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It was now the summer of 1980, and I had Diana Hubbard's approval on my program. As a "special project under Diana", I now had an acceptable identity with the CoS. Someone could ask, "What the hell is that Mike Goldstein doing?" And someone else could say, "Oh, he's working on a special project for Diana Hubbard", and that would be acceptable. Also, if there were any problems, Diana had agreed to run additional "air cover" for me. With the above in place, I could now proceed with getting my Book One program off the ground. The first step was having a Book One correspondence course that actually produced COMPETENT Book One auditors. The entire program hinged on this initial step. I had some familiarity with auditing Book One. My introduction to the subject of Scientology was getting Book One auditing from some guy, reading the book and auditing other people. But I wasn't that competent and certainly didn't feel able to produce the kind of course needed. The only existing course on Book One was an extension course delivered by Pubs. But this was just a mini-type-course designed with the purpose of getting new people who had purchased the Dianetics book, on lines in the CoS. I called Diana for assistance. Diana thought there had been the kind of course I was looking for, and that it was delivered in Washington DC in the 1950s. While she looked through the archives at Flag, an old friend of mine, who was running the DC org, was looking in DC's archives. No such course was found. The only thing that was discovered, was the name of the man who may have delivered this course, John Galusha. I had heard of this man. He was sort of a legend in Scientology. He had been Hubbard's main technical person throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. He had even been Hubbard's research auditor, assisting in the development of Scientology. He had an unbelievable list of accomplishments. Many had tried to enlist John's assistance with various projects for the past 16 years, but he was never interested. Furthermore, he lived in Colorado! I got John's phone number from the local org. I called him and he agreed to see me. When I went to his home, I also met John's wife, Millie, another legend in Scientology. She had once been Lyndon Johnson's secretary before he was President. In the 1950s she became Hubbard's secretary in Washington DC, being the first "HCO (Hubbard Communication Office)" in the world. She had also had an interesting personal connection with Hubbard, where they did photography together and co-audited. I was pretty excited about meeting these two "old timers". I sat on their couch going over my history and my entire evaluation and program. I jabbered on for over an hour. John sat stoic, listening to what I was saying but making no comment. When I was done, John told me that he hadn't been interested in doing anything with the organization of Scientology for years, but that he was interested now in helping me. However, he informed me that that course that Diana had referred to, was just an extension course like the one being delivered at Pubs, with the sole purpose of getting people on lines. Additionally, a course like I wanted had never existed. When he saw my spirits drop, he went on to stay that he could easily produce a course that would accomplish the purpose of training competent Book One auditors. John's first introduction to Dianetics was in 1950, when he bought the book after reading the ad for it in Amazing Science Fiction. He read the book a couple of times, started auditing people, and soon had a very successful practice. He knew the book very well. In fact, he knew the entire book by heart! John told me to come back in a week and he'd have the course ready and said goodbye. I returned the following week to be handed a few tiny, spiral notebooks. In these notebooks, written in pencil, were several hundred questions numbered consecutively. He said that he'd written these up during his lunch hour the past week. It didn't look like a course, but he said that's just what I wanted. Not knowing what to say, I just thanked him and left. As I walked to my car I realized something kind of strange. The questions in the notebook had been clearly written, but there were no erasures! As I mentioned above, I had some familiarity with Book One, but I couldn't answer the majority of the questions. I thought that maybe this man was "out to lunch", but since this "course" was all I had, I typed up the questions, verbatim, organizing them into lessons, thereby giving some format to the course. I handed this course to my wife and asked her to look at it and give me her opinion. Having been one of the first Class 8 auditors, Qual Sec at AOSH DK and at Flag, she had read the Dianetics book hundreds of times, being word cleared on the book and word clearing others on it. I figured she could give me a valuable assessment of this course. As she read through the questions she kept grabbing a Dianetics book, leafing through the pages. After about an hour, she had finished. Looking at me in amazement, she asked where I had gotten this course. She went on to say that she could only answer about half the questions and had to look in the book to confirm that the information being asked for in questions was even there. Her review ended with saying that she'd never seen such an incredible course. With a big sigh, I knew I had a winner. John later added a practical auditing section to the course, and we now had the vehicle for training competent Book One auditors. End of Part 3 of 25 Mike Goldstein |
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