To FZ'ers/Indies/ProScientologists

[Atalantan]

Well, I was afraid that it may devolve into that but I would hope you're not saying that regarding the questions I am asking.

I am trying to UNDERSTAND.

If someone were to say to me, "Ya know, I think Hubbard was a liar and I've looked at it all and I have also studied all these other materials and I believe I can discern what will help another.", that data is valuable to me. It helps me to see that someone can make a coherent argument about why they want to continue applying Scientology tech to others.

It helps me to understand (and therefore probably others) that the generalities about Scientologists are not true.

If we are all connected, all part of single consciousness (which I believe we are) then when we perceive that another part of us is be blinded or unwilling to look and therefore simply spew out illogics, it's painful.

There would be a way to do this thread that was beneficial.

Sorry you are disliking it so much. Can you think of a way to make it better?

Sure there are ways to make it better. One might be to put up your own WP blog or a simple forum, then invite people to post their answers to your questions there. Having admin control you could allow only on-topic comments/answers to your questions to be posted and delete the derailing ones.

Or just ask people to email or PM completed questionnaires to you. I believe there are survey software for that purpose, but you could have the answers PMed to you through ESMB's system.

 

[Voltaire's Child]

I don't understand why this issue is so hard to understand. It's just ideas. People leave CofS (and I've known a few FZers who never had been in CofS) and they take certain ideas.

 

[Gadfly]

I don't understand why this issue is so hard to understand. It's just ideas. People leave CofS (and I've known a few FZers who never had been in CofS) and they take certain ideas.

Because, certain types of people tend to see everything as all "black or white".

People in the C of S are forced to accept Scientology that way (all or none), and certain critics also have a tendency to put everything into an over-generalized neat little cubby-hole. Some of these critics were originally dedicated Scientologists, and they seem to simply take the extremism they enjoyed while in Scientology with them when they go out and shift loyalties. Same old song and dance, just a different "target".

Some people think in generalities - it is weakness of the mind. These type of folks, whether pro or con, are unable to dig into the details and notice varying degrees of "good" and "bad".

Korzybski went into depth about this in his subject of General Semantics. It has to do with people's abilities or inabilities to recognize differences, similarities and identities. Hubbard covered this in the Data Series, though he did alter and screw up some of Korzybski's original notions. People who have trouble differentiating tend to see and experience things as "abstractions" and "sweeping generalities", and are quite uncomfortable viewing the details up close (as these details too often threaten his or her fixed ideas).

I often talk about the fixed ideas created by involvement with the Church of Scientology. They exist. Hubbard's extensive indoctrination system most certainly creates and deeply imbeds into the minds of participants MANY fixed ideas. But also, some critics suffer from the same exact phenomena. It is easy to spot them. To them "it is all bad" - always, with every post, ad naseum. These sort of folks are the 180-degree reverse vector, the mirror image, of the card-carrying fanatical Scientology true believer. To me, they are BOTH morons. They are two sides of the same sad coin.

There is some bad in the good, and there is some good in the bad, and in the end the amount and degree depends largely on from where you are looking (though certainly not completely).

+++++++++++

 

[Student of Trinity]

One of the neatest things you can do, if you're making up a belief system, is to include the axiom that you have to either accept the entire system, or else reject every bit of it.

This is a simple axiom, and it's often the one that hooks people the longest. People will stay in the system even when they really want to reject parts of it, just because this one all-or-nothing axiom tells them they can't reject the parts they hate without losing the parts they love. Or, if they do finally abandon the system, they will reject the parts they liked along with the rest, just because they still can't shake that all-or-nothing axiom.

For some reason it's really hard for people to see the simple escape: throw out the all-or-nothing axiom. Then you can also throw out whatever else you want to throw out, and keep whatever else you want to keep.

