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Scientology, Ron Hubbard and Hypnosis

pineapple

Silver Meritorious Patron
I kind of don't think with the subconscious idea anymore.
It's a convenient term. I'm not married to it. There is clearly a part of the mind that functions without our conscious control. If you want to say it's just the brain, I can buy that.

But whatever you call it, those hallucinations were coming from there. I wasn't consciously putting them there. I'd say they probably came from the same place dreams come from. It's convenient to refer to it as the subconscious.
 

pineapple

Silver Meritorious Patron
I ran a few hundred dianetics hours but never experienced an engram. I tried, I tried to see a full mental image picture, but never happened.
If you couldn't see pictures, how were you running dianetics? For me it was like seeing pictures before I fall asleep -- hypnagogic images -- except I didn't fall asleep, just went with the pictures.

Did you run metered dianetics or only Book One? (There was no book one dianetics when I was in, only metered -- "Standard Dianetics" and then NED.)

Did you ever "go whole track"/run "past lives"?

I'm curious because when I was in I never thought about how I did this stuff. It interests me to hear how others did it, and that we weren't all doing the same thing.
 

mockingbird

Silver Meritorious Patron
Yes I know and perhaps some of those ways can induce trance but "repetitive auditing" has the variable of th PC response.
This has been studied by memory expert Elizabeth Loftus. She is considered one of the top experts in this field and often used an excerpt witness.


"A suggestive question is one that implies that a certain answer should be given in response, or falsely presents a presupposition in the question as accepted fact.Such a question distorts the memory thereby tricking the person into answering in a specific way that might or might not be true or consistent with their actual feelings, and can be deliberate or unintentional. For example, the phrasing "Don't you think this was wrong?" is more suggestive than "Do you think this was wrong?" despite the difference of only one word. The former may subtly pressure the respondent into responding "yes," whereas the latter is far more direct. Repeated questions can make people think their first answer is wrong and lead them to change their answer, or it can cause people to continuously answer until the interrogator gets the exact response that they desire. The diction used by the interviewer can also be an influencing factor to the response given by the interrogated individual.


Experimental research by psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has established that trying to answer such questions can create confabulation in eyewitnesses.For example, participants in an experiment may all view the same video clip of a car crash. Participants are assigned at random in one of two groups. The participants in the first group are asked "How fast was the car moving when it passed by the stop sign?" The participants in the other group are asked a similar question that does not refer to a stop sign. Later, the participants from the first group are more likely to remember seeing a stop sign in the video clip, even though there was in fact no such sign. Such findings have been replicated and raise serious questions about the validity of information elicited through poorly phrased questions during eyewitness testimony.


Direct questions
Direct questions lead to one word answers when explanations are sometimes needed. This could include questions like “Do you get it?” and “Where did it happen?” According to Dr. Kathy Kellermann, an expert in persuasion and communication, direct questions force exact responses through carefully worded questions.


Repeated questions
Repeated questions elicit certain types of answers. Repeated questions make people think their first answer was wrong, lead them to change their answer, or cause people to keep answering until the interrogator gets the exact response that they desire. Elizabeth Loftus states that errors in answers are dramatically reduced if a question is only asked once


Forced choice questions
Yes/no or forced choice questions like “is this yellow or green?” force people to choose between two choices when the answer could be neither of the choices or needs more explanation. This generates more “interviewer-talks” moments, where the interviewer is talking and controlling most of the interview. This type of question is also known as a false dilemma.


Presumptuous questions
Presumptuous questions can either be balanced or unbalanced. Unbalanced questions ask questions only from the point of view of one side of an argument. For example, an interrogator might ask “’Do you favor the death penalty for persons convicted of murder?”’ This question assumes that the person’s only point of view in the situation is that a person who is convicted must either get the death penalty or not. The second type of presumptuous question is balanced question. This is when the interrogator uses opposite questions to make the witness believe that the question is balanced when the reality is that it is not. For example, the interrogator would ask, “’Do you favor life in prison, without the possibility of parole?”’ This type of question may seem balanced when in reality it is still influencing the person to discuss life in prison and no other choice.


