Category Archives: independents

The Psychopath Test

Posted on April 12, 2013 by | 139 comments

References:

Judgment

Sitting In Judgment

I am adding The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson to my recommended reading list.   This short excerpt from What Is Wrong With Scientology explains why:

Ironically, perhaps the best way to understand the most fundamental flaw in the Scientology system of dealing with the influence of sociopaths is to read a book that touches on corporate Scientology’s vehement, costly protests against the alleged failure of the field of psychiatry to do the same.  In The Psychopath Test, Ronson chronicles a member of corporate Scientology’s Citizens Commission on Human Rights (a group established to “clean up the field of mental healing”) and his quest to free an allegedly falsely labeled psychopath from a United Kingdom mental institution.

Ronson becomes fascinated with the apparent terrible injustice of “Tony’s” (pseudonym) incarceration.  As Ronson researches the matter in greater depth, he comes to find the Bob Hare psychopath test, or checklist, rather rational and workable.  The more time Ronson spends with Tony, the more he begins to doubt the fellow’s sanity against the psychopath test.  Out of curiosity, Ronson puts the test to use on a businessman who is unrelated to the matter of Tony.  When he completes the analysis, Ronson shares his condemning findings with a fellow journalist.  His colleague points out that Ronson only spent a couple hours with the target, and perhaps his journalistic “skill” of catching a target out on lurid admissions, and his preconceived notions of guilt, played a part in his finding.  Ronson, in his honest and entertaining style, rides the rollercoaster of enthusiastic certainty to self-deprecating doubt in his own and others’ use of the psychopath test.

Ultimately, Ronson causes the reader to consider that while there is a tremendous, accurate compilation of information that helps us detect sociopathy, can any one of us be trusted with the power to judge and sentence anyone else against that information?  Are any of us worthy of the God-like power to condemn another to a life of quarantine and isolation?  Do we, in wielding such a powerful tool of knowledge, tend to take on the characteristics of the sociopath when we sit in judgment?

Ronson seems to wind up in much the same place L. Ron Hubbard did when he published this statement: “I have come to find that man cannot be trusted with justice.”  While Hubbard persevered and constructed an elaborate system of justice intended to overcome that fatal flaw of humankind, for whatever reason, his lack of trust was proved justified by his own creation.

Ultimately, though, L. Ron Hubbard said that the only guarantee that one would not wind up on the receiving end of a sociopath’s club was to understand how to identify one in the first place.  And that conclusion was echoed by Martha Stout.  The founder of Scientology and his long-time nemeses in the field of mental health ended up agreeing on one unifying principle: When it comes to the havoc others can wreak upon one’s life, the best protection is the truth – know it, and it shall set you free.

And so my recommended remedy in dealing with the very real problem of sociopathy, or the suppressive person, is as follows:

  • Learn for oneself how to evaluate the worthiness and value of one’s fellows.
  • Never forfeit your judgment to some authority, no matter how apparently wise and judicious, when it comes to judging the merits of others.
  • Strive to be worthy of the trust of those you care about.

 

139 Comments

Posted in acknowledgments, black dianetics, disconnection, ethics, healing, independents, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, policy, propaganda, psychs, Scientology, the future, the Reformation, What Is Wrong With Scientology?

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Why Learn Something Of Quantum Theory?

Posted on April 10, 2013 by | 147 comments

Some people have inferred that I am implying that people ought to become expert in quantum mechanics as some sort of alternate route to enlightenment.  Not so.  I am studying it – and suggest people involved with Scientology get some familiarity with it – so that they can fully appreciate and enhance what they attained or learned from Scientology.

First, if you’ve been involved with Scientology, and know much about it, you know through most of his presentation of it that L. Ron Hubbard claimed it was a scientifically precise route to spiritual freedom.  He claimed to have married Western scientific rigor with Eastern wisdom.  In the light of that, it would seem that a person calling himself a ‘Scientologist’ ought to have at least a little curiosity about science, particularly since it has surged forward in quantum leaps since Hubbard lived and wrote.

Second, Scientology has become so laden with doctrine, dogma, values, morality, morality disguised as ethics, opinion, politics, and prejudices, that as many fanatics and close-minded religionists seem to emerge from it as do enlightened beings.  Learning a bit about what Scientology says and does that aligns with what can be demonstrated can help to cut through that fog.

Scientology, the core technology, is one hell of a lot simpler than some folks have been led to believe.  That people believe it is complex is in no small part due to its requirement of strict, literal adherence to a body of writing and lectures that spanned three decades and over time sought to explain all things even if unrelated to the mission of the subject itself.  The complexity is due in large part to unavoidable contradictions inherent  in developing a technology day in and day out over three decades – against ample opposition – while publishing all thoughts along the way, with very little time available to devote to reviewing, updating and summarizing as results evolved.   Faced with this quagmire, the church of Scientology created an even greater one.  It finally threw up its hands in apathy and required all of its adherents to study everything uttered  by L. Ron Hubbard from the beginning  to the end (to the exclusion of any data of comparable magnitude against which to evaluate it), and in essence, said ‘you figure it out.’  In a literalist setting  that is a recipe for chronic cognitive dissonance.

A simple remedy I have applied (strictly in alignment with Scientology logic as memorialized in the Data Series technology) and found extremely workable is as follows.  I isolated where I believe L. Ron Hubbard best summed up what Scientology is about and what it does – as validated by the ancients he followed, and by the cutting edge of science as well.  In other words, the ideal scene it attains toward. It was written in the 1954 book called Creation of Human Ability, under the apt heading A Summary of Scientology.   Here is that passage:

CONSIDERATIONS TAKE RANK OVER THE MECHANICS OF SPACE, ENERGY AND TIME.

     By this it is meant that an idea or opinion is, fundamentally, superior to space, energy and time or organizations of form, since it is conceived that space, energy and time are themselves broadly agreed-upon considerations.  That so many minds agree brings about reality in the form of space, energy and time.  These mechanics, then, of space, energy and time, are the product of agreed-upon considerations mutually held by life.

     The aspect of existence when viewed from the level of Man, however, is a reverse of the greater truth above.  For man works on the secondary opinion that the mechanics are real and that his own personal considerations are less important than space, energy and time.  This is an inversion.  These mechanics of space, energy and time, the forms, objects and combinations thereof, have taken such precedence in Man that they have become more important than considerations, as such, and so his ability is overpowered and he is unable to act freely in the framework of mechanics.  Man, therefore, has an inverted view.  Whereas considerations, such as those he daily makes, are the actual source of space, energy, time and forms, Man is operating so as not to alter his basic considerations.  He, therefore, invalidates himself by supposing an Other-determinism of space, energy, time and form.  Although he is part of that which created these, he gives them such strength and validity that his own considerations thereafter must fall subordinate to space, energy, time and form, and so he cannot alter the universe in which he dwells.

