The Minus Grade Chart

Published: Feb 5, 2014 by Joe Larabell

The Minus Grades are listed from bottom to top. One goes over each by oneself or with a friend (a good idea).

To erase your problem you first talk about it. Thus we have Verbal Tech Release, Minus Grade Zero.

After you talk about it, you have a problem. What is Ethics ((The “Ethics” division handles people who, for some reason, don’t conform to the rules.)) going to do? Thus we have Minus Grade One, Ethics Release. Now you can attack – but what, and how?

Viewpoints are constrained by overts ((An “overt” is an action detrimental to oneself or others.)) such as being on staff. So we have Minus Grade Two, Viewpoint Release.

You now have freedom of ideas. You have felt this confusion before, and the Stable Datum was the Org ((The term “org” is short for a Scientology organization.)). They would keep it until you figured it out. So, releasing the fear of change, there is Minus Grade Three, Org Release.

Rebellion against Orgs has occurred before. However, the computation is then, “Ron plus you equals O.T. ((Operating Thetan))” From here, a fountainhead of Service Facsimiles ((Mental constructs that one uses to make oneself right and others wrong.)) issues forth, making auditors, people, scholars, etc. wrong. So we have LRH ((L. Ron Hubbard)) Release as Minus Grade Four.

But if Ron is — as Ron is — how is one to get auditing? So we have Minus Grade Five, Auditing Release.

A week, or a year, without auditing, okay, but what about the eventual future? Thus the crowning Minus Grade, Six, Bridge Release.

Each Grade is listed with a Public EP ((The “end phenomenon” or ultimate result of a process.)) and a Confidential EP. You are welcome to both. The Public EP is easier to talk about to those who don’t have it. The Confidential EP is the way you can only see it when you’ve got it.

STATE	PUBLIC EP	CONFIDENTIAL EP
0. Verbal Tech Release:
	Freedom to express one's opinions and considerations about Scientology easily.	Can causatively natter about Scientology.
1. Ethics Release:
	Willingness to experience any Scientology ethics action. Awareness that one assigns one's own conditions.	(Goldenrod Release) Has the ability to get expelled or not at will.
2. Viewpoint Release:
	Freedom to hold a viewpoint different from official Scientology viewpoints.	(Other Practices Release) Can [tolerate] other practices easily.
3. Org Release:
	Ability to formulate one's own considerations, postulates, and opinions without regard to those of Scientology orgs or any persons therein.	Is no longer attached to Scientology orgs.
4. LRH Release:
	Freedom to enjoy LRH data for exactly what it is.	Can sort out LRH's tech, dramatizations, and mistakes from the written data; starts to like Ron again.
5. Auditing Release:
	Ability to have or not have auditing.	Above need to get case handled.
6. Bridge Release:
	Ready to really get better.	Knowing that the entire Bridge is available in complete and workable form.

This post was originally published as: https://larabell.org/wordpress/the-minus-grade-chart/

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Mavis (2015-10-24):
It is a policy of mine not to post conmmets from anyone who uses "anonymous" in their screen name. But that doesn't stop me from responding. I got a comment from some anonytwit saying that this post proves that Scientology isn't a religion because the Church offers two courses (out of hundreds of courses) that deal with money and finances.What utter nonesense. Firstly, What is wrong with a Church helping its members to achieve financial stability when that helps them to make spiritual progress? If you are worrying about how you are going to pay the rent or feed your family, you aren't going to have much attention left over for spiritual activities.Secondly, if people want to know what policies the Church follows in budgeting and sensibly managing parishioners donations because these policies can be applied to the finances of an individual, then why not?Really, anonytwit, you either didn't think it through, or you didn't want to. Which was it?

Joe Larabell (2015-10-25):
Wouldn't it have been more effective to respond on your own site? I doubt either of you read the original post because, if you had, you'd notice: (a) it's a parody, and (b) there's nothing in the article or the comments that mentions finances. But now that you've brought it up... In my experience, members of the Church focused more on maximizing their income than anything that I would consider "sensible management". The reason was that everyone felt pressure to start their "next level" and the mandatory donations for courses and auditing were out of reach for many members. I don't think I knew anyone, other than staff members, who hadn't tried their hand at some direct marketing scheme or another just to raise money to donate to the Church. I'm not saying that's necessarily bad -- quite a few of the people I knew eventually left the Church and used what they learned to build a reasonable life for themselves. But I don't know anyone who is actively taking courses in the Church who also has two dimes to rub together.

It’s funny how, every once in a while, if you listen to the subtle messages unfolding around you on a constant basis, you pick up on a pattern of small bits of information that seem to build into something substantial. That happened to me recently on the general topic of effortlessness. Like many would-be adepts, I have a number of daily practices that I fit into various parts of the day. Sometimes they pay off with feelings of increased awareness or energy but, if I were being totally honest, most of the time they feel like drudge-work… a part of the day that occurs more out of habit than anything else… with the basic idea being one of consistency rather than joy.

I was listening to the latest Sam Harris podcast today and ran across an interesting take on something that should be familiar to most Western Ceremonial Magicians. Eric Weinstein was talking about finding meaning in license plate numbers as he drives around (don’t we all do that when we first start on the Path?) and the way he explained it was:

"...it's important to notice what it feels like to discern meaning where there is no meaning... it's important to get in touch with the "as if madness" experience in order to guard against madness; so I'm hoping to suspend my insistence on Truth for periods of time..."

I’m not sure about the connection with madness, per-se… and I’m wondering if that wasn’t just a ploy designed to wrap up the thought before getting interrupted. I realized when he said that that another good reason for discerning meaning where there is none is to prevent intellectual ossification (my term… it didn’t appear in the podcast, as far as I know). The belief that one particular way of looking at things must serve as the filter through which we see everything else from that point forward seems to be common in most philosophies and pretty much all religions. Adherence to a strict theology makes us less able to evaluate contrary ideas on their own merit. On the other hand, by constantly playing fast and loose with one’s synaptic network, so to speak, one might stand a chance of maintaining enough mental flexibility to recognize a true Epiphany when it finally does come.

It’s ironic that avoiding intellectual ossification was one of the main points that Sam was trying to convey just moments earlier… that there’s no logical reason to use one or more points-of-view which happen to have been elaborated thousands of years ago over new points-of-view developed by one’s own reason in the present time. Of course, that’s easier said than done and when most people start on any sort of Philosophical or Spiritual Path, they’re usually not capable of the kind of deep reasoning that would discern the “true meaning” of the Universe at first glance… so we may need to use ancient philosophy and religion as a crutch for a while… in order to bootstrap our thinking to the point where we can reason with some depth on the Universe and our purpose within it. But I expect that we all have to eventually drop the rhetoric and design our own systems based on First Principles.

I was listening to an interview with the authors of the new book The Distracted Mind on NPR this morning and they touched on a favorite pet peeve of mine that centers on a basic misunderstanding of the term multitasking. According to Wikipedia, the first published use of the term “multitask” appeared in an IBM paper describing the capabilities of the IBM System/360 in 1965. Is is only recently that the term has been used in the common vernacular to refer to the apparent ability of humans to “concentrate” on more than one task at a time.