Trom (The Resolution of Mind)

The Goals Problem Mass (or GPM)
There are two things that most notably separate TROM from Scientology.  The first being that Dennis Stephens came up with a technique in which one with some study and practice, can handle the reactive mind all on their own.
The second has to do with how the Goals Problem Mass is handled.
The subject of Goals Problem Mass was introduced by L Ron Hubbard in the Saint Hill Special Briefing Course (SHSBC) in which Dennis Stephens and others took part in.
Without getting terribly technical, the Goals Problem Mass is a mental mass that occurs as the result of two opposing goals. 
In Scientology auditing, the auditor would ask the preclear for a goal and then ask the preclear “Who or what would oppose that goal?”
On the surface, this seems like a perfectly reasonable and intelligent way to handle goals and their opposition.  You have a goal to know something, and perhaps a teacher, parent, spouse, etc doesn’t want you to know it, and therefore you have a Goals Problem Mass and running processes on those identities that would oppose that goal would handle it, right?
Dennis had a different idea. 
Instead of taking the postulate “to know” and put it in opposition to an identity, in TROM therapy you simply oppose it to the postulate “to not be known”.
Copied and pasted from Dennis’ book:
I learned how to handle postulates in conflict --- and found out that Ron had never learnt how to do it. There was a certain fundamental truth in that area that he had not spotted.
My own techniques for resolving postulates in conflict is ---- “Handle correct goals packages”. I found what the true goals packages look like and how to take them apart. You will find this, and it is in Levels Four and Five of TROM.
The research on goals and so forth took me about a year to iron out and turned out to be a lot more complex than I had thought it would be, especially Level Five. I understood why Ron had failed in 1960. His efforts were valiant. He was almost doomed to fail.
The actual legs, the actual postulates of the true GPMs aren't in the reactive bank. They're in the analytical mind. If you search in the bank, you will do it all wrong.
It is an analytical construct, so they're in the analytical mind. All that is in the bank is a mish-mash of wrong opposers. The lies. The truth is in the analytical mind.
So the mistake Ron made on the subject of goals was to look into a mass of lies, in the bank, for the truth. That is why the search went on forever, and why he nearly killed himself in the 1960s.
(From “The Resolution of Mind A Games Manual” by Dennis Stephens)
Remember how in an earlier section we talked about there being an analytical mind and a reactive mind (also known as “reactive  bank” or “bank”)?
In Scientology we learn that the analytical mind thinks in differences and similarities.  The reactive mind thinks only in IDENTITIES.
In Scientology, according to Dennis, handling the identities is the wrong way to go as far as handling postulates in conflict.
So instead of running Goals Problem Mass as such in TROM, we handle “goals packages”.  Here’s another cut and paste to explain that:
Life has four basic abilities. [know/not-know/to make known (bring into existence)/to make not-known (to take out of existence)] Every purpose in life must manifest in line with one or other of these basic abilities. The totality of these manifestations regarding a purpose we call the goals package of that purpose. Thus, all possible manifestations of the goal ‘To know’ are within the ‘To be known’ goals package.
(From “The Resolution of Mind A Games Manual” by Dennis Stephens)
Opposing goals vs opposite goals
If you ask a Scientologist “What postulate opposes ‘to know?’” he will probably answer, “to not-know”.  This is actually a wrong answer.
Not-know is the opposite postulate to the “to know” postulate.  Only “to not be known” opposes “to know”.  It isn’t “to not-know” or a teacher, spouse, policeman or whatever. 
What happens in the postulate failure cycle is that “to know” opposed to “to not be known” will result in either the “to know” driving the other into “to be known” or the “to not be known” driving “to know” into “not-know” and such is the game of life.
In other words, the OPPOSING postulate drives the other person into the OPPOSITE postulate if the opposing postulate wins.
Dennis uses the terms “self-determined postulate” (SD postulate) and “pan-determined postulate” (PD postulate) when describing these interplays.
If you are in “to know” and your opposer is in “to not be known” then your SD postulate is opposed to his PD postulate.  He is trying to drive you into “to not know” and if he succeeds, then his PD postulate wins.  Now you have a situation where he is in “to not be known” and you are in “to not know”.  You have adopted his pan-determined postulate.
Every postulate has its twin, and every postulate has its opposer.  The opposite postulate is the one you are driven into if your opponent wins.
So, the idea that “to know” opposes “to not know” is ridiculous.  “Not know” is what you are driven into if the opposer wins with his “not be known” postulate.
And on the brighter side, if you want “to know” and you have someone in “to be known”, that postulate’s twin, then the postulates are complementary and not conflicting.  And lastly, “to not-know” and “to not be known” are twins too.
While Dennis did cite an example where he asked a trained Scientologist the same question I posed earlier, I sometimes wonder what a Scientologist would say if you asked him, “What postulate would –complement- ‘to know’?”
I can only imagine what the response would be, as the idea of complementary postulates is not really covered in Scientology as clearly as Dennis puts it, if at all.
You don’t need to be an expert on what the Goals Problems Mass is or how it’s handled in Scientology to understand Dennis Stephens’ work.  Dennis does mention it several times in his books so some familiarity with what it is and its history is good to know about.