Chapter 17
- In Dianetics, today's obvious nervous breakdown is tomorrow's most cheerful being.
- -- L. Ron Hubbard{1}
Scientology is perhaps a religion, is probably a
philosophy, is definitely a business, is potentially a political force,
and is also a form of therapy, or as they call it now, pastoral
counseling. Most people do not realize this, since the Scientologists
draw attention only to the idea that they are a religion and a
philosophy. Thus, they have been able to keep the public in the dark
about what is happening -- and they have also been largely able to avoid
public outcry.
Scientologists have devised a series of methods that they
believe can and will save this "enturbulated" world. Some of their
practices -- those that have been widely criticized, such as
disconnecting, suppressives, investigations -- are based on their belief
that anyone who questions, criticizes or tries to stop Scientology from
utilizing these methods is harming not only themselves but the world.
Scientologists try to keep their methods of pastoral
counseling a very strict secret. While this shields them from criticism,
it also makes doctors doubtful as to its efficacy. "Suppose Newton had
founded a Church of Newtonian physics and refused to show his formula to
anyone who doubted the tenets of Newtonian physics?" wrote William
Burroughs.{2} (In an earlier stage, when
Burroughs was apparently more enchanted with Scientology, he wrote
"There is nothing secret about Scientology, no talk of initiates, secret
doctrines or hidden knowledge."{3}) But only someone who
takes advanced Scientology courses or "grades" can find out what
Scientology methods are.
If any Scientologist divulges these secrets after he
takes the courses, he is subject to expulsion. But even though he
doesn't know what the courses are until he takes them, he must agree
that they are correct in advance and cannot question them. "It's like a
physicist saying `you can't see my formulae unless you first agree that
they are correct sight unseen,' " said Burroughs.{4}
Some of these secret sessions are done with the E-meter,
although other sessions consist of a series of exercises to "raise the
preclear's ability." When working with the meter, the auditor may first
show the preclear the auditing room and ask if there is anything about
it that upsets him.{5} The preclear may also be told to
remove his watch and wedding ring to prevent interference by outside
metals.{6} Then the auditor and preclear face each other
in chairs, with the E-meter on a table between them.
The auditor watches the needle of the meter, and if it
reacts in a manner that he believes indicates that an engram is present,
the auditor repeats the question until the needle "floats," which
presumably means that the engram has been "erased."{7}
The preclear, who cannot see the dials, does not have to accept the word
of the auditor to determine whether an engram is really gone. Hubbard
stated that when a patient succeeds in erasing an engram, he will feel a
sense of wild elation -- which explains, perhaps, why when one
Scientologist got rid of an engram, he laughed for two days without
stopping.{8}
During these sessions, the auditor does not tell the
preclear to free associate, as is done in psychoanalysis, but rather he
is told to return to a specific incident, say one that caused grief,
anger, fear, humiliation. The preclear then tries to determine the date
of the incident,
and if he cannot, picks an approximate date and keeps reeling off dates
until the E-meter reacts.{9}
Once the preclear has found the date, he must then go to
the beginning of the incident and tell the entire story, repeating it
many times until all the details become clear.{10} By
the end of that time, the story supposedly loses its emotional charge
and is no longer a source of problems or pain.
At the end of each session, the preclear may be made to
focus his attention on five or six objects in the room, presumably to
bring him back to reality, before he is permitted to leave.{11} Some sessions end more formally with the auditor
saying, "Tell me I am no longer auditing you," at which point the
preclear says, "You are no longer auditing me."{12}
If during these sessions a preclear has a particular
problem he wishes to discuss, he is permitted to talk about it but only
briefly. Then, instead of working on it, he may be told to invent a
problem of comparable magnitude, to lie about the problem he has,{13} or even to invent a worse problem.{14}
There is a strong tendency during these sessions not to
talk about present problems at all. For example, Hubbard wrote the
following to show auditors what to do if the preclear had what they call
a "present-time" problem.
AUDITOR: What do you think is wrong with you? But most of these sessions are devoted to past-time
incidents or even past-life incidents. The preclear, while holding onto
the cans of the E-meter, will be made to answer two or three questions
asked repeatedly during the auditing session. For example, several
sessions may be devoted to alternating commands, like "recall something
real," "recall a communication," and "recall an emotion."
