Don’t Read This Book

Those who ought to steer clear of the book Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, available next week on Amazon Books:

Folks who consider Scientology their faith and who are unsettled by or uncomfortable with anything that might rattle their beliefs.

Those who wish to live in the comfort of having established who’s and why’s for all of Scientology’s travails.

Folks who wish to remain comfortably numb about the many sacred, yet apparently invisible, elephants in the Scientology room.

Those who might feel threatened by losing their adopted bogeymen that explain everything.  

Angry Scientologists who find comfort in clinging to fixed ideas about the subject.

Angry ex-Scientologists who find comfort in clinging to fixed ideas about the subject.

Folks who just have to have an enemy in order to be happy.

Those who bristle at the notion that Scientologists ought to integrate, evolve and transcend.

If you fit into one or more of the above categories, Memoirs probably ain’t your cup of tea.

 

Can I Get A Witness?

At its core Scientology revolves around the auditing process.  The word auditing comes from the Latin root audire which means to listen, or to listen and compute.  The entire purpose of a Scientology auditor is to provide a construct through which an individual may look at his or her life in such an honest fashion that that which is viewed no longer has a hold on that person.  Scientology postulates that ‘charge’ (mental energy) ‘erases’ through that process.  One could just as easily postulate that one’s witnessed experience objectifies.  That is, one’s experience moves from the subjective (part of, and thus affecting, oneself) to the objective.  In that construct, matters of the mind that tend to drive one on an automatic basis are no longer hidden and automatic.  Objectivized matter of the mind is no more capable of driving you than any other person or idea that you can clearly see as apart from yourself. Your own choice in the matter of what to do, what to choose, what to pursue and what to react to is restored to you.  Each time one witnesses in this wise one recognizes that much more the true nature of self, apart from, and thus less subject to, matter, energy, space and time.  Witnessing led the Buddha toward recognizing the impermanent nature of matter, energy, space and time.

It is my view that any time devoted to honestly viewing the content of your mind, your experience, is progress in moving the external world back out of one’s head where it no longer drives you.  There used to be a saying in Scientology, ‘any auditing is better than no auditing.’  No matter what processes, what grades, what levels attained or not, every hour spent objectivizing the subjective is net gain.  There is so much emphasis included in Scientology about the attainment of grades and levels, and purported permanent states of consciousness that the failure to attain very high on the Scientology Bridge (the chart of progressive grades and levels of spiritual attainment) tends to serve to invalidate the work a person did execute in witnessing his or her own mind.

Scientology contains so much dogma asserting superiority to and difference from all other forms of witnessing that people tend to lose site that they spent a tremendous amount of time and effort doing just that, witnessing.  I use the term ‘witnessing’ because it is a generic term that captures what is at the heart of all effective psychotherapeutic and spiritual practices.  Most forms of meditation (Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, et al), most forms of psychotherapy, and Scientology too, create a desirable effect to the extent the individual applying it fully, honestly views the mind.

Any meditator who discounts effective psychotherapy that accomplishes the same result as meditation, or any psychotherapist who discounts effective meditation that accomplishes the same result as psychotherapy, is as narrow minded and prejudiced as any Scientologist who discounts meditation and psychotherapy wholesale.   Corollary, any former Scientologist who discounts his own blood, sweat and tears exerted in confronting his own demons with Scientology is selling himself short.  Witnessing is witnessing.  Meditation, effective psychotherapy, and Scientology are all different methods of helping – and are workable to the degree they allow –  an individual to witness his own mind and its experiences.

Do yourself a favor.  Try to consider that someone who has spent time in other similar practices has spent time witnessing just as you did in Scientology.  See if that doesn’t open up an interesting world of increased affinity, reality and communication.  Just as importantly, validate the time and effort you put in likewise.  You might find you are in better shape than you have previously permitted yourself to believe.

Scientology in Germany

Please read about and see the New Germany Independent Scientology Center (click link)- translation of text below:

On April 27 our opening party was an overwhelming success. 36 guests filled our new courseroom with a tremendous amount of theta, much more than I have ever witnessed during a comparable event. Scientologists – some had not met in 15 years – were in a real extasy of communication.

We had guests from one half of Germany. A few friends from Ron’s Org attended, too. Although we are completely separate groups we were not at all competition minded. Our center delivers auditing up to Clear and auditor training including the solo course. We use course materials produced before the alleged “golden age of tech”.

Our staff – Rita, Maria, Georg and I (Klaus) – would like to say a big thank you to all friends who had been present, whether physically or spiritually. Your huge amount of positive postulates and theta will be with our new group! We hope we will be able to go on with further renovations quickly. The rooms areavailable and as soon as they are needed we will start !

ARC

Klaus Weigel

PS.: The people on the photos have all agreed to be shown here. But there were some more guests on our party.