I first noticed this funny problem with fundamentalist Christians, but I bet the idea may have some application to Scientology. The Church of Scientology emphasizes the all-or-nothing axiom really strongly — despite also proclaiming 'look, don't listen' and 'if it isn't true for you, it isn't true'. In practice those two open-minded ideas seem just to be advertising for outsiders. Once you're in, you're expected to have done all your looking and decided that every darn thing IS true for you. Otherwise, you're not really in.

Once you're out of the Church, though, you simply don't have to stick to that all-or-nothing axiom. You can pick and choose at will. So you don't have to believe that Ron Hubbard was always right, or that his ideas were the only hope. You just have to believe that he was right sometimes, and that the things he was right about are useful.

What I'm saying is, I see no big logical problem at all for an Independent Scientologist to answer Synthia's hard questions. They're only fatal to any belief in Scientology IF you still implicitly accept the all-or-nothing axiom. If it's gone for you, they're no problem at all.

This brings me back to the distinction I tried to draw when I first visited this board, between 'hard' and 'soft' Scientology. If you feel free to simply discard all Hubbard's lies and nonsense, and admit that we're not going to see any real clears or OTs anytime soon, then what you have left is soft Scientology. And it's pretty innocuous.

One critique I have about soft Scientology is that it's also pretty modest in what it offers, to the point where it really doesn't look all that competitive in today's marketplace for therapies and spiritual practices. And I'm afraid I suspect a lot of 'soft' Scientologists of surreptitiously trying to have their cake and eat it, too, by allowing the lofty claims of hard Scientology to float around implicitly, adding allure to their subject, while backing off from them as soon as they are explicitly challenged. Without hard Scientology to make it seem cooler, and feed it with customers, would soft Scientology even be around at all?

 

[Sindy]

One of the neatest things you can do, if you're making up a belief system, is to include the axiom that you have to either accept the entire system, or else reject every bit of it.

This is a simple axiom, and it's often the one that hooks people the longest. People will stay in the system even when they really want to reject parts of it, just because this one all-or-nothing axiom tells them they can't reject the parts they hate without losing the parts they love. Or, if they do finally abandon the system, they will reject the parts they liked along with the rest, just because they still can't shake that all-or-nothing axiom.

For some reason it's really hard for people to see the simple escape: throw out the all-or-nothing axiom. Then you can also throw out whatever else you want to throw out, and keep whatever else you want to keep.

I first noticed this funny problem with fundamentalist Christians, but I bet the idea may have some application to Scientology. The Church of Scientology emphasizes the all-or-nothing axiom really strongly — despite also proclaiming 'look, don't listen' and 'if it isn't true for you, it isn't true'. In practice those two open-minded ideas seem just to be advertising for outsiders. Once you're in, you're expected to have done all your looking and decided that every darn thing IS true for you. Otherwise, you're not really in.

Once you're out of the Church, though, you simply don't have to stick to that all-or-nothing axiom. You can pick and choose at will. So you don't have to believe that Ron Hubbard was always right, or that his ideas were the only hope. You just have to believe that he was right sometimes, and that the things he was right about are useful.

What I'm saying is, I see no big logical problem at all for an Independent Scientologist to answer Synthia's hard questions. They're only fatal to any belief in Scientology IF you still implicitly accept the all-or-nothing axiom. If it's gone for you, they're no problem at all.

This brings me back to the distinction I tried to draw when I first visited this board, between 'hard' and 'soft' Scientology. If you feel free to simply discard all Hubbard's lies and nonsense, and admit that we're not going to see any real clears or OTs anytime soon, then what you have left is soft Scientology. And it's pretty innocuous.

One critique I have about soft Scientology is that it's also pretty modest in what it offers, to the point where it really doesn't look all that competitive in today's marketplace for therapies and spiritual practices. And I'm afraid I suspect a lot of 'soft' Scientologists of surreptitiously trying to have their cake and eat it, too, by allowing the lofty claims of hard Scientology to float around implicitly, adding allure to their subject, while backing off from them as soon as they are explicitly challenged. Without hard Scientology to make it seem cooler, and feed it with customers, would soft Scientology even be around at all?

