From International Viewpoints (IVy) Issue 18 - August 1994
See Home Page at http://www.ivymag.org/
Greetings, Dennis Stephens
By James Moore, England
"That which one devotes energy to, he will have".
LRH, PDC Lecture number 58, 1952.
Another way this has been put is 'what one puts ones attention
on, one gets'. Really put your attention on money (presence
of), you are likely to get money - and if you don't also put some
attention (or energy) on happiness and the welfare of others, you
could well end up a mean, miserable millionaire.
So if we look at what we have in scientology, both free and church,
one will possible also be able to see where energy has been devoted,
where attention has been put.
What have we got?
Well we have got a lot of things in scientology (I suspect more than
most scns and ex(panded)-scns realise). We have some things I would
regard as negative. Amongst them great complexity (why would
there be training up to class XII if things were simple?).
I would suggest that this great complexity is due to having attention
and devoting energy to two things.
In the 50s, and possibly later, Ron was frequently talking or writing
about 'reaching farthest south', meaning being able to handle the
most difficult cases. And this was despite the avowed principle of
'making the able more able'. Thus I would suggest that one factor
that drove scientology into great complexity was the aim of being
able to handle the most 'gone' cases. And for what it is worth, we
can do this.
As I remember it Ron was constantly faced with the problem that things
that worked for him did not always work in the hands of other
auditors,
and his attention (energy) was on getting processes which
worked for all auditors. I suspect that a by-product of
this was complexity.
Ron, and scn, had attention on and devoted energy to being able
to handle the most difficult case and being able to train anyone
to audit others. By-product: complexity.
New looks
Since 'Liberation Year' (1983, I suppose) a number of people
have come up with developments on scn tech, some admitting that they
were developed from scn, others maintaining their developments were
not based on scn, but to my eyes containing many of the basics
in scn. However, all I have seen seemed to maintain the complexity
we know in scn. It also appeared that attention was on making a longer
bridge (i.e. making more, or different OT, Operating Thetan, levels).
Apart from Hank Levin's article on rudiments(1)
I have not seen any work done on simplifying 'lower level'
work (I mean the handling of the man in the street, the stranger
to scientology, the newcomer).
I recently got hold of The Resolution of Mind, known familiarly
as TROM(2), by Dennis Stephens. This
again contains another approach to 'higher levels', which did not
interest me and which I have not yet read. But it did contain
a simplified 'lower bridge'. This I read carefully.
Inadequate tech
Scientology had that glorious goal: to clear the world. Marvellous.
Has my total agreement. But I could not see how the tech we were
offering,
at the price and complexity we were offering it, could be used
by poorer people, and people with less free time, than I had. Let
alone illiterates, and suppressed nations. Also, in Fundamentals
of Thought, we have the goal (to quote Ron): 'the making
of the individual capable of living a better life in his own
estimation
and with his fellows, and the playing of a better game.' Also
a very fine goal. But how many have we actually helped towards that
goal? The percentage in USA and great Britain is lamentably low,
but what about China, Burma, the former Soviet Union, the former
Jugoslavia,
Ethiopia, many South American countries?
While the reasons for relatively limited progress in clearing the
world, and helping individuals play a better game, are many, including
the paranoiac tendencies of the church and its founder and
unwillingness
to change, I feel that the complexity of the tech is perhaps the most
significant. The auditor has to learn to use a meter, to learn and
apply rote processes for rudiments, to 'do' TRs, study many Bulletins
and tapes (admittedly much of the study very interesting).
New hope - greetings, Dennis Stephens
And now, suddenly, as a breath of fresh air in a somewhat stagnant
atmosphere, we get this book from Dennis Stephens. Something to be
truly thankful for.
Read the first 11 pages of the practical section of TROM. You might
want to read it two or three times, but basically you have something
the majority (excluding those where the test on level 1 indicates
the need for objectives) can start on right away. No training, no
paying of fees (or saving up or borrowing for them).
Dennis's style of guiding you through them is very friendly, live
and personal. I guess, by the way, those eleven pages could be
valuable
to those who have had, and possibly got a little stuck in, scn upper
levels. They are so easy, and yet so fundamental. I guess also that
the TROM route would take longer than the scn route, in so far as
one can compare. For example TROM (the levels I have read) lacks
any assessing. Assessing could bring a person quickly to the charge
that he with the help of a good auditor, was just capable of
confronting.
Startling results have always been obtained in scn. But slowness
is better than no progress (the lot of the majority on this planet),
or going backwards due to an auditor who had not mastered all the
complexity of that scn tech he was using, or who had failed to grasp
the essential simplicities of scn.
This route is reachable by many. Is this not a new, exciting
trend in the use of scientology fundamentals? I am very keen to
see if it fulfils the expectations I have for it.
Comments
To me, what I have read of TROM abides by basic principles of scn.
That is very important. But with some amazing simplicities. For
example
havingness has been important in scn since its discovery. On the 1st
Saint Hill ACC it got really complex, with the need to test with can
squeeze, and select by trial from some 20 or 30 processes. That
complexity
is gone in TROM, and there is also a slightly different slant on
havingness.
I can remember two processes which I have not heard of in years:
Before
and After Solids, and Then and Now Solids. I cant remember them in
detail, but reading in TROM on Timebreaking reminded me - but
time breaking is so simple.
Throughout TROM you have your eyes open - nice for people with
a tendency to dope off!
The book lacks an index, but do not let that deter you from getting
the book, reading and using it yourself, and getting those friends
and acquaintances you may have who backed off from scientology
to look at the first 11 pages of the practical section (General and
Levels 1 to 3).
This book seems to point a new way we 'past' or 'expanded' scns can
go in our third dynamic work. It will be exciting to hear how TROM
goes with 'new' people.
(1)See 'Undercutting Rudiments' by Hank Levin, The Free Spirit, Summer
1992,
Danish translation in Uafhngige Synspunkter, M22, June 93. Ed
(2)See IVy 17, p. 23-26. Ed.