The Little Thread Which Grew - the Apollo '73 to Everything But

[lkwdblds]

Re: A new follow up post from Mama

with what might be termed "OT" a being only knows of it from direct experience

i can point to results

i cannot prove my relationship to said results. by definition if it could be proven it would not be transcendent

Say What? Maybe I'm missing something but your answer is a little too complex or esoteric for me. "It's only true if it true for you." I believe that the original author of the statement is Buddha.

My current take is that a life unit commences existence not as a "blank sheet of paper" but instead has some built in fundamental concepts stored in some sort of core memory deep within its beingness. This core memory is not identical for every being. As a being encounters items and experiences which agree with his core beliefs, things are well and nothing changes. If the being encounters something which stubbornly defies his core beliefs, there is change. Flows begin to occur, energy is created, thought occurs, etc.

A reconciliation must occur, there is no way around that. However, there can be a harmonious reconciliation in which the core memory of the being is either not changed or is changed in a way which expands that being. Conversely, a disharmonious reconciliation always changes the being in a negative manner, reducing his perceived size and leaving him a bit confused.

In summary, a being must reconcile the disagreements which he encounters. How he does this effects his auras, his fields, his reach, his perceived size, etc. Furthermore, how well he does this likely also determines how successful, happy and productive his life will be.

Meanwhile out in the world, we have President Obama operating on one wave length and Isis operating on principles 100% diametrically opposed to his. Isis moves forward with certainty figuring out new ways and methods to torture and kill all people who will not join their group while President Obama, has trouble confronting Isis and does not invest a lot of his energy figuring out a strategy to deal with them but instead wants the United Nations to handle Isis while he deals instead with domestic issues, such as minimum wage, making people more equal, and paying for women's birth control devices. It's as if Isis isn't true for him as far as being something so important that he must pull off of his other projects to deal with them.

At the other end of the scale is Vinay. On Facebook his latest theory is that we are all just one being. His model universe goes to extreme simplification. The Universe contains everything. There is no spiritual universe and physical universe. Each person does not have his or her own universe. There is only one universe and all beings are just one big being who simulates being an enormous number of individual beingnesses.

Big breakthroughs leading to fundamental truths often result in simplification, not complication. Vinay's theories make an effort towards total simplification so maybe he is on the right track. In his model of the universe, "It's only true if it's true for you" reduces to an axiom or self evident truth because all beings are really just one being so the quote must be true!
Lakey

 

[Winston Smith]

Re: Winston, this doesn't sound like you!

Ted brought me back to this by "liking" it; I have not been here in months I think. Uh, yes I am an old man, don't know that I am bitter however. I totally forgot about my post from 2010, and probably would not have posted that today. See, even an old man can evolve. No I am no better than anyone here, I just must have woke up pissed off about something that morning when I wrote that.

So I hereby apologize to one and all.

Winston, I have always enjoyed your posts. You seemed to offer down home common sense wisdom. Then there was your attachment to classical music and the nice tribute you paid to Brahams. What is with your bashing type comments above?

First of all, I do not believe the word "novelists" is correct. As far as I know there is not one line of fiction on this entire thread. Everything is non fiction so the word novelist is a misnomer. As far as liking to write, if one likes writing, I think that is a good thing. Our teachers back in public school days envisioned that their students would end up exercising their writing skills. You yourself post on ESMB in high volume and have a following of readers. I'm sorry but I see that as a good thing, I hold you no ill will because you do a lot of writing on ESMB.

Finally, as to being on the Apollo ship, this is a website for ex Scientologists. Hopefully some of them served on ships and wish to share their stories with ESMB members and non members who are guests on ESMB. Those who were never on the ships are usually thrilled to hear stories which took place on the ship. The stories are often helpful in sorting out how various practices which hurt people came into being. Knowing this can help many ex Scios heal from emotional abuse suffered while in the C of S.

