RON’S MAY 15 MESSAGE

15 May 1951

First Anniversary of Dianetics

I’m very sorry that I can’t be with you today in person, and I would like to take this opportunity to say hello to you. I am very pleased at the venture you have undertaken here by this meeting, commemorating the publication of the first book, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. I am very flattered that you have decided to give it this acclaim. I am very happy to be able to tell you that, almost on the same date, the second book, Dianetics: The Science of Survival, is on the presses, with the accumulated information of the past year. You are celebrating the publication of the first book, and I am extremely happy and perhaps I’ve been celebrating a little bit on getting the second book written.

The first book was published because of demand. The necessity of telling people, word for word, how you did Dianetic processing was up to a point before that first book was written where nobody could possibly answer the mail volume, and every time one answered a letter one would have had to have written about a hundred thousand words! So the first book was written mainly to answer those questions— to tell people how to do it, to tell people what Dianetics was all about. I did the best job that I knew how to do on it in the limited time. The book had the drawback that it did not have any background of public experience. That is to say, I had communicated Dianetic processing to a very few people and had only the experience of communicating it to them.

After the publication of the first book began the real work of learning how to publish, learning how to communicate, learning how to bring to general public attention the subject of Dianetics and how one did processing.

Well, it took a long time. Perhaps the first big advance on that was a lecture which I am sure that quite a few of you there attended over at Elizabeth. I remember one Friday night I gave the first lecture on Standard Procedure. It started out with the goals— the clear, the release, and so forth— and codified the matter of Standard Procedure. I gave that lecture, if I remember rightly, to the Monday- Wednesday- Friday Course, the Saturday Evening Course and the Professional Course.

That was the first major codification, and there have been several such codification’s since. Unfortunately, several of these were given in California, a considerable distance from the auditors that I first taught in Elizabeth, so these techniques didn’t get into the hands of very many people, and just the auditors there in California were informed of those. A small book of ten lectures was published in some effort to keep people abreast of this, but it was very far from the complete story. The whole subject of accessibility had to be covered.

The task of trying to communicate to people how you did it, so well that they could do it easily and efficiently, progressed throughout the year. As far as the technology just of communications is concerned some new items of therapy presented themselves, but really they were not very major. If you will read the first book you will find that most of the material which we have is contained in that book.

Now we are working on some new method of communication as a major step, and the codification of processing itself has made its major advance by a chart by which the auditor can select the type of processing (and there are now about eight methods of processing) which he should apply to a particular preclear This is in the interests of making it very simple for the preclear to get the optimum out of processing. People are taking too long to do this, and mainly it comes from the auditor’s failure to properly judge the preclear’s place on the tone scale. This new chart is the core and subject of the new publication Dianetics: The Science of Survival— Simpler, Faster Techniques. All I have been trying to do for a year, actually, is to teach people how to do it, to teach them how to do it well and to find new methods of teaching them how to do it, and refining the techniques so that they are more easily applied.

I take a great deal of pride in my auditors who were taught there in the summer of 1950. They have made some very, very fine advances for Dianetics in the society. I am very proud of the people that were trained in those classes. Actually all that has happened during the past year, between May 15, 1950, and May 15, 1951, has been (1) training people how to do it, and (2) trying to establish some sort of an organizational setup by which Dianetics could be spread the farthest. And these two goals, it appears, have been attained.

The first Foundations were formed in an effort to do further research (they didn’t really succeed very well in that one), but mainly to offer training. Back in January 1950 I was the only one who was trained in this subject, and by June there were only four or five. It is real riches to me— very, very real riches— to know how many people there are. There are over five hundred Hubbard Dianetic Auditors now; these are people who can do it, people who can be depended upon to take over a case and bring about some results. That is worth working for and that has been attained.

As far as the organization of the original Foundations is concerned, the plan of organization of those Foundations was at best very clumsy. The whole subject of Dianetics had to be reviewed to find what kind of an organization could best take care of Dianetics.

It saddens me a great deal that because of the disloyalty and the avarice of a few people, who didn’t see the dream of Dianetics but only saw themselves as being able to possess perhaps a little more wealth and power, they pointed up the inefficiency of the initial organization of the Foundations. It has not worked well.

Back in October I started to work on the science of management— Group Dianetics. Sometime later this year, I will have a book out on Group Dianetics. It is very interesting that the exploration of the third dynamic had to bring to light many new tenets, many new axioms, before the subject of groups could be codified and we could consider it relatively well taken care of. This reflected back to the first dynamic, and it made processing itself simpler once the third dynamic was codified.

