My Sea Org Career in retrospect

Dedicated to my ex-wife Marlis and my two daughters Regula and Jolanda who were made to  ‘disconnect’ plus data on the application of PTS / SP Tech in the Flag RPF

In the late sixties I was an 18 year young student of psychology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. I soon found out that – with the behavioral sciences classification of psychology – the spirit had disappeared out of the subject. In the following search for truth I encountered yoga, Indian mystics, Tarot Cards, Krishnamurti and various forms of meditation. I was about to be initiated on a Satsang with his Holiness Maharaj Sharan Singh. However I met Otto just a few days before, he agreed to accompany me and did and asked the Holy Man some questions, sparking my interest in this new science Otto was promoting. My fellow countryman Otto J. Roos –later to become the first Class XII –  initiated me in the subject of Scientology instead. (Otto had run his body’s head into a bulkhead at the Flagship Apollo and was in Holland for an operation as he had cracked his skull – LRH would later write about this in despatches about survey tech where he found that the common denominator of those accidents had been exterior at the time it happened).

The beginnings of Scientology in the Netherlands

I rounded up a bunch of university students, organized the first  comm.course in Utrecht and did my first  two hours of open eyed, no blink, straight confront supervised by Otto, the toughest supervisor known in the Sea Org. There was to be no movement and I was almost dying from pain etc. but somehow survived it and that was a win.

I literally forgot about the university and went to Leyden where a small but interesting group was starting up. There were OT Phenomena – Otto could exteriorize from the car and see the traffic ahead and around the corners, the first Green Policy Volume had just been published and there generally was excitement in the air. I read the book ‘Fundamentals of Thought’, while hanging around there and went Clear on the Chapter with the basic principles. Of course I didn’t know enough to call it that. I ran a lot of Dianetics since then and I found out much later after having done the Clearing Course, that mocking up (re-creating) a bank is part of the abilities of a Clear. See def No 9 of Clear in the Tech Dictionary. After a while I started on the Dianetics Course and passed some tough checkouts by Otto who then chose me for Supervisor training.

It was August, a hot summer in 1970, Otto gave me 100 Guilders and sent me to the AO DK for the HSDC and HDG (Standard Dianetics Auditor and Coursesupervisor Courses). The first night in Copenhagen I didn’t know where to go or stay and slept in the grass somewhere in Copenhagen. The next day I found the AO. I remember there was a nice Mexican lady who offered me a haircut and I think it was Werner Heinzel who found me an apartment where I could stay. After two months of hard work I could audit Dianetics and knew the materials so well that upon being asked a question I could open the coursepack with no commlag on the exact page of the bulletin containing the answer. On my return in October there were some 15 students eagerly waiting to start the Dianetics Course. Otto had returned to the Flagship to become the first Class XII auditor, he was replaced by two Flag Missionaires Andre Spies and Richard Wrigley. The next year I spent actively leading on the Dianetics movement, Dianetics exploring the time track way, way back and beyond the Magellanic Clouds was pure adventure and we had a ball.

In 1971 a new Mini Course Supervisor Course came out and I was trained on that together with Claes Ditlevsen and several others by Jens Bogvad – a Swedish Medical Doctor who had joined the Sea Org, later the Sea Org Missionaire who opened up Japan – on the Athena in Copenhagen. When I came back the two Flag missionaires had blown I became the ED of the Franchise. It was then that Capt. Bill Robertson told me to move to Amsterdam – it was advice not an order, a franchise (only later called missions)  was still  a relatively independent activity in those days. So we established the first Scientology Mission in the center of Amsterdam at the Rozenstraat near the Westertower. I just realize while writing this how easy going it was, I do not remember even having been asked to become staff i.e. before joining the Sea Org. It was a completely natural flow of help, I just felt like helping out and a certain responsibility and that was being staff – there was no recruitment whatsoever involved. The place we rented was a mezzanine (low ceiling), we got it cheap, it wouldn’t have been a problem for David Miscavige but was a bit embarassing that time when the Guardian World Wide, Jane Kember, a tall lady came to visit us and she couldn’t stand up straight.

Sea Org Duty

Later in early 1972 I turned over the mission to  a staffmember  who had been trained by the Sea Org. And I left to Copenhagen as volunteer to be part of the First Translation Unit in Marocco.  I never got that far as I was recruited for the Sea Org by Juliette in Denmark on the 16^th of April. She showed me a policy about types of motivation, the highest was duty (and what can you do having been a loyal officer before) so I became the first  posted Wordclearer on our Stationship the S/Y Athena (photo, yes it had an actual steam engine), which soon after became the Cramming Vessel for the Sea Org and Org staff in the DK and EU areas. My highest ever was 66 hrs of wordclearing in one week.

