A tool is any aid to accomplish a task. From a hammer, drill, robot or car to a process, method, equation or your own mind. A plan, a preconceived idea or an expectation are also tools. As long as a toll remains under your control, you’re fine. But when the tools start running you, responsibility and control suffers. Let’s kick this off with the dictionary definition of “tool”:
TOOL (Mirram Webster)
1 a : a handheld device that aids in accomplishing a task
b (1) : the cutting or shaping part in a machine or machine tool (2) : a machine for shaping metal : machine tool
2 a : something (as an instrument or apparatus) used in performing an operation or necessary in the practice of a vocation or profession [a scholar's books are his tools]
b : an element of a computer program (as a graphics application) that activates and controls a particular function [a drawing tool]
c : a means to an end [a book's cover can be a marketing tool]
d often vulgar : penis
3 : one that is used or manipulated by another
4 plural : natural ability [has all the tools to be a great pitcher]
Origin of TOOL: Middle English, from Old English "tōl"; akin to Old English "tawian" to prepare for use — more at "taw". First Known Use: before 12th century
Let’s focus on definitions 2a and 2c here.
I could go on and on explaining the usefulness or necessity of tools, the joy of my tools (HyperList, my HP calculators, my PC, my mind and my penis), or the troubles that ensue when your tools starts taking over. I could explain how troubles in life most often come about when your mind starts running the show, rather than you remaining in control (the essence of irrational behavior). I could point to the article “Processes, Automation and Human Potential“, and show that automation must remain under someone’s responsibility, lest it will bereft the user of will. Etc.
But for the sake of succinctness, I will leave you with a scale of “free will“:
- No Tools
- No tools needed
- Tools used freely
- Tools used compulsively
- Tools needed
- Automation
- Only tools
When you are in prison, you are at level 5 or 6 – the effect of tools (the prison system). When you are scared shitless of a spider on the floor, you are likewise at level 5 or 6 as your mind has taken over the control. When you use a calculator to figure out an answer, you are on level 2, 3, 4 or 5 depending on whether you could have gotten the answer without the calculator. When you use a slide show in a presentation… levels 2-5, unless you have no choice at all – as when your boss has ordered you to run those exact slides (then you would perhaps serve at level 6). When a process or method or ideology becomes more important than the result it aims to achieve, you operate at a level below 3.
In different areas of life and at different times, we are operating at different levels on this scale. Our need for tools depends on our inherent abilities, our confidence and our love of the tools we use.
Of course, tools are part of any game. To master a game, you must master the tools, and that implies being able to use the tools freely, if at all. When you are struggling in a game, you are struggling with the tools, you are unable to use them freely. And that includes your mind.
Personally, I am on a quest to nudge myself towards the top of the scale on most any area of life (except for my HP calculators). It seems to me that freedom is gained through regaining the ability to freely use the tools in a game, and by the subsequent shedding of the tools involved.
Geir Isene - uncut 
Using the scale to understand the OP = 2 — 5.
COS using the scale = 6 — 7.
Clearly understanding the OP without use of any tools = priceless.
Exactly. I was waiting for someone to point out the “meta-point” here (the scale is indeed itself a tool) – but wasn’t expecting the first comment to hit that mark.
Ultimately any tool, any method, model, ideology or -ism can be outgrown to achieve even greater freedom. But at that point a blog would be superfluous 🙂
So yes, priceless.
Thanks Geir. As a Scale of Freewill, your OP is profound. It really is making me wonder.
Since months now, I’ve been trying to write that article on “One Second of Time.” The subject threw me into using the tools of exponential notation which I haven’t needed since high school to pass some tests. As a tool, these orders of 10 are undeniably useful. My thinking and the envelope of my mind has expanded. My ego has reduced. Yet, the game of understanding such vast quantities has left me doubting it seems every foundational value that I used to hold. I feel so compartmentalized such as that I have too many realities plaguing me. I don’t know if this is a phase I must pass through; whether this is the beginning of the end of freewill (from a human perspective); whether I should retreat back into my former small frame of reference (which I now view as ludicrous since these orders of magnitude quickly become too small and too large to comprehend); or what?
Sometimes I find myself around 4 on the scale — studying and using the math compulsively, although the exponential notation has now become familiar enough that I do visualize at least the exponent seems somehow meaningful relative to other exponents. In this regard, I would now be using these math tools more towards a 3. In other areas, I am lacking the math tools to understand profound ideas that have been communicated so in this way I find my freewill closer to a 5.
Chris and Geir, this is what I too was trying to say in the last discussion as regards Scn. As a philosophy and tech, it has the capability of taking us far enough to continue the spiritual path all the way (such as what you two and Elizabeth and others of us are doing, in their own ways). Now I think it might be better and more specifically described as Scn being capable of taking us up this Free Will Scale to (2) – Tools used freely – and thus to an ability level of now being capable of reaching for the top level of (1) No tools needed. That level would also be at a tone scale level of Postulates – which would be the level of the other thing we talked about in that discussion, Cause over MEST. And I guess the Meta-tools level above the scale would be at Native State – some may wish to go there, others to remain in the physical universe game.
p.s. I think it was clear but the comment above related to this sentence of Geir’s: “Ultimately any tool, any method, model, ideology or -ism can be outgrown to achieve even greater freedom.”
I wanted to add another thought too. In the recent discussion we were talking about Scientology as a map to the territory (the actuality). A more precise description might be to call it a tool or set of tools. I would say that many Scientologists started out at (4) Tools needed, then went up to (3) Tools used compulsively, then up to (2) Tools used freely. Others, at the direction (or command) of the CoS, went downward on the scale.
My take on KSW is to limit the tech to a maximum of level 3.
I still see KSW 1 as something that itself can be interpreted compulsively – i.e. rotely. Or with conceptual understanding. For one thing, it only talks about auditing and training tech, and I’m not convinced at all that the PL Keeping Admin Working was written by LRH, both because of the date of its issue and because of the writing style. Someone commented one time here on a software program or some type of technology that can determine whether or not a piece of writing was written by a particular author, based on all the idiosyncracies of that writer. It might be a very eye-opening thing to do, on various issues. I wonder why no one has done it, if it’s valid, that is.
Anyway, what you say about level 3 max is definitely the way the CoS pushed KSW off as.
It’s an incredible stretch to conceive that KSW allows for “tools freely used”. Because “freely used” would include “freely misused”, something that would bring you eternal damnation according to that policy. In fact, KSW demands seriousness – and to quote LRH; The more serious you take the game, the less chance there is of winning. Yup – it seriously blocks the usage at level 3. KSW puts the method before the end result, or as we say in Norway; To put the sleigh before Rudolf.
Hmmm… I hadn’t thought that “tools freely used” could mean “freely MISused”. In that case, we’re no longer even talking about a specific tool or set of – we’ve gone into another frame of reference altogether, haven’t we? To me, “NOT used” would be applicable, according to one’s judgment – as when tech is conceptually understood to the degree that you audit the pc in front you and throw out the rules as needed to achieve the actual purpose, the fixed result. That’s even the case with admin tech – e.g. LRH says throw out all the rules in order to give service (paraphrased). But here we go again – it depends on what is focused on, which might be dismissed as “cherry picking” but could also simply be seen as a matter of focus or, more to my way of looking at it, overall conceptual understanding and evaluation.
I do think LRH contradicted himself in KSW 1, for example by calling it a serious game we’re playing in Scn, but I think we have to evaluate that issue according to the time and context. And I honestly don’t know why we have to keep stressing and making such an issue of certain aspects of the writings. Why don’t we actually go up to “Tools used freely” ;). Whether LRH said to or not.
(Sorry, Geir, I still haven’t learned when to shut up. But at least I’m thinking about it. :))
We return to this, I believe, because you insist on defending the indefensible – the KSW #1. I think that one policy (and LRH described it as the most important one – and dictated it be put in front of every course pack etc.) puts the tech in stone, forever unchanged, a perpetual is-ness, a perpetual Emergency condition of “don’t you fucking try to change one syllable, or else!”. Context, time, environment or not. It’s just plain wrong to set the crowd up for being slaves to a methodology like that. By making the tools unchangeable and labeled with his name, he seems to follow up on an intention of “smashing his name into history”.
“We return to this, I believe, because you insist on defending the indefensible – the KSW #1.”
Well, we must be a pot and a kettle, you and I. Weren’t you the one who first brought up KSW #1 in this exchange? 🙂
I don’t think that I am defending it any more than you are attacking it. Maybe less so – e.g. besides bringing it up, your reply above was in response to my comment that included conceding LRH had contradicted himself in KSW 1 – as well as concluding with, “Why don’t we actually go up to ‘Tools used freely’. Whether LRH said to or not”.
That is really where I’m at. If you’re concerned about history repeating itself by people “like me”, realize I’m not not-ising anything – I see as well as anybody the very wrong direction things went in, no matter what was intended.
We’re basically repeating the same arguments we’ve made before and I think that a good case for either viewpoint can be made and has been made by many others besides us. But nobody knows all the whys and wherefores and probably never will (as Maria recently laid out so well, having done a more thorough research on it than anybody I know of so far). Btw, have you read Marty’s book yet? It takes up the subject of a “Reverse” (the name of the chapter) that occurred in policy, very fairly IMO.
Anyway, as regards Scn I’m at level 3 on your scale – Tools used freely – and I think you are too.
p.s. That chapter title is actually “Reversal”.
I’m still reading these exchanges between you and Marildi about KSW #1, and the only conclusion I have come to is that I find your “take” on it incomprehensible.
I apparently read KSW #1 in a completely different way than what you do; I can’t see ANY of what you say you see in it, myself.. This completely baffles me!
I see KSW #1 as simply as – “you own a Ford, don’t try to maintain it using a Volvo manual, Chrysler diagnostic codes, or using Chevy parts. Use standard FORD tech for your FORD auto.”
I can only guess that your conclusions about KSW #1 are based on implanted/acquired ideas from your experiences in the Church of Scientology and their kinky interpretation of it.
Possibly you feel somehow invalidated by KSW #1. But I don’t know why you should; you are not trained as an auditor to start with, except to the degree you needed to be, to be able to Solo. But it does appear to me you feel that KSW #1 is somehow putting a STOP on you, or you are agreeing with someone who claims it puts a stop on them. I do not see any STOP in KSW; I see a START. The STOP is a phantom, like the shadows at the bottom of the lake that the fish reacted to as though they were impassible barriers.
You seem to take it as “I’m not gonna follow any rules made by someone else!” That seems like compulsive oppositional behaivior, if you don’t mind my saying so. I say that because I do not see the “STOP” you are seeing in KSW #1.
Any “tech”, whether cooking, baking, ice skating, or even walking or running, produces the results it produces when it is applied “as written”. That seems childishly obvious. LRH tech is designed to produce specific results; if used “as directed”. Does it not? I still have no reason to think it does not. But obviously, if a person does something differently then s/he does something differently and might expect a different result and has no reason to complain if the result IS different.
