Thursday, January 21, 2016

The end is nigh

Towards the middle of August 1989, things went from bad to worse.

I'd never fully recovered from Scott and Jackie's deaths, not because I'd been close to them (I didn't really know them), but because of what their deaths meant - about LRH, about Scientology, and about OT.

My husband had become increasingly disaffected, and we were barely on speaking terms. At the time, I thought he just resented my being on staff. I realized later it ran much deeper than that.

It became clear to seniors in the Org that I was a mess, and I was being "handled" on an almost daily basis for PTSness and/or out ethics. I was encouraged - strongly encouraged - to leave my husband. With four small children and no income, who thinks that's a good idea?

And although I agreed that he'd become something of a problem because he wanted me off staff, I held Org seniors at bay with the assurance that he'd come around. He was just frustrated. I could handle it. Just give me some time. He wasn't suppressive. He couldn't be, because the implications of that would be too much to bear.

Doubt was now a constant companion. It haunted me in all things and was unbearable. It was a doubt that I couldn't speak of, that I could share with no one - not even myself. I was paralyzed, afraid to look too closely in any direction for fear of what I'd find, of what I would have to decide. It was like walking a tightrope in the dark. There was nothing to hang onto.

I ate little and slept less, living on coffee and cigarettes, all of which made matters worse.

I felt utterly isolated and alone. I didn't trust my husband. He wanted me off staff. I didn't trust my parents. They wanted me out of Scientology. I didn't trust my seniors at the Org. They wanted me to leave my husband. I didn't even trust my friends - all Scientologists. I knew if I confided in them, they would feel compelled to "write me up" - tell the ethics officer what was going on with me.

There was nowhere I could turn, no one I believed in anymore, no one I could share this with who would just listen, without judgment, without comment, and let me talk it through. I was mute and desolate and despairing, trapped inside my head in a fog of swirling confusion.

And then, towards the end of August, my husband called me at lunch one day and read me a passage from a book. It was unquestionably from Dianetics. Only it wasn't. It was from Science and Sanity by Korzybski.

And I went into freefall.

I didn't know it at the time, but this was the day before my rescue.


Thanks, Alex

For some reason, I was able to publish your comments but not reply to them, so I'll do it this way.

Thanks for your comments - for your encouragement, but mainly for sharing your own stories.

Very sad about your C/S. A fellow staff member had cancer, and I have no idea what became of her. I just know, at the time I left, she and her husband were pushing hard to get her up through the OT levels as quickly as possible. Quackery at its best.

Glad you bought a house. The gains from that will far outlast anything from Scientology!

The good that came of all of this for me is that my kids (now all grown) question everything - especially authority - and trust their gut. That they learned from my mistakes is enough!

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Disconnection

The longer I was in Scientology, the easier it became to disassociate from those who weren't. As time went on, I found I preferred the company of those who shared my beliefs and spoke the same jargon as I did.

Friends I'd had for a lifetime fell by the wayside. We had nothing in common any more. And although they were still kind and friendly, they clearly thought I'd made a mistake by getting involved in Scientology. So it was best to just avoid them and stick with those who understood what I understood.

My bosses were Scientologists. My husband was a Scientologist and worked mainly for and with Scientologists. We only spent time with Scientologists. And I was determined my kids would grow up to be Scientologists.

Don't let anyone tell you that the policy on disconnection was cancelled or fell out of favour with the Org. It remained - and no doubt still remains - a most compelling threat to anyone even thinking of leaving.

I was "handled" any number of times on my parents. My mother was particularly anti-Scientology, and I did the SP/PTS Course because of my connection with her. Towards the end, I was also being "handled" on what seemed a daily basis to disconnect from my husband who had clearly become disaffected and was less and less supportive of my being on staff.

Leaving behind my job and friends and colleagues was unfortunate, but nothing more. I wasn't lost to my family, and was able to reunite with old friends who were delighted to have me back.

But there have been others who had much more to lose: parents, spouses, siblings, children, friends, business associates - everyone. The most notable for me in Toronto was David Stokes. (You can read his story here.) This required insight and commitment far beyond anything that was required of me. And I tip my hat to every one of them.


Tuesday, January 19, 2016

My faith is shaken

They broke the news to us at muster first thing Monday morning.

"Scott and Jackie Carmichael died in a car accident on the weekend."

There was silence. Then all hell broke loose. What?! NO!!! Impossible! They were here in the Org on Friday!

