The Scientology Punchline: The Clear Cognition

One of the important steps in the Church of Scientology is attaining the state of Clear, which means that you are no longer burdened by engrams, or painful memories which cause aberrated behaviour.

Scientologists are taught that these engrams are stored in the reactive mind, and surface when you are in situations similar to when the engrams were created. By running out the engrams, through a process known as auditing, you get rid of your reactive mind and become Clear.

When a person becomes Clear, he or she is supposed to arrive independently at a certain idea, or cognition, known as the Clear Cognition. When he or she states this idea to the auditor, the person is given the Clear Certainty Rundown, and if this process is deemed successful, he or she attests to the state of Clear.

What is the Clear Cognition? According to several former members who reached the state of Clear, the idea may be phrased in a number of ways, but the gist of it is that the person was mocking up his or her reactive mind, and has stopped doing so.

But what does this mean? First, we need to know what "mock up" means. Here is the definition from Scientology's own dictionary of technical terms:

MOCK-UP, v. 1. to get an imaginary picture of. (COHA, p. 100)
--n. 1. "mock-up" is derived from the World War II phrase which indicated a symbolized weapon or area of attack. Here, it means in essence, something which a person makes up himself. (Scn Jour, Iss 14-G) 2. a mock-up is more than a mental picture; it is a self-created object which exists as itself or symbolizes some object in the mest universe. It is a thing which one can be. (Scn Jour, Iss 14-G) 3. a full perceptic energy picture in three dimensions created by the thetan and having location in space and time. Now, that's the ideal definition. A mock-up is something the thetan puts up and says is there. That's what a mock-up is. (9ACC-24, 5501C14) 4. we call a mental image picture a mock-up when it is created by the thetan or for the thetan and does not consist of a photograph of the physical universe. (FOT, pp. 56-57) 5. any knowingly created mental picture that is not part of a time track. (HCOB 15 May 63)

That last definition introduces a very important element. Here is the quote from the referenced HCOB, entitled "The Time Track and Engram Running by Chains, Bulletin 1", with all emphasis as in the original:

As we can see here, Hubbard stresses that a mock-up is knowingly created, and it is not part of the "time track", or the sequence of events that have actually happened to the thetan (soul). It is differentiated, within the same document, from a facsimile, which is a mental "photograph" of an event that actually occurred or a thing that actually exists.

We now return to the Clear Cognition, armed with this definition. A mock-up is a mental image picture a thetan knowingly puts up and says is there, but which does not consist of a "photograph" of the physical universe. Therefore, according to the Clear Cognition, the reactive mind did not exist, and it was the person himself or herself who knowingly put up the mental image picture of one.

But here is the important part: the reactive mind is a concept of Dianetics and Scientology. Preclears are told that they have a reactive mind, and taught how to begin getting rid of it. They only begin "mocking it up" after they learn of its purported existence, often spending thousands of dollars to get rid of a nonexistent thing which they had no reason to believe even existed until they encountered Dianetics and Scientology.

And that is the sad punchline of Scientology: that Scientologists spend years, and often quite a great deal of money, to rid themselves of something which they never had until they joined Scientology.