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Scientology - Linked to Satanism

I am playing the DEVIL'S advocate here. :coolwink:

I like and still use "contact assists". Where is there ANY technique, before Hubbard defined it, that is set out in even a remotely similar way?

Second, I like locationals, and I spot spots in space from my front porch every morning for a few minutes when I wake up. I have done locationals on total non-Scientologists to "get them out of heir heads", and to even sober them up. They "work" for me (and others apparently). Where are the pre-existing "methods" that existed in any similar form that Hubbard "stole" these from?

BY the way, I taught my brother how to do locationals about 25 years ago. He HATED all things Scientology. He still does them today to "lighten up", get extroverted, etc.

Third, I like the Spacation Drills. Hubbard gets into talking about "creating space", as an exercise in imagination (though he never calls it that). It is like meditation, but only generally so. Where are the earlier subject materials, by any author, who talk about "creating space" by putting out "points around oneself"? Hubbard talked quite a bit about this, and I find it unqiue and I never contacted any similar ideas previously (and I have read quiter a bit of all this sort of nutty stuff).

My point is that it is a falsehood and a generality to say that Hubbard "stole every decent idea from others".

Why is it so hard for some people to accept that Hubbard might have actually come up with at least a few good original ideas, all on his own, while still being a total asshole? :ohmy:

Just because he may have come up with some cool ideas does not change what a dick he was or change the fact that he created an insanely manipulative organization to forward his obsessively egotistical aims.

Even Mein Fuhrer had his Volkswagon!

you're a straight shooter GF

we don't always point our rifles in the same direction but i like the way you handle your piece
 

Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
As for not stealing the "contact assists" and that Hubbard may have come up with something original, nope. These assists are stolen from Asian based "pressure points" theory that form the basis of several different therapies that are, variously, hundreds of years old or relatively recent - like ancient traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture as well as reflexology. They are also the basis for different types of martial arts fighting techniques and the reason for the "glass jaw" in boxing.

I challenge that assertion. Can you give some link(s) that demonstrate this? For any that don't know, the contact assist depends on repeating the body motion that caused the injury, with the body part contacting the same point again and again. This repetition is supposed to be non-injurious, so if it was a hot stove you let it cool down first; if a knife you are very careful not to cut the skin again; if you walked into a door lintel you do it very gently and not bash your head on it again, etc.

Pressure points, acupuncture point therapies depend on touching with implements or fingers or needles specific points along specific channels where they approach the surface (skin) of the body. Arguably there are points anywhere on the skin, even if they belong to the uncharted minor minor minor points, but that's stretching it a lot.

Here's a PaulsRobot3 page showing the flow and specific points along each of the 14 main meridians. Click on a meridian and you'll see the illustration: http://paulsrobot3.com/woowoo/raw4/chinese-acupuncture-point-select-point.htm. Here are the external points and the internal flow for the kidney meridian, for example: http://paulsrobot3.com/woowoo/raw4/chinese-kidney.gif

Paul

P.S. I've never had a miraculous recovery using a contact assist and never noticed "the pain fly off" or something, but it seems to help dissipate the shock of the (minor) injury quickly.
 
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Reasonable

Silver Meritorious Patron
I think that the church of Scientology is a form of disguised and flawed/perverted Satanism.


What does everyone else think??


Thanks


Daemongnome

I think you are overthinking it.

Hubbard's main goal was to be famous and make money. He wanted to be thought of as a prophet. In my opinion he did want to clear the planet and save mankind but he did not care if he experimented on you and killed you in the process.

At the beginning I think that he thought it would work; when it didn't he kept making new processes to fix those that didn't work and eventually he became old and senile and died convinced that it all worked.

I do not think he was a Satanist. If he were then he would be worshiping someone else and he clearly wanted to be the one being worshiped.
 