Then whisperings, murmurings, pondering the enormity of it - the grief, the loss, the confusion - and the doubt.

Jackie and Scott were OT VII - at least Scott was.

And OTs are CAUSE OVER LIFE.

OTs do NOT die in car crashes.

Did anyone ever say that? I'm not sure. It would have been futile anyway. They would have been glared at disapprovingly and told they had hidden standards on what "cause over life" really meant.

Hidden standard - An unrealistic standard by which one measures the effectiveness of Scientology auditing. (I'm paraphrasing here.) According to xenu.net:
The notion of a "Hidden Standard" is Scientology's escape clause, sleight of hand, the place where the excuses are made for Scientology not working.
Someone - I don't remember who - spoke calmly, soothingly, reassuringly. It was all fine. Other OTs had been in touch with them telepathically after the accident, and all was well.

Bullshit. I didn't buy it. Not for a second. I knew it wasn't fine. How did I know that? Because they had a young son, travelling in another car, who survived. That's how I knew.

Maybe they were PTS or out ethics - because OTs do not die in car crashes.

So being $250,000 in debt (or so rumour had it) in 1989 to pay for training and auditing - would that qualify?

In any event, Scott and Jackie were dead. And my faith was irreparably shaken.

Monday, January 18, 2016

I finally figure out what's wrong with me

"Don't just stand there like a robot! Are you stupid?! Answer me! Why don't you answer me?!"

My senior was apoplectic, fists clenched, stamping her feet, red in the face.

And I was paralysed. My brain had shut down, and I was incapable of coherent thought. And so I just stood there, mute. I don't remember what I'd done to send her into such a rage, but clearly I'd bungled something.

To my relief, she finally released me to go scrub floors.

The thing is, I liked her. When she had convinced me to come back on staff after my unfortunate run-in with a Sea Org recruiter, I was pregnant, and she had taken very good care of me. Every day after lunch, she would hand me the keys to her apartment and say, "Go rest for an hour. You're pregnant. You have to look after yourself." She'd fussed over me like a mother hen, making sure I ate well, got enough sleep, and didn't stay past the end of my day.

And she and her husband had gone to bat for me once when I got in trouble with the executive director for not following an order she gave me. But she had no business issuing that order in the first place, and my senior was quick to point that out. When it looked like the executive director was going to be intractable, my senior's husband threatened to go on strike until she gave it up. He carried a lot of clout, and that was the end of it. I was grateful to both of them.

And so, because she'd been good to me, and because I liked her, and because I wanted to do my job well and help clear the planet, it always saddened me when I disappointed her - again

I was a perpetual disappointment to my seniors for as long as I can remember. They seemed to think I was bright and capable, so they promoted me. But I never lived up to their expectations, so they demoted me. I suspect it only happened a few times, but it seemed like an endless cycle.

Truth be told, I just never "got it". I felt out of place, a misfit. It seemed everyone else - well, almost everyone else - understood something I didn't. And I had no idea what it was. It was like walking into a old boys' club and not getting the in jokes. I was perpetually puzzled, bewildered, and confused, which made it damned difficult to muster a "fixed, dedicated glare."

The problem was that I was "reasonable" and "open minded."And in Scientology, there's nothing worse. Those are highly pejorative terms. It means you're not serious, and you're just making excuses. But no matter how many times I looked them up in the dictionary and cleared every definition, I remained reasonable and open-minded.

And then, many years out, I discovered a term that explained what was wrong with me:

Cognitive dissonance - the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time, performs an action that is contradictory to one or more beliefs, ideas or values, or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values.


And so as much as I wanted to embrace Scientology in its totality, there was a part of me that just couldn't do it. I was miserable if I did and miserable if I didn't. Of course, all of this was going on in the background, uninspected by me. Hence - stress. Lots of stress.

I've seen pictures of myself shortly after I left: black circles under my eyes, gaunt, pale, unhealthy. It was so bad that, 15 years later, I looked younger than I had in those earlier pictures.

And yet, at the time I left, I'd only been on staff full-time for 2 years.

And as dazed and confused as I was on staff, it set me up perfectly for my eventual exit.


Sunday, January 17, 2016

What's good for the Org isn't always good for the public

"If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house

with the conscious design of doing me good,

I should run for my life."

- Henry David Thoreau


If Maria's sister had known this quote, it might have saved her marriage and prevented what may have been her financial ruin.

When I was still on staff at Narconon, Maria's became an FSM (field staff member). It was her job to bring "raw meat" into Narconon or the Org. And if they signed up for services, she received a commission.