Confirmatory questions
Confirmatory questioning leads to answers that can only support a certain point. Here, the interviewer forces the person to make sure his or her answers make them out to be extroverted or introverted. If they want them to look extroverted they would ask questions like “How do you make a party more fun?” and “When are you talkative?” If they want the person to look introverted they ask questions like “Have you ever been left out of a group?” or “Can you be more hyper sometimes?”.



Considerable attention has been devoted to suggestive questions and its effects. Experimental research by Elizabeth F. Loftus, an American psychologist and an expert on human memory, has established that trying to answer such questions can create confabulation in eyewitnesses. Loftus conducted and experiment where participants all viewed the same video clip of a car crash. Participants were then assigned at random in one of two groups. Group one was asked, "How fast was the car moving when it passed by the stop sign?" The participants in the other group are asked a similar question that does not refer to a stop sign. The results showed participants from the first group are more likely to remember seeing a stop sign in the video clip, even though there was in fact no such sign. Elizabeth Loftus stated that everyone is affected by suggestive questioning, and it comes from environmental factors instead of innate factors, meaning that everyone is affected by suggestive questioning.
Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer developed the Misinformation Effect. It describes participants witnessing an accident whose responses changed if questions were worded differently. They found out that people tend to exaggerate what they really saw.Twenty five percent of the participants claimed they saw broken glass because the word “smashed” instead of “hit” was used.

Some therapists are at risk of using suggestive questions on clients while discussing the matter of past traumatic events. Sigmund Freud’s definition of repressed memory is the mind’s conscious and unconscious avoidance of unpleasant wishes, thoughts, and memories.However, there has been very little evidence of this type of memory. Some therapists claim that repression causes people to forget frightful events of sexual or physical abuse as a psychological defense Through improperly phrased interviewing questions, a therapist can convince their client to agree that there is such a thing as repressed memory, and therefore abuse had to have occurred, but the patient just does not remember it. Repetitive questions change clients’ answers from a reluctant perhaps to a definite for sure. The use of suggestive questioning by therapists changes perceptions and can cause entire memories to be created.
According to the psychologist Philip Zimbardo, Misinformed individuals can come to believe the misinformation in which they feel confidence. "
Above from Wikipedia
 

mockingbird

Silver Meritorious Patron
Yes, yes, yes...
Repetition can induce a trance...
The Comm Cyle is NOT repetive; the PC gives a fresh answer each time
Excerpt from Subliminal in full

I wrote a series on the book Subliminal by Leonard Mlodinow.

Psychologists have found merely telling a person an event occurred can prompt the manufacturing of a memory to fit the suggestion. And then recall the memory but not the suggestion that prompted it.


This has been described as successful 15 to 50 percent of the time. A recent study was done on people that went to Disneyland. They were asked to think about a fake ad for the park with Bugs Bunny. It had suggestions regarding vivid imagery of Bugs and being with him using suggestive language like imagine, he got bigger the closer you got and so on.


About a quarter of the subjects recalled meeting Bugs and of those 62 percent remembered shaking his hand, 46 percent recalled hugging him.


Now Warner brothers owns Bugs Bunny and Disneyland owns Mickey Mouse and the two don't visit each other. But people can recall meeting Bugs Bunny when they never did - if provided the suggestion.


For Scientologists the hundreds of suggestions they're provided are certainly sometimes effective on some people at prompting false memories. In Scientology indoctrination and auditing hundreds of suggestions are given and repetitive questions certainly serve as suggestions in this context. And if those people stay in Scientology and agree that the suggestions are real as memories then to them it appears everyone has these memories, because the people that don't have these memories either leave or keep it to themselves.


Mlodinow wrote, "Conscious memory and perception accomplish their miracles with a heavy reliance on the unconscious."


