Things are as you consider they are.L. RON HUBBARD
When I left the penthouse that night I felt euphoric. Broadway stretched ahead of me like a wide pathway to a shining friendly world. Power Processing, or certainly clearing, would rid me of my eyeglasses, lack of direction in life and less-than-optimal sex patterns. Anticipation of the forthcoming adventure was almost enough reason in itself for living. The very word "clear" had a dry, rarified quality. During the process my last remaining considerations would be erased and replaced by Postulates; and having "blown my mind on the clearing course," as the Saint Hill advertisements phrased it, I would return to New York free to do all the things I'd thought about doing for years.
Projects bubbled into my mind like spring-water. I would launch a concert career. I would get rich; with the money my investments would bring in, by next winter I would be in position to indulge freely in stock-market speculation, which -- in conjunction with a system for playing the horses -- was going to raise my assets to six figures.
I would also become an auditor. A traveling auditor. I would take the Special Briefing Course, auditor's training, and then spend a week in London auditing a couple I knew to release on the Lower Grades. Back in the States I would audit friends in several cities. The world-at-large, the multitude of souls that had never been audited -- what Hubbard called raw meat -- was waiting for me. Auditing them would fulfill my desire to help and instruct people, lead them to the truth. I would be an authority. As an Upper Level Scientologist, I would win more recognition in one month than I had gotten as a musician in ten years. A Clear or an OT was almost god-like. There was the danger of using this new power to lord it over other Scientologists. I would have to steer a course between the two extremes of status-superiority and false modesty -- not an unpleasant prospect. Several times lately I had caught myself imitating Gerald's repetitious courtesies and flattery. I realized what I was doing, but it made people feel good and it was for an altruistic purpose. Besides, it worked well. Altruism and opportunism needn't be in conflict. I could play it both ways.
Scientology would be the means to my liberation because it was quick and easy. I would get what I wanted out of it, using it for my own purposes as Gerald used it for his.
In a sense I was using Gerald also. Gratifying as it was that he wanted me to work at the franchise, be another partner, as it were, I intended to go along with him only if there were enough money in it and time to do other things. And I had never mentioned to Gerald that I might leave Scientology someday.
I was well aware, too, that I was being used. With my new credentials and old acquaintances, I would bring a lot of business to the franchise, perhaps draw preclears away from the New York Org. I fit into Gerald's and Felicia's plans nicely.
We were fairly matched. Using people was only immoral if the using were weighted to one side, not if all parties concerned acted in balance and without harming each other. There was such a thing as "enlightened selfishness." It was like a game.
With these thoughts I felt I had penetrated to the essence of Scientology and found there my own vision of the truth. In a flash of illumination I recognized as Scientology Cognition, I saw the full beauty of it: One created one's own truth -- with a little help from Ron.
My father came to New York to visit me. I hadn't seen much of him for the last dozen years. With five Grades of auditing behind me, I welcomed this chance to communicate with him fully perhaps for the first time. I was also worried. A Scientologist was supposed to disconnect from a parent who didn't approve of Scientology. As we were getting ready to go out to dinner, I told my father of my trip to England.
"I've never heard of Scientology. What is it exactly?" he asked.
Standing at the bathroom door of his hotel room, I was suddenly at a loss. The E-meter and the auditing table seemed far off somewhere, lost in the scratching of his razor and the traffic noises below.
"I can't explain the whole thing now, but it's restored my ability to communicate and face problems."
My father stopped shaving for a moment, a pained look on his face. "If you say it's helped you, I can't say anything. But haven't we always been able to communicate with each other?"
"I didn't mean it like that, Dad," I said.
Felicia, Gerald and I planned a magnificent bash to celebrate my last evening in town. Earlier in the week, I'd called the Cafe Chauveron, one of the finest restaurants in New York, and booked a feast for a party of four. The fourth was Dag Lildberg, one of my close friends and Dianetic Releases. We ate and drank to about a hundred dollars apiece, and dawdled at our table for several hours in near-stuporous satiation.
Felicia told us a Scientology story. There was once a man known as "the auditor's poison" who traveled around the country receiving auditing at the various orgs but never reporting any gains. He was well-to-do and spent a lot of time at this pursuit, getting nasty kicks from foiling his auditors. Finally he turned up at the New York Org, leaving a trail of disgruntled auditors behind him, and was given to the org's case-cracker. After several days of difficult sessions, the auditor spotted a floating needle, stood up at the table, extended his hand and said, "Congratulations! You are now a Grade 0 Communications Release. You have the ability to talk to anyone about anything at any time."
Whereupon the man looked up at him and said, "Go fuck yourself!"
At closing time we staggered out into the night air. Gerald wanted us to go up to Harlem to dance at Small's Paradise. We started uptown in a cab. I told Gerald I would be getting out on the West Side to try to pick up a woman -- that was how I wanted to end my last evening in New York. The whole ride he exhorted me to come with them. I almost gave in to him, but at two a.m., somewhere on upper Broadway, I said goodbye and got out of the cab.
I saw a young lady looking at a menu in a restaurant window on the corner of 92nd Street. I said to her, "The food here is very good, but the place doesn't open until noon." She smiled. I asked her to come home with me, and she did. She was not a hooker and her easy acceptance surprised me. Then I remembered that I was a Communications Release. As she was leaving my room several hours later I told her I would write her from England with information on the Lower Grades and the franchise address.
By late-afternoon I was still wide-eyed and alert, transported in the electric drunkenness induced by the multi-course meal, the wines and cognac, and the surprise affair. I called Dag Lildberg from the airport. The warm ambience of the previous evening had ended in his suspicions of Gerald. "Look how he tried to get you to come with us uptown," Dag said. "He wouldn't stop trying to persuade you -- he didn't even hear anything you said. Gerald's a manipulator. He's only interested in getting others to do his bidding."
I felt it was a bit late for me to pay any mind to other people's considerations.