Scientology is perhaps the most powerful technology ever developed for vertical, cognitive individual growth. Unfortunately it comes with an instilled mores that devalues and prohibits meaningful horizontal growth. In my opinion, vertical growth, absent a horizontal foundation can cause spiritual vertigo.
The following 2,000-plus year old story is translated by Eva Wong in Lieh-Tzu: A Taoist Guide to Practical Living (Shambala Publications, Inc.). It gives a flavor of what I mean by horizontal growth.
What is Wisdom?
One day Tzu-hsia was chatting with Confucius. When they came to discussing the merits of each student, Tzu-hsia asked his teacher, “What do you think of Yen-hui?” Confucius replied, “Yen-hui is very kind and gentle. His compassion far surpasses mine.”
“How about Tzu-kung?”
“Tzu-kung is much better than I am when it comes to debating and presenting arguments.”
“And what about Tzu-lu?”
“Tzu-lu is a brave man. I cannot match him for courage.”
“And Tzu-chang?”
“Tzu-chang can hold his dignity better than I.”
Tzu-hsia was so surprised by his teacher’s answers that he stood up and exclaimed, “How come they all want to learn from you?”
Confucius motioned his student to sit down. When he saw that Tzu-hsia had calmed down, he said, “Yen-hui is compassionate, but he is stubborn and inflexible. Tzu-kung can be very persuasive, but he does not know when to stop talking. Tzu-lu can be courageous but does not know tolerance. Tzu-chang can be dignified but does not know how to be harmonious with others. I would not exchange their merits for my own even if they offered. That’s why they all come to learn from me.”
Wisdom is not competence in one skill or many skills. It is the ability to recognize strengths and weaknesses in ourselves and others. Thus, a wise teacher knows that although he may not surpass certain students in specific skills, he can give them what they need to become better individuals.
Moving On Up a Little Higher 
I think this is a false statement:
“Unfortunately it comes with an instilled mores that devalues and prohibits meaningful horizontal growth”.
On the contrary, Scientology is all about horizontal growth.
OK — THIS is my new favorite post of yours.
Tunedal: Please explain how scientology is all about horizontal growth?
For example: explain to me which texts of LRH encourages humility?
Or which texts discuss equanimity — an evenness of mind. Not getting attached to what one wants, or rejecting what one doesn’t want or just being neutral.
As for equanimity — we are taught, as scientologists to go for a goal and barriers be damned — including people.
If we, as scientologists, are ultimately GOAL oriented – are we not perhaps missing the horizon?
So again….it’s all about the teacher.
I have picked mine very carefully of late….Forgiveness….Love….Patients….Seeing my brother as myself…
These are things Scientology never taught me.
At one point I realized that criticism I would have about Scientology would come often from knowledge I have gotten from Scientology and LRH. I think thats kind of where your viewpoint here is coming from. It’s kind of a tricky thing to wrap ones mind around. I mean, without your study of Scientology and your own auditing would you really be cogniting now about these wrongnesses in Scientology? Everything- every subject can be picked apart. You could go to a shoe store and say they dont sell coats. You could join a gym and complain that it’s too focused on the body. You could study science and discover that it’s all about MEST.
There is a fairly constant theme here and I didnt notice it until the subject matter shifted. That is there is almost always something you are writing against. When the subject was the Church and Miscavige I went along because I agreed with a lot of it and sometimes you need to be against.
But I’m having more trouble with the against Scientology and against LRH. And really at this point I am pretty much done with the against the Church and even Miscavige. I still think he’s wrong and probably suppressive based on his products, but I’m done going around and around about it and I have even less interest in going around and around finding any possible wrongness in the subject. I think that someone of reasonable intelligence could, if he applied himself, find infinite wrongness in a grain of sand.
Scientology is absolutely about horizontal and vertical growth. I don’t think anyone shows more humility than a good auditor. The fact that the church of Scientology squirrels the tech doesn’t change the fact that Scientology applied correctly allows for personal growth in every possible way throughout one’s life.
“…it [Scientology] comes with an instilled mores that devalues and prohibits meaningful horizontal growth.”
Marty, are you you talking about CoS Scientology or core Scientology as it was originally developed, and if you mean the latter, which mores are you referring to?
Chris: Isn’t it funny … in a kind of sad way … how different we view this blog.
I don’t find that Marty is chronically “against” at all … yes, in the earlier days of his blog he was very into exposing the abuses of dm. That has shifted.
He isn’t against LRH in my view at all. Rather attempting to keep the technology/philosophy from disappearing by aligning various truths TO other philosophies and traditions.
And then he goes one more step, IMHO, wherein he shows where HE feels scientology MIGHT be missing a more balanced view.
Obviously this is upsetting to you as you’ve mentioned. I get that.
However, before you put Marty, or me, or anyone in a box as someone finding fault (which is suspiciously like saying we have hidden crimes but surely you aren’t saying THAT are you 🙂 —
I invite you to read Ken Wilber’s book — Grace and Grit — the true story of his life with his wife who died of cancer and their 5 year battle with the disease before she died. IF you can read this maintaining ALWAYS a dry eye — then perhaps you are right … you really should move on and away from this blog.
(Ken is just ONE of the people that Marty has recommended for us to have a wider view. Marty has never recommended Grace and Grit)
Christine
Indeed.
If one wishes to move masses, one needs to create a stable base from which to do so. Obversely, if one merely wishes to achieve spiritual enlightenment and even personal salvation, a wide and stable base is also essential to success.
Look at it this way, you can have the most powerful motor in the world, driving the most efficient generator in the world – but no matter how powerful and efficient this combination is, it will not generate one erg of power if it is not firmly attached to a stable base.
Think about that the next time you think to focus solely on a narrow and specific knowledge base in favor of a broad and diverse one. Scientology’s best usage is to help the individual know how to know. If you’ve gotten that from it, use it to your best advantage and broaden your horizons.
Sage advice, Marty. Thank you.
Exactly – if you have lots of money and posh MEST, then you have “high havingness”. If you are not impressed by that then you have “low havingness” which means there is something wrong with you, since your job as Scientologist is to give as much money as possible to the Church. .
Tunedal,
Respectfully, I think you’ve mis-duplicated here. Not to mention a juicy make-wrong in your opening sentence.
The current “church” is pushing the idea of everything being about the individual shooting up beyond the scum of mankind wog-dom.
What it should be doing is teaching one to rise to tolerance, kindness, humbleness, confidence and wisdom as they pertain to oneself and to all others. Horizontal growth is about recognizing the qualities of those around one. And learning from, as well as teaching, others.
That is how you go vertical. But it’s not straight up and vertical. It’s done on a gradient.
Marty, your blogs are a breath of fresh air.
Thanks
Chrismann, that is very well said. I am 100% with you.
“Unfortunately it comes with an instilled mores that devalues and prohibits meaningful horizontal growth.”
If you are talking about Scientology – the “church”, I could agree.
If you are talking Scientology – the philosophy, I do not see that it does not encourage both “vertical growth” and “horizontal growth”.
The breadth of living encompassed by the dynamics almost has no bounds.
Different beings, at different stages of development, value Scientology for different reasons. At different tones, beings will use Scientology for different reasons.
For some, “vertical growth” is their concentration. For some it is mainly “horizontal -growth” that they seek.
Both have their merits, and one’s development as a being seems to require some kind of balance of the two… perhaps some “great middle path”.
But Yes, I agree… vertical growth, absent a horizontal foundation puts a being at risk.
Eric S
I don’t want to explain this, windhorse. We see things differently, I guess. Frankly I don’t quite see how equanimity connects with horizontal growth. I know what I have studied and how I see things. Scientology for me has everything to do with horizontal growth. Maybe it depends on the person, where you go with it.
A grumpy old man got on my computer.
Hey Chris, I don’t get that from this post. What I get is that the opinion most Scientologists I know and knew (including myself back in the day) is: “I have studied DMSMH and O/W and CCH, and I know that all I need to know is in Scientology, and written by LRH. I don’t need to read or study anything else, because I already have the answers.”
This is not something Ron said or encouraged, but it is part of the mores of the group. Witness being sent to Ethics for having the book “The Secret” or reges at ASHO telling me, a 15 year old boy, that doing my levels beats going to school or getting a degree, and “there is nothing there to learn – it is a waste of time.”
From my point of view, you are a waste of life if you only study one thing and one thing only, and only consider one point of view as being valid. It is a sign of immaturity. When I was 18, I ran across a guy named Irwin Schiff, who was dead-set against the Federal Reserve, and claimed that the Income Tax was/is unconstitutional, and that we are going to hell in a hand basket. He made a convincing case, and all my economic ideas sprung from this guy, mixed with a few Finance PLs from the church.
Well. Schiff was jailed for tax evasion, and while his econ theories made sense and were true, his conclusions were spiteful and Ayn Randish, in that the poor should just produce or die. Nothing we can do.
Since then, I grew horizontally, looking at many different sources, learning what was out there, and developing a much different opinion than I had at 18 – and I might say, I am a lot less preachy about it now.
I see this post as a call to arms to people to stop being “single idea” Scientologists – but to apply a bit of Scientology to the world and expand.
Spot-on by the way about using Scientology to eval Scientology. So true – using the Data Series to uncover outpoints in the tech or admin. That is what happens.
Mark Patterson
Excellent post, Marty. Education of a being is about becoming a full person – a full being. Data is not dangerous. It is okay to look at things. In fact, if you are a Scientologist and cannot confront an idea, you are in sore shape indeed!
This has been an interesting ride of posts. My view of all of this is this:
If you do not know Scientology, and are a student, learn it and apply it as written. Ideally in a good courseroom with a sup that knows what is going on.
As you learn and apply Scientology, you will see it fall into place. You will see what is and what is not important. You will see things that didn’t make sense earlier make sense, and you will see why certain processes and routes were dropped or modified. You will also see that people can be helped with it, and that you can be helped with it.
At some point, you learn enough to have opinions about it, and to elide parts of it, and find out exactly what the real rules are, and when they should be applied, and when they should be broken.
Some people study this and find a “solution” and stay there – applying that one solution to the entire universe – Ethics tech, PTS tech, Study Tech, Problems tech, O/W, ARC. You go through this process as you study – I saw this daily on the BC, as each student entered specific areas and started looking at the world through the lens of what they were studying that day.
You see eventually how PTS and OW and Help and Study Tech and Engrams, etc., fit together, after studying each portion. Up until that time, each piece of tech is in its own island. Eventually, they link together.
And then. And then. You see how the work of others fits into the picture – and can see the value of it rather than be knee-jerk about “psychs” or “other practices” or “wog think.”
Look. Ron lays this out in the Study Tapes. He studied photography from a course. He didn’t decry the people as being “wog.” There was something to learn, and he learned from experts.
Later on, Ron and team spoke ill of “wog” technology – sound technology (“Cear Sound!”. Yea, right). Computer technology (the computer series). This is bullshit. And this is the reason for this post. We cannot be arrogant enough to categorically reject all human knowledge.
This is a call to learn. It is okay to learn. It is death not to.
Thanks, Marty, for calling attention to this.
Chris
Interesting viewpoint.
Here’s something that I have been looking at recently. I also noticed a change in the approach that Marty seems to have adopted of late.
Lately Marty has been posting essays that challenge people to think, to have an opinion about some issue. This I consider quite valuable. Those who actually take up the gauntlet and challenge their own understanding, or lack of it, regarding the subject, are almost certainly better for it, The wide range of viewpoints in the responses potentially further challenges whatever viewpoint one has come up with.
I find it quite a learning experience.
Eric S
🙂 Mine too.
Ok, and I think my first part was partially incorrect in that I believe Martys views are probably coming from comparing Scientology against these other things (like Ken Wilber). I agree that it’s good for everyone to have a wide view and study other subjects and draw from all aspects of life to broaden their base. You did touch on what is at the root of my disagrement. I disagree that this is a good third dynamic handling. I think this is more first dynamic. Maybe I am seeing it the wrong way. I fear Scientology will be altered, watered down, combined with other stuff, edited, misapplied, etc. and lost by this.
“Unfortunately it comes with an instilled mores that devalues and prohibits meaningful horizontal growth”
Ok, so what do we do now? Do we delete those parts that Marty thinks instill these bad mores? Do we add materials for someone studying the subject? An article by Marty explaining why this bit of lecture or bulletin is bunk and can lead one astray? What is your handling?
I’m just throwing this out there Christine, dont take it as anger.
Was that “CATS”? I read all that stuff and it did make sense, but oneof those things that would be hard to implement- like Ron Pauls ideas.
I was the DSA in Phx and drove the CATS spokesperson around to do the conservative talk radio shows. The basic concept went over well, but when they got into how it would be implemented and the reality of it things got complicated.
+1 excellent analogy
Eric,
Well colored, in depth. It’s up to the individual, not Scientology.
Hubbard travelled extensively and was not afraid to live in other cultures and thoroughly communicate. Hubbard was not and is not Scientology. He’s a being, Scn is a science. He discovered it, himself used what he discovered, developed it, wrote it up, and passed his discoveries along. Now we have the same discoveries (as well as he could write and lecture and design courses). He chose wisely in how he used it, and which paths of discovery he walked.
Flag is a study in contrast of opposites. Flag is a world unto itself, no TV, no news, no magazines, and even talking to people is not “acceptable” (won’t even talk about “the purity of disconnection”). They’re like the only “clean” ones in a world full of lepers. All others than themselves are “liars” and only they have “the truth”.
Carcha.
“I have studied DMSMH and O/W and CCH, and I know that all I need to know is in Scientology, and written by LRH. I don’t need to read or study anything else, because I already have the answers.”
Anytime I was exposed to that viepoint in the Church I felt in my gut there was something wrong with it. I never fully explored why I felt that way, but I also never agreed with it. But why cant one study Scientology and also other things? My concern is this personal aspect vs as a subject. Are we talking about Scientology as a subject or our own personal reality concerning it? Just to make a simple example- if you study Scientology and Buddhism and get spiritual benefits from both and on a personal level they sort of combine, or ad to each other, in other words- you grow from both and all is good. However, my problem is with taking this approach to the subject itself. Are you now going to include aspects of meditation with TR’s? Maybe add a few things to the checksheet so the student gets the same “cogs” you had? I’m not so much into that. He can finish his TR’s course and then go study the other stuff as his own decision.
Were you really against the Church and DM then I propose YOU who critize were a bit an effect. If however one was just pointing out the out points (crimes) and not being rocked on your tone scale then good for you. I’d like to think I can assume a viewpoint and throw it away like my napkin at lunch. I agree LRH tech gives both horizontal and verticle growth but at largely different rates. ARC Bill Dupree
Agreed. Been there. Done that. Still recovering from spiritual vertigo…
Chris — nice post and I didn’t take it as anger.