Unfortunately, just as the unconscious is unseen by the conscious mind its errors and efforts to manipulate the unconscious to guide or fool the conscious mind are also unseen and when successful unnoticed.


That's the horrifying vulnerability that makes groups like Scientology capable of deceiving people with false memories and similar techniques.


Our ignorance about the vulnerability of our minds is the deadly glaring weakness that leaves us gullible about our gullibility. We are sure our memories are so reliable when Scientology manipulates them we mistakenly take that as proof and see the matter as settled. We couldn't be more wrong.
 
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Clay Pigeon

Gold Meritorious Patron
This has been studied by memory expert Elizabeth Loftus. She is considered one of the top experts in this field and often used an excerpt witness.


"A suggestive question is one that implies that a certain answer should be given in response, or falsely presents a presupposition in the question as accepted fact.Such a question distorts the memory thereby tricking the person into answering in a specific way that might or might not be true or consistent with their actual feelings, and can be deliberate or unintentional. For example, the phrasing "Don't you think this was wrong?" is more suggestive than "Do you think this was wrong?" despite the difference of only one word. The former may subtly pressure the respondent into responding "yes," whereas the latter is far more direct. Repeated questions can make people think their first answer is wrong and lead them to change their answer, or it can cause people to continuously answer until the interrogator gets the exact response that they desire. The diction used by the interviewer can also be an influencing factor to the response given by the interrogated individual.


Experimental research by psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has established that trying to answer such questions can create confabulation in eyewitnesses.For example, participants in an experiment may all view the same video clip of a car crash. Participants are assigned at random in one of two groups. The participants in the first group are asked "How fast was the car moving when it passed by the stop sign?" The participants in the other group are asked a similar question that does not refer to a stop sign. Later, the participants from the first group are more likely to remember seeing a stop sign in the video clip, even though there was in fact no such sign. Such findings have been replicated and raise serious questions about the validity of information elicited through poorly phrased questions during eyewitness testimony.


Direct questions
Direct questions lead to one word answers when explanations are sometimes needed. This could include questions like “Do you get it?” and “Where did it happen?” According to Dr. Kathy Kellermann, an expert in persuasion and communication, direct questions force exact responses through carefully worded questions.


Repeated questions
Repeated questions elicit certain types of answers. Repeated questions make people think their first answer was wrong, lead them to change their answer, or cause people to keep answering until the interrogator gets the exact response that they desire. Elizabeth Loftus states that errors in answers are dramatically reduced if a question is only asked once


Forced choice questions
Yes/no or forced choice questions like “is this yellow or green?” force people to choose between two choices when the answer could be neither of the choices or needs more explanation. This generates more “interviewer-talks” moments, where the interviewer is talking and controlling most of the interview. This type of question is also known as a false dilemma.


Presumptuous questions
Presumptuous questions can either be balanced or unbalanced. Unbalanced questions ask questions only from the point of view of one side of an argument. For example, an interrogator might ask “’Do you favor the death penalty for persons convicted of murder?”’ This question assumes that the person’s only point of view in the situation is that a person who is convicted must either get the death penalty or not. The second type of presumptuous question is balanced question. This is when the interrogator uses opposite questions to make the witness believe that the question is balanced when the reality is that it is not. For example, the interrogator would ask, “’Do you favor life in prison, without the possibility of parole?”’ This type of question may seem balanced when in reality it is still influencing the person to discuss life in prison and no other choice.


Confirmatory questions
Confirmatory questioning leads to answers that can only support a certain point. Here, the interviewer forces the person to make sure his or her answers make them out to be extroverted or introverted. If they want them to look extroverted they would ask questions like “How do you make a party more fun?” and “When are you talkative?” If they want the person to look introverted they ask questions like “Have you ever been left out of a group?” or “Can you be more hyper sometimes?”.



