From International Viewpoints (IVy) Issue 1 - May 1991
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
confus ion 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 (presum ably 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.
LRH correctly stated that absolutes are unattainable. And the notion
of "clear" is an absolute. It's like the notion of "clean" or "pure".
When is water pure? When it has only one part per million of arsenic
and rat poop? Nowhere in the universe is there water which is 100%
pure. To obtain complete Clarity would require a complete as-isness of
any universe the thetan was in and a return to complete native state.
Everyone does have a reactive mind - his own reac tive mind. That's
why one flies ruds and goes E/S and gets off BPC on anyone regardless
of their point on the grade chart. The mechanics of the reactive mind
continue to exist all the way up.
"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.