Becoming Clear

The communication training routines in Scientology are very much downplayed in my opinion.  Supervised with the requisite attention and emphasis, in and of themselves they are a tremendous advance toward the state of Clear.  Ron Hubbard at one time made that point rather plain.

From L. Ron Hubbard’s lecture Scientology and Effective Knowledge (15 July 1957):

I woke up eventually to discover that these training drills (communication training routines) all by themself, practiced with sufficient rigor and coached well enough and instructed well enough, were steps on the road to Clear, all by themselves, without any further processing…

…And where training and processing processes are successful, they lead toward a straighter communication.  And therefore, the road out is marked by simplicity and direct observation….

…The whole subject opens up at its inception with just this: that the simplicity of observation, the simplicity of communication itself and only itself, is functional and will take Man from the bottom to the top.  And the only thing I am trying to teach you is look.

Provided one approached the training routines with the above in mind, and not as a bait and switch toward dependence on years and years of costly and complex psychotherapy or membership in some true-believer group, one might avoid the pitfalls Ron warned of in the same lecture:

Now, that’s the first thing we must know about Scientology is that by the attainment of a simplicity we accomplish a benefit. By the attainment of a simplicity, we accomplish a benefit.  By the invitation of or involvement in a complexity, we accomplish the unfathomable and create a mystery.  We sink Man into a priesthood, we sink him into a cult.

It is interesting to note that Taoists had a similar philosophical view about becoming clear more than two millenia ago.   From Lieh-Tzu: A Taoist Guide to Practical Living (translations of ancient Taoist texts) by Eva Wong:

Those who are involved are muddled; those who watch are clear.

There was a man who was so intent on avenging his father’s death that he could think of nothing else.  He was so engrossed in making plans for his revenge that he forgot he was holding his walking stick upside down.  He leaned on his staff and the sharp point punctured his cheek.  One of his friends said, ‘He is so deep in his own thoughts that everything around him is a blur.’

There was another man who was obsessed with getting rich.  One day he went into the bank and tried to walk off with several bags of gold.  The guards caught him immediately.  A passerby said, ‘only a fool would think of robbing a bank in the presence of armed guards.’  The man said, ‘my mind was so set on the gold I didn’t see the guards.’

You often see people stumbling into walls or stepping into holes because they are so occupied by their thoughts that they don’t see what’s in front of them.  When we are too involved in a situation, we can’t see straight, and things that are obvious and clear to bystanders are a blur to us.  This is very dangerous.

The training routines that Ron devised, well supervised by those not caught in the rapture/delusion of complex scripture, go a long way in attaining that ability to be clear.  A handy stable datum to help steer one clear of the ‘priesthood’ and ‘cult’ aspects of Scientology is to question anything you encounter that doesn’t seem to contribute to this:  And the only thing I am trying to teach you is look.

Total Certainty – Really?

Reference: What We Are Doing Here

Some people get mixed up in Scientology with its sometimes obsessive attempted attainment toward and assertion of  ’total certainty.’   It would seem such folk may have jettisoned some basic Scientology axioms and laws in pursuit of later claims and emphases.  Consequently, I find a lot of former and independent Scientologists are mixed up on the Know-to-Mystery scale.  They can’t seem to understand why it is that ‘Not Know’ is the second highest rung on the scale.  This conundrum was addressed in an earlier post, What We Are Doing Here.   Of late, we have been examining the subject of judgmentalism on this blog – most recently its relationship to sociopathy, The Psychopath Test.   In reviewing one of the texts from the recommended reading section of this blog, The Sociopath Next Door, I came across a passage that sheds a little light on this subject of ‘total certainty’ particularly as it relates to judgmentalism.  It gives some idea why it can seem untoward or uncomfortable or even anti-survival to obsess with attainment of  total certainty.

From Chapter Five, why conscience is partially blind:

One of the more striking characteristics of good people is that they are almost never completely sure that they are right.  Good people question themselves constantly, reflexively, and subject their decisions and actions to the exacting scrutiny of an intervening sense of obligation rooted in their attachments to other people.  The self-questioning of conscience seldom admits absolute certainty into the mind, and even when it does, certainty feels treacherous to us, as if it may trick us into punishing someone unjustly, or performing some other unconscionable act.  Even legally, we speak of ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ rather than of complete certainty. 

The Psychopath Test

References:

Judgment

Sitting In Judgment

I am adding The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson to my recommended reading list.   This short excerpt from What Is Wrong With Scientology explains why:

Ironically, perhaps the best way to understand the most fundamental flaw in the Scientology system of dealing with the influence of sociopaths is to read a book that touches on corporate Scientology’s vehement, costly protests against the alleged failure of the field of psychiatry to do the same.  In The Psychopath Test, Ronson chronicles a member of corporate Scientology’s Citizens Commission on Human Rights (a group established to “clean up the field of mental healing”) and his quest to free an allegedly falsely labeled psychopath from a United Kingdom mental institution.

