How Optimum Is a Clear? (continued)

How Optimum Is a Clear?

(Don't start here. See Page 1.)

a clear. The loafer who could look at a job without being tempted by the salary it paid could gloat to the friend from whom he borrowed coffee money that he was a self-determined clear. The bedfast individual who had made life miserable for his friends and family for years could, by taking the few necessary steps that returned circulation to his feet and legs, regain the wavering attention by announcing that he had processed himself into the state of clear. There even was a way to do it with mirrors.

These persons were rid of neither their compulsions nor neuroses. They are part of the great family of aberrees that would gladly throw themselves on a pile of burning faggots if they knew that the deed would obtain for them a few minutes of hungered-for attention.

In the three years since the first book, the word "clear" has been changed, altered, and even hyphenated. No longer is a clear someone who has turned off a headache, or "remembered" what Mamma said to Papa during his conception, or decided not to act like Grandpa just because he hid Grandpa's cane which made Grandpa fall down and break his scrawny neck. Even the ability to read the small type on the editorial page of The Daily Sunsation, or to hear the undertones of a symphony muffled behind the bleating of a tobacco auctioneer, do not guarantee the properties of a clear.

A MEST clear -- 1953 definition -- had no present day problems, and had cleared up all the occlusion of this lifetime. It was a big order -- but some, after only a few hours of processing (and that from auditors who were far from optimum themselves), announced boldly that they'd hit the jackpot; that, on this merry-go-rouhd of life, they'd found the gold ring.

You don't evaluate, you don't invalidate, but like Ernest, in "The Great Stone Face" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, many of us came hopefully to see, and having seen, sadly turned away. Instead of the miracle we'd expected, we found a person who, under other circumstances and in different environment, might have been expected to park a hand under the lapel of his coat and insist, with great certainty, that he was Napoleon Bonaparte.

With the transition from Dianetics to Scientology -- and the discovery that the thetan and the body could go their separate ways -- the "clear" became more of a variable. One who merely "gets out" is only a "release". A "theta clear" (Issue 24-G, Journal of Scientology) "is a relative, not an absolute term. It means that the person, this thought unit, is clear of his body, his engrams, his facsimiles, but can handle and safely control a body." In the Doctorate Course, the added ability of not being drawn back into the body if the body is hurt or injured is part of the definition.

There may be clears. There even may be lots of clears. It's even possible that some of those who say they're clears are clears. And maybe, to return to the analogy of Hawthorne's Ernest, those who look and turn sadly away are refusing to look upon themselves. We expect a miracle -- not seekers of lost gold mines, not a person in rags and dirt living off the charity of the unarrived, not a person who'll lie to escape blame, even as you and I.

Apparently, the accomplishment of optimum goals as yet is merely theoretical. Possibly, too many have become over-sold on the idea that it's "simple -- there's nothing to it", and a clever auditor can get results in a few minutes or a few hours. They're waiting for something to happen TO them -- with a minimum of work and study. Or, if they can afford it, they think they can take course after course, and like the rich youth of Saint