Responsibility - The Bottom
Line of Case?
By Leonard Dunn, England

WHEN A CLIENT of mine attained a present life case completion, as formulated at the end of my last article in IVy No 23, the final item to be handled to bring about the breakthrough was an aspect of responsibility. The same was true of my own case and I think that this may very well be so for many others too, since responsibility seems to be the most difficult thing to put fully into practice.

The dictionary has several definitions of the word: being in control, being accountable for one's actions and decisions, being the agent or cause of some action, taking rational decisions without supervision and being able to meet one's financial obligations.

It is obviously true to state that one's degree of accepting and taking responsibility will be reflected by one's position on the tone scale operating at the time of the decision. Conversely the attitude to an individual in regard to responsibility is a clear indication of his true tone level despite appearances to the contrary.

One form of overwhelm in TROM¹ is the forcing of another to accept a responsibility that he does not desire, to prevent him taking responsibility that he does desire, or to make him accept that he is responsible for something when, in truth, it is not his responsibility. The being can be particularly vulnerable in regard to responsibilities shared with others in a joint action.

What is one's responsibility? I wrote of this in my article in IVy No 18, Page 16, so will not repeat it fully now but just give a few examples. As always, one's actual intention is what counts here. I once said to my sister-in-law that what one gets from life is in direct proportion to what one puts into it in quality and quantity. To me this was so obvious as to be axiomatic. I learned some time later from another member of the family that she had felt badly upset by what I had said. I had no intention of creating this, but, on the contrary, wished to help her to understand a situation that concerned her. Her reaction to it was, therefore, her responsibility and not mine. Actually, on looking back, it was an invitation to her to start taking some responsibilities for her own life, and considering her tone level this was very unlikely to happen. I didn't know as much then as I do now.

Intentional harm
By way of contrast, if ones sets out with the intention of harming another then the backlash from this action will be in accordance with the Law of Cause and Effect, That Which One Sows, One Reaps. The actual truth is that one cannot harm another unless he has created the idea that he can be harmed. This, of course, is his responsibility. It follows logically that one cannot be harmed unless one seeks to be so for the sake of experience which may be a non-survival way of balancing up one's past overts. That one is solely and totally responsible for everything that happens in one's life by virtue of one having created it, for whatever reason, is perhaps the most difficult aspect of responsibility to understand, accept and put into practice in one's life. It was this aspect that brought about my own present life case completion.

Once this is done, my experience has been a vast expansion of understanding and knowledge. Being difficult to accept it is not all that surprising. Consequently many will raise every possible argument against its being so.

The truth itself is quite simple but, as Dennis Stephens said to me on his last tape before relinquishing his body 'truths are always simple, complexities are just playing games'. This leads to the rather startling concept that there are really no such thing as accidents. All occurs within the workings of the Laws of Life which I wrote about in IVy No 18, already cited.

Feeling guilty
LRH said that to accept responsibility for anything one had only to admit openly that he had done that which was created. Once this was done the incident disappears by virtue of being as-ised. I don't know if this is necessarily true. It will occur when responsibility has really been fully taken but just saying so may not be enough in all cases.

A lady once wrote to me saying that she was certain that she had taken responsibility for that which she had done some thirty years previously because she still felt guilty about it. Considering that one has done wrong is not necessarily the same thing as taking responsibility, especially if, secretly, one still justifies the offence. When she was eighteen she had tried to take an older married man away from his wife and family but had failed to do so. I think that she regretted the failure rather than the act. The interesting thing is that at the time of her writing to me her husband, who was about the same age as herself wanted to leave her and go off with another woman who was much younger than himself. She now told me that she herself, considered that she was totally responsible for this happening which, of course, was not true either, even though it was the working out of the law of cause and effect. This was a question of shared responsibility with the husband and his lover having their own responsibilities in regard to the situation. Later I heard from her that she had forced him to return to her by some sort of emotional blackmail.

She had, in terms of TROM, created an overt by overwhelming her opponent, her husband, by an unfair and undesirable way of winning the game that they were playing. I predicted that the probable result would be a heavy resentment on his part. Unfortunately I didn't hear from her again so do not know what eventually happened.

Shared responsibilities
There are many situations where shared responsibilities occur and I have mentioned above a very simple example of this but the scale can be very much larger in its scope and in the number of people involved. Consider the complexities of responsibilities in regard to a war, for example or the destruction of the earth's atmosphere by increasing pollution. The complexity of this means that it is a game with no simple solutions to it so that each one involved, voluntarily or involuntarily, must assess his own degree of responsibility in regard to it. To simplify the solution a little in regard to one's own measure of responsibility one must look at one's own intentions and actions or inactions in regard to the situation and act or not act accordingly.