Ronson becomes fascinated with the apparent terrible injustice of “Tony’s” (pseudonym) incarceration.  As Ronson researches the matter in greater depth, he comes to find the Bob Hare psychopath test, or checklist, rather rational and workable.  The more time Ronson spends with Tony, the more he begins to doubt the fellow’s sanity against the psychopath test.  Out of curiosity, Ronson puts the test to use on a businessman who is unrelated to the matter of Tony.  When he completes the analysis, Ronson shares his condemning findings with a fellow journalist.  His colleague points out that Ronson only spent a couple hours with the target, and perhaps his journalistic “skill” of catching a target out on lurid admissions, and his preconceived notions of guilt, played a part in his finding.  Ronson, in his honest and entertaining style, rides the rollercoaster of enthusiastic certainty to self-deprecating doubt in his own and others’ use of the psychopath test.

Ultimately, Ronson causes the reader to consider that while there is a tremendous, accurate compilation of information that helps us detect sociopathy, can any one of us be trusted with the power to judge and sentence anyone else against that information?  Are any of us worthy of the God-like power to condemn another to a life of quarantine and isolation?  Do we, in wielding such a powerful tool of knowledge, tend to take on the characteristics of the sociopath when we sit in judgment?

Ronson seems to wind up in much the same place L. Ron Hubbard did when he published this statement: “I have come to find that man cannot be trusted with justice.”  While Hubbard persevered and constructed an elaborate system of justice intended to overcome that fatal flaw of humankind, for whatever reason, his lack of trust was proved justified by his own creation.

Ultimately, though, L. Ron Hubbard said that the only guarantee that one would not wind up on the receiving end of a sociopath’s club was to understand how to identify one in the first place.  And that conclusion was echoed by Martha Stout.  The founder of Scientology and his long-time nemeses in the field of mental health ended up agreeing on one unifying principle: When it comes to the havoc others can wreak upon one’s life, the best protection is the truth – know it, and it shall set you free.

And so my recommended remedy in dealing with the very real problem of sociopathy, or the suppressive person, is as follows:

• Learn for oneself how to evaluate the worthiness and value of one’s fellows.
• Never forfeit your judgment to some authority, no matter how apparently wise and judicious, when it comes to judging the merits of others.
• Strive to be worthy of the trust of those you care about.

 

Walking the Walk

If you have not already seen the Oscar-winning documentary on this extraordinary fellow, Searching for Sugarman, I highly recommend it.  You might learn a little something about walking the walk and the Tao.

The Tao of Physics

Scientology technology is powerful  in lifting an individual from being effect up to being more at cause.

In accomplishing that Scientology focuses heavily on, and makes great use of,  Newtonian classic physics  principles.  Unfortunately, ultimately that world view tends to lock a Scientologist under a glass ceiling of sorts to further transcendence of awareness and qualities of equanimity.

Evaluated against the very axioms (including The Factors and Logics) Scientology is predicated upon one could easily reckon that to be the case.  Paradoxically, Scientology contains laws of interpretation that make one of its own Logics, critical to growth and transcendence, forbidden practice:

Logic 8:  A Datum can be evaluated only by a datum of comparable magnitude.

Thus, the first comprehensive fusion of Eastern thought with Western science ultimately disallowed study of either in the continuing search for truth and higher levels of consciousness.

A very good primer for a) evaluating what is valuable about one’s Scientology experience and what about Scientology makes it so effective, and b) beginning the process of transcending  from where Scientology might leave one in terms of consciousness, is the book The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra (recommended to me by the irrepressible Scott Campbell).

Even though the book was first published in 1975, and it has been followed by dozens of authors treading similar ground of analyzing breakthroughs in sub atomic physics to Eastern wisdom and consciousness, I have found it to be the most thorough, layman-friendly piece on the subject to date.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who has experienced Scientology.   Most particularly to those who have completed the Scientology OT Levels, started the Scientology OT Levels, or who have any intention of pursuing them in the future.  It will provide vital context for your experience.   It might help prevent you from becoming fixated, and set up for a big lose, on the quest for total causation.  And it might help to take you to higher levels of consciousness not contemplated or permitted in Scientology (even through consequent practice of Scientology techniques).

As I have noted before, I believe that it is essential to the transcendence of Scientology to rise above the fixation on attaining to the permanent state of causation.  The fixation can ultimately result in a painful state of effect or an arrogant state of hallucinatory cause.  In either event, it parks one in any quest for continuing transcendence to higher states of being.

