The Old Days - Aboard the Apollo 1973 - The Prequel
I wrote the last Installment of my story on March 11 of this year, 7 months ago. At that time, I was pretty new to this board having joined in February, 2009. I started the story in October, 1973 when I was a Sea Org member who was just transfered from CCLA to the Apollo. The last 7 months on ESMB have changed me drastically as to my knowledge and feelings about both LRH and Scientology. I had nearly 3 1/2 years in Scientology which I did not include in my story and those years were very interesting so with my new insights, I decided it would be appropriate to write a Prequel to the story, telling of the first three and one half years.
INSTALLMENT 8 - "THE PREQUEL" OF MY STORY
Personal Background - I was born into a middle class family in Los Angeles and attended schools there. In grade school I was one of the top students and got straight A's. I had a very very happy childhood, took piano lessons, was in the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and was very popular with the other kids. I had one younger brother and my parents were kind hearted people who were very responsible parents, though a little overly protective. They were just really good people, kind, caring and fun.
The onset of puberty - My happy childhood ends My happy childhood came crashing down at the outset of puberty at age 11 1/2. A wet dream lead to my first ejaculation and I had no idea what it was and was afraid I had damaged my body so I kept it a secret and told no one. About a week later, I thought about the girl across the street, Joanie, again and whamo, another ejaculation. This started me on the road to introversion and self consciousness. At the age of 9 I was deemed to be near sighted and started wearing glasses and at 13, about a year and a half after I started masturbating, my parents had braces put on my teeth. A friend of mine, whom I still know, called me a "Four Eyed Monster with Silver Teeth".
I became very self conscious and was withholding the masturbation from my friends and family. I did not know it was normal so I thought I had some kind of sickness. I was terrified of being around girls and tried to avoid them but fantasized about them at night. My Dad bought me a book, "For Boys Only" which covered the subject of masturbation with a 1950's slant which helped me a little. Anyway, I carried on through my teen-age years, very self conscious and considered myself ugly because of my glasses and braces. I had a circle of male friends and none of us were popular, cool or dating girls and we hung out at school, mainly discussing sports and betting small amounts on a weekly football or basketball pool. Can you say "NERD" because I and most of my buddies were nerds.
My strengths at the time were that I was smarter than average and was always very good in math and arithmetic, plus I had an extremely good memory and memorized much of what I read, especially facts and figures. Actually, I was above average in looks, maybe a 7.5 to 8 on a 10 point scale but I didn't know it and thought I was ugly.
My problem areas were not being able to have a girlfriend and not being popular and it really boiled down to having extremely low self esteem and self confidence.
In my early 20's, using my Bachelor's degree in math, I obtained a computer programing job in the aerospace industry and started going to dances to meet girls. I got contact lenses and the braces had been removed years ago so I was pretty good looking and with a college degree and a good job, I was easily able to meet girls. I was still nervous around them and resorted to haviing a couple of beers or a mixed drink or two at parties or dances to loosen me up and when I did this, I was loose and relaxed and often could get to 1st base (kissing) or 2nd base (fondling) with various girls, some of them extremely attractive. It turned out I also had a good sense of humor and this was another asset that attracted women to me.
I got to a point where I could pick the girl of my choice at a dance or party, have 3 beers or so to loosen up and then spend the evening dancing with her and usually get her to come to my apartment and make out. I became very good at this but the problem was that I was not usually being myself. I talked about superficial things, and tried hard to be interesting. Being a kind hearted person, I did show a genuine interest in the girl's interests but I was not really being myself and was not talking about deep seated beliefs but I was just carrying out a role, being phoney and trying to get sexual favors.
In 1966 one girl recommended a book to me, "The Razor's Edge" by W. Somerset Maugham and this book caused a big change in my life. I began a four year period of reading all the classic books of literature, authors such as Sartre, Camus, Dostoyevki and the like. In the meantime I took a class in Zen Buddhism at U.C.L.A. evening extension and began meditating, Zen style.
I loved my Zen meditation and it relaxed me to a great degree so that I did not always need 3 beers to loosen up to talk to girls. I changed employers to IBM Corporation as a Senior Staff Progammer and by the time I was 27, I was making $1,200 a month which is probably about $6,000 in todays' money. I was pretty well off for a single middle class guy and my expenses were low and I was saving a large portion of my salary. The stage was set for me to now discover Scientology and I did so.