I challenge that assertion. Can you give some link(s) that demonstrate this? For any that don't know, the contact assist depends on repeating the body motion that caused the injury, with the body part contacting the same point again and again. This repetition is supposed to be non-injurious, so if it was a hot stove you let it cool down first; if a knife you are very careful not to cut the skin again; if you walked into a door jamb you do it very gently and not bash into it, etc.

Pressure points, acupuncture point therapies depend on touching with implements or fingers or needles specific points along specific channels where they approach the surface (skin) of the body. Arguably there are points anywhere on the skin, even if they belong to the uncharted minor minor minor points, but that's stretching it a lot.

Here's a PaulsRobot3 page showing the flow and specific points along each of the 14 main meridians. Click on a meridian and you'll see the illustration: http://paulsrobot3.com/woowoo/raw4/chinese-acupuncture-point-select-point.htm. Here are the external points and the internal flow for the kidney meridian, for example: http://paulsrobot3.com/woowoo/raw4/chinese-kidney.gif

Paul

P.S. I've never had a miraculous recovery using a contact assist and never noticed "the pain fly off" or something, but it seems to help dissipate the shock of the (minor) injury quickly.

"results may vary" as the saying goes. i haven't been overly impressed with touch assists and contact assists. they're OK but no big thing. other people often get excellent result and i've done better with them as an auditor than as a PC
 

Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
"results may vary" as the saying goes. i haven't been overly impressed with touch assists and contact assists. they're OK but no big thing. other people often get excellent result and i've done better with them as an auditor than as a PC

A touch assist is a meridian therapy, in that it aims to unblock and even up the subtle energy (qi/chi etc) flows throughout the body. Someone who has never had any similar therapy, formal or informal, or someone who has just suffered some severe impact, is likely to have seriously blocked/unbalanced channels. Someone who starts off relatively balanced isn't likely to notice a lot of change from a touch assist. It's like objective processes: someone who habitually stays in present time (say a top athlete or sportsman or even video-gamer <grin>) isn't going to gain much from procedures designed to bring his attention to and keep it in present time.

Paul
 

Loohan

Am I Mettaya?
As such, like Scientology, which was also started by the intelligence services

Hi JohnMcc; this is fittingly creepy, I'd like to know more. Got any references or evidence of Scientology being started by intell services? Thanks.

I just happened to happen across this article which may not be 100% correct in every way but may provide interesting food for thought for conspiracy buffs:

http://mindcontrolblackassassins.co...ery-scientology-dianetics-the-paradigm-shift/
 

Loohan

Am I Mettaya?
A touch assist is a meridian therapy, in that it aims to unblock and even up the subtle energy (qi/chi etc) flows throughout the body. Someone who has never had any similar therapy, formal or informal, or someone who has just suffered some severe impact, is likely to have seriously blocked/unbalanced channels. Someone who starts off relatively balanced isn't likely to notice a lot of change from a touch assist. It's like objective processes: someone who habitually stays in present time (say a top athlete or sportsman or even video-gamer <grin>) isn't going to gain much from procedures designed to bring his attention to and keep it in present time.

Paul

I did several dozen TA's on many people, and i have to say it does tend to work. Sometimes the issue is too serious to allow more than a slight key-out, but more often it does produce significant release of pain and stress.
 

120 Degrees

Patron with Honors
I challenge that assertion. Can you give some link(s) that demonstrate this? For any that don't know, the contact assist depends on repeating the body motion that caused the injury, with the body part contacting the same point again and again. This repetition is supposed to be non-injurious, so if it was a hot stove you let it cool down first; if a knife you are very careful not to cut the skin again; if you walked into a door lintel you do it very gently and not bash your head on it again, etc.

Pressure points, acupuncture point therapies depend on touching with implements or fingers or needles specific points along specific channels where they approach the surface (skin) of the body. Arguably there are points anywhere on the skin, even if they belong to the uncharted minor minor minor points, but that's stretching it a lot.

