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With their Book One activity in high gear, Flag was going to orgs and missions all over the world delivering their weekend seminar. They avoided Colorado because of my strong foothold there, which consisted of a huge number of staff and public either having completed or in the process of completing our correspondence course. But people in my area were now interested in a live, seminar-type training activity with Book One. John Galusha and I designed our own Book One seminar, which was modeled after the old Congresses delivered in the 1950s that John had supervised for Hubbard. The seminar that Flag was delivering was the seminar Peter Pinchot had designed with the sole purpose of interesting people in Book One. We wanted to make our seminar a much more effective training vehicle. We called our seminar the Book One Congress and we delivered it over two, consecutive weekends. The first weekend was dedicated to theory and drilling, with a training routine much superior to previous Book One seminars. Additionally, students were trained on how to procure their own pcs. The students' assignment for the following week was to line up people to bring to the second weekend. The students, under our supervision, then audited the volunteers. Just like the old Congresses, students were lined up in chairs with their pcs in chairs across from them. If a student ran into trouble, he/she would put their hand behind their back. A supervisor (normally there were three or four) would come over, the student would take a session break, find out from the supervisor how to handle the problem, and then take his/her pc back into session. The Congresses started small, delivered in our offices. Later we moved to a local hotel. On the second weekend of that Congress we had over fifty student attendees auditing over one hundred pcs. These Congresses were fabulous, attended by students new to Book One auditing, people on our correspondence course, and graduates of the course. Additionally, there were large numbers of pcs brought to the second weekend. All of these pcs were interviewed by Survival Services staff after finishing their auditing. Many of them after the Congress continued with more auditing or signed up for training. CoS management and Flag never commented on the obvious success of our Congresses. They only concentrated on what they considered to be problems created by our efforts. Two unpleasant incidents with the CoS come to mind as a result of our Congress delivery. The first of these incidents was over a photograph that we used in the promotion of the Book One Congress. As I mentioned in Part 3 of this series, John Galusha's wife, Millie, was Hubbard's secretary in Washington, DC in the 1950s. She and Hubbard used to dabble in photography. Millie had retained many pictures that Hubbard had taken of her, as well as many photos she had taken of him. Looking though these photographs, I found a picture of Hubbard and John at the 1958 or 1959 Congress in DC. I used this photograph in our Book One Congress advertising. The CoS was upset with the use of an unauthorized picture of Hubbard. But it was a really cool photo, with Hubbard dressed in his famous Congress outfit that he is seen wearing in certain Scientology lecture films. The second incident was caused by an event that was viewed by the CoS as a more serious offense. During a hotel Congress, several students who could not afford auditing in the CoS, decided to co-audit each other. Observing the great wins that these students were achieving, other student attendees wanted similar results. Some of the other students who were interested in co-auditing had already declared to Clear. Being Clear, the only auditing that they were suppose to do was delivered at a higher org in LA or at Flag. Disappointed, they would say, "I wish I could co-audit on Book One! But I can't, I'm Clear". Finally, the thought occurred to one of these students that if he wanted Book One, he must not be Clear. This cogitation gave him the bright idea of going to the local org to undeclare. Coming back to the Congress, the student was excited that he had undeclared from the state of Clear and now was able to co-audit Book One. Other Clears followed suit and soon, there were several Clears showing up at the org examiner saying, "I'm not really Clear", with their needles floating. Next thing I knew, AOLA was writing me up for, "invalidating the state of Clear"! Aside from these minor episodes with the CoS, our Congresses were extremely successful. Unfortunately, we were never able to deliver the Book One Congress anywhere other than Denver. If it had been incorporated into a Book One movement internationally, along with our correspondence course, the subsequent operation of the CoS may have turned out quite differently. End of Part 8 of 25 |
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