LRH said that the being has two basic rights, the right to his own sanity and the right to leave a game. He didn't however, say how this could be achieved. The level of one's sanity is largely determined by the games in which one is involved so that the two rights are basically one. Firstly one has to consider what self-determined and pan-determined postulates are involved and then to counter an unwanted threat of overwhelm from an opposing pan determined postulate, by finding and applying the complementary postulate that will take one out of the game.

Possible lines of action
Here is the outline of a tool for counselling or for running TROM. The former will have the wording 'Has another forced upon you ...?' The latter 'Is there a game where you were overwhelmed with ...?' Questions could be :

1. Accept a responsibility that you did not desire.
2. Prevent you from accepting a responsibility that you desire.
3. Accept as yours a responsibility that wasn't yours.
4. Be irresponsible.
5. Feel guilty.

Each question to be run on all four flows in order to cover every aspect of it.

This I used with the client mentioned at the beginning of this article but found that the use of the four flows on 1. was all that was needed to complete the case by reason of the cognition which then occurred. Later I told her that in reality this conclusion was not an end but the beginning of ever increasing knowledge, understanding and opportunities . She has already found this happening.

The Editor, Antony Phillips (internet address: ant@jacome.ping.dk), does have an Internet line for TROM and allied topics where opinions and experiences can be shared. He will readily give you details of it. If, like myself, you are not into having the necessary computer you can always get in touch with me via himself or, for matters regarding TROM, to Judith Methven who has had considerable experience with TROM. I am moderately well versed in the theory but have had no practical experience since my case completion occurred on a totally different route, which took very much longer.

The price to be paid
When one lives to the best of one's ability and having regard for the Laws of Life, then, as I have mentioned, new knowledge just flows in and understanding increases. For one at this level the price is one that he is quite happy to pay. This price has been expressed in the injunction, 'as you have freely received, so freely give'. I have told my clients that there is no need for my personal recompense but just pass on to others that which you have learnt and tell them to do the same. It works! LRH himself said that ideally scientology should be given freely but then he went on to find every reason why it couldn't be. That, perhaps, was the beginning of the failure of the C. of S.

The way ahead
Whilst I was thinking about the writing of this article it occurred to me that those who are closely tied up with any 'ism, 'ology, or group association may find it more difficult to reach a present life time case completion. This is because too close an association with such organisations tends to impose limitations of thought and actions. In the course of time they all are liable to deteriorate to the level of 'the only way'. Such an association may indeed be very valuable during one's lower levels in one's development but when they become restrictive, it is time to leave them. I went from christian to spiritualist to scientologist to the unnamed freedom that I now enjoy. This freedom I have found to be essential for me as I can not be restricted by others' set beliefs. Once one puts a label on any sort of activity, it can tend to cause it to become limiting, especially if it involves creating an organisation.

Since the separation of the many old time scientologists from the C of S many have found or created new forms of therapy and counselling. To me it is axiomatic that no one way will be right for everyone but that each of them will meet the needs of those who are able to gain from what it offers. This growth and expansion is especially true of the USA as a glimpse through the adverts in The Free Spirit will show. The only thing here that is not to my taste is that some of them still offer their knowledge and services only to those who can afford high prices. I feel that this in itself is highly likely in the course of time to cause the founders to lose their games. Remember the effect that this eventually had on LRH.

Others have offered their new-found discoveries for no more than, or just a little over, the cost of reproducing them. My personal knowledge of them has been Geoffrey Filbert with his Excalibur Revisited, dennis stephens with TROM, and Flemming Funch with his two volumes of essays and his latest work Transformational Dialogues. There are undoubtedly others but I have no first hand knowledge of them. It does seem to me that these are the ones who are on the right and most survival path.

In the sixties my wife and I were on holiday on the Isle of Man and visited the Witchcraft museum there. We had a long chat with the owners, a very fine couple, who were the priestess and priest of the local coven. They knew about scientology and when I mentioned that I was a scientologist they were horrified that scientology should charge for its services as they gave theirs freely and, as they said, charged no more than the price of a cup of tea.

A further warning is that one shouldn't make or imply false claims or unattainable results. In the current edition of The Auditor at the time of writing there is a banner headline in red: "Make it to full OT:- do the Saint Hill Special Briefing Course at Ron's home". This implies that doing so will make one full OT as defined by LRH. I have never heard of anyone achieving that as yet and I am sure that we would have, had it occurred. Irene Mumford (Mitchell) claimed that Dianasis would do this but just before she left her body she said that she didn't think this could be attained while still in a physical body.

Let me end by saying quite briefly that if one does not pass on freely that which one has received, then the source and channel of that knowledge is very likely to dry up. On the other hand, when one passes on one's knowledge and experiences freely there is a never ending stream of new concepts and the understanding of life that accompanies this. This is the open channel to Spirit, Intuition or whatever you chose to call it, but once you've experienced you can never doubt its reality and value.

1 TROM - The Resolution of Mind, by Dennis Stephens, referred to in earlier IVy, amongst them IVy 17, p. 23.