I think I understand a bit more your point of view. Marty would be better to answer as only he knows what’s in his mind …
BUT I think that perhaps this blog is firstly a 1st dynamic activity. Many of us are decompressing after LOTS of time inside the church, time outside the church etc … remember, I’ve not been active IN the church (forget the SO – where I left in 1980) since 1993 and I am STILL decompressing.
(in other words — sorting through stuff for myself)
I don’t believe Marty intends to water down or mix practices. This is often what he’s “accused of” but I haven’t seen this to be true. Buddhist often argue, sometimes in the past violently, to maintain THEIR treasured lineage (sect) — in the late 1800 a brilliant Tibetan scholar started the Ri-Me movement which didn’t MIX the sects but called for acceptance and friendship amongst them.
My hard won advice would be become an expert scientology practitioner (auditor if that is your interest), WHILE reading other spiritually oriented books — not wikipedia overviews of buddhism etc.
Become a professional at living an authentic life …
Which to me means you encompass others into your life, not thinking less of them because they are not in step with your spiritual beliefs.
As for this being a poor 3rd dynamic “sort out” — well — as fas as I know Marty has never said he was interested in being the leader of a “new” church or activity. Just hoping to help others “move on up”
Christine
HI;
I thought the very purpose of vertical growth was to enhance and expand horizontal growth, and the purpose of horizontal growth was to provide opportunities to find new ways for vertical growth; expansion ends when one of the two falters.
I just read his Wikipedia page. It seems like his failure was only that he didnt win. He decided to be a martyr I guess.
When I was at Flag I was listening to a conversation between two execs. One said he would “think about it”. The other sort of attacked him and said “Think about it?! I havent thought about anything in YEARS.”
He looked very tired and had sunken eyes, like someone who had been up for days or had been getting only a couple hours of sleep each night for too long. The body gets some kind of weird energy around the eyes in that situation- like it’s dead or something.
I really like your suggestions Marty. I think they are good ideas. Upon reflection, the following came to mind and perhaps could contribute to the ongoing discussion.
In one of the policies on policy, LRH says that all policy is based on the idea of infinite expansion.
My question is: infinite expansion of WHAT?
Consider the difference between these phrases:
1. Infinite expansion of understanding and wisdom for and of all
2. Infinite expansion of MY group’s ideologies
3. Infinite expansion of MY group’s power
The first one results in the possibility of liberty for all, respect for the rights of others, a willingness to listen, and a continually expanding ability to co-create and co-operate.
The other two inevitably result in the reduction of liberty for anyone not in the group, for the individuals in that group, and the selection of all others as combatants to be dominated and controlled or as pieces to be fixed so they will fit in. The third results in substantial real estate holdings.
IMO, any notion that Scientology is “above it all” instead of a valuable and responsive contributor to the larger effort is detrimental.
LRH speaks of the importance of TEAM work. Maybe its time to work as a member of a team that contributes to the big picture, instead of the being 3 feet back of the head of the rest of the team i.e. team WORLD, team UNIVERSE, team MULTIVERSE. Team members need to be informed about their other team members don’t they?
“Unfortunately it comes with an instilled mores that devalues and prohibits meaningful horizontal growth”. I see this statement as meaning the following: Because Church Scientologists tend to get tunnel vision (which I don’t believe was Ron’s original intent at all) and only read LRH and only participate in Scientology groups and classes, they rise vertically on the bridge (somewhat in DM’s church) but close themselves off from what they can experience and learn from other sources. This phrase ” don’t have other fish to fry” and the Church viewpoint that they want all your time spent at the Church in one way or another and all your money.
A friend of mine calls it living in a bubble.
Marty, you hit it out of the park again. Spiritual vertigo is an excellent description of the condition one can fall into when one remains in an ivory tower or hallowed hall. It is not a position or condition of power. Rocket rides usually end badly.
I want to comment on the contributions so many are making here. There are moments when a very high level of discourse and communion happens. The Cloud Upon the Sanctuary, by Karl Eckartshausen, talks of an inner church, nothing material, not an organization of any sort, but a church made up of members who very much remind me of some here. I recommend the book both for its own merit and because I think some will see the relationship of this blog to this inner church, as i do.
p.s. If you would rather not answer the question as to how you are using the word Scientology, can you at least give some specifics on the mores you’re referring to? That would not only make it more understandable as to what you mean by “Scientology” but, with all due respect, make the statement about mores not come across as a generality.
Windhorse
“As for equanimity — we are taught, as scientologists to go for a goal and barriers be damned — including people.”
I experienced the opposite. Beingness, ARC, increased awareness of the plight and interests of others. And the ability to achieve goals that in themselves help others.
“We are taught”, as you characterize it, is not learning with an eye on what is true for you. Maybe you are referring to the current C of S.
That is not Scientology.
Marty I find your definition of wisdom interesting. “The ability to recognize strengths and weaknesses in ourselves and others.” There is something accurate about this, and yet I need one more piece to feel complete with a definition. Right or wrong, I expect to be moved by reading a definition of wisdom. I expect a shine to come through, something that would compel me to say: “that’s what I want.”
After reading your article, I wondered: “If I was asked to define wisdom, what would I say..?.. What came to me: “The ability to recognize the superior power in everything and everyone….. “the ability to feel love within, and compassion for all creation” “the ability to love unconditionally”….or… “The ability to extract love from every breath”
Wikipedia’s definition of wisdom is terribly boring: “Wisdom is the judicious application of knowledge. It is a deep understanding and realization of people, things, events or situations, resulting in the ability to apply perceptions, judgments and actions in keeping with this understanding. It often requires control of one’s emotional reactions (the “passions”) so that universal principles, reason and knowledge prevail to determine one’s actions. Wisdom is also the comprehension of what is true coupled with optimum judgment as to action. Synonyms include: sagacity, discernment, or insight.” This does not motivate me to become wise. I have a profound conviction, and have had some insights that any glimpse of wisdom is a source of profound satisfaction and deep enjoyment of life.
Contrarily to what WIkipedia says, I don’t believe wisdom requires to control passions. It’s like if you come across great chocolate, eating it does not require you to control your urge to eat bad chocolate—unless you are the exceptional person who prefers bad chocolate. But definitions are not made to describe exceptions.
The Wikipedia further says (getting more interesting): “A wise person has self-knowledge”. So wisdom may come from self-knowledge. Then the age-old question is “what is self knowledge?.” How does one know what it is and whether one has it? Delusionally believing in one’s own grandeur are the easiest thing in the world. Many great mystics or wise men since time immemorial have depicted self-knowledge as secret of all secrets that cannot be attained by the intellectual mind. I supposed that if it was attainable by the intellectual mind, the SAT would have a self-knowledge test.
Confucius said: “Love of learning is akin to wisdom.” Question is.. love of learning what? My neighbor loves learning about fishing, it has not made him wiser. Buddhist scriptures teach that “a wise person is endowed with good bodily conduct, good verbal conduct, and good mental conduct. “
And the Buddha cites behaviors that, in his view and experience, reflect wisdom: “to lead others by non-violence, righteously and equitably. To be calm, free from hatred and fear; he who arbitrates a case by force does not thereby become just.”
Thank you for bringing up the great topic of wisdom, and for quoting Lao Tzu. I look forward to more articles on this, and to reading everyone’s comments.
Not only are infinite compassion, tolerance, courage and wisdom
the goals of OT, there is now way to make it through the upper levels of the bridge, if one does not display them on the way.
Marcel Wenger
Interesting article.
I once assisted a few guys to take a large group of people and get them through a few courses covering ARC, basics of communication and the precepts or basics of moral behavior. They were universally blown away and all of them, every one, went back to their local communities and taught the same principles to their friends, relations and colleagues.
I did this after I had some vertical benefit from the tech.
The above horizontal positive influence was part of the plan and why so many people love the subject.
If you are referring to the current regimented administration of the subject by the C of S, well I agree. It is failing to deliver.
But there are many I know who daily, relentlessly, build the lives of others to heights higher than the day before. And these people, including the auditors among them, are great examples of 360 growth.
360 is what I live for.
DM and his ilk are 180. They get the opposite of what is inherent in the subject. Ideal orgs are not a bad idea for the C of S if it was operating properly. But, with the 180 approach, they get the opposite. An org called ideal but is non-ideal.
Chris
You said…” I fear Scientology will be altered, watered down, combined with other stuff, edited, misapplied, etc. and lost by this.”
Yes…I also harbor that fear, and I very much hope that that is not the direction some are taking this.
I do not see these posts as an invitation to go down that path. I think it is more an invitation to broaden one’s reach in life. To me, Scientology is just one set of technologies, albeit a very comprehensive one, but to really value it fully, one has to put in into context.
I value your input. I think it is very wise to caution of the potential pitfalls of diluting or altering the valid, workable technologies of Scientology. (or any other workable technologies really)
Eric S
I once heard a good definition of wisdom and it was, “Knowing how to not suffer unnecessarily.” I think it’s a good one and also distinguishable from great intelligence mixed with neuroticism.
I think this is one of the more important … life lessons
Ironically when you join the SO they tell you that you are leaving the MEST universe and you are practically stripped of anything and every thing you own. Then as SO members you are made to reg for money (called energy to make it sound less mesty) so you can sell books and tapes which are not considered MEST as its LRH. Nowdays of course we have to have nice big MESTY buildings that are also not MEST as its a church. There is the distain for the general public who are “trapped” in the MEST universe and its the SO’s job to make sure they are up the bridge to be less trapped. That includes the Havingness rundown so you can have more MEST of course. Confucious say Im’a kinda Confused about this Scientology racket…
Can someone give me a definition for “horizontal”?.
Does it mean gaining an understanding of life through examination of other subjects? Being “well rounded”? Is it a term from some subject?
It’s funny, but those were some of the very first things that expanded significantly when I, as a newbie on the fringe, first began studying Scn. Things only went downhill the more involved I became with the organisation, going into agreement (reluctantly at first before eventually embracing fully) organisational policies, enforced ethics, rules, regulations, SP acts, black, white, right, wrong, and doing what was needed in the crusade to “clear the planet”.
It still amazes me how belief can change a person, especially when one is impressionable to group-think. I’d love to hear more from people, like Mosey for example, who have been studying and practicing the subject without ever setting foot in a “church” or being influenced by its beliefs.
“Wisdom is not competence in one skill or many skills. It is the ability to recognize strengths and weaknesses in ourselves and others. Thus, a wise teacher knows that although he may not surpass certain students in specific skills, he can give them what they need to become better individuals.”
That’s one of the reasons I started Scientology. I thought, and still think, that it’s the basic and essential beingness of an auditor. It’s all in the Factors, it’s all at the top of all scales, it’s all in “don’t evaluate for the preclear”, and it’s all in some basic and essential buddhists concepts: selflessness, non-attachment, humility.
Atisha (Tibetan buddhist master):
“The greatest achievement is selflessness.
The greatest quality is seeking to serve others.
The greatest generosity is non-attachment.
The greatest patience is humility.
The greatest effort is not concerned with results.
The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go.”
Imo, “vertical growth” is just a kind of “spiritual materialism”, one of the greatest illness in the western world. Corporate Scientology certainly participate to it.
+1
Chris, in my opinion Marty just wants to get people to widen their view a bit. He’s not trying to get everyone marching in unison toward some kind of ‘handle’. Yes, it’s first dynamic and frankly, most people coming out of the Church could benefit from that, after years of being discouraged from having ‘other fish to fry’.
I know people who were sent to Ethics for reading the same books that LRH read in his research. Marty’s blog is a healthy antidote to that.experience. And the ones who need it the most are those who were recruited into the Sea Org as kids. Man, do they have some catching up to do.
” Scientology is perhaps the most powerful technology ever developed for vertical, cognitive individual growth. Unfortunately it comes with an instilled mores that devalues and prohibits meaningful horizontal growth. In my opinion, vertical growth, absent a horizontal foundation can cause spiritual vertigo. ”
Bingo ! Makes lots of sense !
Lack of reading, education, selfreflection, intelligence, traveling and knowing about the world, study and experiences with different cultures, lack of schooling, even of sports…etc..
LRH talks about that education can Key-out a person and is valid processing.
The major reason we live in a nearly free western world was that the philosophers of the 18th century postulated schooling for everybody and boom ! Mankind made a big jump in evolution !
Mostly that horizontal foundation is given by caring parents and good schooling.
This is still valid today but wasn’t cared about in the church. Imagine a COS that sends people back to college or university before they are qualified for training !!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂
Here about Socrates and wisdom:
According to Plato’s Apology, Socrates’ life as the “gadfly” of Athens began when his friend Chaerephon asked the oracle at Delphi if anyone was wiser than Socrates; the Oracle responded that no-one was wiser. Socrates believed that what the Oracle had said was a paradox, because he believed he possessed no wisdom whatsoever. He proceeded to test the riddle by approaching men considered wise by the people of Athens—statesmen, poets, and artisans—in order to refute the Oracle’s pronouncement. Questioning them, however, Socrates concluded that, while each man thought he knew a great deal and was wise, in fact they knew very little and were not wise at all. Socrates realized that the Oracle was correct, in that while so-called wise men thought themselves wise and yet were not, he himself knew he was not wise at all, which, paradoxically, made him the wiser one since he was the only person aware of his own ignorance. Socrates’ paradoxical wisdom made the prominent Athenians he publicly questioned look foolish, turning them against him and leading to accusations of wrongdoing. Socrates defended his role as a gadfly until the end: at his trial, when Socrates was asked to propose his own punishment, he suggested a wage paid by the government and free dinners for the rest of his life instead, to finance the time he spent as Athens’ benefactor.[15] He was, nevertheless, found guilty of both corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens and of impiety (“not believing in the gods of the state”),[16] and subsequently sentenced to death by drinking a mixture containing poison hemlock.
Seems like the same situation occurring to you Marty !
You’re corrupting minds 🙂 🙂
You’re really a bad boy !
Grasshopper,
Good and insightful comment!
Being a sound professional for my entire life I do need to comment on one thing you said. It is true that Ron did indeed state that no books written about sound applications, such as recording and mixing, were worth reading and he did try to find something that he could pass on to his newly formed Cine crew to study.
He may have made demeaning comments about “wogs” but for the Cine crew he did recommend many text books as very good in the field of lighting, cinematography, make-up and others. Comments made on these subjects were in the majority stated between 1976 – 1983.
