The Sea Org descended upon Saint Hill. They wore white sweaters, white slacks or skirts, white shoes and stockings. They came to see that Ethics was In and stats (statistics) were not lagging. Many of the Hill staff began wearing dirty gray rags tied around their upper arms, denoting that they were in Condition of Liability and working their way through the Liability Formula. Staff members were placed in Liability for breaking a rule, showing poor stats, or making a clerical error. They were at such time considered a deficit to the organization, and made amends by working a straight twenty-four hour shift. This meant their not leaving the grounds for one or two nights. If they ran out of work to do, they could grab some sleep on an office or classroom floor. Such was the case with the Instructor, who was penalized on enough counts to have red-rimmed eyes for days on end.
Sea Org officers placed an order for students to send out several dissemination letters each week. Blue airmail stationery was provided by the Instructor. We had to leave the letters unsealed in a basket on his desk. I wondered if they were read by the officers to see if their tone was enthusiastic enough. I had plenty of people to write to. One was Renzo, whom I still hoped to persuade to come to England before his vacation was over. I wrote to Dag Lildberg, who taught yoga: "Man! You won't find enlightenment sitting on a mountain top in the lotus position. Come to Saint Hill. It's all here! With ARC ..." I entreated other friends as well to get their Grade IV Release at the franchise so that they could witness, as I was about to, the total unveiling of the human mind.
The Sea Org threw all staff members into a frenzied book-selling campaign. Staffers were ordered to lug heavy book crates to East Grinstead after finishing work at night, to catch trains for neighboring towns. Some were put on two- and three-day missions.
Hekla, a Swedish woman staying at the manor, was dejected. She wasn't making enough money to live on doing clerical work at the Hill, and was afraid she would be put in Liability for not selling her quota of books or for letting her other stats drop while she was out canvassing (pay was automatically lowered during a Liability penalty). Hekla had received no auditing whatsoever as yet. She had hoped to return to Stockholm a Grade IV Release, better equipped to cope with an unhappy marriage, and wept to see her goal slipping out of reach.
Dexter, a likeable, long-haired guitar player from the North of England, was working around the clock at the Hill to collect credits for Grade O. He had been in and out of Liability for minor offenses, and had had to take a Joburg, a sec (security) check that dug deeper than the other checks, devised by Ron when members of the Johannesburg, South Africa Org mutinied against him several years back. One was lucky to get through a Joburg in three hours. Each of its 150 questions had to read clean several times -- questions such as "Are you a pervert?"[*]
I was saddened to see my new-found friends under penalty, and I encouraged them to try to hold their lowly stations until they received processing. I was spared their heartache only because I had the funds. My involvement with the Sea Org wold remain peripheral. I would get what I had come for and leave.
The Solo Course End-Word Process prepares you to deal with the highly-charged core of the bank on the Clearing Course with minimal danger.
Each Reliable Item, or phrase, in a GPM (Goals-Problems-Mass) contains a verb in the infinitive plus a noun object of the infinitive, called the end-word. The end-word is not the most highly-charged part of the Reliable Item, since there is only one per GPM. The verb, though, may occur in several or in all of the GPMs. It is highly-charged and will bunch up entire sections of the Time Track if restimulated. I have made a sincere effort on the Solo Course study materials to avoid any restim of words in the bank that will spin you in on the GPMs. You must do likewise. When I give you illustrations of end words or you make clay demos, you must use unrestimulative words. To Catch Catfish illustrates such a Reliable Item, with infinitive To Catch and end-word Catfish, innocent words not in the bank. During the actual process you will get most of the charge off your real end-words. Here is it:
Set up your E-meter and your report sheets, take up the single tin can in one hand, a ballpoint pen in the other, and ask yourself the question: WHAT AM I DRAMATIZING? The answer must be in the form of an object noun, i.e., an end-word. If the word is not a noun, add ness to it. For example, if it occurs to you that you are dramatizing being accident-prone, try Accidentness, Accidentingness, Accidentiousness or some such. If this is one of your end-words it will read.
When you find an end-word, register it on a small filing card with the date and the meter read. Then find its opposite. End-words come in pairs in a GPM, plus and minus, dichotomies like Tallness and Shortness. The prefix un- may be attached to the first end-word to get its opposite: Unaccidentingness.
