The Anderson Report

CHAPTER 16
THE PRECLEAR'S PROGRESS

Almost invariably, a person who enters scientology has been told by the HASI that he is "low toned" and that scientology can raise him on the tone scale. In nearly every case he will have had an IQ test and a personality assessment, and he will have been told that, whatever his IQ may be, scientology can increase it and that certain personality traits shown on the assessment as urgently needing attention can be improved by scientology processing. He will have heard of the fantastic successes claimed to have been achieved by scientology in the fields of mental or physical health or both and in general well-being. He has read, perhaps uncritically and without fully appreciating what he read, some of the introductory literature of scientology. His preoccupation with his own particular ambitions, condition and problems leaves him a ready prey to extravagant but confidently asserted claims, and he sees the rosy prospect of improvement, recovery, rehabilitation, success, and happiness almost within his grasp. His initial experience with scientology in the personal efficiency course may have cheered and encouraged him. He has been made welcome, greeted by his Christian name, made to feel important by being told in a competently delivered "pep" talk that he is as good as the next man, and so he is prepared, as a number of witnesses said, to "go along" with scientology.

So many "go along" to their ultimate confusion and ruin, financial and mental. It is this "going along" which plunges the unfortunate deeper and deeper into the mire of scientology. Scientology, with a specious display of candour, parades as something most reasonable. In an often quoted passage Hubbard has written:

"We are not interested in scientology in getting people to accept what we say without question. We ask them to question it. We ask them to please look at the physical universe around about. To please look at people, at their own minds, and understand thereby what we are talking about happens to be actual. I am not giving you new things. I am giving you old things. By understanding these old things which we have rediscovered, you become free."

Other scientology writers, e.g., Sharpe in This is Life and Horner in Summary of Scientology, loyally copy Hubbard's technique and tell their readers not to test but to look and see for themselves that scientology is right. Implicit in such writings is the suggestion that, if the preclear does not agree, it must be because of his own deficiencies, for Hubbard has said it is true and the preclear's inability to see the truth has been explained to him as being due to his low tone which eventually scientology will remedy.

Williams gave evidence that Hubbard's teaching was that:

"Nothing is true for you unless it is true for you and that which is true is that which is true for you and that which is not true is that which is not true for you. That which is real to you, you can accept. Nothing in dianetics or scientology is true unless it is true to you, and you do not have to accept it unless it is true to you."

Several scientology witnesses, who stated that they still had no "reality" on one or more of the fantastic ideas of scientology said, however, that they did not reject such ideas - they merely had no reality on them but were confident that eventually they would have a reality on them. They think that eventually it will all "add up" to something on which they will "cognite".

Since nothing has been rejected the mind and will of the preclear remain potentially receptive of the more advanced and fantastic teachings of scientology, when he has become better conditioned to accept such teachings, and he is assured that he will eventually have a reality on them when he is sufficiently high on the tone scale.

This technique involves a resolution on the part of the individual to exercise the mind and will, if they are to be exercised, only in the direction of acceptance of scientology teaching when in a befuddled state he gets a "reality" upon the particular thing. Acceptance of scientology "truths" may occur when the preclear, in a process-conditioned state, accepts as true the fantasies and hallucinations he has experienced during the course of auditing.

The unfortunate preclear is further conditioned towards acceptance or at least non-rejection-by the "code of a scientologist" which requires him "to hear or speak no word of disparagement to the press, the public or preclears concerning any of my fellow scientologists, or professional organization or those whose names are closely connected to this science, nor to place in danger any such persons". He is warned about the evil motives of those who might attempt to persuade him to give up scientology, and the "Training Course Rules and Regulations", published in HCO Pol. Lr. of the 22nd November, 1961, contain the following requirement: "25. Do not discuss your case - or that of any other student - your auditor, your Instructors, your classmates, L. Ron Hubbard, Organization personnel or the Organization with anyone". He is persuaded to withdraw from communication with his associates of his pre-scientology days, and to move only in the vacuum of the HASI. In this way he is proofed against the efforts and entreaties of his friends and family. He is assailed by scientology literature such as, "Why some fight scientology", the burden of which is that those who oppose scientology have something to hide, and that the spouse who opposes scientology has been unfaithful or has some guilty secret.

This "going along" panders to the vanity of the individual who shortly feels of increasing intellectual stature, being, as he believes, on the threshold of a new body of learning which claims to have rediscovered long forgotten truths; and of being transformed from homo sapiens to homo novus. He feels that to question or deny what the organization has stated to be a scientific fact would reveal him as unprogressive, of low intellect, as unfitted to associate with members of what he imagines to be a very learned, progressive, and efficient organization with which he has become acquainted. He is congratulated on being chosen - the implication is, chosen by Hubbard - as one of the ten thousand to be clear, and on being, in effect, part of the avant-garde of an organization which is going to perform such wonders for the world as to clear it of all its aberrations. He aspires to the delights of being clear and to the wonderful vistas beyond, though just what they are does not appear very clearly. But that does not matter at present because he will know when he gets there. One very common feature of scientology indoctrination is the loss of the preclear's critical faculties and his abandonment of reason. One witness said that before he entered scientology he was critical but now he could control his ability to criticize and did not now use it.

Of course, during all this time, the preclear is undergoing processing and paying for it, and something is being achieved, though whether for good or evil he does not know, except that after processing, as after a drug, he may experience for a while an elation and some sense of ecstasy before he plunges, as after a drug, into a state of depression. When this happens, he is told it is a good sign, because it is considered in scientology that "the way out is the way through", and so more processing is prescribed, undertaken and paid for.

This continued association with scientology may result in some preclears who have done courses with the Academy becoming staff members, giving their full-time or part-time services for very low financial reward. In that way they continue to have auditing either in return for services or at reduced rates. Other preclears who do not go on staff maintain active association with the HASI, taking further processing, attending various functions, e.g., tape nights and social gatherings, and receiving scientology periodicals and other literature.

They have no opportunity of being free of scientology influence. Their associates tend to become exclusively their scientology acquaintances, and scientology continues to be an escape from reality, making it seem unnecessary and foolish to go "outside scientology" in an attempt to cope with the problems of life. And, pitifully, they squander their money on processing on goals which have changed from goals personal to the individual - to be liked, to have confidence, to be able to confront people, to be less shy, to improve one's work or study, to get promotion, to get well physically, to make more money, to be rich , and goals of a similar kind - to such scientology ambitions as to be clear, to be OT, to go to Saint Hill or to obtain other distinctions in scientology. So that the transition from personal to scientology goals is not too drastic, the preclear is encouraged to state his goal or goals for each processing session, which may be of a selfish or personal nature, and also to state his ultimate goals which generally have a scientology association. In time, the pattern is for scientology goals to predominate, and the preclear is concerned only to advance in scientology.

Preclears move in a strange dream world where normal standards and family and other conventional responsibilities are ignored. To them the very fact that normality is different from scientology makes normality insane. It is all so Alice in Wonderlandish, and yet it is what the evidence showed to be the case.