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The author can be reached at dave@xemu.demon.co.uk.
''This book,'' it begins, ''is a cold-blooded and factual account of your last sixty trillion years.'' Like, WOW (TM). The book is called ''A History of Man'', by L.Ron Hubbard, being ''a list and description of the principal incidents to be found in a human being.'' It was previously published in manuscript as ''WHAT TO AUDIT'' -- earlier books having conveyed the techniques of HOW to audit -- and is a prinipal text in the techniques of Scientology. How and what to audit are described as more inportant subjects than mathematics ; which is handy, because Hubbard got failure grades in maths and physics at university, before dropping out altogether. It is also proclaimed as ''useful knowledge'', which heals the sick and cures the lame.
The FOREWORD tells how the author learned to extend his auditting techniques to the ''whole track'' of previous lives. He announced this to auditors who mostly took it up enthusiastically; those who did not he investigated, in his typical methodology, to found out what was wrong with them that they should disagree with him. It truly works miracles. A woman called Eleanor with chronic athritis which could not be cured in ordinary auditing, is cured in a day with whole track. I would like to see documented record of this. Police using lie detectors get confessions of crimes which they then, astonishingly, find were committed in past lives. I would like to see documented proof of this. And these past life incidents have been confirmed by gravestones and historical records. Again, I would like the detailed proof.
CHAPTER TWO Elaborates on the possible target areas within a human being. There are CELLULAR INJURIES relating to injuries such as burns to particular cells. There are matters affecting the GENETIC ENTITY as a whole. There are INJECTED ENTITIES which are synthetic spirits of some unspecified sort, of lesser importance. For the record, they are called CENTRE, LEFT-INSIDE/RIGHT-INSIDE, LEFT-OUTSIDE/RIGHT-OUTSIDE, and STOMACH; under some circumstances they present as if they were separate minds. And finally there is the THETA-BEING which is the true self: Hubbard goes so far as to call ''mad'' a society centred on caring for the body.
CHAPTER THREE describes the present life, which is important for several reasons: we are still among the circumstaces of it, we falsely identify our present name as ourself, it is not obscured by death and the incidents between lives, and it is here where the current Genetic-Entity & Theta-Being combination is rubbing together. Medical Science has apparently accepted the importance of PreNatal incidents [I would like to see proof of this please]. A list of these is given, including the ''CONSTIPATION CHAIN''--which produces an extra large flush after a final emptying perhaps-- through to a ''CRYING CHAIN'' from the mothers crying. Processes around conception are responsible for embryonic types of cancer, and cell division [''mitosis''] for the malignant cell types. Cancer has been eradicated by auditing out these two types of incident, and I would be most interested in seeing the detailed proofs of this. Other paragraphs deal with memories laid down by birth and by childhood incidents.
CHAPTER FOUR Deals with memories brought by the GENETIC ENTITY from its lives as various creatures during evolution. The author gives a brief explanation of evolution in his own terms, which he thinks is rather confused, and gives some of his own more exact reasoning. The idea of ''epicentres'' is important, i.e. that part of the thinking of an earlier stage animal forms, in a later species, one of the ''switching centres'' such as the funny bone or solar plexus in later species. For example, the two halves of the brain originate in two separate lines, which first fused together at the stage of bivalve molluscs ; malfunction of this fusion can cause illness such as one-sided paralysis. Caution should be exercised in discussing these matters with the uninitiated. For example, describing how humans evolved from clams once gave someone serious jaw pain for three days --- at least, this was the effect that excessive laughter had on me.
Early incidents on the evolutionary timetrack include The Atom, which gives rise to a feeling of comfortable solitude. Cosmic Ray impacts can also leave drastic memories. The photon converter, a single celled plant, fell into inactivity when there was no daylight and gives rise to our need for sleep. Another, called the helper, involves the experience of undergoing cell division as an amoeba. All these memories of past lives, the author says, contribute to problems in our present lives and need to be audited out. Other incidents on this line lead through the jellyfish, and the bulbous seaweed which got cast up on the beach and leads to a horrible dry itching when the incident is recalled.
