View source for Dissemination (SHSBC 640707)

'''Series:''' Saint Hill Special Briefing Course (SHSBC)

'''Date:''' 7 July 1964

'''Speaker:''' L. Ron Hubbard

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Have to look you over, see what’s happening to you. Got to keep Check on you. Isn’t everybody that can read off seventy or eighty eases in the breath of an eye.

What’s the date? Audience: Seventh of July. Seven July AD 14, Saint Hill Special Briefing Course and a lecture on something I haven’t found out what yet.

Little piece of news here first. It’s quite interesting Scientology in its impact and its effectiveness—fantastic effectiveness at lower levels. Only trouble is as we who are accustomed to it are so seldom well, you might say, driven to a total simplicity that we don’t always see its effectiveness at a lower level, you know?

We say, well, absolutely this thing has to be far more complex in order to do something for somebody. And well, let’s do something a little more skilled, let’s get some auditing in at a good professional level, you see, and so forth. And as you might have heard and which you saw the evidence of, I went to a circus on the invitation of its management and photographed the various acts in the circus itself, and so forth.

And these photographs, by the way, I’m not quite sure what their disposition is, but they’ve already been swept into the torrent of publications and publicity, and I had to part with about thirty of them, with shaking hands for fear of what might happen to them for reproduction in a paper on the south coast. A one-time reproduction, and of course, those are transparencies so they have to come back to me, but of course, they’re the only copy there is, you know, and all that somebody would have to do is, taking them out of the cover glasses, is slightly scratch one and that would be the end of that as a picture, you see? But already, why, they’ve started into the torrents of publicity and last night, by the way, we gave a smashing show, absolutely smashing.

The circus, you know, is noted for showmanship. And so we out-showmanshipped the circus. Always count on Ron, you know!

And we didn’t take that little screen you saw them on, you see? I took – and there are also nearly a hundred additional pictures that we had. And we hung up a twelve by twelve white  DISSEMINATION 2  sheet that we had to sew up with our own little fist, for a screen, making a twelve by twelve screen.

Now, twelve by twelve doesn’t sound very large to you at first glance but that is an awfully big screen. That’s actually the vertical, I think, is slightly greater than the Technirama or something screens. I don’t know what those are but it certainly looks so.

And this hung on uprights in the ring last night, over at the side of the ring, of course made an elephant as big as an elephant. And it made a performer anything up to five or ten times his normal size. And Reg’s beautiful Rollei projector there, and boy, it threw that picture out in that dark tent like mad.

We gave them a party. actually, having shot all their pictures and everything, why, we ordered a bunch of beer to be delivered up there by Tyler’s and so forth. And after their show was all over, you see, why, we gave them a show, see? And it was terrifically acceptable to them but actually, show or no show, drinks or no drinks, these people had been becoming more and more and more friendly.

We practically own the circus. And even the animals smiling, you know? The elephant man there, he’s got quite a sense of humor.

He keeps putting an elephant over on top of me every time I start shooting his act. Elephant will sweep in right dead—close to where I’m sitting, you know. The other night, why, he popped a whip in front of my face.

I don’t know, not more than an inch or two away from my cheek. You know? Of course, they’re experts at this sort of thing.

See if I’d blink. And I just grinned at him, you know? But this has been, actually, a very amusing experience in numerous lines.

And these people of course are quite accustomed to high—class black and white photography and—because that’s professional theater photography It’s some—one of the glossiest of photographic fields. So anyway, this beautiful bunch of transparencies and so forth—thrown up there on the other edge of the ring, you see, elephants as big as elephants and so forth, and boy” these people really enjoyed themselves, you know, naturally, as a picture of their own acts and that sort of thing. And we really gave them a good time.

But the point is—little numerous—numerous little things happened. One of them you’d be very interested in—couple of weeks ago, when we first started this—it isn’t I haven’t been working on this for two weeks, but—totally, don’t you see, but we’ve managed to get a couple of evenings off and go and—about three, by the way—and go tearing up there, you know, and wherever the circus is playing. It’s playing in this radius and it’s within about a forty—five minute drive of us or something like that at any given night.

You see, even though it’s changing locations. And they had just been through an awful jump because the grounds they had, had suddenly been denied them and the council had found that the man who was loaning the grounds—renting the grounds to the circus had a clause in his rental of the grounds from the council that he must not sublet it. So the council forbade the circus appearing on its own grounds.

And at two o’clock on a Sunday dawning, why they were out there with  DISSEMINATION 3  flashlights and the chief of police and the mayor and everybody else looking over ground—for new ground to put the circus on. Well, this made a bit of a ripple—so they attracted a fantastic quantity of press. And here was a council turning down a circus in an area but actually they did them a tremendous favor.

They put this circus up on top of a knoll, and you come down on one of these Ml type highways from about three, four different directions and over there, miles, visible for miles, is this big top sitting up there on top of this knoll, see? And boy, they had that thing stuffed to the rafters yesterday. You couldn’t actually hear yourself think much less even hear a camera click or anything like that, with the kids and the cheers and hurrahs.

And you talk about enthusiasm, man, it was there! But anyhow, you’d have thought this crowd would be pretty dogged—out with all this experience and they weren’t a bit, were they? They just, right on their toes and so forth.

And they gave us a big send—off. But the elephant man, couple or three weeks ago, when we first started this, right away got ahold of me just before his act—and he was in the elephant tent there, a bull tent—and he said, “You know,” he said, “I have a terrific swelling on my knee.” And rolled up his trouser leg to show us. And it was.

It was huge! Thing was as big as a softball. And he used to be a tumbler and it’s Ivor Rosair, he’s one of the last remaining members of a Rosair family.

The circuses go by families and it’s very traditional, and so forth. And this Sir Robert Bailey’s, well, that’s Sir Robert Fossett’s Circus, is the name of it and it’s run by Captain Bailey Fossett. And the place is absolutely drowned in Fossetts.

Everywhere you look there’s Fossetts. A couple of girls last night—I was busy shooting some shots of one kind or another and I’d pass by. Of course, they double in brass, you see, a little circus and you’ll see this girl up in all of the aura of a performer doing a death—defying stunt—and no kidding, it is!

It’s good. Their acts are terrific, you see? Nothing corny about them.

The next thing you know, why, she’s down there selling ice cream, you know? And everybody turns to, to knock the big top down, including the manager and the owner, you know—just everybody. And they put it all up again and take it all down and everybody has got his part, you know?

Terrific circus organization. But anyway, this fellow says that he had this terrific swelling on his knee and it was worrying him a great deal, and I don’t know quite where he got the idea, since we hadn’t introduced ourselves in any way, where we quite got—where he quite got the idea that I could do anything about this, you know? But he was leaning on me pretty heavy to do something about this—the demand was definitely there.

So I showed him—I showed him how to do a Touch Assist on it, told him to remember to touch both knees and I didn’t give him a “look at it,” I just gave him “feel that,” you see? And now, “just feel your finger on one knee and then feel your finger on the other knee and you do that.”  DISSEMINATION 4  He says, “Well, at night,” he says, “I can’t even go to sleep, uh—it—it hurts so bad.” And he’s been to hospital, he’s had specialists and medicos on it, and so forth. And I think they were going to remove all the ligaments in his brain at one time or something of the sort.

And anyway, he’s pretty—pretty pressury on the thing. So I told him how to do it and I said, “Make sure you do that and you don’t have to do it very long and just do it every night before you go to sleep. Sit down on the edge of the bed and do this,” you see.

