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Michael Robinson - Operating Thetan Summary and Analysis

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Copyright 1995 by Michael Robinson (all rights reserved)
This document may be reproduced and distributed for non-commercial educational purposes.


Introduction

In early August, 1995, an electronic version of the document known as the Fishman Declaration became widely available on the Internet. Because this court record contained information jealously guarded by Scientology(tm) organizations, it became the immediate focus of a great deal of interest and controversy.

This information consisted of course materials written by L. Ron Hubbard for a program to transform an individual into a Being with super-human powers, known as an Operating Thetan, or OT. A multitude of people have obtained copies of this material, because of the controversy it has engendered, and the number of very important related issues that have been raised.

However, to a person who has not been trained in the communications technology of Scientology(tm), L. Ron Hubbard's style of writing may seem poorly structured, tedious, repetitive, and generally unpleasant to read. As a result, many persons who have obtained copies have found themselves unable to persevere through the entire material.

I have created this summary and analysis of the OT materials to aid precisely those persons who feel it is important to keep apprised of the issues in this controversy, but have found the OT materials themselves too burdensome. I have restructured much of the material for content, rather than process. I have eliminated a large amount of redundant and uninteresting material. And, finally, I have rewritten the material in a style which I hope is more conducive to casual reading.

My hope for this Summary and Analysis is that unindoctrinated readers will be able to get a grasp of all the salient content of the OT materials, and will thus be able to arrive at a more informed opinion of relevant controversies.

I welcome any comments or suggestions for future editions. I request that any excerpts of this work be attributed, and retain the copyright notice. Thank you for your cooperation.

Michael Robinson


Operating Thetan Level One

The first level of the Operating Thetan series actually contains three separate exercises issued by L. Ron Hubbard at various times. Curiously, Level One appears to become less ambitious in scope over time.

The original Level One requires that one locate every overt and motivator lifetime for the previous 3000 years, as well as the "postulate" for each, with the use of an E-Meter. A detailed chart including dates, identities, etc. is plotted for the entire 3000 years.

The second version of Level One starts with the entire 15 steps of Route I from "Creation of Human Ability". After the entire lifetime is scanned out to a floating needle, the pre-OT practices creating and dissipating a reactive mind by use of the postulate "I have mass".

The final version of Level One consists of nothing other than "running" the command "Spot a Person" until "cognition". This is to be done outdoors.

It is not clear what relation, if any, there is between the original and final version of Level One.


Operating Thetan Level Two

(A note is prepended indicating that Level Two is to be performed in accordance with the instructions in the Clearing Course Instruction Booklet)

The purpose of Level Two is to run ten complete whole track tables, each containing a set of GPM (Goals Problems Mass). Each set is run separately.

The GPM found in each set are as follows: ELECTRICAL, TOCKY, BIG BEING, HOUSE, PSYCHO, BANKY, FORERUNNER, BASIC-BASIC, BASIC, THE COMMAND, LOWER LP, LP, and BODY GPM. In addition to these GPM, there are a number of Implant Incidents which have no line plot, as follows: THE ARROW, DOUBLE ROD, WOMAN, WHITE BLACK SPHERE, HOT COLD, LAUGHTER CALM, and DANCE MOB.

The GPM in these "whole track tables" are supposedly the residual mass of incidents that happened untold numbers of lifetimes ago to the individual's immortal "thetan". Approximate dates for each of the incidents are provided, although some, such as "about trillions 214th Power years ago" for the BASIC BASIC GPM, challenge credulity regardless.

The version of Level Two reproduced in the Fishman Declaration is incomplete. A summary of the available GPM follows:

  1. ELECTRICAL

    The purpose of the ELECTRICAL GPM was to "CONVINCE a thetan he should think of himself as an electrical being". Thus, the end word of the permutation is not a word, but a shock. The permutation for the ELECTRICAL GPM is as follows:

         | Create  |  |    (shock) | 
         | Destroy |  | no (shock) |
         | Love    |
         | Hate    |
         | Be      |
         | Disown  |
         | Use     |
         | Condemn |
         | Seize   |
         | Escape  |
    
  2. TOCKY

    In the TOCKY GPM, there is a swing of "Sun" from left to right which gives a read after each item. The permutation for the TOCKY GPM is as follows:
         | Create   |   |    Sun Swing |
         | Abide    |   | no Sun Swing |
         | Enjoy    |
         | Welcome  | 
         | Share    |
         | Keep     |
         | Hold     |
         | Exploit  |
         | Deplore  |
         | Skip     |
         | Continue |
         | Forget   |
    
    Also included are the following two cryptic commands:

         "That's what you get for making this Universe."
         "Get Out-"
    
    No explanation is given for what is "that", who exactly is "you", which universe is "this Universe", nor exactly "out" of what or where one is to get. Either it is expected that all these ambiguities will be clarified at the time one runs this GPM, or that the ambiguities are irrelevant, and it is sufficient simply to run the GPM without this information.