Some years later, when I had left Narconon and was staff at the Toronto Org, Maria set her sights on her sister. I don't know much about her, but she was older than Maria, married with kids. Somehow Maria convinced her to become involved in Scientology. The sister's husband wanted her to have nothing to do with it - hence, suppressive.

With her usual aplomb, Maria pushed, and apparently finally persuaded her to leave her suppressive husband. It took time, but eventually she did leave her husband. And when the matrimonial property was divided, she invested in Scientology training and auditing - quite a lot of training and auditing.

(I was never a party to these discussions. I just heard snippets of conversations about it over several months.)

There was a catch, though: her sister was Italian and, unlike Maria, spoke almost no English. Delivering any services to her would be next to impossible.

I felt sick, furious, impotent - and complicit.

There were rumours of a refund, but I don't know if she followed through, and I don't know what became of her.

Like my fellow staff members, I believed that what benefited Scientology benefited all of mankind. And so I never looked too deeply for fear of what I might find.

Shame on me for not having the courage to speak up.

Thursday at 2 - the stat push

If a Scientologist calls you Wednesday night or Thursday morning, DON'T PICK UP THE PHONE!

Week end is Thursday at 2, and in Toronto Org at least it tended to be bedlam. This was the last chance for staff to "get their stats up" before the 2:00 deadline. Students were pushed through courses - sometimes late into the night on Wednesday. Public were bullied and harassed and harangued to sign up for (i.e., pay for) their next service. Other public were "persuaded" to join staff.

So what are stats? I really don't want to go into this too deeply because, like everything else in Scientology, it's complicated and tied in with a bunch of other stuff that's complicated, like ethics conditions. (Lots of other stuff online if you want to check into that.)

In a nutshell: the measurable products that you're responsible for - whether that be gross income, student completions, new staff members, bodies in the shop (yes, that's a real thing), whatever - are expected to be higher than they were the week before. In some Orgs, staff pay (a euphemism for "pittance" in Toronto) was tied to whether your stats increased from the previous week, and by how much. So there was a lot at stake.

The only book LRH approved of that wasn't written by him was Big League Sales by Les Dane.

I was never involved in regging - getting people to part with their hard-earned money for training or auditing. (Reg = registrar - someone who registers people for services.) But similar techniques were used to "encourage" public to join staff. And I was involved in that.

Hubbard claimed that since man is basically good, and since Scientology is the only thing around that can lift mankind "out of the mud it thinks conceived it," something else is getting in the way of their turning over the money and their lives to Scientology.

In other words, the person's objections aren't really the person's objections. These objections are coming from something other than the person's innate goodness - perhaps from someone who's antagonistic to their progress, perhaps from the next thing that they as a spiritual being need to have handled. And it was our job as staff members to steamroll over those objections and GET THEM MOVING!

Like the Borg, resistance is futile - because persistent resistance is viewed as anti-Scientology. And no good can come of that!

And so if you decide to wander into an Org just to check it out or do a personality test, do not do it on a Thursday before 2!



Saturday, January 16, 2016

Almost Sea Org

The Sea Org recruiter looked at me sympathetically from across the desk.

"It's too bad about your daughter. Fortunately, your husband and parents are around to look after her when she gets out of the hospital. The ticket's booked, and you need to be on that flight."

I stared back at her is disbelief. Something was terribly wrong. She couldn't possibly mean it.

It was Monday morning, and I'd had a sleepless night.

On Thursday, I'd signed a Sea Org contract, and my 5-year-old daughter and I were scheduled to leave for LA on Tuesday. I was being trained in PR, and when that was finished, after however many months, I'd be returning to Toronto. My husband knew; my parents didn't.

Friday night, my daughter started throwing up and running a fever. Nothing to be concerned about. Probably flu. She'd be fine by Monday. But I learned she was blaming herself for this.

"This is my fault. You told me we were going away and not to tell anybody. I told one of my friends at school - and now I'm sick."

The fever persisted, as did the vomiting, and she had diarrhea. She pointed to a glass of water and said, "Pass me the alligator." Hallucinating a bit from the fever. Flu symptoms. Perfectly normal. We've all be there, right?

At 3 AM Monday, she woke us up crying with stomach cramps. We caught a cab to the nearest hospital and sat in emerg while they did a spinal tap. They wheeled her back and said they were just waiting for the results. The diagnosis: meningococcal meningitis. Beyond knowing it was serious, I wasn't sure what we were dealing with.

