I came across a little something that I think that people practicing Scientology – inside or out of the church – ought to consider while pursuing the higher realms of cognitive development and consciousness it can assist with the attainment of. The following is a segment of a talk by philosopher Ken Wilber on traps that certain spiritual teachers can set for students. I think this applies to both the teacher (auditor/supervisor/advisor) and the teachings themselves. The latter being so, in fact, has prompted several essays by me of late suggesting that while you strive for as close to perfection as you can with technical Scientology procedure, you not fall into the trap of becoming a radical, fundamentalist Scientologist (literalist) whether you are affiliated with the church or not.
From Kosmic Consciousness with Ken Wilber by Sounds True.
Indeed we do have these one or two dozen developmental lines, like cognitive development, interpersonal development, moral development. And you can be very highly developed in some of those lines, medium development in others and very low development in yet others.
What seems to happen with a lot of meditative, contemplative or spiritual teachers is that one or two lines are very highly developed; and they are, indeed, the lines that have to do with the capacity for introspection, for awareness, for cognitive capacity and they can get into some very, very high states of consciousness. So in that capacity they are very highly developed, really authentically highly developed. It is not to take anything away from that accomplishment. It’s just perhaps that their own practice or personality has left two or three or five other developmental lines not very well developed, or possibly atrophied, or possibly even pathological. And particularly in certain types of spiritual development there is an emphasis on, let’s say meditation or personal interior development – that spend hours and hours and hours inspecting the “I” but not giving a lot of time to polishing your inter-personal skills, or your sexual skills, or your moral skills even for that matter.
The fact that you are a great meditator does not mean that you are going to be a great mathematician or have great musical skills or have any of these other developmental lines. The problem comes because some of these states of consciousness are so overpowering and appear to be so all-inclusive in a certain way that it’s easy for individuals to say that ‘because I now have this experience of enlightened oneness, that therefore everything about me communicates this perfect oneness.’ And teachers fall into this trap all the time. And I think anybody who has had these kinds of experiences can see that tendency in themselves; because that experience of ‘one taste’ , particularly when you are tapping into the absolute truth – not just relative – but you are also getting this blast of absolute isness, then it is just impossible for that to be wrong in a certain sense. And in its formlessness that’s right. It is impossible for it to be wrong because there are no parts. It just is. And there it is, you just see it.
That doesn’t mean therefore you excel in all these other areas. The problem comes when students come to spiritual teachers and the spiritual teacher is trying to help the student overcome ego which is a very important part of spiritual growth. You have to sort of grow beyond your own individuality, your self contraction, your separate self. And what the teacher tends to do is then – half the advice they give the student is very good, half of it is usually a disaster.
The good part has to do, indeed, with the areas that the teacher is competent in, and can spot self-attraction, can spot ego and so on. But the areas that the teacher is not competent in, then they start criticizing the student for things that might in fact be very wise on the student’s part but can’t be spotted by the teacher. It can be in anything, it can be in any sort of relation, it can be in the job, it can be in work, it can be in marriage, in any sort of relation you are in. And the teacher is telling you ‘no, you are doing that because you are contracting ego, you are doing that because you are being egoic, you are not taking my advice because you are resisting me. And your resistance to me – the teacher, guru, master – is evidence of your ego, your contracted, illusory ego.’ But it might be evidence of your discriminating wisdom growing and evolving. But because the teacher is not evolved in those areas, the teacher can’t spot that. All the teacher can do is spot any disagreement you have with the teacher as if that is egoic contraction, when the disagreement you might have with the teacher is with that part of the teacher that is a jerk – and you should disagree with that.
If teachers don’t have some form of integrally informed awareness, then it is going to be hard for them to discriminate the areas in which they are competent to make these kinds of judgments in and the areas they are not very competent in. And that is a real nightmare, for everybody. We’ve all had teachers like that. To the extent that any of us are teachers we get caught in the same traps ourselves. And the only thing that we can do is to continue to have this dialogue in an integrally informed context.
Moving On Up a Little Higher 
Amen.
Interesting. I suppose the Corp Scientologist pat answer to this would be along the lines of: “well there’s marriage courses and finance courses and so on, plus the balance to vertical cognitive development (going up the auditing side only) is that one must also train…”
But something must be missing else there wouldn’t be OT VIIIs who can’t “walk and chew gum” as Jason Beghe memorably put it. Not to mention “OTs” who are morally and financially bankrupt. I believe that as long as one regards Scientology as “the only road” and anything else is “dilettantism” and “other fish to fry” etc (s)he is thereby cutting himself off from the benefits of almost all the wisdom and learning there is in the world.
Marty,
Your last 5 or posts have been … marvelous! And this one crystallized a bunch of things for me. And based on what I now see, I’ve pretty much concluded:
1. Ron was very good at dealing with people one-on-one; he had this knack of getting them to look at their own lives and figure stuff out. And that’s really what auditing is all about, the formal procedures are just a way to make that happen easily.
2. He also had a knack of getting people to sort their lives out and get back on the straight and narrow. We call this Ethics, and Ron wrote up tools to make this easier.
3. He could motivate people, give them a goal and if let to get on with it, they did OK.
4. He was nowhere near as skilled in *organizing* people. OK, that’s not completely accurate – he was nowhere near as good in writing up his hat about *how* he organized.
I can’t see any shining examples of 3rd dynamic tech that truly last. Oh sure, there were brief highlights such as Chicago in the ’70s and FLB in the early days, but as for everything else – the so-called admin tech he wrote up sucks. Looking back over the last bunch of blog postings, I see a 3rd dynamic engram on admin tech being released, whether it’s mis-application of Ethics and Justice, SP tech, KSW, stat pushing, or whatever.
Orgs and missions seem to have done much better when just left alone to get on with the job when the field was still small. I place that at 1950 to 1965. Since then, tech shined, and Admin kinda didn’t. And there’s too much military style influence that pervades it all, tainting the good and workable parts of Admin.
So regardless of what anyone else thinks, I’m concluding for myself that documenting how to organize on the 3rd dynamic was Ron’s blind spot (he may well have been running a ServFac on it too – it would explain how that towering edifice came to be in the first place).
it’s been a very interesting journey over these last 6 weeks or so, thanks very much for putting all those thought-provoking blogs out there 🙂
Alan
Brilliant post, a good teacher should help the pupil develop their natural personality. When students are constantly say, “Ron says, Jesus says, Buddha says” etc etc I want to know what you say.
I asked my old guitar teacher, “when will I be done learning from you?” he said, ” when you can disagree with me and you can convince me you are right.”
This post speaks to the student maintaining their own sovereignly while learning from others. Perfect!
A+ again. : )
I had no idea Ken Wilber wrote this. This resonates 110% with my own experience. ] On one side, the belief is inculcated that, in order to fully experience the promise of a religious technology, you must give it your mind, heart and soul and not look around at anything else. And, built into that promise, is an implied promise that you will in the process become a more whole person.
And indeed in exerting such single-minded dedication, a person gets a boost on their path. Problem is that at the same time you carve for yourself a closed loop system, where you lose touch of other dynamics, experiences, realities.
In my own path, I had totally lost touch with the world of work, the world of social relationships, the world of personal relationships.
I came to believe that by becoming a renunciate I was now a state of higher clarity than the rest of humanity. That I had spent 2 hours in meditation each day for decades,, I found out, did not make me a whole person. It made me a person with experience practicing meditation, but with exceptionally poor interpersonal and social skills. I had no idea about that, since I had lost my external benchmarks/points of reference. The awakening was painful.
When I tried to reactivate these other parts of my own being—social skills, professional skills, etc.. , I found out that they had atrophied.
They were where I had left them 30 years before. Since they had not been attended, my social skills, professional skills, interpersonal skills, had greatly deteriorated.
I also saw around me many people who believed that in the name of following a spiritual path, they were dispensed from behaving morally in business and personal life. The spiritual dedication, for them, justified almost any behavior. That is a very sad state of things.
Balance, refraining from excess, and avoiding the fundamentalist trap are good, they are not a sign of meakness or weakness. They are a sign of maturity and clarity.
Its important, I’ve learned, to put even the most absolute realities in context. To strive to balance all aspects of life. To refrain from absolutism. Most important are inclusiveness, openness, tolerance, care and kindness. When those are valued, excess is kept at bay, and peace is maintained.
In studying Eastern Religions I found a very interesting article from one Swami. In it he stated that in the end one has to create and find their own truth (their own religion) within their own heart and viewpoint…that ultimately truth can only be found by each individual. He noted that one can learn from other Sages/Swamis, especially early on, but that in the end one had to move out onto his own. He was not saying that all other religions or great sages were wrong…he was simply saying that the only real truth is unique to each individual and must be found by each person on his own. This, in the end, is total responsibility for one’s own viewpoint and cause.
In hindsight, I believe that I wanted LRH (or anyone) to lay out the answers to the universe for me…it is much easier that way. But, you know, LRH simply laid out what was real for him…some was good, some bad, but it was his reality only. Some data really did apply to my universe, but some was completely antipathetic. When I tried to apply ALL of his rules to my life, I failed. This was not his error; it was mine for wanting to find TOTAL truth out of someone else’s universe… truths that would apply for eternity. Fact is, that cannot happen.
It makes so much more sense, even in applying the factors, that I must venture out on my own religious path and studies to find my universal truths. What is odd is that LRH himself tried to stop this from occurring…I do not know why, but again, that was his reality and one that I can grant beingness to but also one that I want no part of.
Great post, Paul.
I like that. Maintaining one’s sovereignty is a good way to put it.
Selling the product of freeing you then sec checking for unauthorized thinking is a little crazy making, wouldn’d you agree?
“love dispite all provocations to do otherwise” vs “ruined them utterly if you can” would cause a little cognitive glitch in la cabesa. Just a little iddy biddy.
Vivekananda, the first man from the east to come to America representing the Hindhu at the first religious congress in 1893 used to argue with his teacher all the time. At one point he considered his teacher crazy.
Vivekananda became the prime student that represented the teachings of this teacher in India and the western world. He taught Vedanta to Tesla and many other luminaries late 1800’s.
If you can’t constructively criticize your teacher, you are a trained robot.
“have you ever had a critical thought of Ron”……………. Pllllleeeeease…………………. someone pass me a barf bag!
Thanx for this insightful post. Very logical and practical wisdom here. Fundamentalism of any variety creates barriers, blindspots, and limitations. To cognite “Isness” on all levels and in all aspects of life, a person needs to be curious enough to look outside the box of any fundamentalism for broader and more complete awareness of all “Isness”.
Love this post. I’m feeling warm and fuzzy all over. Thanx again.
Splog, I don’t think that was Ron’s blind spot. Organizational tech. It might not be as complete as the Tech but what is your opinion of Scientology Orgs lasting for the last 32 years with a tyrant leading them? You said it yourself, missions and orgs left on their own did better. So, what was that intervention and by who? The fact that nobody could (first) spot and (secondly) throw out a Suppressive does not make the whole organizational tech not good. On the contrary I think it was this organization that kept Scientology going even in the pathetic state it’s been led today by Miscavige.
I think that Ron had a short time and thus a short temper for things. In that he many times erred in being more “tough” than he should be. He even said that.
On the tech and admin side I would like to hear more of the non competence of LRH that people think may exist. Ron, after all was a man.
But the basics of Scientology still are valid. I don’t see anyone come out and change the ARC triangle. I don’t see anyone sort of question the Tone Scale, for years now.
I don’t see many come out and say “no a thetan, does have mass… ” or anything like that. I don’t see other definitions to the better.
So the Basics ARE the Basics. Upon those basics and their simplicity LRH based all the rest of the complexities and rules and laws and organizational things to try to get thetans to get those Basics.
Once you get the Basics you are on a big, huge plateau for freedom where you can meet souls from other fields with similar cognitions and from other directions. That’s ok and natural to theta. It has its many ways. 8008 applies.
Ron was just a man….and at times with a humongous ego! It got in the way too much and left the legacy of which is now “Scientology”
There is truth everywhere….And the only real truth Ron ever wrote is “What is Greatness” all the other stuff…one can take it or leave it…doesn’t really matter.
good one…Vivekananda was also the Swami I mentioned in my entry above. Fascinating man.
A good blog posting to bookmark Marty! And comments so far are quite insightful.
I had a ” good, solid German upbringing” and was taught very thoroughly to not argue or disagree or pain would ensue. Jumping from that upbringing into Scientology and the Sea Org validated the training of my early years. I like this reminder that it is one’s right to disagree with the teacher no matter the consequences and work it out for oneself. Very freeing across all dynamics.
Linda
Excellent.
Good point. Real life sample: I found Scientology and the go button had been my problems with women. (or in other words: 2nd D; to mask the problem with tech talk) Then very soon after my first steps went on staff in the org munich. Maybe you heard of, munich org started as Sea Org. Then „converted“ to class 4 org. But still Sea Org 2nd dynamic rules had been applied. Thus I had a problem on staff. Could not follow my goals and be on staff. Then I had to decide I either give up my goal or I quit staff. Here comes the little interesting part: As I had some OT abilites left in my pocket I managed that my parents and some relatives to be very antagonistic towards Scientology. Then Guardians Office had to throw me out. The point here is, that problems can also be solved that way that it looks like that the person solving the problem does not appear to do something actively with that problem but appears to be the effect of the circumstances.
It had been funny to see that „Scientologists“ do talk a lot of OT abilites but they cannot recognize them when demonstrated.