Here's a PaulsRobot3 page showing the flow and specific points along each of the 14 main meridians. Click on a meridian and you'll see the illustration: http://paulsrobot3.com/woowoo/raw4/chinese-acupuncture-point-select-point.htm. Here are the external points and the internal flow for the kidney meridian, for example: http://paulsrobot3.com/woowoo/raw4/chinese-kidney.gif

Paul

P.S. I've never had a miraculous recovery using a contact assist and never noticed "the pain fly off" or something, but it seems to help dissipate the shock of the (minor) injury quickly.

Hi Paul,
I'm not really sure what you're challenging me on as your own links show that Hubbard was basing his touch and nerve assists on Chinese meridian theories. You are FAR more knowledgeable about Scientology tech then I will EVER be and I'm going to give your links a more thorough check out now. However, there's not much on the net about the connection between assists and Chinese energy flow theories. My original post, perhaps a bit glib, was not meant to say that Hubbard actually "stole" his ideas for assists from Chinese medicinal theories in the way he stole study tech but more that he borrowed from these theories and then put his own spin on them to form his assist therapies. In that way they aren't "original" in that they aren't based on his purely original ideas but rest upon the work of those who preceded him.

In HCO BULLETIN OF 15 JULY 1970 (Corrected and Reissued 25 Nov 1970) he states that:

"2. SYMPATHETIC NERVOUS SYSTEM PAINS.

There are two sides to the body. As you learn in touch assists, if the right hand is injured you include also the left hand.

Body nerves conduct pain. The two sides of the body interlock. Pain gets stopped
in the nerves.

If the right elbow is hurt the LEFT elbow will have echoed the pain.

Example, you find a pc with a pain in the left elbow. You try to audit a left elbow chain. It doesn’t fully resolve.

If you ran injuries to the RIGHT elbow, suddenly there's a somatic going
through the left elbow! It gets well.

This is the sympathetic nervous system. The right ear, injured, also gets echoes
with a somatic in the left ear. You audit the right ear only. Pc comes up with a sore left ear!

You can actually direct a pc's attention to it (non-standard but a research
technique) and he can find where the uninjured ear echoed the injured ear.

Where you can't fully repair a crippled left leg, don't be surprised to find it was the right leg that was hurt.

You audit the left leg somatic in vain. If you do, start auditing somatics in the OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE BODY."

For me this completely echoes the yin/yang of the qi (life energy) of Chinese medicine. The nerve assists also are done along the spine and other important points in Chinese medicine and related therapies. As for touch assists being done on only the location of the injury, and therefor not related to meridians, I would say that in the Chinese energy theory there are meridians but also energy running along the entire surface of the body and that's why acupressure and acupuncture don't focus solely on meridians. There are over 400 acupuncture points on the human body. I don't really agree that it's stretching it to say that Hubbard was aware of these theories and used them to developed his touch assists. It's also well known to any parent that rubbing an injury and giving a boo boo a kiss will help make the pain and tears go away. Combine the two and you've got a touch assist, IMHO.

Again, Paul, I completely bow to your superior COS Tech knowledge (and I'm truly not being sarcastic) and will review your links but a superficial view leads me to believe that not only was Hubbard aware of Meridians and qi theories but that he adapted them to his own uses and therefore these are not "original" but unacknowledged adaptations of the original beliefs.
 
For advanced students of Magic mumbo jumbo here is the rest of the story re Scn and Satanism.. LINK

there's no "rest of the story" man; there's always more

i think a lot of your material is a little ditzy arnie but you're a gutsy sonofabitch who got things going before we had the blessing of the internet

keep up the good work!
 

Lermanet_com

Gold Meritorious Patron
Gandhi_Never_apologize_For_Being_Correct.jpg
 

Purple Rain

Crusader
I think you are overthinking it.

Hubbard's main goal was to be famous and make money. He wanted to be thought of as a prophet. In my opinion he did want to clear the planet and save mankind but he did not care if he experimented on you and killed you in the process.

