Category Archives: Integral Theory

There Are Some Things You Just Can’t Fight

Posted on October 6, 2013 by | 44 comments

From Lieh-Tzu, A Taoist Guide to Practical Living, by Eva Wong (Shambhala Publications, 1995):

An eye that is about to lose its sight tends to be extremely sharp in making out details.  An ear that is about to become deaf tends to be very acute in its hearing. A tongue that about to lose its sensitivity can make out the differences between water from two sources.  A nose that is about to lose its ability is most sensitive to fragrances.  It is as if the senses are fighting to maintain their usefulness.  However, no matter how hard they fight, they will eventually lose their effectiveness.

It is the same with people.  People who are beginning to weaken will push their bodies to the limit.  People who are about to lose their minds will become unusually argumentative.  This is because they are not willing to admit that all things must end, and they want to make a show of their strength to cover their weakness.

On the other hand, enlightened persons accept the natural course of things.  They do not force their bodies to display strength or their minds to show cleverness.  Knowing that there are some things that they can’t fight, they accept what comes.  That is why they can embrace life and accept death. 

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Posted in acknowledgments, healing, Integral Theory, Tao Te Ching, Uncategorized

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Scientology Culture

Posted on September 28, 2013 by | 168 comments

Henry David Thoreau’s description of mid-nineteenth century American culture could serve as a fairly accurate description of Scientology culture today, in my opinion.

Thoreau:

It is remarkable that the highest intellectual mood which the world tolerates is the perception of the truth of the most ancient revelations, now in some respects out of date; but any direct revelation, any original thoughts, it hates like virtue.  The fathers and mothers of the town would rather hear the young man or young woman at their tables express reverence for some old statement of the truth than utter a direct revelation themselves.  They don’t want to have any prophets born into their families, – damn them!  So far as thinking is concerned, surely original thinking is the divinest thing. Rather we should reverently watch for the least motions, the least scintillations, of thought in this sluggish world, and men should run to and fro on the occasion more than at an earthquake.  We check and repress the divinity that stirs within us, to fall down and worship the divinity that is dead without us.  I go to see many a good man or good woman, so called, and utter freely that thought which alone it was given me to utter; but there was a man who lived a long, long time ago, and his name was Moses, and another whose name was Christ, and if your thought does not, or does not appear to, coincide with what they said, the good man or the good woman has no ears to hear you.  They think they love God!  It is only his old clothes, of which they make scarecrows for their children.  Where will they come nearer to God that in those very children?

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Posted in healing, Integral Theory, Jesus, policy, quotations, Scientology, squirreling

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Crossing Over

Posted on September 25, 2013 by | 413 comments

There comes a time when it well behooves one to review the bidding in the game called life.

What follows are some thoughts that some might find useful in such a review.

I have used the term ‘construct’ many times on this blog and in my books.   This is the definition I have mainly been using:

Noun

1 b :  a working hypothesis or concept <the unconscious was a construct that came from the daily effort to understand patients>

To date I have used the term mainly in reference to the space opera scenarios inculcated into Scientologists at the upper levels of the Scientology.

I believe that one reason some Scientologists have so hysterically reacted to the idea of considering such indoctrinations as constructs is that they are implanted to believe constructs to be unalterable truths from the get-go of their Scientology experiences.   Consequently, they are living in a sort of parallel universe; an agreed upon and reinforced one that requires such firm policies and notions as ‘disconnection’, ‘squirreling’, ‘treason and enemy conditions’ and the like to protect its constructs from analysis against data of comparable magnitude .  By adopting such self-constricting, voluntary-ignorance vows,  Scientologist can be thoroughly dissociated from observation outside of their firmly believed constructs.

With that introduction, I am going float an idea that is liable to shock the sensibilities of the most liberal minded Scientologist.  That is that just about everything one learns in Dianetics and Scientology is a  construct; a working hypotheses or concept to hold in order to practice a ritual.

In fact, the very first unalterable law one learns is so thoroughly implanted as unquestionable fact that what I am about to impart is pretty much guaranteed to lose me friends and readers.   But, I’ll go ahead and share the idea, confident that it will be of some service to some who have made honest efforts to integrate, evolve and transcend their Scientology experiences.