However, so far I have heard many opinions on both sides; in other words, much heat.little light. This includes anything I post, I suppose.
Hi Valkov! And yet somehow, despite the fact of being a completely self-correcting technology Scientology finds itself on the side of the road with its wheels off . . .
For KSW “stops” just go back over seven, eight, nine and ten. These never were put in adequately for LRH. Possibly that is the problem?
Valkov; ” see KSW #1 as simply as – “you own a Ford, don’t try to maintain it using a Volvo manual, Chrysler diagnostic codes, or using Chevy parts. Use standard FORD tech for your FORD auto.””
I see the same as you – with the exception that using a Volvo manual in fixing a FORD, or God forbid, your own twist on the FORD manual to fix your FORD, then you run the risk of being declared a Suppressive Person, an enemy of mankind, and barred off from eternal salvation.
Beyond that, your post is full of Straw Man tactics.
Geir, I think this is the question – if you are fixing a customer’s Ford while working AT a Ford dealership, should the management (or “corporate”) allow you to do either of what you said – use a Volvo manual or your own twist to fix the customer’s car?
I do realize this general subject could be extended into many other valid areas, such as what a Ford owner does on his own with his own Ford. But in this discussion about KSW 1, let’s just keep it to what is actually said in that PL, so that we’re all on the same page about it – which we still seem not to be after all this time.
While working AT FORD; Then daring to try different ways or even suggest a different procedure will get you into worlds of trouble… nope, these are the ways of last century Taylorism or totalitarian regimes and organizations. Like the CoS. I don’t think the CoS has misunderstood LRH or twisted his intentions at all. I think they complied with Command intention. The result we have on display.
Well Geir, I’ll have to read up on “Straw Man” and rewrite my post I guess. Don’t offhand know what is straw man and what isn’t.
My point remains – I see/read nothing in KSW #1 as written by LRH that leads me to your conclusions about it. I see what the CoS practices as a perversion of what LRH wrote/intended.
I see others interpreting KSW entirely outside of it’s context, even not taking into account internal contexts and who the issue and the various paragraphs address.
I think the fact that the CoS is failing is exactly the proof that they are NOT Keeping Scientology Working. KSW refers to delivering services – auditing and training auditors and C/Ss, and the CoS is manifestly not doing that. If they were doing that and exchanging as they should, they wouldn’t be in the trouble they are in, with a contracting membership and falling stats. And obviously declining income.
Do you really think LRH would have designed it that way, so that his creation would destroy itself instead of flourishing and prospering? If you do, I guess you’re right there with Alanzo – who evidently thinks LRH spent all those years building something, only to turn around and destroy it? Not that he wouldn’t have that right, it being his creation to start with….
And Chris – “scientology” is self-correcting – but only if it is actually applied as itself. A book or binder full of HCOBs does nothing, they are inert pieces of matter. They just sit on a shelf or lay on a table. Isn’t that obvious? The proof of it’s self-correcting nature, (by the way, do you have a reference for that claim, or are you just blowing smoke?) is in the growth and expansion of scientology outside the CoS. Earlier proof is in the success and longevity of the Ron’s Orgs, for example.
Try pervading the globe and look at scientology as a whole over the decades, not just the parochial tin-pot dictatorial development we call the CoS. It’s literal-mindedness is a scam in the first place, a cover up for it’s “pope” to rake in the bucks for no exchange.
I think history itself is the counter-argument against your view. LRH implemented the policy that subsequently resulted in the fascistic culture known as the CoS – while LRH commanded the show. I think LRH made a grave mistake with KSW #1, that’s all. No need for further Straw Man arguments here. Please go to cramming.
I see your take on KSW #1 as a Straw Man in itself. I think it misrepresents LRH’s intention, which is the definition of Straw Man, is it not?
“What goes around, comes around.”
So yes, someone needs to go to cramming, but I’m not sure it’s me. That CoS is not Keeping Scientology Working is manifest. The words mean exactly what they say.
You really do need to read and understand what a Straw Man argument is.
I am not talking about intention in an argument. I am talking about what KSW #1 is from my viewpoint.
I do agree that level 3 is what KSW “limits” the tech to, and that is just as it should be., Because in my view, above level 3 there are no tools needed or being used; but keeping in mind that anything and everything conceivable is a “tool”, language is a tool, even telepathy is a tool, that what you have above level 3 is “no game”. Tools are essentially vias; try getting along without them, eh?
Read my reply to Chris regarding fractal iterations.
Tech should be freely used, cherry-picked and amended and improved, etc – all to the benefit of the goal of the PC and what actually works toward that goal. Any method must be adapted to the goal it’s supposed to achieve as you cannot have a fixed process producing a fixed result when the inputs are in the very least unknown (as it is with a PC). The tech must thusly evolve through further experimentation. Ergo: Kill KSW #1.
OK, Geir, I’ll restate, omitting the word “intention”. I think you misrepresent what LRH is saying in KSW #1, then basing your conclusion about KSW #1 on the misrepresentation you yourself created; that is itself a form of “straw man”, is it not?
However I will point out that it was you who brought in the word “intention”, by stating that you believed CoS was carrying out “command intention” in the way they applied KSW #1.
Based on my reading of KSW #1, I do not believe they are carrying it out at all. Quite the contrary. This seems obvious, based on their results and stats.
Also, by “viewpoint” do you mean what you think, or what you actually see or have seen? Because one of those is simply intellectualization, which can be quite divorced from reality.
Like letters from OSAbots signed “ML” while they promote disconnection.
Geir sez: “……then you run the risk of being declared a Suppressive Person, an enemy of mankind, and barred off from eternal salvation.”
In fact these are all shadows, paper tigers. Who cares? These “declares” are not coming from anyone who matters or really has any authority over anyone’s “eternity”. These declares are coming from a squirrel cult who can’t or don’t deliver anything of value for the most part, and do not represent Scientology or LRH except in their PR.
Geir,
Here’s how I understand the “straw man” concept:
“A straw man, known in the UK as an Aunt Sally, is a type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position. To “attack a straw man” is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the “straw man”), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.”
If you use the term in some other sense, let me know, so I may understand what you are saying.
“is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position.”
We are discussing here, and in that sense, we are the opponents. You have several times in this exchange misrepresented or tried to misrepresent my position. In fact you have done that in more than 50% of your argument, something I haven’t seen even with Al or Vin. I have not once misrepresented your position.
Geir sez: “Tech should be freely used, cherry-picked and amended and improved, etc – all to the benefit of the goal of the PC and what actually works toward that goal.”
This is what an auditor who has any judgement, does. That has been my understanding since I delved into Scientology in the early 1970s. An auditor who has judgement picks and chooses from a huge selection of processes and uses the ones he judges are tailored to the pc’s case. This begins with the Life Repair level, the very bottom of the Bridge. And so on up. Not every process of every Level is run on every pc, they are run until the pc has the cognition for the Level being addressed and no further. That the Scientology Bridge puts everyone through the same “fixed process” is a myth.
That’s like saying a University puts all students through the same fixed process. That’s not very analytical thinking. It is largely an untruth. Largely. Not to say there is not some truth to it, it’s just not very analytical.
Valkov: “This is what an auditor who has any judgement does (picks and chooses processes)”
Chris: This is incorrect. Auditors who express this type of judgement are retrained at their own expense beginning with TR’s until they no longer do this. I get the feeling that you and Marildi are arguing about KSW without copies of the HCOBs in front of you. Val, when you argue that KSW1 doesn’t “stop” then it is evident that you have a weak certainty on seven, eight, nine, and ten. Each of these have stopping as their message. And Marildi, if I said that LRH never claimed to have risen above the bank, how would you counter that with KSW1? He doesn’t say he rose above the bank, does he? No, he says he will not here discuss how it was that he came to rise above the bank. Furthermore, I don’t see evidence that LRH did rise above the bank. What evidence is there that LRH rose above the bank? So there is your single pointed one bone to chew argument about KSW. After that, I have more. I don’t need to cherry-pick in order to nit-pick the tech. It is shot full of fallacious computations and declarations. Because it contains some useful tools and workable concepts that I use doesn’t automatically mean that it is 100% workable. This is the job of religion to make the vast ramblings of the ancients — of which LRH is now one — into “One-True-Religions.”
Chris,
Sorry, my friend, but other than more generalities, opinions and Ad Hom about LRH, I don’t see anything in your post of any substance or pertinence to the principles of KSW except where you stated, “…seven, eight, nine, and ten. Each of these have stopping as their message.”
And now you are resorting to using a loaded word – stop. But no matter – the obvious rejoinder is just to repeat again: KSW 1 is directed at Scientology organizations and its simple purpose is to ensure that the tech that has been proven workable is not altered (or “stopped”, if you wish)– a very sensible approach to ANY technology that an organization is certifying and assuring is in use.
It seems to be very, very difficult for critics to come up with any direct references to the PL itself. And the ones they do come up with hold no water in supporting their claims :D.
Possibly you could define “rising above the bank?” How would we hold this standard up against LRH’s implied statement that he had risen above it?
Chris, whether LRH rose above the bank would be an interesting subject, but it has no more to do with the substance of KSW policy than whether or not it’s true that “self-abnegation has filled the Southeast Asian jungles with stone idols and corpses”.
In other words, it’s a Q&A (otherwise known as a Red Herring) from the subject we were on. Wouldn’t it be novel to actually look at the core materials themselves instead of throwing out generalizations and opinions? I don’t understand the reluctance of critics to do that.
I dunno about that Marildi. Remember the GO TR’s – lying, steering the conversation, etc.,? This texting back and forth without addressing the questions, saying they don’t matter, aren’t pertinent is reminenscent of those TR’s! You are being pretty slippery! I think I smell a rat! What is going on with Marildi?
Christianity as a technology can be boiled down to the “blood of Christ,” and likewise, Scientology can be boiled down to whether or not LRH “rose above the bank.” All other attributes of these two practices become subsets of the core beliefs.
LRH’s comment about stone idols is not on a par with his comment about rising above the bank. You are smelling fish alright, and methinks it is in your back pocket! hahaha!
Let’s narrow the focus back even more and address whether it is true that “we have some time since passed the point of achieving uniformly workable technology.” I would not agree with this. There are no OT’s operating without bodies except in such secret that no one knows about it. Which seems more plausible, that there are OT’s operating without their bodies that I don’t know anything about or that there are not these kinds of OTs?
And if you were as pig-headedly antagonistic toward Scn as you are pig-headedly a true believer then I might be arguing the other side of this. It is an exercise — nothing more. Let’s exercise our minds and see what falls out.
Chris, this is in reply to the above three comments of yours.