Now what has this to do with „radical, fundamentalist Scientologist (literalist)“? Those had been in the munich org as I started in mid 70ies there. But those had not been in any power position. (Whyever or however those mananged to be in power could fill big books.) But those have one inability in common. They cannot grasp OT abilities. They have no idea about the real powers. They can only think in terms like „command“, „overwhelm“, „make money“ „scream“ and things like that.
Maybe you do not like my opinion: Those „literalists“ that are in power now can have their game and their buildings and OT levels. They think they have all the wisdom and have in their hands all the secrets Ron left as his legacy.
„to stew in one’s own juice“ comes into my mind right now.
It seems to me that educating or counseling others comes with a risk of “putting your own stamp too harshly” on the educated or counseled person. He might become a closer copy of the teacher or advisor, but less himself / herself.
I have found this true even of business counseling or teaching in any arena. Only the best teachers, advisors etc. can get their message across without interfering with their clients’ real self..
Marty
Very nice. He put that very well.
That aligns very nicely with the concepts that you are presenting of late, and brings it all together for me. For me, it gives me a much broader, and yet more precise, understanding of where you are coming from. It also aligns nicely with my own views.
It would be great if this essay helps diffuse some of the negative input you have been receiving.
Fuckin-A! I just totally loved this! Keep this sort of info flowing Marty. We all can benefit by it – and I never would have read this if it wasn’t for your diligent research on your own path. Thanks for sharing – it indicated so much to me that it made my heart soar.
I love your opinion! And my life has been a study in this sort of thing! I cannot tell you how many times various events in my life have steered me completely away from what turned out to be full-scale disasters and serious problems! As an example, in 82, I just could not get it together to go into the local mission or org, no matter how hard I tried things just seemed to slip away from me. I find out many years later that it was one of the most horrible and devastating time periods in the history of Scientology and especially so in the area I was in! LOL!
In my experience, the events often appear to be problems or difficulties or losses or whatever, frustrating or upsetting, but I have understood that they are often needful shifts that have to occur for a new paradigm or reality to take their place.
I realized that sometimes I just have to let go so I am not blocking my own postulates by insisting that some crafted plan or earlier path must be carried out NO MATTER WHAT. I have learned that persistence means persistence towards a particular objective or state, not a stubborn insistence on particular means, plan or method just because I thought it was a good idea at some point and by God I am going to MAKE it work THAT WAY and ONLY THAT WAY!
And here I am. Happy to be working through this process on this blog.
Great quote.
I like this:
“But because the teacher is not evolved in those areas, the teacher can’t spot that. All the teacher can do is spot any disagreement you have with the teacher as if that is egoic contraction, when the disagreement you might have with the teacher is with that part of the teacher that is a jerk – and you should disagree with that.”
The missing ingredient with the admin tech, IMHO, is self-determined purpose, which has been squeezed out over the decades until it is now completely MIA.
First of all, the admin policies go into such minute detail on everything that there is very little room for the staff member to originate anything or to make a unique contribution. Second, if you want to kill someone’s enthusiasm for an activity, take what they were already doing voluntarily and Make them do it. Any creative impulse they had in that area will die in a hurry. That’s one big difference I see between now and the early days, and why Missions used to be such exciting places to hang out and are no longer.
About the only way an individual can have a game and create some randomity in the current Org environment is to mis-apply policy and/or opt-term with somebody, or everybody. Other than those options the energy is mostly gone because everyone’s self-determined purpose has been squashed.
I once argued with a New OT8 E/D at my local morgue because he wanted me on staff and I wanted me behind a drumset and an artist’s easel, telling him that, to do anything else as my main production in life would be devastating to me spiritually.
He preached from on high about how he was “the most ethical being in Washington State!” (literally, he said that to me and to others I personally know), and that to argue with him was to be utterly out-ethics and blind.
Well, Ken Wilbur is a smart man.
Thanks for sharing, Marty.
Very interesting post.
My wife and I listened to an audio book by Ken Wilber last week.
He is akin to the Mahayana Buddhist tradition which we do
not follow. However, I have investigated his work and
have found some similarity with our Theravada tradition.
Nevertheless, I admire and respect his spirit of investigation
which is quite extensive. It is widely reported that Mr. Wilber
follows the tradition initiated by Nagarjuna, a well respected
teacher who followed the Buddha Gotama.
While I enjoyed reading his essay on teachers, it does not
directly align with my own experience. In the Theravada tradition,
we rely more on the Pali Canon and spend a lot of time learning
Pali, the language of the Buddha.
In the end, whatever works is best. The Buddha predicted that
his teaching would only last 500-1,000 years depending on the
interpretation. I am simply grateful to be reading his words in 2013.
Another great part of the Theravada tradition is that there is no pressure
to teach. Being a teacher is an individual decision because the
Buddha was very reluctant to teach his own doctrine.
George M. White
As a trainer and teacher I often start my seminars with this quote from George Bernard Shaw: “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.” Humility is very important in teaching. As Wilber states:”To the extent that any of us are teachers we get caught in the same traps ourselves.”
It makes me also think at the hcopl Change of civilization eval : the ethics why found for tr’s and tech out internationally : targeting students toward a lose because they (the supervisors) are dramatizing their service facs.
It’s a chronical illness of scientology staff to have this “you are not quite with us” attitude toward the public.
I see ,around me, friends and family actively studying scientology and wondered for years why on earth they couldn’t apply to their lives and do better and help others do better and communicate easily and with love and care in their manners.I justified with the easy phrase “everybody cognites on their own time ,”. And while this is true , I couldn’t help but say “what is it going to be ? 10 years ? 20 years? 30 years? Today’s post answered my question. Absolutism is what i have been trying to stay away from , be it in my Catholic days or in Scientology but I had too much missing data to be totally safe from it.
Your blog filled in the blanks.
I love LRH”s teachings , but it is every individual’s responsability to evaluate , apply , reject or adopt. And mostly to be free to question , argue and expand.
Thank you . I always admire people who are able to give the right indication at the right time , you seem to be doing that on a regular basis
This track is only a few minutes. It happened in 1893. It was the first time in history that religions from all around the world were represented. And the first eastern yogi to set foot in America to set the stage for all of us to seek liberation from false beliefs.
This audio from Vivekananda is so relevant now, more than ever.
True, not many say a thetan has mass.
But a fair number say there are no thetans.
Doesn’t hurt to question the basics occasionally.
Fabulous! Thanks Brian.
Hi Theo,
I think the orgs have lasted for so long because hordes of well-intentioned people just made it go right in spite of considerable odds. I was there, I know that’s what I did. You were in the TU and you’ve indicated in your posts that you did much the same. “Standard Admin” never really entered the picture. The one thing from Admin that worked well was a good reg really caring about the public. This was sales, real sales, at it’s best – bringing in the fuel that the org runs on.
I did point out that it was not so much the Admin tech itself that was at fault, it was more Ron’s communication of it that was at fault. Compare the overall tone of Bulletins from 1950 right through to the end with the tone of Admin Policy from about 1965 onwards (after the release of the 21 Div Org Board). I see 2 sets of writings that are so different in tone they could well be written by different people. One is caring and understanding, the other smacks of enforcement. And we’ve discussed the tone of policy at length 9plus the effect of that) here in Marty’s front room for the past 6 weeks.
It’s my opinion that Ron was nowhere near as good in writing up his 3D hat as he liked to make out. And you know what? That’s actually OK, no-one is perfect and no-one has to be all things to all people. In Ron’s own words (I forget where) “I have no contract with a Big Thetan to save the world complete”.
“First of all, the admin policies go into such minute detail on everything that there is very little room for the staff member to originate anything or to make a unique contribution.”
Such as the policy letter on how to wax a car? Yes it exists, as a full blown Green on White PL! At best, that should be a mere memo…
Granted, that’s a facetious example and proves nothing. But it does indicate something – nowhere in policy that I know of is there a mechanism that grades PLs to importance. Sure, it is *mentioned* that some things are important, some PLs even say how important they are in their opening, but for the most part everything is as important as everything else. Without a decent whack of brainpower applied Goals & Purposes end up as important as how to format a telex. And that is A=A=A.
Which all ties in nicely with removal of self-determinism, as you point out.
Alan
“On the tech and admin side I would like to hear more of the non competence of LRH that people think may exist. Ron, after all was a man.”
Theo,
I’d like to see more acknowledgment and understanding of the second part and less of the first part in the future. Discussing someone’s shortcomings is only helpful if it leads to truth and better understanding of the person. Take my first post above, I only really looked at that viewpoint to try and figure out what worked and what I could reject. I got something unexpected – I took Ron off the pedestal I had put him on! For a very long time I still clung to the CoS-inspired idea that Ron was somehow super-human and virtually never wrong, or if he had been wrong about something he always fixed it before publishing it. Well, that is just not true.
Alan
I’ve never agreed with Mr Shaw about that 🙂 The best teachers I ever met were those who really REALLY could DO and came to a point where they wanted to share. I work in IT and have done many years of IT training to fellow geeks, I often open a course my saying that “I have a lot of useful stuff in my head, my job is to get it out of there and into yours!”
Every now and then I’d get the kind of person on course I most looked forward to – the cheeky confident well-informed type who sit at the back and chirp constantly for 5 days. These are the ones that demand I show and prove what I say, and “because I say so” is the worst possible answer. I would treasure those types (they are somewhat rare) – they kept me on my feet and my head out of the clouds. End result, I was a better teacher for that and everyone won a little more.
Alan
Great post and thanks for showcasing the book, next on my reading list.
This translates also into parent / child relationships . A parent is more or less a teacher, so you can find the easy parallel. A child’s viewpoint is their ownership of this universe. When you challenge that, you are actually taking away from them.
To the extent that anyone parks any part of themselves or their own view at the front door of any organization, they are surrendering ownership. To enforce a view on someone, who is not capable of viewing from that angle, is false ownership . That is why a lot of people can speak Scientology, but can not think with it or properly use it.
Teaching is asking people to look, asking people to know. It is not a false or borrowed viewpoint. Just because I can think with some part of what Hubbard shared as an idea, does not mean everybody who read that same page will be able to fit that information comfortably within their own thinking / view. It may not mean they are stupid or do not know words. It can mean they have no foundation of their own on which the data can stand.
If a person begins discounting their own view, their own understanding, their own foundation, what do they have left to build on?
This idea that a “blank slate” is the best recruit, could not be further from the truth. They may be sponges for other people’s ideas in their hunger for tools, but with out any foundation of their own, one is only programming a robot.
Scientology’s foundation, in interest and membership and contribution, was a group of educated, well lived, well traveled, curious and intelligent people. People that were curious about the mind, psycho physics, and the supernatural and mental health. This is what cemented any foundation at all for the rest to build on.
When the foundation was being poured, uniforms, awards for the patrons, political and social wars, stat pushes and golden rod, witch hunts and abuse, false reports laid on the communication lines of the world, etc etc, were not in any of that foundation mix. This is the stuff that got mixed in when the tiles were going on the roof.
As most folk know, the roof is always the first thing you have to replace on a good house. It goes in a matter of years if it is not tile, and those fly off and come loose. The roof is supposed to protect the home but the foundation always outlasts the roof. By centuries. The roofs that last any length of time are made of similar properties to the foundation, as you find in cement or clay tiles. Or the stone you see on top of castles that was quarried from the same source as the foundation.
You are welcome Jonsty
Excellent balanced analysis of the minus points of green on white while acknowledging the plus points. The third dynamic tech is NOT as close to being a finished product as is the first dynamic auditing tech. But there is still a lot of useful information there for anyone wishing to organize anything.
Any set of axioms, tenet, instructions,directions, etc. must be used with wisdom, intelligence, altruism, good intentions, etc. in order to be effective,beneficial, and useful. I think that LRH pre-supposed (or at least hoped) that this would be the case. Didn’t work out that way.
The auditing tech is not as vulnerable to mis-use without overt alteration because it’s procedures are a more fully refined and exact.
And to be fair, even the message of Jesus to “love your neighbor” might possibly be twisted by psychotic idiots to a point where people were actually killing their neighbors …….oh yeah, that’s right.
“Our beliefs” “The beliefs of this group” “The beliefs of this country” “The beliefs of our people” “The beliefs of our religion” Is a manufactured A=A assignment (we all believe) which is actually a covert verbal contract (If you are here in this bag you must believe what I believe) people get sucked into. “We” is often used as a manipulative tool and used very recklessly to put out wrong items and wrong indications.
Scientology was not built on a “belief” system. It just evolved into one. It has mainly turned into a system of belief.
The word “Scientologist” was coined. An identity was created. The word was spilled out suddenly and applied to everyone curious enough to buy a book. There was a “brand” and a “stamp” that was suddenly blazed into everyone within ten feet of an Org. A new “catageory” on Earth for someone to slide in to.
“I’m not John Doe any longer! Whew! Now I’m “a Scientologist”. I feel free just stepping into this new category! Let me go learn about my new self!”
FYI — Kosmic Consciousness is a series of 12 one hour CDs on the format of question and answers about Ken’s philosophy, his views about meditation even down to astrology (which he doesn’t give any credence too — boo Ken 🙂 — this was his first interview ever granted and he granted it to his friend Tami Simon – owner of Sounds True
They can be purchased thru Sounds True website or possible on eBay.