Reread you post and make sure that you really meant what you said. If you do, I suggest as your rememdy that instead of bashing us, you simply don't read the thread anymore.
Lakey
P.S. - I joined ESMB in February of 2009 and have made about 1815 posts, you joined one month later and have made about 1640 posts. We are both posting at almost exactly the same rate. What are you saying, that its fine if you post at 4 posts a day but when I do it, it is an aberation?

 

[lkwdblds]

Re: Winston, this doesn't sound like you!

Ted brought me back to this by "liking" it; I have not been here in months I think. Uh, yes I am an old man, don't know that I am bitter however. I totally forgot about my post from 2010, and probably would not have posted that today. See, even an old man can evolve. No I am no better than anyone here, I just must have woke up pissed off about something that morning when I wrote that.

So I hereby apologize to one and all.

Nice to hear from you again Winston. I don't remember ever being ticked off at you but it appears that I was. I accept your apology but I assure you that I forgot about the upset a day or two after I read your post, back in 2010. What I do remember about you is that you are honest and sincere and wrote consistently good posts over the years. You stand out in my mind because of your love of classical music. I love it too but I don't really play an instrument, except for being a mediocre piano player. You were right in the middle of music, playing it yourself as a member of various ensembles. I was never a great Brahms fan until I read one of your posts describing some Brahms performances which you were involved with.

Since that time, I got more interested in Brahms. One of my favorite pieces of his is his theme and variations on a theme by Joseph Haydn. I really love that piece, a fantastic theme by Haydn, taken and embellished by Brahms about 80 or 90 years after Haydn wrote it. In those 80 or 90 years, Classical music changed greatly as the piece reveals:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6L16ggIABg

What a piece!! Two great composers being featured plus a great conductor and orchestra. Brahms takes our senses up into the stratosphere, developing Haydn's glorious theme. This piece is a great place to go for refuge from today's disturbing world news and political debates!!
Lakey

 

[lkwdblds]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

Mom just posted something that she wanted me to post here so here it is:

Please send this to the Apollo Thread

http://youtu.be/bMrmnKl7M4w

Lakey

 

[lkwdblds]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

Someone named "Watchful Knight" has been reading earlier threads from 2010 including this one and one by Face. He or she has been writing a string of "likes" every day for the last several days. I went back to one of those posts written by me July 26, 2010 which got a "like" yesterday. This was posted first on the Apollo thread but then at the suggestion of one or our readers, I made it an OP for a new thread.

I just reread it... well, I'm not one to "toot my own horn" but in all honesty, I think this is a very good post, one of my best posts ever. I'm amazed that I could write something that good 5 years ago. The post is based on bunch of theories I formed from reading the writings of others who worked directly with Hubbard. Check it out and see what you think:

Default A Thumb Nail Sketch of L Ron Hubbard
I wrote this early this morning as a post on the "Apollo 1973 thread and one of my viewers suggested that I make it an OP for a new thread.


A THUMBNAIL RECAP OF L. RON HUBBARD
He was basically very human and was a "louse", primarily Def. 4 below, built on similarities to definition 1b.

louse (lo̵us; for v., also lo̵uz)

noun pl. lice

1.
a.any of an order (Anoplura) of small, flat, wingless insects with sucking mouthparts, parasitic on the skin or hair of humans and some other mammals; esp., the human body louse (Pediculus humanus corporis) and head louse (P. h. capitis)
b.any of various arthropods that suck blood or juice from other animals or plants
4.Slang a person regarded as mean, contemptible, etc

His main motivations, pure and simple, were a desire to be rich, a desire for power over other people and a desire to be idolized and to stamp his name into history and be adored by others.

The man was nobody's fool. He was very bright, well read, and he had tremendous charisma and good Ethics Presence. He was well versed and skilled in several areas. To really see his true characteristics, an examination of his 3 marriages, 3 wives and 7 children pretty much cuts through all the PR and reveals a lot about his priorities and what he believed was important. As can be seen from those 10 people, family, for one thing, was unimportant to him.