Considerable attention has been devoted to suggestive questions and its effects. Experimental research by Elizabeth F. Loftus, an American psychologist and an expert on human memory, has established that trying to answer such questions can create confabulation in eyewitnesses. Loftus conducted and experiment where participants all viewed the same video clip of a car crash. Participants were then assigned at random in one of two groups. Group one was asked, "How fast was the car moving when it passed by the stop sign?" The participants in the other group are asked a similar question that does not refer to a stop sign. The results showed participants from the first group are more likely to remember seeing a stop sign in the video clip, even though there was in fact no such sign. Elizabeth Loftus stated that everyone is affected by suggestive questioning, and it comes from environmental factors instead of innate factors, meaning that everyone is affected by suggestive questioning.
Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer developed the Misinformation Effect. It describes participants witnessing an accident whose responses changed if questions were worded differently. They found out that people tend to exaggerate what they really saw.Twenty five percent of the participants claimed they saw broken glass because the word “smashed” instead of “hit” was used.

Some therapists are at risk of using suggestive questions on clients while discussing the matter of past traumatic events. Sigmund Freud’s definition of repressed memory is the mind’s conscious and unconscious avoidance of unpleasant wishes, thoughts, and memories.However, there has been very little evidence of this type of memory. Some therapists claim that repression causes people to forget frightful events of sexual or physical abuse as a psychological defense Through improperly phrased interviewing questions, a therapist can convince their client to agree that there is such a thing as repressed memory, and therefore abuse had to have occurred, but the patient just does not remember it. Repetitive questions change clients’ answers from a reluctant perhaps to a definite for sure. The use of suggestive questioning by therapists changes perceptions and can cause entire memories to be created.
According to the psychologist Philip Zimbardo, Misinformed individuals can come to believe the misinformation in which they feel confidence. "
Above from Wikipedia
Grade auditing commands and queations do not fit into this "experts" categories
 

Dotey OT

Cyclops Duck of the North - BEWARE
I did the grades, expanded grades, when you would EP the grade, but have to check for roads and run to EP, or if interest type processes, run or not run. I'll have to go see if I still have the expanded grades book. Lots of repetitive, they're not all though.
 

mockingbird

Silver Meritorious Patron
How ? What EVIDENCE do you have that is better than the research these experts conducted ?
See, we keep coming up against the difference between an opinion and a claim with evidence of some kind to support it.

If you are trying to defend Scientology or part of it you have the terrible disadvantage of being stuck in what critical thinking expert Richard Paul called sophistic belief. He described several kinds of believers or thinkers.

He described the vulgar believer who knows little outside of slogans and will support an idea. It can be political, religious or any idea really. The vulgar believer is not well informed but may be devoted.

They can support a politician and not know how laws are made or how taxes work but they support that politician good.

A sophistic believer knows the ideas in a subject and can possibly rattle off dozens or hundreds of quotes and sincerely believes the subject or cause they are informed about. But if other subjects conflict with or contradict their subject they use the ideas from their subject to defend it and attack other subjects. If people are against their subject then they attack them too.

When someone defends Scientology they often end up with Scientology ideas and methods against scientific evidence, research in psychology, research in medicine, research in hypnosis, and on and on. Even subjects like critical thinking, debate, rhetoric and ones addressing knowledge and good reason and debate strongly, PROFOUNDLY, contradict Scientology. Scientology is jam packed with logical fallacies and bad arguments for frankly weak claims.

Once you are outside of Scientology and are not accepting any of the terms or concepts or techniques in Scientology as valid you can slice and dice it with good research and strong evidence from dozens of fields. Hundreds of experts have entire careers of work available that they produced over decades.

Many, many people have produced more than enough to discredit and debunk the claims in Scientology. Many of them never set out to oppose Scientology but their work has better methods and better evidence and their findings contradict Scientology.

Look back through the back and forth between you and me. You have claims, I have claims and something to support them. If I claim Hubbard said something I have quotes. If I claim he knew something I have quotes. If I claim something about psychology or memory or hypnosis I have something, usually from an expert and often with a story about research and the results that supports a claim.

