Abstract:
- the central theoretical model of scientology revolves around the concept of the reactive mind and its absence in the state of clear.
- Scientology theory is developing but consistent throughout the first 25 yrs, after 1976 serious inconsistencies arose.
- coincident with the above change is the involvement of the CIA
- Operating Thetan was and is in essence the original concept of the state of clear.
- the state of clear (dianetic clear) as defined in the latest version is unverifiable
- the basic assumption of scientology’s state of clear is revealed here perhaps for the first time
- conclusion
If there is one concept, that defines
scientology then it is Hubbard’s postulated state of clear. The book
Dianetics: The modern science of mental health audaciously put out a
theoretical, ideal state of man and postulated that there must be a single
source of all dysfunctional behavior (aberrations). The entire construct rests
on the assumption that all aberration and psychosomatic ills stem from a single
source which was named the engram, the main constituent of ‘the reactive mind’.
The ‘experimental evidence’ provided at the time was the simple observation
that hypnosis seems to work, most of the time, as in post-hypnotic suggestion.
The entire history of scientology revolves around
this concept of clear and the ceaseless attempts to establish such a state and
to prove it. There were book one clears, MEST clears, theta clears, first goal
clears, third goal clears, near clears, keyed-out clears, dianetic clears, past
life clears, natural clears, scientology clears.
In this article we attempt to shine some light on
the nature, politics and difficulties of establishing and verifying supposed
state of clear.
Chronology
The scientology state of clear cannot be understood
without consulting the chronology of the subject.
“A clear has no reactive mind and operates at total
mental capacity, an unaberrated person.” This ideal theoretical state was also
described as a completely self-determined individual and as a being cleared of
enforced and unwanted behavior patterns and discomforts.
The state of clear was first defined and postulated,
as above, in 1950. When this ideal and absolute state could not be reached in
practice, as quickly became evident, new approaches were invented and the
target shifted for a while towards increasing general spiritual and mental abilities.
In 1952 the goal was theta clear and then cleared
theta clear. The latter was the equivalent to what later was named operating
thetan. The standard operating procedure consisted of creative processing and
postulate processing.
In 1954, the time the book ‘Creation of Human
Ability’ was published, the clear was a theta clear i.e. ‘An individual who, as
a thetan, is certain of his identity apart from that of the body, and who
habitually operates the body from outside.’
In 1955 Hubbard wrote: “A clear, by definition, is
somebody who does not have any engrams in present time with him. By actual
practice a clear would have to be a stable thetan exterior since the body
itself is composed of energy masses which unfortunately contain engrams.” That
was called the one-shot clear, which was a thetan exterior. (Dn 55)
In December 1957 clear was defined as follows: ‘A
thetan who can knowingly be at cause over Life, Matter, Energy, Space and time,
subjective and objective’. (Scn Clear
Procedure Issue One) This definition of clear was later separated out into
the definition of OT which you could consider a generalized statement of the
vedic siddhis or powers of the gods.
In the 1958
clear procedure, the preclear was made to make mockups until he got rid
of the automaticity. Clear was defined as: ‘null on all mockups. He knows he is
mocking up bank. He can mock up bank.’ (mockup:
a–‘knowingly’–created mental holographic image)
In 1959 he described three grades of clear, book one
clear, theta clear and OT the latter he said was a rather esoteric level, hard
to reach. But at that time was under the general heading of clear.
1960 “When the tone arm reads at clear
for the person’s sex no matter what one attempts to
restimulate on the case you have a clear.” HCOB Responsibility-Key to all cases.
In 1963 it was discovered that the reason people weren’t clear or staying clear is that there were unresolved valences. Extremely sophisticated techniques were developed between 1960 and 1963 to address this phenomenon in the form of Goals Problem Masses (GPMs).
Hubbard by now had concluded that the earlier
attempts to make a clear by taking over the creation of the time track
(creative processing) was of no value and the following years were devoted to
handling the implanted GPMs and the actual GPMs were forgotten or left alone.
Engrams were mere locks on these heavy charged designer implants which formed
the core of the reactive mind.
All that, was researched and it culminated in the
Clearing Course, where the being had to run out certain implanted GPMs, which had
a very intricate and complex pattern, in solo sessions to reach the state of
clear.
By then, in 1965, the definition of clear was given
as: ‘a thetan who can be at cause knowingly and at will over mental matter,
energy, space and time as regards the first dynamic (survival for self)’. At
that time all the lower grades were a requisite to clearing and the state could
exclusively be attained on the Clearing Course at an Advanced Organization.
After clearing the next levels called OT levels from
OT I – OT III were all concerned with clearing up charge on the various
entities. then the thetan was exteriorized at OT IV and started to operate at
OT V and VI, with rehabilitated intention at OT VII.
The
Stanford Research Institute and the CIA
So far everything is quite
reasonable and makes sense. In the early seventies this was what scientology
consisted of and it was at that time that Ingo Swann, Harold Puthof and some
others did all these levels up to and including OT VII and they were CIA and got involved with
the Stanford Research Institute and dramatically showed the power of these OTs.
Ingo managed some impressive feats. He affected the readings of a magnetometer
encased in solid concrete five feet beneath the foundation of the Varian Hall
of physics at Stanford University where the experiment took place. In a remote
viewing session he observed the planet Jupiter, and reported amongst other
details, to have seen bands of crystals, similar to the rings of Saturn. This
was prior to the Voyager probe’s visit there in 1979. What he said was
supported later by observations by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft of clouds of
ammonia ice crystals and rings of Jupiter.