There is one set for sale with 2 hours left for $15.00 which is a steal on eBay. — on Sounds True website they are on sale for $65.00
It is not that ‘he’ doesn’t give any credence to it. He simply cites to the studies he has seen demonstrating when tested against objective/scientific criteria, Astrologists consistenly faile to produce a result.
“For a very long time I still clung to the CoS-inspired idea that Ron was somehow super-human and virtually never wrong, or if he had been wrong about something he always fixed it before publishing it. Well, that is just not true.”
…….Definitely a COS (RTC-Miscavige)inspired idea. Even Ron, himself, didn’t say that. In fact he didn’t even say that Tech was perfect. To the contrary.
Also, rightness and wrongness only exist in gradations. There are no absolutes when it comes to rightness and wrongness. This is something that someone with “absolute certainty” cannot understand. Apparently this is also the biggest barrier to learning and understanding.
The guitar teacher’s example is great. I feel it hits it right in the eye of what a good teacher is.
Very well put, and very correct.
Drat Marty — you definitely listen better than I do – or should I say evaluate better 🙂
Trust the BIG ME that you are. BIG ME is always trying to make things go right, to use a hackneyed phrase. While ‘little me’ is busy thinking it ‘knows best’. This to me is also about ‘letting go’ at times and stepping back to view what is really going on. It is Riding the Elephant. The Elephant will ultimately go where it wills.
HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex
HCO BULLETIN OF 10 JUNE 1960 Issue I
MA
Keeping Scientology Working Series 33
WHAT WE EXPECT OF A SCIENTOLOGIST
A housewife who does not have professional level skill in Scientology could not expect to run a wholly successful family or keep order in her neighborhood and keep her family well.
(The planet was already quite well populated when this was written. There was a civilization here. And it was built on the backs of women, mostly teen aged women who had never read a book)
A factory foreman could not possibly handle his crews with full effectiveness without professional Scientology skill.
(I guess all of those castles and coliseums and pyramids were created by postulate)
The personal assistant to a corporation executive could not do a fully effective job without being a professional Scientologist.
(David Miscavige was surrounded by professional Scientologists when he took over the Church and he threw them all under the bus as trash)
A corporation president without a certificate will someday fail.
(Any success is based on a certificate? No wonder Shakespeare didn’t amount to anything?)
And the head of a country would go to pieces if he didn’t know Scientology from a professional angle.
(Obama has no real value. It is all resting on the shoulders of Tom Cruise)
How can these people handle life if they have no expert knowledge of how to handle life?
(Ghandi seemed to know a thing or two)
We have many, many personal success stories in Scientology. They begin with a book acquaintance and bloom when professional skill enters the background. These people, small people, big people, drove a wedge for themselves into companies, societies, with Scientology and then took over control of the area. They succeeded where they never would have dreamed they could. And every time one of us drives in such a wedge, we all win because the world is brought nearer to a sane and decent world.
(But anyone actually going out in society and making a way for them self is PTS to the middle class, a spectator, a dilettantish, and a consumer Scientologist. An OT can not survive with out other OT’s.)
Any trained Scientologist can win to success in society. Heightened IQ, a knowledge of life, a forthright attitude — with these things it is easy for him or her to improve a social or business position, to get higher pay, to exert wider personal influence. This we know we can do, we have done it so often, so let’s improve the ability.
(This is a stamp guarantee. If you are a “Scientologist” you are guaranteed success. Later on he figured out a person would need all three L’s to actually be able to cut loose and Be, Do, Have. He also did not figure in the sociopaths waving the “I’m a Scientologist, I’m just like you! banner)
Hit for the key spots by whatever means — the head of the women’s club, the personnel director of a company, the leader of a good orchestra, the president’s secretary, the advisor of the trade union –any key spot.
(He was thinking with expanding the foundation with people that were educated, well lived, and successful already with out having any knowledge of Scientology in spite of their success)
Make a good sound living at it, drive a good car, but get your job done, handle and better the people you meet and bring about a better Earth.
(This simple request does not extend to Sea Org staff. Kind of odd. And what about the sociopaths who only appear successful but worsen conditions every place they go, Scientologists or not? )
Scientology is the only game on Earth where everybody wins.
(I don’t know why those folk on E.S.M.B won’t knock off the protest reads and start chanting the same tune. We must need some new run down for a memory swipe on all of their losses. Oh, I forgot, they don’t count. They stopped being a “Scientologist” so none of this applies to them!)
So let’s help the world win.
(This purpose is simple and if kept as the only purpose we all would have been the better off for it. Many people all over the planet “Scientologist” or not are helping the world win. That is the group we aspire to be a part of. The group that is helping the world to win. And that is a very large group that far exceeds the label “Scientologist)
Here is my question. How is the Sea Org helping the world to win?
By publishing false reports, wrong items and wrong indications on the comm lines of the world? Lies abuse fraud out P.R. scandal and “bitter defrocked apostates A.K.A. “people we fucked up” ?
How is the “Scientologist” who is a sociopath helping the world to win?
How is the “Scientologist” who has no real training to audit, sitting across from some P.C. caving him in, helping the world to win?
How is the “Scientologist” spying for O.S.A. and running with a license to harm attack and suppress helping the world to win?
How is the “Scientologist” who is sitting in the ethics office making the decision to harm attack and suppress and, deliver an effective blow, helping the world to win?
How is the “Scientologist” running rampant leaving conflict, chaos, wars, enturbulation and restimulation in his path helping the world to win?
etc etc.
Thank you Christine!
Distilled, “What we expect of a “Scientologist” is a message saying, “We are really the only people that can matter.”
And this is the foundation, the “Scientologist” identity is built upon.
Every P.R. statement issued from the Church in response to a conflicting voice translates into the same theme: “They don’t really matter”.
I believe Astrology is entirely ‘unscientific’ yet has value. I am talking about the “astrology of personality” which I’m quite sure cannot be scientifically proven at all, but which still fascinates people. I think it’s value is the value of a Mandala, which a natal chart resembles.
But instead of narrowly focusing consciousness,it can be a good way of broadening one’s look at others, because of it’s multi-valued nature,dividing Life into 12 Houses, considering the positions and interaction of actually 11 planets and other important ‘nodes’, etc. It is extremely complex and in it’s own way is similar to the representation of the 8,15, or however many Dynamics you consider there are. That is also represented in Mandala(circlular) form.
I don’t see any real predictive value to Astrology, even Natal Astrology (the astrology of personality), but I see it as a good teaching device for some people and a good way to broaden one’s view of life and the universe, on the level of Symbols.
Whew! Having said all that, I wouldn’t spend much time on it unless you have a deep interest and a good compatible teacher, and really like Symbols. It attempts to be a ‘calculus’ for life and existence, but for me it is too ‘fuzzy’ to actually be that. But life is ‘fuzzy’.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic
By the way, the 12 Houses of Astrology are similar to LRH’s Org Board.
And it is growing out here in the grass roots. The “anti Marty” gung ho group, or fundamentalists, are singing the same song. “Now” doesn’t matter. “Yesterday” matters. “Marty doesn’t matter anymore, because he is out here making other people that are not Scientologist matter . Nobody is supposed to matter but us.”
What are they doing? Following “What we expect you as a Scientologist, “We are the only ones that really matter.”
A person “matters” when they make them self matter. There is this synthetic holy “clear the planet” sub purpose pitched against this “WE are the only ones that matter”.
If the rest of the Earth people can not matter until they converted into Scientologists that only matter, they don’t matter enough to help them!
Sea Org staff are now instructed not have a casual chat with public at the base! The public Scientologists don’t even matter anymore.
It’s all about who matters most in the Church now! If you REALLY want to make sure nobody else matters, just fuck ’em up!
How’s that for G.P.M.?
“I matter more than you” is a fucking virus. “You don’t really matter because…” is a ser fac.
I agree.
Here’s the funny part. I reckon I’m a reasonably well-educated guy, I went to a decent school, I can and do think for myself and I have a reasonable grasp of what Ron was saying all along. When I don’t get it immediately, I do get it eventually.
And yet, I still fell into the cult trap. With eyes wide open. So what chance do the starry-eyed teenage MAAs of today stand? Not much chance by my reckoning.
On second thoughts, there’s no funny part to this. It just isn’t funny at all.
Marty, speaking about practicing Scientology, I want to add a comment about practicing medicine. Starting in 2014 I believe it will cost the Church of Scientology about $6,000,000.00 per year to insure all of their Sea Org members and staff at orgs and missions provided they do not expand any greater than they are at right now. Because after January 1, 2014 people are subject to penalties if they do not have mandatory medical coverage under the law, and their employer if any is subject to worse. I just wanted to add that food for thought how it pays to have medical benefits that your church pays for the next time an ESTO pushes you through a plate glass window on Wednesday. 🙂
Marty — I feel you’ve taken out of 12 hours of interview possibly the absolute most poignant and salient part.
It so clearly explains WHY spiritual groups are prone to failure. Moreover, as a result of posting this, if those who are staunching holding to LRH are unable to see what happened to scientology – then I guess a sledge hammer is in order.
This is NOT to say that LRH did not create and bring some of the most profound technology AND administrative technology on the planet. But with it was a great deal of “stuff” that ultimately brought it to where we are today.
dm never was a teacher so should not be included in this conversation. He was just an “heir” — not even an appointed heir.
There is some hope however that because of the willingness to reach beyond the confines of cloistered scientology and LRH – that the core workability of scientology and LRH will live on.
What I see occurring over and over in the heated discussions of “pure” scientology/LRH versus what is misinterpreted as diluting LRH or changing LRH is simply that people have a tremendous personal investment in THEIR brand of scientology. They were once the ED of XYZ org, or the Qual Sec of XYZ or this hat or that hat. And had wonderful wins.
And they NOW want to reduplicate that and expected that Marty would enable this to occur.
Forget the fact that Marty NEVER said he was going to start the NEW ORG BOARD of the world and place everyone on their formerly WINNING posts (that they eventually left because the organization almost destroyed them)
This personal investment is called ones ego. The clothes he wears that others recognize him by. This ego is fueled consistently and constantly by thoughts – which are actually illusions and shadows and not what “is” but reflections.
Without an investment IN ones personal brand of rightness concerning scientology – there would be no name calling or division.
One would have the confidence, IMHO, to simply practice scientology without the need for praise or approval.
Love,
Christine
Why all of the suppression against Marty? He came out here and made everybody matter. No matter what your standing or history or religion or background, as long as you weren’t standing on this platform to degrade and re stimulate others. He made other voices matter. He made other professionals matter. He made other writers and leaders and people in the community matter. This has been his only real crime in the eyes of the Church and the fanatics.
He admits that other people matter too.
“When you can snatch the pebble from my hand…”
Great post Marty!
Wilbur is not doubt familiar with the teachings of the Gurdjieff/Ouspensky school they “The Fourth Way”, because it was an attempt to integrate a person’s development instead of letting it become more and more lopsided as Wilbur describes. Wilbur almost certainly met and knew adherents of this school, which still exists.
The basic idea was that a person by nature was too developed or focused on mental, emotional or physical development and usually lacking in the others.
Gurdjieff slightly pre-dated Hubbard and appeared to be a somewhat keyed-out OT. Unfortunately he never really developed a duplicatable system for teaching his methods and thus the movement never really amounted to much. P.D. Ouspensky wrote several books about it, chiefly “In Search of the Miraculous”, “TheFourth Way”, and a short collectionofa few talks was published, titled “The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution.” This school was focused on developing and strengthening a person’s ‘awareness of awareness’ with various exercises.
Here is the link to that law:
http://www.ncncf.org/2012/07/11/should-nonprofits-care-about-obamacare-what-the-ppaca-means-for-your-nonprofit/
ANY Organization that is non-profit with more than 200 employess is required by FEDERAL law to provide coverage to the workers. Failure to do so is not a crime, it is a FELONY. 🙂
I believe their exemption under Obamacare should be revoked! 🙂
In reading this post, I had the sense of beginning to learn a lot of backlogged lessons which I should have been learning from others all along. Lessons I had failed to be open to learning because I felt myself (or perhaps even was) “ahead of” or “above” that person in a particular aspect of understanding, yet they were demonstrating real wisdom or fantactically admirable qualities in other areas.
Probably my biggest critique of LRH is the sense of brash arrogance which he modelled, and which Scientologists much too often adopt as a virtue in their own behavior. I’m not being critical of others as much as admitting that I adopted that arrogance myself. Others doing the same just solidified the culture, but the source of the attitude in the culture was LRH. Probably LRH was especially appealing to me because I already was arrogant myself.
As an example, it would be a common response for a born-again Scientologist to dismiss Ken Wilbur’s snippet above as “the dynamics covers all of that”. (Ahh, superiority maintained!)
Hammer who… Hello SLEDGE hammer!
Those last three words…
Integrally.
Informed.
Context.
I’m not sure I understand them as well as is possible… But us much as I do at this moment I would say that those three words are the crucial ingredient missing in a whole host of “spiritual” movements that have been more destructive than constructive.
Scientology being at the top of that list.
Marty… Thank you…😊
Hi Christine… Great minds… Great minds…😊
Thanks Marty for another stellar commentary and reference. I stumbled across this three part series yesterday while I considered the content and significance therein. All the while I sought out what causes thought stopping mayhem within religious thoughts and practices., especially Scientology, the purported “Bridge to Total Freedom”.
Phil, Tom Cruise’s ex-father-in-law, summed up a bunch of stuff in a complete, IMHO, historical viewpoint.
I humbly suggest that the “I’m with Ron” few consider these seasoned thoughts. It’ll only take about one and a half hours.
