...
It's the funkiest, freakiest infomercial ever!
The sales pitch is so long, they have to break it up into segments and give it to you over decades.
What are they selling you?
Your Eternity
Can anybody actually give me a clue what they are talking about? I'm not kidding.
I have absolutely no idea.
And Scientologists don't either, but they talk about it all the time.
And threaten to take it away from you if you don't obey their orders.
What the hell does Scientology have to do with "eternity" other than they use the word a lot?
OK, let me try to answer the original question (instead of getting off on severe J & D tangents - which ARE fun in their own right).
Well, I always understood it to mean "my condition as a thetan" throughout the REST of my
unavoidable "eternity".
Hubbard mentions in a few LRH EDs and other places that this "eternity will find you either in good shape or bad". He mentions that he has seen what happens to the folks who do NOT take advantage of his Bridge - they end up
unconscious, as cinders,
dying painful deaths over and over,
alone in the dark forever.
The idea is that you are going to exist no matter what. The idea is that you already ARE an "eternal being" (or at least part of such a thing). But, due to your own many past
postulates, considerations and agreements, along the
Eight Dynamics, you have CREATED your own
limitations, weaknesses, disabilites and unawareness. Strangely, that aligns with other Vedic views, and may not actually be that far from the "truth". :confused2:
What Hubbard & Scientology push, which is also similar to Vedic ideas in certain regards, is the notion that the universe is "getting worse" (
Kali Yuga of the Vedas - last, most degraded stage), and that
unless you do something extra and added, unless YOU take a
personal initiative to address and handle what it is about YOURSELF that allows you to continue along with the momentum of the rest of "sinking humanity", you will NOT end up well. Though in Vedic views, it always recycles. It ends and just starts all over again, cycling through the four Yugas. So, nobody EVER ends up "alone suffering forever". All IS change, incuding any temporary pain and suffering (from the Vedic view).
In pure Scientology terms, the basic assumption is that the awareness of any person, and of all Mankind taken as a whole, is reducing - thus the "dwindling spiral". It is getting
worse. That tendency will supposedly continue unless corrected by
hard personal "work". Hubbard claims to provide a way to address and solve THAT problem for you.
He is not selling you "eternity". He is selling you a way to be "in this eternity" in a "
far better state and level of awareness and cause" than you would otherwise. Part of this package deal is the notion of "Total Feedom", which is really stupid, because Hubbard himself explains in other places that any thetan would get horribly bored with "total freedom" (at the Top of the Awareness Levels, at the Top of the Tone Scale, No Games Condition, Total Serenity of Beingness, etc.). He also explains in other places that the aim of Scientology is NOT to take you forever out of the game, but to improve your ability to PLAY ANY GAME. Of course, as long as you are in ANY game in this universe, you will probably suffer the effects of birth and death. So, THAT is NOT the same result as Buddha was selling.
As we all know, there are MANY contradictions in Scientology.
I can make some sense of the idea that a spiritual system could or should work to improve a person's awareness and ability, so that his or her future existances might be "better" throughout the "rest of eternity". THAT is what Scientology sells and claims to provide - though, sadly, it doesn't deliver the goods.
The "total freedom" thing is absurd.
In the end I think Hubbard was ALWAYS using his PR tech. These are BUTTONS that get BIG READS. These are ideas with lots of attached emotional energy. He used them because of THAT.
Also, and this is major, the behavior of Scientologists is heavily monitored & controlled so that there is NO DISCUSSION of things like this, other than rah-rah-rah agreement at events, briefings and promo.
NO Verbal Data means that NOBODY can share opinions and views about ideas like "total freedom" or "my eternity". In truth, just as you said, if a survey were actually conducted where each person answered HONESTLY, without trying to impress or steer clear of ethics, I am pretty sure that there would be an amazingly WIDE range of ideas about these concepts. In fact, people would have
very different ideas about these.
But the fact of differing ideas is never made known to most, because they are NOT allowed to ever discuss it, not with anything other than 100% agreement and enthusiasm for Ron's "pure" statements. In the end you would be told to shut up, sent to ethics, and told to refer to your materials, and to KEEP whatever you think in your OWN SPACE. See, a bunch of subjective views,
that are KEPT subjective, never would notice when and if they disagreed with each other. In Scientology "comparing notes" is heavily discouraged. Any confusion or disagreement is addressed in the courseroom, in Qual or in Ethics, and NOT EVER by casual discussion with others.
These ideas are big buttons that each person attaches different meaning and significance to. In the end nobody could possibly agree because there is NO "shared observable reality" for things like"total freedom" or "my eternity". The only common things are Hubbard's general claims and statements. In the end these IDEAS relate and refer to no actual thing, having
never been
experienced, and have no existance outside of the
imagination of a thinking mind. They are IDEAS. They are ONLY ideas. Like a unicorn or Santa Claus, which do not exist outside of fiction and the imaginations of people. Of course, people can talk about Santa Claus, make movies about unicorns, and draw paintings of the Easter Bunny, but they do NOT exist. That is basically what people do when they entertain ideas about Hubbard's "total freedom" or "my eternity".
There are always two aspects, or flip sides to any of this. There is 1) what will happen if you just let nature take its course, which is pain, suffering, eternal damnation, unconsciousness, becoming MEST, losing the ability to cause, and then there is 2) the salvation, the answer, the positive things that will occur if you DO WHAT IS NECESSARY to address and avoid the part outlines in "1".
There is the 1) DOOM AND GLOOM. And then there is 2) how wonderful it all will be if and when you take the necessary actions to create a different future outcome. The same sort of dichotomy exists in Christianity and Islam. And, the FEAR of THREAT of ending up in Hell, or eternally damned, or "alone in the dark forever" is what often acts to motivate people to do whatever is required of the "path to salvation", "road to freedom", or "Bridge to Total Freedom". Fear, and threats of
doom and gloom have always been potent forces in nudging along behaviors towards the future ideal, hope and/or utopia.
This involves the metaphotical Yin and Yang of control by religious beliefs. The 1) horrible reality you will experience UNLESS you take advantage of "the path" and redirect to 2) a far better tomorrow.