  3. BIG BEING

    The BIG BEING GPM is associated with the image of an explosion and the subsequent appearance of a BIG BEING (thus the name) in the sky.

    The permutation for the BIG BEING GPM is as follows:

         | You  |  | Must      |  | Survive |
         | He   |  | Mustn't   |
         | They |  | Should    |
         | We   |  | Shouldn't |
         | All  |  | Can       |
                   | Can't     |
    
    This is followed by another explosion.

  4. THE HOUSE

    The only identification of this GPM is the possible appearance of a house or internal room.

  5. THE ARROW

    In the space of 1/10th of a second, an image appears of two back-to-back targets, the front white, and the back black, with an arrow centered on each of the targets (the two arrows thus aimed at each other).

  6. WOMAN

    The figure of a woman appears for a few hours. Nothing else.

  7. WHITE BLACK SPHERE

    An image of a sphere and a pole, black in front, white in back.

  8. HOT COLD

    For 1 1/8 seconds an image appears of a split pole, cold in front, hot in back.

  9. LAUGHTER CALM

    For 7 1/8ths of a second, in a cave, screams of very wild laughter come from the rear (then front) of a split pole, while calm ("a frozen numbness") comes from the front (then rear), giving a sensation of total disagreement.

         "The trick is to conceive of both at the same time." 
    
  10. DANCE MOB

    In the incident proper, one is stuck on a pole and trying to get off it. After this, a chanting mob dances around. The Pre-OT is supposed to get the phrases the mob chants while running this incident.

    However, the duration is only 7/8ths of a second, so it is not clear how much of the chanting the Pre-OT will be able to "get".

  11. DOUBLE ROD

    A long shiny black rod moves from left to right, develops a split in the middle, becoming a white rod revolving forward and a black rod revolving backward. Both rods then disappear forward and up.

    According to L. Ron Hubbard:

         "There is a tremendous feeling of EXCITEMENT attached to 
         this incident.  It has a sort of feeling attached to it as
         if it was being squashed between the two revolving rods." 
    
  12. BASIC BASIC

    This is actually a series of 5 GPM's consisting of explosions inside ones head, "where the Thetan is."

  13. THE LOWER BANK

    Contained in the lower bank are 48 pairs (of which 8 are found in the Fishman Declaration). All 48 affirmative items are first run, then the negative items, than each pair together. The pair schematic is as follows:

    Affirmative: To build a _______ingness machine.
    Negative: Not to _______ yourself.
    The eight listed items are: postulate, think, ideanize (ideafyingness), reason, solve, order, space, and time.

Operating Thetan Level Three

Level Three is the most widely known of the Operating Thetan levels. The purpose of this level is to free the body of hundreds of body thetans by clearing the "Xenu" implants.

75,000,000 years ago, Xenu, the head of the then 20,000,000 million- year-old Galactic Federation used renegades to remove "people" from the 76 planets of the Federation in order to alleviate overpopulation. These people were frozen, brought to Earth (then called Teegeeack), placed near volcanoes, exploded with H-bombs, subjected to 36 days of picture implants, and then transported to Hawaii or Las Palmas for packaging.

After these events, officers loyal to the people waged a six-year campaign against Xenu, ultimately capturing and imprisoning him in "an electronic mountain trap," where he remains. The Confederation, however, never recovered from the brutality of this conflict, and has since become a "desert."

According to L. Ron Hubbard:

     "Various misleading data by means of  circuits etc. 
     was placed in the implants." 
Furthermore, this implant was designed to kill ("by pneumonia, etc") persons attempting to solve it. However, L. Ron Hubbard claimed his tech enabled a person to avoid this danger, and thus he became the first person in 75,000,000 years to obtain this information without dying.