Yes, I’ll be expanding on that very issue, ‘integrally informed context’ in the near future.
What a beautifully written post. Thanks Mr. Durand (or just Paul). I imagine at least 500,000 individuals over the years could have held the pen with you when you penned:
“In my own path, I had totally lost touch with the world of work, the world of social relationships, the world of personal relationships.”
And if, and or when, those same people could hold the pen with you when you penned………
“Its important, I’ve learned, to put even the most absolute realities in context. To strive to balance all aspects of life. To refrain from absolutism. Most important are inclusiveness, openness, tolerance, care and kindness. When those are valued, excess is kept at bay, and peace is maintained.”
……..the impact on this world would be damn near unimaginable (in a profoundly uplifting and transformative way).
Thanks again.
Larry
Wow. That was really cool! Thanks Brian!
Exactly how I see it too, Martin.
Didn’t LRH say somewhere that an OT should still be able to fix the kid’s choo choo train (loosely paraphrased)?
“I’m not John Doe any longer! Whew! Now I’m “a Scientologist”. I feel free just stepping into this new category! Let me go learn about my new self!”
…which is precisely why (by and large) the young, generally uneducated (by worldly standards) and more often than not, innocent, took to Scientology like a moth to a light. A bright light at that. It filled a void in the form of an adventure. And for most it was down right thrilling, at first.
And like all things MESTy (lol) all things change/vanish in time. Even the great Oak tree of 1000 years of age is destined to disappear from this earth. Or change. Which Scientology is doing. It is changing. Ready or not. Here it comes.
The word Scientology itself may one day go the way of the great oak tree, maybe not, but the underlying spirit of it will live on, & does live on. Witness this blog for evidence of it’s transformation.
In time everything changes. That’s a fact (that will not change, lol).
When the dust finally settles (as it has before and will again) it is not L. Ron Hubbard, nor Siddartha, nor Ken Wilber, nor Marty Rathbun that brought spiritual light to a darkened world, that transformed the world, it is ‘the receivers’ of that light (in the form of the communication they delivered) that effected the transformation of the world. In the past, in the present, and in the future.
Ron, Sidd, Ken and Marty are messengers, but the message lived in the heart of their listeners, before these messengers were even born.
And that is my message.
Larry
Amen brother!
Thanks for sharing that.
Thank you Marty
Excellent! Truth!
As with nutritional “cures,” the researchers who have done “scientific studies” of astrology have uniformly been people with very little understanding of the subject they’re investigating. As a result, their experiments have been set up incorrectly, and usually have failed as a result.
The popular astrology columns in newspapers and magazines are incompetently simplistic. But expert, deeply understood astrology is quite another matter. Prior to getting into Scientology 44 years ago I was very much into astrology. I could chat with a total stranger for 5 minutes, then guess his Sun sign, Moon sign, and Rising sign, and get 2 out of 3 right half the time. The odds against that are 72 to 1.
My own horoscope very accurately describes my particular blend of strengths and weaknesses. I once did LRH’s horoscope, and it described him quite well, too.
Astrology deals with the subtle electronics of the body and the composite case, and their systematic restimulation for purposes of keeping the prisoners both interested in and confused about human level games, so they won’t wake up and leave. Each lifetime one gets a different composite, with different factors being more strongly restimulated than others, resulting in one wasting enormous amounts of time trying to answer the question “Who the hell am I, really?” rather than starting from knowing the answer to that question, and then actually getting something worthwhile done in the next 70 years.
There was an early 60’s LRH issue, which I can’t cite because I’ve long since forgotten its date and title, in which he said that “there probably is something to astrology, palmistry, and numerology, but they’re not useful therapeutically.” Actually, I firmly believe that based on an expertly done horoscope for a pc, one could compile various customized assessment lists which would prove quite useful to a C/S in finding reading areas to delve into more deeply. I also understood from the beginning that in order to keep Scientology as purely its own subject, LRH accomplished the same purpose differently. So, I gave up practicing astrology other than occasionally for casual entertainment. But there’s definitely an actual, valid subject there.
Ok, I think whats going on here on this blog is just freedom of thought. It is in actual alignment with the Creed of the Church of Scientology
http://www.scientology.org/what-is-scientology/the-scientology-creeds-and-codes/the-creed-of-the-church.html
Ironically, the organization that put up that website isnt even aware how far they are from that Creed.
There’s different opinions here and obviously I don’t agree with all of them, but I think despite all that there are some good things happening here. There is open communication here. You have to figure out what you know and what you believe and you can’t get away with blindly spewing a quote or a reference as the final word. In this context, Scientology application requires a deeper understanding. It has to be real to you and be yours.
If a belief or opinion is valid you should be able to defend it, or atleast explain it a little. If you arent able to hold that space are you really a Scientologist? Maybe thats why a lot of Scientologists do not talk to people about it, dont disseminate and dont apply it to others (I’m talking about me I guess).
I would run into a situation, I think caused by being in the Church with it’s bad PR, but perhaps more so by my own failure to fully make my own what I had learned in Scientology- to compare it to life and reality- where maybe somebody needs an assist or I could audit them or something, but I dont do it. I fear they will ask me about Scientology and I wont be able to defend it. I havent made it my own. Instead I have accepted wholesale an enforced viewpoint of Scientology. So, I can’t say “Well, I don’t know about that, it sound kind of crazy, but I think I can do something that might help you with your leg…”.
If you really had made it your own and you understood it and knew what worked and why, and you were a free being, free to think and act and speak freely you would not be so timid and cringe when you heard the word Scientology come up in “wog” conversation. You would be free to know what you know and be who you are comfortably. I’m not quite there yet, but maybe I’m closer.
Until one has a freedom of thought on the subject and it is his I think it is actually a liability. One is supposed to be doing this and supposed to be doing that. Supposed to be believing this and supposed to be thinking this way or that. So when your non-Scientologist friend needs an assist, you comm lag for an hour because you have to work through all this mental machinery you got at the Church.
I didnt get everything in here that I wanted. I felt like there werent words yet for some of it, but I’ll try again tommorow or something.
Yes, yes, yes! While some may disagree with Marty about certain things, those issues are far less important than the main thrust of his activity and production over the last 3 years. He has been an enormous catalyst, by providing us with this blog, and by setting a huge example as someone who got up off his back and DID SOMETHING ABOUT IT! Where would we be today if he hadn’t? He wasn’t the only person involved in getting us moving, and we have a long way to go yet, that will require a lot of other people making their own big contributions, but Marty has been indispensible in getting us to where we are today. We don’t need to totally agree with each other, but we do need to find a way to keep our attention of BEING ON THE SAME TEAM.
Theo
OK, I’ll take the bait.
Actually I have found reason to reinspect the “Tone Scale”. It is valid enough, as regards the order that the tones appear to be in, but I have rarely seen any “pure” tones being demonstrated.
Have you ever had trouble assessing what a person’s tone was? You couldn’t quite precisely peg which one it was? It is not necessarily because you are unobservant, or ignorant. Of course I recommend that you look for yourself, but what I have found is that most tones that you will encounter seem to be a combination of tones overlaying other tones. For instance have you ever noticed that someone who is “obviously” in grief may display shades of anger or hate, or despair, etc? They are “doing grief” but with some kind of a twist? I found that as I got better and better at spotting tones I started to became more aware of this phenomenon. I have since found it very rare, in my experience, to find someone displaying any “pure” tone.
Overall “chronic” tones are a bit easier to spot, but even they seem to span quite a range (all at once), and you are left with finding some overall “feel” of the thing.
But keeping all that in mind, it does not change the fact that, with a good knowledge of the “tone scale” you can move people on the tone scale, almost at will.
So, yes, I have challenged some aspects of the data on tone scales, but is it a valuable tool, none the less? You bet.
Eric S
Here is a reference from L Ron Hubbard Jr (Nibs):
“[On evaluating LRHs tech, re: Auditors Code] So one clue is: Do not evaluate for the preclear. So what has L. Ron Hubbard done, particularly in the upper levels? He has evaluated for the preclear. He has handed your preclear the incidents to run. He has handed your preclear the preclear’s time track. So what’s the solution? You run the preclear’s time track! Not your time track or L. Ron Hubbard’s time track or anybody else’s. Any time L. Ron Hubbard has given you in any of the writings such as OT3, Xemu and all of that stuff on a silver platter, reject it. You as the auditor find out what is in the pc’s bank and run it. Don’t let anyone – L. Ron Hubbard, your cat or the milkman – evaluate for the preclear.”
On TRs:
“The actual mechanics of training or the mechanics of auditing became more important than getting results. Again, the ritual became more important than substance. I see that a great deal in TRs recently. Over the years they became rote, they became mechanical, they became ritualistic. The ritual was more important than the original purpose and intention of the TRs, which was breaking the components of an auditing session down into manageable, trainable and learnable steps. It taught you to audit bit-by-bit, piece-by-piece in a relaxed normal manner and atmosphere. But I see that what has happened over the last several years… it has been turning out robots, making you mechanical, ritualistic. The substance has been lost. And I would imagine in just a few more years the actual true meaning and purpose and reason for the TRs will be completely lost. People will be running the TRs as a religious ritual and not know at all what the hell was behind it at all or what the purpose was, but they do know they’re supposed to do it. And it will turn itself into a highly stylized dance. People will be graded on how well they do the dance and not graded at all on its purpose or reason.
Another way to say it is… is that the theta has been removed from the TRs, it’s that simple. One of the goals could be (and should be I think) in Scientology in general is to get theta back into Scientology.”
Nibs was audited to Clear and OT 90% from LRH himself.
Oracle, presuming that you are quoting that PL correctly (because I do no thave any green books with me right now), I can only say that it’s sheer arrogance (in 1960!) is really startling and almost shocking. And as you note in your short rejoinders, what LRH says there are simply lies. But I think you also have to look at the real NUTTINESS of those statements as to where Ron was at as far as his megalomania goes (but I think Ken Wilber would agree, doesn’t mean LRH wasn’t totally spot on about so much, even if he was kinda crazy about so much as well).
Splog, VERY right on post!
And it gets better Tara. I am a Visionary (lol) and I believe in my Vision.
As Blake (I believe it was) once said: All things exist in eternity, already complete & done, and they are merely being played out (or waiting to be played out) in form. Thus I can imagine Paul’s understanding catching fire, and I love it andI believe it, even if it takes a thousand years to come true. lol.
Its the kid in me
(that loves beauty, and knows it when he see’s it, even if its make believe for a while, as everything is make believe, for a while)
Lol,
Kudo’s to Paul.
Larry
“Totally” right, Splog.
The young “MAAs” have no chance. Perhaps they would have had a better chance if Miscavige had not put the kibosh on the Key to Life course which Ron developed as a remedy for, among other things, being out of comm with what is. Then at least there would have been a possibility of them educating themselves, reading about the logic of Socrates, studying the data series, and basically learning how to compute and think with data rationally. As things are these people exist in a perpetual confusion and are very susceptible to any order or threat they are given as a stable datum.
Marty is The Master.
Miscavige is The Slave Master.
That’s the difference.
Splog – goeiemôre
I appreciate all you have written. I believe we are all basically good and agree with that statement. Your ‘eyes wide open”, in my opinion, was and are from that viewpoint. Who, honestly, who not want the world to be a better place? This should only be considered an outpoint, when, and only when, one has ceased to maintain a viewpoint and consideration of truth.
The instant you, or anyone, falls away from the integrity of what is truth for you, to merely accept another persons’s statement has truth – that is the beginning of “cult” following. In simple terms you, in lazy fashion, accepted another person’s idea rather than confront and accept what is true for you as true data.
The “starry-eyed MAA” is, in my view, simply an illiterate who has accepted anothers’s summation as true without any thought. Not much different than an A=A.
Glad to be of the generation, and peoples, still willing and able to think for ourselves. I fully agree it isn’t funny. But tis the unfortunate present time situation (as in greatest departure from the ideal scene) that we find existent at this time.
Of course, I take Mr shaw statement as an ironical one, and it put the students at ease. I often train unschooled people who are a bit afraid of THE teacher.
Lawrence here is some more data on this line. I was in qual
mostly and as such worked with or was the Medical liaison
Officer. I figured out that in the early 2000 the PAC area
SO orgs took at least one million dollars of the LA county
taxpayers money on a yearly basis as sick SO members
went to the county hospitals and claimed religious worker
with no real income so never payed the hospital bills.
Rating of importance not in the PL’s? Its in the ROUTING section of the PL.
And isn’t providing health insurance something the cos should have been doing all along? Why does there have to be a law for a corporation to do the right thing by its employees/staff? Oh yeah that’s right…because greed will win out over good sense almost every time. This speaks to the points made above about green on white. All of the picky detail telling staff to the nth degree how to manage reduces the flexibility of staff (particularly thoses literal minded folks) to actually think through problems/issues/situations on their own and coming up with workable solutions. In health care I have observed over the last 35 years the increasing number of regulations needed to keep patients safe because some idiot bean counter gets a bright idea to cut staffing, etc, that ends in disaster. So this stuff gets written in response to a lack of common sense, intelligent thinking and analysis, and doing what is right rather than what is expedient.
Thanks OM, sooooooo true!
I notived that imbalance of developmental lines, too. Especially the line of respect, love, compassion, empathy.
Sometimes I thought that this uniform in the Sea Org restimulates too much militant behaviour. Just imagine all Sea Org members would have to wear monk clothes like the buddhist. I bet the beingness would have been very different..
