What's new

Buddhism vs. Scientology.

BardoThodol

Silver Meritorious Patron
As I see it, an individual spirit has a basic nature which doesn't inherently change.

If you grant that and if you accept past lives, then Hubbard could not have been Buddha. Their basic natures are different. Compassionate versus self-serving.

The social personality versus the anti-social personality.

A being with conscience versus one without.

One who spreads the truth as he sees it, versus one who bends the truth and lies for his own benefit.
 

renegade

Silver Meritorious Patron
BT, it is as if lrh was also wishful in hoping he was someone famous in a past life, just like one of the threads on ESMB that said there were a lot of scn who said they were Jesus Christ or Marilyn Monroe.
 

Gadfly

Crusader
As I see it, an individual spirit has a basic nature which doesn't inherently change.

If you grant that and if you accept past lives, then Hubbard could not have been Buddha. Their basic natures are different. Compassionate versus self-serving.

The social personality versus the anti-social personality.

A being with conscience versus one without.

One who spreads the truth as he sees it, versus one who bends the truth and lies for his own benefit.

If you mean by "individual spirit" the basic aspect of a "static", then yes, it is unchanging. But, that is VERY DEEP inside each of us.

But the inherent personality (aka "thetan") undergoes change - even if over LONG periods of time. Everything is subject to a cycle of action - including the "thetan". All is change, except for the Nameless and Faceless "static".

To me THIS represents what "evolves":

"Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny."
-unknown author

What is involved here is "character" - something that is molded, shaped and forged in the burning fires of endless existences.

Even Hubbard will change and evolve, though granted, his Karma might be a bit of a pebble in his shoe for quite a few future incarnations to come. :confused2:
 
The words "Buddha nature" are used to indicate that anyone can become a Buddha. However, this phrase does not mean that an entity had already become a Buddha. ...

Quite true. There is also a very famous Ch'an Koan: if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.

The important thing is not who may be a Buddha but in realizing one's own Buddha nature.


Mark A. Baker
 

BardoThodol

Silver Meritorious Patron
If you mean by "individual spirit" the basic aspect of a "static", then yes, it is unchanging. But, that is VERY DEEP inside each of us.

But the inherent personality (aka "thetan") undergoes change - even if over LONG periods of time. Everything is subject to a cycle of action - including the "thetan". All is change, except for the Nameless and Faceless "static".

To me THIS represents what "evolves":

"Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny."
-unknown author

What is involved here is "character" - something that is molded, shaped and forged in the burning fires of endless existences.

Even Hubbard will change and evolve, though granted, his Karma might be a bit of a pebble in his shoe for quite a few future incarnations to come. :confused2:

Like I replied to Mark, I can only reason off what I know. What I observe.

For myself, I seem to have a basic personality that has existed for a very, very very long time. I can remember being very young this lifetime and my personality then was exactly what it is now. I've added some bells and whistles, learned a few things, but that "self" has remained.

Whenever I explored past lives, I had the same basic self that wore different persona and roles. Those roles contained all manner of feelings and beliefs and behaviors. These roles were products of culture and environment.

But underlying the clothing of emotions, thoughts and beliefs was consciousness that had definable qualities.

It was a consciousness that preceded "me", but was different than the consciousness that preceded other "me."

Although you and I have very similar quality of beingness and awareness, we are not the same. Similar but different.

Yet, there are others who are dramatically different. Different in sense of ethics, aesthetics, intelligence. The "wavelength" and quality of being the precedes their "me" is just different.

I don't say this as a justification to marginalize or exclude or condemn; it's just what I've experienced.

I know the theory of Oneness. However, it is beyond my highest observation. At some point, the consciousness that precedes "me" just gets lost in the experience of Oneness.

I'm both aware of it and unaware, if that makes any sense. When I lose that which precedes self but is originator of self the awareness becomes that of other. At which point I cease to be owner of consciousness and become owned consciousness.

language just doesn't begin to describe what I'm talking about. And talking about this stuff just becomes a word waltz.

But, dancing can be fun too.

I think, what I'm trying to say is that in many ways, I am what I've always been. My suitcases are simply fuller.
 

