Re: What Does it Mean to Say That Something Works or That Something Doesn't Work?
I'm completely convinced that it works very well - as a way of endlessly shuffling and re-shuffling thoughts. Scientology, and it's spinoffs, claim to address the soul, but I've never seen that demonstrated. What I have seen demonstrated is that it addresses the personality/ego and thoughts about the personality/ego. It's rather superficial in it's reach.
But hey, if you dig it do it.
During the day my discussion with Smila was perculating in my mind and thought of several points which I believe are relevant.
First, there is Scientifically accepted research on the concept that both physical and psychological illness can be addressed and be at least partially alleviated by having a person look at pictures of their past which exist in their mind. That research was started by Sigmund Freud and was accepted as valid research by the official Scholastic and Scientific bodies of his time (late 19th and early 20th centuries). Other researchers, notably Jung followed and expanded on the work started by Freud.
When Hubbard got involved he was attempting to building on earlier accepted scientific work. Hubbard was not educated or trained in his field of choice and therefore had no standing in the scientific community of his day. For this reason he was debunked as being unscientific by the scientific community of his day.
When Book One of Dianetics came out, Hubbard had not yet claimed to be dealing with a spirit. Early Dianetics was initially aimed at the body, the analytical mind and the reactive mind. At first, ransacking one's pictures was not considered as having anything at all to do with a spirit. Simply stirring up pictures was never a goal of Hubbard's. He believed man was a one lifetime being and he was going for erasure of pictures. He made repeated stabs at developing a one shot clear process, an effort that would have made examining large numbers of pictures unnecessary.
As I understand it, what led Hubbard into the spiritual realm was the fact that many of his early clients began recounting what seemed to be past life pictures. If this were truly the case then he figured that some portion of the person survived physical death and was still around as a being began subsequent lifetimes. This is how Hubbard made the jump to his subject being not just mental and physical but also being spiritual.
In those early days, many processes were developed to spring the spirit out of the body and the mind. None of these processes ransacked a person's bank of pictures. Typical processes were;
"Try to be 3 feet in back of your head!" and the more effective process, "Try not to be 3 feet in back of your head!"
These two process, to me, are a direct attempt by Hubbard to address the soul and can serve as counter examples to what Smila is claiming.
Hubbard claimed that the second of these two processes worked on about 50% of the raw public.
For what it is worth, endlessly ransacking people's pictures was not practiced on a large scale until the early 1980's when NOTS replaced the earlier OT Levels 4 through 7.
The majority of picture running was done on Dianetics only on the part of the bridge below OTIII and then it was done again on OT III. Aside from those two levels, most of the other portions of the bridge including Life Repair, Straightwire, The Expanded Grades, Power and Power Plus did not have anything to do with running pictures. All of these levels did not address pictures or the mind but instead made an effort to directly address the spirit.
SUMMARY
This post attempts to make several points:
1a. Freud was the first researcher in the scientific community to formally take up the possibility that a person could heal himself by looking inward into his past. Other scientific researchers also were involved in this line of research.
1b. Hubbard used Freud's work as the jumping off point for his theories of the mind. Hubbard did not originate the concept of ransacking one's past pictures, Freud did.
1c. Early Dianetics was done without a spiritual component. Pictures were looked at in large numbers but the goal was to erase pictures not stir them up. The goal was to heal the body and the mind through erasing the pictures in portions of one's reactive mind.
2. Hubbard's foray into the spirit came about unexpectedly when a large number of early Dianeticists began running what looked like past life pictures.
3. Hubbard accepted these pictures as being authentic and by doing so he began his career as one who was dealing with the human soul or spirit.
4. From this point forward, running pictures was de-emphasized in C of S for about 25 years. One ran pictures only to heal mental and physical illness and then was pretty much off of pictures until OTIII. After OTIII they were back off of pictures again.
5. Only after NOTS came in did running pictures became a major activity on the C of S bridge.
Lakey
From what I understand, he had very little in the way of self-awareness. His behaviour is more typical of someone frantically fighting against self-awareness. "Work it out, or act it out", as some therapists like to say.
