This post is going to be long and not for the faint of heart; it'll have some of the dirtiest nastiest secrets in dianetics and scientology and be controversial and screamed against and decried; it WILL break hearts, disillusion and shatter beliefs. I am sorry for any upset or turmoil it causes ,BUT I will do everything I can to be honest and I KNOW how hard this information is to consider and accept.
I went through it when I found out the awful truth myself and it shattered MY beliefs PERMANENTLY.
lrh used hypnosis as the basis for most ,if not all ,the technology in dianetics and scientology. That has been stated before, BUT judging how scientologists talk, think and act, many don't have a clue both what this means and how far spanning it's scope and effects are.
As I've stated elsewhere I've seen scientologists state that scientology is hypnosis smugly ,but still show that they don't have a clue what hypnosis is, and still use hypnotic language patterns induced by dianetics and scientology indoctrination and think with parts of "the tech "that are the tech of hypnotizing people merely repackaged under another name.
Something is not always what we call it ;it's what it functions as, to be blunt hypnosis to work can be called ANYTHING ,as long as you do the steps to hypnotize ,whether you know it or not it can FUNCTION as hypnosis. Cult leaders,doctors,medicine men ,witch doctors etc. have been using this for MILLENIA ! Almost always calling it different names and believing it's magic, or spirits, or divine inspiration or the force of will etc ..
UNDERSTANDING why and how hypnosis works is not needed to use it. I can drive a car and I have no clue how it works. The hypnotist just uses natural phenomena of the mind by performing the right actions; it's like a musician doesn't need to understand the inside of a piano or guitar or synthesizer or sound board to use them, he just needs to play the instrument and somehow people have discovered ,over and over, in culture after culture how to hypnotize, no matter what they called it or how they thought it worked!
I have seen expert exscientologist protesters on TV proclaim scientology is hypnosis! only to have a reporter then say, okay HOW is scientology hypnosis? Then the EXPERT says oh I don't know anything about hypnosis!
If you believe you know what is and isn't hypnosis in dianetics and scientology then please answer the following questions HONESTLY: what are the methods of hypnotic induction ? What are hypnoidal states ? what are conversational and covert hypnosis? what is mimicry? regression ? guided imagery ?
WARNING if you are now ready to go off and study hypnosis I must warn you that tapes and writings on hypnosis often include hypnotic tecnhiques and language patterns THEMSELVES to induce favorable attitudes towards the subject, including beliefs that it can't make you do anything you don't want to, but that's a total lie !
It's a boobytrapped subject! Much like dianetics and scientology! But there is a trick to partially bypass the traps, a method where you only isolate and study small pieces of objective info NOT written by or for hypnotists; Jon Atack's articles on it ,and everything he wrote in scientology mythbusting are excellent and so are Arnie Lerma's at lermanet on hypnosis.
In particular The ones on lrh tapes educational dianetics 1950 and confusion 1952. This is covered very well (and briefly )by dean Fox on rant rave and I concur with his conclusions.
I know that hypnosis in auditing has been exposed by Arnie Lerma and Jon Atack and others ,BUT I believe scientologists are largely ignorant of how it works and what was done to them in auditing and so are still CONFUSED and often hampered in their recovery by this confusion.
In addition and even more to the heart of the matter hypnosis is covertly employed in many other ways in the practice and doctrines of dianetics and scientology. I will touch on just a few to begin to make my point.Many scientologists and exes contend that study tech is innocuous ,or at worst tiresome and boring. Well I contend that it is itself a form of mind control and coercive persuasion so cleverly hidden as to be virtually undetectable.
The first thing to know about mind control is that it can exist and be in a non obvious form. The second is to know that hypnosis (or mind control) works sometimes and not always;that it has different forms and methods and they affect different people to varying degrees ,and some people not at all; they can have a slow cumulative effect becoming stronger very gradually.One method might work on an individual while another doesn't, BUT several together cumulatively may be much more powerful.
This helps hide hypnosis as people who are not hypnotized don' t comply with hypnotic commands and suggestions making it appear that you are CHOOSING to cooperate ,when in fact unknowing hypnotic subjects are "cooperating" with their critical and independent thinking skills shut off ,or down , and regressed to a childlike trusting state. NOT free to choose and evaluate what is happening!
As an example I will contend that method 3 word clearing is itself a hypnotic method! lrh wrote and spoke in many hypnotic patterns as many others have thoroughly covered , BUT the new info I present is that CONFUSION is used to induce (bring on a hypnotic state) in word clearing even without hypnotic materials. Confusion (or paradox) is used to induce hypnosis by confusing a person's mind directing their conscious attention onto what they are confused by, lowering their ability to percieve what they hear and read critically and independently, just intaking it without evaluation.
In method 3 a student finishes reading a page,paragraph or sentence and KNOWS they understood what they read BUT they have "mu phenomena"( which are really mostly renamed symptoms of hypnosis or critical or independent thoughts about what is studied).
The student then knows they must have mus and so CONFUSE their own mind!
This contradiction opens up the door to a dirty trick lrh figured out. If you give a confused person an answer,even if it's wrong they ,can feel relieved as they can now direct their mind off the confusion and onto something else! This is a natural phenomena as people ,often when confused, leave alone whats confusing them and concentrate on something else with no resolution of the confusion, and yet feel better!
This masks that "study" in scientology ( and anywhere else study tech is used) is actually a kind of self hypnosis where the student puts themself into a progressive ,deepening light semipermanent trance that greatly deepens when returning to course or study, or even evetually when reading ANYTHING as how the person thinks about reading and language can change.
Their own mind can RUN the study tech on themself ESPECIALLY if this is flanked and bolstered by the loaded language in dianetics and scientology; in and of itself designed to produce the same effect with another variation of a hypnotic technique.
I know this sounds outrageous and many will reflexively say "NO I got gains from study tech ! "There really are words to learn! Yes there are words to learn, BUT MUs as lrh defined them DON't exist and are just a clever misdirection ,with the tiniest sliver of truth perverted to deceive, to hide the hypnotic regressed state he wanted you to "intake '' scientology and dianetics.
I also contend that the demoing is used to regress your mind ,increasing vulnerability and the idea of handling gradients similarly is a hypnotic technique used to misdirect you! He tells you your confusion is with something prior ,making you go on witch hunt for a red herring ,and feeling "relieved" when you find an "answer"!
Please have the courage to look at both sides of this theory and learn about hypnosis and what lrh said about it PARTICULARLY in the references Jon Atack and Arnie Lerma site.
I'm truly sorry for any upsets and grief this info causes, I'm only telling you because my conscience demands it. Best of luck with this.
Thank you