Tag Archives: l. ron hubbard

The Tao of Physics

Posted on March 31, 2013 by | 251 comments

Scientology technology is powerful  in lifting an individual from being effect up to being more at cause.

In accomplishing that Scientology focuses heavily on, and makes great use of,  Newtonian classic physics  principles.  Unfortunately, ultimately that world view tends to lock a Scientologist under a glass ceiling of sorts to further transcendence of awareness and qualities of equanimity.

Evaluated against the very axioms (including The Factors and Logics) Scientology is predicated upon one could easily reckon that to be the case.  Paradoxically, Scientology contains laws of interpretation that make one of its own Logics, critical to growth and transcendence, forbidden practice:

Logic 8:  A Datum can be evaluated only by a datum of comparable magnitude.

Thus, the first comprehensive fusion of Eastern thought with Western science ultimately disallowed study of either in the continuing search for truth and higher levels of consciousness.

A very good primer for a) evaluating what is valuable about one’s Scientology experience and what about Scientology makes it so effective, and b) beginning the process of transcending  from where Scientology might leave one in terms of consciousness, is the book The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra (recommended to me by the irrepressible Scott Campbell).

Even though the book was first published in 1975, and it has been followed by dozens of authors treading similar ground of analyzing breakthroughs in sub atomic physics to Eastern wisdom and consciousness, I have found it to be the most thorough, layman-friendly piece on the subject to date.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who has experienced Scientology.   Most particularly to those who have completed the Scientology OT Levels, started the Scientology OT Levels, or who have any intention of pursuing them in the future.  It will provide vital context for your experience.   It might help prevent you from becoming fixated, and set up for a big lose, on the quest for total causation.  And it might help to take you to higher levels of consciousness not contemplated or permitted in Scientology (even through consequent practice of Scientology techniques).

As I have noted before, I believe that it is essential to the transcendence of Scientology to rise above the fixation on attaining to the permanent state of causation.  The fixation can ultimately result in a painful state of effect or an arrogant state of hallucinatory cause.  In either event, it parks one in any quest for continuing transcendence to higher states of being.

Here is an excerpt from the Tao of Physics that gives a brief description how the confluence of Eastern wisdom and Western science supports that view:

Many of the Eastern teachers emphasize that thought must take place in time, but that vision can transcend it.  ‘Vision’, says Govinda, ‘is bound up with a space of a higher dimension, and therefore timeless.’  The space-time of relativistic physics is a similar timeless space of a higher dimension.  All events in it are interconnected, but the connections are not causal.  Particle interactions can be interpreted in terms of cause and effect only when the space-time diagrams are read in a definite direction, e.g. from the bottom to the top (note: space-time diagrams are explained earlier in the book). When they are taken as four-dimensional patterns without any definite direction of time attached to them, there is no ‘before’ and no ‘after’, and thus no causation.

Similarly, the Eastern mystics assert that in transcending time, they also transcend the world of cause and effect.  Like our ordinary notions of space and time, causation is an idea which is limited to a certain experience of the world and has to be abandoned when this experience is extended.  In the words of Swami Vivekananda,

 Time, space and causation are like the glass through which the Absolute is seen…In the Absolute there is neither time, space nor causation.

The Eastern spiritual traditions show their followers various ways of going beyond the ordinary experience of time and of freeing themselves from the chain of cause and effect – from the bondage of karma, as the Hindus and Buddhists say.  It has therefore been said that Eastern mysticism is a liberation from time.  In a way the same may be said of relativistic physics.

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Posted in acknowledgments, healing, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, ot 8, Scientology, Tao Te Ching, the future

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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?

364 Comments

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

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The Secret

Posted on March 24, 2013 by | 244 comments

This is addressed those who have read the book (by Rhonda Byrne) or seen the film The Secret and failed to have its magic work for them.

The secret revealed in The Secret was the ‘law of attraction.’  In short, that which one thinks one gets.  That upon which one focuses one’s attention will be attracted into that person’s life.  As the book points out the secret is nothing new.  More than 2500 years ago the Buddha was said to have said ‘you are what you think.’ What is new about The Secret is the marvelous job it does of communicating the simplicity of the truth from religious, spiritual, self-help, and even scientific perspectives. The crux of The Secret’s authority is that great human beings throughout history have all apparently uttered the ‘law of attraction’ in their own ways as being a ‘secret’ to their successes.

