Chapter 24

SOME BACKGROUND REGARDING THE FIRST STORM AT THE ASPR
- FEBRUARY 1972 -

I don't recall the exact date the first real storm began at the ASPR. But I remember it was just after the second of the formal OOB experiments, and just after I had begun wondering about what perceptions consisted of -- why certain perceptions are called "psychic" while others are not.
I became a "survivor" of this first storm, and the second more powerful one, too. Both storms were disgusting and abysmal -- and for a long time unfortunately blighted my overviews of parapsychology, organizations like the ASPR, and the whole of human nature.

The first storm at the ASPR aroused a stigma -- one which conspiracy addicts can't get much beyond even today. It was a stigma which, in the heads of the simple minded, was occasionally to blight the history of remote viewing.
Otherwise, remote viewing enjoyed vigorous incredible support from a wide spectrum of sensible people who could sort facts from fiction.

To make the rudiments of the first storm somewhat accessible, I have to divert here into a rather longish autobiographical background having to do with who I am -- and who I am not.
In this, although I don't like to talk very much about myself, I am willing and even enthusiastic to talk about what I have learned -- and from where I have learned it.

You see, to me the world is filled with great minds, many of whom have been diminished by social outcries of intolerance and rejection, by the distinction between the conventional and the non-conventional. Indeed, as I will discuss farther ahead, great minds which advocate interest in the superpowers of the human biomind are largely those pushed into the unacceptable Fringes.

There's that old axiom which holds that money is the root of all evil. This may or may not be true, while something here depends on the circumstances.
In my opinion, long considered by now, PERSECUTION is more likely the root of more evil than money could ever be -- and so I'll take the trouble to ensure it is correctly defined here.

PERSECUTE: to harass in a manner to injure, grieve, or afflict -- specifically to cause to suffer because of belief, natural qualities, inequality, or because of freedom of opinion, expression, or choice.

It's worth mentioning here that psychics or multidimensional types have frequently been persecuted throughout history. And at some point ahead I'll begin building my case along these lines -- because ultimately I helped provide a requested background paper on this topic for the Defense Intelligence Agency having to do with the historical social treatment of psi.

Like the down-to-earth Janet Mitchell, who spoke what was on her mind, I tended to talk about my experiences, what I've learned, and myself as if my life was an open book.
I've never hesitated to discuss the fruits of my learning -- although I do realize that people can absorb only what they are worth to each of them.

Back in 1972, though, I was still in my naive period when I thought truth and facts more important than their opposites -- although I had learned while at the United Nations that their opposites more often do rule affairs far and wide.
In spite of our astonishing qualities, our species is a dissimulating one, chameleonesque in nature. Sometimes what you see is what you get. But often what you see has nothing to do with what you end up with -- and sometimes you get things without at all being able to see where they are coming from.

Prior to July 1971, before I ever thought of actively working in parapsychology labs, and before I could even imagine that such could occur, I had studied many topics, movements and their leaders, especially if there were mind- or mental-development issues involved.
After all, I came from a generation in which "improve your mind" was still a very emphasized issue -- although this issue seems somewhat alienated today.

Very early, though, I found that this "improve your mind" thing actually meant improve it only so far as it does not end up going beyond the syndromic thinking one is born into, going beyond educational entrainment, group thinking or socio-consensus opinion.

In my earlier years, if one went much beyond these one was in danger of stepping into the Radical Lunatic Fringes. These Fringes still existed back in 1972 then -- although today they have been largely eradicated. The distinction today is between fundamentalist (or conventional) and non-conventional thinking, a much weaker social palliative.

In other words, in my earlier years it was DARING to improve one's mind BEYOND whatever passed for normal improving.
It was thus that I dared to go beyond -- for there was a sustaining, derring-do excitement about it.

Pursuit of this derring-do was assisted by a very important factor. I located to Manhattan (after the Army in 1958) as soon as it was possible to do so.
The basis for this move had to do with my art and painting. But one of the by-products was escape from conventional overloads usually present almost everywhere else in this great nation.
And it was in that cosmopolitan, culturally rich metropolis that I found myself completely free to pursue my derring-dos regarding mind improving.