In other sessions they may be told to "recall
a loss," "recall a misemotion," "tell me a problem," "tell me a
solution," or "What have you said?", "What have you done?", "What are
you willing to tell me about?", "What are you willing to tell me about
it?", "What is the problem?", "What is the solution?", "What have you
done?", and "What haven't you said?"{16}
In other sessions, the person has been asked questions or
ordered to do things that to an outsider seem to make far less sense,
for example to "not know" something, to put things in the wrong time and
place, and even to deny the existence of objects around him, so that
portions of the environment, such as the walls or the door have
disappeared in his mind.{17} The preclear has also had
to answer such questions as "Who isn't here?", "What aren't you
thinking?", "Where don't you have a headache?", "Have you a headache in
last week?", "Was your body in 1210 while you were going to college in
1940?"
Many Scientology sessions are devoted entirely to
exercises guaranteed to raise the preclear's "ability."
One series of exercises may be done outside of the
auditing room. For example, Scientologists have ordered an unconscious
person, or a new born baby to "Lie in bed. Thank you."{18} They once reported doing this for several hours to an
unconscious Scientologist, until they were kicked out of the hospital.{19} (The patient later died.)
The reason for this seemingly strange exercise is
twofold. While it may seem odd to be telling something to an unconscious
person, they believe the thetan is always conscious and the person is
thus able to hear it. Secondly, one of the principles of auditing is to
find something a preclear can do and then better that ability -- and
obviously an unconscious person or baby is able to lie in a bed. Hubbard
also wrote that he once cured a drunk on this principle -- he had him
invent new ways to get drunk!{20}
The first Scientology course for $15 consists of two days
or four evenings of the following exercises or "Training Routines" or
T.R.'s, as they call them there.
In the first T.R., "Confrontation," two Scientologists sit a few feet
apart and simply stare in each others' eyes without moving, twitching,
blinking, giggling, sighing, fidgeting, for a minimum of an hour.{21} (It is this exercise that helps Scientologists learn
how to stare intensely at others.)
The second T.R. is called "Bull Baiting" and it is
somewhat similar; one Scientologist again stares directly at the other
without moving, only this time the other partner tries to make the
immobile one "flinch" or react by insulting him, humoring him, taunting
him, or leading him on -- usually about his physical flaws or sexual
problems.
In a third T.R., called "Dear Alice" one Scientologist
keeps repeating lines from Alice in Wonderland while his partner
"acknowledges him."
For example, one asks "Do cats eat bats?", or says
"Imperial Fiddlesticks" and the other says "thank you" or "groovy." (It
is said that in one eastern city, they decided to send an undercover
policeman to investigate Scientology. The policeman spent several days
repeating lines from Alice in Wonderland and being thanked for
it.{22})
In two other T.R's, one Scientologist keeps asking his
partner "Do fish swim?" or "Do birds fly?" while the partner tries to
make him "flinch" or become distracted as he did in the "Bull Baiting."
For example:
While the purpose of these exercises may be elusive, they
are actually supposed to teach someone to get commands across naturally,
to get the answer to the question that he wants, to ask questions in a
fresh manner, and not to start a second question until the first has
been answered, etc.{23}
During a weekend I spent researching
Scientology, I did these five exercises. I certainly admire the amazing
perseverance of Scientologists who do these Training Routines since they
are unbelievably tiring and boring. "Confrontation," for example is a
nightmare. If done correctly, without blinking or thinking or anything,
it induces hallucinations.
When I had to do it, my first reaction upon staring at
my partner was to laugh, but within a few minutes I really wanted to
cry. Everything was itching everyplace. My muscles kept twitching while
the rest of my body felt stiffer than the wooden chair I was on. After a
while, my eyes started to blur, and then so did my mind, and I watched
in horror as my partner turned into a breathing Rorschach card. His
eyes, eyelashes and brows met, his nostrils merged and became a cruel,
flaring cavern in the center of his face, and the shadows cast by this
disfigured nose gave his entire face a sinister and terrifying quality.
"Bull Baiting" was not much better. I was first assisted
to make someone else "flinch," but I was the one who flinched the
minute I laid my eyes on him. There was nothing I couldn't insult him
about -- from the top of his too-tiny head to the bottom of his hundred
pound five-foot frame. He had a Pinocchio-type nose, closely set black
beady eyes, parched thin lips, large red ears, a scattering of
post-adolescent pimples, and a chin like a slightly used rapier.
I couldn't bear to insult someone as unattractive as he,
who must have been hurt often throughout his life. But the Scientology
leader and the assistant of the group both put me down for this. They
also showed me how to do it: the leader described each of the boy's
faults in what must have been agonizing detail; the assistant, however,
told him how handsome, tall, clear-skinned etc. he was.
