Part 6 of 6
In Scientology: 8-80, first published in 1952, and reprinted as recently as 1957, Hubbard writes:
"Thetan is the word given to the awareness of awareness unit, the life source, the personality, and the beingness of homo sapiens .... It is the person .... The thetan is a glowing unit of energy source. He seems to himself to be anything from a quarter of an inch to two inches in diameter. His capability is knowing and being. He exudes and uses energy in many forms. He can perceive and handle energy flows easily. The thetan enters sometime in early infancy. This may be before, during or following birth. He comes in a state of personal unknowingness, desiring to have an identity which he considers he has not without a body. He throws capping beams at the genetic entity, takes over the body .... The thetan in most preclears is within the skull. It shifts on auditing (which is to say the pc shifts) from behind to in front of the head .... Standing behind anybody the thetan can adjust and change any error in the body at will. He sees these as black spots. To get rid of them one has only to get the flows necessary to make and keep them white .... The thetan collapses into the body when the body feels pain. This was how he got trapped .... A thetan can get partly out of himself on a ridge. Then the preclear seems to be inside himself and yet outside .... The thetan is the preclear. The body-plus-thetan is no increase of personality. The body is a sort of vegetable run by the genetic entity. The thetan can clean up and heal his own body and those of others at will."
The thetan "is the 'I', it is WHO the preclear is .... is both outside and inside the mest body". Though the usual residence of the thetan is said to be in the skull or near, it can, so Hubbard explains in Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought, be in one of four positions: entirely separate from the body or even from this universe, near the body and knowingly controlling the body, in the body, and compulsively away from the body and unable 0 to approach it.
In A History of Man (originally called What to Audit), Hubbard writes that the "very best place" for the thetan is "out of contact with the mest body entirely and fully alive as 'I'. His worst place is inside the mest body." He further writes that "his second best place is just outside the mest body" and that "the thetan in most cases, is behind and above the mest body". Sometimes, however, he may be in front of the body, and this causes a
"direction reversal on the part of the person so that he doesn't know right from left-people can teach him continually but he will still say his right is his left and his left is his right, and so it is, for 'I' in this person is the thetan and the thetan is in front, facing the mest body and right is the thetan's right, of course."
The thetan has, so Hubbard suggests, remarkable capabilities, all of which, in 1952, he hesitated to enumerate, leaving it to the preclear, who is the thetan, to find out for himself. Some of its skills and attributes he did mention. Thetans communicate by telepathy, they can move material objects by throwing an energy flow at them. They emit a considerable electronic flow, can be rendered unconscious by wave action, can be hypnotized, can be made to sleep. They can quarrel with each other, feel pain, live on some planets. "A theta body with its alertness restored is capable of remoulding the human body within its field, taking off weight here, restoring it there, changing appearances and even height."
Of equal importance to scientology theory and practice is the doctrine of "past lives," in which the thetan had weird experiences, the influences of which are of great significance to the thetan in its present sojourn on earth. In the early stages of the Inquiry the scientologists endeavoured to create the impression that, at the present time, the concept of past lives played very little part in scientology. However, as the Inquiry proceeded, it became evident that past lives were today as significant and important in scientology as they have always been.
In its long existence through the ages, the thetan has been on earth many times before this lifetime and has had many bodies. lt has been picking up bodies and dropping bodies from time immemorial. In scientology it is generally thought that the thetan picks up a body at or about birth but it can be after birth and it can be before birth; in some cases it can even be many months before birth. In his writings Hubbard tells of auditing bringing to light incidents which occurred eight days after conception and even before conception. When one witness, a former scientologist, gave evidence before the Inquiry that in scientology some took the view that sometimes a thetan, looking for a body, would follow around a woman who looked as though she was likely shortly to become pregnant, the Board at first doubted the veracity of the witness; but this witness was later vindicated, for Lake, one of the principals of the Geelong scientology centre, gave evidence that he had experienced two well authenticated cases of this phenomenon.
It is said that a thetan, when it newly picks up a body, is in a state of unknowingness and may be confused because, though it is aware of the body it has taken over operating, it has never been told the identity of its body, and, while there are quite a few adults around, it has not been told that there are specific adults who will care for its body until it can manoeuvre the body thoroughly. So in the ceremonies of the American founding church of scientology there is a "christening" ceremony whereby the thetan is introduced to the human parents of its body. An account of Hubbard's performance of the "christening" ceremony is a travesty.
