When my son was first diagnosed with Autism nearly 6 years ago, my wife and I, originally accepted it as a curse, until disregarding Official Scientific allegations about its incurability, we worked together in coming up with a Solution.
By the time my son was 3 years of age, it had become all too obvious that he was not normal. His complete absence of any perceivable social skills, his fixations on the same toys, his propensity at launching ferocious and unending tantrums for the slightest failure in complying with his desires, all pointed directly at an abnormal condition, especially when he was sharing the same room as other children.
The Movies “Mercury Rising:” and “The Rain Man” are two movies depicting Autistic behavior, the former in a child, the latter in a grown man.
The diagnosis and especially the prognosis did not sound at all promising. Second and Third Opinions, one of them from one of the leading Pediatricians in the country, only confirmed the original one. The prognosis was in all cases that my son would most certainly not be capable to attend a regular school and would never be able to lead a normal life.
My wife and I set to change all that.
BECOMING THETA THE SOLVER
Both Armed with an Intention without reservations or limitations, we set to use all the tools are disposal to prove “Science” wrong: my wife used her skills, knowledge and connections to enlist every scrap of support group, therapist and available programs. I endeavored to use the vast array of Knowledge and practical skills I had acquired in over two decades dealing with some of the most difficult cases known to Scientology and with the application of communication, and of the most advanced mental and Spiritual healing techniques ever developed on this planet.
Now, six years later my son appear to all but individuals specializing in dealing with “special Need children”, as “just another kid”. Even the Specialists tells us that our son is currently at least 80% as developed as his classmates in the “Normal school” he attends. By continuing on the same trend as he is currently, he should reach 100% and hopefully even go beyond it by the age he is ready for High School. All people who have been involved with his diagnosis, prognosis and his care now range from the utterly speechless to the greatly impressed, about the progress my son has made in the last 6 years.
Both my wife and I agree that the most significant advances and landmarks were achieved by our application of the communication formula, the entire array of TRs from TR0 to TR9, the ARC Triangle, Dianetics 55 and Grade I Technology.
For me, my 20 years of slave labor as a Scientology and Sea Org staff, with its countless 85 hour work weeks and 16 hours days, all done for little or no pay, except for Training, Processing and Knowledge and the tooth and nail struggle to overcome dozens of brutal Technical programs that seemed designed to make all but the toughest 1% fail, on that count alone, have paid off.
CORRECT APPROACH
My approach to addressing Autism has been based on the Technology developed by L.Ron Hubbard, the Axioms of Scientology and the experience acquired through 25 000 hours as a counselor (auditor).
At the bottom layer is the skill of mastering obnosis. This is harder than it sounds. It is SO EASY to make assumptions or to take something for granted. Even natural reflexes or even sometimes what is called “common sense” can be misleading or based on false Technologies, which abound on this planet.
After having spent a lot of time talking to parents of Autistic Children Parents, therapists, and other “Experts” it became quite evident that False Data Stripping on the therapist/parent should come next. False ideas to be gotten rid of are concepts that the unresponsive autistic child is “unaware” and that Enforced control (or any other form of Violence) is ever going to prove beneficial. Also false concepts about communication, life and control may require addressing as well. In Scientology Organizations Autism is often erroneously confused with PTS Type III.
The next layer consists of having a complete ability and desire to communicate with the individual without any bias of any kind and without any evaluation (even those made privately in one’s own mind). This is a true test of pure “OT communication” without any vias..
The latter is almost completely absent, even from many parents.
Contrarily to what is widely assumed, the Autistic Child is generally more aware of people’s attitudes and feelings toward him than “normal children”. I have even found this to be true in the Psychotic, which is one of the reasons that make them particularly hard to audit. There is however no link that I can establish between Psychosis and Autism, a fact that flies in the tooth of many traditional theories concerning the cause of Autism.
Perhaps it is a telepathic skill, perhaps it is an uncanny ability at perceiving others, I haven’t clearly established it at this point, but the slightest impatient or angry thought from the “therapist or “Parent” , even when duly “suppressed” is prone to be perceived by the Autistic Child. This is true, even if there is not the any seemingly perceptible sign of an ARCX or impact of that thought, or even if the child “appear unaware”. The fact is that the child is aware.