Brilliant. To answer the bolded question above, I would have to say "yes", it would still be around but only if it was delivered in a different form -- not as a religion.

There are some invaluable things in the "basics" of Scientology and many are codified and articulated in a way that has never been done before.

That being said, without allowing the "basics" of Scientology to work within other studies, either as adjuncts, "clarifiers" or as concepts to be built upon, it remains an isolated and stagnating cult with some revolutionary ideas that do not have an adequate delivery system -- no outlet.

 

[Gadfly]

Brilliant. To answer the bolded question above, I would have to say "yes", it would still be around but only if it was delivered in a different form -- not as a religion.

There are some invaluable things in the "basics" of Scientology and many are codified and articulated in a way that has never been done before.

That being said, without allowing the "basics" of Scientology to work within other studies, either as adjuncts, "clarifiers" or as concepts to be built upon, it remains an isolated and stagnating cult with some revolutionary ideas that do not have an adequate delivery system -- no outlet.

I think that you hit the nail on the head here Synthia (helped along by SOT). It is a HOME RUN folks!

I agree with everything you said, including and especially:

"There are some invaluable things in the "basics" of Scientology and many are codified and articulated in a way that has never been done before."

If Scientology and Dianetics are anything, they fall under the category of "New Age Self Help". It took incredible amounts of posturing, time, energy, money and fighting by the Church of Scientology to get various government "agreement" that they were some sort of legitimate "religion". The religion thing, to me, is largely a lie, a pretense, a convenient ploy used to gain certain benefits (tax exemptions, legal benefits, etc).

When I joined in 1976, I NEVER believed it was a religion. I had close friends in the GO in Boston, and a few top execs told me quite honestly that the whole "religion" thing was a ploy to help Scientology expand and survive better. No matter what, I NEVER considered myself part of some religion. That was true from 1976 all through 2000 or so, and doing MANY courses and up through OT III didn't change that for a second for me. Also, I NEVER felt genuine calling myself a "Scientologist", and I never did, simply because I was always reading about and playing with OTHER PRACTICES (even when in the Sea Org).

If you look at history, people come to naturally label certain activities as "religious". NONE of these had to LOBBY and FIGHT to be recognized as a "religion" (like did Scientology).

I also had many friends through the years in Scientology, and few or none viewed it as a religion. They were there for the "self-help" aspect, and maybe for some sense of "community" with others. Granted, there were always those few totally dedicated, fanatical, gung-ho members (who were always too much for me).

Clamicide nailed it on another recent thread (Meth and workability). IF, IF, IF Scientology could actually MAKE real "clears" and "OTs" as defined by Hubbard, that would be something else. Then KSW could actually "make sense" (in some strange way). But, the subject, no matter how ruthlessly applied has shown that it does not, and probably CANNOT, produce "clears" and "OTs".

On your last paragraph, interestingly, Shakti Gawain, in her ground breaking book, Creative Visualization, has a chapter on "be, do & have". She obviously contacted Scientology back in the late 60s or 70s, and she used some small amount of Hubbard's ideas in her book.

It needs to be FREE. Just like most other areas of life. Free to participate (or not). Free to communicate with anyone about anything (without the crazy restrictions of ethics, SP declares). Free to PICK & CHOOSE, without getting sent for correction or ethics when you choose NOT to accept and apply certain ideas.

See, THAT is part of the big problem. The subject is presented by Hubbard as being entirely "workable", in EVERY regard, if it is EXACTLY applied. Whole departments of the Scientology organization are designed and function to monitor, address and handle ALL disagreements, failures or inabilities to EXACTLY DUPLICATE and APPLY the "data" JUST AS IT IS. This system accepts no "picking and choosing". If they catch you picking and choosing, you get sent for "correction". And if THAT fails, then you get sent to ethics. It is set up that way, and without MAJOR editing of Hubbard's policies and technical bulletins, it can be no other way within the strict Church of Scientology environment.

