Author Topic: TROM for Non-Scientologists Part Five  (Read 135 times)

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TROM for Non-Scientologists Part Five
« on: March 25, 2019, 10:40:19 pm »
Operating Thetan and the E-Meter
(picture of e-meter attached to this posting)
Two of the most mysterious things to an outsider looking in on Scientology are the concept of Operating Thetan (OT) and the E-Meter also known as a skin galvanometer (which sometimes Dennis calls it in the TROM materials)
The OT levels themselves are not broadly understood as they are confidential levels of Scientology auditing.  Being a Scientologist alone does not entitle you to their secrets.  Only having gone “clear” in Scientology then getting approved to do them, and most importantly paying for the levels and doing the courses for them allows you access.  Not all Scientologists are clears and even less of them are OTs. 
I’ll save myself a little work and speed things up and give you a copy and paste from the official Scientology website about the state of OT:
WHAT IS MEANT BY OPERATING THETAN (OT)?
Operating Thetan (OT) is a spiritual state of being above Clear. By Operating is meant “able to act and handle things” and by Thetan is meant “the spiritual being that is the basic self.” An Operating Thetan, then, is one who can handle things without having to use a body of physical means.
Basically, one is oneself, can handle things and exist without physical support or assistance. It doesn’t mean one becomes God. It means one becomes wholly oneself.
Basic levels of Scientology help a person deal with his personal relationships and day-to-day problems, to free his attention to address higher aspects of existence. At the level of Operating Thetan, one deals with his own immortality as a spiritual being.
Like any other spiritual level in Scientology, the state of OT is attained by proceeding through a series of gradient steps, each one slightly more advanced than the last and each with its own ability gained. The precise sequence is firmly established and variations from that sequence are unproductive. Thus, it would be fruitless to try to move somebody onto the OT levels before he is ready for them. One might as well demand that a baby run before learning to crawl and learning to walk. Similarly, in Scientology individuals can only receive the benefits of the counseling that brings one to OT after completion of more basic steps.
At the level of OT, Scientologists study the very advanced materials of L. Ron Hubbard’s research. According to those who have achieved OT, the spiritual benefits obtained surpass description.
Source: https://www.scientology.org/faq/operating-thetan/what-is-ot.html
The next thing I want to tell you about is the e-meter, which I will once again step aside and let the “official” source speak for me:

WHAT IS THE E-METER AND HOW DOES IT WORK?
E-Meter is a shortened term for electropsychometer. It is a religious artifact used as a spiritual guide in auditing. It is for use only by a Scientology minister or a Scientology minister-in-training to help the preclear locate and confront areas of spiritual upset.
In itself, the E-Meter does nothing. It is an electronic instrument that measures mental state and change of state in individuals and assists the precision and speed of auditing. The E-Meter is not intended or effective for the diagnosis, treatment or prevention of any disease.
In order to understand how the E-Meter works, it is necessary to understand some basic Scientology concepts.
There are three basic parts of Man—mind, body and thetan. The thetan is an immortal spiritual being—the individual himself. The thetan inhabits a body and has a mind, which is a collection of mental image pictures.
The pictures in the mind contain energy and mass. The energy and force in pictures of painful or upsetting experiences can have a harmful effect upon an individual. This harmful energy or force is called charge.
When the E-Meter is operating and a person holds the meter’s electrodes, a very tiny flow of electrical energy (about 1.5 volts—less than a flashlight battery) passes down the wires of the E-Meter leads, through the person’s body and back into the E-Meter. (The electrical flow is so small, there is no physical sensation when holding the electrodes.)
When the person thinks a thought, looks at a picture in their mind, re-experiences an incident or shifts some part of the reactive mind, they are moving and changing actual mental mass and energy. These changes in the mind influence the tiny flow of electrical energy generated by the E-Meter, causing the needle on its dial to move. The needle reactions on the E-Meter tell the auditor where the charge lies, and that it should be addressed through auditing.
Source: https://www.scientology.org/faq/scientology-and-dianetics-auditing/what-is-the-emeter-and-how-does-it-work.html

Now in order to do TROM therapy it’s not necessary to know all about the state of OT or to even use an e-meter.  The only reason I am bringing these up is there will be several passages in the book “The Resolution of the Mind a Games Manual” where Dennis mentions OT as well as the e-meter and if you don’t have sufficient data on these two things you aren’t going to understand any of it.

So let’s take a step back here.  Remember what a “clear” is?  Someone who no longer has a reactive mind.  But getting rid of the reactive mind as described in “Dianetics The Modern Science of Mental Health” is not the end of your spiritual journey in the Church of Scientology.  To put it in the simplest terms, once you’ve handled your “case” as a human being, it’s now time to handle your case as a “thetan” (or spirit or soul or whatever you would like to call the part of you that is not your body or mind yet is aware).