Apparently, in Hubbard's view, a thetan can take over a body already occupied by another thetan. The extent to which thetans had any choice of bodies did not clearly emerge, though one witness threatened counsel assisting the Board that she would return as his grandson's thetan thirty years hence.
The origin of thetans, whether they reproduce and how many thetans there are, witnesses could not say. Whether there would be sufficient thetans to go around when the population explosion occurs is not known. A scientologist in Hong Kong, corresponding with a highly placed staff member of the Melbourne HASI, has adverted to a gloomy prospect for those thetans which have bodies in this present lifetime. He writes,
"I do know that the population of China is 650 million, and that babies are being born at the rate of 17 million per year. Work this out for the next hundred years keeping in mind that three-quarters of the world's population at present is Chinese .... The chances are that next lifetime one would be a Chinese body, be indoctrinated with Communism from birth, have a minimum of education, be overworked and underfed and eventually die of malnutrition when one should be in the prime of life."
with the prospect, it seems, of picking up yet another Chinese body and repeating the same procedure forever.
When a thetan drops off a body, it goes to an implant station, where it is implanted with various goals, the goal to forget being, if not invariable, very common. The thetan waits until it can pick up another body, for which there is sometimes competition amongst disembodied thetans, for to be without a body can be a some what uncomfortable experience for a thetan. In one of his taped lectures, Hubbard states that the minimum period spent on an implant station is sixty-nine days, though the period was earlier thought to be shorter. Hubbard claims to have visited Venus and to have inspected an implant station there. There are other implant stations throughout the universe to which thetans report. In A History of Man Hubbard writes,
"The report area for most has been Mars. Some women report to stations elsewhere in the Solar System. There are occasional incidents about Earth report stations. The report stations are protected by screens. The last Martian report station on Earth was established in the Pyrenees."
Hubbard has worked out processes which he claims will rehabilitate the thetan by removing all aberrations. If this is achieved in this lifetime, the thetan will be able to enjoy future lives without being troubled by problems. if the aberrations are only "keyed out" the death of the present meat body will still leave the thetan subject to a recurrence of the aberrations; but, if a thetan is properly rehabilitated by scientology processing, Hubbard's teaching is that it will not have to go back to an implant station, where those who have not been properly rehabilitated are required to go and where there awaits the dreadful fate of having goals implanted by electric shocks, the passing of currents, "raw electricity" and a variety of other terrifying procedures. It is to escape such experiences as these that preclears, believing completely in Hubbard's teachings, seek desperately to be processed to clear and beyond, so as to avoid such experiences in the "between lives" periods.
Auditing makes contact with the thetan, and its past experiences are brought to light. A great amount of theory has been propounded concerning the thetan, much of which is not material to this Inquiry. It is sufficient to mention some of the more significant aspects of the thetan.
In scientology auditing, an attempt is made to locate and remove the aberration which is preventing the enjoyment of the optimum quality of being clear. The search is for the "basic-basic" which in dianetics and early scientology was the engram. However, in Scientology: 8-80, first published in 1951, "facsimile one" was stated to be
"the one basic engram, on top of which all this-life engrams are mere locks. It was received by the human race many, many centuries ago, and probably was a supersonic shot in the forehead, chest, and stomach, incapacitating, and reducing, the size and function of the pineal gland."
Implants.Subsequently, Hubbard made a dramatic "breakthrough," and the basic cause of aberrations was said to be implants. Thetans, it seemed, had a variety of goals implanted in previous lives. A goal common to many thetans was found to be the goal "to forget." The unhappy lot of the thetan is that it does not remember its past, because in a past age it has been implanted with this goal to forget. This appears to have been done on the planet Helatrobus between 38 trillion and 43 trillion years ago. The hostile work of implanting in thetans the goal "to forget" and other goals was done by implanters, generally referred to as "they," who by electronic means and with great ferocity assailed the unfortunate thetans. Other implants have been inflicted on thetans, such as the gorilla implants, the aircraft door implants, the train implants, the bear implants and the glade implants. These implants were inflicted upon thetans at points earlier in time than the helatrobus implants. In HCO Bull. of the 24th July, AD 13 (1963), Hubbard set out a table of periods as "verified" by his "research," showing the times between which the different types of implants were implanted:-
Helatrobus Implants 382 trillion years ago to 52 trillion years ago.
