he cared for everyone so much (re-read that 1982 LRH ED again) yet the time when he knew people would MOST need to hear from him and his direction was MOST needed, there was nothing but crickets and he died and left behind a mess including an immediate power struggle for control over the church.
There is no good explanation for this.
Again, I could write a long essay backing up my point here, but the essential answer to what the issue you pose Mike is that LRH simply could not PERSONALLY apply straight Scientology. Weird, weird, weird, when you think of it. Without supplying a hundred examples here, I’ll just mention that he applied no ethics gradients (HCO PL Ethics Review) or HCO B Anti Social Personality when he did the whole List 1 RS witch hunt/fiasco. (BASIC fundamental principles of Scientology). Did he apply Scientology principles to his seven children? He couldn’t handle his OWN Type A sit with his first son who you can still find on youtube in videos trying every thing he could to destroy his father’s reputation. What kind of responsibility did he apply to his other children and three wives? When he wrote that if you are in a lower condition on one dynamic, you will be pulled down in the others, his wife was committing federal crimes that could lead to his destruction, so his second dynamic was not in very good shape, to say the least. Was he AT ALL aware of his OWN dynamics. Ron was quick to criticize viciously one of his most loyal and helpful followers (Mayo) – did he get off his OWN overts and withholds? And on and on and on.
One might think I am just attacking LRH here, but I actually don’t think the above lowers the practical value of most of the great research he did and its conclusions. In describing Scientology to someone the other day, I ran a few commands of ARC SW on him as a demonstration and he came uptone after just a couple of them. Contrary to what Marty said the other day, you don’t need to have faith in Scientology for it to work. Most of LRH’s work was gold.
But it was either in HCO PL Group Sanity or Third Dynamic De-aberration where LRH talks about not apprenticing someone as a huge error in management. So…. the fact that he did NOT issue a communication before his death, that he did NOT write a program for a hat turnover (power change?), that he did NOT apprentice a replacement fully …. are HUGE outpoints. But when you go over his whole career (and I just offered a few examples above) you run into this phenomenon of Ron simply NOT applying LRH policy and tech to his OWN life and his OWN actions. Since I feel so much of his work is so valuable, this is indeed a very curious and bizarre thing, to say the least. But I feel it is the START point on what has turned into the eventual downfall of the Church of Scientology.
Not providing a Hat turnover is a huge out point and yes, there is no obvious, logical reason.
However, if LRH was ill for a lengthly period of time prior to his passing, isn’t it possible he wasn’t in the physical or mental state one would need to be in, in order to accomplish this? Illness can definitely affect a persons ability to work, etc. and can absorb a lot of one’s attention units, strength, and soundness of mind.
Sometimes answers can be so simple, they are hard to see.
Of course, I was not privy to LRH’s type or extent of illness prior to his death. Maybe it came upon him way before he was prepared for it.
Ok, Yeah, I’m disappointed.
But I have my version of/thoughts on this too.
I have letters from as far back as 1976, when I first started the comm course and had this big win, getting someone through bullbaiting. Great story but I’ll save it for another time.
I wrote Ron a lengthy letter about what I did to help this girl get through it. I was enthusiastic and theta and funny, if I do say so myself. haha
“He” wrote me back to say, “Mary Sue and I got a kick out of your cheerful letter!” and other words of welcome and congratulations.
I’m not sure if I believe that “every” letter was a fake. But I did have the thought that Ron had to have used a Dictaphone or some other type of handling to get through all of those letters.
What I do KNOW for sure is that I got a letter in around 1980 or so. It was encouraging me to continue on the Bridge but I knew it wasn’t him anymore. The reason I knew it wasn’t him was because it said, “IF you make it through your course…” IF instead of WHEN.
Shortly after, I started seeing that his signature was a stamp instead of ball point pen. The jig was up for me at these points.
Sorry to burst your bubble on the ballpoint pen, there were people specifically trained to sign his name in ballpoint pen.
I’m trying not to sound like a neophyte here, but if Ron’s signature was that easy to copy, and so many people were copying it, how do we know if he really wrote ALL the HCOB’s and HCOPL’s etc? We all know Davie has been doing that with GAT I and GAT II, and the Basics, but maybe this alteration started much earlier than we ever gave credit for? Could people have been signing Ron’s name on HCOB’s and HCOPLs even before we figured out Davie was doing it? Wow, if so, that is a scary thought.
I think this quote is relevant to the subject of LRH and the SO-1 line:
“Up here we have these two methods of knowing. Pervasion. Pervasion is being there.
“Pervasion is being there in present time. You want to know what the Encyclopedia Britannica has to say about something or other . . .You just pervade the Encyclopedia Britannica and you know. . .
“You can actually cast your beingness to a sufficient distance-cast your beingness to a sufficient distance to pervade some subject.”
From the tape Obsession, 23 June 1952.
I don’t understand what you are trying to say? Are you intending to imply that LRH “pervaded” all the letters? Or are you trying to make fun of this quote?
People who simply rely on an “LRH quote” to do their talking (and thinking) for them are a bit sad in my opinion.
What I’m trying to say is that I don’t think LRH set up the SO-1 line with the intention of deceiving people into believing that he was more able than he really was, as if he could almost make as much time and fly around as fast as Santa Claus could.
It is my opinion that LRH did believe in OT abilities. It is my opinion that LRH believed that he, himself, had some of those abilities, to one degree or another. It is my opinion that, in his handling of the SO-1 line, LRH intended to use whatever ability of knowing by pervasion that he thought he possessed.
Consequently, I don’t regard him as being a con artist and liar because he said that all communication sent to him would be received by him.
Thank you very much for sharing this information. It is a subject I have long been curious about, reading so many stories in which people referenced these revered letters of Ron’s. I couldn’t imagine that he really wrote them, but I never really pictured the factory/assembly line method, either.
Well I made my own copy of his signature so I can issue letters from Ron too.
“ASI took this some steps further in later years, selling “LRH signed books” that were NOT signed by him.”
Selling forgeries. Criminal fraud.
I’m no typesetter, but that looks suspiciously like a proportional font in that letter. Even if I’m wrong, I think it’s phony.
And I’ve always wondered why HWMNBN, the Prophet of Scientology, Chairman of the Board Religious Technology Center Mr. David Miscavige hasn’t fabricated any Certs for Himself yet. I mean, any time there is a speaker at even the most mundane event, the bona-fides are given: “How to sell shitty used cars, featuring Mr. Grant Cardone, OTVIII, Cl. whatever, FEBC or whatnot.” Or, “Making It in the Music Business, Featuring Michael Duff, OTVIII, etc.” (Of course Duff’s seminar neglects to mention his successful action was marrying a chick who has a high-paying gig as a soap-opera actress).