You say, “This texting back and forth without addressing the questions, saying they don’t matter…”
That is pure Straw Man – bordering on knowing Falsehood since my words are in black and white. I haven’t been saying other questions don’t matter, just that bringing them up instead of responding to the original one was a Q&A, aka Red Herring, and not what we agreed to discuss. (In fact, I’ve been wishing you would answer the question so we could get on to other things.)
In other words, nothing in the “back pocket”, just up-front standard TR 3. Not “lying GO TR’s”, a not very nice insinuation, btw. And dismissing me as a “true believer” is also rather an insult, if you think about it. And then throwing in “pigheaded” is not only more loaded language but violates the age-old etiquette rule of “I am firm; you are stubborn; HE is pigheaded.” (Lucky for you, you still have credit due in my book or I might have to swat you ;)).
The remainder of your comments were just more Q&A. You know, an auditor whose pc persisted in Q&A, no matter how many times the question was repeated, would have pulled out the correction list long ago to find the held-down 7 – whether an MU, false datum, out rud, ser fac, PTS item, or other BPC. I dunno, maybe your burn scars are just a lot deeper than mine…
In any case, at this point I can see that you are either unwilling or unable to focus on the apparently highly-charged question, and simply answer it – or admit you can’t. All I’ve been asking is for you to tell me, directly and specifically from the written material itself, what you find objectionable. Simple. So as far as I’m concerned you guys have lost the debate by obvious default :P. Nobody wants to play ball so there goes the old ball game.
p.s. If you can understand 2ndxmr’s post near the bottom of the page, you can understand the genesis and purpose of KSW 1. It’s as basic as that.
I’m understanding you just fine. It’s not about that. I’d just like you to take a deeper look at different reasons for Scientology’s failure than the too simple answer of it’s all David Miscavige. I’m puzzled at you and Valkov continuing to bring up Q&A. If you and he are auditing me, then I CAN’T be Q&A’ing, and I’m certainly not auditing you. So what are you talking about?
Regarding your TR3, I am giving you objections to KSW one after the other quoting chapter and verse. Maybe you ought to ask the question again. Better yet, answer the ones put to you. Your unwillingness to give tit for tat has a reason. I don’t know what it is.
One thing that is clear to me is that if you are convinced this is a contest with winning and losing at its culmination then I really have lost for I have failed to engage you.
Policy is defined as “any governing principle, plan or course of action”. So when we’re talking about KSW policy, that would NOT include things like how (or if) LRH came to rise above the bank, just because he happened to mention that in the PL. It may be a great subject to discuss but it has nothing to do with POLICY or the substance of KSW – which in essence is POLICY.
The only thing I recall you quoting that falls in the category of policy was the quote about “seven, eight, nine and ten” – which I responded to by describing (per the PL) how it fits in the overall “governing principles” of KSW, which as a whole simply have to do with applying standard tech within Scn organizations, just like 2ndxmr described in his analogy.
Was there any other quote of KSW policy itself that you gave? Or is there anything of KSW policy that you can quote now, which you find objectionable as a “governing principle, plan or course of action”?
Yes I do have more objections to KSW.
“Having the correct technology” is an overarching principal upon which the rest of KSW pivots. Scaffolding this is the principal that “man has never before developed a workable mental technology,” but billions of people disagree with this as I do. Evidence to support this is in the form of tens of thousands of groups who daily teach and practice “workable mental technology.” Whether Scientology helps as these other groups do is harshly debated.
Undercutting KSW#1-One, “having the correct technology,” is LRH’s statement that he has “risen above the bank” in a carefully crafted “fallacy of false implication” which I object to since there is empirical evidence that he never attained any of the powers that he sold. You object to my using this and you are making a mistake. For you to use a definition of policy to nitpick and negate LRH’s clear reason for why he alone is the only authority on mental technology for the enire history of earth is a mistake. LRH carefully crafts a “fallacy of diversion” when he says and deliberately omits the obvious, “We will not speculate here on why this was so or how I came to rise above the bank.” Ignoring this is a mistake and bad research. Accusing you of bad research is surprising as you are a very good researcher. You are routinely meticulous and thorough researching the written word. You do have a blind spot in this regard toward Scientology where you do not have this blind spot researching other material. This is more curious to me than the present topic. (This ad hom is just as an aside and not in support of my argument.)
Chris, it’s not nit picking to refer to the definition of policy when discussing a POLCY letter. Accordingly, I would say that “Having the correct technology” isn’t so much policy, i.e. a “GOVERNING principle”, as it is an underlying principle or premise on which KSW 1 policy is based. Staff in orgs are in agreement with that underlying principle/premise or they wouldn’t be there in the first place, and LRH wrote KSW 1 polciy for those staff and those staff only, as per the PL itself.
People who criticize KSW 1 are generally in disagreement with it as a POLICY letter, i.e. they disagree with the “course of action” it directs as regards staff activities – specifically, activities relating to auditing and training tech. And since you haven’t really come up with specific disagreements to do with the policy directives in KSW 1, I’m just going to assume at this point that this isn’t actually your beef.
As for your disagreement with the premise that Scn tech is the “only uniformly workable mental technology”, as per LRH in that PL, I personally don’t know of there being any other in that category back in the 60’s when the PL was written. Do you?
There are lots of mental technologies. Which of them have you studied for years at a time as you have Scientology? Why are you trying to draw this comparison as an argument? We could just stick to whether or not Scientology can stand behind its own claims on its own merit.
Marildi: “as it is an underlying principle or premise on which KSW 1 policy is based.”
Chris: Yes, if Scientology doesn’t “have” the correct technology then KSW is futile whether it can even be applied or not as another issue.
Chris, the reason for my drawing the comparison of mental technologies is because of LRH’s statement in KSW 1, written in the 60’s, that Scn tech was the “only” workable technology – and then YOUR claim in a comment above that “billions of people disagree with this AS DO I”. So since you do disagree I figured you would have some specifics behind your viewpoint. And in your last comments just above you again question whether Scn does “have” the correct technology, but again no specifics.
As I’ve already stated, in my comment yesterday to 2ndxmr, my personal experience (on the different flows) has been that tech is indeed a uniformly workable technology. He had implied that it didn’t always work for some lower-level pc’s and I was interested in further specifics as to how often that seemed to occur, since he seems to have had much more experience on relevant lines than I have. I’m sincerely interested in his answer.
And, I might add, I have always been interested in any data that would point to truth, contrary to some people’s sheer assumption about me simply because I speak highly of core Scientology philosophy and tech ;). I hope 2ndxmr will take the time to respond to my queries.
Btw, the reason I also questioned him about the comment to do with OT levels not being very workable is that the data I have come across tells me they were highly workable in earlier decades, and I wondered if he was including those OT levels in his comment or just the “new” levels, which clearly to me too have been highly out-tech, alone because of the gross violation of the no-interference zone (the 6-month sec checks) in recent decades. Again, I hope he gives me a reply. (2ndxmr…?)
I am a bit too busy to make a lengthy reply. Re OT levels and abilities: the first NOTs stories were amazing. For unknown reasons we don’t hear that now.
As for pcs and Grades auditing, yes, in the hands of moderatley good auditors these went well. I had one pc who was very fast. C/S wouldn’t believe he was done the process and made me grind it. Later auditing proved my assumption correct. Some pcs had very little grades charge but had to slog through: mostly bypassed clears. An occassional one had “wierdnesses” that I could now relate to upper-levels data.
Re the technology being uniform: an article by Ant Phillips at workabletechnology.com is illuminating in view of what was standard at the time KSW1 was written.
http://workabletechnology.com/?p=454
i was one of the first at Flag for NOTs. I flew there by plane and got home without using that.. i even gotten my money back from the airlines!!!! hehehe.. this should indicate two things I had great wins and about getting my money back i was ..well fibbed…:)
Thanks, 2x. I know you’re really busy but I knew I could count on you, even if I had to give you a little nudge ;). Thanks for the link to Ant’s article. From skimming over it, it looks like just what I need. I’ll read it thoroughly later on when I have a bit more time.
I wanted to tell you that the other article you posted, at http://www.workabletechnology.com was excellent data about the plight of some of the “new” OT’s. What David St Lawrence had to say about his experience cleaning up them up was especially illuminating. He refers to entities, something LRH talked about in History of Man:
“Many of these OTs were just not aware that most of the emotions and attitudes they were dramatizing came from entities in their space. Some were not aware that their actions were being directed every day by active entities.
“When you hear an OT complaining about his treatment in the church and his negative feelings about auditing, you should be aware that his entities may have been heavily invalidated and have been given wrong items which have never been addressed.”
I got a whole new understanding and compassion for them, even the likes of “squirrel busters”.
2ndxmr, by the time I got to the link you posted and finished reading it last night I was too tired to articulate very well the effect it had on me. Those articles by The Pilot (Ken Oggers) and Ant Phillips were pretty eye-opening, whether they were totally accurate or not in terms of being just two individuals’ accounts. They made me realize how little I know about the history of tech and the corresponding history of KSW 1 and other admin policy including that to do with ethics. It was kind of a humbling experience :). I also got a better idea of LRH’s “method of handling others” (quoting the chapter in SOS and column of the CoHE) during those earlier decades, particularly the 60’s. Only time may yet tell what his deepest motivations were, especially if additional data from reliable sources with first-hand accounts keeps coming to light – although it will still remain beside the point of what value the tech itself offers.
Also, thanks very much for the data on your own personal experience with the tech, as regards fast or slow or “odd” pc’s not fitting into the system of tech LRH had ultimately developed, to which KSW would have applied, and still would. I’m still not sure of the degree to which those instances of relative unworkability occurred, but you gave me a new perspective on the factual existence of such and I can better understand why that would be. I can also see, even better than before, the value of further research along with the need for sorting out standard tech in its “final form”. (And to think this improved viewpoint, as I see it, occurred for me as a result of comments you posted – you, of all people, who probably has disagreed with me the least. Good job, Mr. Auditor Beingness. :))
Geir posted: “The tech must thusly evolve through further experimentation. Ergo: Kill KSW #1.”
The function of KSW is conservation of workable tech, not deterrence of anyone’s experimentation on his own nickel.
I encourage you invent and experiment to your heart’s content. If you intend to improve scientology “standard tech”, then I hope you get trained up at least through Class VIII auditor, if not Class VIII C/S. Because otherwise I feel you will not really have a thorough knowledge of what it is you are trying to improve.
How can a person improve something he doesn’t know the nuts and bolts of?
To be even clearer: The tech should be squirreled.
“How can a person improve something he doesn’t know the nuts and bolts of?”
Can I improve Nazism without knowing the nuts and bolts of it? Or communism? Or the ways of the KKK? Of course I can. And so can you, I hope.
Geir sez: “Can I improve Nazism without knowing the nuts and bolts of it? Or communism? Or the ways of the KKK? Of course I can. And so can you, I hope.”
My answer to this is an unequivocal NO, YOU CAN’T.
A person cannot successfully improve what he can’t or doesn’t see clearly. But his chances of messing it up are excellent.