I feel it is important to realise no species is guaranteed a place on earth. If the environment changes, a specialised creature is not sent back for retraining but goes extinct, and a more basic type evolves to fill the new available roles. Even at the level of one or a few cells, plants build their tissues slowly by absorbing minerals from their surroundings and are very low energy creatures; animals, which maintain steady movement at preceptible speeds, burn up a lot of energy and can only get it by eating and digesting other creatures, animal or plant. There is no chance of a large specialised plant such as a seaweed devolving back and re-specialising as an animal, so that humans could have evolved from it. The evolutionary angle which gives the title is the most interesting--and hilarious--aspect of the book, and I will return to it at the slose of this essay, but I want to cover the whole aspect of How To Audit. After describing incidents 'assumption' of a MEST [material] body shortly before birth, and departure shortly before physical death, the author reviews what has been achieved so far. By auditting out the painful memories from this life, past deaths, and the Genetic Entity's experiences as a seaweed, clam, sloths and so forth, one can practically rebuild the physical body.
This makes the person a MEST [material-world] Clear, a ''homo novis'', who is ''about a skyscraper higher than homo sapiens''. He has, however, not even temporarily been free of his material body, and is still bound by all its needs for food and protection. There is still the impossibility of truly reconciling the spirit [theta-being] with the body which ''Christianity and a million other aninities'' have failed to resolve. This is a basically unsatisfactory situation, and the rest of the book shows how it can be resolved.
There are two states above being a 'MEST'--or 'material'CLEAR-- who has dealt with all incidents relating to his physical body and its genetic entitiy. The lower of these is called THETA-CLEAR, who is cleared of the necessity to have a material body, i.e. he can temporaily depart from it and return. This is the status that Charles Manson claimed to have attained; one presumes the word CLEAR now always implies, subsequent to Elron's ''discovery'' of whole-track auditing, being Theta-Clear. The higher state is to be a CLEARED THETAN'' [later called ''OPERATING THETAN''], who is cleared of all incidents and returned to the full powers of an indendent theta-being. Hubbard cautions his readers not to indulge in displaying out-of-body powers such as ''to knock hats off at fifty yards and read books a couple of countries away''. They should confine themselves to miraculous cures of the body, but tell critics that their doubt is justified and it is all imaginary, until such time as there are enough fully independent and restored thetans around out of body to ''do something about'' mankind and take over the planet from him. Since such things do not exist, I think we can be confident it will indeed be a long time before this happens.
CHAPTER SIX describes the whole track of the theta-being which ''seems to begin'' around 75 trillion [=million x million] years ago. It comprises a series of ''spirals'' each comprising many lives, the fist perhaps as long as a whole trillion years but currently down to about 40,000 years each. The track contains banks of pictures or '' facsimilies'' of incidents which happened to the thetan himself, and also ''secondary facsimilies'' which he has borrowed from other thetans or from genetic-entities he has shared bodies with. While these may have strong effects, they vanish almost as soon as first audited, and the main effort is concentrated on incidents from the theatn's own track.
CHAPTER SEVEN deals with the types of incidents found on the theta-line, i.e. the timetrack of the theta-being before it occupied the current body. The author describes two methods of auditting a person's case, that of unburdenning him of his present troubles to deeper and deeper levels [which is what, unwittingly, auditors have done so far], or of going direct to the basic thaeta-line incidents underlying them. Despite the strangeness of the incidents, anyone who has mastered the techniques in the book ''8-8008'' is able to handle them. However Hubbard cautions that an auditor mishandling these incidents which happened to the more poerful theta-body, may ''be embarassed by making a theta-clear before his time'' because the PreClear will drop dead of a heart attack. This is typical Hubbard hyperbole: reading a certain document [which I read a year ago] is said to give one pneumonia, and a Scieno outside an org building solemnly assured me this was going to happen. Premature exposure to some later revelations is said to cause sponateous human combustion.