Aircraft Door Implants 216 trillion years ago to 315 trillion years ago.
The Gorilla Goals 319 trillion years ago to 83 trillion trillion trillion years ago.
The Bear Goals 83 trillion trillion trillion years ago to about 40.7 trillion trillion trillion trillion years ago.
The Glade Implants (formerly called Black Thetan) 40.7 trillion trillion trillion trillion years ago to 5.9 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years ago.
The Invisible Picture Goals 5.9 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years to a date not fully determined.
The Minion Implants Not yet determined.
The Story of Creation Implants 70 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years.
The last mentioned, writes Hubbard, is the earliest date yet found, "but an earlier incident is known to exist."
In HCO Bull. of the 14th July, AD 13 (1963), Hubbard gives intriguing details of the manner in which the various goals were "laid in." The "aircraft door" goal "was given in the mocked up fuselage of an aircraft with the thetan fixed before an aircraft door. (There are also two or more aircraft fuselages used in the Helatrobus Implants, but the preclear moved through them, was not fixed in them)." The "gorilla goals" were "given in an amusement park with a single tunnel, a roller coaster and a ferris wheel .... The symbol of a Gorilla was always present in the place the goal was given. Sometimes a large gorilla, black, was seen elsewhere than the park. A Mechanical or a live gorilla was always seen in the park. This activity was conducted by the Hoipolloi, a group of operators in meat body societies. They were typical carnival people. They let out Concessions for these Implant 'Amusement Parks.' A pink-striped white shirt with sleeve garters was the uniform of the Hoipolloi. Such a figure often rode on the roller coaster cars. Monkeys were also used on the cars. Elephants sometimes formed part of the equipment. The Hoipolloi or Gorilla goals were laid in with fantastic motion. Blasts of raw electricity and explosions were both used to lay the Items in." The bear goals were handled by a group called "'The Brothers of the Bear' and were the ancestors of the Hoipolloi." The black thetan goals "were given in a glade surrounded by the stone heads of 'black thetans' who spat white energy at the trapped thetan. The trapped thetan was motionless."
The experiences of thetans for countless ages in the past have the quality of the ultimate in science fiction, with wars between galaxies, machines with minds, and celestial travel between universes whose existence was not even suspected before Hubbard's time.
A History of Man was one of the earliest books on scientology; it was first published in 1952 in America with subsequent editions in 1954 and 1957. Its author is Hubbard in whom the copyright of the book resides. It is still recommended reading for scientologists, but HASI witnesses endeavoured, while not disowning the book, to create the impression that it was really not now of any significance. This attempt was belied by the evidence of many scientology witnesses which showed that they were well acquainted with and accepted many of the theories propounded in A History of Man, many of which Hubbard has repeated and endorsed in more recent writings.
To say it is an astonishing publication does not convey adequately the peculiar qualities or contents of A History of Man. Its style is slapdash and its contents bizarre. It is in the tradition of science fiction and for compressed nonsense and fantasy it must surpass anything theretofore written. Yet in the first sentence of the Foreword the claim is made that "This is a cold-blooded and factual account of your last sixty trillion years." The third paragraph proclaims,
"This is useful knowledge. With it the blind again see, the lame walk, the ill recover, the insane become sane and the sane become saner. By its use the thousand abilities Man has sought to recover become his once more."
This may seem laughable nonsense, but the tragedy is that so many people, reading uncritically and wanting to believe in something, have accepted the validity of these fantastic claims and the contents of the book and a great mass of similar and, if it were possible, more ludicrous nonsense. None of this nonsense which Hubbard has propounded has been repealed or repudiated. A very large part of it has been repeated in later writings and on tapes, much of it quite recently.