All of Dianetics and Scientology from one’s first introduction through the highest of OT Levels are utterly dependent upon this first construct.   I will be the first to vouch for its workability to a certain level.  I will also be the first to state that if not evolved and transcended from, continued adherence and reverence to it is the very glue holding a debilitating addiction in firm control of the individual.

That construct is the equation expressed as a fundamental law of the universe even three years before the publication of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.  The equation is “the individual is lesser than bank (the reactive or subconscious mind).  Auditor plus individual are greater than bank .”

If one were allowed freedom to experience the ‘state’ of Clear (the long-held goal of Dianetics and Scientology) one could not help but to soon realize that upon attaining Clear.   But, that is not allowed in Scientology.  Instead, the equation is re-stated with a great deal of false promise and threat of eternal damnation upon the attainment of Clear.

Some people who have moved on through solo auditing will understandably chafe “that’s bullshit, when I solo audit it is me against the ‘bank’.”  And here is where the thought stopping theater of the absurd begins.  First, what bank?  It was supposed to have vanished at attainment of Clear.  The reaction from the die-hard Scientologist of course is that he feels betrayed by this question because it is the ‘bank’ he has vowed never to converse about.  So, the conversation ends there with some.   And the solo-auditor will assiduously go on confronting the bank that no one can speak about, directed every step of the way by his solo C/S (case supervisor), solo D of P (director of processing), Master at Arms (Ethics Officer), ad infinitum.  In other words, it is no longer ‘auditor plus individual is greater than bank’, it is more like ‘individual plus C/S, plus D of P, plus MAA, plus the Sea Organization, and the 5th Sector cavalry might have a fighting chance against the inter-galactic forces of evil that constitute what is wrong him.’

Few, it seems, stop to contemplate and recognize that the further one goes, the more formidable, and interminable his baggage becomes in Scientology.   Fewer still, it seems, recognize the construct nature of the fundamental law that served as the glue to addict him or her to cult life in the first place.

‘The bank is great than individual’ or ‘the individual is lesser than the bank’ is an invented construct.  It has its uses.  But, it is not a fact.

Those who have achieved Clear in Scientology might learn a handy lesson from the man L. Ron Hubbard once claimed to be the architect of the heritage of Scientology, and once claimed to be himself, Siddhartha Gautauma.    The Buddha has been reported as passing along this little parable:

A man walking along a highroad sees a great river, its near bank dangerous and frightening, its far bank safe.  He collects sticks and foliage, makes a raft, paddles across the river, and reaches the other shore . Now suppose that, after he reaches the other shore, he takes the raft and puts it on his head and walks with it on his head wherever he goes.  Would he be using the raft in an appropriate way?  No;  a reasonable man will realize that the raft has been very useful to him in crossing the river and arriving safely on the other shore, but that once he has arrived, it is proper to leave the raft behind and walk without it . This is using the raft appropriately.

In the same way, all truths should be used to cross over; they should not be held on to once you have arrived.  You should let go of even the most profound insight or the most wholesome teaching; all the more so, unwholeseome teachings.

 

 

 

413 Comments

Posted in Buddha, Casablanca, healing, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, philosophy, Scientology, tech

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Emotions IV: The Top Of The Tone Scale

Posted on September 6, 2013 by | 384 comments

references:

Real Emotions

Emotions II: Play Acting Scientologists

Emotions III: The Tone Scale

Some Scientologists unaffiliated with the church clearly believe Ron Hubbard had everything completely taped with no need and no room for additional thought or discussion.  They certainly have a First Amendment right to assert their firmly held religious beliefs concerning the only way to proceed along the only road to total freedom; provided they do not commit civil or criminal wrongs while doing so.   By the same guaranteed freedom, I can continue to attempt to free captive minds caught in suspended cognitive dissonance.