He decided to start a religion to become rich and famous. To form his religion, he was able to sort through vast bodies of data and cull out the most useful and worthwhile facts in this enormous sea of data. He was able to select out many of the key principles of existence, sort them as to orders of importance, reformat and repackage them in Western terms and make them palatable for Western consumption.

PEOPLE HAVING WINS EARLY ON - He must have realized that to hook religious followers he would have to offer materials at a low cost, loss leaders or introductory samples so to speak, which were affordable to people both in terms of money and time spent at study. This, due to his brilliance, he was able to do and he spread his message through his talent and connections from being a good writer of popular fiction, especially science fiction. We do not fully know where he got his data, which data was developed by him personally and which came from other sources. It is clear that most came from other sources but he took credit for developing everything which he packaged. Book One kicked off his movement. People had more gains than he expected and Book One penetrated much more deeply into Society than he expected.

UNEXPECTEDLY, BRILLIANT AND CREATIVE PEOPLE JOINED HIS MOVEMENT, PEOPLE WHO REALLY WANTED TO HELP MANKIND!

Here is the crux of the Hubbard riddle! Dedicated people began to join Hubbard and actually began to develop technologies which helped people and made a stab at a "total know" and were designed to better society and better mankind. HUBBARD DECIDED TO GO ALONG FOR THE RIDE AND LET THESE PEOPLE CREATE.

The contributions of these others plus Hubbard's initial efforts to provide some "loss leaders" at low prices to entice people into the fold solve the riddle or dichotomy of Scientology and Hubbard. How can something developed to control people and suck out their talents and money also have a good side to it? Becauese of the 2 items stated above!

Hubbard had a dilemma to deal with. He wanted fame, power and money from his efforts; fame, power and money for just himself and no one else. HE DID NOT WANT ANYONE ELSE TO SHARE THE LIMELIGHT WITH HIM and reap any benefits from HIS creation, his CHURCH! This applied to all the brilliant people, rank and file people and his family members as well. There was to be only one MESSIAH in this new religion of his and he was it. Timing became critical, these brilliant people within his organization were developing technology which worked. HE DID NOT WANT TO KILL THE GOOSE THAT LAID THE GOLDEN EGGS! These people all had to be gotten rid of and he knew that from the start. The question was only how long to let them create and develop tech for him. A solution arose! Every creator and contributor on his lines was allowed to contribute as long as they remained a background figure. If they began to build up a name for themselves and develop a following of admirers that is the point he chose to get rid of them. He developed a simple method of getting rid of any potential rivals within his group and that was to falsely accuse them of crimes against him and then "Dead Agent" them. This aspect of his organization was not sophisticated and is very easy to see through.

Thus went some of the early luminaries, Volney Mathison Jack Horner, Otto Roos, Johnny Mac, Ray Kemp, Alan Walter. After the creation of the secretive OT Levels, the secrecy was enough to keep rivals from emerging, for a while, but ultimately he got rid of luminaties such as Yvonne Jentzsch and Ken Urquhart and then his greatest asset of all, since Johnny Mac, and that was David Mayo.

As the luminaries began to be kicked out, Hubbard played a greater role in the release of the upper levels and that is probably why they are controversial and do not yield the results which are claimed for them. When the sanest technical voice, a voice of integrity, Mayo, was Dead Agented, the technology took a real dump and nothing worthwhile in the area of tech has come out of C of S since that time. The upper bridge tech was drastically watered down, eliminating Power, Grade 6, and the Clearing Course. Then OT Levels IV through VII were dropped and replaced with NOTs. I believe the idea was to get everyone onto NOTs, a level which could be run year in and year out endlessly. OT VIII was already out but was not delivering anywhere near what was promised so it was reworked a bit. OT Levels 9 through 15 and Super Power were promoted as carrots on the end of a stick, so as to keep the flock looking ahead and paying towards the ultimate levels which would finally deliver the goods originally promised in Book One.