This book is concerned particularly with the development of the "whole track" and past life concepts. The contents of the book and the date of the first edition suggest that it was written about the time Hubbard broke with the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation which looked with disfavour on his theory of past lives. Hubbard claimed that by auditing the time track over the whole span of the track-at that time considered to be about sixty trillion years-he obtained excellent results, whereas in auditing only the current lifetime one could only obtain slow and mediocre results. "Further," he writes,
"it is very hard to argue with a miracle. Today, Eleanor has arthritis. She is audited 'whole track' with 1952 techniques. Tonight she doesn't have arthritis. Miracles, using 'whole track' are plentiful. By using this data an auditor can obtain a Mest clear rather easily."
Hubbard revealed then that with the invention of the Electropsychometer, commonly called the E-meter, great advances in processing were made. He greatly extended the time track, and sixty trillion years is but the yesterday of the time track which now, seemingly, extends back to the beginning of time and, if possible, even beyond that - one trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years or less, according to HCO Bull. of the 24th July AD 13 (1963).
The Genetic Entity.In A History of Man, Hubbard tells of the "genetic entity" or GE. A human body has both a thetan and a GE. The GE is the entity which carries forward from the earliest formation of the mest body and is located more or less in the centre of the body, the stomach. It was formerly referred to as the somatic mind in dianetics.
"The GE facsimiles include a transfer of somatics from past theta beings, for it is not common for a GE to have the same theta being twice .... A GE departs from the body much later than the theta beings abandon one, sees it through the death to the end and only then leaves to join the line once more some two or three days before conception."
Hubbard then develops the thesis that the GE "carries on through the evolutionary line, parallel with the protoplasmic line, generation to generation, usually on the same planet," whereas the theta being comes into the line from various quarters, with the result that a theta being lives each life with a different GE.
"The genetic entity apparently enters the protoplasm line some two days or a week prior to conception. There is some evidence that the GE is actually double, one entering on the sperm side, one entering on the ovum side ....
Pre-sperm recordings are quite ordinary .... Pre-ovum sequences are on record but are not common .... Conception and the impulses generated answer the conditions for one type of cancer, embryonic .... Cancer has been eradicated by auditing out conception and mitosis. The theta being apparently joins the track immediately prior to birth. Its sequence, for itself, is death, between-lives, birth, all in a few minutes according to some findings, a sequence which is quite aberrative .... Birth is a very aberrative affair .... 'Facsimile one' had as many as eighty-thousand births on it as locks. Birth presents itself to be audited much of the time because Mother, complaining of how difficult the preclear's birth was, makes it an overt act. This overt act had birth as a motivator .... The genetic line consists of the total of incidents which have occurred during the evolution of the Mest body itself. The composite of these facsimiles has the semblance of a being," the GE. The discovery of the GE, writes Hubbard, "makes it possible at last to vindicate the theory of evolution proposed by Darwin .... You as a theta being, may or may not have seen Greece or Rome. Your Mest GE has probably activated a body there, just as it has been .... an anthropoid in the deep forests of forgotten continents or a mollusc seeking to survive on the shore of some lost sea."
Hubbard then tells of various things the auditor will meet in processing. For instance, there is the clam. Millions of years ago the clam had many troubles, the first of which was the double hinge problem. One hinge wanted to stay open, the other wanted to close and so conflict occurred which was resolved by one hinge overcoming the other with the result that the latter suffered pain. In present time, so Hubbard claims, all you need do with certain people to restimulate the tragic defeat of the weaker hinge is to ask such a person, "Can you imagine a clam sitting on the beach, opening and closing its shell very rapidly ?" at the same time making a motion with thumb and forefinger of a rapid opening and closing, whereupon the victim may grip his jaw with his hands and feel quite upset. He may, writes Hubbard, even have a few teeth pulled mistaking for toothache the restimulation of the engram suffered by the vanquished clam shell hinge.
How silly can people be? Yet, one woman, who told of benefits which scientology had given her, said in evidence that when counsel assisting the Board mentioned "clam" to her, she had a pain in her jaw.
