As an outsider who has been observing Scientology on the internet for a couple of years now, my impression is that there are two aspects of 'clear' that are probably real.
1)
If a person is serious about trying to solve certain problems in their life, there's a decent chance that they'll succeed in doing so, at least to a fair degree. If the person is talented or has other basic long-term advantages, and they've mainly been suffering from short-term bad luck, then the odds of their success are quite high. Practically anything can be the apparent cause of this success, if it gives such a person the confidence to try hard to succeed. So for some people, it can seem as though Scientology has really turned their lives around. For most of those people, almost anything else could also have turned their lives around, because what really turned their lives around was their own efforts.
On the other hand, they probably did need something to trigger those efforts, by giving them hope and encouragement. Insofar as Scientology may have done that triggering, that's a real merit in Scientology. It's just not any kind of evidence that Scientology really works, beyond giving hope and encouragement. The basic truth is that it's not very hard to make the able more able, because the able tend to get more able on their own, anyway, because that's what being able is all about.
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Love your posts and very intelligent take on matters even when I disagree.
2)
There seems to be an 'auditing high' — the feeling/mental state of being 'blown out'. It might be partly assisted by e-meter electric currents, though this is debatable, and the e-meter is clearly not a necessary element. The auditing high is probably related somehow to hypnosis, though it's not really an adequate explanation to say simply that auditing is hypnosis, because nobody really knows exactly what hypnosis is. .
I don't think there is a such a thing as an "auditing high". Read the stories of those who suffered under continual sec checks in the RPF. They didn't get high. This also
indicates that the idea of the e-meter currents having such an effect is wrong.
Then if one looks at the effect of bad auditing this can be devastating. Think of a
spiritual attack and rape.
In therapy a wrong indication for example can be deadly. Try and recall what you may have read of lets say SO members told they are degraded beings, SPs, criminal etc, and note they believe such concepts, and how it affected them. And that is outside therapy! One hopes.
There can be highs in auditing. End of session, end of process, end of program, end of level etc. Generally these tend to be somewhat permanent.
[snip]
All these individual variations make it hard to study auditing effects rigorously, just as it is hard to study hypnosis. All the efforts I've seen towards critically assessing auditing have aimed at determining whether or not it produces the tremendous results promised by Hubbard. I'm not aware of any serious studies directed simply at determining what the auditing high is like, and how it works. Hubbard's theoretical explanations, in terms of engrams and charge and what-not, are almost certainly complete nonsense. But there seems to be a real effect there, whose real explanation is probably interesting, though probably not all that important, because it probably has nothing to do with making objective progress towards any great goal.
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Hubbards on engrams and charge are not complete nonsense.
Lets say in an earthquake the apartment building you live in was destroyed. You
don't know if your wife was there at the time. You would experience fear, dread,
pain, anxiety and many other reactions up to possibly unconciousness. This would all come under the label " Charge". When you find your wife wasn't there and is still alive all this charge would dissipate in an instant and you will be in a life affirming glorious state. This may be considered a high, but is really more about the resolution of a temporary matter.
Lets say you were addressing in auditing your problems relating to women. And you cognited, that this resulted from your mother telling you that women wearing makeup were whores and evil. You may then be in a state to no longer have problems related with women. This state would probably last all your life at least.
This can't be described as an auditing high.
Your comments that the able can improve because they are able are well said IMO. However, the above scenario may not be resolved by all those who are able.
Maybe by some.
Lets bring this up to another level, perhaps fantasy, perhaps some sort of reality:
Lets say the mother, was beaten by her husband when pregnant, and he called her a whore because she wore makeup. and was evil. And she never wore makeup again.
Thats her engram. And she repeated the content to her son, perhaps while the father beat him for dating a cheerleader.
[snip]
The problem with doctrinaire Scientology is that it's trying to turn a limited, short-term good feeling into a road to eternal salvation. Twenty minutes of auditing can make you feel great, apparently, but twenty years of auditing will not make you a god — or anything noticeably more than an average human being, for that matter.
Its oversold. Does it lead to eternal salvation? Lets say the jury is out on that
one.
Does it lead to better ability is a better question.
It can.
That is one reason that people should differentiate between CO$ and the subject.
Please sign the petition.
When used by me, it's sarcasm.