I'm having to suspend all kinds of disbelief to even have this conversation, but ... (others will, I'm sure, chime if I'm getting this wrong) ....
What qualified as "clear" has changed so many times, under Hubbard and Mayo and Miscavige.
First of all, Hubbard had the idea (or convinced others he had the idea - your choice) that people could go clear on Dianetics.
Then he discovered that didn't happen for many people.
So because of that (and for some other reasons, primarily involving money and the fact that one or more of his financial backers gained legal control of Dianetics organizations) he created Scientology and, eventually (over many years), built and rebuilt and revised and re-designed and reconstructed the Bridge. A lot of the names on "the Bridge" remained the same. But the processes changed over time.
He was always looking for a "standard path to Clear and OT." He had a franchise ideology of transformational personal development -- that everybody had to go through the same cookie-cutter process. Very manufacturing, sort of early Six Sigma, but in concept only -- not in practice.
When I got into Scientology in the early 1970s, one did Dianetics first, then Scientology. And pcs were often C/Sed at various points in their Scientology processing to go back and do some more Dianetics. Wasn't unusual at all to do that.
Then Hubbard and his tek developers discovered that OTs didn't do well on Dianetics. (It had to do with the BTs being run on Dianetics -- wasn't copacetic, it seems.) So anyone who was clear wasn't permitted to do Dianetics anymore -- they had to New Era Dianetics for OTS -- nicknamed (here comes the drumroll) ... NOTs. And a new Upper Bridge was born.
Then, sometime in the mid-late seventies, Hubbard anounced that some people were spontaneously going clear on the Lower Bridge, in Dianetics, Scientology, whatever. Then what went down was this: If you announced the Clear Cognition (here's a good post about it here on ESMB by Paul at
http://www.forum.exscn.net/showthread.php?10438-The-Clear-Cognition-***Confidential***) you got to attest to Clear. And then do your Upper Bridge.
Then some people, during various Lower Bridge auditing actions started cogniting a little extra special along with the regular Clear cognition, along the lines of "I've always done this ....[insert clear cognition here]" and they were determined (starting around 1979) to have been Natural Clears. In other words, they were deemed to have always been clear. And they pranced around feeling super-special for a while. I know. I was one of those.
Serendipitously, all of these changes in the Grade Chart and Clear Definitions coincided with New Ways to Make More Money Faster for Scientology. You see, in the late 1970s when so many people (not all) started "going clear" during Lower Bridge auditing, that speeded up the traffic to AOLA and then (whoopee!) to Flag. What a shocker, eh? Because that's where the real money was -- upper levels and at Flag.
And then later on (long after I was gone) and probably really after Lisa McPherson died (and probably because her death scared the shit out of him), Miscavige apparently decided that all those people who'd gone clear on Lower Bridge auditing or however and were now struggling on Upper Bridge actions were having trouble because they weren't really Clear. So those poor schmucks then had to go back and re-do all kinds of stuff, get all kinds of corrections, buy tons more intensives, until they Really Went Clear. Then they had to re-do (and repay for) all their Upper Bridge shit. And, again, this serendipitously coincided with How to Make a Lot More Money Faster for Scientology.
OK, now I'm getting nauseated.
BTW, I just found a site that I can't vouch for, but it probably has some value, which offers a lot of Scientology tek references on these events. At
http://www.wiseoldgoat.com/papers-scientology/hubbard_story_of_mayo3a_clear.html
And, of course, Veda may wish to chime in on this, if you can persuade him to do so.
-snip-
TG1
Sure, why not.
Re. your link: 'Wise Old Goat' posted on ESMB for a time, until banned, and was known as Roadrunner. It's possible that he may still be posting on alt.religion.scientology.
His web site consists of lots and lots of (accurate) information mixed with some disinformation. As far as I can discern, 'Wise Old Goat' seems to feel that some evil influence took over Scientology around 1978 and, on some fundamental level, perhaps only known to Hubbard himself, Scientology was sabotaged, and Hubbard (so the theory goes) overwhelmed. This would fit in nicely with the idea that Scientology was taken over by the CIA and/or (extraterrestrial) Marcabians, including evicting the Hubbard thetan and replacing it with a lesser thetan who would follow CIA and/or Marcabian orders (See Scientology Tech Dictionary under Marcab Confederacy). There are some people in the Freezone and Ron's Orgs who have ideas similar to this, a variation of which is that Hubbard was kidnapped and replaced with a doppelganger (a look-alike double) in 1973, when he was hiding out in Queens, New York, after having been charged with fraud in France - for which he was later convicted in abstentia.
So, for those who are collecting dates for when the beneficent Hubbard went wrong, add 1978 and 1973 to 1967, 1965, 1964, 1959, 1955, 1951, 1946, and 1938.