Well, I didn’t expect he would, because the cue had already sounded. And the elephants had heard the cue but he was so interested talking to me about his knee that he had missed his own cue and the elephants more or less picked him up, you know, and took him along. So there he was, going along there, restoring the bandage and getting his pants leg down and so forth and the elephants shoving him on, you know, toward the big top.

So we thought, well, that’s the last of that. You very often give somebody how to do a Touch Assist and they forget about it, you know and they think something or other. We pulled up there yesterday—of course, we’ve gotten very friendly with Ivor since—and we pulled up there yesterday and who’s there but Ivor, see, he’s all dressed up, he’s ready to go on.

And this guy, by the way, is one of the biggest elephant trainers and that sort of thing in England. And he was out there, and he was talking very cheerfully and so forth and he said, “Say!” he said, “I want to show you something,” you know? And he pressed his pants together against his knee, right knee, left knee, same size.

Swelling gone. “Yeah,” he said, “I’ve been doing it.” He said, “Yeah, of course, why not?” He said, “Either you’re crazy or I’m crazy!” he says, “but it works!” So last night—last night, after the show, why, I was developing a practice on business consultation and on personal problems. And I’ve got a practice moving around the country, two or three different locations a week and so forth, at this very minute. And somebody who says he can’t find anybody to process or get any results with Scientology and so forth, sometimes puzzles me.

Puzzles me. Because actually, I’ve never been able to lift me head anyplace in the world without developing a practice. I don’t even ask for a practice and I’ve got one, you know?

I’ve got an old sign, I have to show you some day. I think it says, “Esha mak hlopi isangoma,” which means something on the order of “the white witch doctor.” And it gives my name, in script, and then says that I’m a white witch doctor in, I’m not sure, it’s one of the Bantu tongues; I think it’s probably Zulu. And so anyway, I had a nice practice there.

But I’m careful not to work at it, you know? I actually have to be very careful not to work at it. You turn around and the next thing you know, you got four or five guys standing outside the door and they’ve got something going on.

And then they actually don’t ask for anything very heroic. They don’t expect any results and they’re absolutely flabbergasted. You do something for them, just do something for them.

That’s the primary note. Somebody asks you for help, why, do something for them you know, tell them something. DISSEMINATION 5  Fellow was saying to me last night that he got fainting fits.

And he says, “You just show up at the door and they’re all disappeared now,” he says, “but I was having fainting fits just before you came.” I was talking to him in the arena after the show. And I say, “Well, all right, I...” What can you do for somebody with a fainting fit, you know? Well, I’d just got through giving the show and so forth, and my wits were not in a very grooved—in Condition, you know, I’d just given an extemporaneous performance on the circus, to circus performers, you know?

And you don’t think that isn’t tough, try it sometime! And of course, the lantern slide went out as a medium of entertainment some years ago, you know? And to suddenly whip up all this old technology, you see and dream it up and talk to circus people about the circus, you know, you don’t know whether you’re talking to a pedestal or a drum, you know?

You have to call all their names, you know, as pictures of them appear, maybe you got them wrong or backwards, you know; you got no list. And it’s a bit of a—bit of pressure. All of a sudden somebody says to you, “I have fainting fits,” you know?

So, Ronnie just into the other harness, you know, zip—zip—presto chango. “Well, now, I think if you’ll look back on it, you’ll find some—that you’ve done something that you thought you shouldn’t have done every time just before you’ll have one of these fits.” And he wanders around about this, thinking about this. And of course, what did I give him, you see? Obviously there must be some O/W mixed up in it.

That’s just one off the cuff, you know? And he thought that over for a while, and he wasn’t quite sure about this and so forth and he hadn’t digested it yet. Now, hell go off and hell figure that one out, see?

And he’ll at least have something to do. Don’t you see, when he has a fainting fit, he’ll say, “I wonder what I’ve done that I feel guilty about.” And he’ll think, “Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

You know, I stepped on this,” and he’ll get rid of a couple of overts. And that’s just—it doesn’t matter whether that was the fainting fit or not, the fainting fit will tend to change at that moment, see? After he’s done this two or three times he might also cease to have fainting fits, don’t you see?

But the point is, this is a—this is a hunt—and—punch type of practice. You know, it’s just off the cuff. And you better develop a facility of how to do that.

Somebody finds out you’re a Scientologist and that you’re in this field and that sort of thing. And I don’t go ... The funny part of it is I don’t know how you handle it, but I personally never—I never tell anybody anything.

I just never tell anybody anything. Of course, I have the slight advantage occasionally, I have a press agent circulating around unbeknownst to me, you know, driving in a practice on me, and so forth, like Reg probably was. And I don’t know that Reg was doing this.

But he might have been doing it. Naw, he’s—has nothing to do with it. Because it happens to me anyplace I go.

And as far as these fellows were concerned, why, I was just a photographer that was taking pictures and I proved it to them with the show, see? Must be a pro, look at the show, you know? Very funny part about it, the only person that was really rattled at the circus was a young photographer up there from one of the local papers.

He blew in there with his flash gun  DISSEMINATION 6  and Jap camera. And they all carry a little Yashimat or something like this, camera, flash gun. He blew in there and he says, “Uh—you from the press?” And I said, “No.” I said, “American Magazine features,” you know?

And it’s true enough you know. “Oh!” he says. “The English small circus. Hm.” You know, bored you know, like that and he say—I introduced myself. And he said, “What are you shooting there?” And he looks and he sees it’s a Rollei, and he’s shooting a Japanese version of it, see?

Well, that’s a little point—and he says something about, “What are you shooting there?” And I said, “Well, I don’t have any black and white, I’m shooting only color.” “Oh.” Eyes go round—absolutely black tent, you see, impossible to shoot color. And he says, “There are a couple of other photographers around there—been around—a lot of photographers around this act.” Of course, that was Reg and Bonwick standing over there, my cameras ready, so forth. And I said, “Yes.” I said, “We’re a team working on it,” you know?

So he starts to ask me for what are the pictures in the place, you know, and I pointed out this picture and that picture to him and he went and took them. My respect for him went up, however—the comedy horse got loose amongst a whole mass of children. The comedy horse, that—two men occupy it you know, and it’s up there in the stands, and these kids are absolutely mobbing this comedy horse, you know?

And I slid around and jumped up on a bench to get a shot of this, and just before I fired with a telephoto—which stacked it all up, you see—just before I fired with a telephoto there was a flash on it. I don’t know how this boy got a picture. I don’t know how he dematerialized on one side of the ring and rematerialized on the other side of the ring, but he rematerialized right in the midst of these kids and right in the midst of the comedy horse.

I don’t know how he ever got a picture of it—he must have been far too close up, or he was running a hundred—degree—wide wide—angle camera, but there he was and he came tearing out of there and he waved his hand to me. He says, “I got it, I got it!” and off—he’s gone, he had another appointment, somebody was having a fire someplace he had to shoot, you know? But my respect for him went up.

I hadn’t ever seen anybody dematerialize and rematerialize. Press boys are very good at that, you know, they have to be very quick, they have to be very quick on the draw. It’s an odd skill.

And if you don’t believe it, sometime just pack a camera down the street and spot some pictures. And you’ll find out you’re usually spotting the pictures twenty minutes after you’ve seen them at first and then you cut the comm lag down. Actually, this type of thing needs drills, like we have in Scientology.

But putting a practice together has always been a mystery to me, how anybody could miss. It isn’t because I’m me or because of my name, because very often I will appear in some entirely different guise, you know? Like I’m a motorcycle enthusiast or something like that—I got a practice, you know?