There is, I think, a basic "secret" to mind improving -- to know a lot about a lot of things, as perhaps distinguished from knowing a somewhat little about a few things.
This was not a problem to me, for I was a bookworm anyway. But in New York were large or small groups constellated around every possible topic or subject or behavior, some of which have never been considered in book formats. And I could study and interact with them first-hand -- groups ranging from the gutter on upwards into the high ethereal aspects of thinking.
And without reservation I can say that my years between 1958 and 1972 were the happiest ones of my life. After that things got increasingly complex and complicated with stresses of all kinds.

In line with my mind-improving, I first had to study the esoteric traditions of the Far East -- for most of them, after all, are directed precisely to this topic and purpose.
I'm talking here about deep immersion, not just superficial scanning, and I had the time to devote to this.
But after a while, Far Eastern thinking leads into other directions and to other resources, and ultimately one cannot escape noticing the former presence of one of the most formidable females and thinkers ever born.

Depending on one's limits or dimensions of awareness-cum-understanding, this was the famous or infamous Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), the founder of Theosophy, and sometimes referred to as the "intellectual bridge" between East and West. And so she was vigorously supported or attacked.
Whatever one thinks of Blavatsky, she and Theosophy made a tremendous impact and which began diminishing only after 1933 when the heir-apparent to the Theosophical "throne," Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1980s?) abdicated his position.

Among other factors of heightening one's awareness, Blavatsky's concepts of "mind" are radically different from typical Western thinking, while some of those radical ideas have since been accepted within advancing mind research.
If only one-fourth of her concepts are real and valid, well modern Western psychology is merely in its kindergarten stage, even today. She was also one of the seminal thinkers on those sensitive topics which resulted in the modern feminist movement.
For those who might chance to have an interest here, I can recommend H.P.B. -- THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE & INFLUENCE OF HELENA BLAVATSKY by Sylvia Cranston (Putnam, New York, 1993.)

One of the problems with Blavatsky's outputs (and those of other Theosophists as well) is that they produced BIG, THICK books and which cannot be superficially scanned. Indeed, big books were soon to weigh down my shelves. It took me two years to consume most of what I could locate about Theosophy.
I used to bring them to the UN where I read them at lunch and in my spare time. Some few there soon stigmatized me as "a Theosophist" and laughed because I had gone non-conventional.

Blavatsky's and the Theosophical works lead into other directions and into largely "occult" sources. And so my next love-research affair concerned the works of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). This interest was originally stimulated by his book INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS, largely because it had given rise to the Surrealist movement in art.
But his works also gave a not too complex "map" of the mind and how the various segments of it function, and which map had become the basic reference for modern psychology and psychoanalysis.

But he also wrote lesser known essays, among which were PSYCHOANALYSIS AND TELEPATHY (1921); DREAMS AND TELEPATHY (1922); and THE OCCULT SIGNIFICANCE OF DREAMS (1925).
In his NEW INTRODUCTORY LECTURES ON PSYCHOANALYSIS he dealt directly with telepathic phenomena. He thought that telepathy might have been humankind's archaic way of communicating. (If so, in my opinion we should never have lost it.)
My colleagues at the UN and other circles of friends breathed a sigh of relief -- for at least I had gone conventional again. Except that Freud's "psychic" topics had been relegated to the Fringes.
Anyhow, for a while I was a Freudian, quite enthusiastic at that.

Next, of course, came the works of the famous Swiss psychoanalyst, Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1971), and whose voluminous outputs not only had to do with mind but with art and aesthetics and, ultimately, the occult.
I invested in FIFTEEN of his THICK volumes which then sold for about $8.50 each (The Bollingen Series, Pantheon Books.) This was at least a good monetary investment, because today most of them go second hand for about $200.

Jung became most famous for his concepts of the collective unconscious. Simplified, this concept holds that the collective unconscious pertains not to one individual only, but to a whole nation and to the whole of mankind.
The collective unconscious is composed of congenital instincts and primordial forms of apprehension and expressing -- these primordial forms being called the "archetypes" of the collective species unconscious.

These archetypes arise in all societies, such as the Mother archetype, the Wise Man archetype, the Sexual archetypes, etc., and are responded to accordingly by everyone.
Some hold that the famous actor, Marilyn Monroe, was a personification of the Sensual or Sexual Venus archetype (after she had changed her hair to blond) and was universally responded to as such. And I agree completely.

Throughout Jung's voluminous works a "map" of the mind is portrayed, one far more complex than Freud's. The "collective" concept holds that our species unconsciously holds a great deal in common when it comes to "mind."
And it was from Jung's work that I later derived the concept of the inherent faculties existing within our species "hard drive" -- of which the superpowers of the human biomind are but a few.
I was a Jungian for a while.

