In 1958, L. Ron Hubbard delivered 133 lectures including the Clearing Congress Lectures in Washington, DC, the first six of which were filmed.
In October, he sailed to London aboard the RMS Statedam. In England, he delivered 45 lectures while reorganizing local offices.
With this accomplished, he set sail back to Washington in early December aboard the Saxonia.
19th Advanced Clinical Course - Washington D.C.: January - February 1958
“We’re walking, right now, into a space‑opera age. And we are probably the only people that know anything about what Uncle Sammy and Uncle Khrushy face.” While Soviet leader Khrushchev rejoiced over the Russian satellite Sputnik and Russia’s newfound supremacy in the space race, L. Ron Hubbard convened a truly historic ACC. Following on the heels of “the most important Congress we have ever held”—the Ability Congress—the 19th American ACC opened with an account of whole track incidents implanted by space societies, the consequences for any preclear and the implications for civilization. An essential tool in the auditing solution was the E‑Meter, reintroduced due to electronic advances which made a new transistorized meter possible: the American Blue. Yet what made this ACC monumental was Clear Procedure, codification of all processes found most workable when applied by auditors. It consisted of an exact series of steps to obtain the state of Clear. And when those auditors created no less than fifteen Clears on the course itself, that was the crowning achievement—auditors other than Mr. Hubbard with the skill, know‑how and certainty to routinely clear others, laying the foundation for success in the only race that mattered—planetary clearing.
The Clearing Congress - Washington, D.C.: July 1958
Invitations said it all—“We did it!” Here, then, is the state of Clear: its dimensions, freedoms and characteristics. Nowhere is it so thoroughly laid out. Defining a Clear in terms of “freedoms from, ” L. Ron Hubbard shows the progressive steps to move anyone toward this state, including the handling of present time problems and ARC breaks. It all culminates in a “magic button” with the power to open up any case, and summed up in one word: Help. As he describes, it handles “something like TNT”—that splits valences, exteriorizes preclears and puts people into session who were formerly not even vaguely auditable. Directly on the heels of Help as the “heart and soul of the upper dynamics,” comes the yardstick of judgment: how many dynamics does a person compute on instantly? While on the other side of the coin are the negative dynamics —the realm of psychiatrists and makers of the A-bomb. At which point Mr. Hubbard reveals how to bring a being to a state where he can remain at cause, no matter the level of violence in a world gone mad. Today, Clears exist by the tens of thousands in virtually every country of Earth. Here is the moment, immortalized forever, when the first was announced.
20th Advanced Clinical Course: July - August 1958
Having announced the fact of clearing at the Clearing Congress, L. Ron Hubbard now devoted the 20th American ACC to a comprehensive restatement of fundamentals. Telling students, “In every single advance of Dianetics or Scientology we have moved from being able to help the few to being able to help the many,” Mr. Hubbard taught how to clear the many. It began with the technology to evoke preclear participation—namely, in‑sessionness. With mishandled origins the largest cause of preclears going out of session, he detailed how to ensure they stay in session. And that was far from all, for here is a wealth of new material—an explanation of auditing the Rock, an incident at the core of the reactive mind, a description of the Atom, an engram preceding The Factors, and the presentation of crucial discoveries on meter phenomena. With auditors drilled till they knew their data cold, L. Ron Hubbard made the 20th ACC the standard for professional auditor training. While toward that goal of clearing the many, Scientology expansion mushroomed even as he embarked for England to announce the next advance in the name of broad clearing—one that harked back to the earliest days of Dianetics.
5th London Advanced Clinical Course: November 1958
L. Ron Hubbard called it, “The single largest technical gain in eight years.” If he previewed the breakthrough at the London Clearing Congress, the great adventure of application began at the 5th London ACC. It all sprang from 1947 engram running, a technique he employed to make the first Clears, but which had defeated other auditors. But now with training drills in use and other auditors clearing people, Mr. Hubbard returned to those 1947 techniques “smoothed out, demonstrated and proved up in 1958.” Summated in a single embracive word—confronting—Scientology Engram Runningshattered whole track occlusions and brought to view in the preclear hidden patterns of experience, the experience necessary to resolve the case. Whereas Mr. Hubbard had found what he called the swift road to Clear, his final lecture tells of its value for training: “You know more now about anatomy of the mind than any other single group in Dianetics or Scientology has ever learned.” And for the crescendo, there was everything this ACC led to in the book, Have You Lived Before This Life? a watershed of planetary enlightenment on former lives and, hence, a spreading beacon of truth that each individual is a spiritual being.
Washington Staff Talk: December 1958