For books or material written before 1983 I can without a doubt concur with LRH that there is nothing worth reading that will teach you sound application properly. He did say that studying a certain book about the physics of sound would be helpful and that it was a good book, but the book dealt with sound as a physics phenomena, not as a profession in film making.
LRH knew the economics of things and he would rather pass on a good book than writing hundreds of issues himself but he deemed it necessary in the field of sound recording and mixing.
I’m glad he did as to this date I haven’t read anything more fundamentally simple while encompassing, covering all basics of sound.
If you compare the relative progression in Hollywood film and compare visual to audio quality in films from the 70’s I think you will find many movie buffs that will argue that the sound suffered in quality way more relative to the quality of the visual. The first real breakthrough film with better sound was Apocalypse Now released in late 1979, which was after LRH made the majority of his comments on sound.
In the last 15 years many books have been written about specific fields of sound – recording, mixing, mastering, acoustics, etc and many of these books are excellent, but none that I’ve read cover the basics as well as what LRH wrote.
It is an unfortunate fact that his writings on sound are not available outside Gold. Fortunately I remember most stable data verbatim, but it would still be great to have it available for the purpose of teaching new people in the field.
Clearsound is not an LRH’s term by the way – its a Gold marketing term.
Not an expert on computers so can really judge the computer series.
Cheers, Ulf
Chris,
Regarding your comment:
“I disagree that this is a good third dynamic handling. I think this is more first dynamic. Maybe I am seeing it the wrong way. I fear Scientology will be altered, watered down, combined with other stuff, edited, misappli etc. and lost by this.
“Unfortunately it comes with an instilled mores that devalues and prohibits meaningful horizontal growth”
I consider this (Marty’s Blog) a very good third dynamic handling in that it promotes communication about the subject of Scientology in a manner that has been basically forbidden within the cult of $cientology.
Regarding your fears I would add that the risks you mention have already come to pass within Corporate $cientology. In the new paradigm we face with independent access to the tech of Scientology it will be up to each one of us to ensure that is is kept in a workable manner going forward. But that has always been the case. The disastrous condition of the Cult of $cientology has come about because of a failure of all parisoners to demand correct technology.
I appreciate the change of direction because it has allowed me to view my own shortcomings with regard to handling bypassed charge. Yes, I have BPC on many issues and while I have been willing to ‘mouth off’ about David Miscaviage, (I must confess that I have enjoyed the opportunity) that is far less the issue that what I am willing to do about the current state of affairs. And we have all had the opportunity to state our opinions. So when Marty states his:
” In my opinion, vertical growth, absent a horizontal foundation can cause spiritual vertigo.”
please remember, he is not saying anything about how you should or should not apply the tech of Scientology nor is there anything suggested about it “be altered, watered down, combined with other stuff, edited, misappli etc.” It is an opinion about the topic of discussion…nothing more ……….IMHO!
🙂 Think for yourself ! Marty isn’t a guru that has answers for everything !
Wow ! 🙂
“Still recovering from spiritual vertigo…”
LOL 🙂
Thank you for the book reference Peter! For any interested I was able to find it online at this URL:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/cuts/index.htm
I just wanted to shed some light on “horizontal growth” also being ones growth as a source point for spiritual knowledge. The acquisition or determination to be self-determinedly education from an attitude of evaluating a broad range of knowledge, rather than evaluating what is put in our bowl.
Some things occur and work, because of the force of our beliefs that they occur or work that way. The deeper truth is obviously we have more power of self deception than we some times realise, but makes hope no less real, and workability no less workable, it just opens the possibilities even further, and possibly deeper.
I think John McMasters story of S & D can shed some light on the area by shining some truth on the research track, and some damage done from following, blindly, the inflow path of study, instead of “looking” for ones self.
The Story of S & D – by John McMaster
The “S & D” process is an important scientological procedure which addresses an individual’s particular vulnerability to another’s malicious or supposedly malicious intentions. It is indicated when a participant repeatedly loses the acknowledged gains they have already had from processing, or behaves in a highly unreliable manner. (“S & D,” stands for “search and discovery”)
This is the story of the development of that procedure, with some profound insights, by John McMaster, and is reprinted from The Heretic, Issue X. (See “Bon Voyage to John McMaster” in the Free Spirit 90.) – Hank Levin:
***
I would like to discuss the development of S & D for the implications it had in the subsequent development of scientology technology. Had it not been designed the way it was, things might have gone a little differently.
Late summer, 1965. The mesage read: “Ron wants you to bring six of your best review auditors to his office at quarter past five today, and would you get it all organized?” When we were all there, he said that he’d gotten us there for a specific reason, and the reason was to evolve a particular process which he wanted to call “Search and Discovery.”
Now, in the processing that we were doing then, which was mainly the power processes and power plus, we were getting some cases moving magnificently fast, others sort of medium, and some cases moving very slowly.
He said that there must be some factor that was sort of impinging on these cases that were moving slowly, and this process was to be called Search and Discovery simply because it was to search for that which was impinging on the slow gain case and the no case gain, to search for that and then discover it.
And he wanted us to evolve a technology whereby this could be done effectively.
We got together and decided that it would be a good idea to have a listing process to start off with on the search side of it, and then we would discover an item.
We decided the listing question would be sonething along the lines of “Who or what is causing difficulty?”
We made a list and then we’d get whatever the item was, and then put the item into a Represent (“Who or what would item represent?”), and then list away. If the item on the first list had been a person, one blew the charge off that person by getting the Represent out of it.
And on this “Who or what would item represent?” the PC invariably found a “What” in relation to his own behaviour or his own conditions of existence that got restimulated by the actions of the other person and caused what appeared to be the symptoms of a “Potential Trouble Source,” as it was later called.
It was something that the person had in his own makeup, his own behaviour pattern, his own mental mass, that had a sort of magnetism for the behaviour of a certain person.
The other person did something, and this particular thing, in the whole pattern of the PC, would cause an upset and prevent the PC from looking as clearly as he or she might look, from wanting to win, from doing whatever one was expecting the person to do.
So we ran this listing process and the represent process, and we got what we got, and took the results to Hubbard. And as I said, invariably it was a “What”. And you can’t declare a “What” that exists in the magnetic field of the PC to be a suppressive person.
There was a tremendous improvement in the PCs because they found out that in actual fact, when they were so-called “being the effect” or “being suppressed” by someone else, it was because of themselves and something that they had that had compelled them to become the effect of the other person’s behaviour.
But there was another thing some of them found out. Some people found out that in their behaviour patterns they did things and behaved in such a way that they compelled the other person to commit suppressive acts towards them.
For instance, here’s me. And, not during the auditing session but in my everyday life, I am doing something with a regularity that compels another, who also has something in his magnetic field that my behaviour restimulates, to be suppressive towards me, and I am in actual fact causing it.
So there were two aspects that people began to find in this auditing:
1) they had something in their own space that got restimulated by another person’s behaviour, and when they found that and blew it, they no longer were the effect of that person’s behaviour; and
2) they were unknowingly doing something that was compelling the other person to act suppressively towards them.
And everyone run on this process, with the listing and the represent, had far more case gain than is gotten from running up to the ethics officer and disconnecting from a so called suppressive person.
We were really thrilled, because these people, immediately after having had this kind of S & D process run on them, moved magnificently on the power processes.
We took the results to Hubbard, and he kind of hemmed and hawed and told us it was a little bit long-winded and we could do it faster another way. Eventually he changed the thing down to: “Who is suppressing you?”, and it had to be a person. And when that person was spotted, the PC had to go to the ethics officer with the folder.
The ethics officer then had to find out whether the person would “handle or disconnect”, and in most cases the ethics officer decided of his or her volition that the person was incapable of handling and compelled the person to disconnect.
Now if you look at the history of scientology from that point onward, late summer-autumn of 1965, what was happening?
Suppressive people were becoming a reality and the ethics officer was becoming an absolute necessity in any organization in order to safeguard your technololgy.
Well, nothing can safeguard technology better than perfect auditing. If you take the process and audit it perfectly, your technology is established.
Having this via of darting around the corner to the ethics officer just gives the auditor an out. If he can’t quite manage the PC or he can’t quite manage the process, or he can!t quite manage putting the two together, he always knows he can say “Well it’s OK; if I can’t quite manage this then it’ll become an ethics matter.”
When a person was not moving as quickly as the person ought to be moving, they then had to have this S & D process, and then automatically it went onto ethics lines.
So then standard technology was very much involved with ethics; you couldn’t have standard technology without an ethics officer to handle these particular situations. So the suppressive person became a reality and the ethics officer became an absolute necessity in order to have the tech working and standard.
So now the PC disconnects from this “Who” the ethics offlcer regards as a suppressive person, and yet still intact is the “What” that predisposed the suppression in the first place. So the PC is still vulnerable to suppression.
He disconnects, has a bit of relief, and maybe until the end of that auditing intensive the PC is free from the impact of the other. But within the makeup of the person, that which predisposes the PC to being suppressed is untouched.
And the overt act of disconnecting from another, blaming another for one’s own inadequacy, and the fact that one has this predisposition towards suppression, compounds the felony.
The felony of whatever one has done that makes one vulnerable or predisposed is still there, and that is compounded by the disconnection, which creates a heavy ARC break perhaps not only with the person being disconnected from, but with all the people to whom that person is connected.
So now you have the compounded felony. That thing which had come into restimulation in the auditing that should have been run out right there and then, is now being covered over aby another overt act, the act of disvconnection. And what does that do? It causes the prolongation of that condition which predisposed the PC to suppression in the first place.
S & Ds, such as they are run now, do not give permanent relief or release from anything. What they do is prolong the agony of potential suppression. So far from setting a person freer, they are in actual fact burying,and therefore prolonging the condition that predisposes and precipitates the suppression.
This “standard technology” is in actual fact ruining the whole potential of our aims and goals and purposes, because it is pressing out of sight that which we were fortunate enough to have surface, that thing that is predisposing the PC to feeling suppressed.
It is a very healthy sign when someone you are auditing suddenly has problems. So they say they’re not making gains. So what? This indicates to you that something is in restimulation that prevents them from making gains and achieving their goals. This means you’ve got something right there and then, right at the surface, ready to be handled.
So you can do an S & D, but I suggest that you do it the way we did it originally, before it was changed to a “Who?” You might get this thing which has come into restimuation on the first listing, in which case it’s gone. If you have to put it into a Represent list, well, you’ll get a whole lot there.
Now, I didn’t do this at the time, but it seems to me that you could then put in a third question if you do a represent out to another item and you still haven’t blown everything.
You could say, “Now, how do you use so-and-so to make yourself vulnerable to suppression?”, or a question of that nature. Then you have removed the predisposition to the suppression because that which was in the magnetic field of the PC that enabled the suppression to happen will never be there again, unless the PC puts it back. But it won’t be the same one; it’ll be another one.
So I hope this sheds a little light on the way and S & D could be run that could give gain for all time, rather than this temporary relief by committing an overt act on a fellow being on this planet at the same time as one is. It’s not always such; sometimes one disconnects from people out of another time.
However, this is just a vast Q & A with reality. The reality is that somewhere in one’s makeup is this predisposition to be suppressed, and when it is precipitatedd one behaves like a potential trouble source. So, get out what’s in restimulation and remove completely and forever the chances of being suppressed in that particular way.
That is how we started out on Search and Discovery, and how I feel it could be done even now. It’s not too late, for Heaven’s sake! And we could get in, and do the job properly.
Very interesting article Marty – and so Chinese!
You’ve really hit a button here judging from the comments thus far.
I can agree on many of the various views expressed but only if I differentiate from whence the views are based.
There is no need to clarify the use of the word Scientology from that of the Church of Scientology. Yes the current Church has taken certain things to the extreme, but wouldn’t be able to hadn’t it already been instilled in the core mores of the philosophy itself – the combined works.
Chris Mann brings up how your line of thought could result in the arbitrary, meaning up-to-the-person doing it, removal and alteration of bits of the philosophy that to them seem contradictory. I can see his point of view but I never did associate your articles and your line of questioning with issuing Scientology but rather in how to study the existing writings and integrate it for maximum spiritual development.
LRH himself studied more of others than practically anyone I know. He did write many things which encourages to find out for yourself, to broaden your own knowledge and to evaluate yourself. He also wrote, mainly after the mid-60’s that you only need to study Scientology and that he has done all the work for you and as a matter of fact it became an ethics offense or in the very least a dilettantism to have any other line of thought, at least after KSW.
So one can find LRH quotes supporting both very opposite views.
Fact remains that auditing technology works and gets results. You’ve never but acknowledged this.
I concur that the mores, and I do mean the word “mores” of the Scientology philosophy as described in KSW and later – not the fact that workable technology should be applied exactly, but the dogmatic mores of “us and them” will limit a person’s meaningful horizontal growth.
Scientology is unique in that it not only gives you some of the best advice in how to study something – any field – and make up your own mind as to the relative importance of the information, sort out false from correct data, etc, while as a philosophy (within its full body of policy) also condemns this exact activity if it doesn’t align with established Church policy on the subject.
This fact is and must have been confusing for many who have found other good non-Scientology technologies and workable advice in life, especially after leaving the Church, and it is my belief that Marty is simply trying to help in broadening our perspective so as to be able to retain that which is workable with Scientology and move on up with no limitations.
Again my interpretation but there, I said it.
Cheers, Ulf
Last sentence should read, “Not an expert on computers so can’t really judge the computer series.”
Sorry about the immense length of the post. 😦
Hope it helps though! 😀
Thanks Maria. I went there and the authors reference to an inner church is in letter II.
Roger, I was just asking him to clarify his own communication. But now I have an idea as to what his intention is on this OP. My guess is that he simply wants to get more people thinking about what has actually transpired with Scientology and thus be able to see the pitfalls, whether inherent in the subject itself or not.
Ι agree… this is the meaning I got! Plus… don’t be overwhelmed by “whatever” Scientology… find out yourself! Use it, dont’ be used by It!
Chriss has some good observations:
“Everything- every subject can be picked apart. You could go to a shoe store and say they dont sell coats. You could join a gym and complain that it’s too focused on the body.
I think that someone of reasonable intelligence could, if he applied himself, find infinite wrongness in a grain of sand.”
Marty does not need my or anybody’s approval to think or create view points. He is brilliant in this, a true philosopher. His wisdom has been shinning on many of us, and mostly to beneficial results.
The essence of the only thing he keeps “preaching” is: think for yourself, be yourself, create, make your own decisions and opinions. The great thing about this blog and about the Indies in general is that many follow these golden “rules” – to great results, original thinking and much fun and games.