The doctor said they would put her on IV antibiotics at once, and he gave us a prescription as well. Then he said, "Go home and get some sleep."

We got home shortly after 7 AM, and the call came at 10 AM that the emergency doctor was sending her by ambulance to Sick Children's Hospital. She'd stopped breathing, and he was afraid, if they kept her there, they'd lose her.

I'd stopped at the Org on my way back from the hospital to let the Sea Org recruiter know I couldn't leave. And now this. Her intention never wavered. There was no doubt in her mind how this would play out, no question that I had to "make it go right." It wasn't a suggestion or an invitation. It was an unequivocal order.

I was exhausted, distraught - and wondering which of was insane. Everything seemed unreal, so I was pretty sure it was me.

But I was even more certain I wasn't going.

There was clearly no point in arguing. I thought, "Fuck you," stood up and said flatly, "I'm not going," and walked out. It was a while before I stepped foot inside the Org again. And it was the last time I considered joining the Sea Org.

It all turned out well in the end. My daughter was in the hospital for a month, and had two surgeries to drain fluid from around her heart. But she recovered fully, and is now a happy, successful business owner and mother of two teenage boys - and a staunch and devout non-Scientologist.


Friday, January 15, 2016

My declare

After my resignation, there were a couple of half-hearted attempts to recover me. No doubt Toronto staff had bigger fish to fry. I would have been pretty low on their list of priorities.

I did receive a call from a former Toronto colleague who'd gone on to Flag or LA asking what had happened. "Come on, Sue, I know you. You're not suppressive! Surely you can go back into the Org and work this out. I suspect you were just mishandled." I assured him I hadn't been, and that everything had been done according to policy. The irony was lost on him.

When he persisted, I finally said, "Rick, the fact is that I have some basic disgreements that just aren't going to get sorted out."

"Like what?"

"Like KSW."

He couldn't get off the phone fast enough.

My declare arrived in the mail a month or so later. The first thing I noticed was my name. It was misspelled - both my first name and my last name. No surprise there: Scientologists are notorious for not being able to get these things right. Still, it was disappointing.

Then I read the allegations. It's been 27 years, so I don't remember the details, but some were fabricated, some were true but done by others, and the balance were things I was frankly proud of and didn't regret for an instant.

I raged briefly at the inaccuracies and injustice of it, and went outside to walk it off.

And as I walked, a thought occurred to me: Scientologists in good standing can't associate with suppressives because it can cause them to become PTS and lose any gains they'd made in Scientology. (Don't know if I got that right, but that was my understanding at the time. And if I got it wrong, don't tell me and spoil my joy!) That meant that even OTs, cause over life, couldn't risk talking to me, a mere Clear, for fear of what I might do to them.  Now, that's power!

Since then, I've never thought of my declare without smiling. I was done with them - and they were done with me!



Thursday, January 14, 2016

To exscn.net

(This post just keeps morphing and morphing as I try to make sense of yesterday.)

As of yesterday, only 4 people in the entire world even knew this blog existed - including me.

What was intended as a light-hearted and humorous look at Scientology has been tweeted and posted on your forum and commented on ad nauseam. And my cheeks are burning.

I didn't expect my blog to be noticed, or to draw any attention from the ex-Scientology community. I've been out of the loop for almost 30 years, and hadn't even heard of Mark Rathbun or Mike Rinder until recently. After all, my involvement was quite boring in the big scheme of things - but awful for me nonetheless. But I guess I'd assumed that, if it was noticed, it would be met with indifference.

So it was a bit unnerving to read comments from people who presume to know anything about me based on a few blog posts. And I was bemused that anyone thought I was an OSA op. (Not sure what that is, but it doesn't sound good!)

One person contacted me directly, and she was friendly and open, forthcoming with her story and interested in mine. Thanks, Elli!

I don't know any of you, and I don't know your stories, so I can't comment on what you have or haven't been through. But I wonder, if we sat down with a pot of coffee and talked about other things, if we'd like each other.

P.S. - For a non-Scientology view on psychiatry, you could read Reality Therapy or Warning: Psychiatry Can Be Hazardous to Your Mental Health by William Glasser, M.D., a board-certified psychiatrist.


P.P.S. - Thanks for the tip on spellcheck!

The boomerang effect

Apparently, misunderstood words weren't entirely effective at getting others to tow the line. Something else was required. So LRH concocted "overts".