At the beginning I think that he thought it would work; when it didn't he kept making new processes to fix those that didn't work and eventually he became old and senile and died convinced that it all worked.

I do not think he was a Satanist. If he were then he would be worshiping someone else and he clearly wanted to be the one being worshiped.

Hubbard's goal was also to control and enslave people, hence his affirmations:

"All men shall be my slaves! All women shall succumb to my charms!"

He didn't want to save anyone - if "save" means to set someone free. And the snare has worked exactly as designed except not for all men - just those few still caught in the clutches of Scientology.
 

Claire Swazey

Spokeshole, fence sitter
Oh, lots of stuff wrong with Scientology as ology/ism. But it's not satanic. I think DeWolf was not always accurate. (and there could be various reasons for that) I believe his interviews about his late father are a compendium of accuracy/truth and inaccurate and false statements.

They don't worshp Satan is Scn. There was a Crowley link to the OTO and Crowley referred to himself as The Beast. Also, I think that just looking at postulate theory, it seems to me that this was taken right out of Hubbard's occult studies. I definitely see an occult link for sure. But not satanic, as such.
 

Claire Swazey

Spokeshole, fence sitter
[REFLIST][/REFLIST]
Hubbard's goal was also to control and enslave people, hence his affirmations:

"All men shall be my slaves! All women shall succumb to my charms!"

He didn't want to save anyone - if "save" means to set someone free. And the snare has worked exactly as designed except not for all men - just those few still caught in the clutches of Scientology.

I never was impressed with his affirmations. The maunderings of someone (years before he created Dianetics and Scn, by the way) in their private moments can sometimes be unbelievably strange and often even wrong headed. That's the thing about writing this shit down. People can see it years later, it's memorialized, it appears etched in stone. But just verbalizing (unless one happens to be, say, Paula Deen or Dog the Bounty Hunter)- not so much.

I do think his interest in money and power/influence were of paramount importance to Hubbard. I really do. But I think he thought his techniques could assist people. It seems to me that he was a very very odd duck. I think he had a lot of mixed motives. He spent a lot of time on revising his stuff after he already had people hooked. I personally find that significant.

My take on Hubbard was that he loved to dabble in things and thought he could teach people stuff. I think he loved the idea of not just being a cult leader, but being a guru. Of course, no guru should ever love being a guru. They should be aware that this is not for them, it's for the people who are depending on them. I get that. But I think he really thought, egocentrically, hey, I can change people and eradicate traumas in them. And wow, aren't I cool!

Really, that's bad enough. Particularly when that same guy goes on to create freeloader debts and RPFs and billion year contracts.
 

Veda

Sponsor
I never was impressed with his affirmations. The maunderings of someone (years before he created Dianetics and Scn, by the way)

-snip-

The Admissions, a.k.a. the Affirmations, were written two years before the subject of Dianetics appeared, and 8 or 9 years after Hubbard's "Survive!/Smash!" philosophy/psychology as expressed in the unpublished manuscript 'Excalibur', much of which was incorporated into Dianetics and Scientology.


Here's someone who disagrees with you:


I think that Hubbard's perspective on women was very clear in his admissions. That showed what he was really like. And that disgusting, degraded, cowardly perverted AND predatory perspective on women (not to mention children and family) was woven throughout his policies and "tech". Such as his perverted "sec checks", to his whole concept of ethics, to his belittling of women, children and family, to his cowardly betrayal of those who gave their all for him, to his greed, his policy on leaves, his stupid "tone scale" and "conditions", etc. etc.

-snip-
 

Claire Swazey

Spokeshole, fence sitter
Where? The only quoted commentary I see is JustMe's post. Yet, you've said that she disagrees with me. I see nothing in the quoted text (which references Hubbard's views on women and JustMe's perceptive assessment of those) with which I do, could or would possibly disagree or on which I've stated or implied any disagreement or form of rebuttal or, for that matter, which I even discussed herein, other than in this particular post right here. I said NOTHING of the kind. At all. I never would for one nanosecond even vaguely consider disagreeing with what JustMe says on this. In fact, I've spent years saying some very similar things about Hubbard and his views about women. I sure don't need to read his maunder-oops, I mean affirmations to know he was a fucking idiot and male chauvinist about women. I first noticed that in Science of Survival. Pretty appalling, really.
 