     The freedom of an individual depends upon that individual’s freedom to alter his considerations of space, energy, time and forms of life, and his roles in it.  If he cannot change his mind about these, he is then fixed and enslaved by barriers of his own creation.  Man thus is seen to be enslaved by barriers of his own creation. He creates these barriers himself or by agreeing with things which hold these barriers to be factual.

What Hubbard set out to accomplish with Scientology was to return to an individual his or her certainty of these simple truths, and to restore to the individual the ability to exercise his or her considerations in a manner senior to the mechanics of matter, energy, space and time.  A thorough study and practice of Scientology and a wide study of science and spirituality outside of Scientology has led me to the strong view that Scientology has nothing higher or more transcendent to offer than the above.  At the same time, in keeping with the infinity logic Scientology was developed from, there are infinite possible degrees of that attainable. To the extent one wishes to attain something above and beyond that while keeping his or her considerations junior to the mechanics of Scientology doctrine, dogma, values, morality, morality disguised as ethics, opinion, politics, and prejudices, one winds up, for the most part, bitter and disappointed in Scientology.  To mask that disappointment a person can become rather judgmental and fanatical, even cruel and vengeful. To the extent one insists that Scientology delivers more than what Ron outlines above, by my observation, the further that  individual is from  attaining and demonstrating that which it can deliver.  Don’t take my word for it. Look, don’t listen.

So, the very workable guideline I have applied  (strictly in alignment with Scientology logic as memorialized in the Data Series) is to develop the ability to differentiate that of Scientology which forwards Ron’s goal from doctrine, dogma, values, morality, morality disguised as ethics, opinion, politics, prejudices, and even procedure that do not demonstrably lead someone to greater ability to exercise his or her considerations as senior to the mechanics of matter, energy, space and time.

Which brings us back to quantum theory.  A working knowledge of it and how scientists and spiritualists are finding that that knowledge relates to spirit is a) a tremendous, scientific validation of Ron’s observations and goals above and everything he developed that leads to its recognition, a validation which can only raise one’own certainty that CONSIDERATIONS TAKE RANK OVER THE MECHANICS OF SPACE, ENERGY, AND TIME, and b) a tremendous boost in developing the ability to differentiate as covered above so as to attain an  ascending certainty and ability to exercise one’s considerations senior to matter, energy, space and time.   There are even a number of scientists who have reached unshakable certainty that CONSIDERATIONS TAKE RANK OVER THE MECHANICS OF SPACE, ENERGY AND TIME.  That certainty was attained in part by study in the field of quantum mechanics (e.g. Bruce Lipton The Biology of Belief).

I am not suggesting people become quantum physicists in order to attain spiritual freedom through cognitive, scientific intellect.  I am suggesting that enough grounding in the discoveries of science – combined with honest attainment of the grades and the state of Clear, and superior solo auditing skills – concerning the woof and warp of the universe can open vistas heretofore unseen and never before attained in Scientology in alignment with and enhancement of the goals of Scientology.

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Posted in healing, independents, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, tech, the world

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Elephant In The Room

Posted on April 6, 2013 by | 309 comments

If folks want to know why there was so much noise in the independent field about my scary, heretical views all the sudden recently, it would behoove you to do as Ron advises in auditing technology and look a little bit earlier.

‘Elephant in the room:  An English metaphorical idiom for an obvious truth that is either being ignored or going unaddressed. The idiomatic expression also applies to an obvious problem or risk no one wants to discuss.’- Wikipedia

The book What Is Wrong With Scientology? Healing Through Understanding  marched a veritable herd of elephants into the independent Scientology house.  I am going to identify one of those elephants today.

That is Chapter Thirteen Reversal.  A copy of the entire chapter is appended below for easy reference, refreshing of recollections, or for the convenience of those who have not read the book.  In that chapter I spelled out where and how a critical reversal is entered into the Scientology line up that enables it to be converted from a technology to free the mind and spirit to one that incarcerates beings into a cult mindset.

In the near year since the publication of the book, not a single independent Scientologist practitioner has originated a single word to me about the rather far-reaching implications of what is covered in this chapter.  Some have disconnected from me, some have assigned me lower ethics conditions – including ‘Treason’ for having stated facts that allegedly conflict with L. Ron Hubbard opinions.  To me, such actions speak to the truth of what is contained in the chapter below.  The reversal is apparently effective inside and outside the corporate church.  I am more convinced than ever that the way out is not through compliance, conformity, zealotry, and self-induced blindness.  Such self-imposed ignorance will relegate ‘Independent Scientology’ to the role it has played for thirty years, a mere parasite appended to the church of Scientology.  It will continue to walk lock step (with a shallow, self-serving protested distinction between it and the corporation) toward the demise of the subject when the corporate disaffecteds it sustains itself on run dry.  No integration, so no appeal to new students.  No evolution, so continued inevitable conflicts over who is ‘more standard’ in a subject that lends itself to infinite arguments on that score.  No transcendence, and so no ultimate moving on up a little higher.  Dianetics and Scientology would never have been developed at all had L. Ron Hubbard been such a conformist.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

REVERSAL

Miscavige’s elevation of L. Ron Hubbard to God-like status, and himself to demigod status, has provided Miscavige with carte-blanche to reverse the entire vector of Scientology’s aims and activities.

He began by perpetrating a fraud upon the highest-level Scientologists, Clears and OTs, with his promise of upper OT Levels allegedly in his possession.  While the seed was planted at the January 1986 funeral event, it has been a cleverly-played mind game on Scientologists ever since.  Miscavige has devoted most of his attention to keeping these highest-level Scientologists on the farm for a reason.  He knows that they are the opinion leaders among the general membership.  With the opinion leaders doing his bidding, he is able to keep the majority of his followers in the dark.  At this he has done a masterful job.  But to ascribe any great virtue or power to him for having done so would be a mistake.  Without L. Ron Hubbard, David Miscavige would be little more than a clever, overly-aggressive con man.  To pretend that Miscavige perfected his consolidation of power without the help of Hubbard’s own decisions and policy would be naïve and untrue.  In fact, to so pretend would require quite an invalidation of Hubbard’s abilities, and the power of the technology he discovered.

