Refund and Reparation

I'd like to tell you today, here at this first lecture, I'd like to tell you something of the story of Dianetics and Scientology. Some things I've never confided to anyone before.

Would you like to hear that?
Audience: Yes.

Well, the start of this story is probably a long, long time ago. And those who don't believe in past lives will not be offended, because we won't go that far back. We'll just take this lifetime.

The story actually starts back when I was about twelve years old and I met one of the great men of Freudian analysis - a Commander Thompson. He was a very great man, an explorer And it's very fit that we mention his name here in this particular hall, because after all, all the great explorers of Great Britain more or less are haloed here.

And this man was responsible for a great many discoveries out through the world, but he was also interested in the human mind, and his name, as I said, was Thompson. He was a commander in the United States Navy and his enemies all called him Crazy Thompson and his friends called him Snake Thompson.

He was a very careless man. He used to go to sleep reading a book and when he woke up, why, he got up and never bothered to press and change his uniform, you know.

And he was usually in very bad odor with the Navy Department.¹ He was rather looked down on. But he was a personal friend of Sigmund Freud's. He had no boys of his own, and when he saw me - a defenseless character - and there was nothing to do on a big transport on a very long cruise, he started to work me over.

What impressed me: He had a cat by the name of Psycho. This cat had a crooked tail, which is enough to impress any young man. And the cat would do tricks. And the first thing he did to me was teach me how to train cats.² But it takes so long, and it requires such tremendous patience that to this day I have never trained a cat. You have to wait, evidently, for the cat to do something, then you applaud it. But waiting for a cat to do something whose name is Psycho ....

Anyway; at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, where they have all the books on everything, he started shoving my nose into an education in the field of the mind. Now, that's a very unusual thing to do, to take a twelve-year-old boy and start doing something with the mind. But he really got me interested in the subject - up to the point where I was pretty sure that Freud didn't know what he was talking about.

But actually Commander Thompson had a very open mind on this, and he used to tell me, „Well, if it's not true for you, it's not true.“ And I found out that he got this from a fellow named Gautama Siddhartha. Now, you really don't know Gautama Siddhartha as a man (but that's all he was) because better than two-thirds of the world population now considers him, a god. But the first thing that Gautama Siddhartha ever said about his own work was that he was just a man. This he tried to make very plain. And the other lesson, back there about 600 B.C., that he taught everyone is that if it isn't true for you, it isn't true. It was probably the first time that statement was ever made in this rather didactic universe. I find it's a very good statement. It agreed with my own personal philosophy very well, because if there's anybody in the world that's calculated to believe what he wants to believe and to reject what he doesn't want to believe, it is I.

But on this very impressionable background I found, at least, that somebody had a hope that something could be done in the field of the human mind. And I think that was Freud's great contribution - that something could be done about the mind, Now, that doesn't mean - that doesn't mean, of course, absolutely and accurately that something will be done about the mind. It just means that there's a hope that something could be done, and I believe Freud really deserves a great niche in history just for that all by itself. Regardless of what he thought could be done with the mind or how he thought it could be done, he was really the first man that ever stood up and said there was hope for it without whips, clubs, straitjackets and the rest of the paraphernalia by which certain strata of this universe attempt to (quote) cure (unquote) insanity.

I'd like to tell you today, here at this first lecture, I'd like to tell you something of the story of Dianetics and Scientology. Some things I've never confided to anyone before.

Would you like to hear that?
Audience: Yes.

Well, the start of this story is probably a long, long time ago. And those who don't believe in past lives will not be offended, because we won't go that far back. We'll just take this lifetime.

The story actually starts back when I was about twelve years old and I met one of the great men of Freudian analysis - a Commander Thompson. He was a very great man, an explorer And it's very fit that we mention his name here in this particular hall, because after all, all the great explorers of Great Britain more or less are haloed here.

And this man was responsible for a great many discoveries out through the world, but he was also interested in the human mind, and his name, as I said, was Thompson. He was a commander in the United States Navy and his enemies all called him Crazy Thompson and his friends called him Snake Thompson.

He was a very careless man. He used to go to sleep reading a book and when he woke up, why, he got up and never bothered to press and change his uniform, you know.

