Scientology: It's All About The BIG Goals

[BardoThodol]

Based on my observation and experience Scientology utterly fails in helping individuals to change for the better. I wish I can go into more detail about an OT8 that I know who is most likely now certifiably insane. I'm still connected to him and for the time being have to remain connected, so that's why I can't give details.

I will say that there are periods of time in which he totally loses it. I'm talking about psychotic breaks. Not bad enough yet to have an intervention, or to be handled by law enforcement. I wouldn't be surprised however if that will happen one day. I believe very firmly that OT7 fucked him up the most. What a hellish period of about 8 years that was! Most of the best qualities he did have were eradicated by OT7 processing. But he somehow got through the level and did OT8 and now he's a nut. Sure, he's still able to function for the most part, but as time moves on I think he'll lose that functionality. It seems inevitable.

What I've noticed in him and a handful of other OT8s I know and have known is the coldness. The disregard for other people's well being. The lack of tact and empathy. Of course it's no coincidence that Tom Cruise's extreme nuttiness has been during the period in which he has been on OT7, largely over the past decade.

So yes, it's all about the BIG goals, but the goal of improving oneself is impossible going up the Bridge to Total Insanity, therefore the BIG goals are impossible.

As Jason Beghe said, "Show me a MOTHERFUCKING CLEAR!"

Very interesting comment, Lonestar.

Here's my take: when all the stuff about Scientology started appearing on the internet, and you could get access to all the confidential levels, I was still somewhat a believer in the auditing technology (some of which I still find useful--but...) So I started going through those levels.

I didn't have anyone to play the role of auditor on the audited levels, but then again, I had discovered while being audited that, with rare exception, auditors were more a distraction than a help.

The point is I became disgusted with the OT7 and the body theta approach of the upper levels. The approach just seemed so heartless.

So...without a conscience.

In Africa, boys are abducted from their homes and turned into soldiers. Part of the indoctrination is to get them to kill people, to numb the conscience.

There's a very good movie about this. Blood Diamond. By the end of his training, a boy no longer even recognizes his father and is completely willing to kill him. Only the father's love brings the child back to sanity.

What underlies the upper OT levels is this "getting rid of others" mentality. You are the only one who counts. You aren't taught to care for any of these supposed beings. Your objective is to rid yourself of them and their problems.

Where is the love and compassion and caring? Where is the process of healing that being, rather than simply removing them as if they were an engram?

What kind of sanity occurs when one becomes inculcated with the idea that others are simply problems to get rid of? That others are engrams to erase?

 

[BardoThodol]

I was flipping through a book today, Dumbing Us Down, by John Taylor Gatto, and he said something that resonated with what you said above:

"By allowing the imposition of direction from centers far beyond our control, we have time and again missed the lesson of the Congregational principle: people are less than whole unless they gather themselves voluntarily into groups of souls in harmony. Gathering themselves to pursue individual, family, and community dreams consistent with their private humanity is what makes them whole; only slaves are gathered by others.

And these dreams must be written locally because to exercise any larger ambition without such a base is to lose touch with the things which give life meaning: self, family, friends, work, and intimate community."

What is funny is that the Scientologist would falsely imagine and believe thet THEY do what is described above. Of course, what they fail to notice, and miss entirely, is that they are "allowing the imposition of direction from centers far beyond our control".

The dreams are NOT "written locally", but are centrally-determined, and come rushing down the Scientology Command Channels.

The concept of "voluntary" is entirely absent in the philosophy of Scientology. All such ideas quickly disappear if one wants to diverge or sway from Scientology as the ONLY way to give life meaning - for self, family, friends, work, and intimate community. The basic concepts in Scientology are control, 8C and Tone 40 - as the tools to coerce and manipulate "involvement". As Hubbard saw it and explained, common people (all non-Scientologists) are simply "reactive robot machinery, who have NO ability to act sensibly, responsibly or sanely, and who MUST BE CONTROLLED for their own good".