People are apt to consider erroneously that Group Dianetics is an ideology. It is not. It is merely the science of management. Very little has been written on it. Very little is understood generally about it. I have to go to work and communicate that much better. It is not an ideology; in fact, almost any ideology could be bettered by applying these tenets because Group Dianetics works on the group much as individual processing works on the individual, plus the fact that in Group Dianetics one can put together the organism of the group and put it together properly so that it functions.

The main advance in Group Dianetics was studying the Foundations themselves and trying to find out what sort of an organization could bring the most to Dianetics. Now, the Hubbard Dianetic Auditors and the people in the field who are practicing Dianetics out of the book— book auditors— are best protected, and their interests are best served, by a slightly different type of organization. They have every right to use their own initiative and their own capabilities to their fullest extent. And we have been working here in an effort to make this possible. You will know much more about this in the very near future.

The effort is in the direction of much less management being demanded of me (since my field should be research and writing), and much greater scope of initiative for the HDA in his own operating area. Perhaps in the very near future it may be possible for you to send a delegate. Maybe some of the various groups around New York, Elizabeth and Chicago, perhaps Los Angeles and some other sections of the country, can send a delegate in here to the central Foundation in order to establish the best ways and means of accomplishing this. We have some very solid plans in this direction; we would not think of putting them into effect unless they met with the approval of the auditors in the field.

Well, a lot of things have happened in this past year. Fortunately (not as far as Foundation cash is concerned, but as far as Dianetics itself is concerned), there is a great deal on the blue side of the ledger. In fact, the blue side of the ledger so heavily outweighs the red side of the ledger that one would be very pessimistic and misanthropic indeed if he did not regard this as a very fine past year. The five hundred trained auditors, the experience of codification and communication of techniques, the new techniques which have come forward, the experience of running the Foundation itself, the development of Group Dianetics, and most importantly, a considerable amount of validation are some of the positive gains we have made.

The validation pamphlet itself was short and was slanted mainly at psychologists and psychiatrists. That is being rewritten now and in it is being included many of the intensive- run psychometries which have been acquired in the Foundation. There are many of these cases. Dianetics has, then, acquired its validation. This is already available. The Foundation has the validation pamphlet itself, and a new validation pamphlet— a composite of all this material— is being prepared.

The strange part of it is that Dianetics is really not a psychotherapy. Dianetics is a way of handling the energy of which life is made in such a way as to bring about a greater efficiency in the organism and in the spiritual life of the individual. This is hardly something which could be classified as basely as a psychotherapy. But people looked on it as a psychotherapy and they demanded that it be validated as a psychotherapy. This was one of the most fascinating things in the world: the fact that somebody out of some other field (there is no other field like Dianetics, but out of some other "ology") would walk up and tell us to validate it!

Well, I’ll let you in on something. Nobody has ever validated these "ologies"! There is no proof in existence that these work, and nobody is making any effort to get any, as far as I know. That is interesting; it puts us way out in the lead. If Dianetics is considered by anybody a psychotherapy (which it is not), it is the only validated psychotherapy in existence. It has demonstrated its results. And this makes it, if it is to be grouped as a psychotherapy, the only psychotherapy which has been validated. So Dianetics is very far out in the lead.

As far as publicity is concerned the general public has been slammed around about Dianetics and they don’t know whether Dianetics is a cough drop or a new cult down in Arizona. Nobody really knows very much about it. Out in the general public they ask you if it is a cult, or if it is this or if it is that. I suddenly woke up to the fact that I was under evaluating it. I was trying to tell people "Well, this is sort of a psychotherapy and it does this and that," rather apologetically. And I said to somebody bluntly the other day, "Why, Dianetics is the science of handling life; you know, handling life forces!" They looked at me and blinked and I said, "Yes, you know, a fellow starts downhill and starts down toward death. Well, Dianetics picks him back up again." They went away in a trance! Actually, isn’t that what we are doing? The new theta- MEST theory’ makes that so apparent, and the results you get follow in so closely that, actually, we are doing just that.

I have some experiments on the wing which can start to culminate some of the work I started clear back in 1930. I was asking questions in the field of atomic- molecular phenomena back in 1930. What is the energy of life? It is not like electricity. It is like something else; what is it? Well, I’m starting to get a few answers to that, and it is getting to the point where I can see a possibility of measuring it. Maybe one of these days we can find a better source for this life energy. If we can find ways and means of getting more life energy for the individual we can stop worrying about processing.

