Trom (The Resolution of Mind)

Thank you Khepri, for this awesome effort (659 pages!) in producing the most user-friendly compilation of Dennis Stephens' work.

In particular, for solving the mystery of the two tapes Bonding 21/3/1993 and Bonding Relationships 21/2/1994.  I'd been comparing them and puzzling. Of course, if Bonding was actually recorded 21/3/1994 it makes sense as a revision meant to replace the tape of 21/2/1994.

I think you've hit the target with that observation. The conviction that "Scientology is the only hope mankind has of going free" wasn't there in the lectures of 1952. It seems to have grown gradually, and by 7 February 1965 when LRH wrote the Keeping Scientology Working policy letter it was a stable datum. It was an "Only One" computation on the grand scale: not just a matter one one single being trying to take on the universe as his opponent, but a group who adopted this computation as their collective game strategy.

Maybe this was because scientologists started to take seriously the packaging of scientology as a 'religion' instead of a science or anything else. It's not unique to us; just about any religion has this stable datum in a mild or virulent form. There are religions that encourage their followers to kill unbelievers with promises of heavenly rewards. And there was the chaplain at my old Presbyterian school who would shake his head sadly over the eternal damnation awaiting non-Christians, probably even Catholics and high-church Anglicans as well.  I admit, it feels warm and cosy to believe you're in the one chosen group who know The Big Truth.

One way a person might get out of the double bind might be to recognise that "Scientology was the best system we had" back in the 1960s, or 1970s, or whenever they were active. Validate it for what it did, and validate the scientologists for their good intentions and hard work. Then come up to present time and see what tech is available now.

Science doesn't progress by asserting a dogma and shouting down all contradictory opinions. As LRH noted (HCOB 22 July 1963 You can be right) scientists who go that route cease to produce valid science. It progresses by developing the best theory possible with the evidence available, seeing how that works, getting more data, and revising the theory.

Since no-one else has replied to Survivor’s excellent post, I’ll try...

One reason for the shortage of success stories or testimonials might be that once something is handled with TROM it’s gone: either erased, or timebroken so that the person has no interest in it.  The two complementary needs - to know a thing, and to make a thing known to others – get completely satisfied.  This is in contrast to what sometimes happened in scientology when a preclear found interesting incidents but could be left at session end with a curiosity to find out the whole story and/or tell others about it.

I had gone Clear in 1972, and at that time experienced what Dennis Stephens describes as the EP of Level 3 TROM. I could summon any memory if I chose, but otherwise my mind was still. Pictures blew on inspection. Unfortunately, I went into agreement with the lie that I was at the bottom of the grade chart and had to do all those levels. Even so, the bliss and freedom of the moment has never completely gone away. I did the OT levels up to OT5 at AOSH ANZO in 1988; they were no big deal but still valuable experience.

Yes, the theory of TROM is elegant, particularly in the sense that mathematicians use that word.  It leads to greater simplicity rather than increasing complexity, and I’d suggest that is a clear indication of truth.

I did less than 10 hours on Level 2 of TROM, as I’ve always found it easy to bring past objects into PT.  For example, I began by taking coloured pencils out of the pencil case I had half a century ago in primary school and comparing them to pencils on my desk in PT. These sessions soon tended to turn into Level 3 sessions with whole scenes showing up in full colour, 3D, from multiple viewpoints.

Then 38 hours on Level 3 TROM. It was easy going, and I was able to fully view and vanish some of those intriguing wholetrack incidents that had first been contacted on dianetic and scientology levels. When I left level 3, I got out my old E-meter and found a persistent F/N at TA 3.0; previously I had usually F/N’d around 2.6

I took Level 4 more slowly, no longer keeping an obsessive count of time spent but simply working around the sequence of eight classes of overwhelm as long as material showed up. There were many cognitions, including some about my game strategies (the wording of these got gradually refined through level 4 and level 5). Often after a big cog I’d find “nothing to run”, and would leave TROM alone for a week or more before picking it up again. The great thing is to have sessions on one’s own self-determinism and one’s own interest, not anyone else’s. I’d like to advise anyone going this route: “You don’t have to justify what you’re doing to any C/S, guru, headmaster, big brother, matron, dictator, bully, etc etc.”

Rather shatteringly, I realised that my worst this-lifetime overts were things that I had no reason to do, and neither expected nor got any benefit from.  They had just been arbitraries, or things that “everyone knows” a “normal person faced with that situation” would do. Once the charge is off those acts that are called overts or motivators depending on the side from which they are viewed, the whole subject of Motive – dear as it is to psychiatrists and lawyers – just sort of collapses.

I’ve been on Level 5 for just over a year now, still taking it in a relaxed way, doing a session of 5 when it’s needed and wanted.  Other times I’ll just run some subjective RI, or go back to some 3.  I rarely run into any heavy mass (or misemotion, that all seems to have been left behind at Level 4).  There are cognitions in abundance.  The first big one came in the first session of the level: the whole question of wanting was like a maze of mirrors, experiences I thought I wanted turned out to be things that others had wanted me to want.

There are also gains to be had from studying the theory of TROM and relating it to life.  I’m still with the basic package on Level 5 and am in no hurry to try any junior goals.  But I have had many junior goals – both life and non-life – collapse just by inspection and clearing words like accept, restore, misjudge.  These were purposes that I had dramatised at one time or another, but it's very clear how they are subsets of the basic package.

Although it's not part of TROM itself, Dennis mentions in The Unstacking Procedure a great technique for vanishing an object from the mind by discharging its purposes.  This worked brilliantly when I tried it, admittedly on an object that no longer had much emotional charge for me.  Right now, I can’t remember what that object was called – would have to get that notebook out to refresh my memory  .