June 1970 - I meet Harry and am taken to an intro lecture
Ken, who was one of my best friends and who I still know, told me about his cousin, Harry, who was in something called Scientology in New York City and was moving to L.A. to continue his Scientology studies at a place called ASHO. Earlier, I had just moved to a new luxurious apartment with my Brother and Ken and I decided we wanted to throw a party at my new place so Ken suggested that this Scientologist, his Cousin Harry, be invited. I asked Ken what Scientology was about and he said that according to Harry, it taught a person to communicate with anyone on any subject without any back off. I remarked to Ken that to me that did not seem like a big deal. I mentioned to Ken that I had stage fright when talking before a group and maybe I could take a class there that might help me.
THE PARTY I was talking to various people at the party when I noticed a stranger coming in. He was a little on the short side, about 5' 7", wore glasses and while still young, he had a receeding hairline. I figured this must be Harry, Ken's cousin. Harry began at one corner of the living room and began talking to people. I immediately noticed he was different from anyone I had ever seen. When he talked to people his attention was rivited on them - he seemed totally immersed in what they were saying and he seemed with all his beingness to be trying to duplicate them. As he came around the room closer to me, I noticed that he would acknowledge every phrase which they uttered. His favorite acknowledgements were different than most people use, and were not uh huhs and grunts but he would say, "I got that" or I really got that!" or often say "okay" or "I really understand". I noticed that Harry mainly introduced himself, then the other person did most of the talking and Harry was mainly just acknowledging and these other people, really strangers to him, began telling him about intimate details in their lives and they would talk on and on to Harry while he just acknowledged. Somethimes they would ask him a question to get him to participate in the conversation and he would answer with overwhelming sincerity and his answer would seem like some incredible pearl of wisdom, almost poetic in nature. I stopped talking to everyone and just began watching Harry apply his communication skills. I could see he was doing something different in the way he was talking to people but I could not figure out what he was doing.
Needless to say, he finally got to me and I was having a problem at work which I asked him about. He told me that Scientologists did not evaluate for a person but instead gave them the data to figure out the answers for themselves. He then invited me to an intro Lecture to be given at the Los Angeles Organization on June 5 and to be given by a man named Seton Thomas. Harry also invited my Brother and assured us that he would be there to meet us and make sure we got good seats and were handled with good service.
My Brother and I were just blown away by Harry and a lot of the people at the party asked, "Who is that beautiful person, what an incredibly beautiful being.?"
THE LECTURE
The L.A. Org was in a large vintage type two story house, probably built around 1919 or 1920. About 20 to 25 people attended the lecture. Seton Thomas was a nice looking guy who had just turned 40. Later in the lecture, he said that he went clear one year ago in 1969 so though his body was 40, he was really only one year old, dating from when he went Clear. He put on one hell of a great lecture. I found it amusing that he refered to his body as something different than himself. He would grab his waisteline which was flat and firm and say I dig my body, its cool but it isn't me. He covered the ARC triangle among other things. He also stated that L Ron Hubbard was in the first nuclear physics class in the USA and while all the other men taking the class had in mind creating the atomic bomb, L Ron Hubbard was the only one n the class who was using the data given there to free mankind. Seton, also talked of everything in the universe being made of MEST but that we thetans, a term he defined to us, were not in the MEST universe, that we were souls, not that we had a soul as Christianity states it but that man is his own immortal soul. He also had us close our eyes and look at a picture of a cat and then asked each of us 'who' was looking at the picture. When he mentioned that Scientology was a cousin of Buddhism which used similar principles but also used Western scientific technology then I WAS SOLD! I wanted to start my first course, HAS, and I wanted to start immediately
What the Next Couple of Installments Will Contain
Well, this will end the first installment of my prequel, I will take this up to October of 1973 when I left L.A. for the Apollo in Portugal. It won't be real long, maybe three or four more installments. After that, I will put this story to bed forever. Some real interesting stuff happened to me prior to going to the Apollo and there are some entertaining anecdotes. I am anxious to see if there will be much interest in reading this prequel.