According to L. Ron Hubbard:

     "The pictures contain God, the Devil, angels, space opera,
     theaters, helicopters, a constant spinning, a spinning 
     dancer, trains and various scenes very like modern England. 
     You name it, it's in this implant"
Central to Level Three is the issue of body thetans. Body thetans are nothing more than normal disembodied thetans that stick to a human body in a cluster. The basis for a cluster is as follows: at some point any given thetan had an initial contact (collision, etc) with another thetan. The actual duration of contact was brief, but because of the trauma of contact and withdraw, a permanent picture of the contact is formed, thus leading thetans to a belief in permanent contact. Subsequent trauma can cause thetans to "cluster" together in an illusory permanent bond. As each thetan in a cluster is a full-fledged thetan, and thus responds to normal auditing procedure, clusters may be disassembled one thetan at a time by running the initial "contact" picture, and clearing the belief in permanent contact.

Once a thetan has been freed from a cluster, it simply wanders off to start an independent existence as an ordinary thetan.

Which brings us back to the Xenu incident. Hundreds of billions of thetans were captured, frozen, shipped, exploded, implanted, transported, and boxed on Teegeeack 75,000,000 years ago. The trauma of this episode caused them to bond together in large clusters that are at this moment attached to every human on Earth (with the exception of those who have passed OT III). Each and every one of these hundreds of body thetans needs to be audited and "cleaned off" the human body because:

     "Body thetans just hold one back." 
However, the Xenu incident (Incident II) was not the first traumatic incident of this sort. Much earlier ("about 4 quadrillion years ago plus or minus") Incident I occurred to all thetans in the Universe. The details of this incident are rather sparse. L. Ron Hubbard describes it as follows:

     LOUD SNAP
     WAVES OF LIGHT
     CHARIOT COMES OUT, TURNS RIGHT AND LEFT
     CHERUB COMES OUT
     BLOWS HORN, COMES CLOSE
     SHATTERING SERIES OF SNAPS
     CHERUB FADES BACK (RETREATS)
     BLACKNESS DUMPED ON THETAN
To get rid of a single thetan, the Pre-OT must locate it, isolate it, and run Incident I, Incident II, and perhaps the original contact picture on it. This is a tedious and challenging task fraught with difficulties. Only those who have blown off sufficient charge in previous auditing have the awareness required to tease out and selectively audit individual thetans in a cluster. Even then, it's not easy. The overwhelming bulk of Level Three material is an extensive list of different situations that can arise in auditing BT clusters, and directions for dealing with these situations.

The ultimate aim of this process is the ability to "accomplish full stable exteriorization" with full perception. As L. Ron Hubbard puts it:

     "OT III is a vital grade.  One fronts up to it and does it.  
     When he is really done, the rewards of OT III and IV 
     exceed his wildest dreams." 

Operating Thetan Level Four

The purpose of Level Four is to render a Being immune to further implantation. If a Being has no fear of future reimplantation, the result is "Certainty of Self as a Being".

The Pre-OT accomplishes this by systematically recreating ("mocking up") each implant previously dealt with in the entire Clearing Course, then ceasing the recreation, and blowing the charge associated with the mocked up implant. This exercise convinces the Pre-OT that they are at cause over, and can confront implants.

Prior to attesting to OT IV, however, the Pre-OT must add up and scan out all previous auditing (coming up with a total number of hours), and then "find and run a havingness process".


Operating Thetan Level Five

Level Five purports to allow one to "Gain Freedom from Fixated Introversion into MEST". On this Level, the Pre-OT learns nothing less than the exact "truth about the Physical Universe, not the laws of physical scientists, but the basic considerations about Matter, Energy, Space and Time." The Pre-OT obtains the added bonus of becoming free of MEST laws, as well as the encumbrance that "the mind and body" place on communication with the environment.

The first step of Level Five involves solo auditing (with eyes closed) commands from the following permutation:

     | Spot |  | a spot    |  | in the room  |
               | two spots |  | in your body |
                              | outside      |
                              | on the sun   |
Next, the following steps are repeated "until major cognition, very good indicators or exteriorization occurs":

     Spot an object in the room.
     Spot an object outside.
     Locate a moving object.
     Locate a spot in your body.
     Spot a motion.
     Locate a space.
     Spot a Thetan.
The final section consists of eight outdoor exercises, each done until cognition. For example:

     "1.  The pre-OT is to put his attention on an object that 
     is ahead of him like a parked car, lamp post, etc. and 
     walk towards it noticing the distance between him and 
     it.  He is to continue to do this until cognition."
and,

     "2.  Next the pre-OT is to again pick out an object 
     ahead of him and wrap in energy beam around it and 
     himself and pull himself toward the object with 
     shortening of the beam." 
And that's all. At this point, the Pre-OT can attest to "Cause Over MEST".


