EUROPE

May 10, 2017May 11, 2017
by Joe Doe

EUROPE, LEADING THE WAY TO A NEW CIVILIZATION

This article was published in the Sea Org Magazine “HIGH WINDS” Issue 1, 1980

Scientology expansion in Europe continues on a Power trend. Under the very able leadership of Commanding Officer Europe Guillaume Lesevre and his crew at FOLO Europe,power expansion is the order of the day and new orgs open weekly! What’s the secret of Europe’s success? In this article, Capt.

W.B. Robertson tells how it all started…

The story of Europe and its expansion actually starts back in 1969 and 1970, when LRH developed the Flag Executive Briefing Course technology. This was a breakthrough which enabled orgs to run better and to expand rapidly. This was closely followed by another breakthrough, the Data Series, which made management very logical. A manager could actually get in and handle the right whys.

In 1970, I was on the Flagship as an officer. I was on my annual leave, doing the Flag Executive Briefing Course. In those days, when someone took his annual leave, he usually went to do a course, such as the Class VIII Course or the FEBC.

These courses were done under LRH as Commodore and Captain of the Flagship. And these courses were very, very exact, very in-tech – and they didn’t last very long, because the students were put through with a high degree of certainty. They had to demonstrate and apply every bit of the technology, and when they got finished, they knew that they knew it!

I had finished the FEBC and was about to start my internship, when I got word that I was to go on a mission to Europe.

I went into briefing for this mission, and I found out that the basic LRH intention behind this mission was to make Europe capable of supporting the entire Scientology and Sea Org networks in case the Western economy went into a crash. Even back in those days, he could see that the US economy

was too shaky to support itself.

This was a very challenging goal, because at that time, Europe was our smallest continent. In terms of Scientology activity, it was smaller than Africa or ANZO.

When I arrived in Europe, the only thing that was in existence there was the Sea Org stationship

Athena, the Advanced Org Saint Hill Denmark, which had just moved into downtown Copenhagen and was operating at a small to medium level of statistics, and about six orgs: Denmark, Copenhagen, Paris, Malmo, Stockholm and Gothenburg. These were all very small, and in fact the combined Gross Income was something like $110,000 a year.

Today it’s about one hundred times that figure!

What happened?

Well, it was just a simple application of two things: One was mission technology, and the other was management technology, including the FEBC technology.

This was done by setting up a CLO, a Continental Liaison Office (which is now EUROPE – LEADING THE WAY TO A NEW CIVILIZATION known as a Flag Operations Liaison Office, or FOLO).

Believe me, it wasn’t very sophisticated in the beginning. The CLO was first set up in a small, partitioned off part of the hold of the Athena.

It then moved ashore, for better telex and communication facilities, to the basement of the AOSH

house, where the crew lived.

Those basement rooms were about five and a half feet high, and you had to bend your head over as you went in. At that time we had only seven or eight staff. We started in immediately to handle the orgs, which were very small and non-expanding at that time. As CO Europe, I first got the communication lines in to the CLO, or FOLO so that they would be able to relay and receive data and do the standard management functions on a cope basis while I went out to the orgs.

I went out and started actually debugging the orgs, getting the executives understanding and using LRH policy, drilling the crew and getting them actually delivering Scientology services to the public.

We got them selling the one or two translated books we had at that time, and drilled the crews into a concept of service.

We also had to find out which executives could operate both in English and in their native language so we could have a terminal there to relay orders.

You might think “Well, that’s pretty easy – probably a lot of money came down from Flag to do that.” No – everything those orgs had, they had to make. There was no financial assistance. In fact, some of the missions that we ran from the FOLO and some of the trips that I took as a missionaire to get the orgs operating were done on a shoestring. There were no super plane flights until we got a little bigger – at

first it was get to the org in any way you can.

At first it was a matter of getting some products out any way we could and building the orgs up.

When I first went up to Stockholm Org, I could not find the org. Finally, after wandering around in the general area, which was a housing development outside of Stockholm, I happened to see a Dianetics book laying on a basement window ledge. I found the boiler room entrance and found a room in there with three people in it, and that was the org!

I told them I was on a mission from Flag to get the European orgs booming, and they were quite happy about this. One of them said, “This will be like the Dianetics boom of two years ago!” I said, “Dianetics boom! That’s great! Do you have the mailing list of all the people from that boom?” They said, “Oh yes – and we even made auditors!” I asked how many auditors they had made, and they told me, “A few – three”. I asked them where these auditors were, and they said, “Well, we are them!”

Well, that was how we started. Building an org, building a continent, you have to start small and build it up, and just keep going all the way.

Stockholm kept going. We did get those Dianetics names, and we got these auditors delivering auditing to them. Soon they moved into a house downtown, expanded there and finally moved right into the cen

ter of town, with half a square block building, delivering and becoming one of the top orgs in Europe.