Then there is the Weeper, originally, so Hubbard writes, called the "Grim Weeper," or the "Boohoo," a truly pathetic case. "After leaving the sea," writes Hubbard, "the GE spent a half a million years on the beach." In this state it needed food from the sea, but also air to breathe. It would open up to get food and get a wave in the shell. But as it had to breathe it had to pump sea water out, hence the name "the weeper." "The inability of a preclear to cry is partly a hang-up in the Weeper," Hubbard writes. "He is about to be hit by a wave, has his eyes full of sand or is frightened about opening his shell because he may be hit. An occluded case is sometimes merely a case of 'shell-shut' ". Hubbard tells, too, of engrams about birds and bats, of being eaten and of the sloth, the latter being responsible for fear of snakes and falling, and of the caveman and the Piltdown man, the latter being responsible so writes Hubbard, for "Obsessions about biting, efforts to hide the mouth and early familial troubles," for "the Piltdown teeth were ENORMOUS and he was quite careless as to whom and what he bit and often very surprised at the resulting damage".
The meeting of the GE and the theta body often led to great confusion because, "A theta being takes a picture of the memory of a GE and carries it as a record. A GE takes a picture of the memories of theta being and carries those." A consequence of these developments is that in auditing it is quite a problem whether it is the experiences of the theta being then being audited that come up or those of a theta being whose memories were carried by a GE, whose memory was being carried by a theta being, whose memory in turn was being carried by a GE, from which the theta being then being audited acquired it.
The GE also finds prominent and important mention in Scientology: 8-80 and other scientology publications by Hubbard. Williams said that the GE is not now the subject of scientology teaching, is not now known and practised, and if revived as an active study would require some modification. The GE, however, appears still to be part of the actual structure of scientology theory; it is referred to in axiom 55 of scientology by Hubbard, and has not been abandoned, repudiated or substantially modified since the first occasion when Hubbard wrote in the early fifties of the thetan "playing games" with it. Hubbard's practice is not to acknowledge that anything in his pronouncements ever requires modification or recantation. Earlier inconsistencies and contradictions are glossed over or ignored.
The Clear and The Preclear.The concept of "clear" is one of the fundamentals of scientology. The word "clear", used as a verb, an adjective and a noun, is the mainspring of scientology; for the principal purpose of scientology auditing is to clear the "preclear" so that he attains to the state of being "clear", and is thus a "clear", shedding the prefix "pre" as he sheds the last of the aberrations from which auditing is said to free him. Everyone who is not a "complete clear" is said to be a "preclear".
On the way to clear is said to be the "release"; this is a person, according to Scientology: 8-80, "who has reached a point in processing where he no longer is suffering from a psychosomatic illness, or who has been freed of his chronic mental and physical difficulties and painful emotions. While he is far from being a 'clear', he is above normal, has good stability, and can enjoy life." A release is said to be a case which will not get worse.
The concept of clear was not developed in Hubbard's first work on dianetics, Dianetics: The Original Thesis, published in 1948, though reference was made therein to an individual who had been "cleared of engrams and chains and who has achieved a general tone four."
The first extensive references to "clear" appeared in Dianetics: MSMH, published in 1950, and it has been constantly referred to in dianetic and scientology publications since that time.
The "clear" is derived from the language of computers and adding machines. Hubbard used the calculating machine as an analogy to the mind. The action of "clearing" was said to be concerned with the clearing of various zones of thinking and to be the removing of some old unwanted computations from the mind, so that the mind could think and act freshly and clearly on some particular problem.
Originally, "clear" as a noun attempted to describe someone who was said to be "cleared of neurotic, psychotic and suboptimum patterns and thoughts and actions that would arise from these."
In Dianetics: MSMH, a "clear" was said to be "an individual who, as a result of dianetic therapy, has neither active nor potential psychosomatic illness or aberration", and "to clear" meant "to release all the physical pain and painful emotion from the life of an individual or, as in Political Dianetics, a society."
Williams accepted as an adequate current description of clear the following: "A clear can be tested for any and all psychoses, neuroses, compulsions and repress ions (all aberrations) and can be examined for any autogenic (self-generated) diseases referred to as psychosomatic aberrations." An almost identical definition appears in Dianetics: MSMH. Hubbard wrote in Dianetics: MSMH that tests on such a person "confirm the clear to be entirely without such ills or aberrations." Williams claimed that he was a clear, and he has in fact been awarded a silver bracelet by Hubbard to prove it. Hubbard has even said that Williams is well beyond clear, but attaining to such an exalted and supposedly sickness-free level did not protect him from a common cold which he sustained during the Inquiry.