Purple Rain

Crusader
[REFLIST][/REFLIST]

I never was impressed with his affirmations. The maunderings of someone (years before he created Dianetics and Scn, by the way) in their private moments can sometimes be unbelievably strange and often even wrong headed. That's the thing about writing this shit down. People can see it years later, it's memorialized, it appears etched in stone. But just verbalizing (unless one happens to be, say, Paula Deen or Dog the Bounty Hunter)- not so much.

I do think his interest in money and power/influence were of paramount importance to Hubbard. I really do. But I think he thought his techniques could assist people. It seems to me that he was a very very odd duck. I think he had a lot of mixed motives. He spent a lot of time on revising his stuff after he already had people hooked. I personally find that significant.

My take on Hubbard was that he loved to dabble in things and thought he could teach people stuff. I think he loved the idea of not just being a cult leader, but being a guru. Of course, no guru should ever love being a guru. They should be aware that this is not for them, it's for the people who are depending on them. I get that. But I think he really thought, egocentrically, hey, I can change people and eradicate traumas in them. And wow, aren't I cool!

Really, that's bad enough. Particularly when that same guy goes on to create freeloader debts and RPFs and billion year contracts.

I get what you're saying and while I do agree that everyone has complex motives and layers, there is always that fundamental layer at the bottom. And I think that when somebody expresses a wish to enslave people and then sets about doing so then there is something very confirming in that behaviour. I think he was ambivalent towards even those closest to him - he had good motives and bad - but the bottom line was that he couldn't help himself attacking and destroying them in the end. So those motives always won out - although I'm sure at times he tried very hard to do good by them and maybe even managed to achieve that on those occasions.
 

Veda

Sponsor
Where?

-snip-

Where?

In that the Affirmations are relevant to understanding Hubbard's mental state as it existed during his entire adult life.

Basically, Hubbard knew what he was doing. He had a fundamental goal, and it was a self-serving goal. That fundamental goal was shrouded by secondary goals which included many things, some of them positive.

However, the "positive" was always, ultimately, subordinate, to the "real goal," and, the advertized "positives," by misleading others as to Hubbard's "real goal," served to empower Hubbard and his "real goal."

It's a pattern that echoes throughout Scientology, from its inception onward.

Scientologists, who believe that their guru - while he may have made a few mistakes and, perhaps, overreacted, slightly, to the vicious and incessant attempts to destroy (the basically humanitarian) Scientology by a group of international psychiatric&banker conspirators (a.k.a. "the cold war establishment") - fundamentally had humanitarian motives, and, primarily, wanted to help others.

Not unusually, Scientologists display "acceptable truths" to establish "ARC" with non Scientologists, so the non Scientologist can be further influenced and, at least, brought to a point of ambivalence: a kind of happy dumb, agreeable, "I dunno" with regard their guru.

And when not displaying "acceptable truths" and "handling," Scientologists are "attacking," or "disconnecting."

Inevitably, Scientologists are in denial about the sea of information that surrounds them, that challenges their "stable data," even though they may have to deal with it at times with "ARC" handling, or attacking, or simply by (mentally) disconnecting. And they don't just handle others with these things, they also handle themselves with the same: rationalizing to self-'VGIs," introverting and being haunted with the weight of being "out ethics" or "off Source," or just shutting down their thought processes entirely.

As you've explained, your husband is a Scientologist, and you are caught between two worlds. Frankly, you'd be better off simply avoiding the topic of the 'Affirmations', rather than likening them to a school kid's diary scribblings - as you've done elsewhere.