I’m a photographer—I’ve got a practice, you know? It doesn’t  DISSEMINATION 7  matter how I pull the mask over me face, it’s—I wind up with a practice. And one that could be, just with a small amount of pressure, built right straight on up, don’t you see?

Maybe it’s because everybody is trying to build a practice the hard way. Somebody says, “I’ve got a headache,” and you say, “My auditing rates are so—and—so,” and they say, “What’s auditing. “ you know? I’d say that would be the wrong way to go about it.

I’d say that what you do is just on a hunt—and—punch basis get a half—a—dozen cases here or there and so forth—do something here or there and so forth, and you probably build it up to a practice that you could charge money for. You see, having a practice, and a practice that you can charge some money for and a practice that you could charge a lot of money for are just a gradient scale. That’s all it is.

And if you don’t start the one practice, you’ll never get into the other two. I’ve been almost ashamed of myself, someday—sometimes, after I’ve been in an area for a while, the amounts of money—the amounts of money that get pushed in my direction—rather fantastic sums of money. They start going up to the degree that I won’t, you know, go into professional practice.

You know, they start putting the pressure on it, you know. And every now and then I had to raise my rates from two hundred and fifty dollars an hour—that’s too little. Two hundred and fifty dollars an hour is too little.

And those rates were put on my auditing for only—for one reason and that was to stop—not have to audit, see? At five hundred dollars an hour, that’s fairly safe. You only get an occasional once—in—a—blue—moon bid on something like that.

But two hundred and fifty dollars an hour, that’s too cheap. But of course, now, we’re talking about me and my—in conjunction with my name. Well, what would I, operating as nobody at all, just an anonymity or obviously somebody involved with some other profession, well, how fast would it build up to that?

Actually, it’d build up to the same figure. There’s no difference. Because I’d get the same practice, start in the same way, move up in the same gradients.

The only thing an auditor would really have to solve is what does he do for an income while he’s building a practice? And if he hasn’t got a bunch of cash in the bank to relax on or something during this period of time well, what does he do for income during that period of time, that’s all. Because there’s going to be a lag period of time there, depending on how clever he is and how fast he’s off the mark, and so forth.

There’s going to be a short period there when he isn’t making any money. And a period could probably go, with me, from a week, to somebody else—three, four, five months, you see? And some auditors play it backwards.

They set out and use what capital they’ve got, until they get a practice, see? But they never really start their practice, don’t you see. They just live on what money they’ve got, until the practice suddenly mysteriously materializes someplace or other.

Well, that isn’t the way you do it, you actually shouldn’t lean on any capital, you get yourself a bit of sort of income, if you’re starting in in an area or something like that, that puts  DISSEMINATION 8  you in communication and contact with people. Jobs and having something to do and that sort of thing—very useful in getting you in contact with people. Not in any little small office.

If I had to work in a small office and I was trying to build a practice, I certainly would not depend on the small office in which to build a practice. I would go out and join some social clubs. I would join some very numerous social clubs, you know, something that’s got lots of people in it, you know?

Motorcycle racing clubs or debating societies or cooking school—I’d do something desperate. I’d just get in touch with people. And I’d give a few people a little advice.

But usually you don’t have to give them any advice, they come and ask you for advice. They just listen to you talk, that’s all. And you seem to know your business.

You’d be surprised how Scientology communicates across a space that has nothing to do with processing. It’s the most amazing thing you ever had anything to do with. There was a Navy captain, who was—had been flying back and forth on NATO business and I happened to get into—this was some years ago, into the bottom of a ...

They used to have these Stratocruisers that had a huge bar, that—in the lower part of the body, and so forth. And they used to fly back and forth across the Atlantic—old fan jobs. The days of the Atlantic barons and so forth.

These were what they called the pilots of those old fan jobs. Took them seventeen hours to cross the Atlantic or something like that. Anyway, I was sitting down there with this Navy captain, and he was pumping me about something or other or hammering or pounding about something or other, and I was trying to talk to him on the subject of business reorganization or something like this.

It was very banal. All of a sudden a guy sitting on the circular seat that was several feet away from me, he all of a sudden says to me, “Um. Say,” he says, leaning over, “do you have some kind of a philosophy of life or something of the sort?” He said, “You seem to know what you’re talking about.” He said—you know, he was very puzzled.

He was very puzzled. He wasn’t hearing words that were different, you see, but he was hearing thoughts that made sense. Of course, he had no business overhearing this conversation anyhow, you see?

But we weren’t even talking about Scientology and here was this bird over there. And I said, “Yes, as a matter fact, that’s Scientology.” “Oh?” He says, “Scientology?” Of course, I just handed him a Central Organization card and told him to write in for a book or something like that. He was very interested, he put it in his pocket and so on.

I never fail to get on an aircraft without changing the life of at least one person on it. It’s almost impossible. I’d have to be sound asleep or under sedatives, you know?

I find—and my point of view is why I don’t pay any attention to dissemination or that—the amount of attention I should pay to dissemination, perhaps, because it’s not a point I have any trouble with, you see? Of course, I’d be terribly interested in this point, if I had a lot of trouble with it—and I don’t. And I imagine a lot of Scientologists find this a lack, and are upset a little bit about it.

That’s why I’m talking to you about it now, see? DISSEMINATION 9  But it’s not a problem with me and it’s not a problem with me because I don’t make it a problem. I’m actually not particularly worried about it.

Name and reputation have nothing much to do with it, and so on, nothing. They can even know you as famous in some other line, and you’re still there, you see? You don’t have to build a name for yourself, you know, it’s balderdash.

Because a lot of people in the world know my name—just in conjunction with writing, and that sort of thing. But I’ve found very routinely, I could call myself Joe Blitz, and it just wouldn’t make a bit of difference. It’s what you can do that counts, don’t you see?

It’s somebody trying to break into the field of writing—let’s get an analogy going on it—somebody can break into the field of writing and he always says, “Well, if I had a good name, you see, of course, I could immediately get past the editor, you know? And the editor would buy my stuff. And it’s because I don’t have a name,” and that sort of thing.

Well, I don’t know, all of my life I’ve been signing things Joe Blitz, you know? Rene Lafayette. Ken Martin.

Kurt von Raachen, you see? Names. All kinds of names.

Winchester Remington Colt. And those things don’t go to an editor as, “L. Ron Hubbard is now sending you a manuscript which is written by a pseudonym Winchester Remington Colt,” see?

It isn’t even identifiable as manuscript form. It goes in, they buy it. The only time I have any trouble is give it to an agent or something like that, and he buries it underneath a bunch of other manuscripts, and nobody reads it.

About the only trouble I ever had in the old days. I stopped using agents. They have usefulness and they have uselessness.

They’re liable to do you in. They’re liable to send a bunch of stories that you’ve given the agent to sell around to the editor that’s already had them, you see? And then he wonders what on earth is coming off.

Then he wonders if the stories you’re sending him haven’t been rejected by somebody else, don’t you see? And he gets all confused. So I found it was far better just to w—rite “Winchester Remington Colt.” Sometimes you have trouble cashing the checks.

Once in a while you have to send the check back to the accounting department and say, “Please make this out to L. Ron Hubbard, so I can get it in my bank account.” But name—practically nothing whatsoever to do with it. Name is mostly valuable to the editor.

Well, a science fiction story signed “L. Ron Hubbard” can usually kick a science fiction circulation up something on the order of twenty to eighty thousands, additional copies, you see, on the stands. Can be counted on to do so.