BardoThodol

Silver Meritorious Patron
BT, it is as if lrh was also wishful in hoping he was someone famous in a past life, just like one of the threads on ESMB that said there were a lot of scn who said they were Jesus Christ or Marilyn Monroe.

I think he was dynamic enough to have been famous.

As for Jesus and Marilyn, just think of how many girls were in Madonna's "valence" when she made it big. I'll bet a lot of them will look back and remember being Madonna.

Personally, I want to recall a past life being Kate Upton doing the Dougie (or whatever it's called) in a string bikini. God, youtube will create a lot of confusing past life memories.
 

Demented LRH

Patron Meritorious
Like I replied to Mark, I can only reason off what I know. What I observe.

For myself, I seem to have a basic personality that has existed for a very, very very long time. I can remember being very young this lifetime and my personality then was exactly what it is now. I've added some bells and whistles, learned a few things, but that "self" has remained.

Whenever I explored past lives, I had the same basic self that wore different persona and roles. Those roles contained all manner of feelings and beliefs and behaviors. These roles were products of culture and environment.
Can you recall at least one language that you were using in your past lives?

I taught my friend Dianetics auditing because he wanted to use it for the past life recall (he is not a Scientologist). He pushed, so to speak, his mother into the past life, and all of sudden she begun talking German. The problem is that she learned German in high school in this life, so I do not know what to make of this incident.
 

HelluvaHoax!

Platinum Meritorious Sponsor with bells on
Quite true. There is also a very famous Ch'an Koan: if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.

The important thing is not who may be a Buddha but in realizing one's own Buddha nature.


"If you meet Paulette Cooper on the road, kill her."
- L. Ron Hubbard, aka Metteyya, the enlightened source of the tech that brought you the
modern science of mental health, total freedom and a world without criminality and insanity.

 

Ho Tai

Patron Meritorious
Quite true. There is also a very famous Ch'an Koan: if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.

The important thing is not who may be a Buddha but in realizing one's own Buddha nature.


Mark A. Baker
This is the only post in this thread that aligns with what I know of Buddhism (though admittedly that is not so much.)
 

BardoThodol

Silver Meritorious Patron
Can you recall at least one language that you were using in your past lives?

I taught my friend Dianetics auditing because he wanted to use it for the past life recall (he is not a Scientologist). He pushed, so to speak, his mother into the past life, and all of sudden she begun talking German. The problem is that she learned German in high school in this life, so I do not know what to make of this incident.

Dang, you ask hard questions.

That's mean.

I don't like you.

Just kidding.

First off, I don't know if there really are past lives. I just like the idea, so I entertain the idea. And I credit memories of them because it makes me happy and gives my life meaning. Sort of like a Christian believing that Jesus will take them up to Heaven where they will live in eternal bliss. Might not be true, but, hey, sure makes life easier to bear.

If there are past lives, then there will be future lives.

I like that idea.

So, please, please, please let me keep it.

As for language and past lives, a guy named Mark Waterbury did word cleaning on me--whatever that session word clearing was called. We ran across all sorts of foreign words from those past lives. He had bunches of foreign dictionaries. So, we had the resources to look the words up. And those words (which I did not know from this life) cleared up with the expected meanings relevant to the memories. One was a German slang for "flatten like a pancake," which some pilot was talking about before he got on the plane for a bombing run.

If those terms were not real and the memories were not real, it sure was coincidental that I had the sounds for words in those languages which corresponded exactly to the circumstances.

As for remembering an entire language, we have had foreign exchange students stay with us for 11 months. Oddly, when they immerse themselves in English, they begin to think in English. By the end of their stay, some are losing their native language--if they haven't been using it. It's kind of embarrassing for them, talking to their parents and not remembering native words for things they are familiar with.

I have a minor in French. Back in college, I could converse and write in the language without much trouble. I could watch a French movie and correct the subtitles. Today, I have trouble making a single sentence. And because my ears have deteriorated, I can't understand spoken French well in movies.

So, I don't know that language is a convincing "gotcha" to gainsay past lives. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't.

You might watch:

http://www.victorzammit.com/evidence/childrenwhorememberpastlives.htm

It's kind of impressive how children can sometimes remember a past life in such detail.

