Refund and Reparation

When you are out talking overtly about Scientology, you will inevitably meet some people whose entire purpose is to make you be covert in your communication.

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Recognize this about people who are objecting to you talking: When you're having any kind of a mess-up in trying to talk with somebody, the basic objection is the fact that you're talking. It's not true that everybody objects to your talking (don't let me give you that impression), but in this specialized case, where you're getting any kind of an objection—no matter how covert—the main objection is the fact that you're talking.

The way to overcome that objection is to simply drive it into apathy by talking more overtly, and more. Don't try to modify yourself for an agreement. You're sitting in the living room, and there are some friends around, and they have a guest. This guest says, "Well, isn't that a cult?" or something of this sort, after he's heard you're a Scientologist. Bird-dog him right there. His main objection is the fact that you're talking.

He probably considers himself attacked as an authority. After you go along a little further, you'll find out maybe he's a medical doctor or a psychologist. Perhaps he has some vested interest, or he minored in psychology in the barber college (that's where they teach that now), and he makes a nasty crack; he'll pretend some vested interest in what you're talking about. A proper reaction on your part is to just shift the subject entirely, skip it and talk about something that the rest are talking about or interested in and just shut up at that point, only shut up loudly. There are no halves about this; just shut up loudly. You just look at them with a little surprise, and look out and say, "It's nice weather we're having," or get off to some banality. Cut him to pieces and ignore him afterwards, because his main objection is to you talking. It didn't matter what you said; that's why he raised an objection.

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Cut him to pieces by a loud silence, and shift the conversation the other way. There's no halfway point; you don't diddle along saying, "Well I don't know, a lot of people say it is a cult, but you know, between ourselves, really there are a lot of sincere people mixed up in this; I know there are a lot of . . ." You don't do that—that's what he hopes you'll do.

If you cut this guy dead (and this isn't just in the interest of being nasty), you leave a sudden vacuum. It is now up to him to try to lead into a subject which he knows nothing about, and he can get into the most dreadful morass you have ever heard of. You have just left a vacuum, and haven't given him a proper answer; you've left a communication line unfinished. This vacuum has been mocked up and he falls right into it. He'll have to talk about it; he has no other choice, and you can go on ignoring him. The longer you ignore him, the more upset he will be about the whole subject. But he will finally have to go out and buy a book to find out all about this subject so that he can do something to you about it.

Or you just cut him to pieces. You say, "Scientology is an applied religious philosophy. It is the study of the human spirit in its relationship to the physical universe and other life and it does a lot of things for a lot of people." Start explaining it to him very carefully, and if you really want to be nasty about it, mock him up as a two-year-old kid and explain it very, very well to him.

You think the rest of the people at the party are going to turn on you for doing such a horrible thing—they're with you all the way. If you have nerve enough to do that, you've got nerve enough to lead them.

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If you had not cut the individual to pieces, the second you left he would have told all the others some great untruth which he had read in the medical manual concerning Scientology, or something of the sort. He would have cooked any impression that you had made unless you had already cooked him.

That's a nasty crack, but the truth of the matter is, the next time this individual who objected to what you were saying is present and you're not, he will make hash out of you unless you've already made hash out of him. So just finish him on the spot.

Finish him by saying, "Did you ever study Scientology? Oh, you studied psychology. Oh, when was that? Ha-ha—when—when was that? Oh, that was from a regular university? Oh? Oh yeah, very interesting. But, did you ever study Scientology? Oh, you read something. Where did you read this? What issue was that? Who said that? Who said that? Oh, did you read all of the article? Did you ... I remember the article very well"—this throws him off board because he's just invented the article—"I remember the article very well, but in the last half it said it was very beneficial to man in  general—didn't you get down to that? Oh, I see. Well, do you do everything in a perfunctory way like this?" Then drop him!

The art of conversation and the art of dueling have many things in common, and if you are ever dull enough to fail to see this similarity, you deserve everything you're going to get in a fight like that. The dueling trick of suddenly coming up with your weapon and dropping well back to invite a desperate lunge is very, very well known to a great many dead men. The other one is, even in the face of skill, if you just press in a thundering hard attack and just keep on attacking, sooner or later he's going to find a hedge or something at his back and fall into it; you're just taking a chance that way.

In view of the fact that nobody is in the kind of condition to really put up a good fight these days, you're taking a horrible advantage. This guy is dueling you with a hatpin and you have a broadsword. You just go in overtly and butcher him.

This has a lot to do with your procurement of preclears. You wouldn't think so, but it does. You use an overt communication line and people immediately say, "Look, this guy isn't scared. If he isn't scared then he must be a survivor type. If he's a survivor type, why, that's for me, because obviously I'm not a survivor type." All you have to do to demonstrate yourself as a survivor type (one test only), is continue to communicate!

Let's take this in a most horrible way (since we are talking about dueling and killing): Supposing you stabbed a fellow and he fell down, and he just lay there, stretched out, and he kept on talking to you in a rather undisturbed tone of voice. Suppose you then got your broadsword and hacked him into several pieces, and he kept on talking to you in a rather undisturbed tone of voice. And you then got a big keg of gunpowder, put it under him and blew him up and spattered him all over the scenery, and he kept on talking to you in an undisturbed tone of voice. Somewhere along the line you would
have the idea that this was a survivor type.