Some have posited that the Tone Scale in Full referred to in the posts here about emotions refers to ‘tones’ which don’t qualify as emotions because they occur only with spirits who have transcended bodies, or are experienced by spirits independent of any other physiological phenomena connected with emotions as understood by the rest of the civilized world.  By the way, that assertion is made notwithstanding the fact Hubbard’s last words on the subject were those written in his Tone Scale film script.  In that work he had actors, in bodies, depict (with their bodies) all of those vaunted alleged out-of-body tones.  In either event,  these states are normally associated with the highest levels of consciousness attainment in Scientology.

As religion is religion because it deals with, among other perhaps less important matters, life and death and ultimate concerns, should not the life and death of the author of whose words may not be discussed or questioned be of some relevance?  Scientology demands as much by clothing itself with scientifically guaranteed claims, while adhering to institutional policy that requires the personal destruction of anyone who might attempt to objectively discuss or weigh those claims. By his own firm policy, which has resulted in the destruction of scores of relationships and careers of the curious over decades, Ron demands that the only proofs of Scientology be purely subjective.  That leaves the only available objective measure of workability to be the examination of the lives and conduct of those making subjective claims about the product of the subject.

I am interested in hearing from adherents their take, particularly as it relates to the application of the Tone Scale and emotion as they interpret it, to the ultimate emotional state or tone or consciousness state of Ron.  I have included a passage of a discussion I had with Steve ‘Sarge’ Pfauth – a very dear and loyal friend to L. Ron Hubbard to this day – about Ron’s ultimate states of emotion or tone or consciousness.   I have fully discussed – in an in-depth context – my views about it in my book Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior.  Let’s hear yours.

From Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior:

Sarge (Steve Pfauth):  So, anyway, he (L. Ron Hubbard) wanted to see me.  So I went into the Bluebird and sat down.  And he sat across from me and he said, “Sarge,”…boy I wish I had written it all down because I don’t want to goof it up, because this is kind of important.  Basically he said, “Sarge, I need you to do something.”  He wanted me to build him a machine that would get rid of the bts [body thetans] and kill the body.

Mark (“Marty” Rathbun): Wow.

Sarge: Yeah.  It’s kind of heavy.  It struck me real hard.  He told me a few things.  He said, “Yeah, I’ve done all I can do here and I’m just… I’m not coming back. I’m leaving and I am not coming back.”  He wanted to die, basically.  You know, his body was going to hell and all that stuff.  He was having trouble with bts.

Mark: And you say that was in late ʼ85?

Sarge: Yeah.  Fall of ʼ85.  Yeah, it was right around October.

Mark: Like three months before he died.

Sarge: Yeah, like three or four months.  So, I didn’t want to do it. But I didn’t tell him that.  And I was hoping I could talk to Pat because Annie insisted that I build the machine.  And I said, “Annie, I don’t know that much about building machines that fry people, you know what I mean?”

Mark: Well, did he describe how it should be done?

Sarge: Basically, he wanted to hook it up to the e-meter.  And he wanted enough voltage in there that it would get rid of the bts.  And I asked him about voltages and I asked him some questions…it was so long ago. And, uh, well, I gotta tell ya, it upset me a lot.

Mark: I bet.  So, the idea was that you’d be holding the cans…

Sarge:  Turn the thing on and then, in other words, he was gonna audit the bts away and the body was gonna die.

Mark:  Right. So there would be enough voltage to kill the body?

Sarge:  To do it all.  How he figured I was going to figure that out, I have no idea…

… Sarge:  Yeah.  Earlier on I cooked for LRH.  He thought I was a good cook.  And then he got sick.  Anyway, what happened was I was very upset.  So I got pissy-ass drunk and Annie found me about four o’clock in the morning with beer cans all over the green truck, out at the racetrack.  I had passed out on the seat.  And she was screaming at me, “Oh, you son of a bitch!” Oh man, she laid into me.  And I said, “All right, Annie,” and my head was hurting.  But I was upset, I was very upset.  I was crying and everything.  That was a rough time. Very rough.  Uh, so anyway, then days went by, okay?  And Annie kept saying, “He wants to know about the machine, he wants to know about the machine. What are you doing on the machine?”  Annie says, “If you don’t do anything on this Sarge, he’s going to get the local electrician to build one for him.”  Can you picture that?