But, those memories fade rather quickly--usually by age six or seven. Just why they fade, who knows. How can you study it scientifically?

Just as how can you scientifically study God? Or the soul?

But, if you want me to change my mind because logically I cannot speak a foreign language by remembering a past life, then by golly, I'm willing to change my mind. Just to be sociable. Just to prove I can.

Let me see. mumble, mumble, mumble.

There! I've done it. I'm convinced that past lives do not exist because I can't fluently speak any of the languages (including English) from past lives.

Maybe you can help me out with lottery tickets too. I buy them now and then, knowing I won't win, but feeling so good just imagining how much fun it would be to hit the jackpot and contribute that money to people in need. I mean, I know I'm not really going to win, but it feels so good, so fun.

Damn it. There I go thinking how much fun it will be to live again!

Dang, you ask hard questions.
 
... So, I don't know that language is a convincing "gotcha" to gainsay past lives. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. ... .

FWIW, I'm inclined to the view that it isn't. :no:

Any 'memory' that is passed on between differing lives is apparently transferred non-physically. There is no particular reason to conclude that those 'memories' are linguistically encoded.

Language dependent thought strikes me as a learned skill. Many of my most profound thoughts & experiences are at best only poorly expressed in language. In my most insightful moments language slips away.

I'm inclined to the view that ideas are what are somehow being transmitted and only our present lifetime conditioning causes us to relate these ideas through the medium of language.


Mark A. Baker
 

HelluvaHoax!

Platinum Meritorious Sponsor with bells on
FWIW, I'm inclined to the view that it isn't. :no:

Any 'memory' that is passed on between differing lives is apparently transferred non-physically. There is no particular reason to conclude that those 'memories' are linguistically encoded.

Language dependent thought strikes me as a learned skill. Many of my most profound thoughts & experiences are at best only poorly expressed in language. In my most insightful moments language slips away.

I'm inclined to the view that ideas are what are somehow being transmitted and only our present lifetime conditioning causes us to relate these ideas through the medium of language.

Mark A. Baker


I have no conclusion one way or another if "past lives" recall is real. I ran zillions of hours of it. If true it could be very cool. If not true, something else could be very cool. Doesn't really matter to me.

But, you seem to be pretty certain that it is real.

I will relay something that I experienced after Scientology.

When I sold my first screenplay, I began writing a lot of scripts. Sometimes alone, sometimes with a collaborator. Doing that kind of creative work for years, the creative facility called imagination gets quite a workout and improves in much the same way that lifting weights produces muscles.

When I was in writing sessions I did not find any difference between the phenomena that I experienced from when I was in session. The "pictures" were always there to "find". I went through the steps of trying to figure out what it all meant, as if coming thru a haze into a bright clearing--upon which I would brighten up tremendously with an epiphany. In this case, it was how the scene worked and how it all fit together for the entire story structure and puzzle. It produced "FN" and "VGI's" and a "COGNITION" and "RELEASE".

There wasn't the slightest difference between using the imagination and auditing, in my experience.

Do you reserve a part of your thinking to consider the possibility that running wholetrack pictures might just be imagination?
 

Panda Termint

Cabal Of One
Personal Opinion: Most people love to create something out of nothing, it is the possibly one of the most rewarding things one can do in life. :)
 

Petey C

Silver Meritorious Patron
Ex-Scientologists (now they are wogs and SPs) and the wogs who never joined CoS do not think that Hubbard was Buddha in one of his past lives. But the Scientologists who read Hubbard’s idiotic poem, Hymn to Asia, believe that he was the incarnation of Buddha.

Spot on. And what's more, why would Buddha -- who achieved enlightenment and therefore did not have to continue to live on Earth in an earthly body -- want to come back as Ron Hubbard as a reincarnation of himself?????

As you say, idiotic.
 

Demented LRH

Patron Meritorious
Dang, you ask hard questions.

That's mean.

I don't like you.

Just kidding.

First off, I don't know if there really are past lives. I just like the idea, so I entertain the idea. And I credit memories of them because it makes me happy and gives my life meaning. Sort of like a Christian believing that Jesus will take them up to Heaven where they will live in eternal bliss. Might not be true, but, hey, sure makes life easier to bear.