One of the interesting things about Europe is that it eventually worked out to where the heads of all the orgs were – not Executive Directors – but Commanding Officers. They were all eventually Sea Org Members. Those who came to the top of the various organiza- tions were those who had the Sea Org spirit. These were people who were dedicated to the truth and the concepts of Sc ientology and who understood that the Sea Org was the answer. Some of these COs were sent out from th e FOLO on garrison mission orders. One of the most successful was Lt. Jens Bogvad, who went to Munich. When he arrived, the place had about thirteen staff and was located out in a residential neighborhood and making something less than a thousand dollars a week . He brought this to an org which was in a downtown three story bu ilding, with about 130 staff, making about $20,000 a week and delivering more auditing and training than almost any other org in the world! Of course, we ran into problems – but they never seemed to faze us. Orgs today sometimes complain about rising postage costs for instance. We ran up against that problem in Gothenburg. They raised the postage to something like fifty cents per mail item — within the city! We handled that by just having the st aff deliver the promo and mail on bicycles! We had to bypass the enti re Swedish government! It did take staff off post a little bit, but we found it was faster and more positive – the peop le did respond. And it cost us next to nothing. In the beginning, we didn’t have translated materials. And sometimes we had to sit people down and actually get them trained to sp eak English. We didn’t have time to send them to Berlitz or any nonsense like that, so we got them through the courses using word clearing tech. They would learn a new language at the same time they learned the tech! You can imagine, if someone sat you dow n and gave you a pack in Swahili or Japanese or Serbo-Croatian and said “This is the tech – you mu st learn it.” What would you do? You might cry, you might say “I can’t do it!” We ll, we ran into all of that, handled it, and just started off clearing the firs t word in a language dictionary. Soon their speed would accele rate, and the next thing you know, they would be finishing the course not much slower than a person studying in English! And they had a terrific duplication of the materials – because they knew that they didn’t know. When they left, they were speak ing English, and they also knew the tech. This handled the problem temporarily, then Pubs got going on translating materials, and the orgs themselves had trained people transl ating materials, and so it started taking off. We got the key LRH programs translated and gotten in and word cl eared on all of the staff. We made sure they were totally understood by the staff, and then we pushed these key programs. We kept all of the extra traffic off of their lines so that they could just apply LRH’s data, LRH’s tech. Any debugs I did were always to get in whatever policy letter applied to the situation. So the orgs ended up operating on the LRH Executive Dire ctives and on policy. As we went along, we did find areas of out-eth ics, and we handled these, and wherever we handled an out-ethics area, we also turned it into a city office or an org so that there would be something positive there in place of what was at one time negative. EUROPE – LEADING THE WAY TO A NEW 4 CBR 1980 CIVILIZATION At the end of the two years that I was there, we had built up a network of orgs, including Munich Org, Vienna in Austria, Be lgium, Amsterdam, which were all built up by various FOLO missions and the actions of Sea Org members.

At the time that I left Europe, there were about twice the number of orgs, the orgs had expanded, the Gross Income level of the orgs was about twenty times what it had been when I had started. We had grown from eighty or ninety staff to hundred s of staff – and about half of those were Sea Org Members. So Europe from the start was Sea Org oriented, and oriented towards LRH tech – FEBC tech, policy and missi on tech. And these things were all very successful. It got to be quite a booming thing. Pretty soon the lines were connecting up between the orgs and their field and missions, and the or gs in various countries were all connecting up with each other. They started having a spirit of being Europe – as one large community of Scientology. Whatever the differences in language, in cust oms, the Scientologists all had ARC and all spoke the same language – the technical terms of Scientology. And they all had a terrific duplication of LRH’s materials. And those are the strong points that actually made Europe successful. And Europe is successful. They have gone from affluence to affluence since 1972. They have had many capable Sea Org executives both at the FOLO and in command of orgs who have carried on the spirit and drive of Europe and have reached new heights. Commanding Officer Guillaume Lesevre deserves special validation. Since taking over the continent in 1977, he has skyrocketed Europe’s stats and has expanded Scientology activity in Europe like never before.

Today, Europe is 100 times bigger than it was in the beginning, and is the top continent in the world, in terms of Scientology activity. New orgs are opening up all over Europe – Berlin, Angers, Novara, Padua, Brescia, Rome, Brussels, Basel, Geneva, Pordenone… And many other new orgs on the way.

LRH’s original intention for Europe – to have it able to support the entire Sea Org and Scientology network in case the US economy went down the drain – has been accomplished, using his technology. Europe is right now achieving its purpose very splendidly, and I know that Ron is very proud of Europe. We are all proud of Europe. Of course it took a lot of hard work to get Europe to where it is today, and it took a lot of people’s dedication, but basically it took doing what Ron says and applying Ron’s tech in a very dedicated Sea Org manner. At the end of any muster, or event, or meeting in Europe, they would always make sure that it was understood – by the public as well – that behind all of the gains of Europe and all of their wins and cognitions, was the work, the brilliance and the genius of one man – L. Ron Hubbard.

The people out in society have no technology. They’re sunk into false data and beset by suppression, and they don’t have anything to handle it. Now, the tide is turning, and people are turning to Scientology where they know there is a new civilization in the making. It is up to orgs and Scientologists all around the planet to take up the call to arms, expand and totally control their own areas, and realize that a new civilization is in the making. It starts here, with the Sea Org using LRH’s technology. We will handle this planet. We are handling this planet. And all I ask of you is to use LRH’s technology, and bring his postulate of a new civilization to a reality in your area of the world.

Capt. W.B. Robertson

EUROPE

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