Mark: Wow.  That would have been a…

Sarge: I said “No way, man.”  So I had to show some progress. So I went to an electronics place in San Luis Obispo and I bought some Tesla coils and some up-transformer things and I got all sorts of things. I basically built him a battery-operated automotive coil type thing.  This is my reasoning now, Marty.  If he gets zapped by that sucker, it’s gonna shock him but it ain’t gonna kill him.  Okay?

Mark: Okay.

Sarge: It’ll shock him but it ain’t gonna kill him.  It’ll scare him and he won’t want to do it again.

Mark: These are like 12-volt batteries?

Sarge: Yeah.  But the voltage is going to go way up on a transformer.  It’s like an automotive coil sort of thing.

Mark:  So your thought, what you understand is that he is not going to get…

Sarge: I’m not frying him!

Mark: Exactly.  I gotcha.

Sarge:  I didn’t want anything that is going to plug into the wall.  I didn’t want to fry him, but I didn’t want to tell him I didn’t want to fry him.  You know what I mean?

Mark: Yeah, I think about what you are saying right now, and I try to put myself into your position and I…

Sarge:  It was very difficult.  I didn’t want to kill the old man.  So anyway, he used the thing and he fried up my Mark VI [e-meter].  I had a Mark VI that got fried.

Mark:  He used it?

Sarge:  Yeah.

Mark:  LRH actually used it?

Sarge:  Yeah, it was my Mark VI, yeah.  And it fried the Mark VI.  I knew that was going to happen.  Fried it.

Mark:  You mean he actually tried…

Sarge:  Oh, yeah. It had burn marks on it and everything.

Mark:  He didn’t get burnt?

Sarge: He may have.  But after that there was no more mention of any machines.  And that was my intention.  That was my intention.

Mark:  He probably got a good, hard jolt.

Sarge:  I think it scared him, or something.

Mark:  And it burned the plastic?

Sarge:  It was burnt.  It was fried.  The insides were gone.  Because, you know, those things are like a computer.  You can’t put that much power into them without zapping them…I do think people need to know. I just wish at the time when I first blew that I would have written it all down.  But I carried it because I had no terminals [people to talk to].

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Posted in black dianetics, cover up, David Miscavige, healing, independents, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, ot 8, philosophy, propaganda, Scientology, tech, the Reformation, Uncategorized

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The Gospel According to Jesus

Posted on September 2, 2013 by | 139 comments

That is the title of another book by Stephen Mitchell, whose translation of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching I have many times recommended on this blog and in my books.  The subtitle is: A New Translation and Guide to his Essential Teachings for Believers and Unbelievers.

Mitchell undertakes an effort begun by such noted Americans as Thomas Jefferson and Ralph Waldo Emerson, both of whom assayed to differentiate the life and words of Jesus from the hype, falsehood, misdirection and fear they perceived had been added to the Scriptures by others.

I am going to share one passage from the introduction of Mitchell’s book that I believe might resonate on several levels with people who have invested in the Scientology experience.

Excerpt from The Gospel According to Jesus:

He enjoys eating and drinking, he likes to be around women and children; he laughs easily, and his wit can cut like a surgeon’s scalpel.  His trust in God is as natural as breathing, and in God’s presence he is himself fully present.  In his bearing, in his very language, he reflects God’s deep love for everything that is earthly: for the sick and the despised, the morally admirable and the morally repugnant, for weeds as well as flowers, lions as well as lambs.  He teaches that just as the sun gives light to both wicked and good, and the rain brings nourishment to both righteous and unrighteous, God’s compassion embraces all people.  There are no pre-conditions for it, nothing we need to do first, nothing we have to believe.  When we are ready to receive it, it is there.  And the more we live in its presence, the more effortlessly it flows through us, until we find that we no longer need external rules or Bibles or Messiahs.

“For this teaching which I give you today is not hidden from you, and is not far away.  It is not in heaven, for you to say, ‘Who will go up to heaven and bring it down for us, so that we can hear it and do it?’ Nor is it beyond the sea, for you to say, ‘Who will cross the sea and bring it back for us, so that we can hear it and do it?’  But the teaching is very near to you: it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.”