If there are past lives, then there will be future lives.

I like that idea.

So, please, please, please let me keep it.

As for language and past lives, a guy named Mark Waterbury did word cleaning on me--whatever that session word clearing was called. We ran across all sorts of foreign words from those past lives. He had bunches of foreign dictionaries. So, we had the resources to look the words up. And those words (which I did not know from this life) cleared up with the expected meanings relevant to the memories. One was a German slang for "flatten like a pancake," which some pilot was talking about before he got on the plane for a bombing run.

If those terms were not real and the memories were not real, it sure was coincidental that I had the sounds for words in those languages which corresponded exactly to the circumstances.

As for remembering an entire language, we have had foreign exchange students stay with us for 11 months. Oddly, when they immerse themselves in English, they begin to think in English. By the end of their stay, some are losing their native language--if they haven't been using it. It's kind of embarrassing for them, talking to their parents and not remembering native words for things they are familiar with.
.
I like your post.
I did not make myself clear -- I was not referring to recollection of a whole language, just a few of recolled sentences are enough to confirm that you were using a foreign language in your past life. Apparently, you were able to recall several words from existing languages, not the ones that you invented.

As for the recollection of a whole language, that requires a lot of work, so I was told.

I met a French girl whose English was impeccable, the only word that she could not pronounce correctly was "engineer". She had spent only one year in the USA prior to our meeting. I asked her about her linguistic ability. She said that in her past life she lived in England. It took her 3 months to recall the English language in its entirety.

It's a fast way to learn a language. I am learning Spanish now. Hopefully, I lived in Spain in the past.
 

Student of Trinity

Silver Meritorious Patron
The toughest thing about assessing evidence for past lives is this. If people can remember things that happened more than a lifetime ago, if that long-vanished information is somehow still present and accessible to them, then surely they can remember things that happened within their present lifetime, even if it was many years ago.

But that opens up an enormous can of worms. If you can recall a single word of German slang, then one possible explanation is that you were a German bomber pilot in a previous life, but another is that you happened, at some one passing and unremarkable second of your previous decades in this life, to hear the word spoken somewhere.

Maybe it was dialog in a film you saw twenty years ago. Maybe you heard a passing stranger exclaim it on the street one day as a child. There's considerable evidence that people can suddenly remember quite obscure details from long ago experience. And why not? We can certainly remember things for many years when we try, so the capability is there. It's not surprising if the capability is also sometimes exercised involuntarily, like a sneeze or a hiccup. Like any memory, it doesn't occupy our mind all the time, but something can happen to trigger it, and there it is, vividly recalled.

Memory of this life is already mysterious and wonderful, and nobody knows how it works. But it means that the only really solid evidence for past-life memory has to be something that could not possibly have been remembered from any experience in your present life. The ability to read an undeciphered script like Minoan Linear A, for instance, would be pretty hard to explain other than by reincarnation.

(I think it would be very hard to fake that just by making stuff up and pretending that you were reading Linear A, because linguists could tell almost immediately if you were doing that. They would give you a hundred apparently similar texts in Linear A characters, some of which were real texts from archaeological sites and some of which were fakes composed at random, and if you couldn't immediately and exactly pick out the real ones, you'd be discredited.)

In fact, the fact that nobody has so far come forward with a remembered translation of Linear A is itself a pretty good indication that there are no real past lives. Or at least, that past lives don't fit the preferred New Age ideal! Not everybody can be an Antlantean, after all, and with being priests or royalty of ancient Minoa being the next best thing, you'd really think we'd have found quite a few people who were literate in Linear A by now ...
 

BardoThodol

Silver Meritorious Patron
I like your post.
I did not make myself clear -- I was not referring to recollection of a whole language, just a few of recolled sentences are enough to confirm that you were using a foreign language in your past life. Apparently, you were able to recall several words from existing languages, not the ones that you invented.

As for the recollection of a whole language, that requires a lot of work, so I was told.

I met a French girl whose English was impeccable, the only word that she could not pronounce correctly was "engineer". She had spent only one year in the USA prior to our meeting. I asked her about her linguistic ability. She said that in her past life she lived in England. It took her 3 months to recall the English language in its entirety.