While one ''doesn't have to be a nuclear physicist to understand these incidents'', they are in fact based in nuclear physics. There follows some stuff which begins with electromagnetic coils and thereafter looks nothing like the electromagnetism or nuclear physics courses I took many years back. Still ''only one trained in nuclear physics could have cracked the riddle''. Which is rather unfortunate, because college records show Hubbard flunked the only nuclear physics course he took before dropping out altogether.
In auditing these incidents, one will at first encounter puzzled disbelief ;0) and it is easy to suggest a reason why---but Hubbard has a different one. He refers us to the ''CHART OF ATTITUDES'' in the ''HANDBOOK FOR PRECLEARS'', where ''FAITH at the top of the chart turns to DISBELIEF at the bottom'' [this in itself is puzzling, for $cienos are always teeling me that their beliefs are based aon scientific testing and not at all on ''FAITH'']. No, the pre-clear does not want to remember past-life incidents which are deeply unpleasant, and has been ''invalidated'' into a very weak state and poor attitude. Enough auduitting droned on and on -- for which he pays good money every session in the belief it will do him good -- will evetually ''improve'' him until he decides he recalls it after all. Well, well.
CHAPTER EIGHT deals with the specific incidents needed to attain ''a voluntary and controlled separation between the MEST [material] body and the theta-body.'' A ''Theta-Clear'' need only be able temporarily leave the material body and return to it, and that person may still be ''abberrated'' [confused or wicked] in some aspects. A ''cleared theta clear would be a fully cleared thetan'' [later called ''operating thetan''], a much higher state; but theta-clear is relatively easy to attain with the right techniques. The techniques of Eastern mysticism, by the way, do not do this but bind the spirit ever more firmly to the material body. Here is an outline of some of the specific incidents likely to be found:
The JACK-IN-THE-BOX involves handing the thetan a box of pictures which each themesleves each depict a box of pictures showing a box of...and so forth, which then explodes. PreClears having this incident ''are very curious about cereal boxes which have pictures of boxes of cereal which have pictures of boxes of ceral.'' Indeed, so am I: everytime I see one in a supermarket, I think of $scientology and get a fit of giggling. This is an example of deliberate restimulation---once I've described this, you too will be unable to pass them in the grocery store without thinking of $cientology and starting to laugh!
Others involve OBSESSION, then need to have facsimilies and think in a filed & organised way rather than simply ''know'', and the conseqent urge of BORROWING fascimiles from other thetans. Physical incidents include NIPPING [the spiritual/electronic equivalent of slapping one's hands onto the two sides of a victim' head], and BLANKETTING [in which a thetan throws itself all around an other spirit or body, which leads to the obsession with exuality]. This in turn relates to an electronic weapon called THE HALVER, which thetans would turn upon beings with material bodies, ''causing [them] to be two people.''
The FACSIMILE ONE incident is found--actual or borrowed-- in all PreClears and involves ''the Coffee Grinder'', a two-handled device which sends out pulses of push-pull waves bap! bap! bap! like the sound of a pneumatic drill. It makes the victim ''report quickly when summoned, and makes him terrified of arrest and courts and other legal hocus pocus.'' Clearly Hubbard himself never fully handled this incident, for he ended up on the run from the law and terrified of arrest over operations to infilitrate and steal papers from government offices, for which his wife Mary Sue and other church leaders served time in jail. PreClears with many incidents being the victim of this weapon are short and dumpy, with puffy faces, and subject to chronic asthma and.....David Miscavaidge! It fits him to a tee: he's on the run, too, from process servers of a guy called Larry Wollerheim whom one of the church organisations still owes a five million dollar judgement! Clearly this particular incident is the nemesis of the $cientology leadership.
Other incidents are called BEFORE EARTH, THE JOINER, being delivered to a new planet frozen in an ICE CUBE, being made BETWEEN LIVES to forget the past life, and others called THE EMANATOR and DOUBLE BODY. This stuff is nothing if not prolific! Pity the quality doesn't match the quantity, eh?