Without the backing of Hubbard-authored Scientology policy, David Miscavige could never have created the Black Dianetics monopoly Hubbard had warned against many years before.  How could such a contradiction be possible?  That is a complicated story. For purposes of our discussion here, I will provide a brief summation of what will be more fully treated in a later volume.

In short, human beings are full of contradictions, and L. Ron Hubbard was not immune from that imperfection.  For better or for worse, during the ’60s, when Hubbard and Scientology were continually facing attacks intended to bring about their demise, Hubbard issued quite a bit of policy in response which changed the character of the movement.  This “wartime” left an indelible imprint on Scientology.  It was a dark ages of sorts for the movement.  It was a time when the group, as a matter of survival, needed to circle the wagons and know who was with it and who was against it.  This was the era when security checks became routine.  This was the period when ‘disconnection’ from suppressive persons was dictated and enforced by the organizations.  This was when policy called for the overt and covert destruction of alleged forces of evil.  This was the period when Hubbard created a monster to achieve that end – an ogre that would later play an important role in his own demise.  That was the Guardian’s Office – a legal and public relations organization with its own intelligence network.

The Guardian’s Office’s intelligence system was once described by a government official in the know as rivaling that of Israel’s state intelligence service (the storied Mossad).  Hubbard wrote volumes of material for the Guardian’s Office on how to smash and obliterate the “enemy.”  David Miscavige seized on this material during the early ’80s, when the collective crimes of a decade and a half of unfettered Guardian’s Office operations had come back to haunt Hubbard. Miscavige would rise, live and die by that wartime policy.

Miscavige became sort of a reactive mind of the Scientology machine.  Just as the reactive mind drives all of the past into the present to haunt and torture the individual, Miscavige drove all of Hubbard’s “war” era policy to the present, to haunt and torture Scientologists – and Scientology’s detractors – from the ’80s forward.

The way in which Miscavige corralled Clears and OTs, however, begins with a seemingly benign policy.  That is a Hubbard policy letter of 1967, entitled An Open Letter to All Clears. It is the first thing a newly-arrived Clear is required to read.

Hubbard represented consistently and repeatedly, from 1950 to the mid-’60s, that the quest for Clear is the pursuit of personal freedom and personal confidence, to the point of self-trust and being worthy of trust by one’s peers.  In the face of that continual statement of purpose and goal, the Open Letter begins hedging on those representations.  It begins indoctrinating the Clear into the idea that whatever sacrifices the individual might have made to achieve the state of Clear, the ledger of responsibility is not balanced.  The Clear has obligations to Hubbard and Scientology, and is expected to comply with group directives in order to pay off the debt, particularly if one should wish to rise to greater heights than Clear.  The Clear is told, in Open Letter:

An ethical code already exists for OTs so at the state of Clear one should not assume that one has a license to do just whatever one will…

…So, the policies of Scientology which have enabled you to reach the state of Clear still apply to all Clears. In fact, they apply more because you have the reality of their value and the necessity of seeing that they are followed…

…As a result, bigger responsibilities will be given and expected of you so you must be prepared to responsibly educate yourself where necessary so that you can do whatever is assigned to you in a proper manner, in keeping with the main goals and aims of Scientology.…

…It is a crime to invalidate the state of Clear – see to it that you don’t do this in your conduct as a Clear, particularly as regards yourself.…

…You have now become more than ever a part of a team. Obsessive individualism and a failure to organize were responsible for our getting into the state we got into.…

…As soon as you have gone the rest of the way this will become abundantly plain.…

…I expect and need your help to carry out the broad mission of decontaminating this area of the universe.…

And so, the promise of a Golden Age of reason among free-thinking, un-policed Clears was replaced with the news that the organizations would be enforcing your duty to follow an “ethical code” and the “policies of Scientology.”  It announces that you will comply with “whatever is assigned to you” by the organization.  Should any Clear bristle at this news, it is quickly pointed out that he is simply dramatizing the “obsessive individualism” that was “responsible for our getting into the state we got into.”  For my part, the most empowering cognition I came to in my own travels along the Bridge was that I no longer had to agree with anyone.  I no longer felt compelled to go along with group-think.  This was the key to breaking the controlling, conforming conditioning that society tends to coerce us into accepting, including all the group thought patterns that justify greed, cheating, conflict and war.  Upon indoctrination to An Open Letter to All Clears, I had to begin rationalizing, and thus invalidating, that new-found ability to chart my own course in life.

Thus, with Open Letter, and the volumes of policy it mandates now must be followed even more vigilantly, the vector became reversed.  The door was opened to the evolution of an obsessive group devotion that graduated into the Big Brother corporation which went on to ruin the lives of thousands, and to lose whatever magic Dianetics and Scientology were capable of producing in the first place.  It was bolstered by encyclopedic volumes of Scientology organizational policy.  Most of that policy is very heady and workable material.  It cannot be denied, however, that it is liberally spiked with a number of policies grooving in the idea that the group, the Scientology organization, is all important, and that its hierarchical structure must be respected and complied to, irrespective of who runs it.

Here is where the perversion we covered in Chapter 8, Ethics, receives its most potent authority.  The over-weighted third dynamic (group) would forever after skew the contemplation of the ‘greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics’ formula.

To gainsay this reality would be an exercise in denialism.  For example, any Scientologist reading this book is automatically guilty of a variety of Scientology crimes and high crimes, by the mere act of reading.  Per long-standing and currently-extant Hubbard Scientology policy, anyone who has read this far ought to be declared a suppressive person (a sociopath that both Hubbard and mental health authorities agree should be quarantined from society, without civil or constitutional rights).  This is how Scientology organizational policy protects and perpetuates the vicious cult Miscavige has created.

Exacerbating matters is the fact that the first thing a Scientology Inc. Clear will encounter upon reaching that state is unrelenting pressure to get onto the Operating Thetan, or OT, levels.  If a Clear wants to get on with life, exercise his new-found abilities and awareness so as to “practice to increase general reality” (as it was earlier noted that Hubbard had recommended) and resists compliance, Scientology Inc. resorts to scare tactics.  An Open Letter to All Clears is the first weapon in the organization’s arsenal on that score.  That is then compounded with the ultimate weapon, Hubbard’s pronouncement that a Clear is at grave risk as a being if he or she does not get through the OT Levels as soon as possible.  Ironically, that warning perhaps serves as the greatest invalidation of the state of Clear, which the Open Letter policy announces shall be considered a crime in itself.