When you find the opposite (it must also read), completing a pair, note it to the left of its mate on the first card, and in turn register it on a second card with date, read, and first end-word next to it. Place the second card on top of the first and clip them together.
There is no trick to any of this. Use a dictionary or book or synonyms when necessary, register all pairs you find, and throw the clipped-together cards on top of the growing pile. Keep complete reports. That is the whole process: finding pairs of end-words. There may be dozens.
Do not mull over the process in your mind before doing it. If you catch yourself thinking of dramatizations, say "That's it!" and go back to whatever business at hand.
The End-Words Process will put an end to any lingering pains you may have. It's an easy process. Done correctly, it's just a walk in the park.
I realized what I had done. There was nothing about line-plotting or Gorilla or other implants in the process instructions, and the hours I had spent on the E-F Packs were wasted time. Evidently, the E-F Packs had been supplanted, their inclusion in the course materials for historical completeness only.
I had to forewarn my other new roommate, a South African wool dealer named Radcliff Jones, who had a deadline to meet and couldn't afford to waste any time. Carefully avoiding the slightest hint about the process itself -- Radcliff hadn't yet seen the confidential packs -- I reminded him that he need spend his time only on starred bulletins.
How stupid I had been to exhaust myself to the point of illness in the labyrinth of confusing diagrams and nonsense words! It occurred to me that the Solo Course was poorly organized, yet some students breezed through it in a couple of weeks. There was some trick to finding the pertinent data amidst the millions of words Hubbard had written and spoken through the years. But why was it necessary? Did Ron deliberately place obstacles in our path?
There was another possibility. Ron might not know everything that was going on at the Hill. He might be shocked to hear of the punishments being meted out. In fact, Ron himself might not have made up the Solo Course. Somebody else had put together the tapes and bulletins. And included the E-F Packs.
I continued to knuckle down hard on the bulletins I thought were crucial, never going anywhere on weekends -- not to London to visit my friends there, or to Brighton for a look at the beach. I got no exercise, not even much walking; my legs felt weak. The lovely terrain abutting the manor house grounds was a forbidden delight, receding into the distance in enchanting patterns like the chessboard Through the Looking Glass. I had had no sexual urge since my arrival in England, though I didn't have to stray from the manor to find attractive lonely women. "If I'm still like this when I get back to New York I'm going to have to start worrying," I told myself.
At last on a Sunday I took a break to walk around the manor and admire the trees and the fields. Then I spent a couple of hours playing the grand piano in the living room, and happily discovered that my fingers still worked. Richie Blackburn was captivated by a Strauss waltz arrangement -- which put me in solid with him again. He spoke of his home town in Australia, where women were called "Sheilas" and the black aborigines "boongs." He wanted to hear the waltz again. Curvy and available Olga O'Brien sat near the piano gazing dreamily into space as though she was sharing in a mystic ritual.
After dinner Edward Douglas joined us as I played the waltz for Richie for the fifth time. "Oy used to love to sing," he said. "But somehow it just didn't seem to work out. Oy haven't stretched me vocal cords for twenty years." Once again I was in the encourager's role, and insisted he start singing again -- immediately. He went to his room and brought down a pile of quaint old Australian sheet music. What he did with these songs was barely discernible as singing, but I was rather moved by it, applauding each selection: "That's great, Edward! Keep it up, you really must" -- while inwardly surprised that with all his years in Scientology he needed such validation. After a while tears came to his eyes and I let him stop.
A pleasant young lady from California was my checkout twin. We took two afternoons away from the Hill for the bulletins, under an old shade tree on the back lawn of the manor, making trips back to the kitchen to refill our teacups. The first day we went over some material I had already been exposed to on the Dianetics Course in New York and passed over lightly in England, including the Characteristics of the Suppressive.
Next day we examined each other on the End-Words Process, firming our knowledge of the data as we went along. We finished our checkouts aglow with the feeling of mastery, and set out, briefcases in hand, on the pathway over the soft meadows. I had never been this way in my life. My body was a vehicle with me in control, making it step along in any manner I liked, shedding my glasses to marvel at the tiny blue and lavender flowers near our feet with eyes that seemed to get sharper with step, and speaking to my companion in a voice so relaxed it seemed an octave lower than usual.
I knew that this was it. The words sang through my being: To be clear is just this ... all the time!