The Policy Letter KSW (Keeping Scientology Working) #1 may be totally a 180 degree reverse vector. Perhaps the truth is an exact reversal of what KSW #1 states. Others developed the workable portions of the tech, LRH brought out thousands of items of tech as well but of his contributions perhaps only 20 had permanent value and of those 20, non were fundamental or basic. THE WORKABLE PORTIONS OF THE TECH, THE THINGS PEOPLE SWEAR BY AND STILL USE WERE ALL DEVELOPED IN THE 1950'S and EARLY 1960's BY OTHERS AND WERE ONLY PACKAGED AND MARKETED BY LRH.

This synopsis completes my thumbnail analysis of LRH, a project I began 5 years ago to try and understand who the man was and what he was all about.
Lakey

 

[lkwdblds]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

New posts from Mama re the wisdom of Steve Jobs: For those of you who like some real "tech" on how to be more successful and happy in life, the following tech supplied by Steve Jobs should really pique your interest!!

https://www.linkedin.com/today/post...06-31541018-10-golden-lessons-from-steve-jobs

Lakey

 

[Commander Birdsong]

Re: A new follow up post from Mama

Say What? Maybe I'm missing something but your answer is a little too complex or esoteric for me. "It's only true if it true for you." I believe that the original author of the statement is Buddha.

My current take is that a life unit commences existence not as a "blank sheet of paper" but instead has some built in fundamental concepts stored in some sort of core memory deep within its beingness. This core memory is not identical for every being. As a being encounters items and experiences which agree with his core beliefs, things are well and nothing changes. If the being encounters something which stubbornly defies his core beliefs, there is change. Flows begin to occur, energy is created, thought occurs, etc.

A reconciliation must occur, there is no way around that. However, there can be a harmonious reconciliation in which the core memory of the being is either not changed or is changed in a way which expands that being. Conversely, a disharmonious reconciliation always changes the being in a negative manner, reducing his perceived size and leaving him a bit confused.

In summary, a being must reconcile the disagreements which he encounters. How he does this effects his auras, his fields, his reach, his perceived size, etc. Furthermore, how well he does this likely also determines how successful, happy and productive his life will be.

Meanwhile out in the world, we have President Obama operating on one wave length and Isis operating on principles 100% diametrically opposed to his. Isis moves forward with certainty figuring out new ways and methods to torture and kill all people who will not join their group while President Obama, has trouble confronting Isis and does not invest a lot of his energy figuring out a strategy to deal with them but instead wants the United Nations to handle Isis while he deals instead with domestic issues, such as minimum wage, making people more equal, and paying for women's birth control devices. It's as if Isis isn't true for him as far as being something so important that he must pull off of his other projects to deal with them.

At the other end of the scale is Vinay. On Facebook his latest theory is that we are all just one being. His model universe goes to extreme simplification. The Universe contains everything. There is no spiritual universe and physical universe. Each person does not have his or her own universe. There is only one universe and all beings are just one big being who simulates being an enormous number of individual beingnesses.

Big breakthroughs leading to fundamental truths often result in simplification, not complication. Vinay's theories make an effort towards total simplification so maybe he is on the right track. In his model of the universe, "It's only true if it's true for you" reduces to an axiom or self evident truth because all beings are really just one being so the quote must be true!
Lakey

sorry if that post sounds too esotickle for a good solid workingman but good solid workingman are more important to our great country than ectoplasmic chatter...

headed west tomorrow lakey

you might start thinking of visiting the bay next month. buffalo stew, roast turkey, pastrami and all the magaritas you can drink on me at tommy's joint...

 

[lkwdblds]

Re: A new follow up post from Mama

sorry if that post sounds too esotickle for a good solid workingman but good solid workingman are more important to our great country than ectoplasmic chatter...

headed west tomorrow lakey

you might start thinking of visiting the bay next month. buffalo stew, roast turkey, pastrami and all the magaritas you can drink on me at tommy's joint...