Hubbard was an adult - a 35 year old man - when he wrote the Affirmations, in the late 1940s. He wasn't a school kid, and his "philosophy" is consistent, from 1938, to 1946/1947, to the 1950s, the 1960s, and onward.

It may be confusing at first glance, as it's based on the "overt/covert" model, in other words it's devious and manipulative, but it's consistent, at its foundation.
 

Claire Swazey

Spokeshole, fence sitter
Where?

In that the Affirmations are relevant to understanding Hubbard's mental state as it existed during his entire adult life.

Basically, Hubbard knew what he was doing. He had a fundamental goal, and it was a self-serving goal. That fundamental goal was shrouded by secondary goals which included many things, some of them positive.

However, the "positive" was always, ultimately, subordinate, to the "real goal," and, the advertized "positives," by misleading others as to Hubbard's "real goal," served to empower Hubbard and his "real goal."

It's a pattern that echoes throughout Scientology, from its inception onward.

Scientologists, who believe that their guru - while he may have made a few mistakes and, perhaps, overreacted, slightly, to the vicious and incessant attempts to destroy (the basically humanitarian) Scientology by a group of international psychiatric&banker conspirators (a.k.a. "the cold war establishment") - fundamentally had humanitarian motives, and, primarily, wanted to help others.

Not unusually, Scientologists display "acceptable truths" to establish "ARC" with non Scientologists, so the non Scientologist can be further influenced and, at least, brought to a point of ambivalence: a kind of happy dumb, agreeable, "I dunno" with regard their guru.

And when not displaying "acceptable truths" and "handling," Scientologists are "attacking," or "disconnecting."

Inevitably, Scientologists are in denial about the sea of information that surrounds them, that challenges their "stable data," even though they may have to deal with it at times with "ARC" handling, or attacking, or simply by (mentally) disconnecting. And they don't just handle others with these things, they also handle themselves with the same: rationalizing to self-'VGIs," introverting and being haunted with the weight of being "out ethics" or "off Source," or just shutting down their thought processes entirely.

As you've explained, your husband is a Scientologist, and you are caught between two worlds. Frankly, you'd be better off simply avoiding the topic of the 'Affirmations', rather than likening them to a school kid's diary scribblings - as you've done elsewhere.

Hubbard was an adult - a 35 year old man - when he wrote the Affirmations, in the late 1940s. He wasn't a school kid, and his "philosophy" is consistent, from 1938, to 1946/1947, to the 1950s, the 1960s, and onward.

It may be confusing at first glance, as it's based on the "overt/covert" model, in other words it's devious and manipulative, but it's consistent, at its foundation.


Veda,

I'm going to explain a few things to you.

Firstly, it's extremely problematic and foolish to assess the marital and conversational interaction of two people you've neither met nor observed; have never seen in the same room together.

Of course you don't know my husband. But you're assessing his influence on me from the depths of this lack of information and acquaintanceship. Let me show you just how and why your assumptions are off base.

John (that's my husband) is like this: When we were in the cult, and everyone would stand and go hip hip hooray, John would quietly and definitely sit down. People, seeing this, would (I'd say maybe a third or so of them) also quietly sit down. When John was a course supv in DC, he had a student who thought every single solitary thing Hubbard did was just so awesome and perfect and Scn and Dn were just wonderful, wonderful wonderful. John was troubled by this because he saw no thought processes in this student. The guy didn't seem to know why he liked it, didn't seem to have any idea of what struck him as cool, and why. John sat down and tried to get this guy to THINK. He asked the student a number of questions.

When we were both involved in it, the cult implied rather broadly in a rather nasty handling that, hey, if I continued to be on ars, well, you know, I'd be expelled and if I were expelled then John as a member in good standing...(meaningful glances all round) and John just looked at them as if they were a bunch of rather strange new insects he found in his herb garden.

John often talks about how fucked Hubbard was.