And, of course, involvement with Scientology SQUASHES and ERASES any true widespread sense of humanity.

Yep, as John says, "only slaves are gathered by others". With Scientology, Hubbard and the organized Scientology machinery do the "gathering".

I think a lot of this has to do with balance. Been focusing on balance a lot lately, what with getting older and doing more yoga to keep the body and mind balanced.

But Scientology talks so much about establishing a viewpoint, of holding a position so you can generate power. This is all sort of true--if you are allowed to do this.

Yet, Scientology pulls you out of that viewpoint and replaces it with another. You are constantly pulled off balance and away from your true self until you are totally dependent on the Scientology supporting ideas to hold you up.

I'm not sure if this even translates to Western thought.

We strengthen an area by exercising it. But, if you placed a cast around a healthy leg and made the person unable to use those muscles, after a while the muscles would atrophy and the individual would become dependent on the cast and crutches to support those muscles.

Scientology tends to cause one's spiritual muscles to atrophy, making one dependent on the supporting mechanisms.

ps: Gaddie, I know what I just said doesn't directly address what your comment says, but... while imagining what you were talking about I just kept seeing individuals who established and expanded their sense of balance versus those who kept being pulled off balance, not being allowed to establish core strength and being made dependent.

 

[Smilla]

What makes it all worthwhile is that moment when you get the exclusive, VIP only, L Ron Hubbard Soap on a rope and bathrobe. And the ashtray - I forgot the ashtray.

 

[BardoThodol]

I see the Big Goals thing as being expressed in the 'eight dynamics' idea. It poses as this brilliant extension of all previous morality, but all it really amounts to is diluting the moral weight of the only categories that really mean anything, with more categories of stuff that are so large as to be meaningless. Only the first two "dynamics" actually mean anything: yourself, and the other individual people you can actually affect.

It would have been enough for Hubbard to have stopped at five dynamics. Three extra bogus ones that could mean whatever he wanted would still have let him outweigh the two real ones, and justify anything in the name of the 'greatest number of dynamics'. Or he could have made up twelve dynamics, or twelve hundred. Like bad checks, the number doesn't matter, except that a middling sort of number can somehow make the fraud less obvious. So Hubbard picked six.

Although I find the concept of dynamics somewhat useful, your idea of diluting one's morals makes a lot of sense.

If one keeps continuously looking outward at the stars and the galaxies, one can quickly sense one's relative lack of importance. All this vast space. All these beings.

And if you are unimportant in the larger scheme, then so is everyone else.

Yet, importance is an assigned attribute. Only you can assign importance to anything in life.

If you look out at all those stars, none of them are assigning importance to you or your life. Only you and your family and friends do that.

Importance and value. Your value in life can become so diluted against a grander scheme. Which makes each of us easily expendable.

But, I don't think any of us are expendable.

I think all of us are valuable.

(God, what a sappy post. Sigh. I think I need to go out and kill some weeds, swat a few flies, poison the grubs ruining my yard.)

 

[Smilla]

My father has a friend who is an astronomer, and when I was a kid my dad took me to visit an observatory where he was working high up in some mountains. They were both very excited about little 9 year old me spending some time on the very powerful optical telescope. I was enjoying it, looking at the moons of Jupiter, and so on, but when they started showing me galaxies and very distant objects, it frightened me and I refused to look any further. It was just too much for my young mind to handle.

You've probably seen this video, but I'll post it for anyone who hasn't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0

 

[Gadfly]

I was just out for a long walk with my dog, and I got to looking over some other things related to this.

Emotions and "feelings" involve a very interesting range of experiences. One can watch a movie, or read a book, and be lifted to great heights of joy, or be driven down into the depths of grief. I have cried during MANY movies. Yet, movies and books often are not "real".

Similarly, one can fix on some grandiose idea, such as "heaven" or "paradise", and be swept away with amazing feelings of JOY and HAPPINESS just by thinking about the IDEA. I am sure many a communist was carried away with intense FEELINGS as he or she listened to some party leader wax eloquently about the great new People's State.