“noticed” … I meant…
I develop my English 😀
Marildi,
Wanted to thank you for your post #254427 on the “Introduction to Horizontal Growth” page, and the quote from (9 Dec 53, Examples of SOP-8C Patter, Standard Op Procedure 8 Clinical). Beautiful. Let me recommend “The Philosophy of Aristotle” “Nicomachean Ethics”.
Grade IV (Abilities Release) EP is something like ‘Moving out of fixed conditions and gaining the ability to do new things.’ I’ve found that one must still try to do some new things.
Carcha.
I think the traps relating to an accomplished practitioner vs. a literalist becomes apparent with respect how Be, Do and Have interact with the three universes – one’s own, that of another’s and that of others generally.
An accomplished practitioner has valence-free beingness, executes procedures as closely to technical perfection as he is able according to standard practice, and therefore achieves the intended results, whether it is in his own universe, in affecting the universe of another or in affecting the agreements that define reality generally.
The literalist has assumed a group valence, executes procedures as dictated by others or as required by group cultural memes, and attempts to achieve only the pre-determined outcomes demanded of him by the group culture by which he defines himself.
BE: The accomplished practitioner has his own beingness whereas the literalist is in a group valence. The accomplished practitioner is curious about all things, whereas the literalist is at enforcement of below.
DO: The accomplished practitioner executes with technical perfection in areas of interest to him whereas the literalist executes in areas and in the manner he thinks is expected or require of him.
HAVE: The accomplished practitioner achieves standard results whereas the literalist achieves overt products for lack of depth, understanding and character.
Own Universe: The accomplished practitioner is secure in his own universe and craves no agreement from others universes, whereas the literalist has no universe other than that of others and is lost without their agreement. The accomplished practitioner thinks in concepts appropriate to the circumstances, whereas the literalist things with data often out of context.
Another’s Universe: The accomplished practitioner, being secure in his own universe, grants beingness to another’s universe and can easily assume another’s viewpoint without necessarily adopting it, whereas the literalist categorize another’s universe and grants it only as much beingness and acceptance as it aligns with the group valence.
The Universe of Others Generally: The accomplished practitioner has ARC/KRC for extant reality knowing it is a collective illusion, can envision ideal scenes and therefore spot both outpoints and plus-points in any realm he studies, whereas the literalist has cloistered, insular, limited, “us vs. them” viewpoint of reality, is judgmental of it and therefore is deficient of ARC/KRC.
The avoidance of traps is in thorough knowledge and application of Study Tech and the Data Series and maintenance of personal integrity in all circumstances.
Routing is routing, it’s where something goes. Importance is something else entirely.
Hallo daar, hier vandag by my is dit ‘n wonderlike dag (today is a wonderful day 🙂 )
“In simple terms you, in lazy fashion, accepted another person’s idea rather than confront and accept what is true for you as true data”
Bingo, you hit the nail on the head right there. That is *exactly* what happened. Advanced Procedure and Axioms chapter on Responsibility applies.
A side note about that chapter: of everything that Ron wrote, that is the one that benefited me the most; I’ve found time and time again that when I’m trying to deal with something, many things help improve the scene. But only when I take full responsibility for the thing I’m working with, then and only then does it fully resolve. It’s like that magic last step that puts on the finishing touch and makes it complete.
+111 🙂
diogenes and iamvolkov — you are preaching to the choir here. I’ve loved astrology since my early hippie days when there was but ONE “occult” bookstore in Chicago that I would hitchhike to on a regular basis.
I became pretty adept at being about to just perceive what someone’s rising sign was for example. This was the days WAY WAY before online astrology programs and since I still can’t do basic math — doing all the math needed for a chart was way over my head.
That said — I found that predictive astrology or relationship astrology looks perhaps good on paper (OH perfect — she/he is JUST the perfect sign and attendant planets for me) — but alas, the person might NOT actually be “in” his own skin … in a manner of speaking.
Anyway — I know Mary Sue liked astrology as great deal and Diana – having learned that at one time I read palms well – asked me in the MIDDLE of the Lerner Building (where all the senior aides were as well as senior management) to read her palm.
I nearly fainted.
🙂
Splog, ok, it’s understood. As I wrote further down Ron was short in time after a while and possibly that made him short in temper, too.
However I have seen the org board work for me when in the ASHO CF. This was not a miracle, it was real. 250 got to work there under an org board.
In any way, those good intentioned people you mentioned wouldn’t have any chance to do anything at all (even that least they did) if there was no orgs, no posts, no Hats protecting them a bit… no stats… nothing of that. This may not be perfect but was brilliant and abundant ALL OVER THE WORLD, and each good intentioned person had certain rights to promote (even now) his good intentions and get good products. This may sound very simple, but it was A DUPLICATION of LRH’s work in ABUNDANCE.
No DMs could cut that down, no no ones. It still exists even in this pathetic form it’s in now. DM now instead of going into abundance of new orgs (which he can’t do) goes for luxury and few ideal orgs, goes for big money but will never duplicate what LRH did, which was a multiple orgs system all around the globe which was expanding.
It’s not so unusual. Jazz purists, rejected Jazz fusionists. Hubbard was flexible on one end, and unflexible on another. I do not mean to discount his value. He has enormous value. He has been the most valuable person on this planet to me. I love him in every manner possible. I would take a bullet for him in any theater.
But he was a purist about his own creations. He had a right to protect his own brand. That is a God Given right, it was connected to his identity. His ideas. But it was a store front and people have the right to shop. Decisions on the part of the P.C. are what mark “case gain”. To invalidate a person’s decisions then, is to discount that power. Even if they decide Scientology is not for them. It’s all about the decision.
As much as I am willing to take a bullet for him. I am not willing to slaughter other people on his behalf. I have my own lines to draw in the sand. We all have a right to be here. On the worst eve of my life I stumbled into a bathroom stall and saw this written on the wall. And it carried me above it all.
Max Ehrmann
Desiderata
Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.
Max Ehrmann, Desiderata, Copyright 1952.
Theo,
You say “Ron had a short time and thus a short temper for things.”
I think that is very true.
In the late 1970’s and early ’80’s, I had the feeling that we were always in a big rush to get things done. Everything was done in a big hurry.
Ron probably knew his current life was nearly over.
This would explain why the tone of early writing is different from the later material.
He accomplished much in his short time though.
I enjoyed Stephan Arroyo’s books on astrology before I started Scientology.
All nice – except, astrologists often forget that a being has free will and does not allways bow to the law of gravity (and other cosmic “strings”).
The subject is interesting as long you don’t forget that a being can transcend energy, and even time.
Love,
SKM
Kenny G, Jazz fusionist kicked to hell and back by Jazz purists:
Because they heard Jr. Walker first. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub72eylahJg I preferred Jr Walker. But I didn’t feel the need to beat up Kenny G. That is change inability. Isn’t change on the grade chart?
How many Scientologist can not experience change yet they see themselves as a grade release? This is happening. They can’t change. Change is a grades processs and we have OT’s out here that can not change. That ain’t funny.
I think we, each one of us, are all Masters and are so inherently. In other words, we’re all really BIG MEs. However, it appears that at some point we chose to be something else…’little mes.’ But being something else other than what one truly is, even with all the incredibly juicy games at one’s disposal, eventually gets old and one by one, each in his or her own way, says something to the effect, ‘there’s got to be a better way.’ And at that point, one sets foot onto the road of remembering who and what and where they really are.
Paul, I really like the way you arrange words. You fashion a communication that I easily resonate to. Thank you.
A lotta people just don’t know what it means to go out there front stage and center . They have never been on a stage. The happiness and pleasure of others has never been a responsibility they have had to assume. They have sat in the audience all of their life. And criticized the entertainment. They wait for the next curtain call to indicate their next rise or fall. While we, the light in the hall, are supposed to rise above it all. Then send back a memo like a Thomas Guide. Yes, people are that blind. And below it all.
And who, could not love Jr. Walker?
You will excuse me for saying this, but astrology is a crock of shit.
Star signs are random groups of stars as seen from planet Earth. The stars making up say Scorpio are none of them anywhere near each other, they just happen to be in your line of sight. They are huge balls of mostly hydrogen plasma undergoing nuclear fusion into helium, sometimes they explode and kill everything in their path for many light years (and providing raw materials for new solar systems as it turns out).
Planet Earth undergoes precession (it wobbles as it spins) so the Zodiac is not always where it is now. It visually rotates around the North Pole every 26,000 years, so let’s say that the Zodiac was first drawn by Man 4000 years ago, by now it is has moved around the sky by 34 degrees.
The small planets are lumps of rock, the big ones are balls of gas, just not big enough to blow up and become stars in their own right. They wobble all over the place and suffer terribly with having other lumps of rock crash into them about every 5,000,000 years on average.
48 years, 1 month, 15 days and 10 hours ago this body was born in the sign Aquarius. Presumably it’s parents had sex about 38 weeks prior when a random sperm cell met an ovum in a nice warm environment. if you subscribe to the thetan theory of personality, then I am unique and have always been this inquisitive and argumentative. If you subscribe to the MEST theory of personality, then either it is random or it is predictable. If it is predictable for astrological reasons, then whatever the objects in the sky are doing to cause this, they are doing it on cue every twelve months, all in some sympathetic pattern. and they are doing it to every life form on the planet all at the same time without exception.
By the time this body was born, its brain was virtually fully formed and not to different to what it is now. There is no known process by which an object in the sky can change this brain to change personality – that’s the MEST theory. Per the thetan theory, objects in the sky don’t get to change me unless I say so.
All of the above numbers are proven, demonstrable facts, and my logic is sound. Short of invoking a magic process (as in god did it, The Why is God), I would really like an astrologer to explain how astrology is supposed to work. Do keep in mind that correlation does not imply causation.
Graduated,
Very nicely put.
One would think that people who are studying the way to free their mind from fixation, will be able to follow standard procedures without becoming attached to a group imposed identity or becoming subservient to the standard procedures.
That goes to show you that the way of the Tao is not so easily attained by most after all.
Well, lets keep communicating that simplicity then.
love Desiderata and have a framed copy in the hallway.
If I could live out these words by Max Ehrmann fully I would have achieved what I wanted from Scientology. I’ve seen this poem many times but it takes on a whole new significance now – wonderful stuff.
Eric that’s true. I had many times a difficulty to spot what’s called the “chronic tone” of a person. I could see the current tone (easier for me) but the chronic tone… hmmm… I was a bit in doubt. Over the years I learnt few things. First of all many thetans (as thetans) unfortunately are on the second page of the Tone Scale and this is not so evident. I have seen people just controlling bodies. Then I had this realization (which is my own idea, never read by LRH) as I was word clearing, which I found too difficult for the small words especially… I was going through some hell. I was studying in the Academy and studying one or two paragraphs (lol), was trying to do the small words myself… but I had great wins so I couldn’t give up.
So I saw that there is a tone level Needing Bodies (I think that’s the one) and then right next to it the Awareness Characteristic is Symbols. I was in awe when I made the thought that as words are Symbols any people on earth who have troubles with symbols… oh my god.. they are not clear on this Tone…. This is cruel and might sound even insane… but if you see it there is a weight there pulling them down each time. Down to Symbols. Symbology, they don’t get it they can be hypnotized by it (Miscavigedom, lol) I am not saying that such people cannot go up to Enthusiasm or even Action or Postulates but there is a certain burden, better call it barrier there and they are not through it.
So those are basics and one can learn to think with them. What can I say about the Data Series? Aren’t there basic things? The Outpoints and the Pluspoints?
This is what I am talking about. LRH didn’t err much in those basics. He may have erred in other things. But may I say something? Why put the blame on the man and not on ourselves. He wasn’t God… What are we doing about it?
Thank you Dan, it’s a possibility. Actually it makes sense. I think that’s life… we are getting a bit short whatever as time goes on. Especially people who have to get things done.
Yeah, and there is people who believe in ghosts… oh, spooky! Let’s not question that.
Alan, true… he was a man… let’s see the mistakes then, otherwise we can do an A=A=A in all this. Some people have traumatic experiences because of misapplication though and this has to be taken into account.
One thing I can find wrong with Ron’s work (that’s what we are looking, not faults with Ron the man), is that he left the tech in the hands of untrained people to abuse it. But then again, there is a stage Mankind has to go through to learn. And some learn by trial and error.
Of course he was exaggerating in many things and areas. He had to stay alive and keep the subject alive.
I see the overall picture. Did Mankind progress with his work or not? Was it helpful finally? And my answer is Yes, big time.
OracleMysticism, Mankind is moving on gradients, and we are now, in this present time, experiencing that very point of that specific gradient. Yes, I got a new identity as Theo Sismanides, the Scientologist or the Philosopher as some like to call me… but this new category is not just a label… it carries with it years of experience on the human mind and the human soul, it carries with it better knowledge to accomplish things in the realm of personal relations, communications, traumatic incidents, incidents of everyday life and decision making, which others won’t see in many lifetimes. Just this little label… sorry, knowledge.
Imagine now the many John Does or Theo Sismanides around the world. That new category got them to a new level. The question is: can there be a new level which is attainable from this very specific point where we are now standing? That rather be a new stable datum. I think it works like this in this universe…. BOOOOM… shit… I fell off my chair…
wow, really? In what way Valkov?
There is a “debate” answer to each point you made, but I don’t feel like taking the time to go into that much detail with you, let alone the back and forth that would surely ensue. I’ll just say two things.