Operating Thetan Level Six

Level Six consists of a series of exercises which are ideally performed until the Pre-OT simultaneously achieves a floating needle, major cognition, and regained ability.

These exercises include, among others:

     "Be  Three feet in back of your head.  Whatever you are 
     looking at, copy it a dozen times, put it into you.  Find 
     the two back corners of the room and hold onto them 
     without thinking for two minutes."

     "Find two corners of the planet Earth, hold onto them for
     two minutes."

     "Find a person in a distant land.  Notice the time of  
     day.  Notice the terrain.  Notice the general 
     environment.  Smell the air.  Locate a thought that is 
     his.  Locate a thought that is yours." 

     "Create in your body a feeling of calmness;  create in 
     your body sexual desire and turn it off.  Continue that
     step until you feel you have control over the sexual drives." 
It is worth noting that one of the abilities to be regained in Level Six is the ability to travel at will in an exteriorized state, and see the sights and read the thoughts in another place. This ability would be extraordinarily useful in obtaining key intelligence information about criminal conspiracies, but curiously, there is no evidence that this ever actually occurs.


Operating Thetan Level Seven

The goal of Level Seven is the ability to "easily place an intention into or on a Being and/or a body." Level Seven is organized into seven sections which constitute a thorough rundown on "intention" and related concepts.

The first section, "Basic Processes Set-up," covers the basics of intention, including a "very thorough" word-clear on "intention".

Other items include:

     What are you willing to cause?
     Decide something.
     What isn't a clear intention.
     Invent (mock-up) some intentions.
There are also numerous permutations of themes such as:

     Tell me a thought/intention others would be willing to
        receive from others.
     What intention of yours has another not helped?
     What intention of others could you confront?
     What intention of yours could you be responsible for?
     Get the idea I cannot place an intention.
One of the more unusual commands in the first section is, "Give me an unknown datum." It is not clear whether or not this should be given the interpretation which leads to logical paradox.

Section two, "L&N Intention Process" requires an L&N on the item from the following list with the biggest read:

     Has an intention been....
     Suppressed                       Forgotten
     Invalidated                      Hidden
     Blunted                          Avoided
     Abandoned                        Altered
     Denied                           Twisted
     Enforced                         Changed
     Desired                          Completed
     Decided                          Made Wrong
Section three, "Placing thoughts and intentions" consists of a number of exercises, of which the following is most salient:

     Think a thought.
     Creatively place that thought in/on that.  (Indicated object.)
     Now creatively get that (indicated object) thinking that 
       thought.
     Creatively have that (indicated object) continue thinking 
       that thought.
     Creatively have that (indicated object) cease thinking 
       that though.
Section four, "Outside Processes with an auditor (objects)", involves exercises (conducted outside) to place thoughts and decisions into an object.

Section five, "Outside Processes with an Auditor (people)", involves exercises similar to section four, but with people, including:

     Postulate perfection into that person.
     Tell me something you wouldn't mind that person 
       not-knowing about you.
Section six, "Inside Processes solo", consists of a mix of exercises performed on an E-meter, such as:

     What confusion could you create?

     Mock-up your (father, wife, mother, husband).
     Mock him (her) up again.
     Dispose of these mock-ups.

     How could another appreciate another as a human Being.
The Pre-OT is then required to "Find and run a havingness process on yourself."

Section seven, "Outside Processes solo", contains several exercises related to knowing about, intending, etc., random people (in a place with "lots of people"). The final exercises of this section (and, thus, of Level Seven) have become rather well known:

     OT7-48
     1.  Find some plants, trees, etc., and communicate to them
     individually until you know they received your communication.
     2.  Go to a zoo or a place with many types of life and 
     communicate with each of them until you know the 
     communication is received and, if possible, returned.
     OT7-49
     Go out to a park, train station or other busy area.  
     Practice placing an intention into individuals until you 
     can successfully and easily place an intention into or on 
     a Being and/or a body.
At this point, the Pre-OT can attest to OT VII.



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