But sure, outside of that oppressive and tightly-controlled environment, such as in the "FZ", people are free (or at least freer) to "pick and choose", and to even form different groups based on what various people want to keep and throw away of Hubbard's current subject materials.

+++++++++++++++

 

[Sindy]

Brilliant. To answer the bolded question above, I would have to say "yes", it would still be around but only if it was delivered in a different form -- not as a religion.

There are some invaluable things in the "basics" of Scientology and many are codified and articulated in a way that has never been done before.

That being said, without allowing the "basics" of Scientology to work within other studies, either as adjuncts, "clarifiers" or as concepts to be built upon, it remains an isolated and stagnating cult with some revolutionary ideas that do not have an adequate delivery system -- no outlet.

Here is an example. This is from a book I am reading called Parallel Universes of Self by Frederick E Dodson

At the end of the book he suggests further reading. It lists ten items. Here is an excerpt:

"2. David Hawkins and Levels of Consciousness

If you combine the scale on levels of consciousness in David Hawkins’ brilliantly enlightening book
Power vs. Force with the emotional scale of the aforementioned Abraham books, and perhaps
even with the emotional tone scale of a book called Emotions by Ruth Minshull (although the
source and organization behind this book is flawed and full of outrageously detrimental beliefs),
you will have knowledge that few others have. This book’s scope did not allow me to include the
knowledge of levels of vibration, but these books will thoroughly introduce you to this ingenious
thinking."

He so wants to distance himself from Hubbard and the C of S that he uses Ruth Minshull as the source!

 

[Veda]

What is FANTASTIC about this site is that members are not afraid to fight for the right to have an opinion.

They are not afraid to tell someone to get knotted and they are not afraid to show love and understanding.

This site is full of gutsy people with opinions that cover the entire intellectual spectrum of our love/accept/hate subject.

I think this is an interesting thread but I don't think I could have added an intelligent answer to the OP questions even when I was a raving lover of Scientology - My standard answer to lesser questions was "I don't care about any of that stuff; It works" - I simply didn't want to look past the tape I was currently listening to.

My opinion has changed of course, but most of us agree that SOME of the tech works and if the FZ'ers and indies want to go with that, then good luck to them.

I have another agenda.

LTG

Bolding and underlining in above post added.

Realistically, the folks who refer to themselves as Scientologists, with precious few exceptions, advocate and believe in the Scientology Grade Chart. That's a common denominator of "outside the CoS Scientologists." A recent video of a FreeZone Convention showed an OT 3 completion being announced, followed by an uproar of delighted cheers and applause. Same old same old.

To say that anyone who uses any part of Scientology is a Scientologist - for example acknowledges (TR-2) a clerk in a supermarket - is misleading.

Granted, an old Scientology gimmick is to make almost anyone a Scientologist (and Scientology is full of gimmicks, a word with which its founder had great fondness, along with "ploy," "angle," "caper," "trick," etc. Although these words will not often appear in flowery prose meant to impress "wogs" and "raw meat," they do appear in behind-the-scenes expressions of the "Scientology Philosophy"). You read a Scientology book? Then you're a Scientologist. Received an introductory session? Well, guess what, you're a Scientologist. Once the person has been made a Scientologist, then he can be validated for being a Scientologist, and encouraged to take his next step, and progress on the scale of awareness characteristics which happen to coincide with the Grade Chart.

Since Scientologists like to tell non-Scientologists that they "think for themselves" (just like Ron wants them too ), things can become a tad confusing. Sometimes even Scientologists are confused, but this is likely to happen in a "Philosophy" based on the verbiage of someone recognized in an official court decision as a manipulator and a pathological liar.

So did you say "Thank you" to the bag boy at the supermarket today?

You did?

Congratulations, you're a Scientologist.

Well, not really, there are few minor details to be covered in the fine print...

So silly.