But never for that little twat Dave. Of course, we all know He’s not Class anything or OT anything, but that wouldn’t preclude Him from making shit up. I’ve been wondering why He hasn’t awarded Himself a few certs. Perhaps He just doesn’t need to – the Whales just keep soaking up His bullshit regardless.
“Making it in the music business by Michael Duff”???
That made me throw up a bit.
I guess they couldn’t book Mark Isham, or Beck, or David Campbell.
Michael Duff hasn’t even made it in the music business. Anyone not in Scientology ever heard of Michael Duff?
Just a few years ago Michael’s band was in a competition on an LA-area radio station and the Facebook patrol was telling all Scientologists to vote for him so he’d win. He lost.
Do musicians who have “made it” enter competitions on local radio stations?
I don’t mean to run Michael into the ground. I wish he WOULD make it. But a seminar on how to make it in the biz by Michael Duff is as useful as a workshop on how to dunk a basketball by David Miscavige.
Yes, and even his wife, Denise Duff, is not well known. I can’t think of any TV show or movie I’ve ever seen her in.
Mike, I had a BC sup once by the name of Marcy Sargent. She told us one time that she use to be a Messenger for LRH and would we like to hear how LRH handled his mail. Of course we all did. She told us there were two Messengers working with LRH to handle his mail. They would open all of his letters and stack them into a pile. To start the writing, the Messengers would throw up a sheet of newspaper up into the air and LRH would grab it by a corner with one hand and wad it up into his had, just exercising both hands, one at a time using several sheets. Then he’d sit down and one Messenger would hold the stack of letters and LRH would read the top letter and would begin to write and when he finished writing the letter, he’d pick up his hand and the other Messenger would slide the hand written letter off the desk, with LRH dropping his hand to start writing the next letter. The other Messenger having taken the top letter off, exposing the next letter and worked this routine till all letters were handled. Then the Messengers would take the hand written letters and type them up and returned them to LRH for signature.
I don’t believe Marcy was making this up. I never got the year this occurred.
Marcy was making this up. He did handle his “traffic” with two messengers standing next to him with recording machines and any references etc etc. But that was communication from management people, or the shoot crew or the estates people of the location where he was at. Marcy was never a “Watch Messenger” that I am aware of — ie those that were actually WITH LRH during his workday. And the rolling up newspapers is just fantasyland.
OK, I no reason to think that this is not true, but I have contradictory data about this subject. I know someone (no longer in the SO) who said that they had worked in the SO 1 Unit in the 1970’s and 1980s, I believe it was. This person told me that the staff had instructions about how to answer letters on various subjects. After the staff answered each letter per these instructions this person told me that the letters along with their proposed answers were transported to LRH who reviewed them and signed them unless he did not approve of the answer. In that case I was told that Ron would either make notes on the proposed reply letter and return it to the unit to be rewritten. or he would write a long-hand answer himself and sent it back to be mailed.
I was told this somewhere around 1982. This person had been in the unit earlier than that. If I was being lied to, I can’t imagine what the motive could have been since this was a person who seemed to be generally truthful and hadn’t been in the SO for a while……. although I admit was not hooked up to an Emeter while telling me this. : -)
Is is possible that the SO 1 line policy was one which was sometimes “in” and sometimes “out” from year to year? Or could members of the unit have been, themselves, bamboozled as to what was happening? Or do you think this just a case of someone lying through their teeth for some reason, and I missed it?
It’s not possible for one person to do this. I cannot even keep up with all the emails I get. And I do not promote for people to write to me.
espiritu: “This person told me that the staff had instructions about how to answer letters on various subjects. After the staff answered each letter per these instructions this person told me that the letters along with their proposed answers were transported to LRH who reviewed them and signed them unless he did not approve of the answer … or he would write a long-hand answer himself and sent it back to be mailed.”
My guess, espiritu, is that there is some truth to this. Though I would guess that it was more likely that the instructions had more to do with a specific list of people/posts, whose letters that LRH wanted to personally see. I doubt very much that LRH reviewed every single letter and answer, though perhaps certain subjects or topics were on the list too. We’d have to see the SO #1 instructions, to know for sure.
Here’s an anecdote from Pierre Ethier whose wife worked on the S.O. # 1 line. Pierre is talking here about a time in the late 1970s or early 80s while he (Pierre) was working at Flag:
“…when I wrote to LRH about my taking constructive steps and making concrete progress toward my goal of becoming a Class XII Auditor, I had both the incredible thrill and experience of receiving my reply, not on the standard SO-1 stationery, but in LRH own handwriting on my own letter. Those letters will continue to remain amongst my most precious possessions and clearly indicate how special becoming a Class XII has always been to LRH.” (Source: http://www.upperbridge.org/)
If true, it seems would-be Class XII auditors were among those on the “who” list for LRH.
I, too, have somewhat contradictory reportage from someone on the ship long time before – 1970s – teenager then. She reported (maybe 1980s) that LRH had a very fast flow where he looked at much of this traffic and others helped him with responses according to instructions.
That said, personally, I never assumed LRH wrote or saw all. I even argued against this, but the reporter insisted. I assumed LRH responses were according to instructions, and signatures were often stamps or delegated. This would not denigrate the comm line to me. To me it was much like any high level executive saying, “You can always write to me.” Heck, it could have been Jack for Jack-in-the-Box or Walt Disney for Disneyland or even the President of the United States. Would one really expect LRH could personally read and answer hundreds of letters a week and still do all the other things? I didn’t think so then as a devoted scientologist and staff member.
As far as GO Intel Worldwide getting and analyzing copies of SO#1 letters and responses – noted above as something bad… I don’t see it that way at all. The purpose wasn’t to spy on public. It was to be alert to indicators of serious org situations, out tech, financial irregularities, org failures, etc.
The Internal Security hat that Helen (Budlong, I presume) wrote points out that letters/responses were tallied as positive/negative indicators and assigned to organizational areas to be analyzed. This was simply a “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” concept. Red flags (legal, financial, big PR issues) were to be looked into further, and NO Ethics action was to be taken against letter writers -ever. These letters were thus used as a data analysis tool to alert where Tech might be out, where there were organizational mishandlings, trouble brewing. This happens in all major corporations – correspondence to executives and figureheads is used to alert execs to brewing situations!
