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Bizarre and Pricey! Auditing Scientology’s Operating Thetan Level 2 with Claire & Bruce

WeirdSpaceClaire Headley is taking us on our journey to train as Scientologists. She and her husband Marc were Sea Org workers who escaped from Scientology’s International Base in 2005. She spent years working with Scientology’s “tech,” and was trusted to oversee the auditing of Tom Cruise. Go here to see the first part in this series.

Last week, Claire continued to lead us up Scientology’s “Bridge to Total Freedom” as we began our look at Operating Thetan Level Two. With help from former top auditor Bruce Hines, we learned about the incredibly ancient “GPMs” which lie in wait along our “whole track” as we prepare to travel far back into our pasts through auditing.

In fact, these incidents — booby traps implanted by “evil psychs” trillions and trillions of years ago — continue to be the source of our troubles today, and so it’s necessary to go back and neutralize them. Cowabunga.

CLAIRE: If you think this is a mind scramble, not only are you going to have to study all this theory, but then you’re going in session and you have to come out the other side with all the end phenomena of good indicators, floating needles, and cognitions.

THE BUNKER: And how do we get there? Well, we’ve carefully looked through the pages and pages of materials written by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, and once again the magic is supposed to happen with the use of surprisingly mundane statements that we repeat, for hours, while hooked up to an e-meter.

To help us locate a trap laid into us some 40 thousand trillion years ago (the “House” GPM), these are some of the things we’ll ask ourselves:

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“I should create.” “I mustn’t create.” “There are creations.” “I shouldn’t exist.” “I can’t exist.” “I must remember.” “There are memories.”

And so on.

Another interesting one is the “Psycho” GPM, which is associated with heavy explosions, burning, and pain. To track down this brain trap from your trillion-year past, you’d recite these statements over and over again while watching the e-meter’s needle…

1. To Die is To Live
2. To Live is to Die
3. To Surrender is to Victimize
4. To Victimize is to Surrender
5. To Lose is to Win
6. To Win is To Lose
7. To Despair is to Hope
8. To Hope is to Despair
9. To Be Ignorant is to Know
10. To Know is to Be Ignorant
11. To Be Stupid is to Be Smart
12. To Be Smart is to Be Stupid
13. To Disagree is to Agree
14. To Agree is to Disagree
15. To Detest is to Get
16. To Get is to Detest
17. To Hurt is to Enjoy
18. To Enjoy is to Hurt
19. To Dislike is to Like
20. To Like is to Dislike
21. To Hate is to Love
22. To Love is to Hate
23. To Hinder is to Help
24. To Help is to Hinder
25. To Disbelieve is to Believe
26. To Believe is to Disbelieve
27. To Be Bad is to Be Good
28. To Be Good is to Be Bad
29. To Betray is to Be Faithful
30. To Be Faithful is to Betray
31. To Go Crazy is to Be Sane
32. To Be Sane is to go Crazy
33. To Abandon is to Collect
34. To Collect is to Abandon
35. To Stop is to Start
36. To Start is to Stop

There are pages and pages of this kind of thing, all in L. Ron Hubbard’s handwriting.

Here’s one from the “Basic-Basic” GPM, which seems to go on forever: “Stop a receiving health to invent a rejected health.”

Whatever you say, Commodore.

Help us out here, comrades.

BRUCE: In the solo auditing, one is supposed to remove the mental charge that all of these GPMs have. So in session, one says the first line, with the lines below it covered up, and one should see the e-meter react. Oddly, the e-meter actually does react (and I think there is more than just sweat going on). One keeps repeating it until the e-meter reaction dies out. Then you move to the next line. For years there was a debate among pre-OTs whether one was supposed to say the words out loud, or to say them silently to oneself. It takes hours and hours over many sessions, usually, to work through one of those GPMs. Luckily, most often the pre-OT does not have to work through all GPMs, which would take months, but reaches the “ability gained” of the level after a few days or weeks of solo auditing. So, most Scientologists who go up the OT levels do not see most of the GPMs. The solo auditor is given the steps of each GPM piecemeal. As I recall, the “ability gained” for OT 2 is “the ability to confront the whole track.” The case supervisor who reviews the worksheets of the solo sessions has to decide whether the pre-OT has audited enough on the level to be allowed to attest to that ability.