And he was usually in very bad odor with the Navy Department.¹ He was rather looked down on. But he was a personal friend of Sigmund Freud's. He had no boys of his own, and when he saw me - a defenseless character - and there was nothing to do on a big transport on a very long cruise, he started to work me over.

What impressed me: He had a cat by the name of Psycho. This cat had a crooked tail, which is enough to impress any young man. And the cat would do tricks. And the first thing he did to me was teach me how to train cats.² But it takes so long, and it requires such tremendous patience that to this day I have never trained a cat. You have to wait, evidently, for the cat to do something, then you applaud it. But waiting for a cat to do something whose name is Psycho ....

Anyway; at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, where they have all the books on everything, he started shoving my nose into an education in the field of the mind. Now, that's a very unusual thing to do, to take a twelve-year-old boy and start doing something with the mind. But he really got me interested in the subject - up to the point where I was pretty sure that Freud didn't know what he was talking about.

But actually Commander Thompson had a very open mind on this, and he used to tell me, „Well, if it's not true for you, it's not true.“ And I found out that he got this from a fellow named Gautama Siddhartha. Now, you really don't know Gautama Siddhartha as a man (but that's all he was) because better than two-thirds of the world population now considers him, a god. But the first thing that Gautama Siddhartha ever said about his own work was that he was just a man. This he tried to make very plain. And the other lesson, back there about 600 B.C., that he taught everyone is that if it isn't true for you, it isn't true. It was probably the first time that statement was ever made in this rather didactic universe. I find it's a very good statement. It agreed with my own personal philosophy very well, because if there's anybody in the world that's calculated to believe what he wants to believe and to reject what he doesn't want to believe, it is I.

But on this very impressionable background I found, at least, that somebody had a hope that something could be done in the field of the human mind. And I think that was Freud's great contribution - that something could be done about the mind, Now, that doesn't mean - that doesn't mean, of course, absolutely and accurately that something will be done about the mind. It just means that there's a hope that something could be done, and I believe Freud really deserves a great niche in history just for that all by itself. Regardless of what he thought could be done with the mind or how he thought it could be done, he was really the first man that ever stood up and said there was hope for it without whips, clubs, straitjackets and the rest of the paraphernalia by which certain strata of this universe attempt to (quote) cure (unquote) insanity.

You’ll go into a community, you’ll arrive here on Earth, it’s a new area to you, and you start looking around, and you see this happening and that happening, and the other happening, and it doesn’t make any sense to you at all. Well, you don’t know what the law has been. So therefore, you can’t read the opposites because your games condition is going to bring into existence the reverse. If you run a can’thave
on people, they’re going to create it. It’s very interesting.

You take a district, and you utterly prohibit, one hundred percent crime, and everybody goes just a little bit bugs or crime starts to occur around and about the place, or something like that. It is totally police action that creates crime. Everybody knows this sort of instinctively, but they never quite look it over.

I’ve operated down in parts of Los Angeles, South Alvarado and Main and that sort of thing. It’s as much as your life’s worth to go down there on a weekend. Hang around those bars and gin mills and marijuana joints. They just stack up the bodies like cord wood.

It’s nothing. You pick up some guy on the corner, and he’s cut from ear to ear and bleeding gore all over the pavement. Nobody’s paying a bit of attention to him. That is too usual.

Well, it was very odd in operating in that particular area to look what man was actually doing or what he would accept or what he was trying to do. And it was very peculiar that the police were trying in some measure throughout that area to squash all of this kind of activity. And they were particularly hot in those particular activities.

There is more police per square inch on Main and South Alvarado, and so forth, in
Los Angeles than any other place on earth. It’s totally populated by police. And it is the seamiest, lousiest, scummiest skid row in the world. Well, isn’t this fascinating?

Look. Well, you see, reasonability throws you astray. You say the place is rough, therefore they have to have police there. No. You have police there to forbid roughness, so you get roughness. Now, I have actually seen police create roughness. It goes this far.