The works of Blavatsky, Jung and Freud lead inexorably into the occult, and into past occultists -- such as Emanual Swedenborg (1688-1772) in whom psychic and/or multidimensional abilities were superactive -- but still as spontaneous episodes. Once entered into the list of my occult interests, the list of serious sources becomes very long while the list of superficial and useless sources is even longer.

But one of course eventually encounters diverse perspectives, such as the Kabbala, Amerindian psychic philosophies and the Hawaiian disciple called "Huna" (meaning "secret.") In these are hints, sometimes more than hints, of Far Eastern mind-development -- and then secondary hints of Western traditions for the same.

Then there was alchemy to study. Indeed, one of Jung's most important books is entitled: MYSTERIUM CONIUNCTIONIS - AN INQUIRY INTO THE SEPARATION AND SYNTHESIS OF PSYCHIC OPPOSITES IN ALCHEMY (and, in my opinion, just about everything else, too.)

I was enormously attracted to the life and works of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). If I were the predisposed follower type, both psychologically and spiritually, I'm quite sure I would have selected the philosophy and mysticism of this undeniably great visionary.

But alas, somewhere in my childhood the old axiom "Never a follower or a leader be" had made some kind of ineffable sense to me.
I was after knowledge, or at least information. I was NOT after leadership or fellowship, and I found out very early that I was not co-dependent. I was after direct personal experiencing from some kind of source naturally existing within me.
I was not into "receiving" mind-programming, or mind-modeling myself in the image and works of others. And philosophical or mystical robotism put me off.

None the less, Steiner represented some kind of a paragon to me. He had been born in Austro-Hungary (now Yugoslavia.) But he had been a seer and much of his insight was derived from clairvoyant perception.
He had studied philosophy and attended lectures at the Technical Highschool at Vienna. He later became a tutor, and he edited the works of Goethe. He had once been involved in the O.T.O occult order.

Developed from early Theosophical interests, he ultimately formulated the Anthroposophical Movement. ANTHROPOSOPHY is derived from two Greek terms -- ANTHROPOS (man), and SOPHIA (wisdom) -- but which, in my opinion, should be translated as Higher Minded Human Wisdom (something always in short supply.)
I read all of his many books, and studied at the Anthroposophy center in New York for a while. Anthroposophical Schools had been going out of business at the time, but it was known that even retarded children achieved remarkable results by attending them.

Steiner placed great emphasis on color, form, rhythm and the life of nature. He was also a pioneer of biodynamic farming, which dispenses with the use of chemical fertilizers -- the meaning of which has become somewhat crystal clear today.

Had I wished to affiliate myself with a movement and call myself as a member of it, I could easily and willingly have styled myself as an "Anthroposophist," perhaps even an abject one. This was as close as I ever came to being a true-believer "member" in anything.
Although Anthroposophy was in decline when I took an interest in it, Rudolph Steiner has very much to teach one, even today.

Naturally, in surveying all the available literature on such topics, one will run across the voluminous works of Alice Bailey (1880-1944), a noted Theosophist.
She is often described as the "intellectual heir" to Madame Blavatsky, and around her works the Arcane School was formulated to propagate a "Great Universal Plan" dictated by a hierarchy of spiritual masters.

And with Alice Bailey we are talking BIG books, and lots of them, for example THE TREATISE ON COSMIC FIRE, a particular favorite of mine.

The Arcane School was located quite near the United Nations buildings, and it possessed something quite remarkable. An extensive library of what seemed to be all of the occult books in the world. The library didn't loan books, and so I practically lived in this library (or in Weiser's Occult Bookstore), and consumed huge quantities of information.

I became quite familiar to the librarian at the Arcane School, and he started recommending sources I'd never heard of or might not have run across.
I bought all of Bailey's books and pamphlets, and once more my colleagues at the United Nations were dismayed -- for instance, when I read her ESOTERIC ASTROLOGY at lunch. I had gone non-conventional again.

I kept this and other non-conventional books visibly displayed on my desk -- so as to upset those of more conventional expectations (this was a full part of my derring-do).
Now I was an occult "believer."
I defended myself by saying that this was a free country in which one could read what one wanted -- without fear of persecution in the form of ridicule.
Since this freedom was at the United Nations a serious issue -- with so many Member States and their cultures -- most critics there of my non-conventional interests backed down.

