A general summary of Clears and Clearing as of March 1, 1959 is of interest to all Dianeticists and Scientologists.

I have a great deal of data now that has not been generally released and indeed was never before known here on Earth.

The figures are in, the checks have been made. And here’s what I have found: The first Clears I made in 1947 that were stable were in reality Theta Clears, not Mest Clears. Had I had more finance and the data I collected between 1947 and 1959 I would have known that.

They were made by gradually raising their confrontingness of mental image pictures.

When I found in 1950 that other auditors could not achieve this, I made it my thorough business to:

1. Study all phenomena related to clearing;
2. Study ways to train auditors to do the job and
3. Achieve the original state on a broad scale by auditors in general on all types of cases.

I said we needed a better bridge. Well, we’ve built several.

Within the last fifteen months the data and findings have avalanched.

Once there was a breakthrough by other auditors using standard technology to a state of release some years ago, I knew we were winning but some didn’t see it.

Release is the first state one attains on the way up. It is low and crude but it is. It means that state one doesn’t skid any more in. In short, release means a bettered state from which one doesn’t slip. A case stops getting worse and begins to get better, no matter how slowly. Old ARC Straightwire is the original process that created a Release (see Self Analysis, last page).

Release as a state is, in actuality, the first thing a pc is trying for. It’s a gain to find level ground so that he doesn’t from there on get worse. He’s stable now, he won’t keep slipping, if he attains the state of release.

I found the second goal a couple of years ago. I managed to develop drills and skills that would make a person able to audit. The simplest form of this now is called “muzzled auditing” and makes supervised co-auditing possible on a very wide scale, thus achieving goal three above.

The first great breakthrough came in Winter of 1957-58 with Mest Clearing.

Mest Clearing is shortcut clearing. By keying out engrams, one becomes free of them.

This was achieved in a very large number of cases.

What happens to a Mest Clear sometimes? What makes the state unstable?

A Mest Clear, according to several reports even from those given bracelets (ofwhich they should still be proud), starts acting like a Theta Clear and can’t make it. It’s a lose. He falls back.

In short, a Mest Clear can postulate. And he postulates himself into trouble. He can still key in engrams. His postulates operate powerfully on his bank, evidently, and there he goes.

A Mest Clear has not been through a total confrontingness. He arrived by what was a shortcut. His regained ability to postulate operates unexpectedly. He puts himself into things he hadn’t confronted yet. He doesn’t confront them. And there he goes.

So long as he doesn’t use his large power to postulate unwisely, a Mest Clear stays clear. If he does, he’s no longer clear. (Bob Ross, by the way, first mentioned this to me and further reports and observations bore it out.)

Very well — there is a state called Mest Clear. It is a shortcut that is sometimes the long way around and sometimes isn’t stable.

However, a Mest Clear, even skidded, is better off than any Release.

Because of this liability (and because of later gains I made on Theta Clearing) no HGC is now even trying for Mest Clear. It’s all Theta Clearing now. And if it’s all right with you we’ll use the word Clear to mean hereafter a Theta Clear and if we mean Mest Clear we’ll say so.

The Mest Clear, then, still has a malady — the ability to postulate his engrams into heavy play.

Pursuing clearing further in 1958 I developed by early February 1959 the Confrontingness Scale of Reality. This, I find just this week, on a specific test, is also a parallel to the Responsibility Scale.Roughly, the Confrontingness Scale of Reality goes this way from top to bottom:

• No need to Experience a Reality
• Willing to Experience a Reality
• Willing to Confront a Reality
• Willing to be Elsewhere from a Specific Reality
• Willing to Not-Is a Reality (invisible field)
• Willing to Screen a Reality (puts black curtain over it or self)
• Willing to Dub-In a Reality
• Willing to Figure-Figure on a Reality
• Willing to Figure-Figure on a Dubbed-In Reality

Knowing this we see how a case behaves as we raise confrontingness on Mental Image Pictures. The person is out of valence below “Elsewhere” and not even on the right track below “Screen” (the old “Wide-Open Case”).