However, mastering the law of attraction is not quite as easy as the book and movie make it out to be. If the secret was so simple to realize and apply, no doubt in the seven years since the book was introduced, and remained a bestseller, the world would have by now been transformed into something resembling the garden of Eden.  So, what went wrong?

Two things in my view.

First, and this is fatal to the realization of its message,  The Secret omits a most important step of realizing one’s intentions.  That step is doing something in furtherance of that realization.  One can think all the most pleasant thoughts in the world, and absent doing anything to realize those thoughts will result in a person thinking a lot of thoughts.  Every single historical figure that The Secret used for its authority for the ‘law of attraction’ was a prodigious doer.  They did not merely think about what they wanted, they pursued what they envisioned with every fiber of their beings.  Yes, even the Buddhist’s noble eight-fold path begins with ‘right view’ and ‘right intention’.  But, it is followed by ‘right action’, ‘right livelihood’, and ‘right effort.’

Second, The Secret appeals almost exclusively to people’s material interests.  While some of the historical figures used as authority for the book accumulated unimaginable riches I am pretty sure they did not do so by aiming exclusively to attain those riches.  They had bigger, broader dreams and if attainment of those more worthy intentions did not involve attainment riches, they likely would not have been any more wealthy than you or me.

In keeping with the law of attraction, when a person focuses exclusively toward the attainment of matter, they will get matter.  The problem is, that matter might not glitter with gold.  It more than likely will be the dull, painful matter that is most closely associated with thought.  That is mental mass and energy.  And so many a poor soul put all their mental power into conjuring fancy cars and yachts and wound up instead with splitting headaches.  Why?

The answer lies with another historical figure who understood the secret but who was not mentioned in the book.  L. Ron Hubbard built an extensive philosophy, psychotherapy, and religion predicated on the magic of the law of attraction.   He stated it in 1954 in this wise:

Considerations take rank over the mechanics of space, energy and time.  By this is meant that an idea or opinion, fundamentally, is 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 freedom of an individual depends on 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 actual.

Hubbard realized that stating these facts – such as was so artfully done in The Secret – alone did little to liberate people from their self-imposed mental enslavement.  Over the next couple decades Hubbard developed a mental and spiritual technology for relieving the mental mass and energy an individual accumulates since birth while under the mistaken idea that the mechanics of matter, energy, space and time take precedence over the considerations of the individual.  He called the subject Scientology.

There are two Scientology routes to achieving a strong realization of the law of attraction and the ability to use it to one’s advantage. The first, is what Hubbard called the Training Routines.  It is a two to three week course in communication toward the ability of realizing and executing intention.  For some people that course alone will free them to clearly see and apply the law of attraction in their lives.  For those it does not deliver that end phenomenon to, it will not have been a waste of time.  At worst, one will walk away with improved communication skills and the ability to more comfortably be, do and have as one wishes.

The second route is called auditing (from the Latin root, audire which means to listen).  It can be pursued if the first route gave you something desirable, but not all that you sought toward mastering the law of attraction. An auditor does one on one counseling with a person which directly addresses one’s ability to recognize his or her spiritual self, the creator of the considerations that dictate the mechanics in one’s life.  There are six levels of counseling that follow one from another in a gradient approach.  Any one of those levels could result in a person feeling perfectly comfortable and competent in living with and by the law of attraction. There are a number of other skills and abilities attainable with each one of them.

There is an important word of warning in choosing to apply the L. Ron Hubbard approach.  As so often happens with the empowering ideas of a philosopher, institutionalization and monopolization of those ideas for power and profit can pervert them beyond recognition.  By no means should a person go anywhere near a church of Scientology nor any Scientology practitioner who does not practice Hubbard’s ideas in an integral fashion.  Such folk are religionists whose intention to help you is overshadowed by their intentions to convert people to become Scientologists.  That encompasses a world view and philosophy that in many ways is one hundred and eighty degrees diametrically opposed to the simple methodologies of helping people master the law of attraction.

An integral practitioner understands and continues to educate himself on philosophy and science outside of Scientology so as to increase his own worth and ability to apply his skills.  An integral practitioner would understand The Secret and how Scientology methods can be used to realize it and would use them in that spirit.   A true believer Scientologist religionist does not understand that The Secret is simply another way of describing the very thing Scientology was created to achieve.  Thus, a true-believer Scientologist can practice Scientology for a lifetime and never realize The Secret.   Rather than assist you to realize it, he would attempt to discredit it and to dissuade you from even pursuing it.  An integral practitioner serves with the purpose of empowering you.  A true-believer Scientologist attempts to own you so as to ‘save you.’