The Arcane School offered a mail-order course on spiritual, psychic and conscious development.
One was supposed to enroll and pay in order to see these materials, but when I was reluctant to do so the librarian showed many of them to me.
All in all, these materials were quite good -- for anyone just starting up and wishing to acquire something along the lines of knowing more about holistic consciousness. But they were useless to me -- largely because I already knew everything in them and more.

I had, of course, attended many weekend seminars and other conferences on these topics. Some of these were quite good ones back in the 1960s, for it is still those years I'm talking about.
So I had gotten used to paying something for information and immediate experience of what was being offered.
But after several years of this kind of research, I eventually had concluded that merely reading about stuff only did so much for mind-development -- and what was offered at seminars was usually the lowest common denominator the masses were capable of taking on board.

Thus, I started looking around for contemporary developments along these lines. And when Silva Mind Control came along, I paid my fees to learn something directly from a Silva Method "practitioner."
The term "mind control" worried a lot of people -- largely because it implied mental control of OTHERS.
Thus, some of my work colleagues and friends now accused me of being "into mind-control."

And for the first time a few friends walked away from me, especially after the media had a field day with "Silva Mind Control."
But in fact, in the Silva method the "control" was directed to the control of one's own mind by virtue of learning to identify one's own states of consciousness -- and especially, but not exclusively, pertaining to enhancing and optimizing clairvoyance and which clairvoyance could be used for purposes of physical and medical diagnosis.

I didn't do too well with the Silva method, or at least with various aspects of it. But I had read all of the books on mind control (and hypnosis) which had come out during the 1950s and 1960s (quite a lot of them as it was).
I felt that Silva's use of "mind control" was ill advised, and that clairvoyant medical diagnoses would probably present a threat to the American Medical Association and this would lead to subtle forms of persecution -- which it did in large part.

After all, there was a history of such persecution. The persecution by the French Medical Academy of Anton Mesmer who was credited with curing many psychosomatic ills the then medical profession could not.
Mesmer's "cures," it would seen, were largely effected by restoring the natural balances of the body's electromagnetic fields, albeit via very strange "equipment" the likes of which have never been exactly duplicated after Mesmer was persecuted out of France.
It seems that the restoration of the fields also stimulated immediate resurgences of sexual energy, so much so that in some cases the experiencers suffered spontaneous orgasms and ejaculations. And so there was indeed a lot for the conventional-minded to get worked up over.

It was my research of Mesmer which ultimately led to my interests in the Orgone energy of Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957). Again "orgone" energy was sexual based, and many cures of psychosomatic ills were claimed. So of course Reich ended up in jail where he died of a "heart attack" or so it was officially diagnosed.

Year's later, I had the opportunity to talk with Wilhelm Reich's daughter -- who insisted her father had been murdered in his prison cell.
He had been put in prison not because anything nefarious had been proven against him. Indeed, charges had been dropped. But merely for contempt of court -- probably because he had a big mouth and didn't know when to stop using it. Meanwhile, the FBI had burned all of his books and research papers.
And which is to say, BOOK BURNING in this great nation as late as 1957. Those interested in the whole story of Wilhelm Reich might read FURY ON EARTH: A BIOGRAPHY OF WILHELM REICH, by Myron Sharaf, St. Martin's Press, 1983.)

It was the sad tales of Anton Mesmer and Wilhelm Reich which first got me interested in the overall social treatment of psi, the occult, and the superpowers of the human biomind. And we might as well include the treatment of the non-conventional.
As I distinguished back then (in the middle-late 1960s), there was nothing really wrong with studying the past history of the "paranormal" -- with the exception of Madam Blavatsky who STILL today is an occasional issue with polemics occasionally published to demean her and her otherwise stellar reputation.
But when it comes to contemporary, in-the-flesh non-conventional figures, and especially if their teachings threaten existing vested interests -- well, a great ruckus and alarm are entirely possible.
Such was certainly the case regarding Blavatsky -- who not only was a vociferous philosophical female in a male dominated West at the time, but proposed the wholesale importation of Far Eastern "religions" in to the Christian West.
The ensuing ruckus was tremendous -- so much so that the venerable NEW YORK TIMES published every morsel about her, including her daily agenda.