Helen even mentions discovering via the SO #1 line that verboten “postulate checks” had been discovered that week. For those who weren’t around for this era – some early SO scammers in 1970s came up with the bright idea of getting public to write “postulate checks” where said public had no money on account to actually cover. The mere postulate was supposed to magically make the money appear, but of course the cash did not materialize 99.9 % of the time. Checks were deposited nonetheless. GO Finance and probably Commodore’s Staff-Finance people squelched postulate check writing hard, but Helen noted that she had discovered three more incidents of postulate check writing that week through her perusal of the SO #1 letters.
As an aside, seems to me that the more modern incidents of IAS regs getting public to load up credit cards beyond any ability of people to be financially responsible for them (often having to declare bankruptcy) – is a contemporary form of postulate check-writing. It’s “postulate checks” on steroids. An updated form of an SO#1 line with a caring and responsible Exec at the top (not a sociopath), and an effective legal/Intel review might have saved a LOT of public from being screwed over and kept them out of poverty in old age.
Espiritu, in the 80’s that was NOT true. NO SO #1 letters were couriered to LRH. Whoever told you that either: A) was NOT on those lines. or, B) Is intentionally lying to you.
Top Secret: we’re bringing out the super deluxe LRH Vending Machine – be audited by Ron Himself! We went through all of Ron’s auditing lectures, HCOB’s and advices and assembled the ultimate auditor on video – just for you in a choice of 39 languages. Upgrade your IAS Status now.
Also coming soon: Vending Registrar, Vending Ethics Officer, Vending Auditor (Bog Standard), Vending OTC.
Also in the pipeline, the Talking COB Doll – increase your IAS Status, enter the code you’ll be given, and hear his secret message!
You’re on a roll, Poet!
Still just a few months ago I almost bit myself for not taking better care of my belongings at the time and thus not having in my possession my ‘letters from Ron’.
The onion is peeling nicely and now I can happily let go of any thoughts of making self wrong in that respect.
Greta
When I was on the student hat in 1973 another student wrote to Ron on the SO 1 line.
Ron’s reply was brilliant and that student repeated the letter ( coming from Ron)
Other students wrote to Ron and kept the letters, they were very theta.
Great PR . I can well imagine that they did not come from Ron but a nice touch.
There was weekly reports from Ron to Public which I liked (Kool Aid Free)
The Org’s today have vending machines to talk too, leaves much to be desired.
Thanks for alerting those recently out, Mike. I remember back in 2005 finding this out on the internet. Boy, was I disappointed. Big time. As a result, the domino effect set in and I spent hours a day for over a year reading everything I could find on the internet, including LRH’s real military records and death related documents.
Readers… always seek the truth because the truth really does set us free.
Truthfulness and honesty were not virtues valued by LRH. This is evidenced by facts.
There has been analogies from folks, whereby they equate the products of an inventor as being distinct from their personhood’s character.
For instance:
Henry Ford was a racist but that does not affect the quality of his cars etc.
So Ron had a dark side, but he left us the tech.
The difference in these two examples is one man is a maker of things, parts and production of a car which IS distinct from the person.
But Ron was not a maker of objects. He was a philosopher and spiritual leader who worked in the realm of mind, emotions, philosophy etc. He was a teacher of human beings in the realm of the mind and behavior.
Someone who instructed his students in the art of human evaluating and imprinting on them a cosmology and world view.
In that regard, LRH cannot be equated with a man who makes stuff.
LRH instilled thoughts and views not nuts and bolts. So in that regard, the character of the man, Ron, is inexplicably linked with his subject and it’s effect on his students.
The puzzle is to be in a strong place personally, so that we can comb through our experiences in Scientology and separate out for inspection, those ideas that were untrue or outright lies or true.
This is not Ron bashing as some think. This is called discrimination.
If Ron did not mind lying to you about his letters, and for that matter about not receiving church money while suit cases off to hidden accounts, then it is reasonable to deduce, that the possibility of more lies are available to the enthusiastic truth seeker.
“inexplicably” should be inextricably. Sorry 😉
Yes, Ron lied about things in the tech too.
That’s something to consider before opening wide one’s mind to his “Hubbard Guidance.”
Brian the Curious and Poor Editor,
Critical thinking is necessary when trying to sort something out. Even when it comes to LRH and I have no problem with it. Also, I have made many mistakes in my comments with regards to spelling, punctuation and grammar, so I’m a poor editor too.
Mike’s post has humbled me. I thought I was already so jaded, cynical and seeing right through everything involving the CoS until this afternoon. I came into Scn long after LRH was gone and had no idea that this sort of thing was happening while LRH still lived. It has instilled a whole new sense of betrayal, adding to what is already there and sickens me.
I feel like a fool all over again and chastise myself for being so gullible and naive, still even now.
Last, I need to say that still running this lie on the public in PT to extract donations for The Miscavige Real Estate Portfolio (Ideal Orgs) is nothing but CRIMINAL.
I understand what you feel Pepper. But please allow me to acknowledge something good about it.
That force in you, that gravitated towards spiritual knowledge and liberation is a true force. Scientology was not all lies. There were and are truths there as well.
We trusted, that was our fault. But can that truly be a fault?
Being students we did not know. If we did know we would not have been students, opening ourselves up.
Take the good that you learned and increase it and discard the rest.
After many years of studying other paths I have been able to see those things Ron had a somewhat of a grasp on. And I have also seen his immorality and ignorance of spiritual basics.
Feel proud that in this life you attempted to solve the riddles and mysteries of life. That work is not done.
Scientology was a stepping stool. The goal of freedom is true. We are souls and we can realize in this life our immortal nature.
Yes there is a betrayal aspect to Hubbard. A big betrayal.
But whatever cognitions you have had in Scientology, that makes life brighter are yours, not Scientology’s.
Thank you for sharing your heartfelt thoughts.
Brian thank you. I appreciate it.
The S.O. # 1 line was changed a couple of times. I know one was something like ” Any mail addressed to me shall be received by me” and another was “Any mail addressed to me shall be handled in accordance with my wishes”. Maybe one or two more versions. But the “Any mail addressed to me shall be handled in accordance with my wishes” isn’t really saying much. Not really communicating to Ron are you? Maybe his wishes were to circularly file them. If anyone knows all the different S.O. # 1 line versions, post em.
“You might find there are more that did have wins than didn’t no matter their
point of view of LRH and Scientology now.
In my opinion, the above actions are what gave them their self determinism to look
outside the box, question things and determine their own futures
in or out of Scientology.” Thanks, Potpie
While on the BC (mid 70’s) I wrote LRH a letter talking about my wins
on the course. Got a letter back with an answer that didn’t jive
with what I wrote. I figured then LRH didn’t read my letter.