First of all, your “science vs. superstition” arguments against astrology are entirely figure-figure, without the benefit of any observations by you regarding whether or not astrology actually works in practice. In my comment above I gave evidence from MY personal observations. You cannot refute that evidence. It actually happened in the physical universe. The fact that this evidence doesn’t fit with your understanding of science caused you to just throw it out, rather than reconsider your own understanding. That’s “highly illogical.” I’ve forgotten who originally uttered the famous quote, “Science sufficiently in advance of any society’s understanding would appear as magic to it,” but that’s the principle at work in your rejection of astrology.
But, since you asked, here’s the basic theory of “how astrology works.” It has to do with “subtle energy” and the fact that the entire universe is alive. For example, a person’s mental image pictures, ridges, etc. can’t be directly viewed by any devices of modern physics, but they can be seen by other people whose awareness is high enough. If you’ve never done this yourself, just keep getting audited and trained as an auditor, and you’ll develop that ability, as thousands of Scientologists have. There is “stuff” that is “more subtle” or “at a higher wavelength” than what physical science works with. Astrology is entirely concerned with that “stuff.” There are “subtle energy fields” in and around human bodies, the planet, the solar system, and the galaxy. “Subtle energy” is emanated by the Sun, and absorbed and re-emanated by the planets. This energy circulates through the solar system in an almost biological manner, altering and being altered by the energy fields it passes through. When it arrives at a human being, it has an effect on him.
Minus a lot of detail and rebuttals to the objections you’ll probably make, that’s the deal.
Marty,
A few notes from LRH.
“What is true for you is what you have observed yourself and when you lose that you have lost everything.”
“One of the most basic truths of Scientology is that something is not true if it is not true for the individual himself”.
From the Code of a Scientologist #11 a pledge to “actively decry the suppression of knowledge, wisdom, philosophy or data which would help Mankind.”
From the Creed of the Church of Scientology “All men have inalienable rights to think freely, talk freely, to write freely their own opinions and to counter or utter or write upon the opinions of others”.
Marty carry on knowing that you have the full blessing of LRH himself!
Lol!!! The unexamined idea should be examined.
“Even after he has been convicted by the jury, Socrates declines to abandon his pursuit of the truth in all matters. Refusing to accept exile from Athens or a commitment to silence as his penalty, he maintains that public discussion of the great issues of life and virtue is a necessary part of any valuable human life. “The unexamined life is not worth living.” (Apology 38a) Socrates would rather die than give up philosophy, and the jury seems happy to grant him that wish.”
Splog,,
I’m going to jump in and respectfully disagree that standard admin is or has been a Why for failures of orgs. On the contrary, I believe it has been and continues to be the MISapplication and/or misunderstanding of, failure to use altogether and/or ignorance of standard admin which contributes significantly to failures.
It takes a certain skill to correctly apply standard admin. One must be able to think with the data because as soon as it becomes literal and rote compliance it becomes a potential danger. This principle applies to auditing and ethics tech too.
Thinking with data is all part of correct application because if someone can’t recognize differences, similarities and identities, then just about any data has the potential for dangerous results, IMO.
The quote about advanced science appearing to be magic is from Arthur C. Clark. And regarding astrology, someone I know ran an incident from a long time ago, in a galaxy far away, where 12 races each inhabited their own sector of that galaxy. From a planet in the galactic center, one could point to a given section of sky and describe the personality characteristics of the race that lived in that direction. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this, but it’s easy to see how a whole-track memory of that could have become what we know today as astrology.
splog,
You appear to lack imagination, but –
Let’s face it – you are nothing more than 25-28 of mobile intestine, evolved to run around and having no other purpose than to sustain itself until its DNA programming breaks down and it stops running – permanently. 🙂
By the way 4,000 is not 34% of 26,000, its a little over 15%.
When I walked out for the last time, summer 2009, I never thought about creating or joining another Scientology field group. I just wanted to put it behind me. Fact is I didn’t even know about the Freezone or Indies, I just left vowing never to go back.
When I found Marty’s Moving on Up a little over a year ago, and shortly then Steve Hall’s scientology-cult.com and then other sites, I still never considered forming or joining a group and I still don’t. I do now hope to do more auditing and study in Scientology within our field, that is about the extent of it except for backing the movement to expose the lies – perhaps these things, and supporting our field auditors in comm and networking solidify and constitute a group.
So maybe I’m a “with Ron Indie”, whatever that means.
Me, and I suspect many of you now find LRH, once held in almost God like status, to confine now a profit in his own right, but a man, a being nevertheless. He was one of us who could delineate truth – and record it with fantastic ability, even if he couldn’t always act in accord, to put it mildly, and yet thus no longer a god on a pedestal. I would have never known and just been at a loss save for those who told of their stories and shared their truth.
Still, all the demeaning critique in the world isn’t going to change the fact we have a miraculously workable tech – if you choose to use it. Moreover being free from the confines of the mother church, and I’m still running that out as we speak, as an Indie or whatever I am seeking to become now, shouldn’t ever prevent one from seeking other interests which in spite of objections during my entire in Church career, never stopped me anyway.
So no, I don’t get all the hoopla about or between the Indies or LRH or Ex’s much seen lately. There is really no point, no? Lets move on.
Freedom from anything is only so long as you own it, and are willing to defend it for self and others.
Here is a page with a chart: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_(astrology)
The Houses are also similar to the chart of the Dynamics. They represent different spheres of life and the activities and experiences associated with them.
There are many differences, too. They are a way of organizing one’s thinking about one’s life as a whole.
http://www.astrotheme.com/astrology_houses.php
Google shows many results.
“The spiritual dedication. for them,justified almost any behavior”. How true this has always been in connection with organized religion.
Sorry, this, even if it sounds very nice:
“What is true for you is what you have observed yourself and when you lose that you have lost everything.”
“One of the most basic truths of Scientology is that something is not true if it is not true for the individual himself”.
….was one of the best sales gimmick ever developed it blows away any critical thought and opens the door to the most strangest reasoning I ever have experienced, as Marty demonstrated in his article about denialism, that people have illusions far away from reality as truths, ignoring facts.
I know and this a truth for me that Scientology has 10 Millions members and I’ll not give up that truth or I would loose anything !
It’s not true for me that Scientology isn’t expanding, whatever your truth or facts are ! …….ad absurdum !
“You appear to lack imagination, but -”
That’s a strawman. Please don’t do that. It’s also very insulting and evaluative, but I’ll let that slide.
Now please re-read my post. Nowhere did I equate “me” and “the body” so why did you conflate those things in reply?
I never said 34 percent, I said 34 degrees. But you’re right, the answer is still wrong – it’s ~55 degrees
Oh, you’re welcome, Carcha! And I’ll add your reading recommendation to my “queue”. 🙂
Thanks also for the relevant reply to my comment, where you bring up the EP of Grade IV. On the subject of ser facs, here’s another one of my favorite LRH quotes for you, which in an older edition of Advanced Procedure and Axioms is in all italics:
“All that is wrong with any case is a service facsimile. Discover and reduce the service facsimile and its chain, and the auditor changes the nature of man and promotes him. An individual who has no service facsimile will not accumulate facsimiles to his harm or become restimulated by others. The heart of auditing is the service facsimile.”
Aquamarine,
I’m still not convinced.
But to be clear, I didn’t claim that Standard Admin is the reason, I was careful to state it was my opinion that Ron was not very good at writing up his thoughts on standard admin (because so few people seem to get good results out of it); and it was that opinion that led me to question the teachings of standard admin, and then to discard most of it.
When you sat that it takes skill to apply admin tech, that of course is correct – any technology requires skill and judgement in application. But your post seems to imply that lack of skill and judgement would be the only cause of failure, or by far the most major cause. That sounds dangerously like cult-think. I could be wrong, I may be mis-reading you, in which case you might want to elaborate?
Alan
Aquamarine, thanks for this. And now I have a cognition… Ron’s greatest problem was how to teach a hard to teach race. It dawned on me after all those conversations that we have here and around the net, that misunderstoods are a major barrier. Also to say to someone you have an MU has been misused to make wrong of the person and minimize him. Another gross misapplication of the Study Tech. Hitting and not Hatting has been the lot of this race till now. I hope we are all gonna move to something higher.
Ouch!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-s-lofgren/scientology-for-rednecks_b_2707087.html
+1 on the concept of the overall picture of a man or a woman’s life.
Someone invented the wheel – was he a good father? Michaelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel – did he pay his bills or did he stiff everybody. Isaac Newton discovered the law of gravity – was he faithful to his wife? Does any of this really matter now?
According to the New Testament, Jesus, when he was 12, threw a fit at the money changers in the temple. Sounds like he had a quick temper, no? Possibly kind of an in-your-face kid? Later he said, “A soft answer turneth away wrath”. Could it be that he was later speaking out of his own experience with his own bad temper and how making people wrong doesn’t work and actually makes unwanted conditions persist? Who knows? Point is, was he perfect? I doubt it. And possibly he didn’t even exist, but you know, I don’t even care about that. You know why? Because SOMEONE said, “You are your brother’s keeper”. SOMEONE said, “Love thy neighbor as thyself”., and these maxims became the bedrock of pure PHILOSOPHY of Christianity, at least. (Ghandi, when asked his opinion of Christianity, said, “It is a wonderful philosophy. I would like to see it applied”.)
Point is, why do we chew on this bone of LRH not having been this perfect person/saint? Here’s a guy that devoted his life to the erradication of the reactive mind, on a planetary scale, no less. How could he even begin to do that if he didn’t have one himself? WHY would he want to do this if he himself had no pain, no blockage of his own abilities, no evil purposes, EVER? Of course he had a bank, and of course it keyed in on him, and he made mistakes, mistakes with people, his family, his juniors, the tech, all kinds of mistakes and errors. And I RESIST LIKE HELL CONFRONTING THAT because I have some deep-seated, somehow-ingrained NEED to post someone up there who is the epitomy of perfection, someone I can look up to and say, “Well, he/she’s perfect”. Someone who is God or is somehow God-like.
Makes no sense and analytically, I KNOW that on the quest for truth it goes NOWHERE. But I can observe this outpoint of thinking, in myself and others, and I can work on disciplining my own mind to stop freakin’ doing this and to instead LOOK at the over-all picture of a person’s life and evaluate on that, on everything done or not done, good, bad, indifferent. Now, when I take that viewpoint as regards LRH’s life and worth, he’s way, way up there as valuable in my estimation.
Oraclemysticism, I think you are conflating LRH’s 1960 defintion of a Scientologist with what the COS has devolved into in 2013. I think one would have to define what LRH meant back in 1960 by the term, “Scientologist”. There is dropped out time occurring repeatedly in your data analysis which causes your eval to be specious. 1960 Scientology is not Scientology now.
Reblogged this on My LRH.
+1
“Every man is my better in some way.” Emerson.
Humility opens the door to understanding and enlightenment. At least, I have found it so. One of the most important things to know is that you don’t know.
Well, the whole article is BS. He’s just pouncing on a meme. I find it fascinating that people from Party A know in no uncertain terms that followers of Party B are duped, stupid, ignorant, greedy, evil, lying, and dangerous. Pundits from both parties say that same shit, and append a “D” or an “R” to the end of it.
Not sure exactly what the blow-out with Nibs was, but it was a beaut. I never considered him a reliable source for information, though.
Martin Gibson | March 4, 2013 at 10:43 pm | Reply
Here is a reference from L Ron Hubbard Jr (Nibs):
“[On evaluating LRHs tech, re: Auditors Code] So one clue is: Do not evaluate for the preclear. So what has L. Ron Hubbard done, particularly in the upper levels? He has evaluated for the preclear. He has handed your preclear the incidents to run. He has handed your preclear the preclear’s time track. So what’s the solution? You run the preclear’s time track! Not your time track or L. Ron Hubbard’s time track or anybody else’s. Any time L. Ron Hubbard has given you in any of the writings such as OT3, Xemu and all of that stuff on a silver platter, reject it. You as the auditor find out what is in the pc’s bank and run it. Don’t let anyone – L. Ron Hubbard, your cat or the milkman – evaluate for the preclear.”
Much of SCN may be classed as evaluation. And inval in there
somewhere.
You have a bank? You have a time track?
You are a spiritual being?
And so much more!
With a good tech terminal gains will be made.
Had great gains on my two runs on OT 3. In my survey most who did it didn’t believe the OT 3 story. But got gains. See PAB 12.
You have a good tech terminal giving you OT3, don’t reject it.
Inspect it. Try it. See if it works. Then take matters from there.
For me every session on OT 3 I got into very heavy breathing. And
I didn’t even believe the OT 3 story. Took 10 mins after session to normalise. This is definitely not everyone’s experience.
Clearly much was stirred up and resolved. Not sure if I understand why. Great gains. 🙂
Amen. The service facsimile and its mechanics are Ron’s true gift to mankind. I think so many people skipped the grades in the late ’70s, ’80s. and ’90s (and God knows the grades since then were probably screwed up) that that fact alone has done the most damage to Scientology. I mean, really.
I haven’t posted in here for some time as I have my own thing going…
However, some of my friends told me that when Marty stepped out and broadened his spiritual path that some Indies and “tech purists” called him squirrel and assigned him lower conditions.
The infighting in the Independent Field never ceases to amaze me. The blame and judgments are cruel, but laughable as immature. Some of those who have done the badgering in the name of the purity of the tech help keep me in business-. their ex-clients find me to get cleaned up.