Williams said that by clearing in the mental field scientologists meant the removal of some unwanted fixed thought, idea, consideration, motivation or goal that was interfering with the individual's ability to think clearly and rationally about a particular subject. However, the prospect of attaining to clear seems depressingly remote, in spite of Hubbard's promises, for Williams pointed out that "a large mental difficulty is often composed of several difficulties, or several different subjects which have to be cleared separately." Processing is so manipulated that the final difficulty is never reached and cleared; fresh difficulties are constantly discovered as part of the "large mental difficulty", and the preclear is kept always expectant but never attaining to the goal of clear.
A clear was said to be produced by erasing some aberrative materials and keying out others. This state, when all the aberration has not been erased, is called, a "keyed out clear" or "mest clear" or just "clear". There were also "theta clears" and "cleared theta clears".
Theta clears were said to be superior to mest or keyed out or just plain clears. At one stage those beyond theta clear were described as "cleared theta clears." Theta clears are an intermediate step between mest clears and operating thetan. Williams told the Board that Hubbard's teaching was that theta clears could operate outside their bodies, and in The Creation of Human Ability, Hubbard defines "theta clear" as being "An individual who, as a thetan, is certain of his identity apart from that of his body, and who habitually operates the body from outside." Williams said he had witnessed Hubbard read a plaque on a wall some distance away. Williams considered that Hubbard might well be clear, but HCO has no doubt about Hubbard's state, for HCO Infm. Lr. of the 24th November, 1963, states, "He [Hubbard] was clear before 1962, and is now, at this writing, four goals down from present time toward OT, scientology's highest state. He badly needs a vacation." In A History of Man, Hubbard wrote that the first stable clears, produced in 1947, were in reality theta clears, not mest clears. In 1963, the terms "first goal clear", "second goal clear", &c., were used to indicate that that particular number of goals were cleared away from the person's mind.
Over the years the concept of clear has developed, and though the general nature of the concept is indicated in many writings, some of the expositions are contradictory and the boundaries between the various kinds of clears are confused. In some advertisements and elsewhere Hubbard has defined a clear as "a person at willing and knowing cause over his own life, his body and his surroundings and without a reactive or subconscious mind". A clear is credited with having a happy well-balanced personality, with efficiency and intelligence above the average and with an IQ of 135 plus.
Some of the descriptions of "clear" confuse the lower grade clear with the operating thetan, who, however, is also a type of clear. A person who has been "cleared" but is still being audited is still regarded as a preclear and is properly described as "pre-OT (pre-operating thetan)", according to Certainty Magazine, Vol. 5, No. 7. The suggestion that there may even be a "super clear" does not make for clarity.
Operating Thetan.In Com. Mag. Vol. 5. No. 5, May, 1963, it is said that there are three grades of clears, namely, mest clear, theta clear, and operating thetan, the operating thetan being "a rather esoteric level, hard to reach and hard to describe in full."
An operating thetan, frequently referred to as "OT", is said to be a thetan with restored ability to control or "be at cause" over matter, energy, space, time, life and form. An operating thetan has the ability to knock off hats at 50 yards, to lift telephone receivers from a distance and to read a book some distance away. The ultimate goal in scientology is to become OT. There is an award of a gold bracelet to anyone who becomes OT. Williams hopes to achieve this state and he has been undergoing processing to that end. Remarkable attributes are claimed for the state of OT. In Certainty Magazine, Vol. 5. No. 10, appears the statement that, "Every operating thetan has outsight. Some of the qualities prominent are:-High ethical level; enthusiasm; accident-proof; fast reaction times; theta communication; ability to move at will throughout all universes; high creative ability; self mastery, grants beingness; high truth and courage level; strong sense of responsibility on all dynamics."
Hubbard's enthusiasm about the state of OT is equalled only by the extravagance of his boasts and predictions. In Scientology, issue 15G, Hubbard writes, "There is no excuse now not to be clear. A good thorough-going operating thetan should not take more than fifty hours of auditing."..