What does the e-meter have to do with this?
Everything.
You see, according to the practices of Dianetics and Scientology, if you have a reactive mind you still need a separate practitioner to help you erase it (once again, I’d like to remind you, the recordings don’t actually go away, they get re-filed as memories in the analytical mind.  Only the harmful effects erase).  Therefore, if one is below the level of “clear” in Scientology, all of their auditing is being delivered to them by a separate practitioner, namely the “auditor”.

However, once you have eliminated the bank (just another term for the reactive mind, sometimes also called “the reactive bank”) you can now audit yourself solo and use the e-meter on yourself.  This is called solo-auditing and it’s what the Church teaches you how to do on your OT levels.  Once the person learns how to do this, they are given lists of auditing commands to run on themselves and away they go up the OT levels using the e-meter on themselves.

OT levels are numbered.  Currently only the OT levels 1-8 are available to the public that qualify for them.  However, there are up to 15 levels of OT available on “The Bridge” (The Bridge, or “Bridge to Total Freedom” is a chart showing all the levels up to the state of “clear” and then beyond up the OT levels, and also all the different levels of auditor training as well.  When people are engaged in Scientology Training to become an auditor, or receiving auditing themselves, they often say “I’m on The Bridge” or “I’m going up The Bridge”)

You don’t need to know all about OTs or e-meters in order to do TROM therapy. You can do TROM therapy with or without an e-meter. However, you will have to have some minimal understanding of the two in order to understand the book “TROM a Games Manual”.

First off, though Scientology believes a person cannot un-do their own reactive mind by themselves, Dennis’ work does assert that you can simply by teaching the analytical mind to do what the reactive mind does.

Here’s the first passage of his book where he mentions this, and mentions the e-meter:

I learned to take over the automaticity of my own reactive bank. Finally, there was nothing the bank could throw at me that I could not handle, for I could do consciously what it was doing. The bank could restimulate engrams? Me too! It had no power over me anymore. This was proved by the E-meter needle, which was just sitting there idly. I could think anywhere all over my past. Nothing moved. I had broken the automaticity!
(from TROM a Games Manual by Dennis Stephens)

So what Dennis basically is saying in that passage is that there were no engrams in his case because the e-meter didn’t produce any needle reactions.
(Google a picture of the e-meter if you need a visual on this thing)

Here is another passage where Dennis mentions OT and the e-meter.

OT 1, fine. OT 2, interesting but flat. I put myself back on the meter for this but the only needle movement was overrun reads. I was trying to make a process work that was flat. OT 3, I couldn't make it work, it was all flat. And so on each level: ran it, floating needle to start with. If I started to run the process the needle would tighten. Overrun? Yes. Needle frees up. Float. Trying to run a flat process ----- overrun. Eventually --- OT 7.
Then back from OT 1 to OT 7 again. All flat. That really shook me rigid. Because here I was just half way through my own upper level tech and the best that Ron knew was flat already on my case! Later, I came across levels above OT 7, and each of those was flat too.
(from TROM a Games Manual by Dennis Stephens)

So here we have Dennis trying to run the OT levels of Scientology while researching his own upper level tech (technology) and the e-meter needle is telling him that there’s nothing to run—all the processes are flat on him already, and there would be no benefit to his doing the processes OT 1-7. The e-meter is telling him that the process is overrunning, and once he realizes his trying the OT level is just an overrun of what he has already done with his case, the e-meter needle frees up on this realization.

Now normally a “floating needle” read (the needle moves smoothly from left to right indicating there is no “charge”) is what you get at the end of a process.  He is saying he got them right at the beginning of some of these OT levels, and if he dared run the actual commands of the level, it would produce overrun reads on the e-meter needle or tighten up.

In sum, Dennis is asserting that because he did TROM, he has no need for any of the Scientology processes that produce the state of “clear” or “OT”, and the e-meter confirms such.

Lastly, it should be noted that Scientology’s understanding of how the e-meter works and Dennis’ understanding are quite different.
While L Ron Hubbard was correct about everything he knew about the e-meter, reacting to mental mass and energy in the mind, Dennis Stephens’ book, “TROM Therapy Manual” takes it further to say that the e-meter actually responds to postulates and postulate configurations.

That’s all for now.  There will be more to come in future postings as I further aim to help the newcomer  to TROM that knows nothing about Scientology or TROM understand both subjects so that Dennis’ ingenius words can be understood by the masses.  If you read this, please by all means comment, and I assure you, I will not cry my eyes out going to bed tonight if you have any criticisms.  I welcome them.

Best,

The Closet TROM-er

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