Every single person in the Independent Field owes a debt of gratitude to Marty Rathbun. He has taken the brunt of the heat from the “evil domain” and is still kicking. He has had made it safe for Scientologists to blow through his forum, have choices and do Scn if they want to.
I preach Freedom of Thought, the opposite of Mind Control, and praise anyone who steps outside the entrapment of cult think, It is a gift to be able to think for yourself.
Studying other isms and ologies, and so on has made me a better counselor and I’m sure it will do the same for any other independent who wants to broaden their knowledge and spiritual horizons.
Glenn
Go Glenn 🙂
Thanks, Conan, and I agree. I think the message boilds down to, by all means play the game, but don’t allow yourself to get sucked into a games condition. 🙂
Hear, hear!
Thanks for that.
Thank you for posting today Glenn. Great to hear from you! Thank you for backing Marty up. Totally agreed.
Eric, I don’t think it invalidates the tone scale but I think a person often does have more than one tone level at a time in that he may have attention on more than one thing at a time. As a simple example, he may have heard some bad news earlier in the day which still has some of his attention units, while at the same time he is enjoying a funny movie he’s now watching. Those two tone levels might be grief and cheerfulness.
I’ve personally experienced this kind of thing many times – there’s a sort of undercurrent of one tone and yet an entirely different tone level going on at the same time but more “on the surface”. And I’m sure there can be more than just two things that one has attention on, and thus more than two tone levels going on in a being’s space,
But I think that there’s probably a predominant tone that can be spotted, most likely the one that corresponds to where most of the attention units are. When I did the drill to spot tone levels, I got pretty confident about it. And now that I think of it, I was probably spotting the predominant tone and just not putting attention on (or not-is’ing) any undercurrent of tones.
This may also relate to the datum that “Any being is a viewpoint, he is as much a being as he is able to assume viewpoints.” (Scn 8-8008)
Got it on everything, Splog, including how what I stated with regard to lack of skill and judgement in the application of admin tech sounding like cult-think, so I’ll address that first, because I think I said it wrong by making it a blanket statement.
What I should have said, and what I say now, is that, from my own personal experience, a number of admin tech PLs, over a number of years, either already known or pointed out to me by another terminal, read and understood by me, have been helpful, in varying degrees, to me both personally and professionally. Now, I have not had the opportunity or experience to apply ALL admin PLs by any means, but, over a period of many years, I have had positive and beneficial experience from the ones I have read, understood and applied.
There IS a sole exception to what I state here as regards the admin PLs because there is ONE PL which I STRONGLY think is wrong and with which I have alway had serious disagreements. Unfortunately – and I’m sorry if this sounds suspicious to you – I cannot disclose on this blog which policy it is. That said, I have never followed it or would I ever dream of doing so as I have always believed it is 100% wrong and quite harmful. And this policy which I believe is wrong and harmful is the POLICY ITSELF, not its misapplication and/or misunderstanding, nor the “skill” with which it is applied. Believe me, I have seen this particular policy applied with great skill, full understanding, and spot on application, and I HATE it, I reject it.
I’m totally tracking with you on the distinction between bad, harmful policy and the skill, understanding and correct application of bad, harmful policy.
Perhaps our differences are experiential as I have been largely helped and have helped myself with various LRH admin PLs. Perhaps you have not been helped and have been harmed. I acknowledge that apologize for any unintentional inference that it was misapplication and/or lack of skill which possibly caused harm or which were at best not helpful.I myself would be furious if someone had said that misapplication of the PL I loathe was the cause of it not “working” or helping me, because I’ve word cleared it and been false data stripped on it and I still freakin’ hate it and think its wrong.
I can only state my own truths. That’s all anyone can do. That said, Sorry if I came across as smug, pedantic or God forbid, cultish, when do so.
Aquamarine
Grasshopper: “The service facsimile and its mechanics are Ron’s true gift to mankind.”
+1
The ser fac is pretty easy to spot all over the place, even in the people I respect and admire most (even myself :)). And I’ve wondered how much that phenomenon is involved in the current disputes in the Independent field, with all the best intentions at the same time.
Fabulous reasoning Theo. Yes, I believe there is always another level and another parallel dimension.
Marty, this is a great blog post! Thank you. When I first read it, gurus and clay feet came to mind. So, with that I went to google. Never heard of the book or, for that matter, Anthony Storr, but the following two editorial reviews on Amazon did get me interested.
Amazon.com Review
Every generation has its charismatic spiritual leaders, its gurus. Some are true saints while others conceal unspeakable depravity. Anthony Storr, Oxford professor of psychiatry, analyzes an interesting array of gurus and finds many commonalities among them–an isolated childhood, a need for certainty, a demand for obedience. He also elucidates aspects of this psychological profile in various intellectual, artistic, and political figures of history. This eye-opening book invokes a larger issue: in our search for guidance and truth, when and why do we cross the line from reasoned inquirer to unquestioning follower? –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
“The wisest men follow their own direction and listen to no prophet guiding them,” wrote Euripedes. Storr (Music and the Mind), a psychiatrist, uses this ancient caution as the epigraph to a fascinating yet frustrating investigation into the appeal of guru figures. He analyzes the lives and works of the destructive, unbalanced cult leaders Jim Jones and David Koresh, and he uses their symptoms?isolation, narcissism, paranoid delusion?to take the measure of other, generally more respected, “gurus,” including Gurdjieff, Freud, Jung, Rudolf Steiner, Rajneesh, St. Ignatius, even Jesus. While insisting that none of these latter can be described as insane, Storr considers their authoritarian certainty an ominous sign. Stressing that there can be a charisma based on goodness and genuine devotion to truth rather than on the power of personality, Storr warns against teachers who claim to know what he judges no single person can know: “No one knows in the sense that Gurdjieff or Rajneesh or Jung believed that they knew and were supposed to know by their disciples.” But Storr’s elegantly written account is tarnished by his own unacknowledged authoritarianism. He never entertains the notion that there may be states of consciousness? states of knowing? that exceed customary bounds, so that a strange cosmology like Gurdjieff’s might be understood not as a paranoid delusion or mere belief, but as a challenge to habitual modes of perception and cogitation that is composed with a clockmaker’s care.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Amen, Theo.
My reality is that so much case is tied to MUs and false data.
But when ARC is not used, when beingness is not granted, then no word clearing tech or any tech for that matter is going to work because there’s not going to be any self-determined reach. It is impossible to force someone to do Scientology. Once force is used on someone to agree it ceases to be Scientology, no matter that you still call it that. ARC is the process that undercuts all other processes because nothing will reach or work without it. One must always retain and allow others the option of rejecting – anything in Scientology, because once any LRH tech is hammer-pounded.into a person and the option to reject it is forbidden it becomes useless in its actual purpose of rehabilitating the self determinism of the person and converting his entheta to theta. And anyone who is or has been hammer-pounded with any kind of tech is 100% right to immediately reject it, simply by virtue of the fact that force is being used. I would..
Call me a cock-eyed optimist but I believe anyone has a chance to cognite on truth no matter how steeped in a cult one is, how enslaved one is mentally and/or physically, no matter how ignorant of vital data one is kept.
Against all odds, despite huge barriers, slaves have cognited and broken their bonds. Anyone’s essential beingness IS self-determinism and like a deep spring it nourishes each of us whether we are aware of it or not. Freedom will always triumph over slavery eventually.
Chrismann
You said…
“You have to figure out what you know and what you believe and you can’t get away with blindly spewing a quote or a reference as the final word. In this context, Scientology application requires a deeper understanding. It has to be real to you and be yours.”
I am totally “all over that one”. I have found that the lack of what you are talking about here is a major flaw in the way training has been done in the church, since quite early on. I put it right up there as a major “why”, in a large part, for how Scientology got into the mess it is currently in. It effects the use, or misuse, of Scientology at all levels, in all areas.
Eric S
You’re right splog, I couldn’t resist making a crude joke. That’s why I put the smiley face there. I’m sorry you were offended. The “28 feet of intestine” is an old saw. But you were the one who brought up ‘this body and brain” in your post,and linked those to “personality”,kinda setting up a materialistic scenario or context……
And you’re right, in 4,000 years the zodiac rotates about 55 degrees out of 360.
However I maintain you haven’t read the actual posts made here, about ‘astrology’, not as a predictive method or as a determining factor of anyone’s life course, but as a set of symbols representing various facets of existence, as I posted above to Theo:
“The Houses are also similar to the chart of the Dynamics. They represent different spheres of life and the activities and experiences associated with them. They are a way of organizing one’s thinking about one’s life as a whole.”
Saying you didn’t have much imagination was not a Straw Man”, but a kind of “Ad Hom”, actually – an address “to the man” rather than “to the argument itself”.
Of course I didn’t see much of an argument there, mostly a rant…:-) (Oooops there I go again) 🙂
Anyway, PEACE. As Al said recently on another blog, I can be a dickhead sometimes. But I encourage you to refine your arguments about astrology. What I think about astrology may not be what you think I think about it! Kinda like the case with scientology, each person seems to have his own unique view of it.
Theo
Yes…”Why put the blame on the man and not on ourselves. He wasn’t God… What are we doing about it?”
Exactly!
Eric S
Whatever Indy shifts have come to pass, I view now as major improvements, if it has signaled your arrival here.
What an unexpected pleasure to see your name and read your post!
Eternally grateful for the kind, caring and merciful efforts you put forward to assist and repair and revive, those unfortunate few left for dead or set up for failure.
To have whoever was posing as the justice chief, replaced by a master Class Xll , and a well meaning person, on the forum is a vast improvement.
I don’t know much about these groups at all, if anything. But the phrase “Scientology for rednecks” might become a standard hit.
All of a thetan’s case can be found on the Grades (not certain about my phrasing there). I don’t mean to minimize the rest of the Grade Chart at all, but somehow I get the notion that if someone spent a dedicated lifetime with all the materials of the Grades, the guy would end up wondering why anyone would want to hang around in a body.
Aquamarine, beautiful, thanks!
+1
On practicing Scientology:
Voltaire2003 just published on http://scientologie-secte.org/qui-connait-rj-68 the transcript of Ron’s journal 68, which is hard to find. Some extracts which cover well our last weeks communications on this blog : (sorry, a bit long)
“Now this is what I have pointed out for some time, there are two branches to Scientology. One is Scientology the philosophy, it is a religious philosophy, but it is a philosophy and that is something you use to think with, to er, wonder with, to accept or reject. And the other is Scientology the applied philosophy and that is where it applies directly to processing. Philosophy means a love or pursuit of wisdom or a search for the underlying searches and principles of reality and we certainly have that in Scientology. A great number of principles of exist in Scientology, it’s probably the largest written, spoken body of work of any philosophy ever undertaken.Out of this many things can be made of and of it, we can say such things as “What is true for you, is true for you in Scientology”. This is a vast area of observations in the humanity. It is yours to think with with, work with, accept or reject as you wish. It is still there, it is still valuable. No matter how old the book is. No matter how old the tape. It is still part of the body of Scientology, known as philosophy.There is nothing authoritarian about it. It is yours to accept or not as you see fit. It is Scientology, the philosophy, nothing has changed it.
Now there’s this other thing called applied Scientology or processing. Because it obtains a result and is valuable to you personally, processing could be seen to be the whole of Scientology, well, it isn’t. Goodness when you think of the number of policy letters we have on organization and these other things and look at this new Third Party Law,er that is actually something you think with and can process with. Now Scientology processing today is made up only of those things which apply uniformly to all cases.Processing is made up of common denominators which apply to all life.There are no variables, no different cases and this is a considerable achievement, it is a specialized form of Scientology and has specialized use and these exact processes must be exactly done to produce an exact result. It’s like making pie., if you don’t use the same ingredients, the same way in each case, why, you don’t get pie. Now we call this standard tech. And if an auditor is to see it, then you really have to get him to do it exactly a few times and suddenly he does see it and by doing it, why he sees in the preclear that it is the right way to do it and after that he doesn’t require any further persuasion. He has seen it, so it is true for him.I doubt you could make a Class VIII trained auditor do tech in any non standard way. He has seen the precision of modern processes. He knows he can get results that way and so he does it without any variation. He isn’t doing it because I say so, he’s doing it because it works and he knows he can make real pie. Not to compare you to a pie of course.”/em>
(…) Now the real thing we have to guard against is becoming ourselves intolerant of the freedom of others to believe. We do have a parallel in the early Christians and the early Christians had a difficult time because they spoke of human rights, love, spiritual freedom just as we do and we in Scientology are speaking of the same things but in more modern language and with more positive results as far as cases and so on are concerned. /em>
Nice post Marty, the growth continues.
“You will excuse me for saying this, but astrology is a crock of shit.”
A very succinct and accurate summary of the subject in my view, Splog.
There might be something to astrology…..beings have the ability to use anything to predict anything.
Not to be disrespectful to those who use astrology, but the way I see it, it’s like the magic feather that Dumbo the Flying Elephant held in his trunk which “enabled him to fly”. It worked for him. (It might work for you!) But Dumbo eventually learned that he could fly without his feather and that he, himself, was Cause. And free. The stars were and are created by that which is spiritual in nature, not the other way around. Beings are 100% spiritual in nature. We are spiritual beings. The physical universe comes from us. That’s how I view of the universe.
But I also understand that not everyone looks at themselves and the universe from this point of view.
I agree Alan.