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Posted in acknowledgments, healing, Integral Theory, Jesus, Tao Te Ching, Uncategorized

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Ability

Posted on August 11, 2013 by | 80 comments

Related posts:

What We Do: Part 1

Graduating Scientology (What We Do: Part Two)

What We Do: Part Three

Ability

In my estimation one of L. Ron Hubbard’s most important contributions to spiritual psychotherapy was his guided approach to witnessing.  The Scientology Grades were for the most part developed in Ron’s attempt to build a smoother, more sure-fire route to ‘Clear’, which he defined as the ‘unrepressed, self-determined’ state of being that is not continuing to unwittingly create his or her own mental barriers.  Engram running of the early fifties was a grinding, messy affair.  Notwithstanding ample claims otherwise in Scientology publications and lectures, the results were inconsistent and many times catastrophic.  Fifteen years of experimentation and research led to the introduction of the Grade Chart.  It was the culmination of years of research on how to achieve ‘Clear’ more rapidly and certainly than with the uncertain, hit-and-miss Dianetics engram running method.

As Ron developed each Scientology grade, along the line he claimed that each, individually, was the answer to attaining Clear, quite independent of one another.  For example, Grade 0 is the Communication grade.   The book that serves as the backbone of Grade 0 technology – and the auditing (communication) process itself – is called Dianetics 55!   The book explains the entire universe within the sole construct of communication.   It posits that if one were perfectly ‘cleared’ on the subject of communication one would have no ‘case’ (the cumulative aberration of an individual) and thus would not only be Clear, but also OT (Operating Thetan, later ‘higher’ postulated state of being).

It is the same for Grade 1 (problems), Grade 2 (hostilities and sufferings), Grade 3 (change), and Grade 4 (fixed conditions and ability to do new things).   The statement of those goals, intentions, and results at each Grade were memorialized in his lectures along the way.  And at every level you can find Ron postulating – in fact, stating as factual certainty in his own inimitable style – that that grade is the answer to Clear and beyond.

During much of that research period Ron included a caveat about each of those levels being the answer in and of itself.  That is, that if an auditor were addressing the recipient-client from the perspective and with the intention of improving ability his postulated Clear and beyond could and would occur.  Addressing ability was starkly in contrast to the approach in Dianetics, which attacked disabilities.   This is well covered in the Ability Congress lectures.  There, Ron pronounces as ‘law’ that if an auditor approaches a client with the attitude of improving ability, he will get more ability. If he focuses on addressing disability, he will cause more disability.

As was most often the case in the history of Dianetics and Scientology research, the survival considerations of fighting enemies and having the wherewithal to do so and carry on affected the ability or willingness to test out the hypotheses and claims Ron made along the way.  It was a fast-moving train constantly receiving and firing volleys, while attempting to lay ever-more instant and consistent track.  Critics of Scientology and Hubbard will give more nefarious, ill-intentioned reasons for that omission of testing.  The reason why is of little import, because regardless of causation, the fact remains.

Along the way, the once stable foundation of the priority of addressing ability as opposed to disability was lost.  I have found through 35 years of practice that this loss was fatal.  Focusing on disability results in a never-ending ‘bridge’ requiring cult-like devotion and ultimately creating regression.  Focusing on ability brings greater ability and determinism.   There is one thing that perhaps best distinguishes how we practice from others we are aware of.  Our first stable foundation is that we audit and train toward ability.

80 Comments

Posted in Casablanca, healing, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, Monique Banks Rathbun, Mosey Rathbun, philosophy, Scientology, texas, the future, Uncategorized

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Graduating Scientology

Posted on August 9, 2013 by | 131 comments

A lot of what I do has come to be characterized by my wife and me as assisting folks to graduate above Scientology.   It is somewhat of a unique notion.  In fact, the vast majority of people who devoted much time to Scientology ultimately go through the graduation process;  reconciling what they learned and gained, differentiating it from the entrapment mechanisms involved, and finding ways to integrate with society, and to evolve and transcend as a person.  As far as Scientology-understanding assistance along that route, resources have been slim.