This in itself, and the people here are the proof that Scientology can enhance horizontal growth. Big time. So I do think that Marty’s conclusion here in itself is a bit Vertical oriented and lacks Horizontal base… Unless he cares to elaborate more. Here are some more examples:
* Since coming back to practice the subject, 6 months ago, with the Indies, and after many years break I experience great surge in me of: tolerance to people and other subjects, Love for others, care on
All dynamics, humility (way up), readiness to listen, willingness to help without getting anything back (way up) peace of mind and harmony. Far, far from perfect, but meaningful surge up.
May be it is reversed (black) scientology that’s being discussed here.
And I find my (great, unbelievable!) auditor, is the most humble person I have met, and most horizontal and vertical anything. And I can assure you that Confucius, having the chance to get in session with her (or with Marty..or many other Indie auditors for that matter) would be completely satisfied.
The Power Formula: “don’t disconnect” that’s humility, specially when in power.
And the whole idea of auditing: each person works on his weak parts, you take only what reads, right?
If you’re arrogant, you will learn humility, and if too humble, you will cognite and dare more. That’s the Tech, is it not? Both Vertical and Horizontal, towards Theta. (light, detachment, Nirvana, Moksha).
Just to get things here more balanced and Horizontal…
“Everything- every subject can be picked apart. You could go to a shoe store and say they dont sell coats. You could join a gym and complain that it’s too focused on the body.
I think that someone of reasonable intelligence could, if he applied himself, find infinite wrongness in a grain of sand.”
Marty does not need my or anybody’s approval to think or create view points. He is brilliant in this, a true philosopher. His wisdom has been shinning on many of us, and mostly to beneficial results.
The essence of the only thing he keeps “preaching” is: think for yourself, be yourself, create, make your own decisions and opinions. The great thing about this blog and about the Indies in general is that many follow these golden “rules” – to great results, original thinking and much fun and games.
This in itself, and the people here are the proof that Scientology can enhance horizontal growth.
Big time. So I do think that Marty’s conclusion here in itself is a bit Vertical oriented and lacks Horizontal base… Unless he cares to elaborate more. Here are some more examples:
* Since coming back to practice the subject, 6 months ago, with the Indies, and after many years break
I experience great surge in me of: tolerance to people and other subjects, Love for others, care on
All dynamics, humility (way up), readiness to listen, willingness to help without getting anything
back (way up) peace of mind and harmony. Far, far from perfect, but meaningful surge up.
May be it is reversed (black) scientology that’s being discussed here.
And I find my (great, unbelievable!) auditor, is the most humble person I have met, and most horizontal and vertical anything. And I can assure you that Confucius, having the chance to get in session with her (or with Marty..or many other Indie auditors for that matter) would be completely satisfied.
The Power Formula: “don’t disconnect” that’s humility, specially when in power.
And the whole idea of auditing: each person works on his weak parts, you take only what reads, right?
If you’re arrogant, you will learn humility, and if too humble, you will cognite and dare more. That’s the Tech, is it not? Both Vertical and Horizontal, towards Theta. (light, detachment, Nirvana, Moksha).
Just to get things here more balanced and Horizontal…
Sorry for the duplicate parts…
Confucious say Im’a kinda Confused about this Scientology racket…
LOL 🙂
It isn’t about taking Marty as a guru, It’s about 2-way comm and the transmission of meaning via words. marildi is a pro word-clearer and she doesn’t like to make assumptions about what the other person is saying.
“Spiritual vertigo”, very impinging!
How many times have you heard from school kids; “why do
I have to learn about that; I am never going to use it!”.
Another aspect to Scientology are the resolution to the problems
this planet is facing on the 4th, 5th and 6th dynamics, out-
side of what we normally think of with war, famine, insanity etc.
Unfortunately we are today not one ounce closer to the solutions
to what is bogging down this planet than we were in 1950 (outside
the fact that we actually have a big part of the final answers in
Scientology itself but with the bungling of introducing it into the
society we have forfeited those inroads).
Of course we should know as much as possible. We should be
able to talk any language to anyone, be it the streetsweper, the
scientist, the politician, the criminal etc etc. just as Hubbard said.
“Unfortunately it comes with an instilled mores that devalues and prohibits meaningful horizontal growth.”
I see the word is instill(ed):
instil or (US) instill (ɪnˈstɪl Pronunciation for )
Definitions
verb
-stils, -stills, -stilling, -stilled tr
to introduce gradually; implant or infuse
(rare) to pour in or inject in drops
Word Origin
C16: from Latin instillāre to pour in a drop at a time, from stillāre to drip
That is “INSTILLED mores that devalues and prohibits meaningful horizontal growth.”, but not INHERENT mores that devalues and prohibits meaningful horizontal growth.”
INHERENT:
Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913 + 1828)
In*her”ent (?), a. [L. inhaerens, -entis, p. pr. of inhaerere: cf. F. inhérent. See Inhere.] Permanently existing in something; inseparably attached or connected; naturally pertaining to; innate; inalienable; as, polarity is an inherent quality of the magnet;
the inherent right of men to life, liberty, and protection;
A most inherent baseness.
The sore disease which seems inherent in civilization.
Syn. — Innate; inborn; native; natural; inbred; inwrought; inseparable; essential; indispensable.
1580s, “to exist, have being,” from Latin inhaerere “to stick in or to” (see inherent). Figurative (immaterial) use attested by 1610s (also in Latin). Related: Inhered; inhering.
I have certainty on the installations (implants) that are instilled in one in the organized activity known as the Church of Scientology.
I find it quite easy to avoid such in my current activities outside the aberrated third dynamic.
” In my opinion, vertical growth, absent a horizontal foundation can cause spiritual vertigo.”
I can’t argue against that and I find that Scientology basics (see DMSMH, DOT, FOT, Comm Formula, ARC triangle, TRs, etc) give a good foundation for studying Scientology, or whatever else one wishes to study to achieve spiritual advancement.
Dear windhorse,
What do you make of Serenity of Beingness?
ML/A
“Man, in affinity with Man, survives, and that survival is pleasure.”
~ Book One
I have found lots of horizontal growth trough Scientology.
“Unfortunately it [Scientology] comes with an instilled mores that devalues and prohibits meaningful horizontal growth.” – Marty
If you speak of the organization than yes. The “Church” has lost its soul somewhere on the way. But not the subject. Not if you study for yourself. You’ll find all the concepts designed for horizontal growth. The dynamics, ARC, granting of beingness, tools for de-aberration of a third dynamic, The Factors.
Wikipedia says:
The “horizontal” component in spirituality – a desire to be of service to other humans and the planet. In the horizontal we seek to make a difference through our actions. This dimension is manifested externally. A person with a strong “vertical connection” who is also able to demonstrate the “horizontal dimension” has a clear grasp on his/her mission, ethics, values. A strong “horizontal” component is demonstrated by a service orientation, compassion, and well-aligned vision/mission and values that are carried out in productive effective services and products.
So if you speak of the philosophy of Scientology I can’t agree with you this time.
However, I like the little story you shared.
Love,
SKM
I agree Marty, too much truth degrades. I use that LRHism a lot. Gradation of aquired skill and theoretical comprehension was one of Ron’s plus points.
The basics of any path must be in for foundations to be built.
I like horizontal growth for an organization.
I think the Sea Org and RCS was vertical growth. You have the Master at the top and then lesser masters and so forth. You have to do and think the way the master at the top wants you to. (ultimately, or quit)
I can see an organization where lots of indies are auditing and the group grows horizontally with no masters. You will have shared communications and opinions on how to make things better but no real heavy ethics and crazy injustices.
You also will have Steve Halls site where delivery groups can rate their services or sites like his if he doesn’t want to allow any other groups that he doesn’t consider KSW. This is not meant as a jab, but just that this could be a reality. If it were, then someone else would inevitably create another site that performs this function.
So you could have tons of delivery growing horizontally while communications lines are strenghtened on a self determined basis. No paying a percentage “uplines ” for meddling with people and actually inhibiing their ability to deliver.
For individuals you would see vertical growth as people could become what THEY want to become and not some cookie cutter form that the cult wants to thrust upon everyone in order to control them and squeeze them into their sick version of “OT”.
Chris, I take that to mean- learn your scales before you play Beethoven.
A sincerest thanks Marty.
Once again you’ve provided some reminders that Scientology, an applied religious philosophy, is a beginning, not an end.
Thanks Marty for another great Essay
All our best to you and Mosey.
Windhorsegallery writes: “I don’t find that Marty is chronically “against” at all … yes, in the earlier days of his blog he was very into exposing the abuses of dm. That has shifted…He isn’t against LRH in my view at all. Rather attempting to keep the technology/philosophy from disappearing by aligning various truths TO other philosophies and traditions. And then he goes one more step, IMHO, wherein he shows where HE feels scientology MIGHT be missing a more balanced view.”
I have seen a similar, healthy evolution in all people parting ways with the institutional side of new religious movements. First, the person rants and attacks. Then, after they have gotten out the anger out of their system, they look at was good in the religion, and work to isolate it and preserve it, out of genuine care. Then, to broaden their horizons, and look for linkages and alignments with other philosophies and traditions. And then they advocate a more balanced point of view and then they find a truly original path that is theirs, that is an expression of their own individual authentic, unique understanding. After all, we are all unique. I have seen this evolution as a normal, healthy path toward leaving a spiritually healthy, balanced life. A time comes in one’s life to grow out of single-minded reliance on a core religion, to find what works for oneself, what brings a person balance, happiness, what feels natural, what fits like a glove, from within, not because one has been indoctrinated into it, but because it feels good.
A challenging step in my experience, when I left a new religious movement, is to let go of the original mental models, or colored glasses, that one has grown while entrenched in their previous religion. There is a risk to go on to explore new faiths, religions, spiritual horizons, but to do that with the same old reference model inherited from the original religion. To get over this is a tall order. It requires to develop a new pair of brand new eyes. Marcel Proust once rightfully said: “The true voyage of discovery starts not with new landscapes but with new eyes.”
Further down, Christine writes: “My hard won advice would be become an expert scientology practitioner (auditor if that is your interest), WHILE reading other spiritually oriented books — not Wikipedia overviews of Buddhism etc. Become a professional at living an authentic life …Which to me means you encompass others into your life, not thinking less of them because they are not in step with your spiritual beliefs.”
I like that, and I would add: “And don’t just read books, since Buddhism and such paths are to be practiced, not just read about. Just like reading books about Scientologgy is not going to do much for a person. To learn about Buddhism from books is a bit like trying to know surfing by reading surfing magazines. Nice, but not the real thing. At some point, one needs to grab a surfboard, paddle to the top of a wave, try and try again to stand on the board and ride the wave, and finally, one day, one is able ride the wave all the way to its destination. And feel the feeling, feel the water, the air, the wind, the thrills. And then the person is able t do it again and again, as they wish, and to experience the beauty, fun and excitement in it. So much would have been missed by just reading a book about surfing. Life is to be lived, felt, not just read about. I’m a book worm, books are my first reflex when it comes to acquiring new knowledge. But with age Ive come to realize that they are as fascinating as limited. They are just flat pieces of paper with a bit of ink on them, written in the past. Life is lived in the moment, in a myriad of colors, smells, sounds, emotions, and in a sea of people. So much to be experienced and so little time…
I think Scientology is not the knowledge (answers, data, etc) to be given or taken but a tool that can be useful in finding the knowledge within oneself or in life. Of course the tool has a description and the more complicated the tool is the longer the instruction on how to use it. But nevertheless, it is still the tool to help you to see while looking for the data. Scientology is a telescope, a microscope, a magnifying glass, binocular or other means with which we find the data, but it is not THE data, just know-how to get the data.
In the church, Scientology has become itself the data, the answer. You are not even allowed to examine life outside Scientology using it just as a tool, instead you are been feed the answers.
My point is that Scientology does not have the answers to give you, but it can help you to find those that YOU DO ALREADY HAVE. In that sense the wise scientology teacher will give you nothing.
To me, ‘vertical’ is progress, ‘horizontal’ is survival.
Horizontal is an increase of the number of dynamics encompassed, and ‘vertical’ is the introduction of ‘new ideas’, etc..
Examples; an auditor attains Level O. Another auditor also gets to Level O, and another. That is horizontal expansion.
A vertical expansion would be the first auditor who gained Level O, then moves onto Level 1, then 2, and so forth, with no other auditors moving along with him.
One LRH, or millions of LRHs; which is preferable?
A Cleared USA, or many Cleared countries; again, which is preferable?
I think theoretically, horizontal expansion could go on forever, but that can’t happen due to bank considerations. New ideas, etc., open up new possibilities for horizontal expansion
In archaeology, and anthropology I think, time periods are essentially defined by the ‘tools’ used. The tools can be improved, but basically they are the same tools. But, when a new assemblage of tools is introduced, you have a separation out of what came before into a new stage of evolution. Here in North America, the ‘Archaic’ period lasted thousands and thousands of years, the longest of any period, a horizontal growth, very successful. Then the Europeans came and … well … things changed, a new step in social direction occured.
What always impressed me about the ‘Archaic’ period, was the degree of satisfaction that obviously permeated the culture. There was no ‘drive’ to outdo someone else. Life expectancy was around 60 years if I recall; lots of food, and so forth. This period was quite stable; all an example of horizontal growth at it’s best.
my opinions of course.
Great post Marty!
“Conditions” is on the awareness characteristics. Being able to see strengths and weakness’, is being aware of conditions.
Conditions can be viewed on flows. It really is not too difficult to spot what conditions others in towards themselves, their family and their group. And help people come up condition just like you can help them come up tone.
One problem with “justice” in the Scientology culture, is that when someone starts an “investigation” on someone else, the person running the investigation is usually in an enemy condition or lower themselves, to wards the person being investigated!
Say you decide you want to leave staff. People get angry at you. They view you as “jumping ship” or whatever. H.C.O. (who’s stats will drop if you leave), starts the investigation on you, already in an enemy condition towards you. In a low condition as that, how can you expect fair justice? I have found in the Orgs all justice cycles begin with some having the purpose to unmock someone else, and the “justice” bubbles up around that.
It should not be a “justice” issue at all, if someone decides to leave staff. In “Rewards and Penalties, Hubbard says, “No good worker owes his work, that’s slavery”. It is right there in the ethics book.
The ethics formulas are a valuable tool. And Scientology has many valuable knowledge. Behind every piece of it manifested, there is a PURPOSE. When someone has a purpose to harm, and wears it under the mask of love for Hubbard, mankind or knowledge, unfortunately, the end product will be waste.