I had also learned enough scientology principles to be able to handle my army duty for the greatest good. Instead of resisting, I applied for a position as army chaplain with officers rank, with the purpose to teach soldiers alternative ways to accomplish their purpose of creating a more amenable frame of mind on the part of the enemy by using scientology. Instead of approving my proposal they exempted me from army duties.

When the only Dutch speaking intern graduated at AOSH EU & AF and left Denmark in 1974, I saw my chance to get trained as an auditor and was transferred to AOSH EU, there I was put on the newly formed European Standard Auditor Corps (the first TTC) by missionaire Lt. Jeff Walker. Then almost a year later I was kidnapped – brought aboard the ship for an errand then they sailed off before I could get back on land – so I was back on the Athena during the Ethics Mission to Gothenburg, Sweden led by Capt. Bill Robertson. This was a surprise mission and designed to kick out the SPs  as the org was very downstat. Correct target – quite unlike the exploits of Miscavige we hear about these days who is taking it out on the upstats.

A few months later the Personnel Office agreed that I could return to AOSH. I then supervised the Academy for a while and later became the single hatted SHSBC Supervisor under Victor Uckermann a Class VIII. Policy was strictly applied, the students guide to acceptable behavior said that students were not allowed to smoke in the classroom. But there was no mention of the supervisor so I smoked the whole day in the courseroom – not every student appreciated that. J

I did the academy in my spare time. This went pretty smoothly. I would do my post and during my regular studytime I got auditing on the grades from Jean-Michel Wargniez, in the evening break which was an hour and a half – my wife bringing me the food – I would listen to one tape and in the evening after hours I would study the bulletins and so forth. That way I could cover one level and grade in approx. a week, not counting the auditing as we could do that later after having done and studied all the levels.

My first pc in the HGC was a person who only spoke Dutch and was coming for Integrity Processing. So I was given one day to study the materials and got one evening and night coached and drilled by Art Lindskog, the next day I was in session. Right in the first session I got a read on some withhold the man had and he wouldn’t tell me. So I insisted and tried to coax him to tell me, but he tried to make a deal with me to not write it down and skip it.

I didn’t and ended the session. Interesting if you compare this to the type of sec checking that was going on later under Miscavige and others. In this case it was handled very simply and in a straightforward manner. The man was told that if he wasn’t willing to bare his soul and be completely honest with us we couldn’t help him and so he was given his money back and that was it. There was no make wrong or anything of that character.

Anyway in 1974 I was posted in the HGC audited grades, dianetics and integrity processing, as the confessionals were called then. I did the SHSBC full time for a while and completed it part time in 1976. I got my Power Processing from Alain Frank Rosenberg of CC Paris fame (one of the COS leaders sentenced in France recently). Finally I spent a year or so on the Clearing Course and became Clear # 5997 in 1977.

The photo (Courtesy of Arne Gabrielsson) on the right is included to show the relaxed looks of an actual AOSH Sea Org HGC Auditor in his auditing room between sessions.  In those days – seventies – we had no money yet for uniforms and no monthly price increases either.

I really enjoyed auditing a great variety of beings from all over Europe and beyond. I used to say and mean it, that I could continue to audit for hundreds of years and still not get bored with it. Every individual is a universe of its own. I have such joy to hear their adventures and I realized that even the mis-adventures always were nevertheless adventures and games of some kind. My admiration for what beings can create and get themselves involved in has no limits. To be able to allow them by simple questioning to relieve themselves of undesirable charges and selfcreated handicaps and thus get a new life, is what I love about this job.

I did my Class VII training in 1977 and audited quite a few to Power Release. The advent of Dianetic Clear the next year was when the delivery of Power stopped abruptly. This lasted til the late nineties when a few were found not to be clear after all and would be given Power Processing, followed by the Clearing Course.

Class IX

Over the next decades I have stayed in Tech and Qual working in different capacities. I did my pre-OT Levels and was sent to Flag for NOTs training in 1981. That was the time of the first Mission Holder Meetings with Bill Franks as ED Int. it was also the first time I heard the name Miscavige. But I was not privy to anything going on really, I was not really interested either as I was there for the tech. One oddity stays in mind and that was I had a hard time routing out, even when I finished my internship and was scheduled to return. There was a lot of pressure to do  another internship from Ron Norton, as it would only take a day or so I conceded. But I said I would go with the plane that was booked regardless and I meant it and I did. But I also perceived there had been a slight compromise with some technical standard for the sake of the stats. I could understand Norton’s viewpoint as well as it was good that I got that piece of additional tech. And in retrospect we were all happy with the final result.

