Phil Spickler
| Phil Spickler | |
|---|---|
| Birthday | March 6, 1931 |
| Birth info | Detroit, Michigan, USA. |
| Deceased | Yes |
| Died on | January 17, 2020 |
| Nationality | USA |
| Org. Affiliation(s) | Washington, DC., |
| Spouse(s) | Julie B. Spickler |
| Children | Randy Spickler, Mimi Rogers |
Read the collected works of Sigmund Freud at age 10
Trained as an HDA , Hubbard Dianetic Auditor, 1952-53
Field audited from 1953 until 1956 but very occasionally. I mostly worked in Surveying and Field Construction to earn a living wage.
Went on to become Director of Administration. Lost that post in a dispute with Mary Sue Hubbard when Ron was in England doing an ACC. By the Summer of 1958 and the Freedom Congress I was back on Staff as an auditor, Later that summer 1958 I quit the Church and went to work with an engineering firm surveying an area near Washington D.C. that was to become Dulles International Airport.
1957, January. Washington D. C. The founding Church of Scientology. Did the HCA course, and the 18th ACC in the Summer of 1957. then became a Staff Auditor.
In 1960, the winter thereof, I did the 22nd ACC, led by Jan and DIck Halpern while Ron was in Australia doing the first Melbourne ACC.
In June of 1963 began the St Hill Briefing Course in England.....escaped in October of 1963 with a certificate of course completion.
Started a Franchise in 1966 (but incorporated it as a mission of the Church of Scientology).
I968 First American Cl-8 course given at Los Angeles at the AO and later became a permanent Cl-8 auditor.
1969 at ASHO was Tech C/S, and Later Qual C/S.
Left ASHO and eventually stated a Mission In Palo Alto CA. in 1969
ED of mission from 1969 'til about 1980.
Did expanded Dianetics Course and Internship around 1972.
Find and Play With Ron in the 50's[edit | edit source]
- Phil has written and spoken profusely on his experiences and views (see references at the end of this). We have chosen here to give an article he wrote, originally sent to an Internet list on Tuesday, 17 June 1997.
To: Multiple recipients of list <clear-l@lightlink.com>
Subject: To Whom It May Concern, Chap. 2
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 21:02:38 -0400 (EDT)
Having completed the Hubbard Certified Auditor's Course in early March of 1957, and also been ordained a Minister of the Church, which caused my poor Jewish mama no end of pain that her boychik, instead of becoming a rabbi, was now a Minister of some off-beat Church run by a crazy science-fiction writer located in Washington, D.C. (alas, children can cause their parents pain) -- anyhow, my next ambition was to go to work for L. Ron Hubbard as a Staff Auditor in the Hubbard Guidance Center.
But this was not to be. Getting on staff in those days was not a very easy thing to do: you had to show yourself very capable in some way to even be considered for a staff position. At that time, there were very few kids, if any, on staff, and I was considered sort of a baby, at age 26, when many of the staff, including Ron, were in their late 30's and 40's and more or less looked like human beings rather the dropouts from the freshman class at the University of Hard Knocks. I sought to remedy this matter, and, after the July Congress in the summer of 1957, by selling my car and anything else of any value, was able to raise enough money to partake of the 18th Advanced Clinical Course, or as we liked to refer to it in those days, the 18th ACC.
ACCs were somewhat experimental courses; they ran for 6 weeks, from morning to evening, five or six days a week. If you successfully completed such a course, and fulfilled other requirements, such as three complete case histories using the techniques of the course to produce outstanding case gain, and you fulfilled other requirements as to activity and character and dissemination, you could be awarded the coveted certificate Doctor of Scientology, or DScn. This course indeed became my gateway to getting on staff, and also on a daily basis gave me a wonderful opportunity to see Ron in action, to attend daily lectures and be in close association with a lot of professional Scientologists from all over the country and even from abroad who were not only nifty people but were indeed quite skillful in the use of the tools.
This course was the major introduction of things like the CCHs, and every process and procedure in Scientology at that time was given a CCH designation, all the way up to and including Route 1, which as you may remember from the book Creation of Human Ability consisted of the full rehabilitation of the being as an Operating Thetan, or OT, and commenced with those famous words, "Be three feet back of your head," which caused some folks to try to do just that, literally, even if they were somewhat perplexed by the notion of becoming three bare feet (or encased in shoes) somewhere behind their heads. If that occurred they were usually, and quickly, shifted to the lighter gradients of Route 2.