Also just rec’d:
T.O.,
Piers Morgan on CNN is interviewing a Scientology insider tonight at 9 EST.
Lars, I know we have heard for decades about how the world is coming to an end. But if you look at the stats, if you look at the condition of this planet, it is in a better condition than it was ten years ago, twenty years ago, fifty years ago, a hundred years ago. There are situations that pop up here and there but if I was a on a mission to decide what condition Earth was in, I would give it a normal rating.
Taking a horizontal step to borrow a page from Permaculture, we find that nature prefers networks, which have both vertical and horizontal elements. Hierarchies do exist in nature on a small scale, such as a wolf pack, but the alpha wolves can come and go with little impact on the larger ecosystem (a network), which will rebalance slightly and carry on.
I think the same principle applies to human organizations. A rigidly hierarchal group can only expand so far before it becomes unstable, but a network has no such limits. Scientology has come close to a network structure twice, first with the Book One groups in the 1950’s and then with the Mission network up until 1982. It’s not a coincidence that these two periods had the steepest expansion graphs.
There is probably a network analogy for personal growth and wisdom too, but I haven’t thought that one through so I’ll leave it for another day (or another commenter).
Ditto, Karen.
This expands my awareness!
Action I believe is quite a few tone levels below Serenity of Beingness – is it not?
Therefore I’ll answer in this way —
Buddhist practitioners who spend their lives in solitary retreat – meditating – I’m told experience serenity of beingness
Current high lamas are encouraging their students and monks who follow them to engage in mediation in action … pick up a cause that helps mankind and while engaging with a meditative mind … DO SOMETHING
Did I answer your question?
Christine
Hi News Flash Janna Miscavige on CNN with Piers Morgan. Turn on your TV and get out the pop corn.
I find your statement: “But I’m having more trouble with the against Scientology and against LRH” in reference to your alleged “shift” of Marty’s blogging a bit bizarre.
Please give me a specific quote of Marty where he is “against” Scientology or LRH. I’ve been following this blog fairly closely for some time, and i fail to see any of that.
Please, no generalities, i would appreciate you to reference some specific anti-SCN or anti-LRH Marty posts/verbage in your reply. Thanks.
Boy, if Marty is anti-SCN or anti-LRH i really need to know this.
Here is the Wikipedia article I used the above definition from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_spirituality
If you have another definition for “horizontal growth”.
The above article, by the way, is very interesting as it shows how much interest exists in spirituality.
I wonder how much Scientology could have established its position as a spiritual movement in the world if DM would not have the church taken over.
I see the Independents have lots of space to grow horizontaly. Any one as he likes likes and sees fit. And maybe even associations with common purposes.
The “church” is dead – that’s for sure.
Oraclemysticism, guess that “normal” could be debated at
length BUT with what we are doing to this planet in accelerated
speed (polluting, using chemicals which do not degrade, rain
forest destruction and mineral resources depleted at a rapid rate)
and not handling corruption, religious fanatics and dirty politicians
& businesses, I would say the curve is downtrending. Yes, the cold
war ended but now we have Iran and North Korea to contend with.
And yes we now have superfast commlines even in the under-
developed countries which helps to a degree to foster transparency
in the ruling classes but that is not making a big dent (as yet).
In the beginning 80’s, after having audited for 10 years I wanted to
see a more rapid change and so joined the SO in Social Coordination.
And I predicted that by the 90’s we would have taken over the field
of drug rehab in US and then the world, which also would have
resulted in depowering the psychs and drug companies and that
could have many other domino effects (subverting the subverters).
Now NN is under attack and it does not look good.
OK, the light is still there in the end of the tunnel but it got extended.
Marty, i agree, the spiritual tech and philosophy of Scientology, as opposed to the cultural artifacts of the Church organisation, is a most powerful tool for individual growth and enlightenment.
I beleive the greatest potential of the indie movement is for the practice and attainment of Scientology in it purest and most effictive form by people of good will.
The inflow of SCN by a person should result in an outflow of native beingness and causitive self-determined actions in life by the individual. At its hightest expression, this may result in the person being “pan-determined.” In other words, a being so aware, concerned, and causitive on all dynamics that the person instictively acts for the greatest benefit of all of these, as they perceive them.
Routinely the church tries to substitute a third-dynamic bypass of the individual will with enforced ethics or viewpoints for a beings native evalutation of the dynamics, and tells the individual that that acceptance of these things is pan-determinism, when in all actuality, these things cut accross and inhibit true pan-determinism.
A being that must be beaten (metaphorically) into submission along a certain line, cannot by definition be either self or pan determined.
In reading the prior responses to this blog post, some seem to think you are attacking SCN itself, but it is clear you are saying its these “instilled mores” (i read here “additives,” i.e. things NOT scientology) are the suppressor to horizontal growth.
If we take away any distracting additives to actual Scientology, and use it for its intended purpose, we have great potential for horizontal grwoth.
correction: where i say “horizontal growth” in the second to last and last paragraphs, i mean vertical growth. Sorry.
“They’re like the only “clean” ones in a world full of lepers. ”
This, in itself keeps them in a condition of enemy or below on the fourth dynamic. WHY they can justify the donations, the abuse, the false reports, the fraud, out tech and all the rest of the overt products they offer in exchange to society. Nobody is “worthy” except them.
“Anti-” to me isnt really the same as against. These are actual terms that have definitions (Anti-Scientology, Anti-LRH).
I perhaps should have said “critical of” or something along that line.
What I was trying to get at in that part of my post was a concept I’ve been thinking about lately which is that almost all news, blogs, practically everything has conflict. It seems there always has to be a force and an opposing force (and it’s best if we can pick one side) to hold our interest.
I mean, how boring would Martys blog be if it was just good news and happy thoughts?
By now you have received instructions. A car with two of my men will be at your location at 0100 hours. The White Owl has left the nest. It is good to have you onboard.
I don’t think “meaningful horizontal growth” is devalued or prohibited in real Scientology. My own experience was that the big gains at lower levels were in regaining the things I’d individuated from, and understanding other types of lives. However, it probably has been devalued by the changes that Ray Meatloaf made to the Bridge after he took over David Mayo’s job of Senior C/S International.
Horizontal growth can occur at Grade 0: recognising that others exist and communicating with them. It can occur at Grade 2: discovering that you don’t have to not-is or fight all those opponents.
Then LRH’s Grade 4 technology is all about horizontal growth, by handling the service facsimiles that confine us to being one particular type of human being. He said that a preclear should be complete on the Grades and any other needed handlings before starting into the non-interference area, and one reason was that the upper levels do not necessarily change the kind of personality traits shown by Confucius’ four students in the story. They deal with the thetan himself, not the human identity he’s currently wearing.
If preclears are now getting rushed through their grades and dianetics, and pushed on to the upper levels a.s.a.p., it’s not surprising that they don’t make much horizontal growth along the way. Horizontal and vertical growth sound to me like a metaphor from the plant world, so may I say they’re like pines in a dense plantation, forced to grow tall quickly but with their lateral growth suppressed, for the owner’s quick profits.
What about “an unselfish knowingness”. I dont know how to word it exactly. Something like a knowingness that is beyond the first dynamic. Knowingness and ability to look without self getting in the way.
One small example- I find the datum “Dont think- look” to be one of the most useful things in the world. I dont know how many times I’ve fixed things and handled things with that. Someone working on an engine for days about to kill themself with a wrench to the temple. I walk up and say “shhh..” and go into a zen-like state and just stare at the engine. Then I reach down, plug in a lose wire and it starts right up. Am I a Jedi? No. That little “mantra” just helps me get rid of myself long enough to just look at the darn thing. So I think part of wisdom is a realization that you are not the answers are there, but you have to get over the idea that they are within you already.
Last part should be: So I think part of wisdom is a realization that the answers are there, but to see them you have to get over the idea that they are within you already.
Maybe it’s sort of related to the concept of a “cleared cannibal”?
Very much related to “Granting Beingness”. In the current Church you only are granted beingness if you are in that precise moment donating money.
Here is Jenna Miscavige teaching a lesson about horizontal growth to her uncle:
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2013/02/06/pmt-jenna-miscavige-hill-evil.cnn
I agree with Christine, even if she doesn’t like me.
critique
A critique is a review of something. (noun)
An example of a critique is a professor writing notes about a student’s artwork.
To critique something is to give your opinion and observations. (verb)
An example of to critique is to describe a restaurant’s food on Yelp.
I think there is a huge difference between giving a critique of a shoe store and Scientology. Scientology (RCS) was a group that did and is ripping people off and destroying lives. I think it damn well behooves us to find out what went wrong and not just glib out on it and say it all “just being critical” and we could be finding fault in a “grain of sand”!!?? That is utter bullshit.
Are you using some more of your “shake it up theory” now too?
Plus 1.
This was to Eric’s comment.
I liked SKM’s definition of horizontal. I wan’t using that definition in my above post.
Excellent!
You have really made me think about this and I have to say I think horizontal associations are the way to go. This goes along with this quote by LRH too: “I believe that the freedom of the material which we know
and understand is guaranteed only by a
lightness of organization, a maximum of people,
good training and good, reliable, sound relay of information.
If we can’t do these things, sooner or later the
information which we hold will become the property
of an untrustworthy few. This I am sure, because
it has always happened this way.”
LRH Lecture: What Scientology is Doing
6 June 1955 (Anatomy of the Spirit of Man Congress)
The Old Man absolutely had it right here, in my opinion.
Thank you for this post Marty.
Christine. You and Mike Rinder are the two people who I always scan for when I read the blog.
I really have a lot of interest in what you say. Not sure where I am going with that, but just wanted to say it. 🙂
Beautiful.
I had to read this part a couple times until it fully sank in: “I would not exchange their merits for my own even if they offered. That’s why they all come to learn from me.”
Wow, that is powerful, and its wisdom echoes through the ages in any number of philosophies.
It brings to mind a saying I heard recently. “When she fed me, I was hungry. Otherwise I did not know that I was hungry.”
For those entrapped in Scientology as an exclusionary path, they do not yet know their own hunger, only that they are fed what they are fed. They do not know that a solid horizontal base is the prerequisite for a vertical spire.
In a paraphrase of Rumi, perhaps what they are seeking is seeking them.
How about ARC, Paul?
Know it does not sound very poetic and might not move you or make you shine right away, but I think there is no better definition of wisdom than ARC, or rather the result of it, which is, as we all know, Understanding.
Marcel Wenger
“it is my belief that Marty is simply trying to help in broadening our perspective so as to be able to retain that which is workable with Scientology and move on up with no limitations.” Mine too.
This was well before CATS – in 1978. I was working at a pizza place on the beach in Santa Monica and the owner had “The Biggest Con: How the Government is Fleecing You.” It was my bible. Schiff is a great example of how a logical set of deductions can lead you right in jail and to the wrong place. For years I was a hard-core libertarian.
Well, here is another good example of using Scientology to explain the outnesses of some Scientologists. What I have seen is that some people will latch on to the “one answer” – PTS tech, whatever – and that becomes their stable datum that explains the confusion of the world. And to look elsewhere is to shake that stable datum.
In my case, I was 9 when I did my first course, so it was the way for me very early. I was agnostic, and Christianity made no sense to me. I remember when I learned of the concept of “original sin.” I was 13. I replied to the Lutheran minister who was telling me this “You are kidding, right?”
Now I’m older, and a lot more humble. And I understand and respect other viewpoints – and my own has changed as well.
I’d love to read that. I was on the LRH Tape Archives project in ’77 and worked with PJ Severtsen – right after Dan Aurbach was busted off post. David Wilson was RAV at the time. I worked with the Studer tape machines and Nakamichi cassette recorders. It was a lot of fun, but it was hell as well.
I do know the general attitude of the team was that “wog” tech was just not up to snuff and so we dicked around with the Studers trying to get the “perfect recording.”
In the several months I was there, we did not record a single lecture. Pretty crazy. But it was crazy seeing the master tapes – including the ones on paper tape and dictaphone material.
When I left, I studied sound engineering at Sherwood Oaks in Hollywood. There were only two books on the subject. One was the Audio Encyclopedia (I think) and the other was a book on recording engineering by a guy named Rumsen, I believe. It was written circa 1977, 1978. The course itself was awesome and enlightening.
I actually worked in two studios and finally left the business – the music business is brutal, and I couldn’t take the daily heartbreak meted out by the industry.
I would add that you should listen or play Beethoven, but play Fats Waller and the Beatles, too.
You know, all these great discussions about vertical and horizontal growth, and not one word about how the best way to grow horizontally (and indeed, become horizontal) is to eat at McDonalds!
Windhorse, I think if you truly use the ARC Triangle as a way of life, then you use the Reality corner by finding out what is important to others, what makes their life worth living who they care about and love, what their faith is, what they want in life, etc and you CONNECT with them in a way that is meaningful to them; and you use the Affinity corner by at least being strongly interested in them, which further validates their own beingness, and cheerfulness to bring others up tone and enthusiastiasm about others and life, which is a very contagious tone level; and of course throughout this you are USING the Communication corner and you are making life better for yourself and others. Ron could have written books just on this triangle and he should have, and his reputation would have lived on just for that. In any case, it was an important contribution. Too bad it was not very discussed much or emphasized at all in the Org (often quite the opposite was done) – all really good auditors of course knew how to use it all the time in session, as Id di myself. Also fortunately I had a very good senior who believed totally in its use and “she learned me.” I had tons of wins of course in T&P, but the Triangle? That just by itself would have made the 35 years totally worth it. Is that horizontal?
Bryan, I didn’t mis-duplicate anything, no way. The above post is about Scientology the subject, it is not about the Church.
I don’t think that putting the word “respectfully” in front of an opposing view makes it less an opposing view or “juicy make wrong”, as you put it.
Here’s the link for the research story of S&D.
It’s worth the read for insights into how LRH operated, and how other people did actually contribute.
http://www.ivymag.org/cyberivy/PtsJohn.htm
The problems with some „wisdoms“ is, that we live in a practical world. Some of us have the possibility to sit there for 30 years, meditate or read wise books and have enough to eat. But the majority has to work hard to survive. A bit similar to many so called self help books that promise to make lots of money. But then you have to consider that only a small percentange of the people of a society can afford to have the money without valuable work done. The majority has to clean the offices, handle the admin work, manufacture cars and all that stuff that needs to be done to survive. If you do not clean your home on a regular basis then it will be infected very soon and your body gets sick. It is sometimes nice to read some wisdoms and to consider being a better individual. But next day the you have to go to work to make hopefully enough money to get a full fridge.
