Thursday, 30 December 2010 17:53

Dan Koon (aka Joe Howard) today

Jimmy Rebel and I have been working for some time now to make it possible for people to do auditor training outside of the formal Church of Scientology, which many feel has become so weighed down with arbitraries and extraneous demands on their time and bank balances as to make it virtually impossible to learn the subject.

For over 12 years I worked in the LRH Technical Research and Compilations Unit in the Senior C/S International Office in the Sea Org. I was in the unit while LRH was on the lines directing the unit and worked there for an additional 10 years after he passed away.

LRH’s viewpoint on training was that training should be fast and auditing should be more drawn out, both receiving and giving. In other words, people should train in order to learn how to audit and while gaining experience as auditors they would become better while continuing to improve their knowledge of and ability to apply the technology.

The Year of Tech Breakthroughs: 1978

In 1978, LRH undertook a review of Academy training. He found that the Academy Levels had become overly long and had become a mish-mash of all kinds of tech not, strictly speaking, related to Academy Level training, which was supposed to be directed towards teaching students to audit the Expanded Lower Grades, ARC Straightwire through Grade 4. (more…)

After the FBI raid, LRH took off and if was radio silence from July until January 1978. However, plans were already in place to begin shooting technical training films. Sometime in 1977, LRH had mentioned to one of the key crew at WHQ, Stuart Moreau, that he had always wanted to make training films to show students how to do TRs and metering correctly. Stu said he would build him a film studio and, as far as I know, that was the genus of today’s tech films.

There was an old date packing plant on the property and Stuie and the Estates guys got onto renovating it into something that would serve as a film studio. It wasn’t large, maybe only 50 or 60 feet on a side with maybe 10 or 12 foot high ceilings and a couple of smaller rooms off against one of the walls, but it would do. Work on this continued throughout the rest of 1977 until LRH’s return.

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The central building at WHQ was called Palms. It was a Spanish style two story house, nothing remarkable about it at all. Kitchen, dining area and living room downstairs, two bedrooms and bathroom upstairs and a basement. The living room served as mess hall and course room for the crew. The messengers ate in the dining area and studied there. Qual was in the basement.

A couple days after our chance meeting with LRH, we were alerted that he was coming down to Qual to talk to us. We got word through the messengers that he’d met a couple of the new auditors and they didn’t look too bad so he was coming down to see who had been assembled. None of the other recruits had run into him despite having been there for a few weeks already.

We spent the early part of the morning making the basement look as presentable as a basement can be made to look. It was large enough to hold a desk and three 6 foot folding tables and a few filing cabinets. The furnace room served as the Qual Sec’s office and folder storage. I mean, this was the Qual Division of LRH’s personal org and it was situated in a basement and not a large one at that. I don’t think LRH gave a rat’s ass what a place looked like so long as it was clean. So, we neatened the place up and got rid of the dust. LRH definitely didn’t like dust.
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I joined the S.O. in June 1977. The previous year I had finished the St. Hill Special Briefing Course, which, as most know, involves listening to hundreds of LRH lectures given between 1961 and 1966. Every night for 3 hours it is just you and LRH and this goes on for months. When you finish the course it’s a distinct letdown not having that comm line.

At any rate, I knew I was joining the SO to become an auditor under LRH. That was the recruitment pitch we were given.

The picture I had of LRH in my mind was from the photos we’ve all seen. I knew I was going to meet him one day and I figured he would just be LRH like we’ve all come to know him.
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When he first announced the project to make training films for Academy students, LRH let us know that we would also be the actors in the films. The first shooting script was issued to the crew and we learned that it was called The Professional TR Course. There were about 30 scripts for tech films and he starts with the most fundamental of fundamentals, TRs.

We read the script and the story was, as many know, about a lousy field auditor who gets put through the wringer on a TRs course and is thus able to now get good results on his preclears. Believe it or not, the script did not read as a comedy, which the final product assuredly was. LRH just got the essentials down: the shot, the setting, the action, the characters and their dialogue.

