[ Chapter Twelve | Table of Contents | Appendix ]
"Find out who you really are?"
That is what the Ethics Order told me to do.
"Vosper is to apply the Enemy formula which is: 'Find out who you really are.'"
No good writing to Ken Urquhart and telling him, "Look, Ken, I've known you for years. You know who I am".
Hubbard and all his peculiar extensions - Scientologists - wanted me to say, "I AM A SUPPRESSIVE PERSON!"
I wrote it down on a piece of paper, trying to get conviction into the very ink. I was sitting on a bench in Hyde Park, near Speaker's Corner. People were walking up and down. They did not know there was an Enemy of all Mankind in their midst. I felt quite famous.
It was not sufficient to just write down, "I AM A SUPPRESSIVE PERSON" and send that in. Oh, no. These Scientologists want a total confession of all the dreadful things you have done in your life. If you know any, they want dreadful things from earlier lives too! They want you to completely degrade yourself. To admit you are one of the Enemies of Mankind.
I started writing. I've done lots of really lousy things. I cheated at school once. I thought L. Ron Hubbard was an idiot, often. I got angry with my children, sometimes. When I was seven, I had fired an arrow at a cat.
There were dozens of things like this and when I read it over, I realised what a tame life I had led. I hadn't made any mountains of skulls like Attila the Hun, not even a small pile of skulls. When I was twelve I had smoked some cigarettes that had been stolen by another boy. Maybe that was "Receiving Stolen Property".
I felt much better when I had finished my long list. I really was not an Enemy of Mankind.
Should I send it in? Or was it all such complete nonsense that I would be wiser to ignore the Scientologists? But the children; what would they think of me if I didn't try to get back into Scientology? I posted it to Ken Urquhart.
Over the following six weeks, I sent in another five of these applications of the Enemy Formula. I got more and more imaginative every time. In the end I was able to picture myself as one of the most evil beings ever to have inhabited the physical universe. It did not do any good though.
I kept getting extraordinary letters from Peter Warren, telling me to "Find out who you really are". They were not going to up-grade me. But, by now, I really did not want them to.
In the end I decided that I would not act out this idiocy any longer and went back to see my children.
[ Chapter Twelve | Table of Contents | Appendix ]