I might take you up on that. If my cousin is in town in Palo Alto, he always puts me up for the night. Also, my Mazda 3 gets 41 mpg highway and is mucho fun to drive. It would be good to take it out on a road trip and see how it performs.
Lakey

 

[lkwdblds]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

Wow! Exactly 1,700,000 hits at ll:39 PM California time!
Lakey

 

[Ted]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

The perceived success of this thread is due to several factors. Initially, the naming is, I suspect, a hot topic for those of us who have or had in interest in 1) the early days, 2) the Apollo, which is synonymous with Hubbard, and the goings on therein, and 3) Hubbard Himself.

Correct thread naming will generate hits even if the thread deviates from the OP and stated purpose of the thread, even if a viewer hits and runs after they discover and find no interest in the deviation(s).

Next, people who have direct knowledge and experience with the thread topic generate continuing, interesting posts.

Knowledgeable contributors (critics and supporters) expand on the topic.

Community: The thread becomes a micro community within the overall community of, in this case, ESMB.

Being a community, some participants take pleasure (interest) in the happenings, shenanigans, experiences related by other participants.

Acknowledgments for informative and well-written posts encourage more posting.

Although the Apollo thread has not been a zone of contention, flamewars, etc. such contribution would add to the number of hits.

Did I miss anything?

 

[afaceinthecrowd]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

The perceived success of this thread is due to several factors. Initially, the naming is, I suspect, a hot topic for those of us who have or had in interest in 1) the early days, 2) the Apollo, which is synonymous with Hubbard, and the goings on therein, and 3) Hubbard Himself.

Correct thread naming will generate hits even if the thread deviates from the OP and stated purpose of the thread, even if a viewer hits and runs after they discover and find no interest in the deviation(s).

Next, people who have direct knowledge and experience with the thread topic generate continuing, interesting posts.

Knowledgeable contributors (critics and supporters) expand on the topic.

Community: The thread becomes a micro community within the overall community of, in this case, ESMB.

Being a community, some participants take pleasure (interest) in the happenings, shenanigans, experiences related by other participants.

Acknowledgments for informative and well-written posts encourage more posting.

Although the Apollo thread has not been a zone of contention, flamewars, etc. such contribution would add to the number of hits.

Did I miss anything?

Yes...And it's HUGE. As the Thread went forward, more and more non Scn related topics were posted about, discussed and linked to elsewhere on the internet. Over time, IMO, a significantly large portion of the Hits are from Folks that wind up here from a Link from a Google search about a subject/person completely dis-related to Scn. I'm retired and am interested in reading about many different subjects/persons and off and on spend hours doing Google searches and reading a number of the Links provided. On 3 occasions over the past couple of years I have wound up with Links to the Apollo Thread from non Scn related searches.

The same is certainly true for Scn related Google searches that Folks are doing as many different Scn subjects/persons, especially the "Old Days", have bee discussed here on this Thread.

Face

 

[Udarnik]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

Yes...And it's HUGE. As the Thread went forward, more and more non Scn related topics were posted about, discussed and linked to elsewhere on the internet. Over time, IMO, a significantly large portion of the Hits are from Folks that wind up here from a Link from a Google search about a subject/person completely dis-related to Scn. I'm retired and am interested in reading about many different subjects/persons and off and on spend hours doing Google searches and reading a number of the Links provided. On 3 occasions over the past couple of years I have wound up with Links to the Apollo Thread from non Scn related searches.

The same is certainly true for Scn related Google searches that Folks are doing as many different Scn subjects/persons, especially the "Old Days", have bee discussed here on this Thread.

Face

I bet a significant number of the non-SCN hits come from someone searching for the Apollo space program, and they get a space story of a different sort, here...

 

[Ted]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

I bet a significant number of the non-SCN hits come from someone searching for the Apollo space program, and they get a space story of a different sort, here...

Or The Apollo Theatre, historically a hot spot for great music and entertainment.

https://www.apollotheater.org

 

[lkwdblds]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

The perceived success of this thread is due to several factors. Initially, the naming is, I suspect, a hot topic for those of us who have or had in interest in 1) the early days, 2) the Apollo, which is synonymous with Hubbard, and the goings on therein, and 3) Hubbard Himself.