So he’s interested in that, you see? And sounds as if I wrote nothing but science fiction. But one of the reasons they pay you high rates in some publication fields and so forth is just because you kick their circulation up, see?

And then you can bargain. Now, there’s a name, there’s a name, but that’s what? That’s not whether or not you got a story sold, that’s just whether or not you got—whether or not you got more money for it.

And you can stand around and argue with those guys and they finally cry and moan. You’d think you were taking their last knucklebone out of them in a painful way, you know? DISSEMINATION 10  And “Yeah, my God, man, I can’t pay you ten cents a word, I can’t do it, it shoots my budget.

That—that ruins my budget for the next three months!” And I usually look at them and yawn cavernously and then say, “Well, why don’t you get another budget?” The guy breaks down and says, “Well, all right.” And the only reason he would be in that position is he wants to kick his circulation. He isn’t telling me what happened. I know very well what happened.

He’s under the gun from the managing editor. The managing editor says, “Son, I hate to call it to your attention, because body odor and other things of this character and halitosis are not things that are discussed very personally or out in the open, but your circulation has dropped lately. You have circulation falling.” Well, the guy says, “How do I get my circulation up?” Obviously the only way he can get his circulation up is reach for a fast name that’ll sell some more issues, that’s familiar to the public or something like this.

He can do something spectacular with the subject matter, don’t you see? “Pope’s sex life revealed,” you know? But frankly, frankly, that is not—that’s not really—that’s part of it, but it’s not as reliable—that’s not as reliable as maybe putting a photograph by Steichen or something on the front page, don’t you see and the public sees this thing, and this thing is going to be full of these things or you know, something like this. Or, here is a new novel by Pearl Buck, you know, something like this.

Bang, you know, and his circulation goes brrrmmm! See? And then he is now permitted to drink cocktails at the cocktail party three steps closer to the managing editor, you see, in their order of rank.

And his circulation is back up. So that’s his problem, how well known you are is his problem. And it regulates to some degree, but only to some degree, how much money you’ll get.

But that’s all it regulates. It doesn’t regulate how much volume you do. Quite the contrary, you very often find that a famous name bars volume, in the field of the arts, but wouldn’t necessarily in processing.

I was just giving you an example, “You’ve shot my budget to pieces for the next three months.” I had some fellow come around to me one time and said, “You mean you would have sold us—you would have sold us some—some articles?” And I said, “Yes, I would have sold you some articles.” He said, “My God.” He said, “I—I never thought—I—I just—just never dreamed that—that—that you would. So we never ask you.” You run into that situation once in a blue moon, see. “I—I just never dreamed that you would process me, you know?” So a name can stand as a liability—can stand as a big liability. Everybody knows you wouldn’t process them because they’re so unimportant and you’re so important, you see?

They can see you some time, getting the janitor to put down his mop pail and you stand him back against the corner of the thing and you’re standing there running a reach and withdraw process on him, they would get over the idea that you would—were very selective and erudite about who you processed or when you processed. But the idea here is simply that  DISSEMINATION 11  you can go at it; I’m sure you could invent ways to go at it wrong and that you don’t have to try very hard to go at it right. That’s the whole idea, you see?

You probably have to work at it accumulating a practice or getting your name up in Scientology. Now, some of you, many of you, don’t have the problems of gaining a practice, but always sooner or later a Scientologist—whether he’s working in an organization or no matter where he’s working—runs into this problem of, accumulation of a practice. He very often doesn’t know what to do with it.

Central Organization, the wrong thing to do with it is to pick it up and do it. You know, carry on an outside practice. That is actually the wrong way to go about it.

For about eight reasons, it’s the wrong way to go about it. You become suspect from your fellow staff members and everybody thinks you must be scanting your job, if you’re processing outside, and so forth. Well, you can always make some handy, jim-dandy Arrangement with the Director of Processing or somebody in the organization, don’t you see, yeah, you bring people in and process them and so forth, and you know that practice area so you know who can stand traffic and who can’t stand traffic.

Pour your practice on into the Central Organization. Just make sure, however, that your neck isn’t way out so that some kid that just came out of the Academy and had a near—failing grade isn’t suddenly given the pc who is looking to you for help, don’t you see? But you could make all kinds of wild arrangements in an organization and it’d be a very knuckleheaded Assoc Sec who wouldn’t listen to them.

He’d have to be awful knuckleheaded. You say, “I’ve got kind of—there’s five or six people around that I process at occasionally, is it all right if I keep this up?” “Well, do you do it for nothing?” “No, they give me some money.” And you say, “Well, why don’t you—you know—I don’t want to be making this money outside the organization,” and that sort of thing, “because this is nonsense, this is probably cutting the organization’s throat.” Well, work something out, see. Work something out.

And these people got to be processed, why, process them on organization time. He probably even could work it out so that they wouldn’t even be charged full organizational rates. You get the idea?

These things are very flexible. Far more flexible than you could imagine. The idea is of course, after you’ve accumulated the trust of somebody, you don’t want to see that trust betrayed.

And you want to follow this thing through, well, bring some hammer and pound and pressure to bear to make sure that it gets followed through. Now, if you go on the idea that life is just a dream, and that we pass through life on a little light cloud and really nothing is ever any work and so forth, I don’t think you’re talking about a human being, I think you’re talking about a rock—a boulder or something like this. You’re not talking about a human being.

Anything is trouble, man, just it’s—anything is  DISSEMINATION 12  trouble. You start doing something, you’re in trouble. You know?

There is no easy way to do anything, see? You keep looking for the easy way to do it, you’re a fool. There is no easy way to do things.

There are some ways that are not as hard as others. And you look over what it takes to maintain yourself. in the realm and rank of professional competence in any particular field and you’ll just be amazed. Somehow or another, not in—I—it took me about fifty hours to shoot these circus pictures.

Fifty working hours. And that includes all visits, all Transport, all assembly of this and that, and so forth. And I had to somehow or other take this out of my Scientology working day.

I won’t say that my Scientology working day hasn’t suffered somewhat in the last couple of weeks, because you can’t take fifty hours of work out of somebody’s work week without something else not getting done, you see? But nevertheless, in view of the fact that my working day is seven days a week and so forth, I figure out I have stacked myself up a bit of backlog, don’t you see, so forth. But there’s—I’m just giving you an idea here.

I haven’t been working on this exclusively, far from it. A matter of fact, during the same period of time I’ve probably saved the bacon of Central Organizations, doubled their income, handled this line, handled that line, done an awful lot of other things too, don’t you see? But let’s just look at this other thing, just from a standpoint of professional competence.

I don’t know if you think it’s any work, as far as physical labor is concerned, to pack a somewhat heavy camera and throw yourself into all kinds of wild corkscrew attitudes, and wrapping yourself around—around—around tent poles and that sort of thing, and leaping out of the way of—two or three times I’ve been saved from hospitalization and so forth, basically trying to keep from getting in the road of the performers and so forth. But even then, be so intent on a picture or something like that that a ring boy would grab me by the shoulder just in the nick of time to get me out of the road. I almost got run over by the pony carts.

I’d never get—live that down, don’t you see? It wasn’t that it’d hurt, it was inappropriate. See, it was déclassé.

Bitten by a lion, well yes, you could live up to that type of injury, but not being run over by a Shetland pony cart. And yet I’m sure that it would have hurt just as much. But up, down, back and forth and an empty camera and pegging back over, and so forth, and this, that and the other thing and talking to this one and that one and corkscrewing into this position and that position and here, there and up and down and back and forth and around and so forth.