In HCO Infm. Lr. of the 24th November, 1963, it is written, "He [Hubbard] considers the research part of his task concluded in August of 1963, since all targets ever envisioned were realized as of that date and only codification and recording remained .... Now that the skills for OT are achieved they are found to be very precise."
Ron's Journal, No. 7, which is HCO Infm. Lr. of the 17th December AD 13 (1963), reads, "Well, here we go into AD 14, with all our technology assembled, with a complete bridge, with OT's emerging."
HCO Infm. Lr. of the 5th February, 1964, reads,
"OT course open to all auditors who have good basic training. I have kicked the doors open on Class VI. training at Saint Hill. All auditors who have good basic training are eligible for enrolment at once in running Actual GPM's. I am just completing a full training course for the Instructors and we are making OT's at Saint Mill smoothly after three years of hard and arduous research .... This news should tell you quite obviously that we have won all the way. And it's waiting for you at Saint Hill."
Though, as earlier indicated, Hubbard considered that 50 hours auditing could produce operating thetans he has now somewhat revised that estimate, and in HCO Bull. of the 9th July, 1963, he states that he himself is "definitely on the easy last half to OT" and that he considers "that OT lies on the sunny side of 1,000 hours of processing now for cases that can be audited"
Mrs. Williams was present in the 1964 classes at Saint Hill as one of the advanced students, but she did not become an OT, not even clear, and she did not make the acquaintance of any OT's and did not know of any OT's being produced. But that OT is a desirable state is evident, for in Certainty Magazine, Vol. 5, No. 10, Hubbard writes,
"the state of operating thetan is about 50 million miles higher than clear, if we put it into symbolic form. There is actually no comparison. A clear can still be invalidated; a clear can still make effect in the face of overwhelming odds. An OT, well, I don't know: for OT, read 'God' and that's just about it. But one thing is certain you cannot be OT without passing through clear first .... Faster routes to OT are envisaged."
Hubbard attributes his failure to produce OT's, after promising for so many years to do so, to the incapacity of auditors to audit properly. His repeated complaint is that he has devised techniques which are certain to produce clears and OTs, and the fault lies not with his techniques but with auditors who are unable to apply the techniques and operate the E-meter.
In HCO Bull. of the 9th July, 1963, Hubbard typically complains, "It is no longer a question of whether Scientology works, it is only a question of whether the auditor can work Scientology. If he or she can't, then the trouble lies in one or more of these basics [i.e., the auditor's basic skills]. The trouble does not lie with the procedure or with the pc."
Hubbard is endeavouring to produce an OT meter, superior to any E-meter, which will, he claims, make possible auditing to OT.
From time to time Hubbard has made claims implying that OTs were being made or had been made. In reply to a pointed inquiry by a rebellious scientologist, Hubbard wrote that, "Our theta clears and operating thetans are for the present remaining incognito." The Board is therefore unable to report upon the identity of any person claimed as OT. It would seem, however, that if Hubbard is to be believed, an OT is "just around the corner", like the fulfilment of so many of his other extravagant promises.
Overt Motivator.The Overt Act-Motivator in scientology is a principle or working hypothesis, not invariably applicable, that if a person does harm to an area, he will be likely to receive harm from that area.
Williams explained that the principle is that one does an overt act, something bad, harms some part of life, breaches some moral code, and thereafter, because of regret, guilt, &c., and variously associated phenomena, lays oneself open to be hurt by whatever it is against which the overt was committed. The response is called the "motivator," but opinions fluctuate as to which comes first, the overt act or the motivator. People may even be "motivator hungry," and an example was given by Williams in these words: "If you had a lawyer who kept on doing things which caused the judge to scream at him, you would have a lawyer, who in the field of jurisprudence (if that is the word) would be 'motivator hungry' and the assumption would be that he had committed an overt against the judge."
Reference is sometimes made in scientology to "victim," the victim being a person suffering from a run of bad luck or persistent misfortune of any kind, including illness, who, however, is entirely responsible for his own misfortunes, even though it be deliberately inflicted on him by another. As it is a scientology principle that man is good and can be made better, the fault is said to lie with the individual himself, the emphasis in scientology being to make the individual conscious of his complete responsibility for his own condition, whatever it is, and to find out by auditing just what it is in the preclear's own behaviour which has laid the foundation for his present aberrations and misfortune.