If you wish to pursue this route, be sure you establish that you are pursuing it with an integral practitioner.

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Posted in black dianetics, healing, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, Scientology, tech alterations, the future

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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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The Blame Game

Posted on March 1, 2013 by | 522 comments

I just received another volley from an irate, prominent self-anointed  ‘with Ron’  type of ‘Independent Scientologist’.  It was actually an attempt to control through command, assigning me a Treason condition with instructions – after lengthy evaluations – to first apply the Confusion formula.

I only raise the matter here because it is live evidence of two of the most insidious elements of Scientology that in my estimation are at the root of its demise.  It is a great learning opportunity.

The first I will address here, blame.  The propensity to find and assign blame is woven into the woof and warp of Scientology, making it perhaps one of the most difficult character deficiencies to remedy in a veteran member.

The rather lengthy screed I received pronounced me guilty of the current horrid state of Scientology on the planet today.  One central allegation was that I allegedly totally mishandled the corporate Scientology attacks upon me and my family, by …’  Your response to the attack of Miscavige is quite predictably stimulus and response…rather than tangling with the cur dogs nipping at the wheels of the fire engine, you have become one of them.’                            .’

Not more than a month ago two other prominent ‘Independent Scientologists’ as much as accused me of being a suppressive person for failing to automatically and continuously attack David Miscavige and blame him for virtually every shortcoming of Scientology – really on a stimulus-response basis.

The common denominator of these self-professed ‘with Ron’ Indies on both sides of the GPM (goals problem mass – the resultant mass from the collision of opposite intentions or flows colliding) is the seemingly stimulus-response tendency to blame.  In all of their authoritative, judgmental communications the overriding theme is to assign responsibility for whatever it is they are suffering upon another.  Ironically, anyone who witnessed much of Miscavige in action knows that his stimulus-response habit of blaming is perhaps his most destructive and prevelant tendancy.

Here is a central dichotomy with Scientology.  The technology, in pure, sane application can deliver a person to the state where he or she truly understands that he or she is responsible for his or her own condition.  In fact, a person only reaches the pinnacle of the state of Clear, by recognizing this fully and thus losing all inclination to engage in blame.  Yet, I ask you to examine the matter for yourself and see whether there are not other conditionings added to the mix along the route that make that realization in practice short-lived.

I was also accused of ‘You are not getting people to do, you are getting people to question and think about.’

Good point.  Here, I’ll ask people to do something.

Get yourself a copy of the Tao Te Ching, preferably ‘a new English version’ by Stephen Mitchell.

Read it more than once at your leisure, and particularly when you sense the onset of anxiety.

Learn to let go.  I assure you that if you work on it it will move you on up a little higher in disposition and character.

Since apparently the ‘with Ron’ guys won’t listen to Ron on the matter of blame, maybe they’ll listen to Lao Tzu:

Failure is an opportunity.

If you blame someone else,

There is no end to the blame.

522 Comments

Posted in acknowledgments, David Miscavige, ethics, healing, independents, l. ron hubbard, policy, propaganda, Tao Te Ching, tech, the future, the Reformation, Uncategorized

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The Road I Must Travel

Posted on February 20, 2013 by | 212 comments

L. Ron Hubbard was a great observer and describer of phenomena.  He once noted that the universe abhors a vacuum.   He also noted that when confronted with a vacuum of data, people tend to invent data to fill it.

I have intentionally not shared a lot of personal information over the past several months; and I don’t intend to start regularly doing so in the near future.  However, I have observed that Ron’s description of the information vacuum has apparently created a field day for those intent on reading tea leaves and those who harbor intentions inimical to my own.   And that has apparently upset some folks.  So, I am going to attempt to fill in the vacuum in the hopes it might set some people at ease.

Monique and I worked hard throughout 2011 to create some time for me to write some books that I believe will help Scientologists and former Scientologists heal and move on up a little higher with their lives.   Things did not go as planned.  2012 presented some issues that I thought, right or wrong, deserved my attention.