An overt is a harmful act.

And when we commit acts that harm others, we tend to "natter" about those others.

(Natter = complain, criticize, find fault with)

This indoctrination teaches that the only time we natter about others is when:
  1. we've done something harmful to that person, or
  2. we've done something similar ourselves that we haven't taken responsibility for.
Quite smooth when you think about it - and very, very effective.

Any disagreement you have with LRH, Scientology, other Scientologists, or staff members is due entirely to your own prior misbehaviour - even if it's true, even if it's justified, even if it's reasonable.

As soon as you even think about complaining, this mechanism kicks in and you think, "Oh, no! What's wrong with me?!"

And there is no mechanism for dealing with an actual grievance either because it was ultimately your own fault. Someone assaulted you? Stole your wallet? Slept with your spouse? So what did you do before that to cause that (or, as they say in Scientology, to pull that in)?

CAVEAT: The exception is any transgressions against the C of S or any of its executives by non-Scientologists. Those are bad, suppressive, and crimes of the highest order because only Scientology is good - and it is always good!

Hook, line, and sinker

So let's put it all together:

The hook

It could be Dianetics. It could be a Superbowl ad. It could be a personality test. But it's something connected to Scientology that you can wholeheartedly agree with.

And if this is true, then surely everything else is true, too!

The line


Keeping Scientology Working - This policy letter firmly ensconses LRH as Source. He's a war hero, a nuclear physicist, an explorer, an adventurer (none of which are actually true). He alone does not stand on the shoulders of giants. He alone discovered and developed a map out of hell on earth. He gives no credit to any of those whose ideas he plagiarized - with the possible exception of Buddha. But that's okay, because he alludes to the fact that he's the reincarnation of Buddha.

The point is, LRH is Source. He is always right, always infallible, always compassionate, the greatest humanitarian of all time.

And if you take issue with anything in this policy letter, we'll move on to...

The sinker


The misunderstood word. Here's where you learn unequivocally that any and all disagreements you may have with anything LRH ever wrote are because you have misunderstood words. It must be the case. LRH said so! After all, "everybody knows" that to understand is to agree.

Failing that, there's always the boomerang effect. Once you buy into that (covered in the next post), every critical thought boomerangs back at you and causes you to wonder what's wrong with you!

(It's worth defining critical  and critical thought. Both are off limits in Scientology.)


Misunderstoods - a good idea taken too far

The concept of misunderstood words as the root of all evil is - dare I say it? - sinister.

There's a common misconception that LRH has incorporated into everything he wrote on misunderstood words:

Understanding = Agreement

In other words: If you understood, you would agree.

If you don't agree, it's because there's a word you don't understand.

Get it? It may seem inocuous, a small point, but everything else in Scientology hinges on you buying into this.

Not sure you agree with something LRH wrote? The course supervisor may smile at you indulgently (after all, you're still new) and say, "That's because you have misunderstood words! Let's clear those up!"

When you've been around a while, though, they're a little less indulgent. Actually, a lot less indulgent.

So how seriously do Scientologists take misunderstoods?  They're obsessive - and with good reason.

From a Policy Letter dated 23 December 1965:
Any repeated or continued violation of the five points of out study tech listed below, after two Courts of Ethics for violation of these points, subjects the person to a Committee of Evidence on the charge of committing an act or omission undertaken to knowingly suppress, reduce or impede Scientology or Scientologists, and if found guilty
beyond reasonable doubt, the person may be declared suppressive and expelled with full penalties:
1. A person may be summoned to a Court of Ethics or Executive Court of Ethics if it be found that he has gone past a word he does not understand when receiving, hearing or reading an order, HCOB, policy letter or tape, any and all LRH written or printed
materials including books, PABs, despatches, telexes and mimeo issues which resulted in a failure to do duties of his post, without his at once making an effective effort to clear the words on himself, whether he knew he was missing them or not, as the source of his inaction or damaging actions.
The charge is neglecting to clarify words not understood.
Because to understand is to agree!

"What's true for you..." - another hook

"Will you walk into my parlour?"

said the Spider to the Fly.

Mary Howitt, 1929


It all starts off perfectly reasonably. I was told:

"What's true for you is what you yourself have observed."

No problem with that! The 2013 Super Bowl ad says:

"You're here to think for yourself, to look for yourself, to make up your own mind.
The one thing that's true is what's true for you."

But as you read through the rest of these posts, you'll begin to realize that that is only true when you're being audited.