I picked the name on my own. As noted many times, it wound up with 7,200 hits which is a decent total for an OP who was mainly a blue collar guy. Carmelo entered the scene and approached me about changing the thread to something other than my story. As I've stated before, my inclination was that we had to choose a new name. Carmelo strongly urged that we continue with the existing name. He stated that it was a catchy name and already had built up a following. The choice to keep the name was his.

Correct thread naming will generate hits even if the thread deviates from the OP and stated purpose of the thread, even if a viewer hits and runs after they discover and find no interest in the deviation(s).

Next, people who have direct knowledge and experience with the thread topic generate continuing, interesting posts.

Here we were beefed up by Neville Chanberlin a bit at the begining and first and foremost Purple Haze. She had lots of excellent data on the early days of the thread topic. I had some significant knowledge of the thread topic and milked it for all it was worth and then some, while Carmelo also had significant data in this area as well. The big breakthrough in this area occurred when Faceinthecrowd showed up. When he came on board, he supplied us with a huge amount of data, data which I thought would be impossible to come by.


Knowledgeable contributors (critics and supporters) expand on the topic.

Community: The thread becomes a micro community within the overall community of, in this case, ESMB.

Being a community, some participants take pleasure (interest) in the happenings, shenanigans, experiences related by other participants.

Acknowledgments for informative and well-written posts encourage more posting.

Although the Apollo thread has not been a zone of contention, flamewars, etc. such contribution would add to the number of hits.

Did I miss anything?

I think you covered all the pertinent components. Just to elaborate a bit, the topic of "critics and supporters" is worthy of a comment or two. Carmelo and I mutually wanted to have more supporters than critics. It's not that we didn't want critics, because we did want them. What we tried desperately to steer clear of were a particular class of critics which ESMB has become known for, i.e. the critics who level stupendous personal attacks on those who do not share their beliefs. By and large, we steered clear of them. Occasionally a few of them would show up and have their say but they never really took root on this thread.

My other comment concerns "Acknowledgments for informative and well-written posts". Not being a well know Scio or a high classed auditor, I made a special effort to acknowledge almost all posts which I though were well intended and which offered some data that I judged to be pertinent. Therefore, anyone who wrote a post here could expect an acknowledgement from at least me. As it turned out, in our hey day there was a cadre of about 40 posters who built up some sort of connection with a group of posters and almost any worthwhile post was going to get several acknowledgments. I believe that acknowledging good posting and not commenting on poor posting was one of our most successful actions.

One last comment Ted. What do you mean by perceived success? I see it as an unqualified success. Carmelo and I set some goals and exceeded every goal we set by orders of magnitude. Where am I going wrong? Why do you say perceived success instead of just "success"? I respect your views greatly and really would like to know why you consider the thread a perceived success.
Lakey

 

[lkwdblds]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

I bet a significant number of the non-SCN hits come from someone searching for the Apollo space program, and they get a space story of a different sort, here...

You know, it is remarkable that besides starting this Appollo thread, I had an eight year career where I worked on the Apollo space program as well. My hey day of that career was from June, 1964 to June, 1965 working at the NASA Center in Clearlake City, Texas, 30 miles south of Houston. I began in 1962 as a Fortran Programmer on the ancient main frame computers of the day, mainly the IBM 7090 and 7094. Those were the days when we had punch card operators who took the code we wrote, FORTRAN for Scientific applicationz and COBALT for business applications and entered it onto punch cards, which were fed into the computer's hopper. After the Moon landing in 1969, at which time I was with IBM, I stayed on as a Staff Programer until the fall of 1971 at which time I quit my job to study Scio Tech full time. That was the stupidest decision which I ever made!
Lakey

 

[Ted]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

[…]

One last comment Ted. What do you mean by perceived success? I see it as an unqualified success. Carmelo and I set some goals and exceeded every goal we set by orders of magnitude. Where am I going wrong? Why do you say perceived success instead of just "success"? I respect your views greatly and really would like to know why you consider the thread a perceived success.
Lakey

My point, exactly.