This is one of 'Wise Old Goats'/Roadrunners posts on ESMB. For those interested in reading his posts during his stay on ESMB, this link will serve as an access point. (He is no longer listed in "Community" as a member):
http://www.forum.exscn.net/showpost.php?p=13061&postcount=42
It's really a shame that Hubbard changed the Grade Chart the way he did, messing with both the middle and upper "Bridge." By the mid 1970s, Scientology was a functioning front group&mental healing-coated psychological-political operation&Hubbard fan club-cult. Scientologists were so nicely entranced. It was almost beautiful in a horribly perverted, evil, kind of way.
Anyway, 'Wise Old Goat' seems to have omitted an important follow up statement on 'Clear' by David Mayo. This statement may bring some relief to those caught in the web of "tech."
It should be added that, since writing this, David Mayo has further modified his views, and no longer considers himself to be any kind of Scientologist.
Excerpts from an article by David Mayo on Clear, 1991:
http://www.ivymag.org/iv-01-02.html
_________________________________________________________________
START QUOTE
Clear
By David Mayo, USA.
In late 1978, the state of "dianetic clear" was announced. Within a few months two other "states of clear" were introduced: the state of "natural clear" and the state of "past life clear".
This change had two immediate consequences:
1. The number of people attesting (correctly or falsely) to having attained the "state of clear" increased enormously.
2. During and after that period, there was a considerable amount of upset and confusion about the "state of clear".
There were those who considered that a dianetic clear was not a "real clear" and that the only "real clear" was one who (like them) had done the Clearing Course. Some felt that they had gone clear in their last lifetime. Some felt that dianetic clear explained why they had never been able to run dianetic auditing successfully. A large number of auditors, C/Ses, and others felt that there were a lot of people falsely attesting to the state of clear and either
a. Felt unethical about letting the person attest, or
b. Tried to handle it and ended up involuntarily invalidating the pc. No matter how this was "handled", it has persisted as a problem. So we can at least assume that there are aspects of it that haven't been taken into account and handled.
Let us examine more closely what happened in late 1978 and early 1979. LRH was being audited and concluded that one of the things wrong with his case was that he had been audited on dianetic auditing after he had attained the "state of clear" (which he at first thought had occured in objective processing). He then issued a bulletin forbidding the running of dianetic auditing on clears and made various other technical and administrative changes.
He cancelled the state of "keyed out clear" by stating that it was the same state as "clear". He changed the definition of "clear" (and subsequently changed it several more times). He order ed that the folders of pcs (and the pcs themselves) who might have gone clear in orgs and missions be routed to Advanced Orgs. This action resulted in an emptying out of the orgs and missions and a flood of people arriving at the AOs.
At first, people were being declared clear regardless of what they thought they had gone clear on or when this had occurred. More importantly, they were being declared clear regardless of the state of case or condition they were in. In fact, one bulletin went so far as to advise that case and ethics trouble could be caused by a person having attained clear without having the state acknowledged. As a result, many persons who were declared clear were actually in very poor condition. This practice reflected badly on the "state of clear" and the workability of the tech. It caused a great deal of upset and confusion on the subject of clear.
At that time there was a shortage of instructions on how to handle dianetic clear technically and a general lack of data on the new subject of "dianetic clear". However persons accused of mis-handling dianetic clear were handled with heavy ethics. The "invalidation of clear" was named a Suppressive Act, while permitting someone to attest falsely was also a serious ethics offense.
A step in the procedure for handling these new clears was to establish the date when the person went clear. Sometimes the date so found would be before scientology or even prior to the pc's lifetime. When LRH heard that some persons considered that they had attained the "state of clear" in an earlier practice such as Buddhism, he became very upset. He stated that the idea that a person could go clear through any other means than scientology was "suppressive". At a certain point, he also got upset at the fact that people were concluding that they had gone clear in scientology auditing. So he specified that a person can validly go clear only in dianetic auditing. He handled the "earlier than this life time" clears by deciding that they either went clear in their last lifetime in dianetic auditing (presumably if they were young enough for this to be possible) or had attained a new state he dubbed "natural clear". His new theory was that some people had never been anything but clear. However, he refused, thereafter, to issue any further clarification of what he meant by this assertion.
Throughout this period, the definition of clear and/or dianetic clear kept changing - in the direction of dilution. Thus people came to expect less and less from the "state of clear", while the number of new clears (and thus new arrivals at AOs and Gross Income) steadily increased. None of the new definitions of "clear", and none of the new techniques for handling clears or programming them for further actions, really solved any of the problems caused by the advent of dianetic clear.
It is of interest that the definition of "clear" had already been changed several times between its first definition in DMSMH (The book, Dianetics: Modern Science of Mental Health, 1950, by L. Ron Hubbard) and the time the idea of "clear" was put forth. In DMSMH, a clear was said to be 4.0 on the tone scale, with no aberrations (held down sevens), no psychoses, neuroses, nor psychosomatic illnesses. The clear was said to have eidetic recall and highly enhanced perceptions and creativity. Although this chappie didn't have any OT powers, he was definitely quite a phenomenon!