 

[Sindy]

One of the neatest things you can do, if you're making up a belief system, is to include the axiom that you have to either accept the entire system, or else reject every bit of it.

This is a simple axiom, and it's often the one that hooks people the longest. People will stay in the system even when they really want to reject parts of it, just because this one all-or-nothing axiom tells them they can't reject the parts they hate without losing the parts they love. Or, if they do finally abandon the system, they will reject the parts they liked along with the rest, just because they still can't shake that all-or-nothing axiom.

For some reason it's really hard for people to see the simple escape: throw out the all-or-nothing axiom. Then you can also throw out whatever else you want to throw out, and keep whatever else you want to keep.

I first noticed this funny problem with fundamentalist Christians, but I bet the idea may have some application to Scientology. The Church of Scientology emphasizes the all-or-nothing axiom really strongly — despite also proclaiming 'look, don't listen' and 'if it isn't true for you, it isn't true'. In practice those two open-minded ideas seem just to be advertising for outsiders. Once you're in, you're expected to have done all your looking and decided that every darn thing IS true for you. Otherwise, you're not really in.

Once you're out of the Church, though, you simply don't have to stick to that all-or-nothing axiom. You can pick and choose at will. So you don't have to believe that Ron Hubbard was always right, or that his ideas were the only hope. You just have to believe that he was right sometimes, and that the things he was right about are useful.

What I'm saying is, I see no big logical problem at all for an Independent Scientologist to answer Synthia's hard questions. They're only fatal to any belief in Scientology IF you still implicitly accept the all-or-nothing axiom. If it's gone for you, they're no problem at all.

This brings me back to the distinction I tried to draw when I first visited this board, between 'hard' and 'soft' Scientology. If you feel free to simply discard all Hubbard's lies and nonsense, and admit that we're not going to see any real clears or OTs anytime soon, then what you have left is soft Scientology. And it's pretty innocuous.

One critique I have about soft Scientology is that it's also pretty modest in what it offers, to the point where it really doesn't look all that competitive in today's marketplace for therapies and spiritual practices. And I'm afraid I suspect a lot of 'soft' Scientologists of surreptitiously trying to have their cake and eat it, too, by allowing the lofty claims of hard Scientology to float around implicitly, adding allure to their subject, while backing off from them as soon as they are explicitly challenged. Without hard Scientology to make it seem cooler, and feed it with customers, would soft Scientology even be around at all?

BTW

 

[Terril park]

Okay, my questions are these:

Knowing what you know now about LRH, his pathological lying, moments of great cruelty, his intentions and orders re: Paulette Cooper, his "Admissions", his plagiarism, his past psychiatric problems, the manner of his death, his life on the lam, his treatment of his own wife and children, etc., etc., etc.:


1) How do you, in your own mind, get past those things so that you can still read his books and listen to his lectures as if he were an authority on the very subjects that he, himself, failed so miserably at demonstrating?

The important thing is the philosophy and councelling technology. Its a shame LRH was flawed, but not much I can do about that. I can and do protest with anons, let people know they can do tech outside CO$ and
anything else that happens along where I can help end abuses.

2) Since there are no Scientific studies on the techniques of Scientology and because the voluminous case studies Ron cites in Dianetics are apparently a lie, and because the end goal of Clear and OT has never been demonstrated, then:

......................a) What are your goals with respect to the these uncertain procedures?

There has been a couple of wishy washy studies supporting scn/dn and
a few the opposite. However there is enormous anecdotal evidence of it being usefull. See success stories thread here for example.

Re clear its been notoriously difficult to determine. Being natural clear I
don't have a personal before and after to compare, however the majority
come up with the same cog on the subject which is rather astonishing. I
also subscribe to Mayo's idea that one gets clearer.

