Reference: Course on Subject Clearing
The ancient meditation is about focusing on one’s breath to get rid of all distractions, and then resolving anomalies in whatever came up in one’s consciousness. The resolution occurred when a person concentrated his attention on the anomaly and discovered its content.
What Dianetics added to meditation was, to select body somatic to look at instead of any anomaly. This led to discovering past painful incidents including some samskars (genetic painful incidents) and their content.
But not all body somatic are due to singular, well-defined incidents. Some may take a gradient approach to resolve many anomalies before the body somatic could be resolved. Here is my criticism of Dianetics (the precursor of Scientology).
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Dianetics, Criticism of
Apparently, the author of Dianetic thesis (Hubbard) is able to produce results where others run into difficulty. Therefore, the Dianetic procedure needs to be examined more closely. In my observation, many difficulties arise because of the violation of the gradient in approaching the engram.
According to the laws of returning, the analytical awareness starts to shut down as one approaches the engram, and the thinking increasingly dramatizes the content of the engram. The person is not aware of this change but the auditor is. The auditor is then required to navigate the preclear through it skillfully.
According to the thesis, the auditor’s dynamic assists the preclear’s dynamic in overcoming the effects of the laws of returning. But in practice, the auditor takes over the awareness of the preclear instead of assisting it. Even the use of E-meter brings awareness to the auditor only. The preclear is simply being told what to do, and he is never in command of himself while approaching the engram. He mechanically obeys either the engram or the auditor.
Only the preclear can handle his aberrations. The auditor can only support, encourage and guide him but he can’t approach and assimilate the engram for the preclear. The only solution is for the preclear to remain in control of his awareness while approaching the engram and assimilating its content. This requires the preclear to overcome the effects of the law of returning.
It is important to remember that Hubbard was an expert hypnotist and he thought in terms of returning. So, he may not have even considered the possibility of neutralizing the engram without returning.
In hypnotism, the hypnotist installs a hypnotic command. That command can be neutralized by recalling the moment that command was installed. Hypnotist can easily do it because he knows when he installed that command. But the situation is very different in life. One suspects that there is a painful incident, which installed an engram in the mind but nothing is known about this incident. Engram is not like a simple hypnotic command. It has many tentacles reaching into many logic circuits of the mental matrix. Its relationship with the mind is much more complex compared to that of a simple hypnotic command.
The dianetic approach is to attack the source of pain (the engram). It tries to push through the pain to locate and re-experience the engram. It neglects the very many and much finer relationships that need to be straightened out in the process of neutralizing the engram. Thus it violates the principle of gradient. The more the gradient is violated, the more forceful is the reaction of the engram. The laws of returning are simply the result of violating the gradient. There are no such laws in play when the engram is approached on a gradient, as in subject clearing.
The subject clearing approach allows the engram to unwind itself through free association on its own natural gradient. The preclear simply focuses on the aberration that is bothering him. He examines that aberration in detail. He lets the mind associate non-judgmentally all the data that comes up in the context of that aberration. He objectively watches the reactions and even the strong emotions that come up. He lets all such reactions run out as they may. He doesn’t interfere even when the awareness seems to attenuate as in falling asleep. These are contents of the engram getting released to the mental matrix.
It does not matter what the preclear has done or what has been done to him. He does not guess or search for the contents of the engram. If a phrase is running around in his head he simply focuses on it. He experiences whatever comes up without resisting. He may be supported, encouraged and guided by a subject clearing auditor. But it is the preclear’s dynamic that lies behind this free association. Using the gradient of free association any engram can be reached safely and easily.
The Dianetic thesis seems to blame any lack of success on incompetent auditing. It is noted that a proper thesis would be effective and easy to apply at the same time. Hopefully, the subject clearing approach shall be able to overcome the difficulties that have plagued the dianetic procedure.
The out-gradient in dianetic procedure ends up in the auditor taking over the awareness of the preclear instead of assisting it.
NOTE: Even the Scientology Grades and OT Levels suffer from the same problem. At OT Levels, the auditor is replaced by the E-meter. The E-meter and “Hubbard’s rigid theory and instructions” take over the awareness of the preOT instead of assisting it.
This seems to have become ingrained so much so that the preclear is expected to submit to the dictates of the organization delivering auditing. This organization is presently the “Church of Scientology”, which closely monitors all its parishioners and expects them to comply mindlessly with its “code of ethics”. It keeps them in line through a system of reward and punishment. Anyone who rebels against the control of the Church is declared a “potential trouble source” or a “suppressive person”.
Fortunately, with subject clearing approach one can audit oneself to great improvement. He can then help others get started with their auditing. Only this way can a grass roots movement be started which is up to meeting the demands of the society for relief from aberration.
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