To date there has really only been a couple of paths for Scientologists and ex-Scientologists; at least ones that are assisted by Scientologists or ex-Scientologists who understand something about the subject.  Both avenues are of the least resistance variety; the easy, least effective ways that ultimately don’t lead toward graduation.

First, one can cling to his firmly held Scientology religious beliefs and continue with the installed cognitive dissonance that entails.  He or she can be guided to pretend that it is all ‘over-there’ in the church and play the ‘I am the resurrection of the real Scientology’ game.   That ultimately leads to a sort of bitter, secluded ‘victorious Confederate soldier’ megalomania and melancholy.  Second, one can be guided to redirect the implanted Scientology need for an enemy and spend years in a state of suspended enturbulation, senselessly flailing at the church or Scientology itself.  The latter route leads to much the same state of mind and consciousness as the former.

I think both routes are infected by perhaps the most insidious virus one is inoculated with in participating in Scientology.   That is the need to have an enemy.  I have written about this before, e.g. Cults, Enemies and Shadows.  It is a decidedly ‘effect’ state of mind; a continual restimulation of a paranoia about the external ‘true’ cause of one’s travails.  It does not lead to growth, evolution and transcendence in any sense.  It is like remaining in High School year after year, failing to evolve past the angst of adolescence.

There has been a tremendous amount of research done on stages of human growth; cognitive, psychological, moral and more.   This is research done by way of learning more about biology, and observing and interviewing tens of thousands of people for over a century.   It is not ivory tower ‘psych’ chatter.   James Fowler thoroughly studied this huge body of work and spent many years observing an entirely new category of development consistent with those already done on moral, biological, and cognitive bases.  His work was on the stages of development of faith.  Please read this excerpt from his book on the subject,  Stages of Faith, concerning the observed stage of adolescence:

New expectations, qualitatively different disciplines and a host of difficult decisions are the requirements with which societies greet the now more womanly or manly adolescent. In trying to meet and fulfill these requisites youth will call on the available and personally resonant ideological resources of their environments, particularly those that are embodied in charismatic and convincing leaders.  They will seek sponsoring groups and figures and will appoint otherwise well-meaning persons as temporary enemies over against whom their identities may be clarified.  They may band together in tight cliques, overemphasizing some relatively trivial commonality as a symbol of shared identity.  In this cliquishness they can be quite cruel as they exclude those who do not share this common element.

The Scientologist and ex-Scientologist adolescent pack mentality can be graduated from.  It opens up to view a wonderful horizon of possibilities and futures.  I think first and foremost it entails getting over the implanted need for enemies.

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Posted in healing, independents, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, philosophy, psychs, Scientology, Tao Te Ching, the future, Uncategorized

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Emotions III: The Tone Scale

Posted on August 6, 2013 by | 190 comments

Someone posted here once a lecture reference where L. Ron Hubbard pronounced that ‘action’ and ‘games’, were the places to aim for in terms of chronic emotion or state of consciousness (see Real Emotions for how Scientology tends to collapse the two ideas).  The idea was that the top of the scale ‘serenity of beingness’ was far too boring for a being to stay with for very long. For those who made those ‘emotions’ their chronic targets, or their aspired to states of consciousness, here is something to think about.  Games and Action are not emotions.  They are activities.  One could and does engage in ‘games’ and ‘action’ at every level of emotion. The next higher ‘emotion’ on the Scientology emotional tone scale, Postulates, too is not an emotion – and like ‘games’ and ‘action’ is engaged in during all manner of actual emotion.  While ‘Serenity’ may well be an emotion, ‘serenity of beingness’ is probably something else entirely (more on that at another time).  Perhaps the placement of activities on the emotional tone scale contributed to some of the confusion that occurs in Scientology with respect to the role and purpose and worth of emotion.