Possibly one of the problems with Admin Tech is that there’s just too darn much of it. It’s a set of encyclopedias!
Based on my study and understanding, Green on White came about because those silly wogs and their management skills were so primitive, that all they could do is muck it up. I don’t know if that is true, sounds more like a Ser Fac.
Like it or not, but the largest, most efficient, most successful organizations ever to grace the planet – are wog organizations. The proof is in the pudding, as they say. And they operate on policy a fraction of the size of the OECs.
Why is it that, historically, the only real application of the Admin Tech has largely been in Scn orgs and small healthcare offices? Yet, we are to believe that Admin Tech contains the secrets to success on the 3rd dynamic? Sorry folks, reality does not support that assertion.
The other thing you hear is that people just don’t understand policy or can’t apply it or misapply it. Of course, this claim is based on the infallibility of Green on White, therefore any failures must be blamed on the individual. Now, I don’t know what caliber of individual is required to make Admin Tech work, but apparently they haven’t been invented yet. I have known some very intelligent, caring, studious individuals over the years, who despite evidence, maintained allegiance to Admin Tech and its workability. None of them experienced the expected success promised by Green on White.
In defence of this body of work, it is not without merit. In my opinion LRH’s work in this area has philosophic value, but not neccessarily operational value. The OECs may have more value if they were condensed down to a philosophic work on the theory of organizations, as opposed to a all-singing, all-dancing, how-to, secrets-of-the-3D as it is often presented. Then maybe people may actually use it, think with it, and invent their own ways of implementing it….with success.
Nice Paul, and so true with a focused path, spiritual or otherwise. I would suppose someone training for the Olympics their whole beginning of life would experience the same thing. Such focus for an intended purpose would naturally take energy from other dynamics.
Lewis Armstrong, Einstein were dead beat dads. No time for kids. Tesla never really dated. Yet these men’s life somehow made up their deficiencies by having their focused life bring something larger to life in general.
Heroes lives are rarely neat, tiddy and in balance. The lives of heroes are always super focused and unbalanced. Yet their stories of overcoming for the greater good become examples of human potential for all of us.
Was Einstein unbalanced in his development? Did Tesla need some serious therapy? Did Louie need to lay off the weed and learn how to have a stable relation? I’d say yes to all. But the results of their focused lives changed the world.
For me, I am constantly seeking balance between my practical and spiritual life. I find when they are in balance they help the other.
Aquamarine – nice piece! From what I understand, the guy was not boring to be around, but he had this obsession with asking people about their personal problems …. – Carcha.
Unless you have more recent data — I don’t believe Glenn was ever a Class XII …
But I agree his voice of reason and care is certainly more welcome than finger pointing ..
Dear Marty ,
The new post,that just came out,I received threw e mail, says theirs a problem with your web sight it does not work,just letting you know ,thanks,
Eric Alexandrou ,Brisbane Australia
Thanks.
great article,i have personally seen this in the last 30 years,just about every spiritual teacher i met. had major flaws,the most obvious, was sex urges and big egos,what he wrote explains the scene very well.
monte thanks for posting .
+ 1
Glenn,
I checked your website. Very impressive!
It is wonderful to see seasoned old timers like you pitch in and help to clean up this mess.
Roger, an honest question. Do you feel that what I quoted from the Creed of the church and Code of a Scientologist are also sales gimmicks?
Absolutely, put on a uniform and you adopt the valence. But a military valence? How much low-toned shit does that key in, eh?
Radical C of S makes it very clear they are the only one or the only tech that works and to look elsewhere is foolish and a waste of time is their motto. They make you feel really bad and wrong for looking elsewhere and its very disturbing to have such a narrow view. I have found other books or technology that has helped me in life just as much as SCN if not more. Marty this was an excellent post!! Thx
statpush, this bit is very relevant:
“there’s just too darn much of it. It’s a set of encyclopedias!”
I would go one step further and say that Admin tech contains the seeds of it’s own destruction. And also that as a complete body of work, it is unimplementable. Bits of it, yes; all of it, no.
It is just too bit and too complex for any realistic group of people to actually do it. It looks like one of those funny machines Wily E. Coyete was forever building to catch the RoadRunner! If it is that unlikely to be implemented, it cannot possible be workable and contain the secrets of 3D organization!
Smoke and mirrors is probably the appropriate term seeing as there is no actual cases on record of this tech ever being implemented fully, and ZERO record or case studies of successful application. And like you, I don’t buy the excuse that when it doesn’t work out there must be something wrong with the person’s understanding or ability to apply – that’s cult think in action.
Alan
iamvalkov,
I can do peace 🙂
I haven’t read the posts you mentioned, but that’s because I don’t need to. Astrology factually IS commonly presented as a predictive technology. If not that, then as descriptive. And I don’t mean the “Your Stars” column in the newspaper, I mean that section that deals with birth charts and such.
If you want to introduce new symbols to name aspects of human behavior, then I’m happy with that. Symbols are just that – symbols. They have no meaning, they simply exist and are what they are. That puts them in the same category as “happy”, fashion trends, internet memes and the antics of movie celebrities. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. “Houses” as you describe can be used like “Dynamics” – neither of these things actually exist, they are purely human constructs to simplify a large and complex thing (your life) and by slicing it up into bits one can focus on. If that helps a person get things under control, I’m all for it. It still doesn’t mean that Dynamics and Houses exist – ever or now.
But, when people start talking about mysterious energies that emanate from stars and are absorbed by planets to influence people… well, my BS detector goes on full alert. I start looking for real observations that need such a theory to properly explain them, I look for plausible opinions of how it might all fit together, I look for consistency in some form and I especially look for much simpler explanations that are perfectly adequate. Astrology (what the man in the street understand by that term) consistently fails on each one of those points, to the point where trying to defend the subject is like trying to defend fairies at the bottom of the garden or the existence of Puff The Magic Dragon and Superman. A novice student of philosophy can demolish that defense *as*presented* with amazing ease.
Alan
Every piece of the physical universe was created by the spiritual beings who perceive it. However, as LRH said in the Clearing Congress films from about 1958, what’s “wrong” with those spiritual beings is that they haven’t confronted (perceived) all that they’ve created. In Scientology auditing we start by finding what the pc is at effect of that he can confront if asked to (reading items or questions). Then we get him to confront it, which enables him to cease being effect of it, and instead become cause over it. If we skip the step of finding reading items or questions, the pc’s results don’t occur.
We also require our pc’s to get adequate food, certain nutritional supplements, sleep, exercise, detoxification, and medical care, so their bodies won’t put them too much at effect while they’re getting auditing. When they’re on training courses, we make sure they don’t skip gradients (try to confront too much at once). In ethics we make sure they’re not being adversely affected by others who intend them ill. And, we have things like admin scales, org boards, stats, and conditions to enable them to be at cause over, rather than at effect of, survival realities that would otherwise put them at effect.
In other words, we acknowledge and deal realistically with the fact that while they’re spiritual beings of potential godlike awareness and ability, they’re not in that condition now. None of this is “magic feathers.”
Astrology is no substitute for Scientology. But it does describe and predict part of the environment in which we exist, and part of what we start out being at effect of, before Scientology helps us to become more and more cause over everything. While it’s completely unnecessary for a Scientologist to know anything about astrology, in the last 50 years every person I’ve met who thought astrology was a “crock” turned out to know almost nothing about it, and every single person I’ve met who actually has known something about it, and had some experience using it, has acknowledged that it deals with something that is real.
You, sir, like Splog, are simply uninformed.
Sorry if I am mistaken. I read that on the net (Google G,S. class Xll) but anyway, whatever class he is, he can fix up a tech mess and he is one hell of a nice guy who cares about the people in front of him. 🙂
https://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2010/09/17/ten-gross-technical-errors-from-the-golden-age-of-tech/
Lars, everything the Church of Scientology resists it will become. And it’s greatest fault is the inability of it’s members to confront change. Such people never actually start so they never truly finish. 🙂
Vicki K: I should have been a billionaire for the last ten years but I wasn’t! 🙂
There are a lot of things the Church of Scientology should do for it’s own good that it does not and a lot of things it doesn’t do for it’s own good that it should! 🙂 Every church I know of in my area provides it’s clergy and sisterhoods with medical care, even dental in the event of an emergency and the private congregations in the neighborhood, the member’s have their own medical coverage. EVEN L. Ron Hubbard said that in spite of his tech, broken bones can still exist. But of course! 🙂 It is a shame the Church of Scientology that is so “closely connected to Source” does not realize this. They should is right! 🙂
Splog, you have still said nothing in direct response to my stating that before I got into Scientology 44 years ago I could talk to a total stranger for 5 minutes, and then guess his Sun sign, Moon sign, and Rising sign, and get 2 out of 3 of them right 50% of the time. The chances of that happening by accident are 72 to 1. How do you explain that? How could it possibly have happened if astrology is a “crock”?
Your comments about astrology have demonstrated that you cannot reason with facts that don’t align with your fixed ideas. Rather than questioning your ideas, you just throw out the facts, and then cover that up by riduculing the need to even consider them. That’s not at all logical or scientific.
It’s also a type of “thinking” that is widespread on this crazy planet, and one of the biggest obstacles to the spread of any advanced understanding of anything, including Scientology.. Scientology is not about calculating what the truth must be. It’s about looking and seeing what’s there. The reason the Church has been shrinking for the last 23 years is that what its members see when they look is required to align with DM’s fixed ideas. How can we save Scientology if we “think” in a similar way?
The issue here is not astrology. Astrology can be validly pursued as a serious science, or for casual entertainment, or not at all. It’s irrelevant to what we’re doing in and with Scientology. But the attitude you have demonstrated in your comments on astrology will prevent you from finding all the truth available in any subject, including Scientology.
Marildi
Yes, I have noticed that too. Beings seem to be able to do quite a few things simultaneously, and have attention in numerous places. This is likely what accounts for the tone overlays. Amazingly one can still ascertain the “base” tone, or general tone of the being. It is a fun game really.
I found a way to pick up on a person’s tone that I use quite a bit. I simply observe the person briefly, (confront) and then evaluate the tone I am in at that point. Even if the person is just sitting quietly this seems to work.
Each tone seems to have its own wavelength and sometimes other wave characteristics thrown in. One could observe the whole tone scale in terms of these wavelengths. One can also change the tone by just changing the wavelength, once you have figured out how to do that.
Very interesting.
Eric S
Eric: “I simply observe the person briefly, (confront) and then evaluate the tone I am in at that point.”
It sounds like you may in fact be occupying the person’s space and perceiving the tone level directly, rather than it being some sort of analytical conclusion you arrive at based on descriptions on the Chart of Human Evaluation or some other reference. Of course, those descriptions are what are needed in order to associate the names of the tones with the direct perception of them. Anyway, that’s the kind of direct knowingness I’ve been aiming for and practicing – in just recent weeks, actually. And I’ve had some success at it too. 🙂
I also liked what you said about changing the tone by just changing the wavelength. I have some reality on that but now that you’ve articulated it, it’s that much more real. Thanks.:)
marildi.
What I appreciate about LRH is that he had the guts and forethought to say (and I’m paraphrasing) “These are my beliefs, teachings, policies, etc. and if you are going to follow them then make sure you do not misunderstand what has been communicated and follow it as it was originally intended to be followed.” Along with that his statment that “If it isn’t true for you, it isn’t true.” Of course it’s perhaps the most difficult aspect of trying to create spiritual enlightenment en masse, you don’t want a legion of dogmatic mindless atomatons nor do you want endless interpetations and misinterpetations of the communications meant to imbue enlightenment.
It seems we as human beings have the tendency to fall into either of the two extremes. Either total surrender or total manipulation towards our own desires. The buddhist were right in the middle path being the way.
Sure Alan, but please don’t conflate my opinions about astrology with the opinions of others. That could lead to some Straw Man in which you would be rebutting things I never said, and missing the things I actually did say.
I see astrology as a venerable symbol system which incorporates entire mythologies. If you don’t care for mythological symbol systems, astrology is not for you. These kind of systems attempt to reflect literally all of human existence and experience. That’s makes them valuable as teaching devices.
If symbolic communication is not your cup of tea, that is just fine. There are a lot of wisdoms embedded in legends, myths, parables, and symbols. But there are other ways to access wisdom, no problem.
Different strokes for different folks.
+1 Exactly! Oraclemysticism, thank you for posting that.
Carcha, LOLOL.
My pleasure to be here, Theo 🙂
At some point, not so long ago, it became obvious that I (pretending to be a ‘little me’) do not know and never have known, what is in my best interests. This particular awakening really pissed my synthetic holier that thou, self-righteous, arrogant monster aka, the ego, off. Wait a sec….actually, when it comes to awakening, for the ego, there is no order of magnitude. Any awakening pisses it off. As you say, “Trust the BIG ME that you are. It is like Riding the Elephant. The Elephant will ultimately go where it wills.” Great line!
I suspect that BIG ME is using the ‘little me’ to undo the ego. In other words, using ‘little me’ to help itself wake up from the dream it’s having. But first, ‘little me’ has to wake up within the dream and realize there is another choice that can be made. A choice that doesn’t lead to fear, misunderstanding, struggle, suffering, pain, guilt, elusive happiness, self-invalidation, depression and so on. You know the story.
Yes and yes
Hey there! I’ve been following your website for a while now and finally got the courage to go ahead and give you
a shout out from Lubbock Texas! Just wanted to mention keep up the excellent work!