This was a lot of data to collide with. But being aware of the phenomenon of Mest Clear and having developed repetitive command engram running for the 5th London, I had to square around for Goal Three with techniques to run low reality for the 21st American and so found the Confrontingness Reality Scale.

All this made quite a difference in viewpoint. Things that were very vague in 1947 became very obvious to me.

A Theta Clear, then, can be defined as a person who is at cause over his own reactive bank and can create and uncreate it at will. Less accurately he is a person who is willing to experience.

Operating Thetan would be the same as always — the individual at Cause over Matter, Energy, Space, Time, Life and Form.

Theta Clear is stable. Therefore I’m not letting the HGC try for any lower state. In any event Theta Clearing is faster than Mest Clearing but not, of course, faster than Releasing. The maximum time to release a raving lunatic seems to be about 600 hours of CCH 1, 2, 3 and 4 — work, however, that we don’t do.

The maximum time to release a non-insane person by CCH 1, 2, 3 and 4 is probably around 350 hours. And sometimes this route has to be taken as in a non- consent case or a child or a very low reality case or a case that can’t or won’t talk. (CCH 1, 2, 3 and 4 on such low cases is not always successful by reason of auditing skill differences.)

The maximum time to attain a Release on a fairly low reality case is about 175 hours — usually less, using present skills or even ARC Straightwire, Fall 1951.

The maximum time to theta clear somebody from beginning to end has not been determined fully for all cases by a long ways, but early data indicates that a case with high beginning reality could make it in 75 hours of HGC auditing. As all cases addressed so far in the HGC have responded steadily (under auditing done by 21st ACC graduates) on the Reality Scale, we could assume they will all go through to Theta Clear. Some cases (one with a recent severe accident) require evidently four weeks to get up to what you and I would call responsibility and reality on these new processes — but even then the four weeks were all win and all gain. (The auditing was done by a DScn who did not attend the 21st and was only verbally coached.)

Hazarding a guess, I would say we are sooner than 500 hours on Theta Clearing from beginning to end on average cases.

So all goals listed above — examining clearing, auditor training, and broad-scale co-auditing and clearing — are a reality now, just a dozen years from my first incredulous creation of a Clear to general clearing to a stable state. Of course the first goal of examining all aspects of clearing won’t be over for another twenty years but it’s still been dented. And you’ll soon have that pleasure too, subjective or objective, on the subject of Theta Clearing.

It’s a dozen years back to 1947. It’s nine years back to Book One. But it’s only twenty-nine years back to 1931 when I first began to work at George Washington University on the subject of the mind and life. (It’s only fair to tell you that I’d already abandoned physical healing as a road in 1871 after a medical career, the only fruit of which now extant is what the medicos call Endocrinology, so that path is a little longer than we’d let on to the public.)

I’m pretty excited about all this — and comfortable. There were times when people got to jumping around so in the public prints that I figured straight jackets for reporters and Commies were more vital in our logistics than clearing. But it never entered my head to quit, not even when Time magazine divorced me from a woman I wasn’t even married to. (Invented inverted 2nd Dynamics always make more news to Luce* people than a world well and free.)

We can now do these things:

1. Theta clear people.
2. Train auditors to theta clear people. (It’s now done at new HCA level and at HCS level at the Academies in Washington and Los Angeles.)
3. Supervise HAS co-auditing clear preparation plus home co-auditing (muzzled) to prepare for clearing plus broadly practice these processes on a wide public basis.

In short, we’ve definitely won. And it won’t be long before everybody knows it. If you knew what fifty people well released by HAS co-auditing could do for Scientology in one town, you’d know we had it made.

Well, you’ll know even better subjectively soon enough.

And that’s clearing.

[*Henry R. Luce (1898-1967) was the co-founder, editor and publisher of Time magazine.]