'Doubt', are assigned for misdemeanors and crimes against Scientology. A student assigned to an advanced condition must wear a dirty grey rag around his arm, may not bathe, shave or change his clothes, must remain on the premises, must perform manual work, deliver a 'paralyzing blow to the enemy', admit his errors and petition every member of the center for forgiveness. Does Mr. Hubbard seriously expect mature scientists, artists, and professional men who have distinguished themselves in their respective fields to submit to this prep school nonsense?
Furthermore, whole categories of people are automatically excluded from training and processing and may never see Mr. Hubbard's confidential materials: Suppressive Persons, that is anyone who has ever publicly attacked Scientology together with all their families and connections. Anyone
'sitting in judgment on Scientology.' Anyone who has come to find out 'if Scientology works.' No one who has used cannabis within the last six weeks or LSD within the last 3 months may be processed. Such are the unique difficulties encountered by anyone who wishes to inform himself on the subject of Scientology.
As to my personal evaluation, after six months of study: I would not be writing this article unless I was convinced that Scientology is worth serious consideration. I feel that I have benefited greatly from Scientology processing. In an earlier article in Mayfair I said that Scientology can do more in ten hours than psychoanalysis can do in ten years. For what this is worth I still think so. Scientology is incomparably more precise and efficient than any method of psychotherapy now in use. But unfortunately, Scientology has duplicated some of the basic errors of conventional psychotherapy.
Any aberration that effects the human mind must have a three dimensional coordinate point in the human nervous system. Otherwise it could not producer an effect anymore than a television or radio broadcast could be seen or heard without a receiving set. When Western psychiatrists turned away from Pavlov's lead and postulated Super Egos, Ids and Complexes without locating these entities in the human nervous system they foundered in mystical abstractions. And where, for that matter, is Mr. Hubbard's Reactive Mind? (When I suggested that the Reactive Mind must be located in the hypothalamus my suggestion fell on unresponsive ears. Mr. Hubbard is not interested in suggestions. He states flatly that he has never known any suggestion from a student to contain the slightest value.)
The Reactive Mind, as set forth by Mr. Hubbard in the Clearing Course, is a model control instrument well worth the attention of anyone who is looking for inner freedom. Familiarity with this artifact gives one a considerable emancipation from crippling automatic reactions. Mr. Hubbard places the Reactive Mind in unimaginable antiquity, thus making any examination of its origin impossible. In view of a dim rusty label 'Made in USA September 17, 1889,' I cannot go along with this. My guess is that this control artifact was set up around the turn of the century. That is was largely the work of one man. That its purpose was and is to keep people enslaved on this planet, to block the exploration of space and to ensure a parasitic ersatz immortality for the founder andhis confederates. As long as anyone reacts to the Reactive Mind, HE is there. I have, in fact, an identical picture of this man. He was neither very famous nor completely obscure. He was neither very rich nor poor. He was probably a mathematician, perhaps a composer of music, almost certainly a Mayan scholar. The tip off came from the Mayan codices. To summarize my personal impression: I feel that Scientology has scratched some surfaces and turned up some leads. Experimentation and research carried out by workers in the fields of electronics, virology, cybernetics, biology, and operant conditioning could result in revolutionary advances.
Mr. Hubbard says that the mere sight of his confidential materials would make any WOG - (His revealing term to designate those unversed in Scientology) - violently sick. I can claim some experience and skill in the scrivener's trade, but I could not undertake to write a few words guaranteed to make any appreciable number of readers physically sick. So, if this claim is justified, it is certainly a matter for investigation. I am sure that volunteers in abundance would step forward.
Who would pass up an opportunity to read such potent prose? A head ache or a cold or the loss of the last supper is a small price to pay. This is not a frivolous suggestion. If words can make people vomit how are these particular words effecting the vomiting centers in the hypothalamus? Or is this claim put forward to give his followers a feeling of importance and to justify rather substantial fees?
Only an actual test can give us the answer.
If the Scientologists persist in a self-imposed isolation and in withholding their materials from those best qualified to evaluate and use them, they may well find themselves bypassed. Mr.
Hubbard says he wants recognition for his discoveries. Well, let him then show his confidential materials free of charge and without any restrictions to qualified workers in other fields. He says he has the road to freedom. Others have been a long time on that road. At the Edinburgh Writer's Conference in 1952 Alex Troochi coined the phrase 'astronauts of inner space.' Let him show his confidential materials to the astronauts of inner space: Alex Troochi, Brion Ysin, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, to anthropologists like Castaneda and shamans like Don Juan. Let him show his material to mathematicians, computer programmers, biologists and virologists, to students of language like Marshall McLuhan and Noam Chomsky. Let him show his material to those who have fought for freedom in the streets, Eldridge Cleaver, Stokely Carmichael, Abbie Hoffman, Dick Gregory, to the veterans of Chicago and Paris and Mexico City.
Above all, young people nave a right to see his materials. So let him set up a center and give his processing and materials free of charge and without restrictions of any kind to anyone under the age of 35. If he has what he says he has, the results should be cataclysmic. And the mass application of other techniques now available should produce even more interesting results. In my forthcoming book, The Job, I describe the experiments of doctor Neal E. Miller who has taught rats to lower blood pressure, reduce rate of heart beats, control digestion and breathing and brain waves. He has taught rats in one hour to do what yogis take 20 years to learn. Anything a rat can do you can do better, as subsequent experiments with human subjects have demonstrated.
Quote from TIME, July 18, 1969, page 59...'Through the cerebrospinal nervous system, the mind is able to dominate much of the body, how a man walks, talks, etc. But the body's glandular and visceral processes, run by what the scientists call the automatic nervous system, have long been considered beyond the reach of conscious control. Now though, experimental psychologists have proved that the body's automatic nervous system can be taught.
The results of such experiments tend to support the theory of mind over matter so long ridiculed by modern science. "People are reexamining old concepts like mind/body dualism" says Dr. Bernard Engel of the National Institute of Child Health in Baltimore. Engel's work in "automatic shaping" has enabled him to alter heart rates, and rhythms to alleviate irregular heart beats and high blood pressure. Other researchers have proved that man can learn to control even such functions as sweating, blood pressure, intestinal contractions and brain waves.
The vistas are staggering. Dr. Joe Kamiya of the Langley Porter Neurological Institute in San Francisco, who has experimented with conscious regulation of brain waves, looks forward to the day when men will have "an internal vocabulary, a language he can use to explain more effectively and completely how he feels inside. In time we should be able to talk fluently about feelings such as brain wave production, blood pressure and so on."