Re OT levels there must be some OTs as the universe, me and all the many thees exist. I don't believe in any being more supreme than me and thees.
Thus OT. However breaking the rules of the physical universe is breaking
a lot of peoples postulates, and it would appear that doing this trick is rare
and even more rarely repeatable. Telepathy, precognition, empathy, clairvoyance seem to exist and best I see don't violate the rules of the physical universe. It is perhaps no coincidence that many with these talents
are quite positively searching for spiritual enlightenment. If anything the
people of such abilities are more easily foiund outside scn, but that just may be because its such a minority religion/philosophy.

......................b) Do you still want to do your OT Levels even though they don't produce OTs? If so, why?

I've had lots of gains doing OT 2 and 3.

3) Are you still of the belief that mankind's only hope is Scientology or are you just trying to help others feel better with Scientology --- more like some form of therapy?

I'm inclined to think Mankinds greatest hope is mankind. Scn/dn helps increase abilities which is a positive thing.

4) Can you honestly say that you have researched and confronted all of the past information, regarding Hubbard, that you were not allowed to look at while in the church or are there some things you just don't care to look at?

I've been on critical forums for around 12 years and have read just about everything available.

Very good initiative from you.

 

[Voltaire's Child]

Most religions disallow or at least discourage the "cafeteria whatsis" approach. Scn does, for sure. CofS wants to take over the world, HUBBARD wanted to. So the cafeteria approach is only going to be seen as a betrayal and a dilution by them.

There are elder religions that also disallow this approach.

But you know what's funny? Just about ALL of them, elder religions, newer established ones, cults, philosophies, mystic spelling bees- have been diluted and cafeteria'd out the yin yang.

That's just how we roll.

 

[Sindy]

Most religions disallow or at least discourage the "cafeteria whatsis" approach. Scn does, for sure. CofS wants to take over the world, HUBBARD wanted to. So the cafeteria approach is only going to be seen as a betrayal and a dilution by them.

There are elder religions that also disallow this approach.

But you know what's funny? Just about ALL of them, elder religions, newer established ones, cults, philosophies, mystic spelling bees- have been diluted and cafeteria'd out the yin yang.

That's just how we roll.

Precisely the reason that it shouldn't be a religion.

 

[Terril park]

For some reason it's really hard for people to see the simple escape: throw out the all-or-nothing axiom. Then you can also throw out whatever else you want to throw out, and keep whatever else you want to keep.

I first noticed this funny problem with fundamentalist Christians, but I bet the idea may have some application to Scientology.

More so with Scn than many schools of thought. I believe its unique in having an incredibly detailed and voluminous admin area of knowledge to which one also in theory has to follow fully re KSW1. Which Lol! is part of that admin. [ 12 encyclopedia vols worth]Then it has an intelligence and dirty tricks dept, thats not so unique but is I believe far more controlling of the organization and its members. These areas are in general the toxic ones.

The Church of Scientology emphasizes the all-or-nothing axiom really strongly — despite also proclaiming 'look, don't listen' and 'if it isn't true for you, it isn't true'. In practice those two open-minded ideas seem just to be advertising for outsiders. Once you're in, you're expected to have done all your looking and decided that every darn thing IS true for you. Otherwise, you're not really in.

Probably more accurate to say you'll soon be kicked out. Possibly you may have caught some of the threads and posts re the " Happiness Rundown"
where this piece of counseling tech makes especially SO members realize their life is not optimum in the SO and so many thus leave.

Once you're out of the Church, though, you simply don't have to stick to that all-or-nothing axiom. You can pick and choose at will. So you don't have to believe that Ron Hubbard was always right, or that his ideas were the only hope. You just have to believe that he was right sometimes, and that the things he was right about are useful.

I agree. Thats my position.

What I'm saying is, I see no big logical problem at all for an Independent Scientologist to answer Synthia's hard questions. They're only fatal to any belief in Scientology IF you still implicitly accept the all-or-nothing axiom. If it's gone for you, they're no problem at all.

Mostly true. However some independents do have quite strong desires
to follow anything LRH said. However he said so much that one can find
much in his writings that contradicts other things and justify much.

One has to find a way to exercise really good judgment. That can take time a lot of soul searching and perhaps not all can hack it.