At the conclusion of the course, which had turned into quite an ordeal, I was found to be fit for staff and commenced to work as an auditor. In those days, an auditor was expected to work 5 hours a day at auditing and would give the pc 2 1/2 hours in the morning and then after a relaxed lunch hour 2 1/2 hours in the afternoon. And after ending auditing and taking a break, for the rest of the afternoon staff auditors wrote letters and mainly engaged in taking it easy until the daily auditors' conference, which was usually presided over by Ron, in his office, or by L. Ron Hubbard, Jr., or by Mary Sue Hubbard, if Ron happened to be off either to some other place in the country or overseas, giving courses or congresses. The auditors' conferences were quite thrilling, since Ron would often hold forth on his own insights and the possibilities of what one might do to help expand the consciousness of others. Each auditor in turn would be questioned by Ron as to what they had done that day, and then after some dscussion there would be agreement as to what would be done with that pc the next day.
I ended up getting a young chap around 12 years old for 2 or 3 weeks of auditing, who absolutely did not wish to be there. But his loving parent, who had come for auditing and courses, insisted that this young chap get auditing, since he'd already run away once, built a raft, and was merrily floating down the Potomac River when various authorities ended his journey and returned him home. Anyhow, I was doing a rather terrible job with him, and one day in sheer desperation I accosted Ron in the back yard of the Church, just as he was leaving to have lunch at his favorite restaurant, and desperately asked him to tell me what to do. He took mercy on me and ripped off a whole procedure that I was to run on this young man, and at the end of his communication he asked me if I'd gotten it. And fool that I was, I said, "Sure!" Well, that afternoon I ran a very badly altered mishmash of things on this young man, and although it didn't go too badly, it hardly resembled anything that Ron had said for me to do, and my stomach was knotted into little rocks as the afternoon auditors' conference approached.
Well, when my turn came to tell what I had done, after a short time Ron was looking at me as though to say "You're in big trouble, kiddo." I heard him say something as an aside to his communicator about duplication, as my heart went into my shoes. Well sure enough, when I reached the communication center somewhat later in the afternoon, in my In-basket was a note from the founder of Dianetics and Scientology telling me that I was off staff pending the receipt of 25 hours of Opening Procedure by Duplication, which also went by such names as Dirty Thirty, Book & Bottle, or just plain Op Pro by Dup. I dried my tears, and in the next week or two accomplished the needed hours of this procedure, which turned out to be just the thing, and I've never looked at another book or bottle without happy remembrances of that process and the amazing old-timer who delivered it to me.
I did pretty well after that as a staff auditor until my next great challenge some months later occurred, and I did a pretty miserable job on a 3-week intensive on an old-timer who had come there to attain OT-hood. I missed the mark by several light years, and this time when I reached the Comm Center and looked in my In-basket there was a note from Ron saying, "Your auditing could improve enormously." This from the founder of Dianetics and Scientology came as quite a blow to my universe. I was summarily transferred from the HGC to take over the Distribution Center Incorporated, which was the seed that would later grow into the Publications Organization. In those days it included everything from getting all of the organization's mail out each day, to handling all the orders for books and tapes, and the many things that surround printing and distribution. I found the job to be in a worse mess than I was, and so it gave me a chance to put the place really in order, to the point where I started getting quite a bit of admiration and commendation from Ron and others in the organization; so that when the Executive Hat of Director of Administration for the whole Church went empty one day, I suddenly found myself occupying said post. Which brings me to an anecdote which I think you will find interesting, and shortly thereafter to the end of this chapter.
A few points of history, namely: in 1957 several nations of the world were engaging in the atmospheric testing of fairly large nuclear and thermonuclear devices. The resultant fallout had become so bad worldwide that large batches of milk in our dairy states were having to be dumped because of high concentrations of strontium 90. It was a fairly scary period, and it looked like a thermonuclear showdown was not too far off. In the middle of all these charming circumstances, Ron had written a book called All About Radiation, and had also determined that certain forms of auditing plus the use of a vitamin formula that he had designed and named Dianizine, which held large quantities of a B-vitamin called nicotinic acid or niacinamide, would in concert make it possible to run out the effects of ever-increasing radiation. Toward this end, most all of the people on staff and our students were taking Dianizine, as well as engaging in auditing that led up to Spotting Spots in Space, which was considered a sure way to eliminate that invisible fallout. The nicotinic acid in Dianizine produced a characteristic flush htat someone who had just been irradiated might have, the difference being that the flush went away.
