Blown for Good - Marc Morgan Headley [24]
The EPF In-Charge seemed like a really cool laid-back guy. He was a regular-sized black fellow, probably in his late 20s, maybe early 30s. He had his uniform perfect every time I saw him and was pretty straight to the point. You could tell he had a sense of humor and smiled often. I thought to myself that this guy seemed to be happy here.
Before we went off to study, we had to do some Chinese school. Two EPFers went in front of the group with a large printout of an L. Ron Hubbard quote printed on it in huge text. The EPF In-Charge recited it and we had to parrot it back to him. He read it over and over and we repeated it back. After 15 minutes of recital, we were done.
Some of us were sent off to study while others had a different schedule, working while we studied and then studying while we worked.
When I got to the Estates Project Force course room the Supervisor met me. He gave me a list of the courses I was supposed to do. It read:
Product Zero:
1. Basic Study Manual or Student Hat
2. Basic Cleaning Course
3. Intro To Scientology Ethics Course
4. Welcome to the Sea Org Tapes
5. Basic Sea Org Member Hat Course
6. Keys To Competence Course
This was great news. I smiled as I read it. I would be out of here in no time. I told the Supervisor that I was ready to start the Tapes because I had already done the first two courses listed. I did them as a public Scientologist. The Course Supervisor was also pleased since this meant I would already be well into the courses and he could get a completion faster.
I estimated that 75% of the people in the EPF course room were kids younger than me. The other 25% ranged in age from their late teens to 40 years old. There was a huge board on the wall that showed each person and their progress on the list of courses they had to complete. The majority of people in the room appeared to be on the first few courses. I could see that I was going to be getting through this line-up faster than they were used to. I mentioned to the Supervisor that I was Fast Flow. He asked me where I did my courses to become Fast Flow. I told him I did them at Flag the year before. Having done anything at Flag was better than doing them anywhere else. “No checkouts for you then!” he said happily, “You should be able to get through these courses rather quickly.”
I listened to two entire tapes that day. The entire course consisted of five lectures total, so I figured I would be done with my first course within the next two days. The tapes were not like the study tapes I had listened to on the Student Hat course. Hubbard seemed to let his hair down a bit more, but he was still all over the place in terms of subjects covered.
On the first tape LRH talked about how it is harder to live at sea and, if you can live at sea, then you are better than the average landlubber. In the second tape he went over all the types of crews there are in the Sea Org, different types of drills that get done in the Sea Org and how to do them.
After study, we had lunch back in the galley. Someone told me that it was actually called Lebanon Hall. Turns out the entire building used to be a hospital and was called Cedars of Lebanon. Named after the trees that were used in King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem in the Bible.
I was a bit sore from the work the day before, but took it a bit easier and made it through okay. At the end of the day, I got into the showers as soon as we got back and was able to get back to my dorm before the crowds hit.
The next day I got through two more taped lectures. The first was on why the Sea Org was so successful, which I thought was funny since the lecture was given 20 years earlier and the Sea Org had only a few thousand members worldwide. He talked about how Sea Org members handled things that came up and how they were smarter than the average