When it was my turn to be baited, I was naturally braced
for the worst. But to my surprise, instead of picking on my faults or
flaws, or "buttons" as they called it there, my male partners tried to
make me "flinch" by talking about sex, and their incredible obscenities
and explicit descriptions of the amazing variety of perversions they
wanted to practice
with me made them sound disgustingly similar to an obscene telephone
caller without the benefit of a telephone.
The Scientologists also used the bull baiting exercise to
find out if I was a writer. They sent an advanced Scientologist to
bull-bait me. While at first he chatted aimlessly, all of a sudden, he
thrust his face a quarter of an inch from mine, looked directly into my
eyes, and said, ominously, "We've been watching you since you first came
in here. We think you're really a writer." He kept questioning me
repeatedly, while all the color drained my face. So I purposely threw my
eyes slightly out of focus, fixed my gaze an inch above his eyes, and
concentrated intently on what it would be like to kiss him, hoping this
would imbue my features with an acceptable amount of disgust and despair
and I wouldn't "flinch."
It worked and he finally changed the subject, like the
others, to sex. He was so filthy, he made the obscenities of the earlier
"bull baiters" sound as if they'd come from pre-pubescent children. His
final statement was to ask me whether I'd like to join the
Scientologists "in some of the great orgies we have over here on Tuesday
[or Thursday, I forget] night." I'm sorry I can't report to you whether
that last statement is true or not, because I wanted to get out of that
world as fast as I could, and had no desire to attend an "org-y" at the
org.
In all fairness, however, I must say that these TRs,
however tedious (I mean how often can you ask someone "do birds fly?"
without feeling that you're about ready to also?) did have some benefit
for me. They helped teach me to talk with my voice and not with my
hands, to acknowledge somebody's statements before I rambled on with my
own, to look people straight in the eye, and to be more persistent with
someone when I wanted to get an answer from him. And it is probably not
the fault of Scientology but my own incorrigibility that none of these
effects lasted five minutes past that Scientology weekend.
The relation between the exercise and its purpose is a
bit more obscure in other sessions.
In one exercise called "Holding Corners," the person is
supposed to visualize the two corners of the room and then "hold them"
there, thinking of nothing else.{24} For some reason,
this is supposed to make you act younger. Another exercise consists of
"confronting" various parts of the body:
Auditor: What part of that body can you confront? Many Scientology exercises consist of hours and hours of
repetitive commands, not only like the above, but like the following.
The auditor says to the preclear:
Do you see that book? Hubbard said the above should be done "without ... lag,
without protest, without apathy, but only cheerfulness, each time seeing
the items newly."{27} He also said it was better to run
this consecutively for several hours, rather than run it a short time
for several days. One preclear was run for nine hours on the above
without any breaks!{28}
Another Scientology exercise is called "S.C.S." (Stop,
Change, Start). Most Scientology courses are given on levels, and in the
beginning of S.C.S., the preclear must move small objects around a
table, stop them, change their direction, etc., "quickly and accurately
without protest" at the auditor's command.{29} On
higher levels, a person is commanded to get out of his body, since
Scientologists believe that the thetan or spirit can function apart from
the body.
To accomplish this, the preclear is first told to "be
three feet in back of your head" and then told to be in more and more
difficult places "until he can sit in the center of the sun."{30} This exercise was severely criticized by the
Australian Inquiry, and in 1965, the Scientologists told them that it
was no longer being run. (However, in 1970, a book was for sale at the
Washington D.C. Org telling auditors about S.C.S.)
It has been criticized because its effects can be
devastating. Hubbard wrote that "If a preclear is about to fly out of
his head he'll fly out of his head on S.C.S. If he does fly out of his
head on S.C.S. or on any other process, you, of course, continue the
process."{31} He also wrote of S.C.S. that if a
preclear suddenly "flies to pieces," started "flip flopping" and had to
be picked up off the floor, etc., that the auditor should immediately
get him back on to his feet and into the session. "This is no time for
you to be changing processes simply because a preclear collapses," he
wrote.
All these exercises, and even E-meter sessions for
recounting incidents in the real or imagined past, can be extremely
tiring and difficult. Some people even think it is dangerous. The
Australian Report commented on this as follows:
... during this, the preclear is very frequently
experiencing mental torture, which shows itself in contorted and flushed
features, tears, moaning, inability to speak, apparent deafness, nausea,
dizziness, sensations of pain, coma and unconsciousness. One witness
said that he almost killed his auditor, a close personal friend, who was
questioning him about withholds [non-disclosed items]
he had as to "sexy thoughts" concerning a female staff member....