Your saying that I'm shaped by my husband's ideology shows a great ignorance of what my husband is like as a person and what his ideology even is. You seem to only think in stereotypes. What's more, that's a rather insulting thing to say to someone that they can't think and analyze on their own because of who/what their spouse is. That's the same line I got from Polliwog (said I post as I do because John is still "slurping the juice") and Gottabrain who informed me that I cannot truly speak freely with my husband.

Now, when you guys do that about people whom you've not met, never witnessed any exchanges or interaction between those people- it kind of looks, well, I really don't know a polite way to describe it.

But rather than just say how wrong you are, I've posted some anecdotes to attempt to give you some insight into this guy I married and what it's like over at Chez Swazey. For instance, I'm pretty deep into reading Buddhism and Shamanism and doing yoga these days. That's pretty non Scientological. A real stereotypical Scn'ist of the sort you seemed to be implying that John is, well, you know, with a guy like that, I'd have heard chapter and verse about how dumb that is or whatever.

I have tried to explain this to a number of people who speak to me as you've done about this stuff- that really, I do make plenty of mistakes and I have no trouble coming up with wrong conclusions at times. But they're my own. I've said that many times. And it's true every time.

I obviously have nothing invested in Scn being good or Hubbard being a god type d00d. My criticisms of them are pretty scathing.

I just don't happen to be impressed with the affirmations. I realize that many of my pals in the critical community place great weight upon them- think that they are probably fundamental to Hub's mindset. I don't happen to agree. I just don't. They remind me of this dorky notebook I had when I was 14 and I'd write all this stuff in it- it was uber dorky. People's affirmations (it's a rather common method some occultists use so I've read about some other people's, too.) always remind me of that. They just do.

But if it makes you feel any better (and maybe helps disabuse you of the godawful stereotypical thinking and the assumption that you know what's going on in my house), I gotta tell ya. When I read Science of Survival, I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that Hubbard was very sexist, even for that time period. Appallingly so. And I never thought of him the same way again.

Oh, hey, and the Sex and Pain HCOB.

JustMe and I have a pretty similar take on Hubbard's views re women. I just tend not to include the affirmations in the basis of my assessment. Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong, but one thing for sure, it isn't because somebody told me to think something. You've been seeing my posts for years. You should have known mo' bettah.
 

Claire Swazey

Spokeshole, fence sitter
I get what you're saying and while I do agree that everyone has complex motives and layers, there is always that fundamental layer at the bottom. And I think that when somebody expresses a wish to enslave people and then sets about doing so then there is something very confirming in that behaviour. I think he was ambivalent towards even those closest to him - he had good motives and bad - but the bottom line was that he couldn't help himself attacking and destroying them in the end. So those motives always won out - although I'm sure at times he tried very hard to do good by them and maybe even managed to achieve that on those occasions.


That's pretty much my take on it (let those who like to say I'm still a Scnist at heart or am like an extension of my husband take note). By most accounts, he seems to have been extraordinarily self interested all along, long before he started Dianetics and Scn.

I've made no bones about the fact that I like some of the stuff in Dn and Scn that I studied, but then again, that's similar to comments by Panda Termit and others. But I think that the sitch with Hubbard is that he was, for all his flaws, intelligent and observant enough to hit on some stuff that could create effects. He repackaged many things from Buddhism and early psychoanalysis. Then he went on to extrapolate. Quite a few people could do the same and some have. One has to be willing to put in the time and work into it- if one has that type of mind. So he hit on some stuff.

But along with that was way too much self interest. I will note here that it is a relatively common pitfall of gurus- the power and adulation go to their heads. But in Hub's case, I think that he already had the lust for power and desire for admiration.

To me, though, the affirmations aren't as much proof of that as his history and his actions. This may be because I have some experience with that type of thing. Either way, I don't think any of us on this thread are seeing Hubbard as an altruistic guy and I think we all feel he was responsible for a lot of harm.

That seems quite obvious to me and has for years.
 
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