In the past the medical doctor has treated the organism something like a balloon. If a hole got in the balloon and a little gas escaped the doctor very quickly patched up the hole. This was very good, but some of the gas escaped. It went on in this fashion until all the gas went out of the bag and that was the end of the organism. Now, supposing we could get up to the point where we could pump this bag up. The medical doctor would then have something that would be very useful, I think.

I hope nobody is sitting there now and frowning at me, shaking his finger and saying, "No, no, you mustn’t mess with those forces because they are greater than man." I think man is the great force. Man is a great organism. There is undoubtedly a Creator, just as there is undoubtedly a spirit. One is not trying to trifle with these things. But there is just as undoubtedly a life energy; the more we know about this life energy and the more we can do with it, the better we will be. I am not being facetious about this; I actually have here at hand some sketches of equipment by which to measure the wavelength and so on of life force.

I really do not know why I am bothering your heads about this, actually, because the last piece of work on this subject, the chart in this new book, has forty- seven columns. You can place a preclear right across the chart and it tells you exactly what kind of processing he needs. You will be scratching your heads over that when you get it, and we won’t be worrying about life force for a long time.

Perhaps you would like to have a little bit of personal news; you might be interested. I have been getting some processing, after a long period of not even minimal processing but negative processing. The case is coming right on up the line. I am afraid that I very definitely neglected things during the summer and fall; I didn’t get anywhere near what I should have. I started very late getting processed and I found out, for a while there, that I was getting very tired. So I had to start taking some of my own medicine. Some of the Foundation people out here decided that I had better have a rest, so for the last few weeks, since finishing this last book, I have been resting. I got some auditing today; we worked for about five or six hours, contacted a nice lot of material and blew it, and the case seems to be running wide open.

I’ve finished Dianetics: The Science of Survival and there is an addendum I want to write called "Human Evaluation." After that is a book called Group Dianetics and then there is some additional specialized work on Group Dianetics that I will have to write.

The big rush of Foundation affairs seems to have eased off considerably, as far as I am concerned. The general planning has definitely allowed for that. A large number of auditors have been trained, and this new Foundation here in Wichita seems to be a very, very nice place.

The Foundation got about twenty- six processing rooms, quite a few executive offices and a nice big lecture hall— quiet, no trains! Not a single train. And really, this place looks good!

Of course, there has been a little bit of thunder and lightning around here lately, just weather, and there has been a twister or two way over the hills and far away (no hills here, but it has been a considerable distance from us). Kansas spring weather is with us. But we have a very, very nice Foundation. Everybody who comes in here in Wichita says, "My goodness, where’s this place been all our lives?" I have not given any talks here yet, but I don’t know whether I am going to miss those trains or not. I probably will feel lost talking here without the B& O and the Jersey Central and the Pennsylvania all coming together and having a collision every fifteen minutes right outside our windows.

Very shortly now the Wichita office will be in touch with you concerning the formation of a group, not just a Dianetics Group, but actually an official Hubbard Dianetics Center there in New York City. The status of it, the conditions, terms and so on will in a large measure depend on what you want. Certainly you will have a highly autonomous state. You will be able to regulate your own affairs, because it is my belief that the Foundation erred very definitely in trying to control or supervise the offices all around the countryside. I don’t believe the Foundation had enough management to do that and certainly with all the talks and everything I was having to give, I could not do that.

But I know that our HDAs have among them a great deal of talent and skill and I would like to see that organizational experience used. I think that also there should be a professional society arrangement, perhaps something on the order of other existing professional societies. We are getting pretty big, and we are getting bigger. We have not had, for instance, any book promotion— nothing going into the field which was good and solid and well supervised from one spot. We are going to get that now. Dianetics is going to go forward. We have gone over the first few hills, and somehow or other we have made the grade with a minimum number of casualties. Somehow we have arrived at a point, now, where we have the experience of the past to aid the wide future which I cannot but regard with considerable optimism.

I am very happy about your meeting here on May 15; I know that you will have an excellent meeting. I know that a lot of the things that you have been doing will be exchanged among you. I could only ask you for one favor: Would somebody please send me some notes or a transcript of the meeting, so that I can feel that I have been there just a little more than on this tape recorder. I wish you every success in the world, and I hope in the future that I will be able to aid you even more and make it easier for you to do processing. I know that all of us, working together in harmony, can certainly make out of this, today, a much, much better world than we have ever had before. Thank you very much.