Wow – so you don’t think it is possible for anyone to make a better political system than Nazism without knowing every nuts and bolt in it?
OK one more attempt to clarify where I’m coming from, in my thinking on KSW:
What do virtually all departures from the CoS have in common? It is that David Miscavige and his “administration” are not and have not been”keeping scientology working”.
Many of their observations have to do with PLs; I personally believe that KSW applies particularly strongly to HCOBs. LRH himself stated it thus:
The Classification Chart And Auditing, 26 Jul 66, BC Lecture #434
Pg. 245 “What is standard technology? Standard technology is contained in HCOBs. It actually isn’t contained in any of the books of Dianetics and Scientology. Did you ever realize that? Modern technology is not contained in any of the hardcover books, or any of the other books. It’s contained in HCOBs, Hubbard Communications Office Bulletins, and they just run off one after the other. And one of these fine days I suppose we will roll up our sleeves and publish them all in consecutive order, all corrected so that nothing ever corrects anything in the bulletins and make it very, very easy. But we will have to put them probably in about seven or eight or ten different volumes, because there are quite a few of them. But that’s standard technology. They’re on white paper printed with red ink. If I haven’t signed it, it isn’t true. And that’s standard technology.”
http://www.scientology-cult.com/declarations-of-independence.html
Most recently, 2 Class VIII auditors have spoken up about RTC’s and the Church’s violations of KSW, and cited these as their reasons for leaving the Church of Scientology. They have their own blogs, but these pdf links were posted on Marty’s blog( I guess those allergic to the name “Marty” are stuck as far as getting this data 🙂 )
1. Wolfgang Keller – http://markrathbun.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/questions-to-rtc.pdf
2. Forrest Crane – http://markrathbun.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/technical-alter-is-report.pdf
Here are just a few of the postings of Declarations and Resignations posted on Steve Hall’s site. There are
about 50 of them, the earliest being Geir’s own statement of why he was leaving the Church:
1. http://www.scientology-cult.com/images/stories/files/a-letter-from-garcia.pdf
2. http://davefagen.wordpress.com/
3. http://www.scientology-cult.com/ronnie-bell.html
4. http://www.scientology-cult.com/mike-roiger-snr-cs-cinn.html
5. http://www.scientology-cult.com/mike-and-betsy-reppen.html
6. http://www.scientology-cult.com/karen-de-la-carriere-jentzschs-resignation-from-the-church.html
Mypointhere is thatpeople havebeen and continue to leave the CoS precisely because the CoS DOES NOT and
HAS NOT for many years, been KSWing.
Quite to the contrary, over thepast 20 years David Miscavige and his cronies have been blatantly altering
both tech and policy, and changing the written and spoken recorded materials.
It could be said that they have been doing exactly what you suggest – “experimenting” with the tech as written,
changing it to suit their own purposes.
You think”the tech” should be “squirreled”? Well that’s exactly what the CoS management has been doing
with “the tech” as it was originally written, and what we are seeing is the result of that, not the result
of the CoS following LRH’s “command intention”. It is the result of their NOT following LRH’s “command
intention”.
You say I have misrepresented 50% or more of your actual position on the subject. Very well. evidently the
onus of understanding what you write is on me, not on yourself to make your position clear.
Poor misunderstood Geir!
The fact is, I feel you have done little to clarify or correct my supposed “misunderstanding” of you, or my
“misrepresentation” of what you are saying.
The fact also remains, that what you say about KSW is incomprehensible to me. Your conclusions seem to be a
reversal of what observable facts indicate, and you have not actually marshalled any evidence to support
your conclusions about KSW.
You just say – well that’s what I think. And that’s OK up to a point. Each person is free to create whatever
thoughts s/he wishes to create, and they do not need to be aligned with any particular reality. There is no
law that says they must be aligned with any particular reality.
But there is no law that says I must duplicate you perfectly whether you are making yourself clear or not.
On whom does the responsibilty of the creation of a “straw man” rest? Communication is an interaction in
which each side has full reponsibility for the result. If you think I have misunderstood something, whose
responsibility is it to work towards a clarification of the misunderstanding?
So we are back where we started. I don’t understand how you arrived at your conclusions about KSW; I attempt
to explain how I understand KSW and how I have arrived at my conclusions; I started out saying I didn’t
understand where you were coming from about it, that’s the bottom line right there. Crying “straw man” at me clarifies nothing. It’s not entirely up to ME to clarify what YOU said.
You seem to be the only one not understanding my position. Others disagree with my position, but you seem to be alone in not understanding it. I may write a blog post just for you on this topic. Or I may not. We’ll see.
Now, to blame the other in a discussion for one’s own logical fallacies in the discussion (as you do above in blaming me for your resorting to Straw Man tactics) is pretty bad form. If you’d just had said “Sorry for the Straw Man tactics”, then all would be forgotten and fine. But here you are simply compounding the fallacy with more bad form. Sorry, Val, I’m done discussing this with you.
That’s fine Geir. It’s your blog, you can do as you please with it and on it.
Noted that you did not substantively respond to any of my points, and focused only on what you chose to see as my “straw man tactics”.
Go to cramming, review the material on “comments” vs.”originations” in the basic TRs materials.
G: “Wow – so you don’t think it is possible for anyone to make a better political system than Nazism without knowing every nuts and bolt in it?”
This is completely “straw man” and not what I said at all.
No, I am asking. Do you have an answer?
Geir, I was replying to this:
Geir sez: “Can I improve Nazism without knowing the nuts and bolts of it? Or communism? Or the ways of the KKK? Of course I can. And so can you, I hope.”
The operative word in your post is “improve”. I maintain no-one could “improve” Nazism, communism, or the KKK, or anything else for that matter, without inspecting or looking at or somehow knowing by perception of it, whatever it is he is trying to improve.
Certainly one could independently come up with a better political or economic system, machine, or whatever, without knowing anything of the already existing ones.
But to “improve” to me means taking some pre-existing thing and altering it to better it. One cannot improve something without awareness of it. One could perhaps “improve upon” an existing thing without being aware of the pre-existing thing, simply by creating something new that “improved upon” anything already existing.
So perhaps that was the misunderstanding we indulged ourselves in, regarding the term “improve”.
If someone said “Hey! Let’s improve upon Nazism by Not sending Jews to concentration camps” – they could certainly come up with such an improvement without knowing nuts and bolts in Nazism.
If someone came to me and saw HyperList in action for the first time and said “That list surely looks better with Color X there (pointing at a certain element of an HL” – that could very well be an improvement.
And I have seen this hundreds of times in IT. Someone clueless comes and takes a glance at an IT solution and says “Why don’t you just make the solution do This by moving those elements on the screen over there and make id to Blaah when you click there” – and Bang… improvement in design is done, or even functionality.
Of course it is possible to improve something without knowing that area in any detail. Heck, we do it all the time when we explore new areas of life.
Maybe the trouble is with the expression “nuts and bolts”. The concentration camps were part of the nuts and bolts, as I see it. So I don’t disagree with you about improving Nazism by eliminating concentration camps and associated slaughterhouses.. By “nuts and bolts” I simply mean the visible elements of how something is constructed. It’s visible elements, it’s workings. Gestapo, abductions, internment camps(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment), executions etc. were part of Nazism.
A person who is not aware of, not perceiving what is happening, how a system is operating, is not likely to produce any improvement in that system.
It can all be obnosed and I am simply saying that it must be obnosed for any intentional improvement to be done.
In a mechanical system it is easier to spot the cause and effect of connected parts. This rod pushes this cylinder etc. They are simple mechanical connections.
In systems involving human action it can be more complicated because of the added variable element of intentionality.
The same tool can be used for good or ill depending on the intention of the person using it.
Even “internment” can have a positive aspect, as when a dangerously contagious person is held “captive” (from his point of view perhaps a violation of his “liberty”) in a hospital isolation ward until he is cured of his contagious disease.
This post is only regarding the semantics of “improve(ment)”. (isene 2012-09-21 at 07:52). I’m afraid (in this case) I disagree with Geir.
Improve: vb
1. To make or become better in quality; ameliorate.
2. (tr) To make (buildings, land, etc.) more valuable by additions or betterment.
3. (intr; usually foll by on or upon) To achieve a better standard or quality in comparison (with). E.g.: to improve on last year’s crop.
Ameliorate : To make or become better.
Source: Collins English Dictionary http://www.thefreedictionary.com/improve
All these definitions start with “to make” or “to achieve”. If it’s not done, it’s not an improvement.
> “I have seen this hundreds of times in IT. Someone clueless comes and takes a glance at an IT solution and says “Why don’t you just make the solution do This by moving those elements on the screen over there and make id to Blaah when you click there” – and Bang… improvement in design is done, or even functionality.”
I also have seen this hundreds of times in IT. The improvement was not done by the clueless. The improvement was done by people who knew the “nuts and bolts”: the system analyst / designer / programmer.
> “If someone came to me and saw HyperList in action for the first time and said “That list surely looks better with Color X there (pointing at a certain element of an HL” – that could very well be an improvement.”
Again, the improvement will not be done by somebody who says something about color x of an HL element. The improvement will be done by people who know the “nuts and bolts” of Hyperlist: the system analyst / designer / programmer: in this case, you.
> “If someone said “Hey! Let’s improve upon Nazism by Not sending Jews to concentration camps” – they could certainly come up with such an improvement without knowing nuts and bolts in Nazism.”
Again, the improvement would not be done by somebody just saying let’s stop the concentration camps. It would be done by people who knows the structure and philosophy (i.e the “nuts and bolts”) of Nazism. In this case there should be a change in structure (to stop the concentration camps) and a change in philosophy (to avoid again in the future something similar to concentration camps).
> “Of course it is possible to improve something without knowing that area in any detail. Heck, we do it all the time when we explore new areas of life.”
Again, an improvement will be done only by people who knows enough (i.e the “nuts and bolts”) of the life area to be improved. In this case we do have a lot of “knowledge” about life which is both conscious and unconscious (we are mainly unaware of the big quantity of “knowledge” because they usually run on automatic).
▶ There is also the issue of the scope of the improvement. Obviously, to make a permanent and stable improvement, the amount of “knowledge” (i.e the “nuts and bolts”) needed is bigger than otherwise.
Franc, I think the nuts and bolts of Nazism was the dark heart of Hitler which he hid. We don’t have to know the workings of the Gestapo to discern that making some German citizens wear the Star of David on their clothing is wrong, do we? And if not, then how much easier is it to discern that these German citizens should not be removed from their homes, crowded into cattle cars and excommunicated from society?
Sorry Ferenc – no go.
Any improvement is an improvement. An improvement in the design of a car is an improvement, even if the car is not yet produced. An improvement in the design of a piece of software is an improvement in that piece of software – even before a programmer touches a keyboard. A suggestion from you on how HyperList can become better can indeed be an improvement to HyperList.