As shall be made clear in the next chapter on the OT Levels, I am a huge proponent of the idea that the OT Levels are indeed capable of taking people to spiritual heights they never imagined possible.  However, to ignore the shift of focus and the reversal-of-motivation tactic employed – even by Hubbard himself – would be to check my logic and personal integrity at the door.  Just why Hubbard deviated from a 15-year devotion to creating a path that would only work where the practitioner’s motivations were solely the pursuit of truth toward the empowerment of each individual addressed, into scare tactics aimed at having each individual surrender his or her self-determinism to the will of the group, is a complex matter.  Warranted or not, much of what Hubbard and Scientology were facing in terms of opposition by vested interests by the mid-’60s wove its way into Hubbard’s outlook, his thinking, and his overriding, strong intention that Scientology survive and be made available to humanity.

At bottom, it was Hubbard’s reaction to what I consider ill-motivated, unethical, and vicious efforts by certain vested interests to keep him from achieving what he aimed for.  Whether the response was an over-reaction or was necessary at that time is a question requiring a more in-depth history.  For our purposes here – outlining what is wrong with Scientology – it is only necessary to highlight the contradictions that are obvious.  Recognition of those contradictions makes patent the simple fact that to take every word Hubbard wrote literally, and treat it as commandment, puts one on a slippery, untenable slope.  To do so would be just as irrational as criticizing and rejecting all of Hubbard’s work and discoveries just because it is recognized he was not infallible.  Exercising either extreme would be to employ the type of associative-reactive thought patterns his discoveries help people to overcome.

The problem with Hubbard’s reaction to the attacks, and the ultimate product of that reaction, is that it puts an individual or group right back into that which they had sought to transcend through Scientology in the first place.  Technically, it is a violation of one of his own fundamental maxims, “that which you resist, you become.”  It is perhaps best explained in Hubbard’s own words, in the very lecture series, the 1958 Clearing Congress, where he finally settled on the parameters and qualities of Clear:

We get this sort of a situation where everybody’s idea of everybody else becomes himself. Well, let’s look at that. Here’s Mr. A. Mr. A is certain that everybody around him is very evil and that they are “gonna get him” one way or the other. Now, Mr. A. has no choice – if he is also saddled with super-agreements, obsessive agreement, making equality a necessity – but to be this way himself.

Now, we ask this question: Does this evil character actually exist? And that’s one of the first things we have to ask in clearing. Does this evil character exist?

It seems like we have a synthetic personality in existence which isn’t really anybody, but is simply everybody’s idea of how bad the other fellow is. This is pretty complicated, see. See, he’s got the idea that this other fellow is so bad that he cannot help but criticize him violently. But because he is equal to this fellow over here, then, of course, he himself has to assume these characteristics of superlative evil. You see that? We get generals, admirals, politicians, all sorts of people, who have an idea that the enemy is so bad, or that the fellow man is so bad, or something else is so bad, they can’t possibly live with it, and have therefore got to cut it to pieces. It’s a very tricky thing. This has a vast bearing on clearing.

They’ve got to cut this evil being to pieces. Yes, but at the same time, they have an equality complex. By communicating with him, they therefore go into agreement with his evil characteristics, and the only thing they have left is an evil, synthetic personality which they themselves have to wear to be like everybody else and to be normal. This is one of the simplest and easiest tricks that is played in a culture.

So, what are you trying to do when you’re clearing people? You’ve got to find the fellow himself and you also, as you go up the line – not an attribute of Clear, but an attribute of OT – have to give him a certainty on the other fellow.

Therein Hubbard echoed the ancient book of wisdom he once noted that much of Scientology had grown out of, Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tzu:

There is no greater misfortune than underestimating your enemy. Underestimating your enemy means thinking that he is evil. Thus you destroy your three treasures (simplicity, patience, compassion) and become an enemy yourself.

In the same 1958 lecture, Hubbard continued by warning against the temptation to create policing agencies:

…Well, all you’d have to do is have a police force and a society would start caving in. Why? The police force constitutes a constant reminder that men are evil, which is a constant reminder that we must agree with these evil men. Do you see how this would work? Neat little trick.

Now, that doesn’t say that we are so starry-eyed as to believe that at this time we could dispense with all police. Or could we?

Now, you have to make up your mind which way you’re going to go with a society, if you’re thinking about a new society of one kind or another. And if you say, “Well, this society would be totally unregulated,” then we would be proposing an anarchy. And all the anarchists tell us that the only way a society would work as a total freedom without government would be if everyone in it were perfect.

Well, I don’t know whether we propose – when we talk about a cleared society – whether we propose or not to have an anarchy. That’s beside the point. That’s up to the people who get cleared. But I don’t think you’d wind up with an anarchy. I think you’d wind up with a much finer level of agreement and cooperation, because I think you’d then be able to realize the rest of the dynamics.

Again, Hubbard was in perfect alignment with the Tao:

Throw away morality and justice, and people will do the right thing… The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous the people will be… I let go of the law, and people become honest.

However, with the advent of tomes of policy, creating layers of hierarchical restriction upon the group and aggressive policing of its individuals’ morals, the promise of the sanity and happiness of a cleared group and society was replaced.  The new doctrinal paradigm held, in essence, that the only way to achieve a ‘cleared society’ was through a tightly-controlled, disciplined group whose survival trumped all other possible considerations.  While volumes were written on how to run a Scientology organization in keeping with the goals of Clearing and the promise of OT, no matter how one dressed it up, Scientology policy created and required a force that one would have to be in utter denial to characterize as anything other than the police enforcing prohibitions, so as to protect good people from other people presumably dedicated to evil.

I am quite aware that these views will be condemned by many Scientologists, corporate and independent alike.  But I believe that if one dispassionately examines the facts of how Clears and OTs have come to be treated, how they have docilely accepted such treatment, and how they have come to behave within Scientology Inc., to ignore or deny Hubbard’s empowerment of such treatment and behavior is tantamount to condemning Scientologists to repeating a history they are systemically required to remain ignorant of and yet perpetuate.

I am not contending that Hubbard was wrong to react to opposition in the way he did.  Nor am I contending that he should not have memorialized his reaction under the heading of ‘policy.’  I do contend that to take Hubbard’s policy literally, out of the time and the context in which it was born, is to become an extremist.  With extremism comes the loss of the potential benefits that would otherwise accrue from application of the discoveries Hubbard made.  In my opinion, nowhere is literalism and extremism more destructive than at the highest reaches of the Bridge, the OT levels.

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Posted in black dianetics, David Miscavige, ethics, healing, independents, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, policy, politics, Scientology, Tao Te Ching, the future, the Reformation

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The Way Out Is The Way Up

Posted on April 3, 2013 by | 309 comments

I received a report that IAS was pressure regging for vital projects that the church’s anti-psych arm CCHR (Citizens Commission on Human Rights) is working on. CCHR hack Bruce Wiseman is doing briefings on the vital necessity of killing some federal health budget.  The reason?  It includes funding of facial recognition technology research to detect and prevent  terrorist  attacks and mass murders.