I did notice the signature and it didn’t look real to me. I looked
at a few letters others got from him and all the signatures looked
exactly the same…..to me it is not possible a person can sign some
thing exactly the same each time. I wouldn’t have written the letter
in the first place but I was pushed into it by a sup. It made no difference to me.
I had already read what he thought of auditors. And I was training to
be an auditor. So okay he lied about the SO 1 line.
I can damn sure tell you he wasn’t lying when he trained an auditor.
Potpie wrote:
“So okay he lied about the SO 1 line. I can damn sure tell you he wasn’t lying when he trained an auditor.”
Why?
What exactly makes you “damned sure” that you know that LRH didn’t lie when he trained an auditor?
If he lied about the SO #1 line, why wouldn’t he lie when he trained an auditor?
It’s a real question for you.
Not rhetorical.
Alanzo
Alanzo, if you were a trained, interned auditor with hours in
the chair, you wouldn’t ask that question.
Dear Potpie
what a very nice reply. That reminds me of the behaviour of my needle on OT2 there is no way, absolutely no way that this could have been invented or else. The reads were exactly according to the Book. Extraordinary
Potpie wrote:
“Alanzo, if you were a trained, interned auditor with hours in the chair, you wouldn’t ask that question.”
Thanks for your answer, Potpie.
In DMSMH, Hubbard told auditors that Dianetics was “an organized science of thought built on definite axioms: statements of natural laws on the order of those of the physical sciences”.
Is this true, Potpie?
Hubbard also told auditors that Dianetics would work every time if applied properly and “will invariably cure all psychosomatic ills and human aberrations.”
In your long experience as an auditor, Potpie, is that true?
In April 1950, before the public release of Dianetics, he wrote: “To date, over two hundred patients have been treated; of those two hundred, two hundred cures have been obtained.”
Is this true?
In your experience as an auditor, have you seen these kinds of results?
“… when the knee injuries of the past are located and discharged, the arthritis ceases, no other injury takes its place and the person is finished with arthritis of the knee.”
Have you cured arthritis with auditing, Potpie?
I understand that you may believe that you can, but have you ever seen an OT with arthritis?
Why wasn’t that cured with Book One, as Hubbard claimed it was – invariably?
“[The reactive mind] can give a man arthritis, bursitis, asthma, allergies, sinusitis, coronary trouble, high blood pressure … And it is the only thing in the human being which can produce these effects … Discharge the content of [the reactive mind] and the arthritis vanishes, myopia gets better, heart illness decreases, asthma disappears, stomachs function properly and the whole catalog of ills goes away and stays away.”
In your experience as an auditor, this true, Potpie?
“Leukaemia is evidently psychosomatic in origin and at least eight cases of leukaemia had been treated successfully by Dianetics after medicine had traditionally given up. The source of leukaemia has been reported to be an engram containing the phrase ‘It turns my blood to water.’”
Have you ever cured leukemia with Book One, Potpie?
In your experience as an auditor, are the claims that Hubbard made above to you – as he trained you as an auditor – true?
Would these be examples of lies that he told auditors while training them?
Why or why not?
Alanzo
Laurie Dim wrote:
Dear Potpie
what a very nice reply. That reminds me of the behaviour of my needle on OT2 there is no way, absolutely no way that this could have been invented or else. The reads were exactly according to the Book. Extraordinary
I know what you mean, Laurie. I have had similar experiences watching meter phenomena.
These observations of meter reactions act as evidence for many Scientologists to support the claims that Hubbard made for the states of “Clear” and “OT”, and for auditing in general.
A lot of critics dismiss the meter as a simple lie detector. I think there is much more going on with the E-meter than that. A website devoted to the teachings of one of the first people to use the E-Meter for psychology, Gustav Jung, (the psychologist who was a contemporary of Freud’s) has this to say about it:
http://www.mind-development.eu/jung.html
Now, when Scientology is a matter of faith, then LRH’s explanations for what you and I observed on the meter are not able to be questioned.
But the deal was never to accept Scientology, or Hubbard’s words, on faith.
So all of this is able to be questioned.
Other explanations can exist for why the meter did what it did.
Alanzo
To encompass all of your questions I will rephrase my
answer a bit.
If you had completed the BC in the 70’s with original LRH
checksheets, done the VI internship and logged hours in the
chair, you would not be asking any of the questions you asked.
Of course he said those things and he believed them when he said
them. I could give very lengthy answers with references etc. but I will
leave it to you to explore the history of how LRH developed things
from DMSMH. into the early 80’s. Just get a set of the original tech
vols (not the Miscavige versions) and read them start to finish.
Then consider how many people who write on this blog and Marty’s,
that did have wins on the TR’s course, Life Repair, ARC Straightwire,
Objectives, Dianetics ( later called New Era Dianetics ) and the Grades.
You might find there are more that did have wins than didn’t no matter their
point of view of LRH and Scientology now.
In my opinion, the above actions are what gave them their self determinism to look
outside the box, question things and determine their own futures
in or out of Scientology.
Alanzo, I have no quarrel with you. It is obvious we both have
points of view and yours are fine with me. As hard as you might
try, you will never sway my point of view when it comes to the
tech and its application.
I think I read in one of your comments above that you are from Keokuk.
Is that correct? I don’t know how old you are but when I was a kid in the
1950’s the major league baseball farm leagues had a lower class labeled
D ball. Keokuk had a team in that league…they were the Kernels and/or
the Cardinals. I’m from a town in Indiana that had a D ball team…Kokomo
Dodgers. I used to go to all the games and at the time never heard of Keokuk,
Iowa. When Keokuk came to town I always got a kick out of that name for
some reason. Did the name Keokuk come from a local Indian tribe? Sorry,
just some trivia and remembering fun times gone by.
Thanks for the great answer. Whether one agrees with your position or Alanzo’s this is a healthy discussion. But I am going to end it here as I think this is a good point. It could go on endlessly and of course, like me, everyone wants to have the last say. I am completely arbitrarily selecting this as the last response because I like the very civilized nature of your reply (and this is not to imply that Alanzo has not been polite).
Mike, thank you for this. It reminds me of the Wizard of Oz where everything and I mean everything is being done and performed by the old man behind the curtain. And since OSA and DM read your blog and others, it makes sense that they would try to prove you wrong by making it look like Exec Strata is still alive and well, as proved by the “letters” from the Exec people who are really not there. Also when we quote LRH references that prove that he was not in favor of the Ideal Org program and would rather some of us revolutionaries blow up the building before we let mest be more important than people, this looks like the church trying to disprove that also by fabricating a letter “by Ron” that shows him to be in favor of the “Ideal Org” program, capitalized, when back when he was alive, those words were never capitalized except when in a title of an article.
