I have been working the last few months on a scientology research project – as part of a new book – aiming to scrutinize scientology by logically applying it to itself. The discovery of ritual Word Clearing is a relatively small part of it. In Scientology Word Clearing has become “prescription only”, meaning it is has to be done in a rigorous ‘holy’ never to be questioned manner, anything else is an ethics offense.
Method 8 Shock
I looked up the bulletin on Word Clearing Method 8 and to my astonishment I found sneaked into the text a complete invalidation of the student who is familiar with and knows the meaning of a word such as an average literate person. It was embedded in the following paragraphs:
“Method 8 is an action used in the “Primary Rundown” where one is studying Study Tech or where one is seeking a full grasp of a subject. Its End Product is SUPER-LITERACY. The steps are these: Usually an alphabetical list of every word or term in the text of a paper, a chapter or a recorded tape is available or provided.
1. The person looks up each word on the alphabetical list and uses each in sentences until he has the meaning conceptually.
The words are looked up in a big dictionary. “
HCO BULLETIN OF 21 JUNE 1972 Issue IV Word Clearing Series 41 METHOD 8
Enforcing such a ritual as the above is a covert invalidation of the knowingness of the being, who knows the definitions. If not that, then it is at least an unnecessary burden and waste of time for the student, stretching the runway.
Primary Rundown
For some reason I had not noticed this before, but in an internet forum recently the Primary Rundown was being discussed and drew my interest. I had started that rundown in 1972 and had ended up in an endless chain of words to be cleared. I don’t even remember how it ended. So it is perhaps not surprising that some attention units got stuck there. I had been using the two volume World Book dictionary, a big dictionary, just like it said in the above bulletin.
The idea of clearing up the meaning of words and the effect of misunderstoods had been firmly established since the summer of 1964. This was when LRH did a course in photography and had many realizations about studying and gave a series of lectures on his findings. In the earlier Scientology materials the clearing of words outside of the context of clearing auditing commands is never mentioned.
It appeared to be a rather simple discovery that blanks in memory were caused by misunderstood words, however when the relationship between overts and the misunderstood word or symbol was revealed its true significance became apparent.
First Bulletin on PRD
Anyway back to the PRD, I looked up the first bulletin on the subject namely: HCOB 30 March 1972 The Primary Correction Rundown, Vol VIII, p.65 and it states the following simplicity:
… STUDY TAPES.
(a) One time through picking up and looking up every word even faintly in doubt of or when not understanding, going back to find the word that was missed.
(b) Then going through the Study Tapes for content with Method 4 at the end of each tape.
This bulletin says it all, it is a simple and very doable action and won’t take very long in fact it would speed up one’s study and improve the quality. All the following HCOBs however start to complicate the action until one had created a formidable ‘rundown’ out of a simple action, which was already covered in the 9 July 1964 lecture on Data Assimilation.
Here is the origin of what was later blown up to a large and impressive rundown, the Primary Rundown.
Source
“You see how important nomenclature is? But a comprehension of the nomenclature which is used is primary to the study of anything. Now, for instance, I’m studying a parallel course to get insights into study of Scientology. And a very, very smart thing – an extremely smart thing to do – is to take a page of material and look over it for words you don’t know – words that don’t instantly react to you. Circle each one of those words or make a list of each one of those words and look up and study their definitions or ask people and get definitions for them. Find out exactly what those words mean. Don’t tackle the subject of the page. Just tackle the nomenclature of the page. Get that nomenclature slick as a whistle, tackle the subject, you’ll find out the subject was very easy. From Studying: Data Assimilation L. Ron Hubbard 9 July 1964
All this raises some serious questions. What would be behind such blatant alter-is and over complication even as early as 1972? Why was the primary rundown later almost forgotten? Did they realize the blunder, but would rather obscure it rather than admit. Some few researchers have hinted that LRH was already replaced at the end of 1965.
Researchers such as Michel Snoeck, http://www.wiseoldgoat.com/ lists a lot of material on the history of the PRD but seems to have missed these points.
The next article will take up Method 1 Word Clearing