We wound up spending the bulk of the year assisting with battles (Battle of San Antonio, mop up of Headley affair,  expose of the Pat Broeker affair, etc.).   We with forethought entered them and exited them without a single penny in compensation; not even for the not insubstantial personal costs involved.   Fundraising for them diverted much of our income for the year.  This was the case much to the frustration of Debbie, Wayne, Marc, Claire, and others who demanded I be compensated.   We did not do so because the road I feel I must travel requires absolute independence of thought and obligation.  The pursuit of truth can, and has through history – including with Scientology- , been compromised by financial considerations.

We decided to move at the end of the year and Monique decided to go back to work in the health care field for two reasons.  First, it was necessary in order to obtain the type of premises that would afford us our life back from an intelligence apparatus the likes of which have been unknown to the world since the infamous East German STASI.  Second, it was necessary to afford me the time and space to get done the books I am in progress on.  Monique knows what I have to say – and what I have been trying to find the time to complete in the full context I have always asserted it deserves in books form.   She felt it so important to be said that she gave up – temporarily – the joy and fulfillment of auditing in order to make it happen.  We also forfeited our only assets, $35,000 in equity from a lease/purchase option, in order to effectuate this change.

Thanks to great research and planning on our part, we are moving forward on our plans while also rebuilding our lives from the intrusion.  It is not that the STASI (OSA, Scientology Inc.’s Office of Special Affairs) has gone away.  It is that they are buffered.   Thanks to the good people in our community, and the rather ethical and uncorrupted law enforcement agencies in our vicinity, we know more about their rather extensive and expensive surveillance operation than it can divine about us.   Their absurd black PR campaign being run directly at virtually everyone we have known or met (including everyone who has visited us and all of Monique’s family) is indication of the level of frustration of not having 24/7 access to our every movement.  It also doesn’t hurt having Sugar Ray Jeffrey as a neighbor and friend – the only man in history who has kicked Scientology Inc.’s ass two times in one year and who is fully motivated and prepared to do so again if they get too adventrous.

As far as what I have to say in my books, I am previewing some of it on the blog of late – but those are simply snippets.   I will say the following.   I believe I will demonstrate that perhaps the most powerfully destructive fault with Scientology is its promise and authoritative insistence that only it, to the explicit and must-be-agreed-upon exclusion of examination of any other data or technology, with scientific precision delivers ultimate truth.   Understanding that, in my view, opens one to potential heights that Scientologists wind up insisting they have achieved, but in reality are not even aware of.

Where ultimately does that go?   I don’t purport to know.  I do believe, though, that the moment one is certain he has arrived, he in fact has died spiritually.

To borrow a line from Tom Morello, ‘the road I must travel, its end I cannot see.’

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Posted in acknowledgments, black dianetics, David Miscavige, Debbie Cook, ethics, harassment, healing, independents, justice, l. ron hubbard, miscavige crimes, miscavige lawyers, Monique Banks Rathbun, Mosey Rathbun, office of special affairs, PI reports, tech, texas, the future, the Reformation, Uncategorized

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Integration, Evolution, and Transcendence

Posted on February 18, 2013 by | 174 comments

Learning the art and honing the skills of differentiation, identification and association increases accuracy of observation. It increases intelligence. It increases ability.  L. Ron Hubbard aptly defined the application of those skills as sanity.

When one observes while exercising differentiation, identification and association one has assumed and assigned identity, differentiated himself from and made associations between himself and those phenomena and things that he observes.  By doing so, one is experiencing duality in the mode of causation.

Continued practice in these skills can reduce complexities and systems to simplicity and create a heightened sense and certainty of oneself and his place and role in the cosmos.  It can bring about an unrepressed, self-determined, well and happy state of being.  Scientology technology, sans cultish policy/group think indoctrination, is well equipped to bring about that state (the means and reasons why are covered in some detail in the book What Is Wrong With Scientology? – along with vital data on how to steer clear of the policy/group think cult indoctrination).

Once attained, one can trade on those skills to bring about higher intelligence and power of observation in others and/or more profit and power to oneself.  Some, though they would be the last to admit it, obtain and exercise a feeling of superiority and a comfortable identity for having accomplished a high degree of competence in the skills of identification, association and differentiation.  If the exercise of one’s skills are of sufficient value by way of their scarcity, more penetrating observation beyond them might seem a threat to the value of those skills of differentiation, identification and association and all that they garner. One can very easily find a contentment level where further observation of higher truths and unexplored realms might be seen to upset the comfort of the help, profit and power zones one is experiencing or operating in.  Some have even bought into the idea that to transcend or move on from that which increased one’s ability to identify, associate and differentiate would be tantamount to eschewing those skills and constitute the most heinous form of treason.  The act of continued observation beyond the constructs provided apparently threatens the very identity the skilled one carved out and created for himself as a master of identification, association and differentiation.