My own experience was pretty anti-climactic. I was living in Los Angeles before I joined the Sea Org and did this at the Advanced Organization Los Angeles (AOLA). I did the actual solo auditing in my apartment, which was part of my sister’s house in Silver Lake. I think I spent about a month doing it, with a daily session of an hour or so. I recall trying to convince myself that I was becoming more OT — that I could make something happen by intention alone, or read people’s minds, or whatever. In retrospect, I did not benefit at all from it. It is interesting how you can believe that you are getting rid of all this negative stuff that has been holding you back for eons and eons.

CLAIRE: I didn’t really accomplish much either. Of course, a Scientologist would tell you this means I’m a bypassed case.

It’s a good thing I no longer care how others label me, especially those who know nothing of me and who have dehumanized me in their minds, as only a cult member can.

My problem with all this was that I simply could never try and insert logic into it, or question it, or anything else, or the entire house of cards would have collapsed all around me.

And already by this time as well, each OT Level had a minimum number of hours assigned to it. You had to have at least audited a certain number of hours before you’d be allowed to complete the level. As I remember, I did around 30 to 40 hours on OT 2. I believe 25 hours was the bare minimum.

And again, I come back to this: It took me a very long time to get myself grounded when I left Scientology. It took Marc no time whatsoever compared to what I went through. A dear friend of mine once asked me if it ever occurred to me if this wasn’t a huge part of that — in other words, I had done the OT Levels (up to OT 5) and Marc never did any. It really gave me pause for consideration.

If nothing else, this was a whole massive mess and on no level did I find it a healthy experience, if that makes sense.

BRUCE: In my experience, generally, OT 2 would take a person from a couple of weeks to many months to complete. No set period of time is given. It depends on how often one solo-audits and the length of sessions. I find it interesting that Claire was told there were a minimum number of hours that one would have to audit, as there is no such prescription in the things that Hubbard wrote about it. One of the biggest no-nos in the technical world of Scientology is to “quickie” a process or grade or level. So case supervisors tend to try to keep a person going rather than let them claim to be complete too soon. Of course, what “too soon” means varies depending on where and when one got auditing, and who was considered to be the authority at the time. In truth, the actions of auditing are far from precise.

CLAIRE: Each of the GPMs you listed had its own “platen,” a laminated binder pouch with the sheets and Hubbard’s handwritten or typed notes laid out in regards to each GPM. I can’t quite remember, but I think some of them had diagrams too. And you were given each platen, one at a time, to use in your solo session until you were done and ready for the next one.

And in terms of length of time to complete this level, with the theory we covered last week, I’d say 45 hours. The minimum number of hours on a level was a new thing that was put in place with release of the Golden Age of Technology in the mid 1990s.

In terms of cost, OT 2 is listed as $5,250 on my freeloader bill.

THE BUNKER: We’re learning so much from you two. Now we think we’ll go ask some of these questions and commune with our “Psycho” mind-trap set trillions of years ago by evil psychs. Scientology!

COST THIS WEEK: $5,250

COST SO FAR: $267,383.25

 
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Discovery in Monique Rathbun Case Still Happening

Although Monique Rathbun’s harassment lawsuit against Scientology and its leader David Miscavige was thrown for a bit of a loop by the church’s anti-SLAPP motion, it hasn’t shut down altogether.

Before the anti-SLAPP motion was filed, the case had been consumed by jurisdictional questions (Miscavige, for example, says he should be let out of the case because he has nothing to do with Texas, where the suit was filed). To answer those questions, the two sides have been engaging in discovery, and we have a short update about that.

Monique’s attorneys have taken four depositions in recent weeks: Two Scientology officials (Warren McShane and Allen Cartwright), a Texas private investigator (Monty Drake), and a man named Steven Gregory Sloat, who admitted in a declaration that although he’s not a private eye, he was hired to spy on the Rathbuns by setting up cameras aimed at their property. (Drake and Sloat are defendants in the lawsuit.)

As for the depositions you really want to hear about, we’ve learned that former Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis will be deposed on December 4 in Austin, but the deposition for actress Leah Remini is still to be scheduled.

 
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Posted by Tony Ortega on November 26, 2013 at 07:00

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