Now, certainly there are abuses with facial recognition – most notably by criminal commercial identity theft operations.   But, to attack the technology of micro facial expression qua micro facial expression technology is pure caveman regression.  Unfortunately, the impetus for such regressive activity is woven into the woof and warp of a ‘science’ that was once heralded by one pundit as on par in terms of importance as ‘the  caveman’s  first discovery of fire.’

Let me illustrate how ironic, and regressive, this mentality is.

I spent seventeen years as an Inspector General, including seven as the Inspector General, within the church of Scientology.   In spite of impressions folks might have about that activity given the importance media has placed on the abuses I have exposed and confessed to, I became skilled at rapidly and accurately getting to the truth of various matters utilizing discoveries of L. Ron Hubbard.

In any given day I was called upon to determine the truth underlying several situations.  That usually entailed having to rapidly determine who was telling the truth and who was lying. The environment made that a rather difficult task given that Scientology managers used LRH tech themselves rather artfully to deflect attention, redistribute blame, and stay out of trouble.  Scientology management was a breeding ground for accomplished liars.

How I navigated that swamp was by understanding and utilizing LRH technology better than the expert artful dodgers.   While David Miscavige was fixated on the e-meter, treating it much like a lie detector, with the oft-repeated ‘put him on the meter’ order, I preferred not to use the meter.  When I did, I wound up relying more on facial and body indicators than on meter phenomena.   After all, indicators take precedence over the meter (all that you know when the meter reads is that the meter read; arc break f/ns, the meter reads on the auditor first, etc., etc.).

In the course of my in-depth study of everything L. Ron Hubbard ever said about the tone scale, indicators, and investigation (the Data Series and beyond), and out of survival and success pressure, I began to discover things for myself.   One of the most important things I discovered were common facial and body indicators – that are nowhere covered in the writings or lectures of L. Ron Hubbard, but are completely and utterly consistent with what he did write and lecture about.  In fact, application of what he did write inevitably led to the recognition of those indicators.

One critical indicator I noted over and over was the fake smile – curling of the lips, while the eyes remain cold as ice.  In the late nineties I was called upon to train a young crop of security officers for RTC.  Miscavige caught wind that I was imparting such data along with their training on application of the tone scale in investigations.  I was actually training them to increase their peripheral vision so that they could note how 1.1’s were so adept at showing their true emotion the micro second that you took your eyes off of them.  Miscavige went ballistic accusing me of ‘squirreling’.  That made perfect sense to me, since he was probably the first person I spotted the fake smile, and the masked true emotion, on.  After all, he could serve as the poster boy for it.

But, this is not a criticism of David Miscavige.   The problem is far deeper than that in Scientology.  No doubt, many Scientologists outside of the corporate walls would have – and have had – the same reaction to me evolving Scientology like the science I consider it to be.

The impetus for this essay was our watching of a TV series that someone recommended to me called Lie To Me (available on Netflix) starring Tim Roth.  Incidentally, I can’t recall who recommended it – and I would appreciate it if whoever it was reminded me.   While the show is fiction, it is based upon the established science of micro facial expression reading.   I found a number of the indicators that the psychologists have now catalogued and standardized in their training were the very ones I recognized and used while utilizing and expanding upon LRH tone scale tech professionally.  In other words, other fields of the mind are expanding on tone scale tech, while being deprived of LRH’s discoveries by Scientology’s cult-like, insulatory practices.

I recommend the series to anyone who is familiar with tone scale technology as developed by L. Ron Hubbard.   See how consistent micro expression tech is with tone scale tech.  See how far back in the stone ages tone scale tech is in comparison to micro expression tech.  See how far micro expression tech could go with a grounding in tone scale tech.  See how the protagonist uses his tech – naturally applying the auditors code, and beyond, by among other things, parking Scientology-brand ‘judgmentalism’ at the door.  I think you might get a greater appreciation for my mantra to integrate, evolve and transcend.  You won’t be disappointed even if you don’t see the tech parallels I am making, because the series is very entertaining in its own right.

Every day I see more evidence that the way out and up for Scientology and Scientologists is to integrate, evolve and transcend.   In the meantime, Scientologists are campaigning for segregation, devolution and regression.   Wake up. The way out is the way up.

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Posted in David Miscavige, healing, ias, independents, int base, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, politics, propaganda, psychs, regging, Scientology, tech, the future, the Reformation, the world

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Is Spirit of Quality or Quantity?

Posted on March 27, 2013 by | 364 comments

For the first several years of L. Ron Hubbard’s research into a path to enlightenment, his focus was on simplicity. In that wise, his quest aligned perfectly with the ancient universal truths he sought to make more easily and uniformly attainable.  Those truths, per Hubbard, were particularly well articulated by Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha), and Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching.   Hubbard seemed to understand, and could communicate in modern language, the Buddhist and Taoist descriptions of the spiritual, the difficult to conceptualize ideas of ‘emptiness’ or  ‘nothingness.’  Hubbard lectured as follows on 1 December 1954:

You can have a quality in complete absence of a quantity.  You don’t have to be “a quart of good boy.”  And this was what he (the scientist) was assuming, see.  The next time you see a pound of lust, send it around and we’ll put it in a museum.  These things are not quantitative.

So we had to get out of quantitative thinking, thinking in terms of objects and masses, before we had any real comprehension of existence.  And this was very easy to do. Very easy to do.  You merely had to define what zero was .  And we find that life, basically the awareness of awareness unit in life, is not a thing of quantity – not even vaguely of quantity. It is a thing of quality, of ability. 

Where you have ability, you have life. Where you have space, energy, mass…I don’t care what kinds of energy.  The energy contained in your engrams.  The energy contained in mental pictures.  The space contained in your visios or lack of them.  Anytime you have any quantity of any kind, you have walked downhill from life.  Just like that.  And this works out.  This works out in processing, works out gorgeously.

Scientology counseling (processing or auditing) does work out quite gorgeously when a thetan (the awareness of awareness unit, or individual spiritual being) is considered in this wise.   When this framework is kept in mind, Scientology procedures are rather simple.  That is because all of them are used toward the result of removing additives, or complexities, and returning the quality of the awareness of awareness unit to itself.   That quality is uniformly found to be good by universally recognized human standards.

