FreeZone Academy at Elma, WA

Scientology—Then and Now By Patricia Krenik

Each person has their own “then and now” regarding Scientology. For me, then was 1951 when I read DMSMH. It started me on a new path. The book was well known, and it wasn’t hard to find others in the small community on Vashon Island, WA who also had read “1st book”. Co-auditing began.
Jump to “now” and you find me here in Elma, WA a small town 30 miles west of Olympia, WA the capitol of this Northwest State. Here, my husband Raymond J. Krenik, Jr. and I are handling students and preclears through the entire bridge without any connection to the COS.
Roll back to about 1953 where meetings and group auditing were held in Seattle WA. Already OT abilities were being demonstrated. One fellow would stand on a bathroom scale and we would note where the weight registered. Then he proceeded to mock up mass until the scale went up five pounds!
The excitement was palpable in those early days. It was all so new. Some people had Dianetic Auditors Certificates from having been trained by LRH. Ed Clark, whom I never met, taught Dianetics in Seattle, Audrey Robbins practiced in Tacoma out of her home. She had a large basement she used for meetings.
Co-auditing went well. My auditor was J. Fred MacLean who took me through my major this lifetime engrams including sodium pentothal surgery where I flipped into the infamous “body in pawn” incident and ran that out. He also ran me on a whole track secondary and I cried for half an hour over the theft and loss of my beautiful asteroid. Things were very real.
In 1955 I met Wing and Smokey Angell, who had come to upgrade those who had been trained and by Ed Clark, and I also met Stan Sage, a recent Doctor of Divinity from Phoenix who was assisting them. Much to my disappointment I wasn’t permitted to take the course, my hours as an auditor didn’t count; only certs mattered. Ray Kemp was around at that time, too. These names may not mean anything to recent escapees from the COS, but they were the movers and shakers of the early days.
Fast forward to when I left Sea Org in 1983. Scientology had grown and the COS had huge buildings they owned instead of being located in store fronts where they were always behind on the rent. I was in training for HGC auditor at AOLA. All was well until I mentioned in a D of P that I had listened to a David Mayo tape. The E.O. took me off post to mop floors until I made up my mind to disconnect from the friend I had known for thirty years who had shared the tape with me. Incidentally, my friend George was in good standing with the COS—it was really out-tech to ask me to disconnect.
Since I wasn’t planning to disconnect from George my future in Sea Org began to look bleak. I could see RPF looming as a potential reality and I wanted nothing to do with that. That, coupled with the fact that I was aware that LRH was no longer in charge, made the scene of the Sea Org unworkable for me.
My trust was really low; I sensed danger in the situation. This was the year that the tape “The Proof” came out and I became aware of three things: LRH wasn’t the person on the tape, David Miscavige was the one who would have known about this, and LRH was no longer in charge. Without LRH, in my mind, there was no recourse.
I blew quietly in the middle of the night and returned to Washington State.
Back to 1955, I continued to co-audit and studied The Creation of Human Ability, and the Axioms verbatim. I challenged the test, and passed. Dick Steves, well known Qual person from D.C. Org checked me out. In 1956 I had my first certificate, Hubbard Certified Auditor!
I’d been run on almost all processes of Creation of Human Ability and was well into the Co-Auditors Manual. There were four of us starting the Church of Scientology of Bremerton, Fred MacLean, Vern Townsend, Duane Leazenby, and I. It didn’t have a lot of public but we had fun, and did a lot of co-auditing. Fred was our legal beagle, Vern in charge, Duane just could do anything. I used to call him “Stable Able.”
From Bremerton we moved to Seattle and started the Church of Scientology of Washington. Soon after that we had to file for dissolution of the corporation as we were told the Church had its own way of setting up their legal system. Look at this as the attitude we had in those days—we never asked permission, we just did it.
In the same manner my then husband, Ron Arnold and I took off across country to Washington D.C. to take the 19th Advanced Clinical Course, taught by LRH. It was the Clearing ACC. E-meters were being re-introduced. This was the first ACC with TRs, and we did TRs the right way for two weeks, six days a week.
