reference: Scientology and Presentiment
Several commenters speculated as to my purposes for posting Scientology and Presentiment. My purpose was simple: I wanted to hear what other people thought about it. As far as implications are concerned – that is the question I asked folks to weigh in on – my view before I posted was largely reinforced by considering the hundreds of comments.
From my perspective, the most important implication is that it is more evidence that Scientologists are trained into constructs – to the point of confusing the map for the territory. Their attention is focused with a great deal of intention and discipline on mental trauma. Conscious, two-valued logic based, and three-dimensional time-space construct based perception is finely disciplined. This results in increased focus and force of intention. The unthinking, yes/no binary device called the e-meter facilitates this training. In exercising such scientologists are led toward attainment to pre-defined abilities and states of consciousness – known as end phenomena in Scientology auditing. They are promoted and preached as static, permanent states (again using two-valued logic, materialistic terms). I have seen evidence of people becoming better at communication, problem solving, personal responsibility, handling of upsets, and moving out of fixed conditions through application of these constructs. Sometimes they even achieve alleviation of psychosomatic disabilities along the road.
Then, rather consistently, I see them forfeiting their intellectual honesty and curiosity in vain defense of what got them a boost in the aforementioned abilities. In the course of that defense I have witnessed those people become decreasingly effective at communication, problem solving, personal responsibility, handling of upsets and dealing with fixed conditions.
One faculty that is critical to spiritual growth is neglected, and then disabled, along the scientology route. In my view it is at the heart of the decline and reversal noted above. That is intuition. When I use the term intuition I use it in its broadest possible sense. That includes what the world at large considers extra sensory perception (including presentiment) and cognition and what Scientologists have referred to as ‘OT abilities.’
It has been said that the sixth sense could be considered conscience and the seventh sense intuition. I think that paradigm makes a lot of sense and have found it workable in practice. If one abides and nurtures a healthy conscience, attention and awareness is cumulatively freed to perceive and explore greater horizons. That includes those horizons that are not accessible to the traditional five senses; but are visible through intuition. In Scientology, once the aforementioned, dictated abilities are attained (and even during the quest), one is required to forfeit his conscience. I covered how that occurs in the books What Is Wrong With Scientology? and Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior. I cover it in greater detail in A Course on Graduating From Scientology, and suggest means for not only recovering conscience but also rising to the level of intuition.
Initially, intuitive powers are largely ignored in Scientology. As much as Hubbard at times preached the value of pursuing positive gain rather than negative gain (e.g. mid-fifties Ability Congress, Freedom Congress, etc) the scientology bridge ultimately focused on virtually nothing but attempting to remove the negative. Hubbard went so far to definitively announcing a ‘law’ back then that if one focused on disability he would ultimately get more disability and if he focused on ability he would get more ability, and then constructed the entire bridge in defiance of that law. In scientology one’s attention is focused on removing disabilities. One begins his auditing with lengthy sessions defining Dianetics and Scientology constructs. He learns early on that nothing proceeds unless the simple ohm meter (the emeter) with its mechanical yes/no answers green lights it. Attention is focused so as to detect the negative, that which is said to be foreign to the being’s natural state. So focused, the meter ultimately proves there is no end to the negative gain quest (reacting as it does to thought’s or intention’s interaction with the physical body). A number of provisions are enforced to make the constructs real. For example, along the way, if one does not think in pictures, he is treated as a special aberrant case in need of remedies that will get him to think by creating pictures. Then hundreds of hours can be spent auditing out the now-considered malady of thinking in mental image pictures. Or, if a person does not originate incidents from past lives, again he is treated as a special case and subjected to special remedies. Those include running incidents from movies the person may have seen. It even encourages the running of imagination as reality until such time that the person believes that imagination is in fact reality.
Exacerbating matters is scientology’s considerable thought policing that trains a person to rein in intuition. For example, the scientologist is trained to understand that any negative or ‘unkind’ thought he or she might entertain about L. Ron Hubbard or his appointed scientology ecclesiastics is the result of undisclosed crimes the thinker has committed or deeply seated evil intentions he or she harbors. That results in lengthy, traumatic, and very expensive interrogations on the e-meter to remedy the ‘cause’ of such intuition.
By elevating the emeter above judgment and understanding, the two-value logic construct is cemented in place. The all-knowing meter, being a two-valued, binary (charged or uncharged?) device guarantees that.
L. Ron Hubbard once preached against developing meter dependency. I think he understood when he did so that the last thing one wanted to do in search of greater spiritual ability was to synchronize one’s psyche against a crude electronic instrument. But, like with so much in Scientology, he also preached the precise opposite. For example, in 1978 – his self-proclaimed year of greatest technical breakthroughs – he ordered hundreds of long-time, dedicated Sea Org staff to hard labor concentration camps when the meter determined, in most cases against obvious available evidence, they were anti-social personalities unknowingly out to sabotage Ron Hubbard. In the early eighties he instituted a rundown – and demanded its application to all senior scientology ecclesiastics – to conform not only intuitive perception, but perception seen with the naked eye or heard with the ear (see, The ‘Truth’ Rundown). Again, we run into that super-charged word as the only one that can accurately describe the result of yet another scientology dichotomy, cognitive dissonance.
Some of the faculty of intuition can be brought out in the solo auditing process. But, for the most part it is lost by losing reality for the construct while engaging in continuous, active thought stopping to conform with scientology’s thought policing. Should the practitioner even consider the construct as construct, intense thought patrolling (as summarized above) is employed to correct him. What is never permitted to be recognized (which an unmolested or nurtured intuition would easily perceive) is that it is the process of exercising intention across distance – and communicating telepathically – that hones intuitive powers. It is not that which one focuses on, extends intention toward, and communicates with that does the trick. When the construct is implanted as reality – and it is with more force than any Christian or Muslim sect – the scientologist becomes to greater or lesser degree forever the effect of that construct. Again, the meter consistently proves the construct as reality. As a result the upper OT levels can become the route to slavish compliance to the perceptions and the guiding laws of the physical universe. More on this in a Course on Graduating from scientology, and possibly later posts.
There are a lot of benefits to be had from increasing focus and power of intention as I have acknowledged in this essay. The question I pose is, at the end of the day is the effort worth the cost in scientology? For many, they consider that it is. Provided those who fit into that category respect the rights of others not similarly inclined they have nothing to fear from me. I have spent my entire adult life working to guarantee their right to continue along that path. But, now my attention and intention is directed toward working with those who intuit that there are in fact broader horizons than Scientology permits exploration of.
Moving On Up a Little Higher 