Just goes to show, the church’s attitude is “If you can’t disprove it with facts, then manufacture the facts.” (and call it an “acceptable truth”)
Notice in the letterhead——————-a SNAKE! (think that is a mistake?)
i wonder what Captain Renault would say if he were a scientologist.
When I was in the SO in around 1988 we had to get into a storage unit in L.A. that was filled with cartons of old papers and search the boxes. One of the things I found in there was a set of instructions on how to answer S.O. 1 line letters so that they would look genuine.
I first found out about back in the late 70’s when I met someone (I don’t remember who now) who had said they used to make him practice the LRH signature. There were guidelines as to how to answer letters. This was a “hat” created for to keep up with all the mail. That was one more blow to the head for me, back then, as to some actual truths behind the scenes of Scn. Nothing like some wake-up calls.
The type writer character size is smaller than the “RON” in the promo piece. It’s fake.
(In the letter from the update, all the text is the same size.)
Not only that, but the text is kerned…that is only done by a computer, not a vintage electric typewriter with a Selectric Ball, which is what used by the SO#1 line.
The letter from “Ron” supporting the idea of an “Ideal Org” in Miami is clearly a forgery.
I was just going to comment on how pristine and white and line-free the paper the letter was written on was when the update from 1986 appeared. I have a bunch of letters my mom saved that I wrote her when I was in Sea Org that I got back when she died. My ASHO letterhead did not fare well over the years.
A 34 year old document would have (a) aged and (b) have been sent on the non-archival cotton bond that Ron favored and therefore not have been bright white and line-free, and somehow shown some signs of wear, no matter how well preserved it had been over the years. Sort of more like the 1986 letter above.
I’m really enjoying the unveiling of the curtain. There are all of these ideas that I was just in awe over while I bought all the stories hook-line-and-sinker. The idea that someone would do all of the things that Ron claimed kept him as a super-human in mind.
The process of accepting “Ok, fine. He’s normal.” is actually therapeutic in itself.
And by the way, it has zero impact in wins from the tech in my experience.
I hate to tell you this, but Ron wasn’t normal.
I don’t know how much tech you’ve had. The lower level stuff is OK.
Once you get to the so called upper levels, you’ll be auditing Ron’s “case.”
My advice to you is: Think twice before “making that your own.”
I agree B.V. Orts
Ok fine. You have an opinion on what others should do. That’s ok.
The point of my comment was that the truth is therapeutic. And it does not take away from anything someone achieves.
Next you’re going to be telling me my autographed promo photo of him with the cowboy hat and his giant sideburns on the camera dolly was not personally autographed by him. (Don’t bother, I know.) But it’s still an awesomely awful picture.
Anyone know about the sale of “LRH signed” e-meters as a “great investment?” How many were sold?
Given the incredible price, I’m curious about how many people thought this was a good investment strategy?
Hmm, well, that is different. He DID sign the Mark VI faceplates — I was there when he was signing them (and prior to that all the experiments with the ink to ensure it would work). I think those meters may well be worth something as they truly are limited editions that were signed by him and he did use that meter. For scientologists that is a pretty significant item.
I don’t know…I only saw it once and the signature was definitely engraved on a plastic plate, precisely like a name tag worn by anyone in the service industry.
My ex insisted I give him the $$$ for this for “investment,” I refused…
I had been out for eons and pointed out that this had value as an “investment” only for scinos and they never had any money as they give it all away, thus it wasn’t actually an “investment,” which is something on which you have at least some hope of reasonable return.
He bought it anyway, without telling me, by taking yet one more fraudulent business.
I wonder if he turned it in with all the other now-verboten meters?
Anyone else out there have any?
Those two signatures are so incredibly different is is laughable. The jig is up, Miscavige. It sucks to be you.
From a 1985 interview with John McMaster, “The world’s first real Clear,” as published in the book, ‘L. Ron Hubbard, Messiah or Madman?’:
“He got me doing all sorts of things. For instance the ‘Standing Order number one’ (which mandates, ‘All mail addressed to me [Hubbard] shall be received by me’): He had stamps made of his various signatures and… I handled his letters. I handled the whole lot and used his stamps and so on. But I used to go over it so that people wouldn’t be insulted. But he didn’t want to see his letters. He really didn’t care. So – with a few exceptions – I didn’t think he’d seen a letter to him in years. Because in 1964 I started handling all his mail…”
To: IAS MEMBERS
From: COB RTC
Subject: LETTERS TO COB RTC
CURRENT SCENE
The Ideal Orgs are expanding at unprecedented magnitudes of straight up and vertical expansion. Every 1.2 seconds there is a win.
We now have 963,904,658,026,872,587,094,385,271 people on SOLO NOT’s — and this thanks to the miracle breakthrough technology that is the new Ultra Mark VIII e-meter with its lightning reads and speed of light movement.
Not only is Scientology the world’s fastest growing religion, but it is has also become the world’s biggest bookseller topping even Amazon. Each second of everyday, 117,883,012 Basics libraries are sold in 92,981 languages scattered across the nineteen continents and 15,901 countries of the world.
And now the expansion is going at tremendously increased speed.
All this means more volume of flow on the COB RTC No. 1 line.
Yet the basic principles of the COB No. 1 line remain: Unless there is cash, cheque, or a money order in the envelope my staff will shred your letter and you will be getting a trip to Ethics for a face-ripping serious reality adjustment you pie-faced CICS SP!!!
How dare you try to communicate with me on an out exchange basis!
Love,
Dave
Truth is truth. Thank God less and less people are falling for the con. It is not nice to be taken advantage of in this way.
Wow. It’s bad enough being duped on pretty much everything to now find out that my long term correspondance with LRH since 1973 was a joke as well. Glad I’m OUT more than ever if that’s even possible!!
I recall at some point in the early 1980s (that would be prior to his death), SO#1 as promoted in Scientology magazines was changed to something like “All mail addressed to me shall be handled in a manner in accordance to my wishes.” Can anyone verify that or document this?
Yes it was changed, but only after a bitter disaffected apostate had already revealed the truth that the SO# 1 line was a fraud and that Hubbard did not personally handle the letters. It takes time for the truth to sink in, especially when the person that deceived you was someone that had been previously trusted completely.
Guaranteed he did not write that Mighty Miami reply. He went off the lines on 14 Feb 1980 and was not back until November 1981. The Broekers were sure not bringing him SO #1 letters during that time.
Go on Mike! You’re lying! You sonofabitch! 🙂 Oh hell, I only wish you were! I’ve still got my precious collection of letters too! LOL. Fantasy, it seems, was a nice comfortable little indulgence, that seemed so acceptable… (though, rationality told me, that just like Santa Claus, the sheer logistics meant Ron’s personal replies were highly improbable!)