If you only bring Scientology to a battle of wits and the other person can, and does, bring evidence from psychology, memory experts, hypnosis and other subjects then unless you really believe in Scientology and require no proof it is like going into battle buck naked against an armed opponent.

What do you really have ? "I don't believe" and "I already believe in Scientology " ?

People like to say we just put out opinions but if that was the case I would not have hundreds and hundreds of quotes and articles and bits of research by experts. I don't see this as identical.

If one side just goes "I don't believe this cause it is not what I already believe " and the other has all this stuff it doesn't mean anyone is automatically right or wrong, but what they bring to the table isn't equal.
 
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Gib

Crusader
If you couldn't see pictures, how were you running dianetics? For me it was like seeing pictures before I fall asleep -- hypnagogic images -- except I didn't fall asleep, just went with the pictures.

Did you run metered dianetics or only Book One? (There was no book one dianetics when I was in, only metered -- "Standard Dianetics" and then NED.)

Did you ever "go whole track"/run "past lives"?

I'm curious because when I was in I never thought about how I did this stuff. It interests me to hear how others did it, and that we weren't all doing the same thing.
no, I see pictures, mental image pictures. I could see the pictures in my mind of locks and secondaries, but never an engram. I tried, never ran into an engram, even the birth one. But then again, I was never unconscious that I recall. Never had somebody beat me to a pulp to unconsciousness, no operations being put under, etc.

I was run on book 1 dianetics, no meter.

Never went whole track or past lives, I tried, but no mental image picture came up. I thought at one time I was a black five case, LOL.

I can see mental image pictures now all the time, and can even mock them up as in imagination.
 

Gib

Crusader
no, I see pictures, mental image pictures. I could see the pictures in my mind of locks and secondaries, but never an engram. I tried, never ran into an engram, even the birth one. But then again, I was never unconscious that I recall. Never had somebody beat me to a pulp to unconsciousness, no operations being put under, etc.

I was run on book 1 dianetics, no meter.

Never went whole track or past lives, I tried, but no mental image picture came up. I thought at one time I was a black five case, LOL.

I can see mental image pictures now all the time, and can even mock them up as in imagination.
of course you know Pineapple, we would never be allowed to have this conversation while in Scientology, it would a high crime to talk about case.

I wonder why?

ROFLMAO.
 

mockingbird

Silver Meritorious Patron
I kind of don't think with the subconscious idea anymore.
The subconscious or unconscious is in my opinion a good hypothesis.

The best simple book on it in my opinion is Subliminal by Leonard Mlodinow. I also like the book The Brain by David Eagleman. David Eagleman has a lot of videos on the brain on YouTube. The standard for books on the subconscious and conscious mind is thought to be Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow by Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman. It is for a devoted student and superb.​
 

mockingbird

Silver Meritorious Patron
Hypnotic states and depth of trance

What is depth of trance?

In short, depth of trance is the measure of the hypnotic subject’s susceptibility to suggestion in a given moment. This means, that a person who is “deeper” will be able to realize a larger spectrum of suggestions than a person who is “shallower”. Depth of trance is tested by using suggestions in various directions. Below, I am listing the commonly accepted criteria for each of the hypnotic states, and the suggestions which characterize them.

When the critical faculty bypass has been stabilized on some level, that creates a state, or a hypnotic trance. There are numerous different trances, however we’ll focus here on those which are most common. Alongside each, I will note the minimal criteria required to judge whether a person is in that state, but also the most common contexts in which those states are used.

What are the hypnotic states?

Light trance characterized by the subject being able to realize suggestions for:Catalepsy (relaxing or tensing a limb to the extent where the hypnotic subject cannot consciously move it),

Kinaesthetic hallucinations (regarding the physical body; e.g. feeling ones hands as warmer than they are),

Decreasing the sensation of pain.
Most commonly used in order to get to deeper states.
Medium tranceCharacterized by the subject being able to realize suggestions for:Analgesia (turning off pain, but not other sensations),
Distortion of ones sense of time.
Most commonly used in order to get to deeper states, however also widely used in conversational hypnosis.