Back in Copenhagen I audited for a few years while training on the lengthy AO Review Auditor Course and the Solo CS Course. Then in ’84 I was posted as the Solo CS and was on that post till 1987 when our only Italian NOTs auditor Jone van Hoecke was transferred to Flag. For a year or so I was again flat out auditing NOTs and AO Review actions on Italians. Over the years I got a reputation as a multi-lingual auditor covering 7 languages. The ability to speak several languages also got me out of the org on tours and as speaker on AOSH events in European Orgs.

As I myself went up the Bridge in particular after OT III,  love and affinity got a whole new meaning. I remember getting tears in my eyes when I heard the story of Fumio Sawada, the Eighth Holder of the Secrets of Yu-itsu Shinto recognizing LRH. It awakened something of the old Buddhist in me.

In 1991 I went again to Flag to do the new Class IX training with latest updates. I was co-auditing NOTs with the Senior CS at the time and we were going along fine redoing the NOTs program and some new steps. The senior CS and myself were the first ones in the org to have our own personal computers. My computer would later become a security issue. But first there is the big renovation and polish up of the org building under the guidance of ….

David Miscavige

The first time I heard this name was as the man who knocked out the Guardian’s Office single handedly. I told several people in the Sea Org at that time that this action was off policy. This  mission’s  action was in direct violation of at least two LRH Policies and made a farce of proper Sea Org decisionmaking protocol. If it had been LRH’s  intention he would have written a new policy letter with a full explanation, if not before the action then at least following it right after. The LRH Policy Letters violated were HCO PL 1 March 1966 The Guardian and HCO PL 2 1 Jan 1969 Controller “The Controller is appointed by the Founder or in his absence by the Guardians and Board of Directors in single meeting. The term of the office is for life as is that of the Guardian” The newest version of the OEC Volume 7 carefully omits any reference to the Guardian. Of course leaving that in would have become embarassing as  smart students would continually ask such embarassing questions. This whole evolution of the extermination of the Guardian’s Office is an early example of the sixth point of the MECHANISMS OF MISCAVIGE: The Big Lie.

The first time I actually met the man was when he was inspecting the org sometime in the late eighties. It was exactly as described in the MECHANISMS OF MISCAVIGE article by T. Paine. I was the solo CS I had painted my office and had been up most of the night. Notwithstanding the absence of an LRH issued searchwarrant, DM walked in with Jager, Starkey, Mithoff in tow exuding a certainty of going to find something wrong,.

Everything was okay, all I remember is David Miscavige saw a metal moneybox in my drawer and he asked whose money is that? I said it is mine. Then there was something completely different – some outpoint –  which I don’t remember – something like the area stats were in danger and I had to reassure him I would handle it. That was all. But he left you in any case with a slight feeling of ineffable guilt.

To the left you see me as I looked for the RTC Photograph.

The renovation of the building was a mega project that lasted a year or so and culminated in a steel dome being placed over the court yard. It was an architectural achievement and Miscavige was the driving force that made it happen. Meanwhile we learnt to audit in a rather noisy environment.

After one of our NOTs packs had been stolen in 1983 by Robin Scott who posed as an RTC Missionaire, a new security system was put in. All confidential packs were wired inside cabinets and when taken out had to be plugged into table sockets within seconds or else an alarm would go off. This virtually made it impossible to consult your packs quickly to check up on a reference as you had to go through laborious procedures every time. You could no longer look up a reference from a Class VIII tape in a simple and straightforward manner but had to go through extravagant security systems. Another way to sabotage standard tech? Yes!  And who did it? DM, you bet.

In this period I had preserved the handwritten translations of various confidential materials and lists in my computer which was located in an auditing room in the NOTs HGC, this was a temporary solution agreed upon with the Mission I/C. We are auditing away regardless of the barriers of security put in our way. Co-auditing is going forward very nicely and we are winning. Until…..

the day the ‘Golden Age of Tech’ so called was introduced in 1996. I had just started to learn Russian as the Russians were coming. But gradually it started to dawn upon me that the many new –  arbitrary – requirements such as  ‘learning by heart’ the commands and so forth would become too lengthy if you had to do that for each of eight languages. So I figured that  would be the end of my multi-lingual auditor career in the Sea Org.

It took over a year for a team that we sent to Flag to return as GAT qualified NOTS Auditors. In the meantime the ‘old’ NOTs auditors were supposed to be perfect regardless.

We had to do our posts as usual yet go on study 5 hours a day and forget about the co-audits. This  was out tech to go and do hard TRs in the middle of an auditing program, but that was ordered and had to be done.

I was auditing a Danish businessman on NOTs  which was going very well. He was a printing wizard and had arranged some good deals and took care of the external printing of several magazines THE AUDITOR and ADVANCE I think. He got us a good deal by having these mags printed in Zimbabwe. One day out of the blue, he was called to account for him cheating the orgs according to the Sea Org Management in EU.  He did a full report but interestingly enough nowhere does he mention D. Miscavige. (So perhaps Marty should put him on his list).

