Nothing good comes from trading reality for the role playing game of Scientology or at least I have not seen any evidence of anything good coming from it. Ken was just another casualty in it's long list of casualties who gave up reality for Scientology.
The bottomline is ... if Scientology was able to deliver what it promised, Hubbard would have used it to cure his own mental illness, instead of spending the last few decades of his life on the run hiding from imaginary enemies.
Valid points - even if a little over-simplified.
The Otto Roos account shows Hubbard had his chance (to apply the tech to himself), and chose not to.
Assuming Pilot's account of SDH was valid, don't miss out on the point he made there, that he didn't have an answer for that sophisticated an implant. There was something about it that he couldn't completely get to in his auditing (solo or otherwise).
In 2006 I made a long study of MKUltra and Monarch programming. I realized that govt Black Ops were way out ahead of Hubbard, and either Hubbard didn't know or didn't say (or was himself a victim?). Yet, victims have been deprogrammed with similar methods to Dianetic reverie (often simple talk therapy with psychologists) and have told their stories. It opens up a whole new area of tech in which implant deprogramming would need to be developed. Once he discovered the SDH, Ken recognized that it went much deeper than what our tech could easily undo. He was working on trying to figure out and un-do, the 'obsessive-create' aspect, which also seems related to what blew Hubbard away in the Crowley rituals, and which might have been the seed of destruction that LRH unleashed back on himself with his own unethical behavior and mistakes on the GPM research at Saint Hill.
The point is that there can be a ton of value in Hubbard's work and Pilot's work, among others, which can be overlooked or dismissed entirely, based on events that make it appear their founders were poor examples of their own, otherwise-brilliant work. Notice how Hubbard trashed Freud (whose work was used to invent auditing) on the Class VIII course and in the film (Man, the Unfathomable) depicting him as a 'coke addict'.
The observation that people sometimes 'crash and burn' or simply fail, when they let their lives ('dynamics') go out of balance, applies all over. It's like the race car driver/auto mechanic who spends all his time building the 'perfect engine' in the shop and never takes the car on the road. Or the musician who dreams of recording the perfect record - spends his years building the perfect home studio - then wakes up to realize he's too old to go out on the road - his expensive electronics are now outdated.
'Real life' passed them by.
And here, I am starting to go into the other good question posed, which seems to be whether it's worthwhile getting into mental technology and/or your own mind. The pitfalls and traps are many. And how do you happily balance that out with real life?
It seems like Self-Clearing - or any solo auditing for that matter, should usually be a minor daily activity (like the 'meditation hour' of other practices) subordinate to living life, unless you are full-time professional at it (like I am now) and even then you have to get out and 'live' outside the bubble you create. And the tech you work so hard to develop should be useful to the man and woman trying to live life better.
That's what I'm trying to do. That's what Ken was trying to do.
Hence my long, assertive 'right-ups'
- I know it sounds like I'm parroting "this tech works if you just apply it" (LOL!)
but there is a certain degree of truth in that. It's easy to tear it down - much harder to defend it. (Same with Hubbard's tech, which their solution is to pull up the drawbridge and stay inside the castle.)
The Pilot's article about "Freedom" (perhaps Antony wants to re-post that someday?) is a brilliant observation of the real-life dichotomy that things go better in a balance - freedoms grow on top of a stable, disciplined base. Discipline (barriers, responsibilities) balance with Freedoms (to pursue one's own purposes single-mindedly) and I think it explains why some people respond positively to discipline, and others thrive when 'set free'. Raising children, managing a music band, running a business - all thrive in an optimum balance of free-flowing purpose, vs. recognition and confront on the mundane, 'hard work' tasks that life's obligations require.
Self-Clearing set my thinking free and at first I made tremendous gains. But later on, a more disciplined 'Standard Tech' co-audit opened up a whole new layer of case. Then after that, I went back to do some solo auditing - actual 'research' auditing - 'do whatever I wanted' stuff. 3 sessions later I was exterior and remote viewing a bit - something I could not do before.
This back-and-forth or 'balanced' approach has been a valuable 'Middle Path' for me:
Standard Bridge <-> Own Wants Handled
Co-Auditor <-> Solo auditing
Auditing Others <-> Receiving auditing
DO and HAVE processes <-> BE processes
EFFORT, EMOTION <-> Thought, Postulates
Living Life <-> Research lab
Physical Work <-> Internet/Computer
Physical Reality <-> Virtual Reality
To name the first that come to mind.
It seems that Ken and many of his predecessors, might possibly have, in their 'fervor to get it right', to some degree violated living a balanced life in full exchange on their dynamics. But it does not in my opinion, make their work less valuable. In fact, it gives us an opportunity to further learn from their mistakes. One obvious lesson of which, is that 'ye shall be judged by your appearance' - as to whether you are living a successful life or not - to answer the question in most people's minds - does it really work?
I could go back to schoolteaching, architecture, etc. But I choose to pursue the development of mental technology. So I guess the question is answered for me personally (admittedly might be different if I was not already somewhat close to retirement). And I even have a nice balance in my clients - older men who are about done with life; young women who have their whole life ahead of them. In either case, I do get tremendous satisfaction seeing my clients more happily living their lives.
The good in the tech has surpassed the pain of disconnection (losing my dear wife)
and other forces which would tend towards 'bouncing me out of the incident.'
Isn't all that the long way of saying, "let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater"?
I take notice of others who have made similar decisions, and I am grateful to them for keeping the FreeZone alive, the Pilot's work available, on-line access to all the work, etc. All while I was in the cult busily making them wrong and inhibiting others from looking.
Scott Gordon
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