This brings me back to the distinction I tried to draw when I first visited this board, between 'hard' and 'soft' Scientology. If you feel free to simply discard all Hubbard's lies and nonsense, and admit that we're not going to see any real clears or OTs anytime soon, then what you have left is soft Scientology. And it's pretty innocuous.

You may wish to look at my answers to Synthia's questions re clear and OT.

The key point is it improves ability, and IMO is very effective at that.

One critique I have about soft Scientology is that it's also pretty modest in what it offers, to the point where it really doesn't look all that competitive in today's marketplace for therapies and spiritual practices. And I'm afraid I suspect a lot of 'soft' Scientologists of surreptitiously trying to have their cake and eat it, too, by allowing the lofty claims of hard Scientology to float around implicitly, adding allure to their subject, while backing off from them as soon as they are explicitly challenged. Without hard Scientology to make it seem cooler, and feed it with customers, would soft Scientology even be around at all?

" Hard" scientology is dying along with the CO$, slight generality but essentially true. " Soft" scientology is alive and well. Almost all new people coming to the FZ are very new to the subject, and if they had any connections to CO$ left right smartly!

 

[Student of Trinity]

"Hard" scientology is dying along with the CO$, slight generality but essentially true. "Soft" scientology is alive and well. Almost all new people coming to the FZ are very new to the subject, and if they had any connections to CO$ left right smartly!

Actually, thinking about this more now, and with more familiarity with the subject and its practitioners from hanging around here, I think this is probably true. There's probably a fairly substantial and coherent body of doctrine and practice, that can reasonably be identified as Scientology, and that will attract a significant body of people for the indefinite future. A lot of it was taken by Hubbard from previous inventors; I'm afraid I don't really see that L. Ron Hubbard really originated anything terribly brilliant. And a lot of crap that Hubbard added to the stuff he adopted will have been stripped away. But I can imagine that what's left may have a certain coherence of style and flavor, such that calling it 'Scientology' is not just PR, but fair nomenclature.

It's not for me; between physics and Christianity, it just rubs me too many wrong ways even after you pare away all the really bad stuff. But I can see how it could be attractive to some people even without the promise of OT superpowers.

 

[Commander Birdsong]

the commander has his ears on

Oh please. Such whitewashing of the reality of it all. The PRACTICE of AFFIRMATIONS is far from "doodling".

Affirmations, and their use, come from various forms of magic. This is not my "opinion", as ANY honest person who cares to spend a little time can easily verify this.

All forms of magic, including watered-down modern "New Age" techniques, aim to bring into existence some actuality through the controlled and active use of the human imagination. I have read over 400 books on this stuff, have played with many of the ideas, as I have an affinity for the "occult", and what I am about to say is the way it is. Of course, you can deny or disagree from any point of complete ignorance and stupidity.

There are various theories about what actually happens, one being that what a person repeats over and over (an affirmation), seeps down into the subconscious, where it connects to all OTHER subconscious minds, and in some unknown way acts to bring about or attract the affirmed reality.

Affirmation is often used in conjunction with creative visualization, another modern derivative of traditional magic.

Simply, a person practices affirmations as way to bring about desireable future events and situations. It is NOT simply "doodling", and is entered into actively and with the intention to CAUSE and CREATE the content of the affirmations.

To ignore all of that is to first ignore what Hubbard was actually doing with his mind in this regard, and second, to ignore or minimize Hubbard's affiliation with and practice of certain magical techniques. Hubbard's dealings with magic are where he first REALLY got an inkling of how to "postulate", "consider" or "bring about realities via thought alone".

But, the aspect of Hubbard's affirmations that matter the most are the CONTENT. What were the things he DESIRED. Those things truly display the personality involved.

See, a high-minded, gentler sort of being, like the Dalai Lama, affirms things like "world peace", or "a world without pain and suffering", and also visualizes these things as a way to help bring them about. Whether it works is something else entirely, but that the practice and its history exist are clear and obvious to anyone who looks into the subject.