You claim success. That's all well and fine. It is something you are proud of which no one can or at least should not begrudge you. It is, nevertheless, your claim. I recall only you, here, making an issue of stats. The rest of us just post. Others may or may not agree with your definition of success, hence, "perceived success." I do not care to deal with anyone's objection to the claim.

I will suggest that you have a button on this matter when and where, in my opinion, there need be none.

Life goes on within and without the Apollo thread. (Thank you George Harrison for that one.)

 

[lkwdblds]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

My point, exactly.

You claim success. That's all well and fine. It is something you are proud of which no one can or at least should not begrudge you. It is, nevertheless, your claim. I recall only you, here, making an issue of stats. The rest of us just post. Others may or may not agree with your definition of success, hence, "perceived success." I do not care to deal with anyone's objection to the claim.

I will suggest that you have a button on this matter when and where, in my opinion, there need be none.

Life goes on within and without the Apollo thread. (Thank you George Harrison for that one.)

Stats were just one of many interests which we had. As the thread grew, other issues arose which were more important than stats. We wanted an elite group of top quality posters. We did not want certain types of negative people posting here. Carmelo started to use big photo shoots and interesting videos as a means of communication and expression. Since he was more into pop music and I was into classical music, I offered classical music as a topic as well. That was a successful move.

We were looking at creating a sort of substitute for a morning newspaper, something people would look forward to reading when they woke up or when they got home from work or school. We achieved this to a greater degree than either of us thought possible. Every single thing we talked about doing we were able to achieve better than expected. Call it by whatever name you like - it is what it is.

Life goes on without a lot of things of value being present. For example, life goes on without the USA having a manned space program anymore. The fact that such is the case says nothing about whether or not the space program was a success. It was what it was, it reached the lofty goal JFK set for it and also contributed heavily to a lot of the high tech stuff which society enjoys today. Was it a success? Probably there is no agreement on that point but whatever adjective people assign to its past existence, it achieved certain goals which were set for it. To the extent which it achieved the goals set for it, it could be said to be a success or a perceived success. It doesn't really matter what descriptives are used. I was simply curious as to why you used perceived success. I asked you and you replied. No more need be said.
Lakey

 

[lkwdblds]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

Chuck Beatty started reading the thread yesterday or today. He started at the beginning and he clicked 58 likes in the course of an hour or so. The "likes" were distributed among several posters, not just me.

Welcome to the thread Chuck, and thanks for all those likes which you checked!
Lakey

 

[lkwdblds]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

I attended an ex Scientologist party this evening out in the Pomona area. Johnny the Magic Thetan was there and I talked to him for 10-15 minutes. He is looking good and is engaged in giving a lot of workshops mostly in the Southern California area.

He told me that he has created his own new upper OT Levels and has run them on a female client of his very successfully. What do her abilities enable her to do? How about visiting other planets and galaxies in an out of body state and communicating with various inhabitants of those places.?

Some of his new lectures will deal with these types of phenomena.

This stuff is way too far out there for me to take seriously but I make an attempt to take in this information in a respectful manner and give a clean acknowledgment. I stayed about an hour and a half. It is a very nice group with some very fine people but I don't feel as if I belong there. I have nothing much to say to anyone and really don't fit in.

After an hour and a half, I got up and left unannounced. Back in 2009 when I first started going to such affairs, I savored each moment being there and tried to get all the gossip and "skinny" which I could collect. Here, 5 years later, I'm a fish out of water at such an event. Mainly I have no interest whatsoever in Scientology, either corporate or field.

THE BREED IS DYING OUT
A very fine lady whom I knew from a trip to Northern Cal in 2010 has a husband who is doing well as a field auditor up North. She made this very astute observation, "No new auditors are being trained outside the church i.e., out in the field." She continued and said that as soon as the current generation of auditors passes on, field auditing will die out.

