In the mid 1980’s a Class VIII Auditor named Ian Waxler headed a group called The Council for Spiritual Integrity. He recently sent me an April 1985 newsletter The Free Spirit that the council published. A copy of it can be accessed at the end of this post.
I highly recommend people giving it a thorough read. After having done so myself I recognized a couple of important things.
The parallels between what was happening in the field in the mid eighties and now are remarkable. The newsletter reads much like this blog in terms of issues the field was contending with. Though many doubt it, I had very little exposure to the “Independent” movement of the eighties. As will be made very clear in my book between 81 and 85 I was thoroughly consumed in dealing with dozens of lawsuits and a number of criminal investigations targeting L Ron Hubbard. It was not till November of 1984 that I was thrust into the Mayo/Advanced Ability Center lawsuit, in my position as Legal Executive Author Services Inc, as it was perceived that then-RTC honchos had thoroughly screwed it up. Even then, it was only one of dozens of disrelated lawsuits I remained involved in. By the time I got into RTC, March 1987, there was little to nothing going on overtly in the Independent field, at least nothing that effected the church very greatly. I give this brief history to make the point how remarkable I find it that Moving on Up A Little Higher so parallels The Free Spirit. Uncanny in some respects, like choosing July 4th for an annual Independents’ get-together.
Having been accused of all manner of skullduggery – there was plenty I was involved in, just not so much in this sector – by folks on the receiving end from the eighties, I batted back a lot of nasty comm I’ve received from that sector for three reasons. First, it was full of false accusations and arguing facts seemed to go nowhere. Second, and more importantly, it didn’t open the door to any handlings – their presumptive why for the past Independent movement having nothing whatsoever to with anything they did or didn’t do (the why is God). The comm only reinforced the conclusion I had already drawn about the ebbing of the “squirrels” (from my church perspective) that they had suffered the fate LRH had suggested they would if they did two things : a) squirreled, and b) denigrated Hubbard and his technology. Third, I found both “a” and “b” to be rampant within the current Freezone.
However, reading the Waxler CSI newsletter caused me to re-think this historical era. It has prompted me to conduct a thorough investigation and evaluation of the 1980’s Independent movement for purposes of learning from its strengths and weaknesses.
I am interested in receiving hard facts from the perspective of pioneer Independents on what went right and what went wrong from their points of view. I do understand the impact of the Mayo/AAC going down. I was most definitely involved in that. But, there are certainly other factors. There must be more useful facts for pure evaluation, that is, what did the Independents do or not do to lose their momentum, cohesion, and effectiveness.
While this process can certainly lead to important connections being made by various sectors of the Independent field, I am quite certain a bunch of comm attempting to “enlighten” me on the virtues of “a” and “b” above is going to be counter-productive. Because of the volume of traffic on my lines on a lot of productive fronts, this is a word of warning that I am not going to devote any time to such origins. If that is the bulk of what I receive, I’ll understand my initial conclusions – though omitting pluspoints like Waxler produced – were probably right in the first place.
If you have such facts and are willing to share them, please forward me reports at rathbunmark@yahoo.com.
Moving On Up a Little Higher 