Deep trance (somnambulism)Characterized by the subject being able to realize suggestions for:Amnesia (which also has several levels, i.e. “light, medium and deep somnambulism”):Comfortable non-thinking means light somnambulism.
Amnesia while in trance is the marker is medium somnambulism.
Post-hypnotic amnesia (i.e. we suggest amnesia, bring the hypnotee out of trance, and they still can’t remember) is the marker of deep somnambulism.
Anesthesia (turning off all sensation, locally or generally),
Positive hallucinations (experiencing something which isn’t there),
Negative hallucinations (not experiencing something which is there).
Most commonly used for everything which isn’t covered by the deeper states.

Hypnotic coma (the Esdaile state)Characterized by the subject not responding to any suggestions, due to the state being so comfortable and pleasant that the hypnotee basically ignores the hypnotist.
Automatic anesthesia of the whole body. (Automatic as in, it doesn’t have to be suggested.)
The body shows a pre-catatonic response – automatic catalepsy of skeletal muscles follows when you move the hypnotee’s limbs around. That gives them a ‘waxy’ quality.
Catatonia can be induced in a limb by decisively pulling on (“setting”) joints, which results in the muscles locking, and the limbs “springing” back to the way they were set should we try to move them.

The Esdaile state is most commonly used for anesthesia during surgery.

Ultra-depth state (the Sichort state) – achieved via the hypnotic coma characterized by absolute relaxation, including deep abdomen muscles, and skeletal muscles.
Anesthesia continues.
Indirectly, via the subconscious, the hypnotist can affect physical body regeneration, quickening healing processes,
fortifying the immune system,
the balance of the hormonal system.
The Sichort state is used as anesthesia in surgery – especially those dealing with the abdominal cavity.

Ultra-height state – achieved via the hypnotic coma characterized by complete conscientiousness, which allows for:Rapid realization of suggestions,
Dynamic realization of more complex suggestions by the hypnotee,
Expanding the horizons of the mind – conscientiousness allows for discovery of ones own abilities and tendencies.
It is a very useful state in therapy, as it allows for going through the whole therapy process within a few minutes, rather than several sessions.I

Hypnotic sleep
Characterized by the absence of the conscious mind in the hypnotee, which means that this state allows them to realize all suggestions - from website HypNox.ok by Filip Bajsicki


This is an excerpt from an article about depths of trance. I have found that lots of hypnotists talk about different depths of trance and tried to find a relatively simple description of light and deep trance as it is used in hypnosis. It is important to note that hypnotists like people in many professions don't always agree and the definitions and kinds of trances that exist are one thing they definitely have different ideas about. Some focus on eye movements and some on brainwave patterns and on and on. Some are degree of suggestibility as the key while others think that is entirely the wrong idea.

I hope this example of the definitions one hypnotist uses are helpful.
 

Gib

Crusader
The subconscious or unconscious is in my opinion a good hypothesis.

The best simple book on it in my opinion is Subliminal by Leonard Mlodinow. I also like the book The Brain by David Eagleman. David Eagleman has a lot of videos on the brain on YouTube. The standard for books on the subconscious and conscious mind is thought to be Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow by Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman. It is for a devoted student and superb.​
subliminal has nothing to do with sublime writing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublime_(literary)

Hubbard wrote words of sublime. And his sublime of the grandeur of Clear and of OT are false, as you know.
 

Clay Pigeon

Gold Meritorious Patron
subliminal has nothing to do with sublime writing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublime_(literary)

Hubbard wrote words of sublime. And his sublime of the grandeur of Clear and of OT are false, as you know.

That is not what I know.

I tend to believe there is not a "Reactive Mind" per se which can be terminally eliminated but I don't consider the term "Clear" to be meaningless...

And "OT" (in quotation marks) is as tangible as an apple...
 
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