As kids, we improve every day without knowing much nuts and bolts at all.
Geir, what Ferenc terms as semantics I will express in terms of logical fallacy. I see your comments about how anybody can improve something without knowing much about it as the fallacy of Selective Observation: counting the hits and forgetting the misses.
In my last comment to you, downstream, I gave you a real-life example that happened with HyperList, showing how a person could easily mess up when not knowing much about a subject. You never responded to that – or to any of the other counter-arguments I made with regard to the actual substance of KSW policy, not how it was derived or the character of the man who derived it. I was really hoping that for once all of us could stick to one subject and see what we could resolve amongst each other.
p.s. By “stick to one subject and see what we could resolve” I am talking about one SCIENTOLOGY subject, and seeing what we could resolve by discussing it directly and specifically.
I am amazed that Mairildi and Ferenc is defending Valkov’s viewpoint here. Since many examples countering his viewpoint does not work – let’s attack this from a purely logical, almost mathematical viewpoint to show how off the wall his viewpoint really is:
Valkov sezzz: “My answer to this is an unequivocal NO, YOU CAN’T.
A person cannot successfully improve what he can’t or doesn’t see clearly.”
OK, so a person CANNOT successfully improve upon anything that he doesn’t see clearly. CANNOT. NOT POSSIBLE: Zero chance of any improvement happening whatsoever in any positive direction.
Let’s take this one to town: If there are… let’s say for the sake of argument… one million possible suggestions regarding a specific subject and only fifty of them would improve upon the subject. Without seeing the subject clearly (whatever that means), the person has absolutely NO CHANCE at even stumbling upon one of those fifty possible improvement. No chance at all.
So, Valkov tries to convince us that the person not seeing the subject clearly (how clearly exactly?) by some mystical force of nature is absolutely precluded from, even by pure chance, to happen to utter the words associated with any of those fifty suggestions that would improve upon the subject. If this is indeed true, I believe that Valkov has come across a fifth force in Mother Nature and that the Standard Model for particle physics is about to get its first hit.
So, the person that doesn’t see the subject clearly has NO CHANCE of hitting the magic 50. OK. So what happens when he sees the subject a bit more clearly. Well, a person cannot improve upon his clarity to some degree and get those magic 50 into view. It is ONLY when he sees the subject CLEARLY that those magic 50 becomes possible. So, here Valkov has stumbled upon another very interesting observation – the definition of “CLEARLY”: A subject is seen CLEARLY when, and only when, the possibility of happening to utter an improvement in the domain of the subject equals the total possible improvements divided by the total possible suggestions. I would call that an advance in logic and linguistic that outdoes in precision of any dictionary definition of this word to date.
I would have to conclude that either Valkov (and his defenders) are genius and has improved upon the world of logic, without knowing all the nuts and bolts of logic (Valkov admitted here that he was foggy on the Straw Man concept) and without seeing the whole of the subject of logic CLEARLY. Oh wait… is that Gödel turning in his grave?
Geir,you must have missed the point I was making, regarding Selective Observation: counting the hits and forgetting the misses. Of course there would be hits by those who knew little about a subject – but many more misses. And many more hits for those who did know the subject.
And you still haven’t gotten back to the subject we were on – the meaning and substance of KSW policy. I’m starting to feel rather ignored. 😦
But seriously, I don’t get why you and Chris won’t or can’t stay on a specific subject. It’s fine to get into other ones too, but there’s an incomplete one that you both have essentially dropped and gone back to opinions, extrapolations and just plain Red Herrings.
Any improvement to a part of a system is obviously an improvement to the whole of the system.
Your later argument in the discussion does not help Valkov in his original assertion that you CANNOT improve anything if you cannot see it clearly. I was simply countering his obvious illogic. Deal with it.
Sure, I can deal with it. Can you deal with the other points I have made to you in the last several comments above? You don’t seem be doing that.
So, you admit that Valkov’s statement was Wrong and that it was Wrong to defend it?
And yes – I will answer your points later. I just felt the need to address the most glaring illogic first.
As I said, I got from Val that he was talking about improving a whole system – as a system and I believe that Ferenc was basically looking at it that way too when he said:
“There is also the issue of the scope of the improvement. Obviously, to make a permanent and stable improvement, the amount of “knowledge” (i.e the “nuts and bolts”) needed is bigger than otherwise.”
You say, “Any improvement to a part of a system is obviously an improvement to the whole of the system.”
I can see how that would be – in a sense. But again, this is a semantics problem, because changing “a part”, such as what I tried to do (and you made workable, knowing the “nuts and bolts”) with HyperList, doesn’t change the system AS A SYSTEM.
So I see this point of yours about Valkov as either semantics or a Fallacy Of Composition – assuming that a whole has the same simplicity as its constituent parts.
Sorry Marildi – I see you back paddling on this one. Improvement in part of a system constitute an improvement in the overall system if the parts of a system makes up the whole.
So, the quote I showed from Valkov: Was that Right or Wrong? Simple answer pleas, no dodging.
Wasn’t it Aristotle, one of your heroes ;), who said “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”?
Is that a counter-argument to what I just wrote?
Please answer the question above – was Valkov’s assertion right or wrong?
Sorry. I wasn’t clear. But I thought I had already answered the question where I said above that Val was talking about improving a whole system and you were talking about improving parts of a system. And my last comment about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts was alluding to, and further support of, that first answer. More directly, my answer is to your question is – yes, Valkov was right. But, as already stated too, you were right in another sense.
The key point I’m making is that there are interactions between the parts that may be greater than the sum of those individual parts and the interactions may not be understood without knowing the whole. That’s one reason there are more misses than hits by people who attempt to improve on a part (like I did with HyperList). THIS is the far more relevant point that the fact that there are a minority of hits.
The point that the whole is greater than its parts does not in any way address the fact that an improvement in a part is an improvement to the whole. And so you state that he was right in that it is COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE to improve upon a system without seeing that system CLEARLY – he wasn’t talking about more or less chance of missing. He was stating an absolute. I am flabbergasted, befuddled and going to bed. I rest my case. Let the readers review the above and draw their own conclusion.
🙂
I know from one of your articles that you give credence to the principle of emergence so I’ll rest my case with a little more description of the Fallacy of Composition: “assuming that a whole has the same simplicity as its constituent parts. In fact, a great deal of science is the study of emergent properties. For example, if you put a drop of oil on water, there are interesting optical effects. But the effect comes from the oil/water system: it does not come just from the oil or just from the water.”
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html#dogged
Totally beside the point. Case closed.
I love you just the same.
Love you too. 🙂
BUT it’s not beside the point. A change in a part can indeed change the whole system but without understanding the system itself, it’s just a crap shoot at best, with very bad odds. The fact that you are picking on Vakov’s wording as absolute is another logical fallacy – Argument By Selective Reading: making it seem as if the weakest of an opponent’s arguments was the best he had.
(I love arguing with you almost as much as I love you. ;))
Your logic here is disappointing. But let it go now.
I’m not going to make any new argument here, but just to clarify – I see now that my comment above was misworded. I meant that the odds were very bad that a change in a part would IMPROVE (not ‘‘change’’) the whole system. This was the point I had been making about the logical fallacy of counting the hits and forgetting the misses, which was “disappointing” logic too. And my other point was that I think the concept of Valkov’s absolutist wording was not that hard to duplicate, and no more a flagrant error than your dwelling on it.
That being clarified, I will let it go now.
p.s. I also think that originally Valkov was talking about improvement on a whole system, not just a part of it. That’s were a problem in semantics comes in.
🙂
Since this discussion is too heated, I decided to suspend posting here (Tools), and rather read it as a reality show. 🙂
However, after reading this, I think I should clarify.
isene 2012-09-21 at 21:19: “I am amazed that Mairildi and Ferenc is defending Valkov’s viewpoint here.”
I think everybody have good points.
I started trying to clarify “improve(ment)” as a step which could lead to an exchange based on General Systems Theory. (Isene mentioned, in his blog post Understanding Miscavige, “He [DM] probably never heard of Gödel or General Systems Theory”). I think that probably Isene is the only one (in this discussion) having a deep grasp of this theory.
Ferenc – heated? Ya think? 🙂 You made me laugh where you said you read this discussion as a reality show. That’s what my sister calls it too! 😀
On General Systems Theory, here’s a great quote:
“Since Descartes, the ‘scientific method’ had progressed under two related assumptions. A system could be broken down into its individual components so that each component could be analyzed as an independent entity, and the components could be added in a linear fashion to describe the totality of the system. Von Bertalanffy proposed that both assumptions were wrong. On the contrary, a system is characterized by the interactions of its componentsand the nonlinearity of those interactions.” http://www.statpac.org/walonick/systems-theory.htm
The last sentence I believe is basically the same concept as the Aristotle quote I posted earlier and thought was applicable to the subject of improving systems: “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. What do you think? (If you dare to say, LOL)
Those definitions of a system were interesting but lacking in defining boundaries. I would submit that a system is defined by the elements required to complete a cycle of action. Within any cycle of action there could be sub-cycles of action: sub-systems.
A cycle of action is defined by the simplicity of start-change-stop. There are broadly defined cycles of action (such as: wake up [start], perform the activities of a day [change], go to sleep [stop]) or narrowly defined cycles of action (such as a blink of an eye: lower eyelid [start], moisten and clean eye surface [change], open eyelid [stop]).
I use this model of a system exclusively and I have yet to find a system that does not conform to the model. Certainly the organization of Scientology can be seen as a system (with many sub-systems) that follows this model: it had a start, it changed, and now it is coming close to a stop – to ceasing to exist. It will cease as fast or as slowly as it corrects or doesn’t correct cycles of action within the overall system.
A system is as workable (or sane) as its cycles of action promote survival. What we see in Scientology is a number of workable cycles (sane training, auditing and administration) that have been corrupted by other unworkable cycles (duress, non-delivery, disconnection). It’s very much akin to a finely crafted motor that was running smoothly until someone started putting sand in the oil (just an incorrect cycle of action).
It would be easy to go on and identify the organizational cycles of action that were sand-like and correct them. It would be easy – if the mechanic (Qual) was allowed to do its job. That it is not able to do its job is another subject, in this case a legal matter – a whole other system to bring into the equation. That’s all. Just another system, another cycle of action.
2x, this is brilliant. Your model is obviously the most fundamental way to break down and simplify any system, even the most complex – what could be more basic than the cycle of action? Or the fractal sequence of the universe?
As I was reading your post, the concepts I got reminded me of what LRH says about an arbitrary, which could be said to be the thing that enters in to create an incorrect cycle of action – the sand in the oil. I just now looked at the “Service” PL, with this great paragraph mentioning arbitraries:
“We are essentially an evolutionary group. All of us together. We must not fetter ourselves beyond increasing our own efficiency, nor must we entangle our purposes with arbitrary laws which do not further our cause.”
