1st. Saint Hill ACC
| 1st. Saint Hill ACC | |
|---|---|
| Author | Antony A Phillips |
| Type of Article | Category:History of Scientology - Technical |
| Website | http://antology.info |
| ant.phillips@post8.tele.dk | |
1st. Saint Hill ACC
This was the last ACC held in England, and was first advertised as the 7th. London ACC. It was held from 8. August to 16. September 1960. The venue was altered to Saint Hill Manor fairly late in the promotional history of the ACC. As was normal, it was held immediately following a Congress, and as usual, the Congress contained promotional elements to encourage the trained auditors to enroll in the ACC. I was not working at the time, and certainly did not have the money for an ACC, and when I went to the Congress had no plans to take the ACC. I do not know what the “real reason” was, but during the course of the preceding Congress we were told that the aim of the ACC was to research into the lowest levels of case, and so to ensure that we, so to speak, scraped the bottom of the barrel, auditors could come on the ACC with the whole cost of the course on credit - no money down at all! (People without much money were regarded as "down stat" - inefficient people.)
I was so enthusiastic as a result of the promotion at the conference that I came on the course. Possibly because of the fact that it was initially intended to be held in London, we were all driven to Saint Hill in a bus, which left at 9.00 A.M. (probably, if my memory serves me correctly) from central London, every Monday to Friday for the six weeks of the course, and driven back to London in the late afternoon (probably leaving at 6.00 P.M.). Thus we had a fairly short working day and week (certainly by later standards). On the first day there was an amusing incident. There was a small, rather elderly, lady who hung around the premises at HASI London, known as Eileen Russell. When we arrived on the first day she was sitting at the back of the bus (that sort of bus, tourist bus, those days only had one entrance/exit at the very front. Eileen was not an HPA, and thus not eligible, so valiant efforts was made to get her to leave the bus. The attempts failed, and thus she took the whole ACC. She was pretty hard of hearing, so she always found a place in the front row when the time of the daily LRH hour long lecture came round. However, at a point during the course (and I don't remember why, perhaps there was too much squabbling to get in the front row) it was decided that students listening to the live lecture should sit in alphabetical order of surname. This did not deter Eileen Russell, for the next day she came in and said that she had changed her name to Eileen Russell Able and thus was still in the front row.
The subject matter of the ACC was havingness and confront processes, and in the end something in the order of 20 of each were developed – the main ones are in HCO B. 6 October 1960. There was a way of testing each process on a preclear, in the order of, getting the preclear to give a can squeeze, running a few commands of the processes, and getting the preclear to give a second can squeeze. A good havingness process would (it was said) give a greater drop on the can squeeze, and a good confront process would give a reduced drop, referred to at the time as loosening and tightening the needle. In contradiction to the two previous British ACCs I can not say that I saw any effectiveness from the processes of the 1st Saint Hill ACC, nor did I see that it particularly aimed at the worst type of case. It would be interesting to hear if any auditor has experience of the data from the ACC being used since then. To me (looking in 2015 with hindsight), it looks as if there was a sort of passion to invent new processes.
However, that is my impression now (2015) of something that happened over 50 years ago. Looking in the Red Volumes on the subject I am reminded that here were some good processes around at the time and that help processes were also run, and at one point it was announced that L. Ron Hubbard would personally assess each student for a terminal to be run on the help process. That he should do it was unusual (on the 6th London ACC Dick Halpern had assessed my terminals), for I can not remember seeing Hubbard during the running of the ACCs I was on, apart from his lectures. There was some excitement when we learned that we would each be personally assessed by Ron. In my case he assessed "a priest" as my terminal, at which I made a mild protest. This was due to my only contact with Christianity being through three years in the Methodist Church, which had a doctrine called the priesthood of all believers, and we held that one did not need a priest to contact God for one and I was therefore somewhat contemptuous of priests. I told this to Ron, suggesting that "a minister" be my terminal. He pointed out that "priest" had a longer whole track record than a minister, and I therefore accepted his suggestion. As an aside it should be remembered that help processes were a central part in the routine for Step VI Clears in the late 50's and in my opinion may not get sufficient attention nowadays.
The ACC was held in what was called the Monkey Room at Saint hill. All the walls had pictures of monkeys dressed as humans and doing human things, in the order of doing fairground things like being on swings and roundabouts. The walls were covered in protective transparent plastic – later they were concealed from view (when it was an office HCO in the later SH 7 division Org days – 1965) but students on the course, if they got bored by the auditing, could look at the walls.
References[edit | edit source]
There are references to the 1st Saint Hill ACC in the Red Volumes, including processes with a list of the recorded lectures on Page 138 of the elder Red Volume IV (page 444 of the new Red Volume V). The Bulletin on page 150 of the old volumes contains the names of 39 attendees. The same Bulletin (22nd September 1960; "Announcing New Technology") in the new volumes omits the last sentences, which are "Dick and Jan Halpern gave able assistance on this course. The following students attended it: " and the names of 39 students were also omitted.
HCO Bulletin of 23 September 1960 "Order of Test of Havingness and Confront Commands" gives some of the commands and has the following on how to test for their efficacy:
- "A pc's Havingness process is one that returns the Tone Arm to clear read and frees the needle.
- "A pc's Help process is one that moves the Tone Arm at least 3 tones per hour and brings the reading always a bit closer to the clear read. (5 to 6, 5 to 6 on and on won't do.)
- "A pc's Confront process is defined in the same way as his Help process, except that it should move pc on the track, going further and further into the past and easier and easier into present time. PC's pictures should improve on a confront process."
The combination of Havingness and Confront processes was called a presession, and HCO Bulletin of 6 October 1960R (Revised 8 May 1974) "Thirty-Six New Presessions" gives them.