On the other hand, one could also value curiosity, sense of adventure, and thirst for higher truths above comfort and power – and possess the courage to explore them – and one could thus seek to view larger and more complex systems and the interactions between them.  Over time, one might begin to observe entire universes and their interactions.  One might even transcend identity and the differentiation, identification and association that defines it and catch a glimpse of all of existence and the synchronicity with which all elements within it seem to interact.  Contrary to the fears announced by those profiting and comforting by expertise in the skills my personal experience is that further exploration only sharpens those skills.

When one observes the whole of existence with no differentiation, identification and association in mind – simply observes the whole of existence as it is – one does not differentiate, identify or associate himself.  One is not separate and apart from the whole of existence.  One is experiencing nonduality.

If one also studied advancements in science, he might find that the higher reality of nonduality is being validated in the laboratory.  And if he continued to observe, beyond differentiation-association-identification, he might find that the universe can be seen to behave as quantum mechanics is beginning to demonstrate. That is, the behavior of the universe is dependent upon the character of the observer; that there is a synchronicity and interconnectedness across the cosmos that is largely invisible and undetectable to the five traditional human senses which are all bound up in identity, and its dependence for survival upon differentiation and association.  Planet earth’s greatest scientific minds – historically, the most skilled at differentiation, identification and association – tend to say of quantum mechanics, ‘if you think you understand it, then I know that you don’t.’

They might more accurately have stated that ‘if you think you can explain it in words, then you haven’t witnessed it.’  As Lao Tzu noted: The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.  The name that can be named is no the eternal Name.  The unnamable is the eternally real.  Naming is the origin of all particular things.  Free from desire, you realize the mystery.  Caught in desire you see only the manifestations. Einstein called it ‘spooky’ phenomena, as phenomena observed potentially could turn our entire concepts of all of existence, our very identities and the definition of God, upside down.  For decades hence science agreed to steer clear of examining how quantum phenomena might impact or shed light upon the nature of the soul, spirit and consciousness. For the past five decades, however, scientists have increasingly explored consciousness and contemplative philosophers have begun to explore science. And in this meeting of minds more clarity is arising.

The heightened abilities to differentiate, associate and identify are demonstrating with greater accuracy how we can better predict the manner in which the universe responds to stimuli.  The universe can be more causatively manipulated. It can be more thoroughly controlled.  It can be caused to bring about more comfort, profit, and power to the identities exercising identification, association and differentiation on a more causative level.

However, it seems that only when one transcends identity and the need for comfort, wealth, and power and the need to differentiate, identify and associate in order to collect and maintain them, that the higher truths of the universe can be directly experienced and perceived.  Not with the five traditional senses.  Instead, with the sixth sense and beyond – referred to in Scientology as theta perceptics, referred to in Eastern traditions as nondual consciousness or awareness.

It seems that if one can learn to let go of an avid craving and drive for the ultimate, everlasting state of ‘causation’ he or she might get a taste of it.  Ironically, contemplative teachers increasingly refer to such tastes as ‘causal consciousness.’ It might just be an activity that one cannot do, but instead a state one must actually be in order to realize.

In that experience, the universe does not respond to one’s causation. It is not something separate, apart, or even associated with you.  There is no association or differentiation between you and it. It is you and you are it.  It and you simply is.

Is one then a separate, distinct identity or a part of a single infinity?

It would appear that it all depends upon how one is viewing himself and the universe.

Can one have it both ways?

Inevitably.

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Posted in healing, independents, l. ron hubbard, Scientology, Tao Te Ching, tech, the world, Uncategorized

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Sitting In Judgment

Posted on February 15, 2013 by | 398 comments

 

In December 2012 I posted an essay on this blog suggesting that  judgmentalism is a negative  trait that Scientologists ought take care to curb.  This blog is frequented in the main by former members of the church of Scientology who still consider themselves Scientologists.  These are people that have been out of the organization for years and who profess that Scientology ought not be used to control and dominate the lives of others.  Nonetheless, a popular counter-position posted in response to my essay was that ‘labeling, and judgmentalism, is just fine in and of itself – the only problem with such practice is inaccuracy of the labeling.’   Even years after their participation in the organization, many Scientologists considered a judgmental attitude a positive virtue provided it is done in keeping with their own standards of accuracy.  The most zealous proponents of that idea resorted to ad hominem attacks on me for raising such issues, and ultimately disconnected from me.