There are a number of THETA TRAPS, such as the JACK-IN-THE-BOX [remember those conflakes packets? you will, next time you're down the supermarket!] used to catch the thetan. Then he is taken off and placed into devices such as the BODY BUILDER, the JIGGLER, the WHIRLER, the BOUNCER, the SPINNER, or the ROCKER, in order to produce further disorientiation. The FALLER instills fear of falling, and the EDUCATION -- oh how Hubbard loathed education after he flunked college himself -- which instills rote learning. The FLY-TRAP is a kind of sticky trap, and the BOXER involves being hit by a device like a boxing glove until you learn each time to respond to the present stimulus. And, if you don't remember these incidents, it is because you have been invalidated into the very low state called ''disbelief'': just pay yet more dosh for yet more auditting, and soon you will convince youself that you remember. Like, each time you walk past the cornflakes in the supermarket <giggle>.
CHAPTER NINE briefly defines a few technical terms in auditing. A MOTIVATOR is a wrong done to the PreClear, and a OVERT a wrong he has done other persons or dynamics. The word DED is used for a wrong he has done others unprovoked, and DED-EX -- ''the DED EXposed'' -- means the ''protesting too much'' which he does about those he has done an unprovoked wrong to, in order to justify himself. Other guilts arise from a MIS-ASSIST [attempted help which has only harmed], and being a DEGRADER [a person whose, possibly quite genuine, idea of help is to drag anyone down to their own level]. Being a ''JOKER AND DEGRADER'', i.e. giggling at the absurdity of Scientology doctrines, is regarded as a high crime: you have been warned.
CHAPTER TEN I will dwell on but briefly, as I am suffering from terminal tedium, but it describes incidents of TRANSFER i.e. of leaving, or more usually of entering, a MEST [material] body.
''THE CLAM,'' writes Hubbard, ''can be a deadly incident'' [ooh dear!], ''but mostly when restimulated on purpose''. It was a white, scallop-shelled creature probably not identical with the modern species, and had many troubles. The foremost of these was the conflict between one hinge which wished to remain closed, versus the other which wished to remain open; and the feelings around these have become, in humans, the nerve-ganglions for the hinges of the jaw. In order to verify this, Hubbard tells me to ask you:
''Can you imagine a clam, sitting on the beach,
opening and closing its shell very rapidly.''
And, while I do so, I should make a rapid snapping open and closed with my thumb and forefinger. Are you feeling very upset, as Hubbard says you should? Are you gripping your jaw in pain? Do you feel very sad, and say ''poor clam''? [This scene is meant to depict a clam dying]. Or do you fall about laughing?????? BWAAAAHARRHARHAHA! WHOOOOOH-EEEE-HEE-HEE! Poor little clams! Snap!Snap!Snap! Poor little clams! Snap!Snap!Snap!
Hubbard clearly regards this threat of reviving clam engrams as a serious one. When Catholic newpaper proprietor Richard Luce had carried critical articles in his papers, Hubbard raged that he should be ''thrown into the clam''. At first I thought this was some giant sixfoot snapping clam kept in the basement of the Fort Harrison Hotel, into which he would be cast bodily.
But, no, it meant he should be cast into reliving the incident described above. Did dozens of vengeful $cientologists attend press club lectures, fixing Mr Luce with an unblinking stare and rapidly snapping thumbs against forefingers in unison---and, if they did, did they succeed in giving him a terrible pain in the jaw? History does not record. Now, ''there was or is a spore method of reproduction used by the clam''. Flunk!!! This is a biological absurdity. Encyclopaedia Britanica (Micropaedia), p111, 'SPORE', says: ''spores are agents of asexual reproduction, whereas gametes are agents of sexual reproduction''; a spore is ''a reproductive cell capable of developing into a new individual without fusion with another reproductive cell'', whereas a gamete is a reproductive cell which must so fuse to develop. Spores ''are produced by bacteria, fungi and green plants''---no mention of clams. Among fungi they ''serve a function analagous to that of seeds'', being relaesed by specialised fruiting bodies as the main method of re production. All green plants have alternate sexual and asexual genrerations; among non seedbearing plants, spores have a similar function as for fungi. In seedbearing plants, they are not released but become new seedbearing individuals dependent on the parent plant. Under clams, it says that eggs are usually shed by the female into the water and fetilised externally--a few have internal fertilisation--where they become a freeswimming larva which soon settles into the bottom mud. No spores. Sorry, Ron: start again!