Emotions, feelings, and even spiritual experiences need not have ANY connection to anything "real". Of course, one can feel joy or sadness as a reaction or response to an actual life situation. But also, one can and does OFTEN react or respond to ones OWN IDEAS that one entertains in ones own head!

Is the joy or sadness any less real? Nope.

Emotions and feelings can and often have NOTHING to do with "hard reality". By "feelings" I don't simply mean emotions, and this includes a wide range of experiences such as raptures, amazing flights of the imagination, sensations of great space and even "key-outs" and "exteriorization". The later are not at all "emotions", though they are "feelings". Such as, "I felt so light", or "I felt like my space was huge", or "I felt a connection with all other people".

My point here is that people can and do REACT to IDEAS. When a person reads something, or listens to a speaker, and agrees, and CREATES SOME IDEA IN HIS OR HER HEAD, he or she can FEEL all sorts of things as a result. It isn't so much that the speaker is "causing" the "feeling", though that might seem to be the case, but instead, the person is causing his or her OWN feelings and emotions by entertaining and feeding the idea in his or her own space.

So, "things most certainly happen" when one thinks and talks about "clearing the planet", "spreading ethics throughout the universe", or "making Ron's dreams come true", just as a Christian might also get lifted away to some sort of rapturous emotional high by thinking and talking about "heaven", or "paradise". The imaginations and minds of Men can do interesting and strange things. And, all of these experiences and feelings have little or nothing to do with WHAT IS TRUE (as determined by the shared mutual experiences of hard physical reality).

I am not stating this as a criticism, but am simply pointing out that a LARGE part of any person's experiences has NOTHING to do with "hard reality".

What does this mean then? I have no idea. :confused2:

But it has something to do with the BIG IDEAS that Hubbard & Scientology fills the minds of his followers with. What it does mean is that the EFFECTS created by Scientology often have little to do with the "effectiveness of Scientology", and more to do with the way any human being functions as an imaginative and feeling/emotive sort of being.

Emotional reactions can be to IDEAS. These ideas can exist quite sepatately from ANY "truth". In other words, you can "feel" all sorts of things, in all sorts of ways, simply by "thinking about something".

As regards Scientology, I suspect that Hubbard knew about such things, and USED these psychological facts to further entrap his followers. And, maybe it was all a big unanticipated accident, or unwanted by-product, and he never actually intended any such thing. :confused2:

Either way, involvement with Scientology opens the door to such dangers.

 

[Smilla]

I was just out for a long walk with my dog, and I got to looking over some other things related to this.

Emotions and "feelings" involve a very interesting range of experiences. One can watch a movie, or read a book, and be lifted to great heights of joy, or be driven down into the depths of grief. I have cried during MANY movies. Yet, movies and books often are not "real".

Similarly, one can fix on some grandiose idea, such as "heaven" or "paradise", and be swept away with amazing feelings of JOY and HAPPINESS just by thinking about the IDEA. I am sure many a communist was carried away with intense FEELINGS as he or she listened to some party leader wax eloquently about the great new People's State.

Emotions, feelings, and even spiritual experiences need not have ANY connection to anything "real". Of course, one can feel joy or sadness as a reaction or response to an actual life situation. But also, one can and does OFTEN react or respond to ones OWN IDEAS that one entertains in ones own head!

Is the joy or sadness any less real? Nope.

Emotions and feelings can and often have NOTHING to do with "hard reality". By "feelings" I don't simply mean emotions, and this includes a wide range of experiences such as raptures, amazing flights of the imagination, sensations of great space and even "key-outs" and "exteriorization". The later are not at all "emotions", though they are "feelings". Such as, "I felt so light", or "I felt like my space was huge", or "I felt a connection with all other people".

My point here is that people can and do REACT to IDEAS. When a person reads something, or listens to a speaker, and agrees, and CREATES SOME IDEA IN HIS OR HER HEAD, he or she can FEEL all sorts of things as a result. It isn't so much that the speaker is "causing" the "feeling", though that might seem to be the case, but instead, the person is causing his or her OWN feelings and emotions by entertaining and feeding the idea in his or her own space.