In the bigger scheme of things though,… I suppose it was, ….’an acceptable lie’ 🙂
Of course I can’t just leave myself so exposed here, for belng so gullible, so here’s my offered ‘justification’. :).. I got to thunking about just how much actual harm was caused, by these ‘Source’ letters. Well, ‘truthfully’, do we REALLY harm our kids, when we run along with the Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy, or Boogie Man tales?? That is to say, when the’re all ‘growed up’, did they launch a hate campaign against us for our ‘blatant’ lying?
Or, perhaps we could(?) afford a little licence in this area, that is, providing no-one was actually harmed in the process? This of course, will be utterly rejected, (with contempt), by those who are still bogged down in that ‘dire’ mental affliction: ….’Seriousness.”
Am I off the hook now? 🙂
Well, it’s not a very good analogy unless you look at LRH as the tooth fairy or Santa Claus.
The wrongness in all of this is that he portrayed himself as one thing and did something else.
Look at that 1982 LRH ED.
Thanks Mike. I truly get that. Perhaps I’m viewing this just ‘too’ impartially?
Anyhow, just to pass on a life changing cog I had, about two years ago?
(…and you played a BIG part in that too. btw!)
I just decided to STOP taking everything sooooooo bloody seriously, from now on. EP? 180 degree shift in attitude! …Didn’t cost me a cent, either!!
Thank you, Mirth Guru! 🙂
–Calvin.
I can remember a time when below the RON signature 2 small letters like EF or BC had been written to indicate that this letter is not from Ron personally but from one of his SO#1 staff. Some did bitterly complain about the fact that those letters had not been from Ron. So, they left it out and those S0#1 letters continued to be signed only with RON. The public demanded it. They did want the illusion. Many or maybe nearly all knew that RON did not write those letters personally. But the idea behind had been that he “magically” did communicate through his staff. Like a theta telepathy communication from Ron to letter writers. (at least for an OT this should be not a big problem to assume more than one 1st dynamic. He would not even have to run the body. This did the person itself.) Think a bit more creatively when it comes to OT abilities.
Well,, if people got letters from him with those lower case initials (like were on PLs and HCOBs) they probably WERE real despatches. The initials of the typist ALWAYS appeared on his despatches back then and if there was a proofreader their initials also appeared.
Mike when the Mark 6 was released about 25 dials were signed by Ron for high priced
Meters. Were those signatures really signed by Ron?
I just answered this to someone else. Yes, they were signed by him, I was there when he did them.
I’m afraid I fail to see why this is such a bomb. I’m not in the least surprised. Maybe growing up in the land of illusion leaves you a little jaded.
There’s HCOPL Executive Director Com Lines and the fact that in the late ’60’s Standing Order One was changed from received by Ron directly to be handled in accordance with his wishes or something like that.
But anyway an SO #1 letter mentioning “Ideal Orgs” especially one dated sometime in the ’80’s is rather suspicious since by then “Ideal Orgs” was a policy in the Data Series no one paid much attention to that was originally a RED which was issued in ’71.
From what I remember. Not that I have Total Recall. But my memory is pretty good of that period there was no push to make orgs “Ideal”. From what I remember there was a push for newer and better quarters for some orgs but none of this was conflated with “Ideal Orgs”.
In fact the “newer and better quarters” that we ended up in was a former brothel and porn shop because the body count was so high according to the missionares.
Guess they were counting hookers and their johns, drug dealers and their customers and undercover cops or something.
But I digress…..
In my opinion this is just another cynical effort to get everyone left on board.
I wouldn’t doubt that the letter is a forgery and wasn’t even issued by the SO #1 section.
Or if it was that it was based on an entirely different concept of “Ideal Org” other than the one being currently promoted.
I would guarantee that the Miami execs and staff wrote saying they were making an ideal org in Miami. It was a PL in the data series and RED as you say. This is typical of SO #1 replies. Someone writes “I am on the Briefing course and doing great” the response is “Carry on to become a Duke of Auditor Elite”. “I just went Clear” answer is “Great on going Clear.” “We are going to make an ideal org exactly as it is described in the PL” “If anyone can make an ideal org its Mighty Miami.”
The concept of “Ideal Orgs” didnt come about until way later — after the failure to make orgs St Hill size in order to “release OT IX and X”. And even then, to begin with the program was called “Central Orgs” and that is how they are presented in the “Golden Age of Admin” when he announces his “why” that “orgs are trying to do too little.” Only sometime later did he hit upon the word “ideal” to describe the orgs with fancy buildings. I am sure it was purely coincidental to the Policy Letter. As if anyone READS that policy letter it makes a mockery out of the “Ideal Buildings (Orgs)” that he has been creating. Thus us the promo for “ideal orgs” you only rarely see mention of the PL and RED, and when it is, there are sparse quotes used. They don’t want anyone reading that Policy Letter and seeing what it REALLY says.
Mike,
“They don’t want anyone reading that Policy Letter and seeing what it REALLY says.”
If you read my earlier comments regarding this. You’ll find I have been saying this all along.
Also as I said that if they were writing about actual ideal orgs per the policy that it would be I totally different concept from what they consider an “Ideal Org” is now.
I included the possibility that the letter was a possible forgery because as I said there was little discussion about Ideal Orgs in that period of the early ’80’s from I remember.
You are right about the Ideal Orgs.
Every SO #1 letter was a “forgery”…
Mike,
Again you obviously did not read my comment.
I never said that it was definitely a forgery.
Did I?
Thanks for info Mike. I remember back in Aug of 2013 on Facebook you were setting me straight in regards to a hand written letter that I had (and many other staff at the time) had believed to have been written by LRH.
Back in 1982 LRH’s son Ron DeWolf was claiming that his father was dead. Later that week someone who had sent a letter to the SO#1 line received a two page hand written letter from LRH. When he showed it to us in the org, everyone’s jaws were dropping. Some people even started offering him money to purchase the hand written letter.
As you pointed out in your post, at that time Captain Davey was pulling an elaborate con to fool the courts. I guess this also included fooling all the staff at that time. It worked very well. I was a little sad to learn the truth, but then on the other, I was glad that I didn’t spend any money to obtain the fake letter.
🙂
Minorror, the lies started even before Hubbard started dianetics & scientology. Hope is a powerful emotion. We were played like a guitar.
There is also an LRH recording, I believe it is a Rons Journal, wherein he discusses his discovery of the SO 1 line being out through the actions of others and what an ARC break it was not only for him but for YOU. (Rons emphasis in the tape)
In retrospect, if he was on the lines, how could it be absconded.