This supposed spore was ''like'' [not identical with] a barnacle. If the clam was cast ashore in the heat, while the spores outer tissues remained alive, then inner ones died and decomposed producing gas so that the barnacle exploded. Poor little barncales: pop!pop!pop! If your breakfast preference is for rice crispies rather than cornflakes, you might recall this incident and giggle each time the milk starts them popping. This incident, by the way, is said to be the root cause of toothache.
The next creatures in line are BOOHOOS, formerly known [by whom?] as GRIM WEEPERS. The idea of crying is fundamentally unnatural -- why should we react to stress by pouring out salt water -- and results from these creatures, which had two breathing tubes facing forward that frequently got clogged with sand as the waves swept over them. And these tubes which were the foremeost part of the creature became, according to Hubbard, the human eyes. This if a subject is unable to cry, one should tell him to ''imagine that his eyes are in his mouth, looking out.'' [if reciting/reenacting the essay live, the reciter should 'mock this up' with two gobstoppers or pingpong balls] More biological illiteracy, of course: one can see perfectly well the progression from simple creatures with lightsensitive spots, to basic lensed eyes, to those of mammals and reptiles. If this were true, logically, we would now have eyes peeking out the end of our nostrils ;0). Just don't pick yer nose, or you'll poke yerself in the eye!
Many of these beach-dwelling molluscs have incidents involved with erupting VOLCANOES. Indeed, this seems to be a chronic problem for $cientologists, for ElRon says it is the source of our smoking habit. $cientologists generally take no soft drugs and almost no alcohol [unlike Hubbard, who consumed prodigious quantities of rum and amphetami nes] ; so, like him, they mostly smoke like chimneys....or rather, like volcanoes. These molluscs also had trouble with ''BIRDS which had become so earlier'', and occasionally with bats. More lunacy. The first backboned animals to take to the air were the Pterodactyl dinosaurs, and feathered birds are their direct descendants : they had not ''become so earlier'' when the most advanced creatures around were molluscs, nor did they leave any fossil record of doing so. And bats are mammals, similar to flying mice---they were not around before the first land creatures either.
The next important incident is THE SLOTH. Yes, indeed, a sloth-like creature is indeed probably on the evolutionary track from small rodents through to the various bears, pandas, and apes. It had a lot of trouble falling out of trees when attacked by snakes, or falling off cliffs when attacked by....Baboons? FLUNK! Oh dear, Ron, just when you were beginning to make sense. If the Genetic Entitiy follows the evolutionary line of our ancestral species, then baboons weren't around when our highest known ancestor is the Sloth. Sorry--start again.
And finally, the nearest ancestor to hom sap, the Piltdown Man. According to Hubbard, ''the PILTDOWN teeth were ENORMOUS, and was quite careless as to whom and what he bit''. He also occasionally ate his wife. Shortly after this was written, the Piltdown Man fossil was shown to be a hoax. The biggest mystery in all this farago of Clams, Boohoos, exploding barnacles and falling sloths, is whether Hubbard really was a complete scientific illiterate, or whether he was mocking his followers to see just what depth of stupidity they would swallow uncomplaining; or quite possibly both.
I have refrained in this essay from merely mocking the more obviously absurd passages. This book, specifying WHAT TO AUDIT on the whole past-life timetrack, is a main and serious part of $cientology still [I am told] included in the course-pack for Operating Thetan III. And key parts of the book are the incidents around conception with the claim to cure cancer; the incidents to the Genetic Entity with all their biological absurdies about clams; and all the SciFi weirdness and coffee-grinders said to lie in the past lives of the rational spirit or theta-being. It is all of one piece, exposing $cientology and its founder for exactly the nonsense they both are.