But Hubbard, what did HE affirm? What did he desire? To be a monster in bed? To attract women? To be a hugely successful writer who leaves a HUGE imprint on the world? All ego-based, personal BULLSHIT. That was/is the fellow known as L. Ron Hubbard. And, you need to be a mindless moron to ignore that very possibly his creation, the Church of Scientology, was his vehicle for realizing his desires as stated so clearly in his AFFIRMATIONS.

But, please, affirmations are MUCH MORE than doodlings. Of course, believers can and do "believe" whatever they want, all evidence and facts to the contrary.

+++++++++++

yes, gadfly, i do pay sharp attention to what you and others are saying

but...

this is speculation.

a primary principle of american jurisprudence is "innocent until proven guilty". we should all be grateful such personal documents have come to light. maybe he just doodled those out one night and slipped them in his archive. maybe he spent days, weeks, months or years with them. he certainly had the right to do research into any and all matters psychological and spiritual.

exactly what he did with the"affimations" we do not know. we do know they are not part of CSI published materials.

 

[Commander Birdsong]

hi Rmack

Commander Birdsong, I can attest that this guy knows what he is talking about. I have studied the occult for many decades, and was the highest ranking Chief in a very busy Lodge of the Mysteries for many years.

But, if you don't care about the many glaring evidences that Hubbard was a very evil and selfish man, then look at the 'tech'. Read my post a few posts earlier on this thread, for starters.

I've developed the theory that people do the mental gymnastics you are indulging in because they are 'auditing junkies', and don't want to give up what gives them the high.

I'm not sure if the slight electrical current traveling through your body while holding the 'cans' has anything to do with it, but in any respects, auditing induces a euphoria that is very similar to the effects of other religious practices.

My brother was a member of a Christian cult that practiced 'group tongues'. This is basically a room full of people jabbering incoherent syllables. In most cases, just a few, or even just a couple of syllables over and over.

He claimed that the happiest he ever felt was during one of these long sessions of blabbering.

Let me ask you a question; If that can do it for people, then don't you think auditing could, too, regardless of whether or not it's actually doing anything permanent for the person, even if it's based on lies?

i am not Ron's judge nor am i personnaly free of greed and lust. i am capable of affirming in wor and deed something better an at times i do. and i am a CLIV HGDS auditor. both the studied materials and my practice were ssntially wholesome.

auditing can certainly produce pacebo effect. i do believe personnly it can b of greater substance as well. the practice of glossolalia has scriptural reference and is covered by the first amendment.

 

[Voltaire's Child]

Precisely the reason that it shouldn't be a religion.

I'm not saying I disagree that Scn shouldn't be considered a religion, but I'm not sure which of my comments is the one that you find reason for that...I'm confused.

I would say that Scn emulates all the elder religions, and I mean that in an UNcomplimentary way, as in, they are repeating many of the mistakes and abuses...

Might be good to just not have ANY of 'em be religions.

 

[Sindy]

I'm not saying I disagree that Scn shouldn't be considered a religion, but I'm not sure which of my comments is the one that you find reason for that...I'm confused.

I would say that Scn emulates all the elder religions, and I mean that in an UNcomplimentary way, as in, they are repeating many of the mistakes and abuses...

Might be good to just not have ANY of 'em be religions.

Because religions, as a rule, tend to disallow the "pick and choose" approach vs. a philosophy or other spiritual studies that encourage other great minds to contribute. I thought you were originally commenting on the train of thought prior to your post how Scientology is better off not being a religion if it's going to survive.

 

[Smilla]

“ To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself -- that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink. ” “ The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them....To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth."

George Orwell - 1984

 

[Veda]

-snip-

It's not for me

-snip-

Why don't you let one of the Scientology FreeZone PR twins give you an introductory session before you decide that? Before you know it, you could be on OT 2 running charge out of the dance mob implants.