Scientology once had been given anserwers to those „mechanical“ problems. But that is long gone.
The Scientology „solution“ for that situation is, that we (the Scientologists) are the „eilte“ and the rest has to do the work for us. For me a wise man is someone that can do his job and that does his job. Be it a boss or a truck driver. He knows that if he wants a good life he has to add to society. Not only wise words but also valuable work done.
Basically what I took away from this post is that the things that are important in life, developing those traits/foundations deeply valued in an individual by compassionate, humble and unified societies, have absolutely nothing to do with Scientology, and vice versa.
Therefore it is my opinion that the desperate pursuit of all things superfluous and lofty to grounded, wise individuals, such as the supremity promised to individuals undertaking Scientology practices, is just… well… sad, really.
WHATEVER !!!! (just kidding Tony – and I do like you)
And yes — one cannot compare a shoe store to scientology —
Personally, I believe all of us are continuing to go through phases of decompression and our best bet is to be as OPEN MINDED (GAWD forbid) as possible.
That does NOT mean mixing practices or throwing out the baby with the bath water …
It means PERHAPS science has now proven things that were not provable during LRHs day.
YEARS ago a young woman asked me WHY didn’t they just video all the sessions in the early days so we wouldn’t have all the mistakes. DUH — videos didn’t exist.
She was dumbfounded.
I posit that SOMEDAY there will be those, who frequent this board with a RIGID point of view, see that indeed SCIENCE has proven that neurotransmitters DO exist and do have something to do with how we function. (JUST as an example)
Does that take away from auditing tech? No. Because those same transmitters function better when negative thoughts, for example, don’t continue to entrench themselves in our minds and brains.
Christine
Thanks Tara and RfST, Nice to get a good ack.
Actually Schorsch there are scant few buddhists amongst the 200-500 million followers who sit and meditate for 30 years – doing little else.
How you really serious? IF Tibetans, who until the red chinese invasion were primarily buddhists, sat meditating all day without working – they would have quickly frozen to death. It’s cold there 🙂 and harsh!!
While I read constantly — I also know I can’t hope to understand buddhism to my core without doing the practices — so I meditate but not much more than 20 minutes a day, if that — unless I go on a retreat for up to 3 weeks.
My hope is that I bring what I’ve learned INTO my life — my work (which I have to do to eat) my friendship, this blog etc.
I agree with you about a wise man doing his job as well as adding to society.
I also liked your comment, Tony.
“I can see an organization where lots of indies are auditing and the group grows horizontally with no masters. You will have shared communications and opinions on how to make things better but no real heavy ethics and crazy injustices.”
Your statement ~ ‘Scientology is all about horizontal growth’ ~ sounds so much like one of those ‘absolutes’.
Scientology can be whatever you want it to be – which includes or excludes the ‘instilled mores which prohibits meaningful horizontal growth’.
‘Progress’ with compromised integrity at your own risk. Keep in mind,
“As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged.
And it is in such a twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air — however slight — lest we become unwilling victims of the darkness.”
William Douglas
Sinatra – the REAL Chairman of the Board!!! (with all due respect to Yankee pitching great Whitey Ford of course)
While I unequivocally take exception to truth of the first sentence of this blog post I greatly enjoyed the story you shared about Confucious .
Very enlightening and a valuable lesson. Thank you Marty.
I’d like to read that stuff. I read something on frequencies and EQ. Seperation of parts. I believe this idea of sculpting out a unique space in the frequency spectrum for each instrument is a concept that may have come from LRH. People were using EQ of course, but the way he described it and used it was unique I believe.
I believe most on this blog would agree that the technology is helpful to an individual and his dynamics. Most would agree that they have personally experienced a blowing of charge as well as a deeper and better understanding of the spirit and life in general due to their studies of Scientology. For me, these points are undeniable.
That said, we can also agree that “something” changed in Scientology. Many questions and disagreements have to do with when and how this started to change. Was it LRH, DM, the suppressors of the 60’s? Maybe this will never be fully known or agreed upon. For me, the reasons are clear and understandable, but they are also only my opinions. What I can say with certainty is that I could not be fully free to view this whole situation until I spotted the following:
KSW-1 was used as and acted as an implant command. It was the “must be complied to comm” at the beginning of every course; at the beginning of every cram; quoted at nearly every event or announcement or staff meeting; ordered as an M-9 at nearly every disagreement; and so on. The command was clear: “LRH was the only one who made it…you must agree…have no other counter-intentions…our survival is all that matters…you must stop all others as we are right.” That is an implant. I am not even arguing whether the info in KSW is right or wrong, or whether the intention of KSW was to be an implant, or who used it in this fashion…I am just noting the use and impact of the issue itself.
It is difficult to understand how something so useful morphed into something so hurtful. The problem for me was separating out the two opposing viewpoints: something so good vs something so problematic. Perhaps it is just the woof and warp of life that things can and do at times work this way.
We all know that where held-down postulates, commands, or intentions exists, one will have difficulty in acting in or evaluating in the present.
like the story, and the post i agree with.and i like a path with heart which i didnt find outside the auditing room.
In my edition of the book Notes on the Lectures, there is a graph entitled “Combined Spectra of Logic and Survival”
You can see an expanded version of the graph at this URL:
Note: In my book, the version of this diagram has an arrow pointing to the left hand side of the graph, several bars in to the right. The arrow is entitled “ultimate wrongness, finite death, zero on the tone scale.” It is clear from the diagram that this is body death, with succumb and wrong extending infinitely to the left beyond body death.
This is the description of the graph quoted from the book NOTL:
“The computer of the mind by which all data of a problem is summed up works on this principle. Each datum has its own value of rightness or wrongness on the scale. The computer sums up these values and makes a decision. As each new datum is added, the arrow of decision moves according to the value of that particular datum.
When the computer sits at dead centre there is indecision, no action. You can have an engram which keeps the evaluation scale stuck, so you can’t evaluate data. “I’m always right,” “I’m always wrong,” freezes the computer. An “I have to believe it” engram deprives a person of his sense of humour. He takes things too seriously. Realizing that it is socially bad not to have a sense of humour, he laughs when he sees other people laugh. He is suggestible and impressionable. In extreme cases he may be in an amnesia trance or a catatonic state. To arrive at correct evaluations one has to have the right to make decisions. An engram is fixed data. It does not allow re-evaluation — a forgetter such as ‘It is not to be thought of’ sends intelligence down. A man gets more and more wrong in his decisions. And how wrong can a man get? Dead wrong.
The position on the tone scale of a person continually wrong — no one would let him be right — is ultimate wrongness — finite death. The above graph, turned on end, is the tone scale.”
My comment: It was horizontal. And then the charts were up-ended. Up-ending them created an illusion or analogy of higher and lower.
“The above graph, turned on end, is the tone scale.”
Hi Summerwind, “forgiveness, love, patient and seeing my brother
as myself” are amply taken up by LRH in his writings and tapes.
The “love” part is included in the ARC triangle and if it is fully dug
into and practiced to it fullest extent you will get all the other key-
words above included.
I have talked to a former Sea Org member who worked directly with
Ron on a daily basis on the Apollo and he had some very telling
stories of how LRH was displaying all the above traits (too long to
detail here). Another SO member, who also worked under the “Old
Man”, had a few stories of how Ron was forgiving and had boat-
loads of patient. Ron, after he had developed the Bridge, worked
on it tirelessly for another 20 years plus, to refine it and make it
more workable and with a lot of undercuts because of deteriorating
society.
“Spiritual Vertigo”
Sounds like a bitchin’ rock band!!
Excellent post, Marty! Thank you. Keep ’em coming! We could all use a little horizontal now and then. 😉
That’s also known as “Secretary Spread.”
My wife has since lost hers. 😉
I probably know of you if I knew your name.
To me there is a huge difference between knowing audio as an electronics/physics science and knowing audio as a recording and mixing art. They are two different fields and it is VERY rare that someone is proficient in both aspects, though the technical guys usually assume they know recording and mixing just because they know the design of the recording electronics.
Having read most of the stuff from that time period, including what you guys submitted and what LRH responded I can only say that there was always a gap between what he was trying to do as an art, involving technical, and the RAV guys trying to make a Studer A-B. In the end only Rick Cruzen and Luigi survived. Maybe some were shot unjustly, and I wasn’t there until later, but had I been the recipient of some of the submissions that were sent to LRH I would have been might angry…
It doesn’t originate with LRH but using EQ as one of many tools to separate instruments in the sound field was part of his overall issues on sound/audio. He called separation “proportionate sound” and some of the stuff he wrote on the subject I have not been able to find elsewhere and from my own practical experience I can say that he was correct in what he preached on the subject of sound.
Very nicely stated Tatiana!
Is it safe??
Aeolus writes: “I know people who were sent to Ethics for reading the same books that LRH read in his research. Marty’s blog is a healthy antidote to that experience.” In the new religious movement where I spent more than 30 years, I saw exactly the same: people being criticized or punished for doing, reading or watching things that the founder in fact did or read himself.
He, in a way, had a much broader contextual view of his teachings than his students. The students had made the path a lot more absolute than he himself had envisioned it. But in the process, they killed its soul. They focused on the rules, as if more applications of rules could trigger more spiritual experience. While the founders’ own practice may have been, and assuredly was more assiduous, his own openness to other angles and points of view was certainly much greater than his followers’. And, from that, he derived an evenness, a balance, an equanimity, a humanity, a wisdom, that his students had lost touch of.
Rigid adherence to rules and isolation from other beliefs and practices bring a feeling of certainty, assurance, safety, promise of success. But this promise does not seem to deliver: there is a bhajan, a sacred Indian song, that says “poverty, chastity, obedience do not bring salvation of the soul.”
Few religions had stringent vows at the time of the founder. Vows came much later, after the founder deceased. In Christianity, through the centuries, more and more specific vows were introduced: allegiance to the pope, allegiance to a specific order within the church, simple vows and solemn vows, temporary vows and eternal vows, etc.. My sense is the more vows were created, the more the genuine, spontaneous allegiance from the heart kept declining, and the more subservience increased and, with it, the death of the spark that attracted the student in the first place.
Rules often serve as precursors to fundamentalism, which is invariably characterized by a demand for a strict adherence to specific, radical, theological doctrines. All fundamentalists have one thing in common: they believe that their belief is the sole source for objective truth. Fundamentalists share some traits such as elitism, literalism and the conviction that nothing will change their mind. Fundamentalists need not be religious: many atheists are fundamentalists.
Interestingly, researchers at the University of Edinburgh have shown that fundamentalism is associated with low intelligence, with each 15-point increase in IQ making people about half as likely to have strong fundamentalist views.
A healthy rule of thumb, from what I have observed in new religious movements is to observe what the founder did and to not try to be holier than him in one’s behaviors, and to not make and follow more rules than he did himself.
When you look at Rumi or Kabir, great mystics from ancient times, or others like them, when they speak of reading books from other angles, they do not see these books as divergent. To the contrary, they say that their own spiritual experience now allows them to see the experience that the authors of these books, the experience that gave birth to these books. They now have a vantage point to see what these other saints and writers were talking about, and they can enjoy what they are describing. They are not coming anymore from a point of fear, of needing to separate themselves to protect themselves. They can be in the middle of the world, in the middle of other views, and be comfortable with their own and with others.
Tunedal,
Where I struggle is when LRH gets into telling the audience that they are the upper one tenth of one percent (paraphrasing).
I struggle when LRH suggests that his philosophy is “it”. And that open-mindedness is unnacceptable (paraphrasing).
I struggle when LRH says that all the little kids out there in the audience will someday live in a world where everyone has to pick up the cans and be checked for crimes in order to get a job in society, as if to say that e-meters and Scientology will be a common tool for mankind in a few decades, (State of Man Congress, I believe).
I struggle when LRH uses the term “wog”.
None of the above is horizontal growth. And it sure isn’t vertical growth either. It is arrogance, if not delusion.
I’ve had wins in Scientology. I’ve had wins exercising. I’ve had wins with meditation. But it all relied upon communicating with others in a friendly and helpful manner. And when I violated that, my vertical growth took a crap on the front lawn.
When Marty says, “Unfortunately it comes with an instilled mores that devalues and prohibits meaningful horizontal growth”, I believe he is spot on. Church or no church, the philosophy itself is a confusing blend of help, arrogance and paranoia.
I know people who were sent to Ethics for reading the same books that LRH read in his research.
That is new (as in the last 20 years). I had a copy of the AAC Journal in ’83/84 and the MAA ASHO didn’t like it, but it was not actionable.
To be sent to Ethics for reading anything is idiotic.
The original policy was not to do things like Yoga or TM when you getting intensive auditing, as these activities shift the case and interfere with the auditing. It’s like not texting when you drive ;).
This Nazi BS is pure David Miscavige SO BS, and IS NEW. LRH had no issues with people reading other stuff. He brought up Krishamurti in a BC tape, for example, covering specifically that students are reading it. He did not say “don’t read it.” He did say “evaluate the data.”
The biggest cussing problem the church has are that its members are not trained in Scientology.
Mark
I have no idea what you’re talking about.
It seems to me that horizontal growth is available to people to who keep their personal integrity in and don’t compromise their reality. I remember back in the early 80’s hearing about a Mormon (who may have been a bishop) he got a bunch of auditing and did some TR’s and then gave as wins that because of Scientology he became a better Mormon. It is easy to get pulled away from original purposes e.g. getting handled to join staff or borrow large sums of money to donate to the IAS but it seems to me the people that didn’t do that but rather used the tools of Scientology to make themselves and their environment better could still experience horizontal growth.
Last paragraph was so true and so beautifully written! As a foreign language poster, I learn a lot from people like you!
Something else: I am so surprised that some people were hurt by the last weeks posts of Marty. Nothing “shocking”, a lot of theta, LRH himself would be happy of it. So, please, fundamentalism is a corporate Scientology stuff!
Without LRH’s teachings I don’t know that I would have found the skills necessary to help people from all walks of life who have been in and out of my life.The chart of human evaluation, the tone scale,the ethics conditions properly applied for the simplicity that they really are….to name just a few.
The Church’s attemps at fundamentalist application never impressed me very much .But again I have never been on staff, having establish for myself that Scientology ought to be applied outside the church, in real life.
So I feel that confucius”s lesson was taught to me by LRH.
+10
I am Mark Patterson – I was on in 1977. Markus Bihler joined the project when I was there, who was a very determined German who helped push this through.