So, "things most certainly happen" when one thinks and talks about "clearing the planet", "spreading ethics throughout the universe", or "making Ron's dreams come true", just as a Christian might also get lifted away to some sort of rapturous emotional high by thinking and talking about "heaven", or "paradise". The imaginations and minds of Men can do interesting and strange things. And, all of these experiences and feelings have little or nothing to do with WHAT IS TRUE (as determined by the shared mutual experiences of hard physical reality).

I am not stating this as a criticism, but am simply pointing out that a LARGE part of any person's experiences has NOTHING to do with "hard reality".

What does this mean then? I have no idea. :confused2:

But it has something to do with the BIG IDEAS that Hubbard & Scientology fills the minds of his followers with. What it does mean is that the EFFECTS created by Scientology often have little to do with the "effectiveness of Scientology", and more to do with the way any human being functions as an imaginative and feeling/emotive sort of being.

Emotional reactions can be to IDEAS. These ideas can exist quite sepatately from ANY "truth". In other words, you can "feel" all sorts of things, in all sorts of ways, simply by "thinking about something".

As regards Scientology, I suspect that Hubbard knew about such things, and USED these psychological facts to further entrap his followers. And, maybe it was all a big unanticipated accident, or unwanted by-product, and he never actually intended any such thing. :confused2:

Either way, involvement with Scientology opens the door to such dangers.

In some situations, it's interesting to look at feelings/emotions as verbs rather than nouns.

Sadding
Anxiousing
Enthusing
Fearing
Happying
Angering

So feelings/emotions can be looked at as self-generated behaviours, not necessarily related to anything external.

Of course Scientology is a form of covert Behaviour Modification that works a lot of the time in a subliminal way.

The little behaviour tweaks are written between the lines of the BIG message, which craftily sneaks them in.

That's how it seems to me.

 

[Gadfly]

In some situations, it's interesting to look at feelings/emotions as verbs rather than nouns.

Sadding
Anxiousing
Enthusing
Fearing
Happying
Angering

So feelings/emotions can be looked at as self-generated behaviours, not necessarily related to anything external.

Of course Scientology is a form of covert Behaviour Modification.

So true!

I really enjoyed doing the Tone Scale Drills where one "mocks up" each of the "emotions" on the Expanded Tone Scale. One simply practices each one, and "puts it there", despite the fact that there is no external force or stimulus prodding you to do so.

I got a great deal out of doing that, one thing being that I realized that I CREATED MY OWN EMOTIONS. I can "mock up" great happiness, and I don't have to wait for something to happen to "make me feel that". But also, I can easily react and respond to actual situations with appropriate joy and happiness (like when I watch my daughter's baby taking her first steps).

In various forms of magick and visualization one MUST use the imagination and "put various emotions there". But, even more so, one must learn to "feel something as true", even if it doesn't yet exist! That might sound psychotic, or schizophrenic or NUTS! But really, it is not at all.

I have read all Neville Goddard's books. He was a Rosicrucian who brought magical/occult ideas to the west by (slyly) clothing these ideas in a form of New Age Christianity. He was a bit sneaky, in that he probably wasn't any sort of "devout Christian" at all, but he never gained or benefitted by his "little deceptions". I think his aim and purpose was to HELP people (without sucking them dry of their time, energy and money). He simply presented the ideas in a form that they could be easily accepted and assimilated at the time.

From him:

After this is accomplished define yourself as that which you desire to be by feeling yourself to be the thing desired: I AM that.

This understanding that you are the thing desired will cause a thrill to course through your entire being. When the conviction is established and you really believe that you are that which you desired to be, then let it go, and trust God to do his work (of Whose Ways are entirely unknown).