Why, if—there really aren’t very many people who work that hard. That’s why they don’t get pictures. You see?

I mean, the difference is somebody else wouldn’t work that hard. DISSEMINATION 13  So well, he’s then not a—he can’t come up to pro standards. Why?

He won’t work that hard. Simple. It’s hard work.

See? You don’t have to look on it as hard work, but it’s certainly active, don’t you see? And you’ll find this obtains in any field.

One of the reasons I went about studying photography is a parallel line for you. I don’t need any excuse or apology for having done so, but restudying photography after all these years, I’m about to rewrite all your courses from the word go, so the best thing to do is to take a full course in another extra field, don’t you see—that has nothing whatsoever to do with what we’re doing—and how does that put together, and what trouble does a student run into and all the rest of this sort of thing. I’m coming on down the line, finishing this up, having lagged it for three years, having had no reason to do it.

Now, finishing it up in about an eighth the time anybody is supposed to, practically every mail is coming back here with one of its examination papers in it, don’t you see? And of course, will be finished up in record time. Then I’ll know how a course like that should be run, know what a student objects to in a course, know how to study it, what the shortcomings of it are, know all this sort of thing.

And nevertheless this is again, hard work. You can’t just limply sit there and say, “Well, isn’t it interesting that cameras have lens covers, you know, isn’t it interesting. “ No, brother, you have to say, “If you use a camera, and there’s several different ways you can use shutters on a camera, and one of them is to remove the lens cap, isn’t that interesting? That’s the oldest shutter there is.

What do you know about that?” you see? You have to invest some of yourself in it. Even if only to that degree.

Then you say—then you say, “Well, you know, if I ever found myself...” a little imagination, see, “if I ever found myself out there and my shutter went busted wide open or I couldn’t get the camera to speed and I didn’t know what the speed was, I could probably stop the aperture way down and put some kind of lens cap over the front of the thing and lift the lens cap and get the exposure. As long as I could have a second or a half a second in which to accomplish this operation, I could probably get the picture, you see? Makes a good basic photographer out of you.

You know, a lens cap goes over the front of the thing; it was used by old—time photographers in order to get the exposure when they didn’t have any shutters. That’s the datum in the course, see? All right, what are you going to do with that datum?

Well, it’s—if it’s just a running river of data that doesn’t have anything to do with anybody and doesn’t apply to anything, you haven’t invested any of yourself in it, see? You’ve got to say, “Well, what is this datum? What can I do with this datum?

What’s it about this?” For instance, I was reading about composition of portrait lighting. Portrait lighting—wow, you say, what’s a—kind of a subject is this? Well, it’s a staggering subject, it’s a sufficiently staggering subject in the first place that hardly anybody  DISSEMINATION 14  ever shoots a portrait, and that of all the samples gotten from all of the portrait photographers in England not one of them passed muster here a few weeks ago—a few months ago.

I looked over all of their samples. They hadn’t made the grade. They weren’t up to Sunset Boulevard or Park Avenue photography standards and this was the whole field, you understand?

They’ve lagged a little bit behind. Now, it’s very odd to find an English professional lagging behind in any particular field, but that’s because the public makes no demand on him, you see? But this is a field that is one of these fantastic fields.

I mean, the portrait photographer that can take a real portrait, you know? He almost can name his price, you see. The best paid fields are portrait and fashion.

So you sure know something about lighting. Well, one of the reasons why nobody ever gets any portraits, they don’t know anything about the lighting. This is one of the wildest subjects I think I ever tangled with.

I didn’t know there was that much to it, see? So, well, naturally, if you’re going to take somebody’s picture, a picture of somebody’s face, you’ve got to have some light on it, you know? That’s the simple statement.

Well, it’s just about as a simple a statement as describing the entirety of atomic physics as something that is used to make atomic bombs. Now, we’ve described the whole field of atomic physics, don’t you see, in that brief statement. Well, it doesn’t describe it.

Because this is a wild subject. I was involved with it last night for a short time. I’m studying this course just before I go to sleep.

And all of a sudden realized everything they were talking about in this particular section had no application to any portrait I would ever take. I wouldn’t take a black—and—white portrait if I could possibly avoid it. I wouldn’t shoot a black—and—white picture if I could avoid it.

This is the day of color. And the thing to do is be in the vanguard, not in the rear guard. And black and white is a terrifically complex technique, but who’d ever buy a black—and—white portrait of themselves if they could get a color portrait of themselves just as easy?

That—the prices that you get for portraits, you might as well give him one. See, it isn’t the finishing or the materials that make the portrait sitting expensive or inexpensive, it’s what the traffic will bear. That’s how the—that’s how the thing is calculated on its pricing.

What will the traffic bear? Well, what the traffic bears is greatly superior to anything that color materials would cost you. This is a fantastic—a fantastic area, and I suddenly realized everything they’re describing here in the way of studio equipment and that sort of thing would have to be converted.

Because there is no field of color portrait photography. Left me in the middle of the lesson going “Uh?” you know? Then I realized I’ve got to go ahead and learn black—and—white color portrait lighting in order to know how to convert it.

Well, it didn’t say to do any of that in the text, did it? They didn’t tell you to invest anything of yourself in this subject. It says you’re just supposed to put the fill here, supposed to put the main light here, you’re going to put the hair light there, and you’re going to put the—a small spot over  DISSEMINATION 15  here in order to bring up the hands and you’re going to put a headscreen over here in order to take out the ungainly large ear of the person.

That’s all you have to know. And “Well, all right, aar—riigg—hhtt, ara—ara—ara—eah, and we get down and we’ll pass the examination nyah—nyah. One day you would have been setting up and you suddenly would have realized, “Wait a minute, I’m shooting color.

I don’t shoot black and white. What am I doing with thirty—five hundred Kelvin? What am I doing with a photoflood 2?” Well, you’re not doing anything with a photoflood 2 because the day they make what is laughingly called indoor color film into a color film, I want to hear about it.

Because I don’t think the day has arrived. There are two brands of color film. They’re what’s called “outdoor” color film or “sunlight” color film and there’s “indoor” color film or “tungsten” color film.

And tungsten color film has a certain adequacy, I’m sure, and some photographers try to shoot inside color film by putting a blue lens cap on their—or a little blue lens on their filter and make it do somehow. But I notice oddly enough they don’t get color pictures and I always thought the point in taking pictures was to get a picture. I know that’s naive.

But all I’m making here, not to drag you off into those ramifications, is it here required the tremendous investment of self in the study of the thing. What was I going to do with this material I was studying? I wake up in the middle of this thing ...

Of course, I’m happy as a clam to know all about these areas and angles and I’m very happy to know all about black—and—white lighting and so forth. But none of this can be done with the equipment which is advised, because the equipment which is advised is all—would turn your color film into nothing but red fire. And you would have nothing on that color film.

The kind of color film I shoot and the day I study a course and change my color film just because they haven’t given me the answer, of course, hasn’t arrived. See, because color film is something you can’t make work anyway. You’ve got a color film that’s working for you, man, don’t move off of it.

Well, what happens to portrait lighting? What happens? Well, you can’t use any of those types of lights.

You have to use the basic setup, but how do you figure out a basic setup? The thirty—five—hundred—Kelvin red light would just make a ruddy mass of red mush on your color film, you see? We can’t do anything with it.

