People who dabble in the occult are already travelling through the suburbs of fucked up and heading towards the city centre, when the guru bus picks them up and gets them there faster.
Even on the very lightest level, no one goes to a tea-leaf reader if their thoughts/mind are 100% steady and life is going well.
And we have all been there. The lucky few miss the bus.
I'm not sure how to define the difference between responsible and irresponsible when dabbling in the occult. You could warn me to be careful when playing with the ouija board, but what does careful mean? When does it become irresponsible? How do we know?
I had a cool book once- it was put out by some esoteric publisher in a series called something like "What they don't want you to know". Every chapter was about a different occultist. Almost all these people were terribly messed up. And I've met others who seemed to be that way. I'm also mindful of Nikki Sixx's experiments with same. It seems to me that delving deep into some types of occultism, particularly left hand path stuff seems to take a toll on some people's psyches. I'm talking about intense involvement and experimentation. I think Hub believed his own stuff. I think he delved deeply into the space alien bt stuff, so much so that he got consumed with it and that this is one of the reasons he died raving about demons.
I also- and this is something that, believe it or not, Scn -among other ologies- covers (though they cheerfully disregard it) - irresponsibility and cupidity and misdeeds take their toll on people, too. I think that this is the other thing that fucked Hubbard up. And maybe other Scientologists, too. The ones who RPF people and sneer at them. The ones who reg all their money. They ones who run Scn companies and fire employees for going into labor. The ones who break up families and slap women (thinking of Maria Pia Gardini) in the face for not coughing up a huge donation. Unethical, immoral, greedy and irresponsible behavior.
Carlos Castaneda appears to have been like that, too. He seems to have flat out lied about Don Juan. Made it up. Though he does seem to have truly been into occultism and shamanism. But he was irresponsible with others and there are some bizarre tales about him. Thus can someone be a true believer
and a charlantan. (he has this in common w/ Hubbard.)
I know that I've gotten flak for saying stuff like this before (and I've stopped responding to the ones who try to take me to task for it) but I, in fact, don't think that auditing, per se (or word clearing or TRs or other drills) fucks people up. I think anyone who is too fragile for that is someone who'd not handle most psychoanalysis verywell, either. I think people are, in general (in Scn) driven nuts by all the mixed signals, screaming, abuse and incredible losses that being involved in CofS so often causes. I was thinking about this today and seems to me that if I were going to find one generalized nut shell term for the ill consequences suffered by Scn'ists from being involved in CofS, it would be "loss". Loss of health, of money, of homes, of family- even their lives.
Now, back to occultism messing one up. I think that there are things that "restimulate" (I like the word, dammit, even though it's a scn one) or stir things up within a person's psyche that sometimes they can't handle. I also suspect that there's a lack of balance thing with those who get messed up by it, cuz those are the people who aren't doing enough other things to balance it out.
You'll know what I mean.