Here’s a guy minding his own business. A cop walks up to him, turns him around and tells him to get out. Well, what is the fellow doing? He’s doing nothing. Well, that was why he was told to get out. It’s all too calm here for the cops, man. And the next thing you know . . I have actually seen a man beaten till every tooth was knocked out of his head and stamped on and everything else. And there wasn’t going to be a single thing going on. I mean, the fellow didn’t do anything or otherwise. The cops just had to have some trouble.

It was very interesting. One of the cops, after that foray was all done, was all beat up. He was just black and blue, and he was in terrible condition and all this. And this other fellow got away, by the way. And I was standing there explaining to this police officer how I had helped him all I could. I did too.

And he was trying to create trouble; I helped him create trouble . . for himself I was helping him beat the guy up, you see. I was operating as a special police officer myself, you know. Just somehow or other, every time he’d raise his hand to strike, you see, his wrist would hit my arm or something like this. He kept getting in my road. That’s what I kept telling him. It was a very confusing brawl.

He explained to me afterwards over a glass of whiskey, and so forth, he’d never been in quite as confusing a brawl. He’d never . . .

But that it was possible to keep law and order in these places was very, very easy to observe. Because in those areas where I was, they didn’t have any trouble. Now, that wasn’t some special monkey business I was pulling off. In fact, I wasn’t looking for any trouble either way. I wasn’t either trying to make people be good or be bad or try to start fights or otherwise.

Actually there was law and order in that immediate area because nobody was running a can’t-have on anybody. There were no can’t-haves being run. I’d talk to all the guys that came in, and so on.  People kept trying to hire me, by the way, because it was bad for business to have these brawls, and so forth, occur. And I’ve been offered some very fancy sums to keep on with this job. It was very, very
amusing and entertaining to me. They took me as the real McCoy, you know. I must have been the real thing. I thought, that . . boy, that’s the biggest fraudulence I ever pulled in my life.

I by the way had a, let me tell you a little anecdote. I had a bad experience with this one time. I told the wrong man, I told my father this one time, I got tired of all of his talking about me and money and so forth, he knew nothing about money and he knew nothing about me, been a naval officer all of his life. I was often making a month what he made in a year. I don’t know, the unreality of people is gorgeous. And he told me that once too often and I was just out of hospital, it was at the end of the war, and my temper was rather short. And I turned on him and I said, “Look,” I said, “Don’t go telling me this anymore, I’ve listened to it most of my life and it’s not true,” I said, “Look at yourself. You’ve been making money all of your life, you haven’t got anything to show for it, you spend your money like a drunken sailor. Now, why don’t you make more money?” So he did. He got ahold of my yacht and sold it. And having done that, he sold my ranch, well anyway, he made more money.

So it doesn’t always work that the message goes through straight, but it is the answer, it is the answer. If you have hatted according to policy and not hatted off a lot of squirrel, offbeat actions; if you have made sure that you don’t have using policy to stop; they can do that by the way, by always applying the wrong policy letter. All you’ve got to do is take the policy letter that applies to A and instead of following that, find another one that really doesn’t really apply to A but find something in it that can be construed as to apply to this and they say, “Well, you
see we can’t do that.” Policy was designed to tell people things they could do and when it tells them not to do something, it’s trying to put edges on the channel so they won’t go off of it. But what channel? The channel of doing something right. When you say this is a high crime PL it means we’ve had enough of it, it’s been too prevalent, this why is big enough and prevalent enough and has been in the past to become a policy why, so don’t. But that doesn’t stop anybody from going down the main channel.

Now, if a fellow doesn’t know the policy that gives him the main channel and only knows the policy that tells him to stop, then you will get people using policy to stop. Do you follow? There is always policy that tells them how to go on the channel. If they only specialize in stop, that’s terrible. Well, there’s one thing that you must know that any group of thetans can get best agreement on a stop, they will most readily agree on a stop, that’s any group of thetans.

It’s one of the reasons democracies don’t work. That’s what you know as group think . That’s a very funny one and that’s how they all get sort of frozen. If you’re not able to put in the public lines and if you can’t get a student into and out of an org, you know then that you have a group think and it’s a stop think. They don’t know the ways to do things and they’ve only agreed on the ways to stop things.