The reason I mention this
detail is that obviously the military and the government got very interested in
the fact that scientology could produce abilities such as Ingo demonstrated.
Technical
Anomalies
In terms of scientology theory
development it was practically completed by 1970 the last Hubbard lectures were
on the Flagship Apollo, in December 1975. There is also some evidence that
Hubbard, from 1976-1977 onward, was no longer in control of the church.
In the following years in
particular since 1978, significant technical anomalies arise the first of which
was a re-definition of the main concept namely ‘reactive mind’ and ‘the state
of clear’. These are anomalies because the reactive mind core had been
researched extensively by Hubbard in the late sixties and was found to consist
of GPMs. From 1978 onward the reactive mind was all of a sudden consisting
merely of engrams–the GPM kernel component was dropped without even a comment.
This covert re-definition of the reactive mind made it possible to declare the
possibility of attaining the state of clear on Dianetics.
The definition of clear had been changed numerous
times before, as can be seen from the chronology sketched above. The new and
final definition of clear was: a being who no longer has its own reactive mind. The difference with earlier definition
changes was that L. Ron Hubbard always gave a full explanation of the changes.
Well there was some attempt at an explanation such that the nature of a being
was very complex and was not a single entity and that there are beingnesses,
valences or personalities which could be the source of aberration. The definition
of clear was supposed to apply only to the one entity, the first dynamic. And one
had to be cleared on all dynamics. All this however did not explain the
complete change in the definition and structure of the reactive mind.
Later in the early ‘80s the OT levels beyond OT III
were completely taken out of the scientology line up and substituted with ‘pre-OT’
levels, effectively denying people the OT abilities which the CIA had been so
interested in.
At the beginning of the millennium I found out that
the Power Processes – contrary to what Hubbard had said – could be run on
dianetic clears. That was the first time I started to suspect there was
something wrong with ‘dianetic’ clears. I myself had reached the state of clear
on the Clearing Course Solo Auditing. Later in my practice I re-instated the
original route to clear based on eradicating certain GPMs. In 2006 this was one
of the reasons for leaving the Rons Org group, based in Switserland, where I
was a senior technical member.
If the clear does not have its own reactive mind
then there must be other reactive minds capable of influencing it, but how do
you verify such a state in the presence of other minds?
Basic
Assumptions, and testing of the State of Clear
There is a basic assumption
underlying the theoretical state of clear, which I will elucidate in the
following. The test of clear has always been whether s/he/it can consciously
create or re-create a reactive mind. (Tech Dictionary, Clear def. 9) For many
years now something equivalent to the clear cognition has been promoted all
over the new age and esoteric scene namely “you create your own reality” which
didn’t make the testing easier to say the least.
A positive proof would require the
demonstrated ability to consciously create a reactive mind. In creative
processing one could make an individual consciously create a mental image
picture of a moment of pain. But it would be very hard if not impossible to
consciously create the unconsciousness part of the engram, let alone the entire
reactive mind including all the GPMs and whatever else that may contain. Per
Hubbard’s data from the sixties the reactive mind kernel is an entity that all
beings have in common (GPM), therefore he also stated that there never had been
a real clear in this universe.
The negative proof would
require exposing the candidate to an x number of potential restimulators of
reactivity and see whether the state including its Floating Needle would last.
From a scientific viewpoint if the claim to be clear cannot be falsified
(K.Popper) than it remains questionable.
We are not even going into the
difficulty of distinguishing one’s own reactive mind from theorized other
reactive minds.
What has been done in actual
practice is to accept a clear cognition–the realization that one is creating
one’s own troubles/engrams accompanied by an FN, VGIs.
Now here, and that also goes
for the state of clear attained on the clearing course, the assumption is that
once one is aware of the automaticity of creating mental images of charged
situations like those containing trauma with pain and unconsciousness one will
stop doing it.
We now have pin pointed exactly the basic assumption of scientology: If one becomes familiar with and aware of creating mental holograms one will stop doing it and can no longer be the unwilling, unknowing effect of a reactive mind.
This is the central unproven
assumption underlying the supposed scientology state of clear.
In scientology the reactive mind is equated with the unconscious mind. One area of the unconscious which scientology avoided was the subject of sleep and dreams. Another omission is not taking into account evil intentions as part of the procedure to reach the state of clear. Per definition a clear should have no bad computations which would throw the analytical mind a curve.
All this however does not make less of the value of the philosophical excursions and factual discoveries of various mental phenomena and their solutions that were made in scientology between approximately 1950 – 1970.
The MGT Institute for Consciousness Exploration Approach
Our solution to the exposed
clear conundrum has therefore been to drop the whole theoretical idea of clear
in favor of a more practical approach. At the MGT Institute for Consciousness
Exploration we have developed and tested the concept of personal harmony.
We found that by using what we call
the Universal Imagination Processing© technique–based on creative processing,
postulate processing and concept processing–combined with Traumatic Incident
Reprocessing and a few other techniques on the various charged issues or
disharmonies that someone is experiencing in his or her personal life one can
reach a relatively stable state of personal harmony (first domain). This also
includes some education of the principles involved in leading a harmonious life
also taking into account to some degree the influences of the other domains on
the individual’s life.
There is no generic state that is
valid for everyone, the key is living in harmony with one’s own considerations
and that can be tested by an individual.
http://www.mgtconcepts.com/personal-harmony.html
All this is fully described in
the “The Self-Explorer’s Handbook”, Caspar de Rijk, BoD 2015. ISBN 978-3-7392-2254-7 https://goo.gl/fWFPUR