It is also significant that the attributes of a clear, as described in DMSMH, were never actually attained, although in reading DMSMH, one might be led to believe that they were. When people started attesting to clear, the definition was watered down to the vague generality "at cause over mental MEST as regards the first dynamic". This definition can mean many different things to many different people. Anyone is at least somewhat causative over his own mind. So anyone can find an interpretation of this definition of "clear" that he can attest to. The states of "MEST Clear", "Theta Clear", "Cleared Theta Clear", "Clearing Course Clear", "Clear-OT", and, finally, "Dianetic Clear", and "Word Clear" were equally absolutistic when first stated, but when people started attesting to them, the definition of each, or the criterion for allowing a pc to attest to each, was similarly watered down. This sequence has been repeated over and over throughout the history of scientology.
-snip-
"Clears" have always had trouble explaining why they still act reactively at times, or a lot of the time, and why they still have problems in life and in getting along with people. The amount of mileage you can get from the notion of a "cleared Cannibal" is very limited. Even a cleared cannibal, if he were really clear, would get along wonderfully in life, never manifest misemotion, and love all his fellow beings, even as he was having their bodies for dinner!
The idea of "harmonics of clear" is quite accurate. The main reason why LRH blew up at the idea of "harmonics of clear", as expressed in the HCOB I wrote, was, as he told me, that this idea tended to leave him open to the charge that the claims he had made in DMSMH and elsewhere concerning the "state of clear" were fraudulent.
The truth appears to be that there are various stages of release, at each one of which you are clear-er than you were. A person experiencing the glee of insanity is clear-er than someone who is just completely unconscious.
It was PR and marketing considerations that led Hubbard to decide that certain people were "clear" at a certain point, and that they therefore had no reactive mind. However this assertion is a lie, and a very destructive one, one that denies case gain to a great many people and provides a too-convenient rabbit button for pc's, auditors and C/S's who are having trouble with the pc's case. The claim that case and ethics problems can be caused by being clear was:
1. Absurd on the face of it.
2. A declaration of open rabbitting season.
Trying to define "clear" is difficult because it is being done over a lie. We either have to restore the meaning of clear to its original absolute meaning (which means that there aren't any clears in existence), or we have to say that what people have attested to as clear is actually only a state of release or reduction.
We can say that the purpose of auditing is to clear aberrations and that if all aberrations were cleared, a "state of clear" would be attained.
The concept of "clear" is useful as an ultimate goal, like the goal of perfect happiness or of perfect anything. It is a direction in which to continue to progress. It is not an attainable state (at least given our present level of technology).
Another part of the problem is that the states of release and clear are only subjective. Asking an aberrated person to decide when he feels or thinks that he is no longer aberrated, is asking for a delusory "cognition" from the start. At one time [ca. 1959. Ed.], LRH postulated that the state of clear could be objectively proven by the presence of a "free or floating needle" and a TA position of 2.0 (Female) or 3.0 (Male). But this was an unverified guess that did not stand the test of time.
Perhaps what we have been calling "clear" is "no longer chronically affected by engrams" or "engrams no longer in chronic restimulation." As such, the state would be more accurately described as a state of release or as a state of reduction. In other words, it would mean that the majority of a person's aberrations had gone into abeyance.
Regardless of what the state is named, the recognition that a person can continue to be come clear-er, restores hope and makes progress possible again.
END QUOTE
________________________________________________________________
To the NoI folks, what you have been given as Dianetics is 1950 'Book One' Dianetics. In 1968, what was called Standard Dianetics was released, and that form of Dianetics was used. 'Book One' was only (occasionally) used at an introductory level so the person could have a "win," and then be further led into Scientology.
At that time, the only way a person could "go Clear" was with the 'Clearing Course'.
In 1978, this was changed again, and the definition and requirements of "Clear" were changed, leading to a fair amount of confusion. However, Scientologists being Scientologists, in short order, most "got with the program," and continued with the Scientology activities.
These days, I don't know if a NoI 'Book One Clear' would be considered a true Clear. Did you run Past Lives? Those on (1968) Standard Dianetics and, later, (1978) New Era Dianetics, when they could not run Past Lives, were given something called a "Past Life Remedy," so they could, then, "run" (access) Past Lives.
In both Standard Dianetics and New Era Dianetics there is very little concern with verbal content or words, and very little attention or importance placed on the prenatal area.
The techniques are also different.
If you look at the Scientology Grade Chart, you'll see that 'Book One' is used as an introductory level lead-in the the rest of Scientology.
You'll have to decide for yourself if you want to go there.
