This is an excerpt from an upcoming book with the working title ‘Deconstructing Scientology.’ It is directed toward those who are considering the possibility of dipping a toe into dianetics or scientology study or participation. My failures over the past three years in attempting to help former members graduate from the subject informed a whole new line of research into some of the darker arts that L. Ron Hubbard mastered to make people so apparently incapable/unwilling to learn.
Hypnosis
The most diabolically effective form of hypnotism would probably thoroughly convince the subject that it was impossible to hypnotize him. It seems that only in that case could the idea be implanted that no awakening and de-hypnotism would ever be desirable or even possible. It would inculcate the opposite of the old adage applicable to any reform, or even education, activity that the first step to recovery or learning is the recognition that there is something to recover from or to learn. If you were thoroughly convinced that you were more awake than virtually all of humanity, there is no chance that anyone could convince you to possibly take a look at waking up.
Imagine this scenario for a moment. You take up a course of therapy and study that convinces you that if you dedicatedly address a particular category of subconscious incidents (those anchored in unconsciousness and pain) you will have erased your subconscious mind and all of its automatic associative responses. The practice promises to render you virtually immune to sub conscious suggestion because you are permanently erasing that mind system or mechanism – in this case related as a tangible, factual entity – that makes you susceptible to such. The practice of concentrated attention toward past experiences produces some feeling of catharsis, just as countless forms of psychotherapy, meditative and contemplative practice inevitably do. Thus heartened, you assiduously follow instructions and devote a substantial amount of time and treasure to the endeavor. The required sacrifice alone conditions you to fight to justify the experience so as to account for the years and resources devoted to it.
Each session of therapy leaves you that much more certain that you are that much less prone to sub conscious persuasions. While following this course, you also take in a tremendous volume of opinions, prejudices, life-directing philosophy and mythologies from the source of the methodology that is making ‘erasure’ of your sub-conscious a reality. You are fed a comprehensive, romantic and imaginative new universe view. It is reinforced every time you encounter evidence against its plausibility. That is because your new universe view characterizes any information conflicting with your new universe view as evidence of the validity of the new universe view under attack by ‘flat-earther’ holders of traditional universe views.
You implicitly trust virtually all of your indoctrination because you find the therapy cathartic on some level and you are so grateful for being given the opportunity to forever be free of hidden persuasions directing your life. Your experience is being validated and reinforced by sophisticated, organized positive encouragement all along the way. That – combined with ample mythology adoption – elevates your cathartic experiences to levels of exhilaration. You are led to believe that these feelings of exhilaration are super human states making you sort of an elite, special being. You are literally told you are among the upper tenth of the upper ten percent of humanity, simply because of your participation.
The indoctrination becomes part of you because, consistent with the principles of conversational (or covert) hypnosis, you are given to believe you are assimilating it of your own volition. You are repeatedly told that nothing you are being told is true unless you yourself accept it, so that analytically you are certain data cannot be being imposed upon you, but instead you are self-determinatedly evaluating its truth or falsity and use.
All the while all the data input is being poured into a sub-conscious that could not be opened wider for unfiltered receipt of information and suggestion. That is because you are convinced that you have no sub-conscious, auto-associative mind. As noted already you are given to believe you have ‘erased’ that hidden persuader. Of course in reality you have as strong a sub-conscious as anyone else. It is probably even far more hair-trigger given all the counseling you engaged in to take the edge off your incidents anchored in pain and unconsciousness. That you have a sub-conscious, auto-associative faculty is patent. Otherwise, you would not be able to draw a breath. You would not be able to direct a spoonful of corn flakes into your mouth in the morning. You would last about five minutes on a busy city street before you walked in front of a bus or speeding car. You would not be able to perform any of the myriad intuitive tasks human beings routinely carry out daily.
Just as you have come to believe that you are making trillions of analytical, conscious calculations every day in order to function, you consider all that you have been taught during your mental therapy devotion is analytically evaluated and understood wisdom. Yet, by objective observation of people not wed to the same therapy your behavior is in many ways far more reactive than before you engaged in the therapy. If such observations are shared with you, you will reactively, automatically associate such with sociopathic characteristics of the type who oppose the magic of erasure of the sub conscious, associative mind system. That is part of your indoctrination. Just as certain as you become that you are a member of the top one percent of humankind, you truly believe that such negative people are part of the sociopathic bottom 2 ½ percent of humanity. You will move away from such people and replace those bonds with people who have received and abide by your therapy and its indoctrinations. Again, indications of the possibility of your having entered an elaborate trap are converted into reinforcements for the walls of that trap.
By now, you might recognize that what is being described here could be characterized as an extreme, exaggerated case of the mechanisms of fanaticism. You might have noted some more subtle forms of the mechanics outlined so far as being present in the far-out fringes of political or religious isms. Such indications are not difficult to recognize when there is some distance between you and the object of your observation. By entering those mechanics into such a super personal, ultra subjective activity as psychotherapy that works with the deep recesses of your psyche, those mechanics are far more difficult, if not impossible, to detect.
Moving On Up a Little Higher 