As to the church, it appears that no upper level auditors are being trained anymore and if some are being trained, it is not pure LRH training but instead an altered brand of auditing which is pushed by DM. Therefore, no new standard auditors are being made either inside or outside of COS. I had never thought of that before. I thought there was some sort of training going on in the field, perhaps at the Chen Academy or some place like that but apparently this is not the case. In these circumstance, another 25 -30 years and all existing auditors, already middle aged and up, will be gone and Standard Hubbard auditing will cease to be available on planet Earth.

That is quite a sobering thought. With the contemplation of that sobering thought plus my conversation with Johnny, my interest and identification with being an ex Scientologist has ceased to exist. As many problems as there are out in society, it is still a better place to be than to be wrapped up in either Scientology or ex Scientology!!!
Lakey

 

[lkwdblds]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

Yes...And it's HUGE. As the Thread went forward, more and more non Scn related topics were posted about, discussed and linked to elsewhere on the internet. Over time, IMO, a significantly large portion of the Hits are from Folks that wind up here from a Link from a Google search about a subject/person completely dis-related to Scn. I'm retired and am interested in reading about many different subjects/persons and off and on spend hours doing Google searches and reading a number of the Links provided. On 3 occasions over the past couple of years I have wound up with Links to the Apollo Thread from non Scn related searches.

The same is certainly true for Scn related Google searches that Folks are doing as many different Scn subjects/persons, especially the "Old Days", have bee discussed here on this Thread.

Face

I just did a very thorough reading of this post. IMO, everything said in the post is true. The post is true as far as it goes but it has HUGE omissions!

There are thousands of threads on ESMB, many of which have catchy names and/or interesting topics which are posted and discussed elsewhere on the internet. That being said, why didn't any of those threads, over time, receive a significantly large portion of the Hits from folks doing a Google search about a subject/person completely dis-related to Scn?

The question which Face's post above does not ask but which needs to be asked is what is it about this thread that caused so many Google searches to end up on this thread? Why do so many people land here rather than at some other ESMB thread?

Most of the people on the thread do various dub ins trying to explain away why this thread got so large. Some of them also tend to minimize the importance of the thread.

As usual, the truth is very simple. IMHO the reason the thread got so large was that it's founders, Carmelo and I did an excellent job in starting the thread and continued to do an excellent job for 5 more years in creating the thread.

Carmelo was the one who conceived the format of the thread. He proposed to me what he wanted to do and encouraged me to participate with him and I agreed to do so.

ONE OBVIOUS POINT - This thread covers a multitude of topics not just one main topic as do most other threads. Having a multitude of topics is an obvious reason why we show up on many more Google searches than other threads. Face's post does not recognize this obvious fact! People from other parts of the internet don't just stumble onto the Apollo thread. They come here because we cover many major topics concerned with life!!! This is CAUSED and is no accident and the person who caused it is Carmelo Orchards!!!

A SECOND OBVIOUS POINT - The thread gets on the Google Search engines because we recruited the top posters on ESMB and got many of them to post here regularly and engage in interesting dialogues. Here again, this was Carmelo's idea. I caught on to it quickly and helped assist him as best as I could but he is the source behind recruiting the best and most knowledgeable posters. Thus the two biggest points which caused us to be the biggest thread on ESMB were masterminded by Carmelo!

SUMMARY - The main reasons this thread became far larger than any other thread on ESMB are as follows:
1. Carmelo conceived the idea of having the thread cover multiple topics, almost any topic of interest was welcome here to discuss.
2. Carmelo contacted the top poster on ESMB and promoted heavily to get them to come to this thread and post regularly here.
3. Carmelo contacted me and proposed that I work with him and promote #1 and #2 above and keep the original thread name which I had created.
4. Carmelo and I pushed forward his initial concept in an excellent manner and thus created a thread that frequently would come up on the Google search engines.

Face's post above was accurate as far as it went but it covered only item #4. I have added items 1 -3 to fill in the HUGE omissions which he did not mention.

As to the importance of the thread, it is what it is. That is a judgement matter to be made by each person who has participated on the thread, reading, posting or both.
Lakey