We had arrived on a shoestring budget–$100 down for each of us is what we offered for the course. The Reg eventually gave up trying to get more and went to consult Ron. She came back with approval. We signed contracts to pay the balance of the $800’s with time payments. It had never occurred to us that they would insist on all the money up front!
Half of us went Clear in that ACC, the other half did not. That line of research was dropped because it didn’t clear 100%. LRH checked us out personally, and Qual division eventually permitted us to buy our Clear Bracelets. This was in Feb. 1958. Of course, by 1965 we Step-Six Clears were forgotten.
Now picture this. In all of this auditing I’d received and given there were no worksheets. There was no C/S. There were no Correction Lists. There was no Classification, Awareness and Gradation chart. And as recent ACC graduates we were the most highly trained auditors on the planet.
In D.C. we met a lot of people. Katy Hubbard was my friend. Nibs helped instruct our ACC. Mary Sue and the kids were around. Diana Hubbard was about 8 years old, playing with the younger ones in front of the D.C. Org. Ron was open and available. We’d run into him on the street—or he would be eating in the same restaurant. John Sandborn, who was the Editor of the Ability Mag for a number of years was on staff—John Fudge was on staff—Ken Barrett was on staff. Julia Lewis had recently left D.C (she and Ken Salmon came to LA in 1957 to start building the L.A Org) These are names that mean nothing now to the later wave of Scientologists.
We left Washington D.C to return to Seattle where we ran a Franchise (now Mission) for two years. Supervising HAS co-auditing courses were what we did the most.
Hop back up the track to 1968. Quite a year, with the first Class VIII’s being made. Auditors at ASHO were being hosed down with cold water for mistakes in auditing, a left over practice from the “overboarding” of the first Class VIII Course on the ship. The C.O. of ASHO, Artie Bacon, was locked in a closet for a week, a substitute for “chain locker”.
Ron awarded the SHSBC to those people who completed the ACCs, and I enrolled in the fall of 1968. After I graduated new data was coming out—Word Clearing for example, Standard Dianetics for another. Then it was off to AO to do Solo audit the CC course, OT I, II, III, and the rest of the original bridge. Now we had auditor’s admin, worksheets, report forms, correction lists, C/Ses and lots of e-meter training. Auditing was no longer something that could be done well without a team. You needed an Examiner, a D of P, even a folder page. Well Done Auditing Hours were highest ever in the 70’s.
I worked for Bent Corydon in Riverside as an auditor, next I audited at the Delphi in Oregon, then back to ASHO on Temple Street as an FESer. (FES=Folder Error Summary) By 1978 I was L.A. Org staff, but at heart I was always a field auditor.
I still am. Now I am still doing what I started out to do, Clear the Planet. You don’t hear that much anymore, it has been so defeated. It can be done, but not only by one-on-one. We need to create more free theta than there is entheta on this planet and it will destimulate.
In Elma we are building a power team. Two cool OTs are joining us, Roy Selby and Ervin Scott. They are both moving to Elma in May 2011 to help expand this group. NOTs delivery is happening here. We use Glenn Samuels, a Class XII and expert in NOTs auditing as our Senior C/S if we have any problems. We have people auditing on Solo NOTs, as well as those receiving NOTs auditing. We also deliver the missing OT levels (original OT Bridge) whenever it appears to be the right action for a case.
Don’t forget that one of the reasons we stay with Scientology is it really is the best game in town. It is fun. Granted it isn’t quite as it was in the early days when it was all new and people were reaching out to get data and hadn’t heard of an ARC break, but auditing works, the disaffected from the COS are revitalized and the Independent Scientology movement a/k/a “free zone” is expanding.
To the best of my knowledge, our group is the only one currently supervising a Solo Nots Course. If you are OT III you need to find us. Write p_krenik@hotmail.com
The cat is out of the bag; no one can stop us from Clearing the Planet or even Straightening out a Few Universes. Life is in us today; we make our tomorrow. It is true that truth will set you free—but truth sets all of us free.
That is its secret.