Ron Hubbard 2001 Science of Survival: R Bridge Publications.
About 8 years ago whilst living in New Zealand I was seeing a therapist who background and training was a mystery to me. He was also a teacher of Ayurveda and ran classes in this subject which often ran into other areas of spirituality, ethics and councelling. He would speak from time to time about some books by Scientology founder Ron Hubbard and mentioned that it was derived from a form of Buddhist Psychotherapy.
I didn’t think much of this until recently having decided to do this course and recalled what he had said and decided to pick up a copy and see wether there was any truth to this.
I admit I didn’t come to the book without a prejudiced mind. Images of John Travolta, celebrity stars and religious cults was there but I endeavored to keep an open mind.
The first page of the book instructs the reader to make sure to read every word carefully and not to skip a single word. It goes on further to say that at the end of every paragraph make sure you have fully understood what you have read or go back and read it again.
For someone who likes to skim read and is impatient to get to the good bits this proved quite a challenge. I went along with this instruction though and it was insightful. I became aware of just how much I miss due my impatience and thinking that I have understood something when i hadn’t.
Hubbard had previously written many science fiction books and this came through in his writing style which often read like a fantastic inner exploration of the human condition.
Whether his ideas where in fact derived from Buddhist psychology is unknown but I definitely could some see some connections.
One of the central features of his ideas is that of the auditor(derived from the Latin audile-to listen). The auditor perform auditing which in his terms is a spiritual councellor.
This apparently is not some haphazard affair but rather a structured set of questions to help a person find out things about himself and improve his condition.
His model of the mind is this. There are 2 part to it, the analytical mind and the reactive mind. The analytical mind is the rational, conscious aware mind which observes data and records it. Than their is the reactive mind which responds to stimulus and operates below conscious thought.
The mind he says is composed of metal images pictures which are recordings from past experiences. these images are 3 dimensional and contain smells, sounds and all other sensory perceptions.
This is where it got interesting for me. When a human organism encounters moments of shock or pain and its survival comes under threat then the analytical mind shuts down and the reactive mind comes in. All the perceptions that are present in the environment at that time are recorded in the reactive mind. This forms a body of energy which he refers to as an Engram. I guess this is what we would call a Trauma or a samskara.
If any of the given data which is stored in an Engram is present in the environment than this has the potential to restimulate the engram releasing the content of the engram which a person could experience as sudden unexplained fears or even physical pain.
In Buddhist psychology the idea of dependent origination and conditioning seems to find its way into this book. I get the feel that the author sees the human being as being imprisoned by layers of defenses and he has detailed a very systematic way of releasing a person from these. The goal he describes is one of spiritual enlightenment and freedom. The idea of a "clear" being a person who through intense auditing has released all the "charge" associated with his reactive mind is not too disimilar to states of liberation described in Buddhist Psychology.
The role of the (auditor)councellor seems to be quite mechanical and a little military but from some of the case studies given I can’t doubt it could be effective. The book places a lot of emphasis on the Engrams and releasing a person from their grip. An auditor is held in high esteem if he is able to locate one of 3 major engrams which condition a person. They are the trauma of conception, birth and death. The book gives the impression of interconnecting network of engrams and almost offers a military style strategy for disabling these defenses.
One of the other tools which is Central to Scientology which get a lot of mention in the book is the Emotional tone scale. This is a scale that plots emotions on an ascending and descending order. The list is very detailed and by knowing where a person is on this scale one can predict what behaviors this person would be likely to exhibit. According to Hubbard most people are about point 3 on the scale which is Conservatism. The scale goes up to point 40 which is serenity of being down to 0.0 body death. A person has a chronic level where they usually are on the scale but can move up and down according to certain experiences and engrams being restimulated. I found it hard to get away from the feeling that I was reading the rules for a computer adventure game and at the same time couldn’t wait to start to play.
In conclusion I felt it was a very stimulating read and it the way the author was able to weave together his fiction writing and story telling skills with a deep understanding of psychology and human behaviour kept me engaged right through. The case studies at the end bought together the concepts and theory into a clinical practical format and was helpful to seeing how it all fit together.
Would it make me want to put myself forward for some auditing
sessions? Well if I had a spare $20,000 than maybe(apparently I hear
its not cheap). Then again I could call my old mate Tom Cruise up and
see if he would be willing to give me a few sessions on the cheap!.