Here is an excerpt from the Tao of Physics that gives a brief description how the confluence of Eastern wisdom and Western science supports that view:

Many of the Eastern teachers emphasize that thought must take place in time, but that vision can transcend it.  ‘Vision’, says Govinda, ‘is bound up with a space of a higher dimension, and therefore timeless.’  The space-time of relativistic physics is a similar timeless space of a higher dimension.  All events in it are interconnected, but the connections are not causal.  Particle interactions can be interpreted in terms of cause and effect only when the space-time diagrams are read in a definite direction, e.g. from the bottom to the top (note: space-time diagrams are explained earlier in the book). When they are taken as four-dimensional patterns without any definite direction of time attached to them, there is no ‘before’ and no ‘after’, and thus no causation.

Similarly, the Eastern mystics assert that in transcending time, they also transcend the world of cause and effect.  Like our ordinary notions of space and time, causation is an idea which is limited to a certain experience of the world and has to be abandoned when this experience is extended.  In the words of Swami Vivekananda,

 Time, space and causation are like the glass through which the Absolute is seen…In the Absolute there is neither time, space nor causation.

The Eastern spiritual traditions show their followers various ways of going beyond the ordinary experience of time and of freeing themselves from the chain of cause and effect – from the bondage of karma, as the Hindus and Buddhists say.  It has therefore been said that Eastern mysticism is a liberation from time.  In a way the same may be said of relativistic physics.

Ron the Integral Thinker

I finally got around to watching several of the interviews of Phil Spickler that are posted on You Tube. What a breath of fresh air. A wise man who evolved through Scientology and lived long enough to speak about it with measure, intelligence, compassion and hard won experience. Clearly, Phil doesn’t have a horse in the race nor any agenda other than sharing his experience and what he took from it for the purpose of helping others. I am including one video in particular here where he and I share some observations. I am going to tell a back story to demonstrate why I think it speaks to Phil’s credibility and teaches an important lesson about Scientology.  Phil and I have never met, spoken nor corresponded.

For the past several months I have been studying sources that L. Ron Hubbard once credited as being influential on his thinking. Several of the critical ones he later eschewed and effectively denied had any connection or relationship to the development of Dianetics and Scientology. From my reading, it appeared to me that some indeed had little influence. That was particularly true for some of the more sensational ones that certain journalists have obsessed with because it made good copy, such as Aleister Crowley (note: in my final analysis though, Crowley’s influence was a dastardly one). However, after reading Alfred Korzybski, the founder of General Semantics, I found far more influence than Ron ever let onto, even if he consistently made more references to Korzybski than just about anyone else.

Korzybski’s 1933 opus Science and Sanity is as close to a template for Dianetics as exists anywhere. Science and Sanity is a 900 page foundation for the creation of a “Science of Man.” Korzybski finds the underlying principle aberration of the human mind is ‘identification.’ He isolates one of the most important foundational skills to develop as that of differentiation, which he calls ‘to distinguish.’ He begins by establishing the need for the use of infinity logic, and to eliminate two-valued logic and the belief in absolutes. Being the first general semanticist he puts extreme importance on knowing all definitions of words, and emphasizes the importance of creating an entirely new nomenclature. Central to a ‘science of man’ is revolutionizing the science of communication. He is the one writer I have ever read whose tone and voice closely resembles Ron’s. He repeatedly emphasizes, with unrestrained vehemence, the need to reject much of what has come before: scholarship, institutional education, mental health profession givens, politics.  He even preaches a heavy disdain for ‘democracy.’ That was the extent of my comparison by the time I ran into Phil’s talk below. He identifies another parallel between Korsybski and LRH that is probably more important than any of those I have noted.

I found the several videos of Phil that I have watched (the 5 part series and the 6 part series) to be chock full of credible information given in a credible manner. I chose the one segment below to introduce the idea that Ron was indeed influenced by his learning – and did not immaculately conceive Dianetics and Scientology, as miraculous as his discoveries were.  Though some might bristle at the suggestion his discoveries were ever represented in such wise, I believe such a reaction would be born out of denialism. It is critical for growth and transcendence to understand that the technologies of Dianetics and Scientology were evolved out 10,000 years of evolution in thought that preceded them.  Unless of course one desires to regress by holding to the idea one can, or must, cling to that which is already written to the exclusion of any other evolved or new original thought.  L. Ron Hubbard applied Integral Theory decades before Integral Theory was even conceived of.  And I agree with Phil’s assessment of and attitude about Ron, he is a hero for accomplishing what he did, particularly in the environment in which he did so.  At the end of the day, I believe what I am noting here, in combination with what Phil talks about, are validations of the credibility of Ron’s work.

Watch the rest of Phil’s talks when you get the chance. The ones I have watched are poignant and contain rich history and observations we all could learn from.

Thanks to Tatiana for having the foresight and for expending the time and effort to capture Phil on video and make it available.

Thanks to Phil for demonstrating that study and practice of Scientology can contribute to our evolution into wise folks.

The Tao of Scientology