A long-lost (?) Brethren, Information letter from Robert De Grimston covered this topic. The list of BIs I have omits numbers 2, 6, 10, and 11, so I assume it was one of these. This puts it in the period 1968-69, when the Old Game, base around the primacy of Jehovah, was at its height. The concept it outlined was reconceptualised later on, during Lucifer’s Game ( post 1970), but since the repugnance the original text evoked in me was so strong, I have vaguer memories the ‘nicer’ version from the early 1970s. The BI itself was not, apparently, rewritten.

The Process thought along NeoPlatonic lines. That is, not just plants and animals were held to be separate beings, but also physical objects, concepts, and human qualities. At the same time, it was understand that an entity such as the human psyche was not a homogeneous, self-generated structure, but was, instead an agglomeration of qualities, attributes and, above all, compulsive agreements with which we had identified. The notion that “I must be good, or bad things will happen,” familiar enough to any child psychologist as being imprinted by our parenting was seen differently in The Process. We quite literally absorbed the energy(ies) of the idea from our parents and incorporated it into the vast structure of compulsive agreements we had been building up over many lifetimes. It would have to be congruent with the existing tendencies in the mind: that is, it would be absorbed according to the existing God-pattern, like a new twig on an existing branch of a tree. Thus, a Jehovian child might take in the aforementioned idea about being good as a commandment to follow to avoid evil, while a Luciferian-minded one might take it in as “I must be good in order to generate good things.” Either way, the compulsion embodied in such a buried or half-buried notion would keep it firmly in place, and immune to conscious analytical reasoning.

Processing, or Sessions, or P-Scope Sessions or whatever title the formal therapy had at any given time, was designed to bring out these compulsive agreements to which we felt bound, and release them. After each Session, we would discharge the actual agreements down into the Abyss. Mother Flavia, of blessed memory, once told me she saw bicycle handlebars when she saw the Abyss: this was so anything positive wrongly discharged there could make its way back out.

This whole conception of things extended to anything soever that was part us: our cunning, our charm, our dishonesty, our sweetness, our ability to create art, or be a nurturing parent, or feel emotions. Thus, one could both gain and lose such attributes: again, in accordance with the pre-existing God-pattern and its nature.

The lost BI, which depressed me immediately on reading it, explained that anyone who joined The Process brought in all their personal qualities; and if they left, some of those would remain in The Process’ egregore. (The website http://salemos.tripod.com/index-50.html offers a good definition of this useful word: The Process itself didn’t use it.) Someone else joining afterwards could then be ‘built up’ with those self-same qualities.

It was also stated in the BI that a person leaving The Process would take out with them negative qualities. Clearly, this was a disincentive to quitting, since such a deserter would become like the Biblical scapegoat, taking the community’s negativity out into the wilderness of humanity. It also, looked at in retrospect, like a neat way to frighten people out of leaving.

Since being part of The Process called for a major identification with it – its beliefs, goals and hierarchy – people who did leave often looked deeply woebegone for the first year or so while they re-established a sense of selfhood. Many of us hung around for a time, in various degrees of denial about how we had fallen, but clearly supplying an object lesson to those still inside as to how true was the notion of the Bank. We had lost some of our best qualities, and taken on some of the trash from the group mind. Worse, we still had a very shaky sense of what our selfhood itself was.

Now, later on, the idea evolved. It was then understood that we absorbed qualities and energies from the people we met on the street or who came to visit, but clearly in less dramatic quantities.

And there’s no denying the strength and breadth of the Bank that resulted. It was possible to tap into it for inspiration, or strength, or guidance, or an image to adopt out selling magazines on the street, when one’s usual one wasn’t working.

But in the end, I found the whole thing unconvincing. I was mightily depressed for my first year or so after leaving, but eventually realised that I was essentially intact. Depression is simply a temporary loss of abilities, not a permanent one. I concluded the Bank was a crock, at least in the way it was formally explained. It was simply a huge astral attic built up from our collective experiences. Yet, I would also argue that the egregore, the Bank, of The Process is what has kept it in the public eye. Outsiders unconsciously tune into it without realising what they’re doing, and, surprised with what comes into their minds, find it understandably off-putting. Particularly since it is stale, and so worked over, and so borrowed from, mis-remembered and mistrusted, it’s a very shaky depository, rather like one of those ancient, self-destroyed civilisations the Enterprise was always finding on Star Trek.

Possibly someone else reading this post has a different perspective, and can offer a comment from that viewpoint. To me, though, as originally expressed, the notion personified the psychic vampirism of the shadow side of The Process. And I have a suspicion that Robert, when he re-read that BI at some point in Lucifer’s time, was secretly embarrassed by it, and wasn’t sorry to delete it from the Processean canon.