Aligning that with your model, “our cause” would be the largest cycle of action of the Scn organization, the one that most broadly and widely promotes survival – freeing beings. And “entangling our purposes” would only happen because of arbitraries – or, unworkable cycles of action, from the smallest to the largest. I’ll have to think more about “fettering ourselves beyond increasing our own efficiency”…
What I especially love in that paragraph is “We are essentially an evolutionary group”! The word “evolutionary” says everything about the need to keep that Qual function going at all times, always evolving and correcting towards survival. Btw, where you mentioned “a legal matter”, I assume you were alluding to the current organization with regard to the law stepping in, or were you referring to the legal department in an org, or internationally (yikes – OSA)? I never knew a lot about the legal area in an org.
One other thing I was remembering – the idea that an organization moves slowly through the phases of each of the divisions of the org board. I wonder when it will reach the mighty Qual Division. (Like you seem to be, I’m a Qualie at heart, :))
This thread is out of hand, as far as trying to respond to specific posts….
However. For a person to say “Let’s improve Nazism by not sending Jews to concentration camps”, wouldn’t that person have to be aware that in Nazism, Jews were being sent to concentration camps?
Would he make such a suggestion, if he had no awareness of that particular aspect of the Nazi system? If he did not know that anyone was being sent to concentration camps, how likely would he be to suggest that the practice be terminated? If he was not aware of the practice existing in the first place?
By the way, I am really sorry I ever used the term “nuts and bolts” because it obviously means something different to you than it means to me.
Since marildi is challenging me :-), here is some basic info for your entertainment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_thinking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_philosophy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_science
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-systems
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_systems_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_of_systems
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systematics_-_study_of_multi-term_systems
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_types_of_systems_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_analysis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_dynamics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_Systems_Approach
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_systems_theory
I’ll keep reading the reality show. 🙂
Ferenc, that has to be the most clever way anybody has ever attempted to shut me up – or at least keep me quiet for a good while. Hilarious. 😀
:D, :D, 😀 !
Yeay yeah. Go ahead, LYAO.
But don’t get your hopes up. 🙂
Marildi.
your above post is very good my dear….you made me think; postulate as a tool, yes that can be but only if one would use words “i wanna be like…… or i want to be carpenter ” but in reality the words are not the real postulate.. since the real postulate is invisible, intangible, holds
no energy so the postulate, the vizualation ”i wanna be a race driver” and see self driving that car is creation and experience at the same time… that person already that race driver but the problem is that he wants that happen in solid form.
And that complicate things for him and feel the loss if those thoughts dont materialise in solid form
But than using the language, sounds and verbally expressing –postulating is on the SOLID level it is intengible yet totally belongs to the MEST universe.
I see the LANGUAGE as a tool since it’s use is continual creation, in fact language, use of words is the ultimate superior toll ever created in order to create with, because it turns on: stimulates arises excites enlivens inspires motivates provokes fuels stirs every sensory the being has and goads that being to respond further with creation: communication=creation.
No wonder the universe expands in an incredible rate.
Nstive State has no tools.. one do not have the need since creation is on the different level.
Eliz, I was in the middle of writing a reply to Will/Katageek when you posted the above comment, but it’s on the same subject of postulates and you’ve probably read it by now.
I agree that the words used are neither the intention nor the postulate, which is just a concept or visualization, as you say. And I agree with you about the immense power of language too. I’m not sure I got the connection to the expanding universe, though – say more?
M,
Because the use of the language as a tool, it do creates continual stimulation which has become heavier and heavier since it has begun that dense energy has to expand and it doooooo.
Just look around you what the use of language as tool has caused? What it is it’s outcome? The stimulation is not only effecting the human population but that continual generation of those heavy energy flows accelerated considerably since energy was ”re-invented” in the form of electricity which is addition to language as tool and its outcome also hugely effecting the planet= Nature, the weather, look at the so called wild Kingdome, look around how fast everything going down into Hell or Hell it is already.. I believe that.
Expending universe? Yes, I say it do..
Marildi, I just had a huge cog and I thank you for that, pull up your socks my dear…. and …seat belts please…. First time off the presssssssss.
COGNITION: what causes the expansion the growth of the universe.
It is about what makes energies to expend here on this Planet… where that energy coming from the first place?
That expansion of our universe that growth that development is caused by re-stimulation because every beings already has that energy flow and that is that “BAG” LRH’s talked about..[one carry around for ever, till it will be as-ised in sessions.]
And what are in those BAGS I ask you?
What is sitting there quietly, unmoving motionless Immobile dormant inactive who know how long?
Enormous masses of energy which was amassed collected for eternities by every being that has the Track and every being has one on this Planet Earth: and I believe that Bag is the BANK the MEST Universe…
And what those bags contain is: huge amount of power which in the past has created and destroyed planets and everything within: so how much power on individual bag has?
That anger which is expressed going down on the road by the screaming motorist or yelling at his kids, that rage one hit his partner with, or kills somebody, bombs which kill dozens of innocent bystanders that same heavy rage once destroyed planets, wiped out nations…
I know it is downscaled by now, has become considerable less effective but still a huge amount of power is being re-stimulated when those things do happen.
Just think that kind of stimulation happens across the planet all the time and it exists in many different forms and acted out by billions daily because they were re-stimulated.
Let’s name a few: sex=climax huge bundle of energy, and it is created out visual stimulation and that simulation effects millions every day, some go for the second round or more because the stimulation is heavier since porno has been brought into homes on the computer: the planets energy rocks shakes daily just from that alone!
These sex energies origin is not from here it is re-stimulation from other place and other time!
Giving birth: huge energy mass stimulated, how many of those happens daily?
Killing-murder—power is immense in those acts, any fight, argument, explosion of any kind, accidents =suffering…all that is energy re-activated brought back to life once more.
Death:, the agony of it, the loss for those who morn.
Sickness, pain, stimulation from drugs: everything in re-stimulation and all of it was established has its foundations its origins way back someplace on the Track.
And let’s not forget for the second that stimulation=energy causes more re-stimulation [ the whole track becomes stimulated so that energy expands very rapidly that can’t be helped, only in session one as-is energy one can reverse the flow… auditing any one?
So what will happen in the future to the Planet because the power created within and continually expanding????
Have a question?…or you can recall what has happened when you were in other place, other Planet when the occupants were doing the same as here?
Elizabeth, I suddenly remembered I hadn’t yet replied to this post on your cognition. What I wanted to say is that I really got what you mean about the immenseness of the charge that is in the “Bags” of all the Banks. And it made me also think of the fact that charge becomes as-ised with auditing. So I wonder how you see the “race” between the two – the build-up of more and charge in the universe, because of all the locks that keep being added – and on the other side in the race, all the auditing that is being done, including on all those free beings, as you call them. Is the as-ising at least starting to catch up with the growing charge, or has it already passed it and gaining speed? That is the way some people see it.
M, who are those people could you give me some names please? These people they have reality or just guessing?
E, the only name I can think of right now is Maria. But I know that she isn’t the only one who has bascially said, in so many words, that theta (rather than entheta, charge) is gaining ground and that this is the direction the universe is going. Even you have talked about how auditing being done by one person is actually affecting others, specifically those free beings without bodies who are hanging around. Did I get that right?
You got that right…. I have written about the effects of auditing more than once by now and I have not changed my mind, in fact I have discovered that one can change other beings outlook, space easily not only by putting them is session..
I am looking into this… since it is a topic which hold great interest…
I do not agree with the concept of “changing another being’s outlook.” This desire is flawed in my opinion because of the #1. the judgement and evaluation toward other’s opinions being better and worse, and #2. the idea that this is possible, I believe it is not. It is a basic-basic mistake.
Is that really how you meant to phrase that statement?
Chris
“I do not agree with the concept of “changing another being’s outlook.” This desire is flawed in my opinion because of the #1. the judgement and evaluation toward other’s opinions being better and worse, and #2. the idea that this is possible, I believe it is not. It is a basic-basic mistake.
Is that really how you meant to phrase that statement?”
“This desire is flawed in my opinion because of the #1. the judgement and evaluation toward other’s opinions’’
E, Desire ? I did not say ‘’desire’’ It never entered in my mind.
Have you any idea what you do, eat, wear, read, talk about, drive a car, teach your children are affected by everything around you, by computer, media, advertisement etc…???
It is not a basic-basic mistake; you have fears that you lose control of your thinking…
One’s own considerations are one’s own limitation. If nothing is impossible then there are no limits. I believe that and that is my reality because only MEST has limitations since it is limitation in itself..
Keep it in mind when one has no bank than one has no evil intentions either….
Not even on ack on my communication back to you? something like, thank. —i still dont agree.. whatever?
As you can see, I wrote this to you last night.
Chris Thompson
2012-09-21 at 08:02
Elizabeth: “You got that right…. I have written about the effects of auditing more than once by now and I have not changed my mind, in fact I have discovered that one can change other beings outlook, space easily not only by putting them is session..
I am looking into this… since it is a topic which hold great interest…
It is not a basic-basic mistake; you have fears that you lose control of your thinking…
(then) . . . One’s own considerations are one’s own limitation. If nothing is impossible then there are no limits. I believe that and that is my reality because only MEST has limitations since it is limitation in itself..
Keep it in mind when one has no bank than one has no evil intentions either….”
Chris: No one can change another’s mind. This has been tried for many generations of men controlling men. Controlling others through force and also using the softer arts of sales, marketing, and hypnotism is not the same as changing another’s outlook. Only the individual can change their own outlook. You can invite another to change their outlook — yes. In your own mind, you may have infinite creative possibilities; however, in the material world you do not. Additionally, the “free will” that you do exert to impact the material world must follow the rules of the material world in order to appear. Any magical OT abilities involved take form in one’s smooth and seemless use of the tools of the trades involved and dovetail with the rules of the material world. Your experience of your existence is yours and yours alone just as is my own. OT abilities are limited to one’s own world view and aside from some sparkling generalities and heresay, this is indisputable.
it did not show here, thank you for the answer…. now I say you are totally wrong….. so wrong thay it would be impossible to get any wronger than what you have writen–what you believe in..
I am totally wrong? — So wrong I cannot get any wronger? Turned around, I must understand that you are totally right for what you believe in? Not much wiggle room! — I am defeated.
You have made yourself wrong, I did not do that to you. Go and investigate and see for your self.
Chris, you shoud have a hard look into ”soft sales”’ how it is affecting the general public…. than have a really good look on” mass media”’ than investigate the computer how all these concepts rules the Earth’s population.
Yes. Good. And when I do, what will I discover?
that is for you to know.
No, you have already established that I will perceive it totally wrong. I accept that. Now it is for you to teach me the right truth and do not be vague.
lets not play silly games, in your comment it is you who said that I was totally wrong. You go teach your self and investigate for your self… the road is open so walk on it..