The numerous Introspection Rundowns that I delivered, many on High Profile cases, have thought me the ability to grant complete Beingness even to a raving Lunatic and to the most ferocious and spiteful critic without forming even “inner criticism” or private dismay toward the other person. The presence of those thoughts is actually out OT-TR0 and out TR0 and will to a degree or another betray the therapist and reduce his effectiveness.
Further on, the therapist or parent dealing with the Autistic Child must achieve great skills at TR-2. This goes well beyond the routine acknowledgement.
The Hallmark of an auditor with truly great TRs is to acknowledge the pc at the exact right time: not a moment too soon, not a moment too late.
In the case of the Autistic child, this is a particularly difficult challenge, because it is extremely difficult to establish the correct time. The tendency of over 90% of parents and many therapists is to acknowledge too soon or to do TR-4 prematurely. In many cases the response of the Autistic is non-verbal. It can be, at times, almost as hard to perceive an answer as it is while doing a “Comatose person assist”. It requires the patience
Another Key point that must be recognized is that the Scientology Axioms or the Basic Communication formula is that the response to a verbal command does not necessary come verbally. This is particularly true for people suffering from Autism.
BASIC MISCONCEPTION ABOUT AUTISM
Show the List of the Lower 5 grades to someone and ask him which one would parallel Autism the best.
You are likely to get a consensus about Grade Zero.
While it is true enough that Autism can be defined as an inability of the person to communicate with his environment, the truth of the matter is that it in the case of Autism it is not the Thetan (or Being) who has trouble communicating, it is the Thetan + Body that has trouble. This difficulty is perceived soon enough by the Being and THAT becomes a PROBLEM. Beings (thetans) are not natively Autistic, but some children are definitely born that way.
This is a common problem with most therapies on this planet. They seek to address what the practitioner think is wrong with the person, not what the person truly sees as wrong with himself.
Out of communication-ness is what bothers parents and therapists about Autistic children.
To the child, he knows damn well he has a problem with communication. Only a complete boob would be unaware of that fact. He wants to communicate using the “via” of his body and he cant. That becomes a PROBLEM.
The expert application of CCHs (Which stands for COMMUNICATION, CONTROL and HAVINGNESS processes) and similar processes based on positive control will also go a long way toward helping the child.
In the case of the Autistic Child there will be a definite tendency to do things on automatic. As long as the child is doing the process on Automatic, no benefit is to be expected. The ideal auditor will have the ability to project intention (the Original OT VII dealt with that), be a master at TR-8 and be able to get the child to execute each command in a new unit of time.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hbLPEsdFmI]
KEY TO SUCCESS
To succeed, in addition to applying the rules set above, the following must be done:
1- Work Intensively with the child. Except for the every beginning, anything under two hours a day will produce negligible results. The most lasting results are accomplished when a minimum of 15 hours a week are spent personally with the child. Weeks of 25-35 hours produced the improvements. As the child reaches a new plateau, he may stall, or even begin to regress. When this occurs, it is best to take a break for several weeks and let the child adjust to his new level of awareness until he is comfortable. After several years, as the child improves and matures, the amount of work done can gradually drop, as long as the child is continuing to make good progress.
2- Alternate objective type auditing with learning and duplication drills. For each hour of objectives type auditing, dedicate at least two to learning, duplication drills and therapies. Depending on the child condition, it may prove difficult to run more than 15-20 minutes of objective processing in one stretch. In the case of my child, in 6 years he has received over 200 hours of Objectives and probably four times as much of therapy and learning and duplication drills.
3- While it is best to limit the number of therapists as much as possible, a certain degree of change is inevitable, due to therapists and programs change and uncontrollable factors. In my case, I was able to limit the number of therapists (including myself and my wife) to less than 5 per year.
THE PROGRAM
There are literally hundreds of Objective type processes. They are described in the “CCHs” issues, the ones on Havingness and those on ‘Assists”.
Some simple processes (Havingness, Locationals, Orientation processes) can be run hundreds of times.
After the child has completed the standard battery of objectives, light straight-wire (Recall) can be attempted and will produce good results.
EPILOGUE
My son is now 8 years old. He can recall incidents up to the time he was three years old.
As far as the cause of Autism, I can’t say at this point. What little I did of research I did has established firmly that my son was never exposed to any of the substances or physical factors that have been associated with Autism from Mercury to Vaccines.
A non-Scientologese version of this article is being published in a number of specialized publications dealing with Autism.
Pierre Ethier