You are so right about the difference between the technical and the artistic when it comes to recording/sound engineering. I was totally amazed at the concepts of Noise Gates/expanders, compressors, various filters, etc. The courses I took were done in off hours at Hit City West in LA and other pro studios. All of it was analog at the time, of course. One of my fav pieces of equipment was the “Gain Brain”
http://www.ebay.de/itm/221011751034?nma=true&si=THY%2F1SIwcgbvYq3MSR5ShE1MyWo%3D&rt=nc&_trksid=p4340.l2557&orig_cvip=true
with its funky picture on the top.
The first day I was in class was educational – when I truly learned how we can tell the direction of a sound. I always assumed it was because the sound was louder in one ear than the other. Oh, no. It is the difference in phase – the sound reaching one ear before the other. It BLEW MY MIND. I was very interested from that point on, and I knew there was something to know here.
As for the project, it was absolutely crazy. I was soldering add-on boards for the Studer because the tapes from the early 50’s had a different “EQ” – they were recorded differently to tape than newer machines, and we were using new machines to play them, so we had to modify the new Studers to read them. All the freaking math to determine which capacitor to place on the board. My God. And, we adjusted the azimuth of the tape heads daily, which is not supposed to be done, which ended up breaking them – which is why I was accused of “sabotaging” the project.
Later, I found the tech that in the presence of suppression, a being makes mistakes. I sure did!
We would have things to talk about…
Marildi,
The question you bring up is very deep, imo. The entire motivation behind philosophy and religion is Ethics, and in Scn OT’s are supposed to, imo, develop them. Ethics are set by philosophers and religious leaders, then mores are based on these. So you get Hammurabi’s Code (1700’s BC), or Akhenaton’s one God (1300’s BC), Greek philosophers (300’s BC), and mores are set after them. All were attempts, with progress, to gain knowledge to “explain” things like angry Gods and Fates.
With certain knowledge of science, Hubbard avoided these evaluations, mores, and the Eighth Dynamic – so strongly that he left it intentionally to the individual to work to determine his or her own ethics (as far as I know). The church quickly became an ethical and moral vacuum.
The Co$ only developed 3rd Dynamic or organizational mores, that I am aware of. Those would be a study for behavioral psychologists, and could be summarized formally, e.g. under categories of obedience, sacrifices, punishments. “Graduated” pointed out that even the legitimate Scn 3rd Dynamic ethics which were present were so misused they worked backwards. The people within the Co$ certainly did not develop adequate personal ethics, did not develop personal mores, and in fact went on to very, very, seriously violate the mores of this and many other societies around the world reaching back to the dawn of civilization!
I got some info on the Key to Life and Life Orientation courses – it looks like they’re not broadly available, and even when they are, in the Co$ the 3rd Dynamic function overrides the individual’s personal ethics (which would make them useless). The Way To Happiness may also touch on the subjects, but I think have to do with historical mores in broad perspective. I don’t mean to have only one subject to talk about, but this one is so big and so important.
Carcha
Would be awesome, to me, to see that the next “Independent Scientologists” get together embraces the welcoming of all souls who are on a spiritual path.
That would truly be, to me, a huge breaking away from the third dynamic chains and the nourishing and celebration of the “soulness” in each one of us.
Kind of playing along with your theme. I thought you would know of this famous clip.
Damn, I should have said “Is what safe?”
Yes….they are taken up in his tapes and books but how I was treated as a student or a pc was so different than what Ron wrote.
To me What is Greatness is the most magnificent article he ever wrote but Love was not something that was in abundance IN the church.
Judgement was the order of the day……I do not think Ron was a patient man just from listening to all the BC tapes and hearing about what he thought of certain governments and the AMA…..This was not a loving man….. he was a “player” and he prided himself on being cunning and hostel. Maybe he was schizophrenic because he definitely had more than one personality. I also think he was a genius in many areas….But I think his ego drove him in the wrong direction in the end. There are just too many outpoints on how he conducted his life. So much of his writing contradicted the way he actually lived his life.
In the Acknowledgements at page 404 of her book Beyond Belief – My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape, Jenna Miscavige Hill states:
“I want to acknowledge all of the ex-Scientologists and even independent Scientologists who have spoken out over the years on Scientology’s abuses, negligence, and human rights violations, taking personal risk and attack to bring forward the truth and still persevering despite everything. Tory Christman, Mark Bunker, Marc and Claire Headley, Mike and Christie [i.e., presumably Mike Rinder and Christie Collbran], Marty Rathbun, Tom Devocht, Jeff Hawkins, Amy Scobee, Matt Pesch, Lawrence Woodcraft, Chuck Beaty, Paul Haggis, and the many others I have not mentioned. Thank you.”
Hahaha… ‘supremity’??? It was late… forgive me. I clearly meant ‘supremacy’. (I remember thinking something didn’t quite seem right about that word at the time)
This is maybe what Marty wants to say. The only example of “Scientology ” to the world is the church, we got to use that triangle to the hilt and get people understand and come uptone! This is horizontal growth. I loved your post on ARC and the simplicity and magnitude of it!
Yes – sound is interesting. One of my favorite concepts of sound and recording is the Fletcher-Munson curve, which is the frequency response of the human ear, which varies by loudness of sound. So, music played loudly sounds different from a frequencies-heard perspective than music played softly. When you “turn it up” you hear more high-end and low-end in proportion to the mid-range. If you remember the “loudness” button some hi-fi equipment had, the button only boosted high- and low-end a bit, making it sound louder when it really wasn’t.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher%E2%80%93Munson_curves
But I was at the age when I could enjoy telling someone “hey, turn up the volume so we can take advantage of the Fletcher-Munson curve!”
Does anyone know if Jenna has ever posted here? Or if she would be allowed to post here?
Chris – I did not know there was another former DSA around here. (Must be driving the WUS Security Chief bonkers.) I was DSA CCDallas 1999-2004 and DSA Costa Rica 2004-2009.
Scott Gordon – Auditor Class 0+
“I disagree that this is a good third dynamic handling. I think this is more first dynamic. Maybe I am seeing it the wrong way. I fear Scientology will be altered, watered down, combined with other stuff, edited, misapplied, etc. and lost by this.”
It is what happens across eight dynamics to elevate each dynamic in sync with all other dynamics in order to reach and withdraw and move every one of one’s own dynamics up.
Since you are afraid of Scientology being altered, watered down, combined with other stuff…etc etc…I assume that you, yourself are training diligently up to class VIII or beyond and auditing and training others well, to ensure you take your fair share of responsibility for correct application???
Oracle,
While I do not think the world is coming to an end, the issue of mans impact on the planet deserves a good hard look. Our responsibility level with respect to the stewardship of the earth could use a tune up in my opinion.
The LRH advice that “with freedom comes responsibility” applies here. We have been free to use the worlds resources to our benefit. How does the responsibility aspect get addressed?
There is a very well done series on Economics, Energy and the Environment to be found on the http://www.peakprosperity.com website and you will find a video series there called the Crash Course which addresses the key issues we will be facing in the immediate future. The series is not based on opinion but rather the facts which delineate our current predicament. The information is available without cost.
I would be curious as to your thoughts about our condition of NORMAL after reviewing that data.
🙂
Oh so you DID know….
The written word is not always the best means of communication.
I do believe that Scientology as it is practiced within the “church” does not allow for horizontal growth. I have personally experienced instances where I was subjected to sec- checks and roll backs for exploring other philosophies or practices, or for failing to pounce on others who were thinking outside the box. Perhaps it’s because its believed that since Hubbard already explored and charted the path that there is no need to look. But make no mistake, scn trounces on exploring minds- at least if you are staff. You are sec checked, roll backed, accused of other practices,etc. one thing that absolutely baffled me was the entire practice of prohibiting staff to be in touch with the rest of the world- by restricting their movements, keeping them on lock down in the base, etc. I just could not figure out how we were suppose to “clear the Planet” when we were not allowed to be in communication with it! There were kust so many thought stops pushed on us: don’t read the papers – they are entheta. don’t watch TV. why read some other philosopher when you haven’t read all if Hubbard’s works (what’s your other fish?) it goes on and on….These kids growing up in that world are clueless to the wealth of experience, knowledge, cultures that exist around them- all of which you need exposure to in order to continue to evaluate one’s own chaging perceptions, awarenesses. Seeing what goes on around you helps you to objectively assess life situations better, to put things in correct perspective and to nourish one’s own growth an a spirit. The two forces -vertical and horizontal- help to balance each other and to provide continued springboards for upward and outward growth. Stunting one’s reach horizontally only serves to cut short spiritual growth, because all that horizontal stuff is the stuff of life through other dynamics. And the interchange between dynamics cannot be suppressed without consequence. I know that the higher I got up the “company ladder” the more sufficated and stifled I felt, yet as I moved up the Bridge the more I wanted to stretch out and reach into the vastness of humanity. It was a real problem. And i believe many OTs who are still in struggle with this.
Carcha, thank you so much for reflecting on all that and communicating it. 🙂
You said, “Hubbard avoided these evaluations, mores, and the Eighth Dynamic – so strongly that he left it intentionally to the individual to work to determine his or her own ethics (as far as I know). The church quickly became an ethical and moral vacuum.”
Well, I myself do see that specific mores are implicit in the philosophy and tech of Scientology. On the auditing side of the Bridge, unethical impulses get handled. On the training side the materials teach about ARC and KRC, both of which infer a certain behavior. The R in KRC particularly, is a pretty direct reference to ethics. And these two triangles, ARC and KRC, are the basic foundation of Scn, as symbolized by the “S” and double triangles.
Besides the two triangles, another basic construct that would lead toward certain behavior would be that of the 8 dynamics, which in fact are urges towards survival – survival being the very definition of ethics. And part and parcel of the 8 dynamics is the ethics tech of the optimum solution, which is to be left up to the individual. So yes, in that sense, you are right that LRH did leave it to the individual – but again, it was in the context of the basic philosophical principles that one would determine one’s own ethics.
Of course, as we all know, the CoS altered ethics philosophy and tech in such a way that the mores became what they are today – “an ethical and moral vacuum”, as you put it. Marty pinpointed the key way it happened in his first book, where he wrote about the change to ethics tech where it was no longer the individual’s own decision as to the greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics – rather, the arbitrary requirement was that the solution had to place the Church, just one part of the whole 3rd dynamic, as above all the rest of the dynamics in importance. Insidious.
As for KTL and LOC, when I was in the SO at Flag a decade ago, I knew the KTL/LOC staff personally, and I can assure you they already knew (kept to ourselves, of course) that there was suppression on the lines as regards those courses. Not only was the whole purpose of the LOC course – to find one’s hat in life – completely corrupted, but I got from those staff that they felt there was intention to have the courses gradually vanish by giving no support to them in the form of promotion or anything else. From what I’ve heard lately, there is no longer even a KTL/LOC course room at Flag.
But I would imagine that you could do LOC with an Independent or at least get yourself a pack. Is that your plan? ARC, marildi
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
― Rumi
Hi Mark,
Yes, I’ve seen your name in advices from that time period.
Later, I assume after you left, Luigi finally got approved to simply have one standard Studer A80 with factory mechanical parts but with modified Mark Levinson sound cards which included a phase compensation switch to be able to not only adjust phase as far as azimuth but also be able to align the square wave “hat” signal on higher frequencies.
Then they made pre- and post-emphasis curves of all recorder models from the 500’s and 60’s and set up a copy chain where an external EQ was used on the copy chain itself (in addition to just setting copy levels) to replicate the original emphasis curves.
This became the Archives Copy procedure which was used from the beginning to the end of the project.
Not sure what problem you had with setting azimuth daily but the Studer heads and adjustment parts should have been perfectly sturdy to deal with daily adjustments. As they are mechanical parts they are prone to changes due to temperature and daily use and therefore azimuth has to be at least checked on a daily basis for daily use. Not doing so would be a fallacy though it is the “rule” of some studios. I never personally ran into daily adjustments as an issue, and I calibrated Studers on a regular basis for almost 20 years.
Yes, direction of sound all has to do with phase. Psychoacoustics is all about phase. Surround emulation and 3D sound is all about phase. Phase also plays an important role in changing EQ as the phase between various frequencies changes with capacitor-based analog EQ circuits and hence phase compensation had to be introduced. Radically changing the EQ in an area which isn’t directly affecting the sound by itself, may affect the sound elsewhere just by the introduction of phase shift. This is a tool often used.
Yes, I’m sure we would have much to talk about 🙂
Cheers, Ulf
Yes, the Fletcher-Muson curve is a know and applied science at Golden Era as well. It is also applied in rescue operation as for example a whistle is designed to be at the frequency most sensitive to our ears to be able to be heard over let’s say a roaring sea or crowd. This phenomena is also important to realize when checking mixes as you have to listen both low and loud to account for the perceived differences in frequency content relative to the listening volume.
Grasshopper: “The original policy was not to do things like Yoga or TM when you getting intensive auditing, as these activities shift the case and interfere with the auditing.”
Just like you don’t do TRs when getting auditing. I think that puts it in the correct context. 🙂
Bryan, the way you are using “open-mindedness” is a misrepresentation of how LRH used it. From HCO PL 7 May 69 POLICIES ON “SOURCES OF TROUBLE”:
“Persons who ‘have an open mind’ but no personal hopes or desires for auditing or knowingness should be ignored, as they really don’t have an open mind at all, but lack the ability to decide about things and are seldom found to be very responsible and waste anyone’s efforts “to convince them”
+10 also!
Marcel Wenger
Just for the record, again, I didn’t misduplicate the original post. “It” refers to Scientology, not the church.
Ok Bryan. I see your struggle. And of course you agree with Marty, I got that from the start.
Windhorsegallery
just to add, I have nothing against buddhism and meditation. Last year I had a „session“ with the timewaver device developed by a buddhist monk. The practitioner „reads“ the device results and then he discusses with you the results that are based on buddhist texts. Oddly enough quite some charge from the past popped up during that process. Really very interesting. I would say after that experience that Scientology is faster but buddhism is more „in depth“.
+1
Yes, that is also unfortunately true, which has made this
potential 3rd and 4th dynamic solution into a, in many
cases, very 1st dynamic oriented narcissistic activity.
The real heart of Scientology as practiced in the indie
field (and possibly in some far-reaching corners, away-
from-the-church org) is where you can get the true
spirit of the Tech.
Hello Marty
I have found this on line today, and would want to see your honest take on this.
Warm regards
Jane.
Was very important reading. Thank you !
Schorsch – thank you for this – I’ve never heard of a timewaver device and spent a bit of time going through google links.
It appears to be a biofeedback device of some sort with lots of various data bases.