This begs the question, are there emotions higher than exhilaration (perhaps the highest Scientology tone scale position that is fairly sure to be an emotion)?  I think it is a worthwhile exercise for people to work out for themselves how the emotional tone scale should or could or can be logically and intuitively seen to be.  That is particularly so for those who have set their life goals around the achievement of the non-emotions placed at the top of the Scientology tone scale. It can be a liberating exercise.  I have done a lot of work on it myself – by self-observation and observation of others.  I share some of my notes on it below.  This sharing is not for the purposes of indoctrinating or selling an idea.  Instead it is provided in order to stimulate thought and conversation and input.  The plain type items accompanied by numbers are from the original Hubbard Tone Scale In Full.  The italicized typed items are tones on the existing scale that I question as being emotions in the first place (as noted above).  The bold-faced, italicized entries are emotions I added by observation in their relative positions to the existing Tone Scale In Full.

 

Bliss, Pan-equilibrium (Non-Duality)

Serenity, equilibrium (Justice)

40.0  Serenity of  Beingness                                          Know

Compassion (Responsibility)

Care  (Nurturing)

Empathy (Transcendence of ego/pan-emotion)

Appreciation (Acknowledgment)

Release (Letting go)

30.0  Postulates                                                                Not Know

22.0  Games                                                                       Know About

20.0  Action                                                                         Look

8      Exhilaration                                                              Plus Emotion

6      Aesthetics

4      Enthusiasm

3.5  Cheerfulness

3.3  Strong Interest

3.0  Conservatism

2.9  Mild Interest

2.8  Contented

2.6  Disinterested

2.5  Boredom

2.4  Monotony

190 Comments

Posted in Casablanca, healing, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, philosophy, Scientology, tech, the future, the world

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Emotions II: Play Acting Scientologists

Posted on August 5, 2013 by | 107 comments

Scientology culture is recognizable by its collective, synthetic ‘cheerful’  or ‘enthusiastic’ emotional tone.  Scientologists learn to put on a happy face.  If they are seen without one, a fellow Scientologist considers it his duty to ‘handle’ it. And that primarily means making the person mentally deal with the life situation causing the lower emotion so that he can easily mentally cope with putting on a happy face in spite of it.  In a Scientology group one is expected to act happy.  To display any emotion less than that results in Scientologists almost instinctively interceding with a person’s psyche to remedy the perceived problem.  A Scientologist learns eventually to convincingly act happy all the time, even when he or she is feeling deep sorrow, a sense of devastating loss, or is suffering pangs of conscience.

Scientologists will bridle at the notion they are taught to play act through life.  But, the technology they are applying day in and day out is plain:

‘Force yourself to smile and you’ll soon stop frowning.  Force yourself to laugh and you’ll soon find something to laugh about.  Wax enthusiastic and you’ll very soon feel so.  A being causes his own feelings.’  – L. Ron Hubbard 25 August 1982

If you read Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior (Amazon Books, 2013) you will get a fairly comprehensive picture of the mood of the Scientology community that Ron was addressing with this bulletin, and the reasons for that tone.   That includes the mood that Ron himself was in.

I think that if you look at it objectively you cannot help but see the effects of a culture en masse adopting the stable datum that emotion is something to create like play acting.  That objective look has prompted some to reckon Scientology culture as resembling those communities depicted in the movies The Stepford Wives and The Truman Show.  How else could otherwise upstanding-seeming citizens blissfully ignore wholesale human rights violations happening at their church’s headquarters, the regular disappearing of church public figures, the forsaking of long-time associates and even family on the arbitrary order of one’s church, the countenancing of extreme methods of harassment directed at anyone who expresses the slightest disagreement with the Scientology way, etc, ad infinitum.  If you believe this only applies to the corporate church community you have got a serious case of denial – maybe even the Stepford/Truman strain.

There is another, accurate, word to describe this phenomenon of manipulating one’s own emotions.  It is called ‘acting.’

As in, act, from New Oxford American dictionary: 2. Behave in the way specified, and  5. Peform a fictional role in a play, movie, or television production.

I have news.  One must for sure act in order to attain desirable emotion, such as those concomitant with ‘happiness.’   But, Scientologists  – notwithstanding all their literalness with exact, precise definitions of terms – are given  and tend to thus dramatize the wrong definition of act.

Try, definition 1, Take action; do something.