I do not contend that the labels Scientology promotes usage of are inaccurate or harmful provided they are used in a professional manner as initially intended upon creation.   Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard created numerous constructs against which the mind, spirit and human condition could be understood and improved.   He observed and recorded gradient scales ranging from horrendous, painful conditions all the way up to beautiful, joyous conditions.   The scales are invaluable when used by professionally trained Scientologists to help move people up those conditions.  But, just like any other field of the mind and spirit – including psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and other religions and systems of spirituality – the moment one takes the diagnosis and treatment or practice scheme out of the hands of trained, responsible practitioners and applies it casually and inexpertly in the field of day to day human relations, disaster is close to inevitable.

Imagine a friend telling you that you are an obsessive compulsive disorder case – in all seriousness – , and thereafter treating you as leprous until you conformed with that friend’s standard of acceptable behavior.  How long would you tolerate that friend in your proximity?  Not for long I suspect.   Scientologists – regardless of levels of training – are encouraged to apply their own, equally judgmental, labels to others and apply them in life.

Scientology has a substantial lexicon of judgmental labels that rivals the scope and complexity of the American Psychological Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM).   Its organizations promote their facile use in day to day life.  Despite that, Scientology organizations spend millions of dollars a year condemning the DSM and its misuse or even professional use.  Their argument is that such labeling is judgmental and as such it does not promote improvement but instead categorization and stigmatization.

Perhaps the most commonly used stigmatizing terms in Scientology are “suppressive person” or SP and “potential trouble source” or PTS.   An SP is defined in Scientology as one of those roughly 2 ½ percent (Scientology founder  L. Ron Hubbard estimation) of any population who exhibit the characteristics of a sociopath or psychopath.  Scientology’s diagnostic scheme for identifying an SP is nearly identical to psychology’s and psychiatry’s diagnostic standard for identifying the sociopath or psychopath.   A PTS is a supposed  member of approximately 20% of the population who are intimately connected with an SP and consequently are mistake-prone or act ill or cowed.

Scientologists are encouraged to take a three week course of study in order to achieve the purported professional  ability and  license to identify and handle an SP and the target of his effects, the PTS.  All Scientologists are required to take this course and are expected to apply it with an attitude of certainty regardless of lack of any other professional credential.   The result, bluntly, can denigrate into a community  of untrained, arrogant, Monday morning shrinks passing the most condemnatory judgments upon one another at the drop of a hat.

To make matters worse, there is a distinct SP characteristic in Scientology writings that takes precedence over the other dozens that align with the psychology field’s similar diagnostic characteristics checklist.  That is, if someone exhibits an ‘anti-Scientology’ leaning he or she is sure to be diagnosed as being an SP.  To qualify one only need question the wisdom of any Scientology writing.  This fact alone is probably more responsible for Scientology taking on the character of an insular cult than all others combined.

L. Ron Hubbard once quipped that it is futile to get into an argument with a psychiatrist.  The problem, he noted, was that the minute you get a leg up on the psychiatrist he definitively ends the debate with the evaluation, ‘you are crazy.’   Ironically, this ad absurdum joke could almost describe the modern day Scientologist.  If you attempt to even discuss a shortcoming of Scientology the debate decisively ends with the evaluation, ‘you are an SP.’  Per Scientology policy all Scientologists must disconnect from an SP.  That is, the Scientologist must refrain from any type of communication with the SP, directly or indirectly.  That policy holds whether the declared SP is one’s spouse, child, parent, business partner or best friend.   The SP is entitled no civil or human rights as far as any Scientologist is concerned.

By way of comparison, the psychiatrists’ condemnatory label ‘crazy’ is a rather mild evaluation.

Nonetheless, Scientologists – even those who have disaffiliated from its organizations because of its alleged proclivity for judgmental evaluation, trying and sentencing of followers and the population at large – believe ‘judgmentalism’ is not a problem with Scientology.   They are so dead serious about that that they are prepared to prove it by disconnecting from anyone who says otherwise.

Decompression is important in any cult recovery effort.

Re-education is probably even more important.

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Posted in black dianetics, disconnection, ethics, healing, independents, justice, l. ron hubbard, policy, propaganda, psychs, Scientology, the Reformation

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