Sometimes preclears are so distraught that they scream, develop
murderous feelings, have bouts of anger, grief and morbid feelings and
thoughts; their sexual passions are aroused, they act insanely, laugh
hysterically and engage in other hysterical behavior; they become
violent and try to escape and have to be restrained.... In Scientology
parlance, when such manifestations as these occur, the preclear is being
"restimulated"; in fact, he is being debased and mentally crippled.{32}
Hubbard was aware that a preclear might have these
reactions, but warned auditors to continue nonetheless. Hubbard said
that if a preclear begged his auditor not to make him talk about
someone's death "that is the first engram he should get."{33} Hubbard wrote:
... when the preclear is apparently in the most intense
pain ... you must calmly continue to run the incident, asking for any
phrases connected with the incident, and picking up all sounds, sense of
touch, and kinesthesia as they appear.... And then, when the incident
seems to be over, and the pain has subsided, command the somatic strip
to go to the beginning of the incident and roll it again! ... Pay no
attention to any efforts he may make to avoid going through a second or
third time.{34}
Perhaps it is not surprising that S.C.S. has sometimes
been given as punishment -- and one person said he had been "sentenced"
to S.C.S. for twenty-five hours for some infraction.{35}
The Australian Report devoted an entire chapter to
another danger they saw in these sessions -- hypnosis. They concluded
that these various exercises were a type of hypnosis. To support their
hypothesis, they listed every aspect of the Scientology auditing session
along with its hypnotic counterpart. They also mentioned the fact that
Hubbard admits he was "schooled in hypnotism and mysticism" although
Hubbard claims he doesn't
use hypnotic techniques.
The Australian Report concluded that Hubbard does
use hypnotic techniques but that he has simply changed the name of
various hypnotic phenomena to names of his own invention. The report
pointed out that it was a common practice for Scientology auditors to
ask the preclear at the end of the session whether he had achieved his
goals and was satisfied with that session.
Since they believed that the auditor was asking these
questions when the preclear was coming out of a "hypnotic trance," while
the "hypnotic rapport" with the auditor was in effect, the post hypnotic
suggestions helped the preclear to believe that the goals had been
obtained and that the session was successful. After the session was
over, the "suggestion" that the session was a success could still
persist. The Scientologists believe these exercises have helped them,
while the Australian Inquiry concluded they've been used to hypnotize
them.{36}
{1} first quote
[6]
PRECLEAR: I'm impatient.
AUDITOR: Can you think of someone who's impatient?
PRECLEAR: My father.
AUDITOR: O.K. We'll run a father.{15}
Preclear: The elbow.
Auditor: What part of that elbow can you confront?
Preclear: The wrist.
Auditor: Thank you.{25}
Walk over to it.
Pick it up.
Not know something about its color.
Not know something about its temperature.
Not know something about its weight.
Do you see that bottle?
Walk over to it.
Pick it up.
Not know something about its color.
Not know something about its temperature.
Not know something about its weight.
Do you see that book? Etc.{26}
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{2} quote by Burroughs on secrecy & Newton
[187]
{3} quote by Burroughs on nonsecrecy
[130a]
{4} must be Scientologist to know what happens,
etc.; quote on physicist
[187]
{5} showing preclear room
[130a, 261]
{6} removing ring
[130a, 139]
{7} needle floats
[130a]
{8} man who laughed for two days
[6]
{9} remember grief anger; get date
[130a]
{10} repeat story from beginning
[6, 103a]
{11} focus on objects
[261]
{12} "tell me I am no longer auditing you"
[261]
{13} problems of comparable magnitude or lie
about it
[158]
{14} invent worse problem
[16]
{15} running a father
[20]
{16} Scientology questions
[14, 139]
{17} putting things in wrong time or place
[252]
{18} Lie in bed; raise abilities
[16]
{19} kicked out of hospital
[36]
{20} drunk helped
[16]
{21} exercises in first course
[111, 178]
{22} policeman in Scientology
[142]
{23} purpose of exercises
[111, 277]
{24} holding corners
[142]
{25} confronting elbow
[14]
{26} book and bottle
[261]
{27} Hubbard quote on book and bottle
[272]
{28} persons run for 9 hours
[261]
{29} SCS move objects
[158]
{30} get in back of head and sun
[261]
{31} Hubbard quotes on SCS
[16]
{32} Australian Report opinion of treatment
[261]
{33} Hubbard says talk about death
[6]
{34} Hubbard quote on intense pain
[4]
{35} person sentenced to SCS
[261]
{36} Hubbard studied hypnotism; Scientology
is hypnotism & post hypnotic suggestion
[261]
Extraneous citation notes:
{37} able more able
[102]
{38} raise abilities
[255]
{39} lit claims to cure
[261]
{40} Vitamin E
[229]