We began discussing who should try out for which part. I was being pushed to try out for the lead character, Joseph Aaronberg Howard, and I wasn’t altogether sure whether this was meant to be a reflection of my past auditing, though I hadn’t really worked as a field auditor, just mission staff. But from some of my early TRs critiques it was pretty evident that I definitely could play the part of the bumbling Joe Howard. LRH set about to make sure I could play Joe Howard at the end of the film as well.

A few of us tried out for the lead role and I got the part. LRH sent me congratulations and began sending me despatches about what was expected, simply that this film was going to be the model of TRs for all Academy students in the world. Gee, is that all, Sir?

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For years now, I’ve been hearing about DM’s “interpretation” of LRH’s definition of a floating needle and the trouble it has caused both auditors and preclears.

The LRH definition as written in HCOB 21 July 1978, WHAT IS A FLOATING NEEDLE is elegant simplicity itself:

“A floating needle is a rhythmic sweep of the dial at a slow, even pace of the needle.

“That’s what an F/N is. No other definition is correct.”

That’s the entirety of the bulletin.

I’d heard that DM, via his RTC Reps, had begun enforcing an interpretation based on the word “rhythmic” that an F/N had to sweep back and forth at least 3 times, based on the definition of the word “rhythmic.” I’m guessing that the idea was to give a verifiable minimum physical universe standard for what constituted a release in the pc’s mind. Whatever the reasoning, I’d heard a fair amount about this over the years.
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Golden Age of Tech, Background and (Mis)Administration

Since its release in 1996, the Golden Age of Tech has been a high interest, hot button subject for many, inside and outside the formal Church of Scientology. Here are the details of how it all came to pass with some opinions of how it was misimplemented, what could have been done better and what can be done now in the independent movement to take what was useful from that period to improve the quality of auditing, which was the Golden Age of Tech’s original purpose, however defiantly that may be disputed. There’s a fair amount of detail here that hasn’t been available to my knowledge about what went on during the evolution and leading up to its release in May 1996.

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“Scientology: Crazy Ideas, Crazy Wins”

by Joe Howard

There it is, the new PR campaign for Scientology, coming soon to a billboard in your town! We just need a way to siphon off some of the three-quarters of a billion dollars in the IAS war chest to pay for it.

That, by the way, is the totality of the campaign. It acknowledges the general public’s perception of Scientology, which immediately establishes the highest Reality possible, while letting viewers make up their own mind about the wins. They can dispute whether the wins are crazy or not, depending on which definition of “crazy” they choose to read into it.

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by Joe Howard
Sherlock Holmes and Dr, Watson are on a camping trip. In the middle of the night Holmes wakes up and gives Watson a nudge.

“Watson,” he says, “look up in the sky and tell me what you see.”

“I see millions of stars, Holmes,” says Watson.

“And what do you conclude from that, Watson?”

Watson thinks for a moment. “Well,” he says, “astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter to three. Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. Theologically, I see that God is all-powerful, and we are small and insignificant. Uh, what does it tell you, Holmes?”

“Watson, you idiot! Someone has stolen our tent!”
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Say what you will about David Miscavige, there’s no arguing that the man is very, very clever. As demonstration of this, let’s consider the latest international push to turn every Scientology org in the world into an Ideal Org.

HCOPL 12 March 1975, Data Series 40, THE IDEAL ORG, describes just such an org. To quote the second line of the PL, “It would have enough space in which to train, process and administrate without crowding.”

The rest of the PL talks about the activities that should be going on within that adequate space. DM, one supposes, has taken it upon himself to see that the space requirement is taken care of around the world. Therein lies a stroke of genius. But to fully appreciate this masterstroke a little background is needed.

In past decades Sweden had a fairly buzzing Scientology field. It had orgs in its largest cities: Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö, and still does, though these orgs are nowhere near as busy as they once were. The Ideal Org program is meant to change all that.

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