It's a fast way to learn a language. I am learning Spanish now. Hopefully, I lived in Spain in the past.

Spanish. I have that on my list since so many construction workers are hispanic and speak little English. All sorts of stores around here now have bi-lingual signs.

One of my first sessions was a Life Repair action called a body comm. I was lying on my back and suddenly I had this VIVID sensation of being a Spaniard, a soldier, still in armor, hurting like hell, lying on my back. The image and sensations were as real as feeling my own body. And this before I was indoctrinated into Scientology beliefs. It was a huge WTF moment because I didn't believe in past lives.

As for Europeans and English, what's fun is to hear Germans or French speak British English. Some of our European friends speak with a pronounced British accent.
 

BardoThodol

Silver Meritorious Patron
The toughest thing about assessing evidence for past lives is this. If people can remember things that happened more than a lifetime ago, if that long-vanished information is somehow still present and accessible to them, then surely they can remember things that happened within their present lifetime, even if it was many years ago.

But that opens up an enormous can of worms. If you can recall a single word of German slang, then one possible explanation is that you were a German bomber pilot in a previous life, but another is that you happened, at some one passing and unremarkable second of your previous decades in this life, to hear the word spoken somewhere.

Maybe it was dialog in a film you saw twenty years ago. Maybe you heard a passing stranger exclaim it on the street one day as a child. There's considerable evidence that people can suddenly remember quite obscure details from long ago experience. And why not? We can certainly remember things for many years when we try, so the capability is there. It's not surprising if the capability is also sometimes exercised involuntarily, like a sneeze or a hiccup. Like any memory, it doesn't occupy our mind all the time, but something can happen to trigger it, and there it is, vividly recalled.

Memory of this life is already mysterious and wonderful, and nobody knows how it works. But it means that the only really solid evidence for past-life memory has to be something that could not possibly have been remembered from any experience in your present life. The ability to read an undeciphered script like Minoan Linear A, for instance, would be pretty hard to explain other than by reincarnation.



(I think it would be very hard to fake that just by making stuff up and pretending that you were reading Linear A, because linguists could tell almost immediately if you were doing that. They would give you a hundred apparently similar texts in Linear A characters, some of which were real texts from archaeological sites and some of which were fakes composed at random, and if you couldn't immediately and exactly pick out the real ones, you'd be discredited.)

In fact, the fact that nobody has so far come forward with a remembered translation of Linear A is itself a pretty good indication that there are no real past lives. Or at least, that past lives don't fit the preferred New Age ideal! Not everybody can be an Antlantean, after all, and with being priests or royalty of ancient Minoa being the next best thing, you'd really think we'd have found quite a few people who were literate in Linear A by now ...

Standards for assessing validity or invalidity sometimes baffle me.

"If you loved me you would...(cut off your left testicle and donate it to charity?)." The person uses this standard as a measure of whether you actually love them. But, because you don't want to cut off your left nut and donate it to charity she leaves you. Doesn't matter if you loved her dearly, you didn't pass that one test.

Sometimes one test is enough. When I heard about Hubbard sticking that kid in the chain locker, that was enough to realize he was fucked up. that he forced a father to push a pea around the deck in front of his family just confirmed it. I didn't need all the tomes and tomes of niggling confirmation. Sometimes one fact is enough.

Seems like a contradiction. One fact is not enough. One fact is enough.:confused2:

Yeah, there is always the possibility that I heard that stuff and transposed it into session fodder. William of Occam might have a better grasp of which solution is more obvious. I'm a bit limited as to answers.

I hope you clicked on the link to those children's experiences. Your possible explanation might not apply since some of those kids knew names and addresses the odds of which their having known being astronomically against.

I'm not in the business of trying to justify any of my beliefs as facts. Some things are true, some merely amusing. I'm quite willing to toss any of my cherished beliefs at any time.

Beliefs are like investments. When you're stuck in a bad investment, moving your resources elsewhere might be a good idea. If you're good at investment, you'll earn back your profits elsewhere. If you're emotionally attached to an investment going south and refuse to move resources, you're gonna take a financial bath in some pretty nasty water.
 
Top