Lecture: How To Create and Instruct A PE Course
Author: Hubbard, L. R.
Document date: n.d.
Document title: How To Create and Instruct A PE Course (Part 1)
Document type: lecture transcript
Event: Organization Series lectures
Location: Washington, DC
Document ID: Org series-01
Description: Hubbard is talking to organization staff about their introductory course called PE, or Personal Efficiency; says their membership consists almost totally of members of the Roman Catholic Church; talks about people with a pitch; gives instructions to not talk too much about the 7th and 8th dynamics; discusses the PE course in Dublin and how the government came to love it., 1956, 18 October
Thank you. Now, you may not have recognized it – you may not have recognized it as such, you see – but you are attending tonight a PE Course.
But a couple of little notes before I go on.
This PE Course is a very international affair, truthfully, very international. In fact, tonight as I stand here, I want to call to your attention that the international character of it is somewhat sullied, however.
You remember the king that was King of England when the United States revolutionized? That was George III, and if you look here carefully, I’ve brought back his head.
Well, the main difficulty that we’re up against in teaching PE Courses is exactly that – their international character – because there are certain various things which intervene between public interest and sanity.
Now, I wouldn’t mention any names, I wouldn’t mention any cults, I wouldn’t mention any activities at all.
However, the Roman Catholic church is an organization which has a great many people in its membership. And when we teach a PE Course to a large class that contains almost totally members of the Roman Catholic church, if we go heavily on the Roman Catholic church and give them a poor time, what happens? Next week we have no attendance, not because the people don’t want to come, but because they’ve been told that they will be excommunicated and go to hell if they do! This makes it much more attractive, but they stay away.
Now, this international character is observable in small districts, in small countries and in big countries. And the handling of an international activity on a blunt, this-is-the-way-you-do-it basis is almost impossible because it does not take into account the randomity in existing areas.
Now, it would fascinate you to know that today Scientology is active in nineteen separate countries. You don’t hear much about that. In some of these countries numerically the activity is very small, but wherever Scientology has gone it has continued to flourish. And particularly since PE Courses have been introduced, they have cut a swath that nothing else has ever cut, including early Christianity.
The mere fact of teaching a PE Course is evidently one of the most civilizing activities that has been conducted here for a couple of thousand years. Now, that’s quite fascinating to know that.
So let’s start right out at the beginning of What is the goal of a PE Course? Internationally the goal is to bring about a superior civilization in which peace can exist on earth. The modus operandi by which this is done is education in the actual, simple facts of existence. And a PE Course is equally welcome to the government of Ireland, it is welcome to the government of England, to the government of France, and oddly enough to an Arabian government and the Israel government. It is welcome to the British nation and to the Indian nation. Wherever you look you’ll find these people ready to tear each other’s throats out and both sides accept a PE Course, the data of which is contained in Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought. And they both accept these tenets as good roads and good weather, and here we are.
The Republicans, the Democrats, the Communists, the Socialists might also accept this, not then on a national basis, but a political basis.
However, I’m afraid that I have to report that we’re not too successful in educating commissars. We are not too successful in educating high priests – and other psychiatrists. We are not too successful in educating people with a pitch. Get that.
The people with a pitch conceive that you are going to subtract from their particular MEST – which is what people are to them, MEST – some of their vacuum lines. And I always tell them quite frankly, “We’re not even vaguely interested in disrupting your control of your congregation or your populace. If you were to come and study this, you would see exactly how it is not likely to disrupt your control.” And they fall for it and they come and they get all confused.
Scientology today is an effective mission in the Western world, highly effective. And the effectiveness of it is on the level of populace which, in the workaday world, runs the actual wheels of industry, commerce, agriculture and loafing in the various nations of the world.
We have an enormous appeal to the general public, an enormous appeal. But if you think we have an enormous appeal to intelligentsia, then your PE Course is going to fail. All right, let’s not generalize on this, let me settle this problem once and for all of vested interests and pitching the substance matter of a PE Course so that people with a pitch won’t start pitching at you.
You have to take the materials of Scientology and carefully edit them in your lectures so as not to start tromping on toes in the immediate front yard of some dinosaur or mammoth or overgrown bulldog.
You run it, then, good roads and good weather. Everybody’s in favor of those – good roads and good weather.
We don’t, then, start talking in Ireland about the eighth dynamic, nor do we talk too much about the seventh dynamic.
Every night at 69 Merrion Square South in Dublin, Eire, somewhere between twenty-five and sixty Irish assemble and are taught a PE Course. Good roads and good weather. There is the first PE Course. That was the first point of origin of PE Courses. It originated because an HCO – a Hubbard Communications Office – was being established in Dublin and it had a great deal of extra space.
At first the government was very wroth, it was very upset, it was very mad that anybody should come in. And then it sent one of its “best” investigators – some fellow way below minus zero – and boy, he thought that course was wonderful. And he went back and he told his superiors that, and several of them came too. The course had the cleanest bill of health that was ever written up on a pratique. The government loves it.
Hubbard, L. R. (1956, 18 October). How To Create and Instruct A PE Course (Part 1). Organization Series, (Org series-01). Washington, DC.