“LRH ED 346 INT 10 May 1982
TO: MY FRIENDS
FROM: RON
SUBJECT: THE SO #1 LINE
Church executives and staffs now run the churches and such organizations. They have been very good about handling mail, even though I am no longer connected to the Church and it is not my legal address.
But the other day I suddenly noticed there were only two mail bags full for the week. I asked what this was all about and was informed that earlier, an unauthorized person, using my lines, had inferred I did not ever see your mail. I almost wept. What an awful ARC break to hand you! And for no valid reason! The person that did that has now blown-understandably. What an awful thing to do to you!
Don’t think these lines are out-they aren’t. I am always happy to receive communication from you as to how you are doing in Scientology and progressing on the Bridge.
I love your letters and would miss them.
I look on the SO #1 line as the only way I have of hearing from my friends. I am interested, man! Why else do you think I work so hard? YOU!
A man is as rich as he has friends-and that makes me the richest man in the world.
So don’t get the idea you are not heard and are out of comm with me. It isn’t true. You are heard. And appreciated.
Love
Ron “
Oh yeah, I had forgotten about this.
It is a TOTAL FALSEHOOD.
There was no need to put out an issue like this. And there is NO sensible reason for doing so other than he thought at the time that he was losing control over the scientology world.
I think it may also have been some sort of legal handling as people were trying to serve him by using his SO #1 statements and he was attempting to be clever by saying he was no longer connected to the church but he still got the mail sent there.
Honestly, I read this now and cannot believe how insane it is, or that I ever dubbed in a “good reason” for it being a series of bald faced lies.
Okay, so Ron didn’t actually write the 10 May 1982 letter.
People or a person working for LRH did this? Who would do that?
Clearly it was someone who thought it was okay to impersonate Ron and who believed there would be no consequences for it either.
How many other issues are out there like this, and God knows what else.
Why do you say he didn’t write this? I am pretty sure he did. People were not in the habit of issuing LRHED’s in his name at that time if he didnt write or approve them. There were a number of HCOBs issued around that time. They too were not dreamed up out of thin air (the Cause of Crime and Sec Checking and Still Needles).
Mike – I said LRH didn’t write the May 1982 letter because you wrote that you forgot about that and it was a “total falsehood”.
I got confused because in your third paragraph, you refer to “he”, meaning LRH and then refer to people serving him by using his SO statements. I didn’t duplicate this well at all.
Anyway it’s good to know that people were not dreaming up issues out of thin air, which was the idea I erroneously got.
Thank you for clearing that up.
Sorry for not being clear. Us Grammar Nazi’s have to be more careful…. People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones they say.
Mike – thank you for your response but there’s no need to apologize for “not being clear.”
I’m not the brightest bulb so to speak and it was my own lack of attention and duplication on your comment, nothing you did. I was only answering your question why I said what I did.
I’m the last person to be a grammar nazi or throw stones here. I’m a big believer in “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” and try to live by that – even though that could debated because I criticize the RCS.
There is a picture of Ron walking along rows of secretaries with letters and typewritters on their desks supposedly giving them personal instructions on responses. He is wearing a bolo tie and is quite animated in the photo. I recall it vividly. I do not recall if there was a location given. Saint Hill seems a logical choice since there was space for it. Of course this is prior to Mike’s 73 date. The photo accompanied information about the SO 1 line.
It seems there was a time when this line was real. Since I saw this photo in the later 70’s it would appear that the line was no longer in and the photo was used to create the illusion it was.
Holy shit. I don’t know why it never occurred to me that this SO 1 line was as fraudulent as you have explained. It should have occurred to me but it did not.
There are many young people who grew up in Orgs who, like you said, cherish the letters they got from Ron in the early to mid-80s.
It honestly never occurred to anybody that they might not be from Ron even though like you said he was in complete seclusion.
Similarly, I have heard many present time staff members indicating that they had sent letters to the international management executive committee and had received responses from those members as evidence that the data about management being dismantled is false.
Now I understand why even middle management would not know what’s going on at into management. It truly had not occurred to me that the comm line into and out of the management was this manipulated, but now of course it seems so obvious.
This was an awesome post, thank you Mike.
That’s because we all had hope back then. We were going to save this planet as well as the Galatic Federation. We were all going to get super powers. We would leave our bodies at will. Those were heady times back then. And facts be damned. Now, we can all REALLY move forward in our lives.
i heard the “we are looking into it” line a few times, in recent years. Seemed like BS to me but was taken as hopeful and a “ha!” moment for the recipient.
People would say that the Big Thetan could answer them all because he was master over time.
I just checked the 12 March 1975 policy, THE IDEAL ORG. The only capitalization of ideal and org is as you see in the title. Any use of the words “ideal” and “org” and the term “ideal org” are all lower case in context within the policy. The Miami promo piece must have been doctored because whoever wrote the letter on the SO #1 Line would not have capitalized the words “Ideal” and “Org.” That is contemporary usage and not based on the original policy.
WD, nice catch.
Anyone have any idea when the first use of the term “Mighty Miami” was used?
WidowDenk, that makes sense.
Since at least 1973? Well. What do you know. One more thing I didn’t know. Thanks.
To use the ‘source’ comm line in such a perverse way is quite degrading. The lie that you were in comm with ED Int, LRH or an Exec only served to pervert Reality (and still does). The amount of lies entwined on such a comm line has caused nothing but decay.
You can only lie to a certain point, sooner or later you would start experiencing a recoil of your deceptions. That world is so ‘black’ that even the devil himself despises it so.
Nothing like truth and a smile with it.
sorry .. I have now thrown my letters from LRH away ..
I did that years and years ago, Friend. But, I do adhere to: “What’s true is what is true for you.” And the cult is certainly NOT true for me.
Thanks Mike for laying it out so bluntly and succinctly. It is as you say entirely understandable that LRH wouldn’t personally handle all incoming mail. What I find harder to forgive is the overt perpetration of the lie, that he did. In the issue called “The SO#1 Line” he expressly and specifically says that he not only reads all the mail – but answers it all personally too. As I recall from the issue, he took umbrage at the mere implication that he didn’t read all his mail personally. But as also evidenced, it was used by GO/OSA as an intelligence weapon: http://www.forum.exscn.net/entry.php?381-L-Ron-Hubbard-and-the-SO-1-line
Mike,
I think you just dropped a bomb. I highly appreciate your openness and hope that it does not hurt those too much, who prefer to only live their personal reality.
Maybe, just maybe, he did them a favor. But I do like your sentiments. You’ve got a good heart. Ultimately, all the ones still in are victims too.