There are no strobe lights burning fifty—six—hundred—Kelvin daylight color. There are no strobe lights that you could compose with, see? But I dimly remember sometime somebody or other in a photographic magazine, Modern Photography, something like that, that somebody had put out something that had a bulb in it and also had a strobe in it, so that you could compose with the bulb and then when you fired with the strobe you would get the daylight.

That sounds awfully roundabout, don’t you see, and it might look different, but this was the line I was suddenly shoved off into, a technical problem miles wide. How do you solve that technical problem? Well, you better know all there is to know on the subject which you’re studying—not go galloping off into the wild blue yonder just because you have a technical problem not  DISSEMINATION 16  specifically covered.

Let’s find out the subject we are studying, before we go galloping off. This was no reason then why I should put down portrait lighting as a text, you see, and start maundering and spinning practically on the subject. Well, all right, this is the way you light a portrait, but I’ll be taking color portraits.

Even if I take a black and white, don’t you see, I will first take it in color. I wouldn’t shoot a black—and—white negative. Not now.

I’m learning better. You take a color negative and convert it to a black—and—white negative, by a secondary step. Well, what do you do?

Well, your best operating procedure is jolly well study what you’re studying. You know, not leap out of the airplane with no parachute. Now, when you’ve got some command of that, why, maybe the dawn will rise and the bells will tinkle—tonk, you see, and you will suddenly have a brilliant clue, because you may not be up against that problem after all.

It may be a simple problem. When you finally get through, you may finally discover that there are such things as masking disks of some kind or another that fit, and that you could even convert a photoflood. Or you may find some various other things.

But even though knowing full well you were studying something that is inapplicable to what you will be doing, the best thing to do is to—as far as a formal subject is concerned or the formal study of the subject—is to go on and find out all you can about it from it. So I’d say the system that you would be operating with is first invest a little bit of yourself in the study. And having done that, study what you’re studying even when you find it doesn’t apply.

If it’s there to study, study it, see. And even though you say, well, it doesn’t apply to my peculiar, particular problem, well, finish studying it if you’re in training, you see. Finish studying it.

Even though it doesn’t apply to your particular problem. Don’t go getting impatient with it and so forth, because you’re liable to find out that its principles as you go around the corner, suddenly in some way do apply. But you actually at that stage don’t know enough about it to really know whether they apply or not.

You may only think they don’t apply. You may be under a misapprehension. Well, the way to get around all that is to go ahead and study what you’re studying.

Even though it is apparently not applicable to what you are going to apply it to. And then, after you have completed all that, make your adaptions. So you’ve got three steps here.

Put a little bit of yourself in it. You know, “How am I going to use this stuff?” you see? “How does this apply to me? It says here that a woggaroo is nine feet taller than a whizzabung.” Well, that’s an interesting datum.

What’s it got to do with you? What’s it got to do with a pc? What’s it got to do with anything?

Study actually does you no good whatsoever unless you ask questions like that. All of a sudden you say, “Oh, he means a—he means a hoolagaroo. Oh, uh—oh well, of course, that’s nine feet.

Why does he remark on it?” Well, that’s just being curious about it, you see? DISSEMINATION 17  All right, well let’s back it up just a little bit and you’ll say, “Well, how would I use this datum in handling a case?” See, how would I—you that’s reading that—how would I use this datum in handling a case? How would I apply it?

What does it have to do with anything I would be doing? See? That’s what I mean, put a little bit of yourself in it, see?

What does this have to do with anything I am or will be doing? And you’ll be quite electrified sometime that a statement that doesn’t have anything to do with the price of fish all of a sudden becomes very intimate and very germane. From just a meaningless string of words, it turns into a very meaningful statement indeed.

One of the reasons why—one of the reasons why people have an awful hard time studying things like engineering, and so forth, is they’re not involved with engineering. Students in universities are not involved with engineering; students in medical schools are not involved with healing; people in mental—treatment skills of yesteryear are not involved with mental treatment at the time that they are studying it. So, of course, they come out at the other end with a total unreality on the whole cockeyed thing.

This lays an interesting foundation, don’t you see? Because and—why this is bad—the only thing that’s bad about this, see, you’re not in that position, you are using it. But your—what’s bad about this—what’s very poor—is that your nonapplication then never brings up what would I do with it, see?

I’ll give you the lousiest course, the most horrible course I ever took. I stayed in Washington one hot summer to finish off an awful lot of engineering courses, and so forth, that I needed for credit, you know? People stand around and they say I haven’t got any degrees, I haven’t got any of this and so forth—they ought to been there that summer, man.

I’d much rather been out flying airplanes, because I was having a ball flying airplanes. Instead of that I had to sit in this horrible—they didn’t have any air conditioning in Washington and Washington is cool at 95, in most summers, you know? Sitting down there at GW, sweating over this stuff.

And one of the courses was materials of construction. I could have cheerfully have choked the guy who ever wrote that textbook. He had the organization facility of an army officer.

And my God, brick and concrete, brick and concrete and pebbles and aggregate and the streak characteristic of marble and the tension of steel—were all in the same paragraph. You just couldn’t sort it out. Nothing—nothing was ever over here grouped.

You didn’t start in something, “We are now going to talk about bricks. There are big bricks and little bricks. Bricks are made out of clay,” see. “And you take clay and you put them on a paddle and shove them in an oven and you bake them at umphty—umph degrees for umphty—umph hours, and when you bring them out, you can sell them for money and they’re called bricks,” see?

Nothing like this. This book—this textbook—I think, cost about twenty dollars or something like that, of those precious dollars of those days that really bought something, you know? With twenty dollars of today I think you can get a lolly for it.

Anyhow, this cockeyed  DISSEMINATION 18  book was about two—and—a—half or three inches thick. And he hadn’t classified anything like that. No, bricks and steel and pebbles and marble.

And—and every sentence was another disrelated datum. You talk about a walking zone of GPM confusion—this was the worst I ever heard of. Every sentence, in every paragraph, related to different subjects—and contained many subjects—but every sentence in the paragraph was something which was isolated and different from the paragraph.

And with the Thermometer bouncing around a hundred, you know, sitting in a roaring hot classroom, you see, trying to walk my way through this—that’s why I almost kill reporters who say, “What degrees , do you have?” It’s just that one. Anyhow, I wasn’t using any bricks, see? It wasn’t actually how confused the text was—and it was a horrible textbook—the usual gag of the textbook written by the professor, you know, when there are better texts.

I wasn’t using any bricks. I wasn’t about to do anything with marble. I wasn’t about to do anything with Aggregate and I didn’t care what the tensile strength of steel was.

I wasn’t going to steal any. This stuff was blah—who cared? Well, I’d be interested in it right now.

I’d be interested in quite a bit of that material now. Well, we’re building quite a few buildings around here, and they’re built out of various thises and they’re built out of thatas, you know, and it’d be very interesting to know what this stuff was and what its genus was and that sort of thing. But I’d now be reading it from a different viewpoint, wouldn’t I?

I’d be reading it from the viewpoint of “Well, I don’t know does this have any application to anything we’re doing around here? All right, here’s a datum that says, ‘Bricks when they’re put on a paddle are flipped and pancaked and after that you have groozergruffs in them.’ That have anything to do with what we’re doing? Oh!

Groozergruffs. I don’t know, that must be that—that must be that weird scoop that has the maker’s name in it. Hey, what do you know!

I think I’ll go out and pull that on Mr. Jenner, you know?” You know, look very wise and say, “Be sure you get the groozergruffs right side up, you know?” But I’d probably know what that was for, you know, it’s so they won’t slip sideways after they’re laid or something, you know? I’d probably have some interest in them.