Viktor Frankl can ‘splain better than I can:

Normally, pleasure is never the goal of human strivings but rather is, and must remain, an effect, more specifically, the side effect of attaining a goal.  Attaining the goal constitutes a reason for being happy.  In other words, if there is a reason for happiness, happiness ensues, automatically and spontaneously, as it were.  And that is why one need not pursue happiness, one need not care for it once there is a reason for it.

–          Vitkor Frankl, The Will to Meaning

For those Scientologist still sufficiently brainwashed to refuse to consider the words of a psychiatrist – even one who survived three stints in Nazi concentrations camps and demonstrably walked the walk far more realistically than any Scientologist who ever breathed – maybe the following will resonate.   It is understood in the highest halls of academia as well as the streets of Brooklyn.  You gotta work hard to ‘be’ who you wanna ‘be.’   Wake up.  Perceive. Feel. Live.

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Posted in black dianetics, healing, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, propaganda, psychs, Scientology, tech, Uncategorized, Viktor Frankl

Real Emotions

Posted on July 30, 2013 by | 244 comments

Somewhere along the way emotion was converted into equating with states or levels of consciousness in Scientology.  In the process emotion became a negative humanoid attribute, e.g. writing off any feeling or expression of emotion off as ‘human emotion and reaction’ or ‘h, e and r.’

Emotion and grades of awareness or consciousness are not the same thing.

Wikipedia gives a good definition for emotion that was no doubt contributed to by a number of interested people from a variety of religious, philosophical, scientific and educational backgrounds.  It is as follows:

In psychology and philosophy, emotion is a subjective, conscious experience that is characterized primarily by psychophysiological expressions, biological reactions, and mental states. Emotion is often associated and considered reciprocally influential with mood, temperament, personality, disposition, and motivation,as well as influenced by hormones and neurotransmitters such as dopamine, noradrenaline, serotonin, oxytocin, cortisol and GABA. Emotion is often the driving force behind motivation, positive or negative.

That definition is not inconsistent with Scientology definitions, even if it is far more comprehensive.

The last sentence bears some thought, ‘Emotion is often the driving force behind motivation, positive or negative.’    Carl Rogers has noted that emotion can serve as an important referent to deriving meaning.  For example, an issue that confronts you causes sadness.   In processing that emotion, it might inform your conscience and influence you to decide to do something worthy about the situation.  That in turn could result in your feeling some more pleasurable emotions.

If instead you used a mental trick to lift you out of sadness, you may well simply feel comfortable – in the short run – in forgetting that which made you sad.  Your conscience is bypassed in the equation; and the situation that perhaps legitimately engendered feelings of sadness remains unaddressed.   Would that be ethical?  Would that be pro-survival?  You’d have to think of examples of real situations and work it out for yourself.

Imagine habitually utilizing exercises that rose you from genuine emotions caused by real situations that confronted you.   What would ultimately happen to your conscience?   How real and worthy and meaningful a life would you wind up living?

Perhaps because emotion is mistaken for a level, grade, or state of consciousness in Scientology the culture tends to frown on having, demonstrating or processing emotions per se.  They certainly are not recognized as anything worthy of serving as a referent to deriving meaningful meaning.  Emotion instead becomes something to get out of, something to rise above, or something to manipulate in others.  Techniques abound in Scientology for achieving that.  Nothing wrong with such tools provided they are used wisely.  When I say wisely, I mean not done so habitually and consistently that one becomes emotionless.  In Scientology cultures, folks can become downright anti-emotional to the point where conscience is effectively forfeited.  That would seem to be a factor in Scientologists’ facile ability to turn their backs on loved ones, associates, family, and  friends; and even to proudly avow to never fear to hurt another in a just cause.

If you’ve been in Scientology culture for very long, I invite you to have and process for yourself some real emotion.  Don’t try to repress it, suppress it, avoid it, evade it, escape it, conquer it or ‘causatively’ rise above it.  Instead, feel it for all it is worth.  See for yourself whether sometimes emotion can inform your conscience and your decisions and lead to more rewarding and meaningful activity on your part.

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Posted in Casablanca, disconnection, ethics, harassment, healing, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, philosophy, Scientology, Uncategorized

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