Rational Inquiry Made Easy! Part 1

Here is Part 1 of my super-simplified version of Rational Inquiry. It is based on the patent filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Keith Raniere.

APPLICATION NUMBER: 09/654,423 FILING DATE: September 01, 2000 For: RATIONAL INQUIRY METHOD

1

Rational Inquiry is a method for detecting and removing ‘disintegrations.’ When the disintegration is uncovered, a student has another belief to rely on, as opposed to fighting for what she believes in.

Rational inquiry teaches that the more integrated an individual, the more consistent her beliefs and behavior will be. The more consistent, the better she will be. Contradiction and inconsistency in behavior is a sign of non-integration.

Rational inquiry creates integrations so people become more consistent in their beliefs and behavior. When integration occurs, meaning changes. Rational inquiry modifies the meaning of stimulus to the student and changes an individual’s beliefs.  Integration provides a shift in how people do things. Rational inquiry changes the way individuals experience the world.

2

The Rational Inquiry method is presented in a seminar with a teacher. Rational inquiry includes questions and answers. The teacher asks questions and leads students to the ‘correct’ answers. The seminar also includes coaches to lead small discussion groups, leading students to ‘correct’ answers.

There are rules and rituals including the ESP handshake for students to develop a deep appreciation of ESP.  Students wear sashes in different colors signifying rank based on their contribution to the ESP mission.

A student builds ‘inner independence’ by giving tribute to those who contributed to who the student is.  The pictures of Keith Raniere and Nancy Salzman are displayed to teach students to give them tribute.

All people entering the seminar are required to remove their shoes. Students bow when entering and leaving a session. At the beginning and end of a session, the highest rank calls the group together with the ESP handclap. The class stands, repeats the handclap in unison, and bows to the person leading the session. The leading person then returns the bow.

A twelve point mission statement is recited.

3

Here are a few Rational Inquiry terms and some of what they purport to teach:

Taking responsibility is being ‘at cause.’

The range of emotions. including ‘positive’ as well as ‘negative’ emotions, is one’s ’emotional bandwidth.’

Among emotions there are ‘correspondence control emotions’, ‘vested interest emotions’, and ‘immature emotions.’  Correspondence control emotions are used to try to control others. Vested interest emotions come from beliefs that a student wants to keep because changing them would require a change in behavior or beliefs that the student does not want to make.  Immature emotions are emotions that a student has not identified as being correspondence control or vested interest emotions.

ESP teaches ‘rapport’ and ‘excited state’. ‘Pacing’ is matching or mirroring a student’s behavior to control them. ‘Leading’ is moving the student’s communication in the desired direction, after establishing rapport.

Coaches lead students to realize what persistence is with respect to ‘inner word.’

4.

Students are taught how to become aware of their ‘intensity level’ and learn to increase it. The coaches lead students how to achieve ‘intensity and power.’  The ‘fight or flight response’ is the body’s natural mechanism when something from the outside world signals the need to respond quickly.  This is experienced as fear or anger and triggers adrenaline surge in the body.

A ‘peak intensity state’ is something one experiences if her life depended on it (fight or flight).  This state is normally momentary but with Rational Inquiry practices she can build emotional endurance and the ‘power state’, an ’emotional state of optimal physical and emotional readiness and strength’ that can be accessed at will where a student can harness her adrenaline.

‘The switch’ is a term used to describe the mechanism that turns off rational control of a student’s emotions and behaviors, moving the student into lower brain fight or flight  activity.

A trigger is a stimulus-response mechanism. Changing a student’s physiology can change the student’s emotional state.

5

Giving and taking with consistency is integrity. Giving and taking that are inconsistent is not in integrity. Integrity is about being consistent, not about being honest.

Ethics are ‘consistent internal guide.’ When one violates one’s ethics ‘the contradiction causes fragmentation and lowers self-esteem.’

Good is ‘pro-survival and builds value’. Bad is ‘counter survival and destroys value’.  Evil comes from intelligence.

Coaches lead students to accept ESP definitions of ‘parasite/producer strategies.’ Parasite strategies keep people dependent and lower self-esteem.  [Critics say ESP employs parasite strategies.] The objective of parasite strategies is to obligate without consent or with misunderstood consent.

The students are taught about punishment.  Students explore forgiveness. Forgiving with integrity means that a student believes in punishment that ‘fits the sentence in a consistent ethical evaluation.’

The students are taught that a ‘shifter’s objective’ is to devalue all that is good. The way people take something that is valuable and destroy it is through ‘value inversion’ or taking something that is good and making it seem bad.  [Critics say Keith Raniere is a classic shifter by his own definition.]

Edification is speaking highly of another. Students are taught it is wrong not to edify Keith.

Students are taught to identify the key elements of being successful according to ESP along with a unique process to evaluate their personal skills, a fair market value of these skills, and how to increase that value for the purpose of creating a complete success plan, as defined by ESP.

6.

Therapy by exploration of meaning or EM technology includes taking what a person says, and finding the true ‘deep meaning.’  The student learns that her beliefs are assumptions that she accepts as reality.  Her beliefs have a certain rigidity causing an inflexibility in her behavior. EM technology facilitates awareness of disintegrations allowing an individual to integrate the awareness; and remove the former, limiting belief.

This process leads to uncovering disintegrations.

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7

The student is taught that ‘inconsistent internal existence’ is upheld by her ‘postulates.’ The state of “what is” requires the student to utilize content as opposed to her process. It reconciles freewill and deterministic views of human existence.

Her inconsistent internal existence is manifest in bodily function; intellectual function; emotional function; or combinations and can be manifest in a phobia or disease.

Rational inquiry defines limitations to ‘discover human potential.’ Rational Inquiry provides ‘consistent human internal existence’ and ‘consistent reality.’

Stay tuned for Part 2.

To read the entire patent application click here: 2003 05 26 patent application for rational-inquiry

Frank Parlato