Hubbard clearly mapped philosophy and procedures that brought about abilities (qualities) in a being that culminate in the state of Clear.  Hubbard defined a Clear as “an unrepressed and self-determined being” who is no longer subject to stimulus-response reactive thought processes.

Unfortunately, the issue becomes muddled as one assays to move higher on the Scientology path, called the Bridge.   Above Clear, the reached for states are no longer expressed in terms of freedoms from the additives that hamper a being.  Instead, Scientologists shoot for the vaunted state of ‘cause.’   Cause over matter, energy, space, time, and life is the state that is promised.   Powers become the target.   Rather than the removal of additives the goal becomes the inclusion of an additive, expressed in a term that infers physical properties or force, power.

In formal, organizational Scientology the relentless promotion and cultural propaganda and pressure hammer that theme home.  They seize upon some later seemingly contradictory words of Ron mentioned in policy letters and bulletins because of later turns Hubbard himself took.  By the mid sixties he began to contradict the maxim regarding quality versus quantity.  Beings were increasingly considered to vary in size, or to be recognizable by something other than quality, the new measure being quantity.

For example, in a policy letter issued on 22 March 1967 Hubbard introduced the idea of size with respect to thetans. He wrote,  ‘Some  thetans are bigger than others.  None are truly equal. ‘  He went on to instruct that smaller beings, whom he designated as degraded beings, occur ‘about eighteen to one over Big Beings in the human race (minimum ratio). ‘

Along with that shift of focus onto size came the introduction of different goals for processing.   Rather than the original goal of returning a being to the simple, uniformly good, freedom from the additives tainting the being’s quality, the focus went toward achieving powers.  Conditions of existence were issued along with formulas one could apply in life to improve one’s condition.  Those conditions were determined primarily by the quantity produced as measured by statistics. The most senior of those conditions to which all of them were designed to lead toward was called ‘Power.’  While those condition formulas were, and are, very workable, the schema contributed to a culture of lust toward attainment of power.

The very definition of power in Scientology radically changed as follows:

a)      The ability to maintain a position in space.  – 1 March 1958

b)      The amount of work which can be accomplished in a unit of time, or the amount of force which can be applied in a unit of time.  – 6 December 1966

Over time the adjective “powerful’ became regularly associated with ‘thetan’ in Scientology think and speak.   Scientologists began to promote and covet the idea of becoming a big, powerful  thetan.   Scientology promotion became more geared toward such ideas as ‘unleashing the power of the thetan’, and  bestowing ‘super power’.   Achievements in the Scientology world were ascribed as attributes of ‘powerful thetans’ and ‘big beings.’   Conversely, bad conduct was routinely condemned as that of smaller beings.

Exacerbating matters were more Hubbard policies that excused otherwise destructive behavior of beings based upon the size or power of the individual, particularly when that alleged size or power was abused in the forwarding of the power of Scientology as a movement.  Thus, in the policy The Responsibilities of Leaders, Hubbard’s ‘seven points of power’ suggested the ends justify the means when protecting the ‘power’ one relies upon for his own power.   Hubbard suggests the physical beating of the critic of the power one relies upon and serves is commendable behavior.  He even suggests that a real power would accept those who rely upon his power murdering enemies of the power.   And that a true power would encourage his underlings to keep him ignorant of the crimes they commit in increasing his power.  In fact another  Hubbard ethics policy letter stated that an individual who produced a lot toward expansion of Scientology could ‘get away with murder.’

In the years that Scientology evolved in this fashion, most particularly after the death of Hubbard, its very aims were demonstrably altered in significant ways.  Gradually, alleviating the world of ‘insanity’, ‘war’, and ‘criminality’ was replaced by a drive to wreak ‘planetary obliteration’ or exact ‘global vengeance’ against the Scientology-designated evil-doers of earth.

It fairly makes one wonder whether somewhere along the line Scientology lost sight of its own purpose and the quality of life it was created to restore.

Does Scientology address beings as ‘qualities’ that lost sight of their own very nature by introduction of the confusion of ‘quantity’ into the equation?

Or does Scientology address beings as ‘quantities’ that need to have some quantity added to them to become sufficiently big and powerful?

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Posted in ethics, healing, ias, independents, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, Scientology, Tao Te Ching, tech, Uncategorized

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The Enemy

Posted on March 21, 2013 by | 463 comments

I commented twice in the discussion on the post Scientology Regression that there is no enemy; the malady is having to have one.  Apparently, Scientology instills the firm belief that there are people worthy of the label ‘enemy’, and that such people must be depowered and dispensed with, or in some cases made to be and act in an acceptable way.  I’m sure someone will cite to What Is Greatness?, originally published as a magazine article in March 1966, to stop this train of thought.  In that case, someone else can just as easily cite HCO PL The Responsibilities of Leaders, issued as policy less than a year later, which justifies murder provided it is carried out stealthily against the enemy of a worthy enough power.

You even have a self-auditing process in Scientology designed for people deemed by authorities in the group to have acted in a way that warrants the label ‘enemy.’  That formula requires the individual to change the very essence of his being – his very concept of his own identity – to conform to the liking of the powers that be in the group.  That can be a rather dysfunctional, destructive process given the fact that finding out who one really is is the end product of the Scientology bridge itself.  In order to be accepted back into the group he must, in addition to other steps, ‘deliver an effective blow to the enemies of the group one has been pretending to be part of despite personal danger.’

I think it is worthwhile for someone who has adopted Scientology beliefs to think about what notions have been inculcated into oneself about labeling people as ‘enemy’ and treating them as such.  Think about the effect it might have on your relations and your own peace of mind.  For contemplation about how to deal with anyone who might declare you an enemy of him or her, an apt passage from the Tao Te Ching describing what is a ‘great man’ might assist:

      He thinks of his enemy as the shadow that he himself casts.

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Posted in ethics, healing, independents, Integral Theory, justice, l. ron hubbard, policy, Scientology, Tao Te Ching

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Scientology Regression

Posted on March 18, 2013 by | 360 comments

Michael Moore, President of the International Freezone Association, posted an article on the iscientology blog apparently in protest of the message this blog, and my book What Is Wrong With Scientology?, have been proposing as a course to assure the future relevance of Scientology:  integrate, evolve and transcend.   In his article, What is RIGHT With Scientology, Mr. Moore asserts that the reason Scientology has a bad rap is because:

In today’s western society man is cultured into believing that he is basically bad, cannot be changed for the better, and is a body only run by a brain and all efforts are in the direction of reducing man’s level of responsibility through the encouragement of laziness and increased regulation. Through repetition such mores become the accepted norm and efforts to introduce a more causative approach for man, such as Scientology, hit this head on. Hence it takes time to assimilate a new and radical ‘think’.