As I was the auditor who had done the OT Eligibility Check I was perforce guilty of missing withholds. Through the CO CMO I had been given an SRA (Severe Reality Adjustment, a Miscavige invention) and she made sure to tell me it came from D.M. directly and personally for me. Thereby I know that the originator of the actions described by Robert above as stemming from Top management actually was D.M.

I was told to write up my O/Ws instead of giving me a Comm Ev and retrain. As I didn’t argue and thus pleaded guilty I should have been put on a retrain.

HCO B 28 NOVEMBER 1978 AUDITORS WHO MISS WITHHOLDS, PENALTY  “… the penalty for missing a withhold on a pc is as follows: Comm Ev, and if found guilty, suspension of certificates until retrained.”

Part of the SRA was Miscavige ‘threatening’ me with RPF and expulsion, if I would do what was the right and standard, on tech, on policy thing to do at the time namely do a retrain because of missing a withhold. At that point I knew he was off the rails. LRH would never, never never have Q& Aed with an auditor like that.

RPF and the end of a career

Several months passed and I was struggling with ‘impossible assignments’ such as making high hours, living up to Golden Age of Tech standards while doing 5 hrs of study a day in order to reach such standards and videorecording and reviewing every session and keeping the public happy with their service.

Fortunately the team of trainees was returned all GAT NOTs auditor graduates and amongst them were Italian, French and a Spanish speaking auditors. I was taken off post and put on the new NOTs materials evolution which was a lot of work, therefore I could only study a little.  I was doing actually quite well on the Professional Metering Course.

Then came the news of the Comm. Ev.  Of course my computer had confidential data on it and that was a crime, regardless. I had miscalled F/Ns but that was already on the OW writeups.  I was fine on getting a Comm. Ev. and was very cooperative as I thought it was obvious that I had done sufficient ethics overt / withhold write ups and ethics conditions and had had an ethics change, besides I was progressing  very well on course.

But negative, I was assigned to the RPF.  Okay so they really want to find evil. At that point I realized the only intention was to introvert me by looking for evil purposes that were not there. So I said I will not go to the RPF , then the MAA came up with a lot of sensible arguments like what about your wife and children and these responsibilities. My wife was the the head of OSA Germany and I had not spoken to her about the whole ordeal. Later it turned out I wasn’t even allowed to talk to her.

Okay – I said I will accept the RPF conditionally and do ethics and exchange by dynamics and be completely sure whether leaving the Sea Org is the right solution.

I did my Conditions and Exchange by dynamics then the NOTs auditors on the RPF were ordered to Flag. The same day that order came out there was a complete new set of RPF Flag orders released which we had to study. I studied a bunch in the morning then went on the plane accompanied by a Security Guard to Tampa Florida and studied the rest the next day/night at the RPF quarters in the Hacienda Gardens.

I loved the MEST work at Flag in the heat and my physical condition got better and better. I ran a lot and ate well. I learnt quite a few tricks from experienced profs In the building trade. On study I was assigned a former Senior CS UK as my twin, the poor man had had some reported R/Ses and was physically sick. I saw a very nice and social being and it was hard to imagine that this fellow was required to study “Dale Carnegies: How to make friends and influence people.”

So I finished my conditions and exchange by dynamics and decided to stay for the PTS/SP Course as well. At some point while rereading the book Science of Survival, I read about the 8^th dynamic and all of a sudden it dawned on me that I could be, do or have an infinity of things. It was as if LRH told me you can go, just take responsibility for what you do. If you do that you are free. That is exactly what I had also realized after all these O/W write ups, there is nothing wrong as long as you take responsibility for what you are doing.

After that I was flying, I completed the PTS/SP course in very short order and went to the RPF I/C the day after graduating and said Sir, I am leaving!

He got the point that I meant what I said and routed me to the route out berthing where I spent some time studying R&D volumes and I started a diary.

I was given an HGC Auditor Allan to do my leaving sec checks and those were done FPRD NOTs style, so after 25 hours I was flying. On one occasion I had a FN TA and was so blown out I was sent for a walk and I had such a laugh with my security guard accompanying me. Great fun.

I had to leave as my father was dying and wanted to see me. And finally I was given a leave from the RPF and later completed my sec check in DK and routed out with RTC Okay all F/Ning.

And you never heard me natter about Scientology or the Sea Org.

What happened and what I did after I left the Sea Org is another story…

With love,

Caspar de Rijk

Address:
C.G.M. De Rijk
Salzer Strasse 9a
39211, Biere, Germany
0049-(0)39297-28922

 

cderijk @ gmail.com