I’ve yet to discover online that it was developed by a buddhist monk – I’m a smidge skeptical about that however I can see that someone might use his knowledge of buddhist texts and depending on what came up in the reading – correlate that.
I’m interested enough to definitely look into this further 🙂 — so thank you.
Marty – I also found this – and is it not time to let the truth be known about this man? Please listen to this – and Marty & Mike – I believe it is high time to make right what was done to this man. One can not continue over overts and withholds. Why is he still being victimised. Please listen to this in a new unit of time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLVUX_KknaA&feature=youtu.be
Scientology is growing horizontally but I doubt DM is too happy about it. Exhibit A is Stephen Colbert’s recent bit on Scn and his interview with Lawrence Wright. Awfully damn funny, and at DM and his lawyers’ expense. Worth checking out.
Excellent point.
One thing that is very amusing (in a tragic sort of way) is when you have a reading suppressive person who gets targeted, and everyone seems oh so happy with getting him declared or disconnected. Then the so-called SP gets some auditing and blows a long term habit pattern and gets totally keyed out. BUT the original PTS boy still has a victim valence that craves to be suppressed and he just goes out and finds someone else to be his “item.”
He couldn’t confront some action the so-called SP was doing, or some wierd mass in the so-called SPs space. You have to find that out, as well as what the PC has mocked up in his own space that would justify him playing the victim.
Personally, I’ve found that the current PTS and S/P rundowns if done correctly will nail it.
“Who or What” is the current S&D question. Lack of technical acumen by the auditor and C/S is what will lead to a 1/2 done on an S&D and leave the PC still prone to being a victim and dramatizing PTSness.
“Scientology is perhaps the most powerful technology ever developed for vertical, cognitive individual growth. Unfortunately it comes with an instilled mores that devalues and prohibits meaningful horizontal growth. In my opinion, vertical growth, absent a horizontal foundation can cause spiritual vertigo.”
The horizontal foundation includes a desire and willingness to be in ARC with all eight dynamics. This requires an ability to allow others to have thier own opinion regarding THEIR dynamics. There are eight billion folks on this planet and the “only one” attitude fostered in the “church” isn’t going to cut it with the vast majority of them. Want to clear them? Better find out what their R is or you’re just gonna mock up your own GPM, in your own universe and you’re going nowhere with that game.
There are a lot of people with a forward look who are trying to create a better civilization. Help them if you can and if you wish.
Personally, I like going Up the Pole once or twice a year. Then I come back down to earth and audit some folks. Not because I have to, but because I like to help.
I thought he said “I have no idea what you’re talking about”, but I remembered it wrong.
😀
Ah I see, nice explanation.
Marildi,
Thank you for your return considerations on this, and data on the courses and treatment of them. A framework is there, in Scn data and procedure, and indeed, it should be used! “Implicit” and “inferred” are useless if not used.
I really wish there were some place to discuss this at length, with some interest in resolution from people willing to set aside their status and egos in favor of a resolution and definition of something besides just a dead skeleton of ethics, and someone to intelligently moderate ‘discussion’ to fleece out illogics. A definition is needed, not just a “win” in a debate (such as a facile “think for yourself” gratuitious invalidation). This topic should be a “sticky” on every board dealing with Scn. I personally would like to think over what you said for a few days, but by then this topic will have passed over into the archives, left behind for the Langoliers.
The R in KRC is definitely key, but the other two are missing if and when an individual knows so little about himself and life that he will allow himself (and his wife and children and parents and other family – and his money, his evidence of mores and energy) to be shoved around (by ANYONE). Ethics more than anything gives strength. Depending on which version of the tech dict one has, defs 7 “admission of control of space, energy, and objects”, 8, and 9 are interesting. To me, responsibility involves the creation of energy. Most I’ve seen here equate “granting of beingness” with “tolerance” (and that is incorrect, as those two are different animals).
Survival along Dynamics is not going away anytime soon, but from an OT point of view, Dynamics as-is to the 1st, 7th, and 8th. The 9th and 10th Dynamics are also in the tech dictionary – but how many have heard of them? How could Aesthetics be a Dynamic? How could “ethics” be a Dynamic? Where are additional references on the 10th Dynamic? We lack, imo, a clear definition of conduct. This is a lack in varying degree from individual to individual, but there is still a general lacking of a standard. The as-is-ness of unethical impulses doesn’t fill the vacuum. To me, ethics cannot be dealt with on one’s own below OT awareness, but even then there is no guarantee a being will mull it all over, so a more explicit impetus would be useful. There are men who, absent the luxury of auditing, worked for and won OT awareness. Now there are men who have all the luxury of auditing to OT awareness, but have no notion of working for it – or apparently fighting for anything – once they are there. They never really thought about it to much avail. Scn … it’s just another consumer item, right? Well, no … now one has to think about it, do some real work.
I will look for all three courses, but I think there is material and procedure deeper than all three, so yes, that’s my plan, but I also seek to impell more people to look at what they will and will not do – and what they *should* do (besides make “movies” without meaningful content, fly jet planes, build their public image, etc., all on the slender justification that it is survival along their [selected] Dynamics). We cannot just toss it off and leave it all by LRH’s mailbox. It was addressed to us, each of us. He already has one.
Carcha.
Schorsch: “I would say after that experience that Scientology is faster but buddhism is more ‘in depth’.”
I have started to believe that possibly the best path would be to take the fast route of Scientology and then go off into Buddhism (or possibly some other path) for further “depth” – and be able to benefit from that path much faster due to already having a much greater awareness and knowingness that was gained from Scientology.
This could even align with the viewpoint LRH had (at least in 1953):
“You’re only trying to free him up to a point where he can recognize that he can have freedom. And after that, all the freedom he gets will be given to him by himself. But you get him up to a security where he knows he can have freedom, and he’s on his own. I mean, you can’t go any further with a thetan.” (9 Dec 53, Examples of SOP-8C Patter, Standard Op Procedure 8 Clinical)
Not to mention you can whale away at it with the suppressed person rundown and its huge array of problems processes.
Part of my evolution in leaving the church had to do with noticing some non-Scientologists who were extraordinary human beings – kind, compassionate, honest, and really attempting to be good people – these are people I would trust my life to. I thought about getting them “in” and knew that it would just not work. These individuals would absolutely not tolerate the “values” practiced in the church and it would end in a mess. Two events happened almost simultaneously that illustrate what I was seeing: 1) A church reg extracted money from my elderly mother by lying and deceit, 2) A non-scn man who was in a position to benefit monetarily from my doing something, advised me against it. The reg, I would not trust as far as I could spit, the other man earned my trust, not only from this one action, but from the way he conducted his entire life. I justified my tolerance of amoral behavior by the church by agreeing with the oft-cited excuse that it is only a few individuals who are not following policy and also, that since I know what scientology can do, I can overlook many faults. (The end justifies the means.) I came to see that one can’t create a world without war, etc., by the use of violence and cruelty. And, if I had to choose, I would rather be a person of high character any day, than high power. The information is there in scientology to encompass this (TWTH, etc.), but it is given far less importance, when it is really the most important. From my experience at Flag, TWTH was followed there less than in any other environment I had ever been. I have made tremendous horizontal gains, but only since leaving the church.
Carcha, you basically expressed my own sentiment that it would be wonderful to have a forum strictly for the purpose of discussing all the aspects of the philosophy of Scientology and all three of its techs. As you can see by that, I would not limit it to just the principles of ethics as I believe they are part of a whole, the necessary whole of Scn (which I’ll say more about as I go on here).
Marty’s and other blogs do have a certain amount of such discussions about Scn but only incidentally since that isn’t the bloggers’ purpose and there is no intention of being comprehensive about it. I also like what you said about having “someone to intelligently moderate ‘discussion’ to fleece out illogics” – a great idea and needed, IMO.
You said: “The R in KRC is definitely key, but the other two are missing if and when an individual knows so little about himself and life that he will allow himself (and his wife and children and parents and other family – and his money, his evidence of mores and energy) to be shoved around (by ANYONE). Ethics more than anything gives strength.”
Totally agreed. To my mind, however, without the curves and spins the CoS added to ethics tech – i.e. people getting (to quote you) “shoved around” – the K of KRC would naturally increase along with the R, since KRC is a triangle and when any one of the three corners rises to a higher level so will the other two.
A primary part of increasing the K is understanding the basics of life and livingness that are laid out in Scn. But in addition to those basics, the “Reality” column of the Chart of Human Evaluation at the highest tone level states: “Search for different viewpoints in order to broaden own reality. Changes reality.” To my mind, that would logically include continual search outside of Scn too.
As for those folks not yet at such a high tone level or, as you say, “below OT awareness”, there exist the conditions formulas. This is the tool LRH devised that would give workable stable datums to handle the confusions about what is ethical and survival, which stem from bank influences as well as lack of sufficient personal wisdom as of yet. This gives you an idea of what I mean when I say the various parts of Scn work together as a whole, and it is the whole that gives the adequate ethical impetus, IMHO.
You also said, “To me, responsibility involves the creation of energy.”
You may be interested in the chapter “Responsibility” in 8-8008, which starts out, “The responsibility level of the preclear depends upon his willingness or unwillingness to handle energy.”
I’m not familiar with those PDC tapes referenced for the definitions of 9th and 10th dynamics in the Tech Dict, but I’ve read Ken Oggers (aka The Pilot) description of them, and in fact of all 16 dynamics – LRH’s 8 plus Ken’s research on what he calls the “Upper Eight: http://www.freezoneamerica.org/pilot/sscio/05_02.html
Btw, I’m interested in your understanding of “granting of beingness” and what you meant by “all three courses”. ARC, marildi
Marildi,
You offer a lot of thought-provoking commentary and references. Various things you said could each be taken up for fairly lengthy discussion as separate topics. All the necessary tech may exist within Scn but if it isn’t being used, then it’s useless. One of the key principles of Ethics and personal ethics is the handling of others, and I see evidence outside the church that this is not being done. To me, the whole pupose of Scn is to enable someone to look – inside or outside the science, it doesn’t matter. As to granting of beingness, it involves the creation of energy. It’s observable on four flows, and is a tangible pro-active creation of energy. “Tolerance” by contrast is a “not opposing” – it’s passive. The three courses I meant would be KTL, LOC, and WTH.
Carcha
Thanks, Carcha.
Two things, if you’re still interested in a bit more exchange of ideas.
One – I’m not sure what you mean exactly regarding personal ethics being “the handling of others”.
The other thing: “As to granting of beingness, it involves the creation of energy.” That too is not specific enough for me to get the idea.
Got it on the third course being WTH.
marildi
Marildi, Ken Ogger states in writing that the ninth dynamic is ethics, and the tenth dynamic is aesthetics. Unless I suddenly cannot read, he got those two backwards. I don’t see anything in “his” dynamics of merit. E.g. “Dynamics” implies change, so trying to name “change” itself as a dynamic introduces verbal confusion – it may be named by grammaticians as “tautological confusion” (I don’t know). Something like “wet water” or “moving earthquake”. I had heard good things spoken of him, had never read anything of his, but I stopped reading when I saw the list and the error on the 9th and 10th. Based on this piece, my opinion of him isn’t a good one at all. Carcha.
Got you. What I got out of that article (which I haven’t read very recently, however) is that his purpose wasn’t to clarify LRH’s ideas about upper dynamics but to describe his own research findings. One point he made that I sort of recall is that he aligned the upper 8 dynamics with the lower 8 in a certain way as he saw a relationship between. For example, the 9th and the 1st related, 10th and 2nd, etc. That could have been why he switched two. As for the Change dynamic, my thought is that since the dynamics are a thrust or impulse toward a certain sphere of existence, I can see how there might be a thrust for change, especially if change is defined as in start-continue-stop; that would make the Create dynamic align with the start part of the cycle..
In any case, I’m not really trying to promote Ken Ogger, just thought you might be interested since you mentioned the 9th and 10th. The PDC tapes referenced in the Tech Dict is probably what you might check out if you haven’t.
As for the two questions I wrote on my last comment, are you not interested in clarifying those? You may want to concentrate on the latest post, which is fine if you do.
marildi 🙂
p.s. Instead of the cycle of start-continue-stop, I should have said start-change-stop (another way LRH put it).
Thanks Ulf – I always wondered how it went when I left. I never met Luigi. We had a Mark Levinson pre-amp in the studio when I was there, and I know Jon Horwich was in love with his stuff – and it was truly awesome stuff. I am glad that they got pros to build out the cards instead of 16 year old kids like me ;).
I am not sure what I was doing wrong with the Azimuth setting, but whatever it was the screw sheared off and sprung the head. It got pretty tense in the room, I can assure you!
Did you ever meet Markus?
Yep – very true. After I left and started working in recording, we regularly mixed at different volumes. We also had a set of small speakers on the console to allow for mixing to make it good on car stereos.
Marildi,
Granting of beingness – I’m not sure which references to give, but you mentioned Scn 8-8008 on responsibility. With responsibility, comes beingness, and I observe that energy probably comes in around emotional tone 20 – Action (“Look” on the Know to Mystery Scale). How one handles others would be according to one’s personal ethics, no? Personal ethics would also determine what one reads. One’s policies on an Admin Scale are important.
I’m a Scn: many have “said” life is all the same thing, eventually, at a high awareness. But until LRH no one made the relevant distinctions to identify the components. Some have explained parts accurately, but LRH realized that auditing someone to higher awareness enables him to duplicate those explanations – to make distinctions and have accurate perception. I actually do not stray very far at all from Scn., and I do try, accordingly, to look at actual life. I use straight Scn data as the framework to define my ethics.
Carcha.
Carcha, thanks much for the additional comments. Your last paragraph brought to mind this statement by LRH:
“You’re only trying to free him up to a point where he can recognize that he can have freedom. And after that, all the freedom he gets will be given to him by himself. But you get him up to a security where he knows he can have freedom, and he’s on his own. I mean, you can’t go any further with a thetan.” (9 Dec 53, Examples of SOP-8C Patter, Standard Op Procedure 8 Clinical)
What really struck me was the last sentence in your post: “I actually do not stray very far at all from Scn., and I do try, accordingly, to look at actual life.” I basically feel the same way and have received a lot of criticism for it in discussions over the years, specifically as regards “do not stray very far at all from Scn” . So it’s always gratifying to come across a kindred viewpoint. 🙂
One other thing I especially wanted to mention is that I hope you didn’t miss a recent comment on Marty’s “Mission Statement” post thread, which to me was one of the best I’ve ever read anywhere and I think you might agree. Here’s the link: https://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2013/01/26/mission-statement/#comment-254257 Enjoy!
ARC, marildi