Neville explained this aspect of "feeling the wish fulfilled" better than any other author I have ever read. He goes on with:

"All things express their nature. As you wear a feeling it becomes your nature. It might take a moment or a year-it is entirely dependent upon the degree of conviction. As doubts vanish and you can feel "I AM this," you begin to develop the fruit or the nature of the thing you are feeling yourself to be."

He wrote this great book:

Feeling is the Secret (at Amazon)

It is available for free download at scribd.com.

Now, all the Christian mumbo-jumbo is not necessary, and it can be a hindrance for some, but if you look PAST the Christian analogies and metaphors, it is basic "magic" based on visualization techniques (as is so much of the New Age info).

Quoted from somewhere on the Internet:

A Favorite "New Thought" Author

One of my favorite new thought authors is a gentleman by the name of Neville Goddard. Neville, as he is affectionately known, was a Christian metaphysician born on the Caribbean island of Barbados in 1905. He came to the U.S. to study theater, but after meeting and studying with several teachers of his time, he devoted his life to writing and speaking on the subject of how thought and feeling create reality.

Feelings Are Magnetic

His most profound statement is that you must assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled to bring about the manifestation of your desire. What exactly does this mean? It is much more than simply affirming what you want to create. When you assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled, you actually feel the feelings that you would feel as if your desire had already been achieved.

What you said Smilla got me thinking about this, because any practitioner of magick knows that one must CREATE the emotion, just as you described - as a self-generated behavior.

Hubbard talks and talks lots about POSTULATES, but he NEVER provided ANY methods to energize and make them come about. Hubbard simply said that "as you go up the Bridge your postulates will get better and become more effective". Information such as contained above involves the actual "tech" on how to "make things happen through thought alone". But, you have to "believe" for it to work!

There is a certain danger though - in that you MUST be careful what you wish for! Strangely, while things may happen and "come true", as YOU change, so does "what you want" change, and what you NOW have isn't any longer what you would NOW wish for!

Buddha just skipped ALL of this hocus-pocus, though I have no doubt he could talk the talk and walk the walk if he wanted to - discard ALL desire - then you have no need to postulate anything!

The reason for all forms of magic AND Scientology go away if you have NO DESIRES on ANY DYNAMIC. To become free of the endless wheel of life and death, and rebirth, over and over, one must abandon ALL desires. Are you REALLY ready to do THAT?

I didn't think so.

 

[onthepes]

B

But he somehow got through the level and did OT8 and now he's a nut. Sure, he's still able to function for the most part, but as time moves on I think he'll lose that functionality. It seems inevitable.

Great stuff Lone Star. Sorry for your OT8 Friend. I watched a once brilliant man who had dedicated 30+ years to the SO and who was OT5 go down the drain slowly. You could see it in him. I loaned this fellow $3000 which he was to pay back a month later. It took 2 years to get $2000 back. He still owed me $1000. He has since passed away. I do not care about the money. I was as much a nutter to loan it to him. He basically mocked up some inheritance from a guy he did not know. This was going to pay for an Ideal Org. It was a huge scam. Amazing story. Towards the end of his life, I would see him walking around picking cigarette butts out of a bin. His face was unshaven and his clothes were hanging off him. He died in a home with little support. I met other OTs that were as cold as ice. Basically serial killers. Jason Beghe says you get worse on OT5. I believe him. Maybe clearing the planet is a reference to insidiously killing people.

 

[Student of Trinity]

About all those galaxies out there, and all those molecules inside us: Blaise Pascal got the basic idea way back in the 1600s, soon after the first telescopic and microscopic observations were available. He concluded that humans live suspended between 'two infinities', the very large and the very small. Of the interstellar distances he wrote, "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me."

He had the right idea, but yet he had no idea how right he was. Our galaxy holds about 100 billion stars, far more than we can see, and the Hubble space telescope has revealed that if you hold up a grain of salt to the sky, you are covering hundreds of galaxies.

 

[JBWriter]

This thread? Pssst....

Thank you, Gadfly*.

JB. (*and the others who posted, too.)