Much the same can be said of Georgei Gurdjieff (1877-1949) after he came to the United States, and, as well, of Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910) after she got her act together and founded the Christian Science Movement. Great social and persecutorial hubbubs followed in their wakes.
Then there was the perhaps somewhat deserved case of Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) who was both brilliant and stupid. His dark magic philosophy, practices and claims of "astral communications" didn't get him in as much trouble as did his claimed rediscovery and well-advertised practices of Tantric Yoga (sex-magic.)

And then there is the case of modern parapsychology itself, virtually hounded into if not complete social extinction, at least into scientific, psychological and psychiatric extinction by subtle and not so subtle persecution formats. Since this will be discussed in detail at some point ahead, I leave it at that here.

All of the above (and much more) had taken place before 1967, and so at one time or another you could say, as some accused, I was an ardent devotee of the topics and personalities of my research.
But DEVOTEE is defined as an ardent follower, supporter or enthusiast. I'll add, an ardent follower often (but not always) with closed-minded circuits which often obliterate anything else -- one who is unaware of a lot and hence can make no perceptions about it.
With the exception of enthusiasm about what I was learning from these sources, I was never anything of the kind.

After all, one can study stuff -- and not become a stupefied android or automaton of what one is studying.
Accepting mind-programming is a matter quite different from learning about things, about what went on in other times and places, about what's going on in one's contemporary times.

I don't remember when I first heard of Scientology, but I do remember purchasing in 1961 a May 1950 copy of ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION magazine because it contained an essay by one L. Ron Hubbard entitled DIANETICS, AN INTRODUCTION TO A NEW SCIENCE.
Even though Hubbard had been quite famous before 1961, I had never heard of him. I bought the magazine because of Hubbard's essay and which had to do with the author's ideas of how the mind worked -- the topic of one of my passions.

I then learned that the essay had been expanded into book form as DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH. So I acquired a used copy of that, too.
The book stood around for about two years in my to-read piles. When I did read it, I was impressed by quite a number of his observations. Among these he insisted that intra-uterine memory was possible and did occur and that the unborn baby began recording memory and other impressions well before actual physical birth.

This concept is rather broadly accepted today. But even as of 1963, it was anathema to science, the medical professions, and to psychology.
I felt I had such memory -- and as a young child I used to refer to events and situations which occurred while my mother was pregnant with me. My family used to say: "Who told you that? You couldn't remember that because it happened before you were born."

There is of course, the small detail of where and when the mind begins.
For quite a long time it had been understood that during the later months of pregnancy, the senses of the babe become formed and functional, especially during the seventh to the ninth month. Convincing cases also abound regarding the pre-birth baby's capability of sending empathy and telepathic signals to their mothers. Today, mothers are sometimes encouraged to read out loud so their pre-birth babies can hear and begin their learning processes. But one must draw one's own conclusions about all of this.

Most encyclopedias having an entry for Dianetics indicate that Hubbard's book became an over-night best-seller, and which was indeed the case -- and for quite a long time.
I also began occasionally running into people who were into Dianetics. As a group I found them a rather odd lot, but most of them were also "occultists" interested in topics of my passion, and were enthusiastic about the developmental possibilities Dianetics held for those topics.

I first became really apprised regarding Scientology in a strange way.
In the winter of 1962, at the United Nations I met a woman hired to work for the duration of the General Assembly. She was exquisitely beautiful and was lusted after by males everywhere in the UN buildings, and I was intensely attracted.
She was a bit older than I -- which caused my mother's eye brows to arch a little. But what the hell. I wanted her, and I got her, and our affair lasted nearly four years. I will call her Pauola, because she has long been happily married to someone else and wouldn't want her name spread through the Internet.

At the time she was deeply passionate about the work of Georgei Gurdjieff and the movement which had formed around it. This coincided with my own interests in reading about Gurdjieff and his works, and so we were happy as clams.
After about three years of our bliss, and etc., Pauola became interested in Scientology and thought I should become likewise interested.
She took me to a Scientology franchise center far uptown in Manhattan -- and which center was composed of the ugliest interiors possible.
I remember it clearly. Old dark green wallpaper with large PINK palm trees, the paper torn here and there. The furniture -- well, one could actually find better stuff in the streets in those days. I'm not prissy, but I tended to associate aesthetic conditions with states of mind -- and the center flunked this in all regards.