One final illusion bites the dust! Thanks a lot Mike.
Actually your post calls it correctly — a sensitive subject indeed. At first I was one of many that thought LRH was responding – some of the time. Or at the very least he was “on the lines” meaning he knew what was going on. I guess that phrase right there – he was on the lines – was powerful medicine. It had a calming effect – which isn’t bad really. It’s just that in the end, the truth is better.
Odd
Welcome to the club, Odd. I remember in ’82 when the dwarf killed off all of the missions (which were doing much better than the orgs). I went out to what was left of the Riverside Mission in California run by Bent Coryden. He started to fill me in about the stuff I never knew about. At one point he looked at me and said, “Robert, I’m sorry to have pulled your “Ron Rug” out from under you.” That was my turning point.
I hope everyone has the opportunity to read Bent Coryden’s book Messiah or Madman.
If you truly want to learn about how the Mission Network was destroyed with mafia-like aggression read the chapter ” The Savior’s Revenge.”
This book was written by a guy who was one of the top mission holders. My x Likki and I performed there in the day. Bent was a true blue theta dude. Friendly and super upstat. (holy crap, the language is creeping back in, MAKE IT STOP!!)
Bent’s book was first published in 87. So it is from a Scientologist’s fresh perspective during the most defining time in Scientology’s history.
The take down of the Mission’s, when you read it, will make you want to take a shower.
Read it.
I clearly recall at some point in the late 70’s (I was a teenager then) I would “write to Ron” as one was encouraged to and so I would write nice long, lengthy letters about all my wins and what was going on in my life etc. I would get these “typed and signature stamped” robotic-sounding replies, of about 2 or 3 lines max. I knew for a fact that LRH had never personally seen my letters. I still have some of them somewhere.
My mom, on the other hand, has a number of hand-written letters from LRH dating back to the late 50’s & early 60’s – which she has under close guard.
In this case, subgenius, it’s vital. I remember getting a letter from “LRH” at the Honolulu mission. I was so excited! Several years later I learned the truth from SO staff that had left. What comes out of this cult, like any other cult, is lies. I’m not sure they’ve ever spoken a true word yet. There’s even a course called TR-L, or, training routine lying. Or, as they say, “an exceptable truth.” They will never overcome the internet.
“They will never overcome the internet.”
Or the truth.
That seems to be par for the course. More smoke and mirrors at the fun house.
There is so much scientology philosophy about the importance of truth. From the Axioms, that lies cause persistence, that truth creates as-isness, to confessionals, to OW write ups tons of stuff. Thus when LRH or DM tells a really tall one, it’s completely impossible to grasp as long as you are in the bubble. Sad.
I mean, the image is obviously not of the original letter. Its been either recreated or is a complete fraud. This is not a scan of a doc. Its been created in a graphics editor.
Dunno about that, Chris. The one sent to Mike today looks just like the “Ideal” one.
After seeing The WindowDenk’s post below, I ask the court to kindly allow me to withdraw my objection. Apologies to you, Chris.
Do you think “Ideal Org” was capitalized in the original?
Unbelievable that someone would create that mailing piece. Anyone public who gets that and doesn’t leave the church can’t have an IQ much >50
“Letters to Ron” are in the category as letters to Santa Claus or Aunt Jemima. At least with Aunt Jemima, you might get a useful coupon. Does Miscavage have such a ghost unit also? Is Ron still replying to letters today? Target 2 is not that far away, by exteriorazation. I do hope he took his signature stamp with him.
Zeemoo wrote:
“Letters to Ron” are in the category as letters to Santa Claus or Aunt Jemima. At least with Aunt Jemima, you might get a useful coupon.”
LOL!
I can tell you that when I was a new staff member at the Church of Scientology, Mission of Peoria, I had NO IDEA how much these people lied, I cherished my letter that I got back from “Ron” as a new staff member.
Scientology was the most important thing in my life at that time. It was my new religion. I had decided to base my life upon it because it had actual tools I could use to address my very real personal ruin at the time – my dysfunctional family. I was very proud of Scientology and excited that I had found it.
When a person approaches a religion, any religion, and asks for help from it, that person is like a small child looking up to an adult, and trusting that adult not to harm him. Anyone who has ever seen how trusting and vulnerable a small child can be knows what it would be like to lie to that child or to harm that child in any way. It is the lowest thing that you can do as a human being.
That’s what Scientology does. They attract people who are willing to give them everything, and they dig to find out these peoples’ deepest secrets, their fondest hopes, and their greatest fears. Then they use that information to exploit every vulnerability that a new person has in order to take everything of value from him that they can.
When you are a low-level staff member out in Keokuk (I was 112 miles from there) you really believe that you are part of an organization that was put there to help people, and that the people above you in your Church are there to help people, too.
The SO#1 Line is one of the things that you believe in, not because you are an idiot, but because you are actively and blatantly lied to about it. Knowing the truth and intentionally deceiving you as to what that truth is – that’s a lie. That’s the SO#1 line. You never imagine that your group would do that to anyone.
Yet that’s what they did. And that’s what they continue to do every day to people all around the world.
I became a critic of the Church of Scientology the day I found out the depths of the disgusting deception and lying that went on in Scientology, I could not sit back and allow anyone else to be lied to like I was. I’m not the only one. Virtually every person who has ever been a critic of the Church of Scientology became one for the exact same reason I did – to expose the lies and abuse of Scientology so that no one else could be harmed.
The SO#1 Line, set up by L Ron Hubbard, is one of the things that makes Scientology a toxic spiritual deception.
Thanks, Mike, for doing your part to expose the lies.
Alanzo
So true Alanzo – it really is disgusting the depths of LIES this “Church” spews out every second of every minute of every hour of every day. It is all coming right back at the cult too….karma is a bitch and I am happy to live to see it going down!
You too, Zeemoo!!!
Mike, thank you for explaining so clearly that the SO #1 line was a lie.
Some things are open to interpretation. The SO #1 line was not. And truth makes us free.
I guess they stopped trying to give the illusion that ED Int is there. I wrote “him” a very polite letter in April 2012, 3 months before I was declared, and didn’t get any reply.
I also wrote letters to ED Int within the last decade and got NO answer.
I wrote to Guillame about a situation in the org back in the 90’s and he promptly sent me a letter back which addressed all of my concerns and originations. Not so after the turn of the century. I thought it was strange to receive no communication back from the “You can always write to ED Int.” PR.
Now I know why. Thanks Mike for shedding light on the phony practice of communicating with anyone in Management.
I hear that history is a good thing to remember for some reason.