Some quotes concerning the unpublished work "Excalibur"

2 February 1952 tape: "Mysticism":

Now in 1938 I was so steamed up I wrote a 125,000 word book in 6 days - good book, it's well written; 6 days. I bundled it up, took it to New York and said, "Oh boy, now we've got it!" I dropped it on some editorial desks. Fifteen people read it.

PDC Lecture 20:

"If this had been the simple job of putting together how do you make a universe, that job was done in 1938, and it was written about in a book called EXCALIBUR. But it didn't work because everybody was in agreement with the MEST universe so you had to find out what this universe was all about, and you had to find out how it was put together and what all these agreements were and what the progressive scale of agreement was, and what happened on the whole line. And then you could make Scientology work. So it became a study of agreement, progressive agreement. But progressive agreement doesn't really fall within the...the framework of logic. Logic is a progressive similarity. "

16 October 1953 tape "Subjective Processes (continued)":

I wrote a book in 1938 and probably will never completely recover from having done so. And I gave this book the working title - the mask you might say - of Excalibur. And it was quite a book. It contains, in essence, most of the theory which has been later used. But it didn't have it in any kind of a transmittable organization.

Every once in a while - the book has sufficient orienting factors in it that every now and then I am struck by the fact that we have gone into too deep, technical communication networks concerning this material. And I go back and reevaluate the material against the original postulates in that 1938 book and all of a sudden we lose a lot of technology suddenly and gain a lot of workability.

It would seem to indicate, if the reductio ad absurdum were followed, that everything would simply boil down to one flash. And this would be very nice to contemplate but I have not found this really taking place.

I have, however, found that with the Prelogics, the fact that the mission of theta is to create space in which to locate matter and energy - the Prelogics are a very definite advance. There's the theta-MEST theory and those. They're very good evaluating theories. Extremely good.

But in this original book there is something that you should know: A man is as sane as he considers himself dangerous to his environment. A real good one for you.

That is a not entirely integrated statement. But it is an entirely workable statement.

6 April 1954 tape: "Universes":

There is an earlier writing than this. There's a book called Excalibur which was written in 1938. That book is about 125 thousand words and is the theoretical top level of philosophic principles which we're still using. But it had no connecting link with anything like therapy. It had no connecting link, really, with beingness or something of this sort. It just took off in... ten thousand feet up and climbed. Nothing connected to Earth about it. Some of its principles are quite interesting. One of them is "A man is as sane as he feels dangerous to his environment." That's a very interesting line out of it, because as the years have gone along that has proven to be more and more an accurate statement when you consider a man as that composite of a thetan plus a body, Homo sapiens. He feels dangerous to his environment, he's all right. When he feels that the environment is dangerous to him he's all wrong.

The word survive and the first principle of existence also appear in Excalibur and are run down to a considerable extent. There is a great many electronic manifestations outlined, and several new laws there. There is considerable about the somethingness and nothingness of existence, and there's a big examination of why. Why are we living? This is something that bothers people every once in a while and there's a dissertation in there on it.

4 August 1958 tape: "Case Analysis - Question and Answer Period"

Male voice: I’ve heard a lot of fabulous stories about the book “Excalibur.” Could you tell us a little about that?

It still—it still exists. I got a carbon copy of it. The original’s been stolen.

Male voice: Will you ever put it in print, Ron?

The original... No. The original was stolen by the Russians a long time ago. They offered me a hundred thousand dollars to go to Russia and work exclu­sively in Russia—all laboratory facilities—and actually offered me any facility and pay and equipment that Pavlov had ever had and they almost had me on the boat, you know? That was back with Amtorg. And a few years later, why, my apartment was raided, doors smashed in and so forth, and the only thing miss­ing in the whole place-papers were all thrown about and so forth—and the only thing missing (there were very many valuables there) and the only thing miss­ing was the original copy of the book “Excalibur.” Still gone. I do have a carbon of it, however. I didn’t know I had the carbon. The carbon is the first writing. The book that was stolen had been rewritten somewhat. That answer it?

Male voice: Well, I was wondering if it would be something that you might ever put in print or.

Highly doubtful.

Male voice: Was it dangerous to read, I mean, the subject.

       Very, very.

Male voice: How about Scientology?

Terrifically introverting.

No. Scientology offers some hope. “Excalibur” simply was nothing on worlds, Earth—without any understanding at all on the subject of why. Or it simply said exactly what he was looking at and it evidently produced the mechanism, making him confront immediately and intimately all of the brain mechanisms. And, “Excalibur” is actually devoted to brain mechanisms as well as many of the principles which led to the research line. But it described brain mechanisms, and so forth, and guys read those things and they actually were sitting there just looking at them and they go up the spout.

Now, in Scientology you ask a man to confront why, you ask him to confront thinkingness, you ask him to confront reason and supposition. You don’t give him the hard rock-bound object, you know? And he gets along all right. You can write too brutally on the subject evidently.

Scientology—I’ve never known anybody to do anything with Dianetics and Scientology or any book thereof, but after reading in one, to feel better, even though they were sometimes worried, or something of the sort. And I have had instances of people just reading the first article and stepping out of a hospital bed, and so forth.

So this is not true of “Excalibur” and “Excalibur” comes under the heading of a dangerous weapon.

Male voice: Would it still be dangerous for a Scientologist to read it?

Oh no, no. Matter of fact from that aspect I wouldn’t publish it for another reason and that is that a modern Scientologist would laugh at it. It’s the only book, too, by the way, that contains any nomenclature straight off my case. Many of the descriptive words in it are straight out of my own engrams. I’d had no auditing at the time; I’d had no broad look at the track, or anything of the sort; and I just picked up the handiest stuck phrase on the bank. Right.

21 April 1964 tape: "Problems and Solutions":

As you may know, not contained in the body of Scientology but standing aloof, there are a series of research maxims or data, which I have really never bothered to collect. You'll find some traces of them in, of all things, Dianetics: Evolution of a Science. Its got quite a few of them in it. It's, you know, the rationale and how of how you figure it out. There's a whole book was devoted to this - was "Excalibur", is how you went about figuring it out.

HCOB 17 March 1969 "Politics":

Here is a scale taken from Excalibur from memory. Excalibur was an unpublished book written in the very late 1930s. Only fragments of it remain.

By placing it against the Tone Scale developed at the end of 1950, certain current political philosophies are better estimated. By then looking up these tone characteristics in Science of Survival much can be learned and the ideologies are thus made easier to predict or handle.

The cycle of a nation goes on a descending spiral down this scale.

Creation of Human Ability:

Many of the preclears being audited in Scientology are being audited simply to experience a new adventure. However, it can be said with some truth, and was said in 'Excalibur' in 1938, that a man is as sane as he is dangerous to the environment. What occurs is that the environment becomes dangerous to the man and the man cannot be dangerous to the environment. And his answer to this is immobility and general deterioration.

Here's an article from "The Aberree" in 1961 detailing some of the contents of "Excalibur"