Central, or basic, to Hubbard's thesis was the "reactive mind." This can be described various ways, but I'll do it my way -- since I was ultimately to agree in principal and in details as I still do today.
The mind sets up "circuits" based on earlier experiences, and these circuits thence tend to work on automatic and subconsciously.

When one encounters future experiences, they are automatically processed through these pre-installed circuits in a "reactive" kind of way. One then is not dealing with the new "present time" experiences, but is being influenced, usually negatively, by the past circuits.
The new experiences are stimuli which automatically reactivate the old circuits -- often with deplorable results especially regarding emotions, behavior, intelligence, abilities and other kinds of mind-dynamic activity and often resulting in dire physiological circumstances.

Here, then, was an extension into humans of the automatic stimulus-response mechanisms which the early Russian researcher, Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936), demonstrated existed in his experimental dogs and other animals.
Hubbard postulated that everyone had a reactive mind -- and by extension the entire planet was populated with reactive minds and reactive (as contrasted to causative) situations. One can, of course, either be cause or effect -- and the reactive mind caused one to be the effects of IT.

Hubbard proposed that the way to "clear" one of one's reactive mind was to identify the reactive circuits and "erase" them by consciously digging them up and re-experiencing them in "present time" until the circuits lost their dynamic energy and vanished.
Once this happened, the person would then be "a clear," as it was put in Scientology. From this resulted the "steps toward becoming clear," a series of strict processes to be administered by a "professional Scientology auditor." Each of the steps cost dollars.

Naturally, vested interests in our American culture felt that Scientology represented an "aberrant" form of psychotherapy, a term which Hubbard turned back onto his critics by holding that THEY were aberrant because of their reactive minds.
I don't know for sure if this was the original cause of the persecution of Scientology and Mr. Hubbard. But soon his spreading organizations were being raided by the FBI, etc., which seized equipment and confiscated literature and files.
Hubbard, however, proved to be something of another order. I never met him personally, but the last thing which could be said of him was that he WAS not meek, and didn't take things laying down.
He made himself perpetually unavailable -- and took his persecutors into the courts of this fair nation. Thus began the Scientology "scandals," and which were eventually to achieve monumental and quite startling proportions. And conspiracy addicts had a field day.
From the onset of the persecutions, Scientology became in large part Mr. L. Ron Hubbard against the reactive-mind world. But this is too long a story to even summarize in this book.

What mattered to me, as in all things I've studied, was what I got from Hubbard's ideas, concepts and theories -- and which was considerable, and none of which I'm ashamed of or regret in anyway.
The story of what I got, and the evolving, complicated story of Mr. Hubbard's organizations are two different matters.
People who want to learn and know more always have to labor to separate the wheat from the chaff -- while throwing the baby out with the bathwater gets one nowhere.

Here, of course, was a new derring-do for me. My "entry" into Scientology occurred in April 1967 a few days after I first gave my two years notice of resignation at the United Nations -- and which resignation I thereafter withdrew and resubmitted twice.
But I never "entered" Scientology. I became a paying client to undergo the processes and techniques which would result in Clear and the Levels above that. I became enthusiastic about certain of Hubbard's concepts, and less than enthusiastic about others.
I exited Scientology of my free will in 1975 and under reasonably amicable circumstances. I might have exited earlier -- had I not personally been persecuted in the minds of some as "a Scientologist," always instead being a student of Mr. Hubbard's ideas and techniques.

However, my so-called "entry" into Scientology was delayed. Although Pauola grew insistent about my doing so, wild horses couldn't have dragged me into that stinking miserable center uptown in Manhattan -- and which didn't even provide toilet paper.
So one day, without much fanfare, Pauola came to my apartment, collected her tea cups (she was English), threw a couple against the wall and walked out. Then, to my chagrin, three weeks later she married a man she had met in Scientology.
Well, what the hell. It was good, very good, while it lasted. Eventually she and her husband became good friends, and which friendship has lasted to this day. They are no longer "Scientologists," either -- and as most know, the list of former Scientologists is a rather long one.

So, I was a Theosophist, an Arcane School-ian, and a lot of other temporary things, to which I ultimately added "being a Scientologist."
I made no secret of anything along these lines, and both liked and was encouraged by interested people to talk about what I had learned from very MANY sources -- and to which sources I've added many since.
For instance, the wonderful "peak performance" philosophy and psychology of Abraham H. Maslow and various versions of "metapsychology."
After all, one cannot be confined into ideological constraints if one wants to learn something about Life.

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