But only if I’d invested something of myself in it. Of course, there was nothing to invest in it at that particular time, because I (1) had no slightest intentions of ever doing anything in the field of engineering and (2) wasn’t doing any engineering and (3) it had been removed academically as far as possible from the realm of practicality. It couldn’t have gotten any further without a spaceship and left the planet, you see?

Well, that makes then a very unreal, a very poor professional. You’d have a very poor professional. Well, it comes from the basis—he must invest some of himself in it.

He’s got to do it, in other words. I don’t know, I could probably sit up there and read that photography course from cover to cover all the way through. True, there’s a lot of these things I’m not doing.

I’m not suddenly taking a lesson, and so forth, but I am using it. I was clever enough  DISSEMINATION 19  last night—a couple of them, the proprietors of the circus, asked me why I hadn’t taken their picture. There was some inference that I should have taken their picture.

Well, true enough. And I told them that portraiture was entirely different than candid shooting an act. I could speak with some authority.

I’d been studying the living daylights out of it, you see. I said it’d take considerable more equipment, I said it’d take a lot more time and I’d have to catch you some day and I’ll come up some day with some equipment and we’ll shoot your pictures. And I said, but this is a different field.

And they were very impressed with it, but I was on solid ground. Yeah. I could have laid me a gorgeous egg, you see, because those people would tend to be seen full face and full in close.

They’re not performers, don’t you see? The only thing you could shoot of them would be a portrait. The only thing that would be worth shooting would be a portrait, don’t you see.

They aren’t doing anything, there is no action they’re involved in, except owning and being themselves. So what can you shoot of them but a portrait? Well, then it’d have to be a sort of a study, wouldn’t it?

It would depend on its characteristics for their character, or their—their attitude. This portrait would sort of have to reflect this fact, it’d have to tell a little bit of the story. What could you do with it?

Well, that’s what you could do with it. But right away, when I came back, I was reading there last night before I got me forty winks and I was reading this ... How the hell would you walk into a circus, eighteen pounds of snoots and sixteen—a snoot is something you use in photography, not in their zoo—and big spots with barn doors and headscreens and backscreens and benches—and this is minimal studio photography equipment.

I looked this over; how would you go about getting a portrait of these people? You haven’t even got two hundred and twenty volts to work with, see—you haven’t even got the voltage. They run on four—forty.

I suppose you could take an ordinary bulb and screw it into a reflector, but you wouldn’t know how hot that was or what the light was after you’ve done that. And portraiture requires a fixed setup of fixed and known areas. How would you go about this?

And I suddenly got the peculiar notion of how would you go about putting together a portable portrait studio? What would you have to have in order to do this? Wow!

It left me completely adrift. I haven’t got it licked at all, see? But there’s no lack of interest in the subject.

I had two people, two very good looking people, standing in front of me, you know? “Well, why haven’t you taken our pictures?” you know? I had to think fast. I had to say, “Well, portraiture.

Ha! That’s very specialized field of photography. You realize that we’ve been shooting in the field of action, candid, here, color.

But portraiture, that’s another field. Takes a long time.” Ha! I could speak with authority.

Yeah, it does take a long time. I get back and I got a very, very renewed interest. I’ve been going over portrait lessons and so forth and that sort of thing and I got a very renewed interest in this whole field.

What is this, see? All of a sudden some reality dawns on me. I’m not opening up a shop, you see, with a thirty—foot back studio.

DISSEMINATION 20  It’s very funny, you know, you get sold in this course. Every one of these boys is a specialist. They’re terrific authorities in the field, they’re good boys, you know, good practical men—writing these texts and so forth.

And every one of them assumes that you’re going to be their kind of photographer, you know? So he gives you all the pressure. This is what you’ve got to do and this is what you should have and this is the kind of a camera you will be using, you see, and it’s all intent.

And you’re from this field of photography to that field of photography, the other field of photography—and you never knew there were so many fields of photography. And when you wind up, you wonder what you are, you know? You’re not quite sure!

You’re going to—are you a fashion photographer, are you a this? Actually kind of wind up a mixed bag. We’re not going to open up any studio down there on the street and hang out a little sign saying, “Your lifelike portrait finished in five minutes,” or something like this, you’re not going to do anything stupid like that.

Well, how are you ever going to take any portraits? What are you going to do, have your wife falling all over these light stands in the middle of your ... I got enough things to fall over!

You ever notice, in my office, and so forth? People keep bringing me things and giving me things. I have things to test and every once in a while every two or three months, we get very heroic and we move out the tigers and we move out these various things and we find places to put them and all this sort of thing.

All we need is to add large spots, small spots, fills, mains, backscreens. This is all we need, you know, just to make life unbearable. I can hear Suzie now.

She’s very good at it, but I think she’d blow up. She wouldn’t be able to get to a dining room table or bring me a Coke or anything, see? What do you do?

Apparently nobody has really solved this one. But probably they have, see? And somewhere down along the line somebody is all of a sudden going to talk ...

Because I notice there’s a future lesson someplace says “Home portraiture.” Odd thing for a lesson to be about for professional photographers. He must be talking about some kind of photography you do going around driving around in a car and setting up a—portrait stuff or portable portraiture. Maybe there’s a whole book on the subject, see?

There’s no particular reason to just give up and throw in the sponge, because it can’t be done, don’t you see? And there is no portable equipment and you know, bog down at this point. You’ve invested some of yourself in it, you see, and now you’ve run into this fantastic problem that is undoable.

No, well, let’s go on and study the thing out to its bitter end, see? And somewhere along that line you’re going to find a doability. You’ll know more about it from which to evolve your solution.

Solutions are not actually evolved from inspiration. Solutions are evolved from observation and inspection and data. That’s what you get solutions from.

Observation, inspection, data. Familiarity. You’ve got an object, it’s object A.

I don’t care what this object is and you got a problem with relationship to this object. I don’t care what it is. This could be a handy, jim—dandy clock that is made in Switzerland and tells how many freckles you’ll have in  DISSEMINATION 21  August, you know?

It doesn’t matter what this thing is. Familiarity is a tremendous factor in this, as you know. So you just touch it and not touch it and touch it and not touch it, for a while.

Scientology has a lot of simple facets, you know? All of a sudden you say, “Oh, that’s what you do with it,” you know? You get the idea. “That’s what you do with it.” Familiarity.

Observation. It runs off the barriers which prevent you from observing it—run off on this Reach and Withdraw stuff. But more importantly, you’ve got—you’ve got all kinds of data and other things, you can look the thing over.

Of course, you can go to another crime of “We will study it for the next five or ten years before we do anything about it.” That is equally a crime, don’t you see? That’s nonsense. That’s overstudying.

That is not solving it by studying it. Huh—huh. Which I think that some of the boys in some of the fields which preceded us were quite guilty of “Well, we will study your case for two years and at the end of that time, we’ll find out whether or not we can do anything for you.

During that period of time we will charge you sixty dollars a week for your sittings. What’s your paycheck, sixty—five? Well, actually, sixty—two—fifty is our charge.” Bunch of fakes.

You know that criticism or critique of psychoanalysis, you’re probably familiar with the old paper from way back when. That really landed harpoons into those poor psychiatrists down there. “He doesn’t know anything about psychoanalysis. He’s crazy.

He doesn’t know anything. He’s well...” They were presented with this thing, this paper, see, on the stand. They just went mad!

Boy, that thing must have sunk into them like harpoons fired into whales, you know? Because every line of it is dead—on and dead—true. But it’s the very things they don’t want anybody to know, you see?