“All efforts” in “today’s western society…are in the direction of reducing man’s level of responsibility through encouragement of laziness and increased regulation” and apparently to condition him into believing “he is basically bad, cannot be changed for the better, and is a body run by a brain”?   This statement is so sweeping and absurd as to communicate to the world that Scientologists are uninformed, isolationist cultists.   Perhaps, even fascist cultists, given the  political slant he apparently felt compelled to toss in.  At best, it is a complete effect point of view, rivalling the victimhood that Scientology Inc. instils in its members to be totally certain and right in the face of the most fantastic wrongnesses.

Mr. Moore goes on to assert:

There are many philosophies and religions with promises either based upon behavior or practicing certain rituals to assure oneself a place among the gods so to speak. But not one of these religions or philosophical ideologies or practices, prior to Scientology, attempted to increase the abilities, responsibility and causative levels of an individual using a practical application of the philosophy in the form of a technology, the techniques of auditing and the bridge over which to travel to attain higher states of being in a measured and predicable fashion. On the contrary it was a case of pray hard or meditates (sic) hard and leave everything to the gods.

Does anyone have an idea what religion and philosophy is promising people a ‘place among the gods’?  Ironically, of all religions, this claim fits Scientology more than any other, what with the hyperbole of ‘powers’ and total ‘causation’ to be had by following its rituals and behavior.  His sum up of every religion and philosophy outside of Scientology as ‘pray[ing] hard or meditate[ing] hard and leave everything to the gods’ is far more ignorant and bigoted than anything that would possibly emanate even from David Miscavige’s Scientology Inc.

Moore’s  article more than bristles at the repeated suggestions on this blog that Scientologists recognize the similarities between it and other practices (which incidentally, never once imply that a single Scientology auditing procedure be altered).  His implication that there is no possible gain to be had by the hundreds of millions of people on this planet who in some form or another confront their minds is indicative to me – aside from serving to make Scientologists look arrogant and narrow-minded – that he does not understand the first thing about how Scientology auditing actually works.  He apparently believes it has to do with the ritual and not the act of seeing something exactly as-is, so as to as-is it.  Yes, yes.  The ritual is remarkably workable.  It is directed and patterned and performed  with an exacting discipline that is extremely effective.  But the ritual does not blow the charge – the individual observing, or witnessing, exact time, place, form and event is what blows charge.  To say that witnessing never happened anywhere else in the world ever is to tell the world you are a pack of mislead idiots who never did anything worthwhile with your mind and yourself as a spirit.  I got news for Michael, that attitude got Scientology where it is today.

Are there any practicing Scientologists out there who see these types of public statements as uninformed, bigoted, and/or arrogant?

Are there any practicing Scientologists who believe it is a wise course to attempt to integrate, evolve and/or transcend?

I really would like to know the answers to these questions.

I don’t think piling on or launching assaults on the alleged character deficiencies of me or Michael will contribute to anything constructive.  I really think we need answers to the two questions posed.

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Posted in David Miscavige, healing, independents, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, office of special affairs, tech, the future, the Reformation, the world

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Ron the Integral Thinker

Posted on March 15, 2013 by | 199 comments

I finally got around to watching several of the interviews of Phil Spickler that are posted on You Tube. What a breath of fresh air. A wise man who evolved through Scientology and lived long enough to speak about it with measure, intelligence, compassion and hard won experience. Clearly, Phil doesn’t have a horse in the race nor any agenda other than sharing his experience and what he took from it for the purpose of helping others. I am including one video in particular here where he and I share some observations. I am going to tell a back story to demonstrate why I think it speaks to Phil’s credibility and teaches an important lesson about Scientology.  Phil and I have never met, spoken nor corresponded.

For the past several months I have been studying sources that L. Ron Hubbard once credited as being influential on his thinking. Several of the critical ones he later eschewed and effectively denied had any connection or relationship to the development of Dianetics and Scientology. From my reading, it appeared to me that some indeed had little influence. That was particularly true for some of the more sensational ones that certain journalists have obsessed with because it made good copy, such as Aleister Crowley (note: in my final analysis though, Crowley’s influence was a dastardly one). However, after reading Alfred Korzybski, the founder of General Semantics, I found far more influence than Ron ever let onto, even if he consistently made more references to Korzybski than just about anyone else.

Korzybski’s 1933 opus Science and Sanity is as close to a template for Dianetics as exists anywhere. Science and Sanity is a 900 page foundation for the creation of a “Science of Man.” Korzybski finds the underlying principle aberration of the human mind is ‘identification.’ He isolates one of the most important foundational skills to develop as that of differentiation, which he calls ‘to distinguish.’ He begins by establishing the need for the use of infinity logic, and to eliminate two-valued logic and the belief in absolutes. Being the first general semanticist he puts extreme importance on knowing all definitions of words, and emphasizes the importance of creating an entirely new nomenclature. Central to a ‘science of man’ is revolutionizing the science of communication. He is the one writer I have ever read whose tone and voice closely resembles Ron’s. He repeatedly emphasizes, with unrestrained vehemence, the need to reject much of what has come before: scholarship, institutional education, mental health profession givens, politics.  He even preaches a heavy disdain for ‘democracy.’ That was the extent of my comparison by the time I ran into Phil’s talk below. He identifies another parallel between Korsybski and LRH that is probably more important than any of those I have noted.

I found the several videos of Phil that I have watched (the 5 part series and the 6 part series) to be chock full of credible information given in a credible manner. I chose the one segment below to introduce the idea that Ron was indeed influenced by his learning – and did not immaculately conceive Dianetics and Scientology, as miraculous as his discoveries were.  Though some might bristle at the suggestion his discoveries were ever represented in such wise, I believe such a reaction would be born out of denialism. It is critical for growth and transcendence to understand that the technologies of Dianetics and Scientology were evolved out 10,000 years of evolution in thought that preceded them.  Unless of course one desires to regress by holding to the idea one can, or must, cling to that which is already written to the exclusion of any other evolved or new original thought.  L. Ron Hubbard applied Integral Theory decades before Integral Theory was even conceived of.  And I agree with Phil’s assessment of and attitude about Ron, he is a hero for accomplishing what he did, particularly in the environment in which he did so.  At the end of the day, I believe what I am noting here, in combination with what Phil talks about, are validations of the credibility of Ron’s work.

Watch the rest of Phil’s talks when you get the chance. The ones I have watched are poignant and contain rich history and observations we all could learn from.