Outside of that, this - and only this - holds true:

"If it isn't written [by LRH], it's not true."

And at the moment you buy into that, you stop thinking for yourself, looking for yourself, or making up your own mind.

KSW - LRH as Source

"The Monk watched in transfixed awe. The man, he believed
with an instant effortlessness which would have impressed even a Scientologist,
must be a God of some kind to arouse such fervour.
He waited with bated breath to worship him."

- Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

"A true teacher leads you to Allah.
A false teacher leads you to himself."

- Sufi Sheikh


The first policy letter you study in every Scientology course - and I do mean every Scientology course - is Keeping Scientology Working. (There's a link to the text on the right-hand side of this page.)

In a nutshell: You learn that, had LRH not been brilliant and courageous and daring beyond your wildest imaginings, there would be no hope for mankind. He - and he alone - single handedly dragged himself out of the mud and mapped the way out for the rest of us. He - and he alone - is Source.

In all the years I have been engaged in research I have kept my comm lines wide open for research data. I once had the idea that a group could evolve truth. A third of a century has thoroughly disabused me of that idea. Willing as I was to accept suggestions and data, only a handful of suggestions (less than twenty) had long-run value and none were major or basic; and when I did accept major or basic suggestions and used them, we went astray and I repented and eventually had to “eat crow.”
And so the work of Scientologists is not to research or innovate or be creative with the technology. Their work is to follow that path to the letter. No additions. No deletions. No alterations. In order for the tech to work, it must be pure and must be applied exactly as LRH wrote it. Don't think for a minute that you can improve on it. You can't.
Our technology has not been discovered by a group. True, if the group had not supported me in many ways I could not have discovered it either. But it remains that if in its formative stages it was not discovered by a group, then group efforts, one can safely assume, will not add to it or successfully alter it in the future. I can only say this now that it is done.
KSW is also full of jargon and Scientology nomenclature. This makes it especially difficult for the uninitiated. Just getting through these 3 pages if you're not familiar with the terminology is a monolithic task. It can take hours - sometimes even days - to complete.

I used to think this was unfortunate - understandable, of course, but unfortunate.

Now I think it's deliberate.

I'll explain in the the next post: The Misunderstood Word.

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Dianetics - the hook

Nicole and I worked together as waitresses at the same restaurant. I'd only recently moved to Toronto with my boyfriend, and was happy to have found a friend at work, someone who was interesting and cheerful.

After a time, the conversation swung around to Dianetics. Had I read it? No. Would I like to? Sure.

I recently read Jon Atack's recounting of reading Dianetics, and it all came back to me: the excitement, the exhilaration, the possibilities - the hope. I was hooked.

Here's the premise: Man is basically good. The problem is that he has a "held down 7". Think of a calculator: If the 7 is always held down, all the calculations will be incorrect.

Here's how it works. We experience a painful incident accompanied by some degree of unconsciousness. Specifics about our environment and any conversation that takes place around us during that time are faithfully recorded by the reactive mind (the subconscious).

If we later find ourselves in a similar environment, or if we hear language similar to what was used when we were unconscious, our reactive mind will try to warn us that we're in danger and will cause us to "key in" - i.e., experience pain, discomfort, or emotions similar to what we experienced in the first incident.

The example is given of a little fish being bitten on the tail by a larger fish. The sun is low in the sky, the water is murky, the temperature is 68. The little fish gets away, but he's distraught and in pain.

Some time later, he finds himself in a similar environment: sun low in the sky, murky water, temperature 68. And although there are no other fish around, the little fish becomes uneasy. When he doesn't swim away, his unease turns to panic, and he feels a sharp pain in his tail. Not until he swims out of that "dangerous" area do his symptoms subside.

And so all that has to happen to unstick (or clear) our stuck down 7s is to revisit and release the pain and unconsciousness from those past incidents and, presto, we're sane, happy, and healthy.

Makes perfect sense, right? What could be more reasonable?

CAVEAT: LRH makes it clear in Dianetics that there's no way to tell the difference between an actual memory and a fabricated memory. So what happens when the person has a "memory" that they think may be false? It's not up to the auditor to validate or verify. It's up to the auditor to accept whatever the person says on the premise that "What's true for you is what's true for you." And this will have far-reaching ramifications down the line.

NOTE: If you compare Dianetics to Science and Sanity by Alfred Korzybski, you will see astonishing similarities. Korzybski died in March 1950. Dianetics was published in May 1950. Hmm...