Goals-Problems-Mass.Probably the latest "breakthrough" by Hubbard is the "goals-problems-mass" or GPM, which he now appears to regard as the "basic-basic" cause of all aberration. The GPM is associated with the time track, implants, past lives and OT's.
In scientology it is said that a person's problems have weight which can be measured. As early as Dianetics: 1955, Hubbard wrote,
"If there were no energy being created by the awareness of awareness unit, then one would be at a loss to account for mental energy pictures, for these things, being made at a tremendously rapid rate, have considerable mass in them-mass which is measurable on a thing which is as common and everyday as a pair of bathroom scales."
In evidence, Williams defined GPM as being "the mass of stored mental energy which has accumulated following the setting of a goal." He explained how a person
"sets himself a goal, and in his attempt to succeed in that goal, he acquires the problem, and the problem is trying to achieve the goal, on the one side, and forces opposing that, on the other, and there is conflict giving us the idea of mass."
It means, he said, "a mental mass .... which certainly has mental weight, but whether it is discernible or not, that could be debatable." "Mentally speaking," he said, "it has thickness and other dimensions like that." There was further evidence that, according to scientology, the mind could mock up a mass - a black mass floating in front of the individual but really invisible - which he could then bring into his body and thereby increase his weight by up to thirty pounds, and, by further thinking, he could expel this same weight. Whether a person could, by thought, permanently expel weight from the body was not clearly determined, and scientology has not yet emerged as an alternative to dieting.
During the Inquiry the scientology interests were invited on several occasions to demonstrate how a mass could be mocked up and brought into the body and how the increase of the body weight could be measured on a scales, which was the claim Hubbard made, and which Williams asserted could be relatively easily done. The invitation was not accepted, although it was made clear that the Board would be greatly impressed by any such demonstration.
However, strange physical developments are attributed to processing. In Ability Magazine, issue major 2, is a testimonial from a young lady who writes, " Before starting on these sessions my breasts were unusually small. In fact I wore a size 32A brassiere .... I am now wearing a size 34c, and from all indications will wear still larger." Possibly inspired by such a report, two prominent female members of the Melbourne HASI staff, each with the same male auditor, set goals which were quite opposite. One set as her goal to have a smaller bust, and the other to have a larger bust. Whether the first attained her goal through auditing did not clearly appear in evidence. However, the second woman considered that she had attained her goal through auditing, because formerly she walked round-shouldered, but now she stands up straight and holds her shoulders back.
In HCO Bull. of the 23rd September, 1963, Hubbard tells of implant GPM's and writes that these
"have only passing importance as a pc's Actual Goals and GPM's are a thousand thousand times more aberrative and important than Implants. But one has to know the extent and nature of Implant GPM's in order not to get them confused with Actual GPM's."
In HCO Bull. of the 28th September 1963, Hubbard writes,
"Confusion between Implants and Actual GPM's occurs because the implanters used types of goals and patterns found in actual GPM's. Implanters obviously had a knowledge, from historical record or even research, of what a thetan's own goals look like but obviously they never developed the data to a workable therapy or they probably would not have continued to be driven to such costly expedients as continuous implanting, between lives installations, &c.
The highest level of treatment technology known to exist in the universe before Scientology was Pictureology wherein, at a signal from the therapist, the thetan crunched up the engram. This is currently in use (and has been for many trillions of years) in the Galactic Confederation."
The latest information available to the Board is that work on GPMs is still in the developmental stage. In HCO Infm. Lr. of the 5th February, 1964, Hubbard writes,
"You can't run an Actual GPM unless you're trained to Class VI. You'd kill somebody. The new technology has not been released and will not be. It is too exacting. We can do it safely at Saint Hill".
Though Hubbard in the same information letter stated in effect that by the running of Actual GPM's "we are making OT's at Saint Hill smoothly" the scientology interests did not produce to the Board an OT or anyone who had seen an OT, and in this respect Mrs. Williams, who was a Saint Hill student during the first half of 1964, disappointed many who had hoped to see an OT when she gave evidence before the Board in September, 1964.
The foregoing summary does not exhaust the content of scientology theories but is sufficient to illustrate their general nature.