Thanks to Tatiana for having the foresight and for expending the time and effort to capture Phil on video and make it available.

Thanks to Phil for demonstrating that study and practice of Scientology can contribute to our evolution into wise folks.

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Posted in acknowledgments, healing, independents, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, tech, the future, the Reformation, Uncategorized

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The Tao of Scientology

Posted on March 13, 2013 by | 377 comments

 

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Posted in acknowledgments, ethics, healing, independents, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, policy, Tao Te Ching, texas, the future, the Reformation, the world

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Integral Theory

Posted on March 10, 2013 by | 338 comments

There is a tremendous body of work available on the subject of Integral Theory.   It comes from the idea to ‘integrate.’   That is, to bring disparate parts together into a synergistic whole.  Its principle author is a philosopher by the name of Ken Wilber.   Wilber sought to provide maps for those interested in rising to higher levels of consciousness.

He approached the problems of humanoid existence from a completely different perspective than L. Ron Hubbard.  Hubbard’s approach could be characterized as more ‘subjective’ whereas Wilber’s was more ‘objective.’   Hubbard tackled the problem of what was eating him, figured out how to deal with it and developed a technology to share the route.  It was a masterful process of elimination – differentiating those datums that assisted his journey from those that did not, and then codifying the former while rejecting the latter.  His rejection of that which did not assist his route was done in the most emphatic terms, emphasis perhaps added in part, to clearly differentiate his route.  In this regard, he was unparalleled in his ability to detect and label what and who was ‘wrong.’  His emphasis became dissociation and exclusion from other thoughts and ideas.

Conversely, Wilber began with the proposition that ‘everyone is right on some level’.   All routes have a place somewhere on a bigger map.  His emphasis was on association or inclusion.  He looked for the common denominators of great religious, philosophic, contemplative, and psychotherapeutic practices over centuries and placed particular emphasis on objective indicia of workability. From that he developed scales outlining evolutionary phases, levels, and states that people went through from birth to the highest states of consciousness.  Whereas Hubbard was the founder of a mental/spiritual practice or lineage, Wilber was more a philosopher/academic who mapped common denominators of many practices and lineages.

Probably in part due to the vehemence with which Hubbard rejected and condemned other routes, and his established reputation for severely punishing critical analysis of his route, apparently even though Wilber approached the matter with the stable datum that ‘everybody is right on some level’, Scientology was never included in the analysis (at least it was never mentioned).

Ironically, at the end of the day, the work of Hubbard fits quite tidily into the broader maps drawn by Wilber outlining what objective analysis tells us are workable means toward higher states of consciousness.  In that respect a study of Integral Theory serves to enrich one’s understanding of how and why Scientology works.  It also serves as an objective, even scientific validation of the work of Hubbard.  Wilber projects and advocates integral psychotherapeutic and spiritual practice – subjects that all too often are treated as two disrelated practices .  And so it is somewhat ironic that Hubbard gets nary a mention in Wilber’s work when L. Ron Hubbard was a pioneer in the integration of spirit into psychotherapeutic practice.  That is likely due in large measure to the intensity of prohibition on integrating Scientology practice with any other learning or discipline. Sadly, virtually none of the rapidly expanding ranks of Integral practitioners and thinkers – whose work over time increasingly treads on ground tilled by Hubbard – recognize a single word of Hubbard.

Interestingly, Integral Theory also validates virtually all of the commonly agreed upon distinctions that integral-thinking Independent Scientologists seem to have agreed upon that make Scientology workable on the outside and potentially deleterious within corporate Scientology.  That, by no means, applies to many Indies who have shown a violent disdain for the ideas of integration, evolution and transcendence as outlined in What Is Wrong With Scientology? Healing Through Understanding.

There are four potential benefits for learning something about Integral Theory.

First, one can attain a much broader, far-reaching understanding of the technology of Scientology than one could possibly attain from denying himself from studying data of comparable magnitude to it.  Ironically, to those literalists unwilling to expand their horizons, such an approach to learning is recommended in Hubbard’s Data Series (Scientology logic) and Scientology Logic 8 itself: a datum can be evaluated only by a datum of comparable magnitude.

 Second, if one wants to begin thinking rationally with how the subject of Scientology might be communicated to the world, post corporate Scientology Armaggedon, one had better know the vast array of parallels that exist between it and other subjects. In the Age of Information a cloistered, my-way-or-the-hiway, damn the ignorant infidels presentation will likely wind future Scientologists up in remote caves clinging to AK 47s.

Third, for those who have ventured quite a ways up the Bridge it gives you  a number of informative standards by which to evaluate what Scientology has done for you and what perhaps you seek but have not found in Scientology.  In other words, you might find there are ways and means available on this big, wonderful planet that might serve you in moving on up a little higher.

Fourth, for prospective Scientologists and those applying it at all levels of the bridge, integral theory can help you to maintain your own intellectual integrity and sovereignty, integral to full expansion of consciousness and yet put at risk if approaching Scientology with tunnel vision.

For the curious, a good introductory overview of Integral Theory is covered in The Integral Vision by Ken Wilbur, which can be picked up used on the cheap on Amazon books.  A more in-depth, but very well articulated overview is covered in a ten-part interview series with Wilber conducted and published by Sounds True (available on Amazon, and sometimes EBay).

Word of advice.  I am not promoting or recommending Wilber’s own suggested introductory integral program at chapter 6 of the book.   It is a reflection of Wilber the guru or practice teacher, as opposed to Wilber the researcher and philosopher. The former grew out of popular demand by much good
work as the latter.  But, I think anyone who reads this blog is intelligent enough to differentiate when the two hats collapse – which in the broader field of the map making work does not happen often.  I do happen to agree with Wilber’s initially emphasizing the wisdom of an aerobic and weight-training regimen.  I read a Canadian medical study once that found that muscle stress training can greatly reduce the speed of body-aging deterioration (even claims, though I don’t grok the science of it well enough to vouch for it, that on a certain level it can reverse the aging process of the body).  In either event, I have found on a subjective level that a fit body frees all manner of attention units for work on the mind and spirit.

Note for the Kamikazee KSW crowd.   In Wilber’s more in-depth, purely research/map-making work he emphasizes that it is not wise to monkey with workable contemplative lineages. In other words, don’t change workable technology – instead, supplement it where it does not address or meet all of your needs or goals and purposes, and better utilize it by understanding it in greater depth against advances in science, the mind and spirit.

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Posted in acknowledgments, healing, independents, Integral Theory, Ken Wilber, l. ron hubbard, Scientology, the future, the Reformation, the world

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