And so out of the whole field of Scientology, all psychiatry could pick on was a critique of psychoanalysis. In other words, they didn’t pick on Scientology. They just picked on Scientology’s opinion of them.

And that was all they found fault with, and it short—circuited their whole ... You understand what happened? We wrote a criticism of psychoanalysis, so we wouldn’t make similar errors.

So when they were dragged up as witnesses by the Laborites down there, and so forth and when they were all squared around, why, they were really going to throw harpoons into us, see. They were going to really fix our clocks and so forth, when as a matter of fact although they did give some other extraneous testimony to this, their attention and all the excitement and heat went on, on our criticism of them, see? They were just trapped, right there, with that.

And actually never got off to first base about saying how bad it is. Only thing they could say is, “They don’t know anything about psychoanalysis. It’s not true, see?” Of course, every line of it is true.

And so all they harpooned was our harpooning of them. And I tell you, driving harpoons into harpoons after they have sunk into your midriff is not a good defensive mechanism. So, the upshot of this is that familiarity, knowledge, and so forth, can be overdone.

Some—I’ve heard of somebody going to school till he’s—for eighteen or twenty years to learn  DISSEMINATION 22  how to thread needles or something like that—an overstudy situation. But that would again be because the study must not be developing any familiarity. I should think the thing would short—circuit itself out, if there was a subject there to be studied and if any familiarity could be gained with it.

So the shortness of study depends on familiarity acquired. That’s why university education takes so long. They don’t acquire familiarity with what they’re studying.

In many zones they don’t, a few of them they do, they take flashlights and go around at night, around in parks, to shine them in cars to study sociology and that gives them familiarity. As a matter of fact, I’ve often thought it was too familiar. But there are some fields where they do do some looking.

Now, in then a course of approach to the world of gaining understanding, of gaining knowledge, of gaining things, you actually have a necessity to be in contact, to be in touch with, to not fall out of touch with. And as long as you can maintain your familiarity line or channels or approaches or something like this, you will find that your competence will increase. It is only when you crawl off into an ivory tower and so forth—one of the reasons why you find me tearing off into the wild blue horizon whenever I get an opportunity every few years and suddenly hitting some other subject matter, and so forth, is just that.

You can become too concentrated on one line of subject matter, you fall out of contact with a line of subject matter which is the basic line of subject matter which we have, which is people. And you can fall out of that, you can get so withdrawn into that, that you never meet any people. You can overdo this by getting so involved and so in contact with them that it stops being a familiarity, it seems to be a horrible bore.

You can overdo this very easily. That is to say, you can throw yourself out into the sticks somewhere and you’re not in contact with anybody who knows anything or does anything and you don’t actually operate to improve the situation, don’t you see? You don’t get anybody in that area studying anything and so forth.

And you just keep contacting raw meat and associating with nothing but raw meat, after a while you get kind of overwhelmed. Because it’s awful raw. But if you withdraw to a point where you’re in contact with no raw meat whatsoever, you tend to 90 out of contact with your basic material: how do people operate?

Who are people? What do they do? How do they look?

How do they feel? How do they act? And then you’re liable to get a specialized idea of what raw material is or how it operates or how it should operate or something like this.

You’re liable to get an odd opinion of it. So you ought to go look at it once in a while. And you ought to go look and see how people operate and so forth.

See if you’re getting unreal in any particular line and so forth. Well, I obviously find I’m not getting very unreal. I go out and I apply Scientology I at the very highest.

I apply it just as I’ve told you to apply it; I go out and be pleasant and smile, don’t even hang up a shingle or a sign and so forth, and I get a practice. I got one growing and believe me that if I went on contacting that area and those people—and I very probably will—over a period of time without my doing another blasted thing about it, except being nice  DISSEMINATION 23  to them, and when they have a problem give them a piece of advice or tell them something to do or do something for them—next confounded thing you know, these people are built right on up along the line. They want to know more about this.

They want to know more about what’s going on. And so what do you do? You route them into some texts.

You give them some books, you tell them to read this or read that or read something of the sort. You don’t even have to strain at it, don’t you see? You give them a card.

Say, “If you order a book from this area for five bob, why, it’ll tell you all about it, see?” Something like that. It isn’t even difficult, see. It requires no strain.

Well, you go on this way and if you are not running it backwards and interfering with yourself, you wind up at the other end with a practice. You just can’t help yourself. It’s whether or not you can keep yourself busy during this interim period, that is—would be the problem.

Wouldn’t be the problem—the problem isn’t to develop a practice, the problem is to have a little bit of time in which to let a practice develop, don’t you see? Buying a little bit of time, the economic world, you buy time with dollars and pounds and runts and things of that sort. But anyway, there’s the—the problem involved in the world is familiarity with the world and the people of the world and so forth, and these people are very far from mean, vicious and ornery bums.

There are some that are blinder than others. And you can normally find out that your—what you know and what you’re doing works and it’s wise and it brings with it a great deal of comfort and straightens a lot of things out and so forth. And then you sort of know that you’re doing right and going right and all is well and all of this sort of thing works out.

I’d say, as far as developing a practice is concerned, the problem is simply to get over the period of the coffee and cakes while one is forcing itself on you. See? So, if you try to force a practice on yourself or try to speed this up or razzle—dazzle it in some particular line or—you’re liable to goof it up, don’t you see.

You’re liable to violate its time factor. See? You’re going to work at it, you know, you’re going—you got to keep working at it all the time, but you can’t force its development.

You can’t say this has got to be developed seven times as fast as it is developing or something like this. “Because I need more money next Tuesday” or something like that. That’s how you get in the road. But you normally develop a practice anyway.

I’m quite intrigued with this little adventure—a very small adventure, only I’ve had them many times. I’m not really a creature of ivory towers. This is why we have Scientology.

Familiarity with existence. And it—I get into a rebellious frame of mind every once in a while. I don’t want to sit at the desk any longer, you know, and be snowed under with the despatches and all this sort of thing, it appears to me to be profitless, something like that.

I lose touch with whether or not it’s worthwhile, you see? And I go out and in the space of a couple of weeks, of a few visits to a particular area, doing an entirely different thing and without any reason for anybody to be nice to me at all, why, I get—what we’re doing works,  DISSEMINATION 24  it’s desperately needed, the little light touch that you can hand out, just off the cuff and so forth, makes a better, happier world in the environment you enter. Very magical.

Matter of fact, I feel myself just a little bit overwhelmed because I don’t know anything I work less hard on than Scientology in that particular area, see? I worked on Scientology hard at home, but in that area I carefully didn’t work on Scientology. And all of a sudden, why, there it comes.

Next thing you know, I probably wouldn’t be able to do anything about it at all. Why, there is probably the practice—I won’t exaggerate—of the whole circus world walking in my direction. There it is.

I can do something else for them, and so forth, but gradually, if I keep associating with that zone or area, that’s going to walk in more and more. It happened to me once before in England. I had movie actresses and things like that walking in on my direction.

I cut it off. I channeled it off very hard in another direction because it was getting in my research road and so forth. Well, I hope I won’t have to cut this one off, because it’s too pleasant.

It’s too pleasant. After all, if you—you can suddenly appear for just a few brief hours in an area and have people asking you all about it and the next thing you know face the problem of “What am I going to do with this practice while not trying to acquire one?” Well then, there’s hope for any Scientologist that walks out into the world and doesn’t try to push it too fast or too soon or too quick and does his job somewhat competently. Thank you.

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