Meantime, various groups, such as our loyal Food and Drug Administration, the American Medical Association, and the Atomic Energy Commission, decided that Mr. Hubbard had overstepped his bounds once again, and needed to be slapped very heavily on the wrist for making statements that promised an alleviation for past, present, and future radiation poisoning, and that were also highly critical of the continued atmospheric testing of large thermonuclear devices.
One fine day in either late l957 or early '58 -- my memory fails me at this point -- (I need to get my dating drill rehabbed) -- I suddenly heard quite a racket within the Church's confines, and discovered that the Food and Drug Administration, in concert with a fairly large number of U.S. Marshals, was in the process of raiding the Founding Church of Scientology of Washington, D.C., armed with all kinds of warrants to confiscate all the books entitled All About Radiation, and to confiscate the dangerous vitamin formula called Dianizine, as well as to arrest L. Ron Hubbard. (I think the charge was practicing nuclear medicine without a proper license.) The scientists out in Bethesda were really pissed off that Ron had been claiming to do something about radiation poisoning, which at that time and possibly in present time there was little or nothing anyone could do about anyone who had received a fairly large dose of any of those very body-harmful rays, such as gamma, etc.
To continue the tale: since L. Ron Hubbard was not on the premises at this time, I soon found myself in my own office virtually imprisoned by several large marshals, and one or more FDA Inspectors, who were making very threatening noises in my direction, since at that very moment I was the Acting Administrative Head of the Church. They were saying things like, "Let's take him down to City Jail and book him for obstructing justice," since I adamantly refused (mostly out of ignorance) to divulge the base whereabouts of L. Ron Hubbard. At this point I needed a large adult-size diaper, and in the midst of this overwhelming confrontation, the door to my office opened, and here's where things became really amazing. Who should stick his head in the door of my office but L. Ron Hubbard, bigger than life. On his left arm he had strapped a large press camera with flash attachments of the kind that were used in 1957 --- a really big affair. He pointed this camera at all the different people in my office with the exception of me. At this point, time seemed to stand still, and the three or four men in my office became temporarily motionless. Ron said to me, in his most melodic voice, "How's it going, Phil?" Even though my heart was in my mouth, I managed to croak, with a false sense of certainty, these words :"OK, Ron!"
He said, "All right, take care of everything, and I'll see you later," and he closed the door to the room and continued to wander around inside the Church. Time in my office continued; the marshals and the FDA inspector started to move and to speak again; they mumbled a few things like, "That's all we can do here for today." Not one of them asked, "Who was that who just entered the office?" and shortly thereafter, having collected their books and vitamin tablets, they departed the Church. I bear creditable witness to this amazing event. It seemed as though when Ron pointed the large press camera at them, something got keyed in for them that left them unable to act or move for some period of time. Here was the very chap that they were attempting to arrest, who was wandering around in the church, literally under their noses and the noses of many other marshals and inspectors from the FDA.
The final outcome of this event was the book All About Radiation remained confiscated (but we had many other copies that they didn't get their hands on), and the vitamin tablets were charged in District Court with failing to meet the full potency on their labels, and they were summarily destroyed -- end of event. We of course had lots more of the vitamins that they never saw to confiscate, plus the formula could easily be purchased at any vitamin store in its individual components.
In closing I should like to say that although at the end of his life Ron certanly didn't seem to be the neat fun-loving character I knew in the 50's, and although he left a legacy of horribly mean-spirited little idiots to run his church, and although he wrote and said a number of things that certainly contradicted the best we knew of Dianetics and Scientology, I should still like to point out that this would have been quite a meager lifetime, at least for me, if L. Ron Hubbard or someone like him had never existed -- I think things would have been damn dull, and even stupider than they already were, and I should also have failed to meet all the good buddies who kept popping up over the years.
So all is forgiven, and heuristically speaking, let's hope the fun continues. Love and all the best to all who receive this missive -- Phil
References[edit | edit source]
Phil wrote 22 articles for the FriScientology magazine International Viewpoints (known familiarly as IVy ). You will find a list of them under the surname Spickler at [[1]] (the first number at the end of each line is the issue of IVy). The actual issues of IVy will be found at the following link: [[2]] . Click on "Back Issues and PDFs" and allow time for all 89 issues to load.
Phil contributed regularly to the ivy-subscribers Internet list. At the following link you will find a list of these articles and if you click on the blue title you will be shown the article [[3]]. The magazine IVy (International Viewpoints) and its associated Internet list were closed some time ago and these are archive files which are not kept up to date (technologically and typographically).