It is not a game when the rules are win for you and lose for me. That is what is called a “games condition” because it looks like a game on the outside but on the inside everyone is not playing honestly. Hippies called this type of play “head games.” In Scientology it is referred to as a service facsimile because it is a “picture that serves you” by showing you how you are right and I am wrong.
Do you feel you are a victim here?
I have dirrected you toward the answers: Please go investigate the power of the media over yout life… go see it for your self…
Chris: ‘In Scientology it is referred to as a service facsimile because it is a “picture that serves you” by showing you how you are right and I am wrong.” =is that what you were doing when you have made me totally wrong?
. . . Or you could just make your very right point.
At the root, you don’t know what I know just as I don’t know what you know. You don’t control what others think and trying to is a mistake. Your tools work on your mind just as my tools work on mine. Our personal realities can only impinge on the world according to very certain rules. These rules are interfaced using tools. Our competence in using our tools determines what effect we can have on the material world.
right you are… am glad your tool works…
Ch; “You don’t control what others think and trying to is a mistake.”
I never ever said I control what others think… you have not duplicated what I said..
I have understood you well enough.
that is simply wonderful 🙂
in the other hand: no you have not understood what I said, you assume something out of your own reality but no, you have not duplicated what I said=what I meant.. and dont ask me to write it again .
I am dismissed. I will give you the last word.
I don’t get why #3 and #5 are where they are.
Your scale seems to go from “No tools needed” to “free use of tools”. It would seem to me that there would need be the existence of tools, before any conditions about the use of tools could be applied. Thus both “Used freely” and “Used compulsively” would seem to fall below “Tools needed”. Above that level of “Tools needed”, no tools exist because they are not needed. Therefore they can neither be used freely nor used compulsively, because they do not yet exist.
Thus “No tools” and “No tools needed” seems like a redundancy. What’s the difference?
“Using tools compulsively” seems a bit like “Having to have before you can do.”
Chris,
You get me lost. I couldn’t figure out OP’s meaning. I looked in English dictionary, Scientology tech dictionary, & Fractal theory.
Your OP is deeper than mine. (I don’t qualify for a coffee with Geir). And you also speak Hungarian …
Hi Frank! Sajnalom. En nem beszelek magyarul, de van egy szotar. OP: az “eredeti post.” OP az eredeti cikket a blog. I like your posts!
here is something for you than puszild a szamar feneket.
@Elizabeth, — Really? Joking right? csokolja a segged a Tatto? Hova mesz ezzel? hehe
I have written that you doing that to the donky… just very simple hungarian whatever… and for you to exarsise your fingers leafing throught your book. 🙂
ah! The ass which means the donkey! My mistake (blush).
the main point is that it is you need to do that…
LOL! You can have the last word!
i dont want the last word, but you have not asked the question why you need to csokolni the ass’s hatulja.
Previously, through my enlarged ego, I thought I might discover and share some new idea or concept. My studies have shown me that I have light-years yet to go to even catch up with the tools of extant knowledge. When I cognite on a new idea, I have now become used to finding that if I will research that specific revelation that I will find someone, sometimes lots of someones have already been there and worn the path smooth. In this example, the tool of my own personal knowledge seems to fall around a 5 since I always seem to be needing knowledge that I do not have. The knowledge is available but I still have to learn it.
Well, I haven’t quite gotten to the bottom of this scale myself. Here, as most other areas of philosophy (in the broadest meaning possible), there are many levels of understanding. I am pondering this and related areas. Maybe I’ll just vanish in a “blip” one day.
“Maybe I’ll just vanish in a “blip” one day.”
Impassible, that never can happen, that never will happen, It do not work that way.
To the Contrary, and intangible infinite do not means: nothingness
Great article and a very insightful scale. It’s clear how it is a scale of “free will”. I think it could also be described as a gradient scale from total spirit (which is unlimited free will) to total matter (physical universe only). The mind – “conscious” mind – would be the ultimate tool since it creates all other tools, including an “unconscious” or reactive mind which is all matter. But more than that, the conscious mind is the only tool that is composed not just of matter but of spirit as an integral part. Actually, all tools, used as tools, are controlled by beings – spirit – so I guess I would just say that the mind is the physical universe tool most intimately and directly connected with spirit.
So, to become free from something , one needs to become free of his tools in the first place. Knowingness comes to my mind. Not not-is the bad tools of a subject because these, too, are part of the character nature of that particular subject.
Can you think of a scale #1 example?
Chris, a scale #1 condition is an absolute, it is just the ideal scene description in the real world. An example of an absolute do not exist on any subject because you will always find it incomplete or inconsistent :-). But even so, if you become so good doing something that do not even have to think about the tools involved, well you are close to the # 1 on that particular subject imo.
Agreed (on all points)
I see what you mean. Thank you.
Yes.
#1 I would say is a freewill conjecture only with no real world examples. Or?
#2 I cannot think of any real world example unless we are allowed to exclude the mind as tool.
#3 All the most competent and able people I know of fit in around here. Doesn’t doing HP41 math in one’s own head fit here? Gravity games, great baseball players, top executives and top tradesmen, typists, and other professionals fit in around here.
From #3 — #5 we may need to fit in the correct and incorrect use or misuse of tools
Geir or anyone, what would be some examples of “2’s”?
It depends on how wide or deep you want to look at this. The scale goes through the same fractal iterations as the universe itself. So, on a practical level (and on of fairly high fractal, mundane level); Presenting with Powerpoint slides: 1: No powerpoint slides (no need, no no-need, total freedom from The Slides) – and slides would actually deteriorate the delivery of the message. 2: No slides needed for that presentation, but slides wouldn’t necessarily hurt the presentation either. 3: Slides used freely in the presentation – using slides, but can jump around with them, skip a few, play with the presentation (but they do become a distraction to the audience on occasion). 4: Have to use slides to avoid trouble (crutch). 5: Slides run automatically, every 30 seconds – you just have to spiel off the script. 6: You’re not on the stage, the presentation is run by a robot 😉
But, I presume you are looking for the initial fractal iteration, the ultimate, all-encompassing, life-swallowing usage of the scale? In that case – for #2; Telepathy?
by the time one is that good [clear of MEST] as useing telepathy as communication, one would not need any presentation since telepathy is one notch bellow intention.
Geir: “…But, I presume you are looking for the initial fractal iteration, the ultimate, all-encompassing, life-swallowing usage of the scale? In that case – for #2; Telepathy?”
Chris: Wow. I didn’t intend or realize until you wrote that how strong I must be coming across… Maybe I am always looking for silver bullets to level inconsistencies. Maybe I just am searching for corners to cut. Your fractal analogy – just now – does make it clear to me that scales need context and a specified “zoom power” or frame of reference to bring that frame into focus or else the examples become pixelated and meaningless.
I spent most of the summer studying small things and the last few weeks large things. I don’t know what kind of scale I would use to describe the experience but mixed with the usual wonder and awe of studying the universe is mixed in an increasing of misery and frustration at being unable to hold onto one frame of reference while zooming into or out of another. I have gotten better at using my math tools as well as that part of my mind, so I think the solution for me is to practice more to get over the vertigo of moving into and out of various orders of magnitude quickly. Written another way, if I were learning to skate, my knees would be very skinned.
Wow. & we have to meet for a coffee one day.
Thank you. A coffee would be great.
Chris, as I see it, a # 2 is not just no tools needed, but as well, no need of certain and preconceived tools. This is the field for the creation of new and better tools. Or as the tao teaches, not know is a good condition to start living for real.
Thanks Rafael SN, I know that you are right. Mostly my life is well in balance life but my heart is way out ahead of my “knowingness” so I find myself sitting on the limbs that I saw. Just a hazard of trying to know stuff, I guess.
“”Just a hazard of trying to know stuff, I guess.”
hazard of trying to know? think that over……very carefuly
You never worked your way through a belly-ache when confronting? Never felt the vertigo that goes with confronting the size and scope of the world? That’s all I am saying.
I have experienced everything but I never thought they were hazards of any kind. Since I was the creator of all that crap my track: recalls and after all this time I am still here… nothing of my creations – or my agreements were bigger and better, more powerful than I am and i have been…
The way i look at the items no matter what they may be: wow… I am sure know how to create on grand scale!
been thinking more about your “confronting”
here is what you write ”I have gotten better at using my math tools as well as that part of my mind, so I think the solution for me is to practice more to get over the vertigo of moving into and out of various orders of magnitude quickly. Written another way,””” if I were learning to skate, my knees would be very skinned.””””
After sessions, confronting one do not walk away battered, being hurt in any way, or even remembering much of the session since that has been as-ised, but after confrontation one has a cognition and that cognition is a uplift, places one outside the MEST…. So one do not feel anything but being elated high ecstatic, floating top of the World.. and one feel one just slain hundred dragons… ? All these confrontations you have but you have not shared one cognitions Would love to hear them… care to share?
Of course, we both know the facts, yes?
It hasn’t been sessions. It has been studying.
great, thanks, i am glad you made that clear, i was worried there for a minute that you left the PC in the mass.. So than what ever you were doing was not the same as i would have being in session.
By the way I never felt of feel any vertigo about the size of the world, it is only a speck you know, or not even that since it size is so small, so insignificant, it is lost among the much larger masses and any way it cant to be seen from space.
The size of the planet is only large if it is perceived with the ”eyes”’ because one, the ”looker” compares that to the size of the bodies and also to other objects and comes to conclusion what size is that territory: big or small and by how far the ”eyes” can see.
So the use of the eyes-looking are the drawback, In this case the ‘’eyes’ are the TOOL and being used as such only work to a very limited restricted range. Like the cameras lenses since that is what they are.
No vertigo here, none what so ever…
Yes, I can see what you mean.
Chris, I am sure that your life is in good balance and that you seem to be a passionate person is clear. I am a very fortunate person to know a person with a beutiful natural knowingness like you.
Rafael SN, Thank you but the honor is mine. You always present sound comments with high ARC. I look forward to reading your posts.
Chris thanks, you are appreciated here, just like Geir is.
Geir, are you finding time to use your OMG tool? Your new telescope? Days have gotten noticeably shorter so you should be enjoying nice dark nights now?
The Willpower Paradox meets the Paradox of Self.
http://www.forksoverknives.com/does-willpower-hold-the-key-to-your-success/
Hi Will,
Just for fun I analyzed the experiment in the article you posted the link for, in terms of the Scn “map”.. Firstly, I don’t know if you are comparing the two but if so, by “free will” I believe Geir means “ability to choose freely and independently, i.e. personal choice that is not dependent on physical or divine forces”; whereas, “willpower” simply means “determination; resoluteness”. (These are basically dictionary definitions.)
Leaving aside any debate about whether free will exists ;), we can simply talk about willpower as used in the article. I’m sure you know the Scn term, postulate – basically, a decision or resolution. My understanding of the Scn principle involved is that the “degree of intention” put into a postulate (a decision/resolution), as well as in the actions taken to put it into effect in the physical universe, could be described as the amount of willpower a person has in a given instance.
In Scn this is determined by where the person is on the tone scale, both in making the decision/resolution, and in the degree of “resoluteness” in attempting to carry it out. On the tone scale, wavelengths are smaller and lighter at the top and progressively longer and heavier going downward. Also – at the top levels is the area of “thought”, in the middle is the range of “emotion” (all of them), and at the bottom is the effort band.
A postulate made and actions done when one is higher up on the scale is lighter (i.e. has a smaller wavelength) than when a person is down in the area of effort, and success in achieving what is intended is much more likely to come about because of this simple fact – the higher/smaller the wavelength, the more powerful it is and thus the more powerful is the postulate made and the more likely that it will be put into effect in the physical universe.
The people in that article were obviously making decisions and exercising their willpower and I got that the ones saying “I will! I will!” were operating at the level of strenuous effort, i.e. making a heavier postulate and attempting to carry it out in the band of heavy effort. And those saying “Will I?” had the lighter touch, one higher up on the scale and thus a more powerful wavelength – which, accordingly, would determine the strength of their postulate and effectiveness of their actions.
This isn’t to say that a person doesn’t (usually) need to industriously make an “effort” to put their postulate into effect in the physical universe. But again, their tone level is what makes all the difference in making things come out the way they intend.
p.s. Just wanted to be clear that “amount of willpower” isn’t the same thing as “degree of free will”. We’ll leave that for another debate. 🙂
In reply to Geir’s comment at https://isene.me/2012/09/16/tools#comment-22865
Well, Geir, looks like it’s my turn in this tag team match that Valkov and I are playing against you and Chris in the KSW 1 championship. He picked up the ball when I last “passed” it and it’s now time for me to “get the ball” and take a shot at a body slam :D. But seriously, I do want to try to at least make sure the rules of the game are being followed. Then I think we’ll have a productive and good time of it.
I think there is some truth to what Valkov said – that “you did not substantively respond to any of my points, and focused only on what you chose to see as my straw man tactics”. My impression was that it wasn’t so much that Valkov didn’t understand what you were saying as he didn’t understand why you were saying things that aren’t in KSW 1 and don’t directly apply to it. So I decided to quote some things you wrote and give my own responses to them.
1. You said, “LRH implemented the policy that subsequently resulted in the fascistic culture known as the CoS – while LRH commanded the show.”
First, you seem to be forgetting that LRH was NOT in command for that whole period of time while DM was manipulating the comm lines between him and management. But much more significant to this discussion is this – it’s actually a Red Herring fallacy to talk about how that policy letter was ultimately implemented. That we could debate too, as to who was responsible for what. But the subject right now is the policy letter of KSW 1 itself. And I’m still hoping that all of us can actually succeed at sorting things out together. I see us as something like the originators of the Constitution of a country :), who are more or less obliged and have no choice but to work things out together. We are just as capable, IMHO. So how ‘bout we gnaw on a single bone of contention at a time, the current one being KSW
Specifically, it would be helpful if actual quotes from KSW were given, or at least paraphrases, rather than interpretations and extrapolations. I’m interested, for example, in what you can point to that is fascistic in the actual PL – or whatever you want to point to as an outpoint in that PL.
2. You say: “Tech should be freely used, cherry-picked and amended and improved, etc – all to the benefit of the goal of the PC and what actually works toward that goal.”
Valkov’s response to that was basically the same as mine has been – that there IS a free flexibility built within the tech itself. I’ve even listed out specific examples – and no “opponent” ever outright denies any of it, which seems to be because they can’t actually do so with any substantial support for it from the tech itself.
3. You say, “The tech must thusly evolve through further experimentation. Ergo: Kill KSW #1.”
I’ve said before and I’ll say again, it would be silly not to be in favor of further research – on any given technology. But here we’re talking about what LRH wanted done WITHIN the organizations that exist to deliver proven Scn tech.
KSW is written completely and only in the context of what staff in Scn organizations do. So the above is off the subject of KSW 1.
4. Geir: “To be even clearer: The tech should be squirreled.”
Squirreling is defined in KSW 1 itself as “going off into weird practices or altering Scientology” and, again, this is in the context is Scn organizations themselves.
5. “Can I improve Nazism without knowing the nuts and bolts of it?…”
I’m trying to think with this and am wondering how you would respond if someone came along and wanted to improve upon your HyperList system, for example, but tried to tell you how to do so without their even understanding how HyperList worked. I’m sure that you would find such a thing ludicrous. And if you didn’t already know about that person’s lack of understanding, it would become apparent to you in short order – and I doubt that you would think such a person could even begin to IMPROVE it. It’s almost a contradiction of terms. Even if this guy had the ability to develop something from scratch, superior to HyperList, that wouldn’t qualify him for improving on a system he doesn’t even have a good grasp of.
.
So Geir and/or Chris, I’m challenging you to be specific about what in KSW 1 itself you find objectionable. IMO, there has been so much false data spread about KSW 1 that those falsehoods have come to be assumptions about it that “everybody knows”.
1; My original mention was that KSW (not just KSW #1 – see also KSW #4) limits Scientology as a tool to below 3 on my scale. Valkov responded that “that is as it should be”. So that case is closed.
2; LRH declared people (and more brutally so) for people experimenting with tech and also condemned publicly groups who were researching tech on their own nickel. So, I don’t think LRH meant to limit the use of KSW (the whole KSW series) to only delivery Within an official organization.
3; See 2.
4; See 2.
5; Of course anyone can take a part of HyperList and improve upon it – even without understanding that part. They can in fact improve it by MISunderstanding it in the first place. Anything is possible. Let me give an example of improvement of something not understood: If you look at the Flat Earth forums, you will find that some proponents of the Flat Earth theory will go into complex mathematics to explain how the Sun, Moon and planets are moving as glowing disks above the Flat Earth. You may not be able to understand the math involved, or even the physical explanations of the theory – but you sure as hell could improve upon that theory. My 4 year old could do so easily.
6; A few quotes:
From KSW #1 – in clarifying the scope of that PL: “It is not “entirely a tech matter”…”
From KSW #4 – LRH defines “altering Scientology” as bad: “For some years we have had a word “squirreling”. It means altering Scientology, off-beat practices. It is a bad thing.” SO – any change to Scientology (not just the tech contained in HCOBs) is a bad thing. And he further says: “Scientology is the only workable system Man has.” The only workable system? Not “the best” – but the Only workable system. Wow.
This is good. It feels like we’re playing ball rather than just having a debate for the sake of a debate :). So here I go with my counter-arguments to each of yours:
1.Valkov’s words were that he does “agree that level 3 is what KSW ‘limits’ the tech to”. He didn’t say “BELOW 3” as you stated above. But that may be what you actually meant.
I agree with your statement that the scale goes through the same fractal iterations as the universe itself. We seem to be jumping around from one frame of reference to another, but in this fractal iterations frame I would say that the tech too can be applied at “Tools used freely, as per the examples of flexibility I’ve listed at different times (including upstream here), in order to get the intended result.
2, 3, and 4. Sorry, but here you give no specifics, only what you “think LRH meant” and, most pertinently, no specifics that directly relate to KSW.
5. One time I suggested a small change of something on HyperList and you even liked the idea – but you pointed out that where I was positioning it wasn’t at the correct level of indentation and thus my change would automatically include another item and thereby make an inadvertent change that would be incorrect. So although someone COULD luck out and not run into any mishaps in trying to improve something they don’t fully understand, I believe it’s a stretch to consider doing such as anything more than an iffy proposition. “Anything is possible” is a very high level of fractal iteration, isn’t it?
6. You say that the scope of KSW #1 is clarified by “it is not entirely a tech matter”. Your meaning there is vague as you haven’t actually specified what you interpret that scope to be. But here’s the quote in context: “It is not ‘entirely a tech matter’ as its neglect destroys orgs and caused a 2-year slump. IT IS THE BUSINESS OF EVERY STAFF MEMBER to enforce it.”
I think it’s clear from the context of the sentence that follows the one you quoted that what LRH is saying is it isn’t just up to tech staff but every staff member. And this interpretation is fully backed by the rest of the PL – the whole general context of which entirely supports the intention he had of application to Scn organizations.
You also quoted KSW #4 SAFEGUARDING TECHNOLOGY with regard to squirreling being described as “altering Scientology”. Here again, the meaning of “Scientology” can be easily understood in the context of the whole HCOB, which is summed up at the end as follows:
———————————-
“Scientology is a workable system. It has the route taped. The search is done. Now the route only needs to be walked.
“So put the feet of STUDENTS AND PRECLEARS [my emphasis] on that route. Don’t let them off of it no matter how fascinating the side roads seem to them. And move them on up and out.
“Squirreling [note the context just above] is today destructive of a workable system.
“Don’t let your party down. By whatever means, keep them on the route. And they’ll be free. If you don’t, they won’t.”
———————————-
You also wrote: “The only workable system? Not ‘the best’ – but the Only workable system. Wow.”
Let me ask you a sincere question: Do you know of any other workable system that existed at the time, that took individuals as far as Scn tech did? Or, for that matter, do you know of one that does so even today?” In the past, you have stated that Scn tech is “the best we have”.
So Geir, no reply? Does this mean that the Valkov-marildi tag team has won the KSW Championship by default?
marildi, I have to laugh! You posted this exactly 2 minutes after your previous post! I don’t think you’ve heard the last of Geir.
Anyway, that other Norwegian is filling in below, proving himself 100% wrong with a quote of Amy Scobee.
I guess blood is thicker than reason, eh?
Well, Val, I figure that previous post of mine, two minutes earlier, was an easy pin of Chris and your last one clearly immobilized him. So I went back to the illustrious Viking from the old country since he has been a no-show since yesterday in this bout with me. Isn’t that called default? 😉
Blood is thick than reason – good one. 😀
Funny! But Amy Scobee left in 1973. People twist the argument that Scn was not under LRH’s control when he died in 1986. Probably not is seems that by then he had deteriorated to a sick and neurotic mess — clearly not “above the bank.” But then was he in control in 1985? Then earlier? When was he the boss? When wasn’t he? What about 1973 when Amy Scobee left?
Have you read chapter 13 of Marty’s book? You should read it. It is titled “Reversal”. In that chapter Marty identifies a turning point I hadn’t spotted myself – it was the publication of a PL titled “An open letter to all Clears” in 1967. In this PL, LRH came on all “moral” and started laying down rules for how Clears should behave, instead of letting them guide themselves by their own perception of ethics.
I’m sure it will be debated endlessly, why LRH wenti n that direction, instead of sticking to his original philosophy of allowing self-determinism. It doesn’t really matter, the fact is he started trying to exert more control over everyone going up the Bridge. He founded the Sea Org etc. The rest is history.
I was new to Scientology, but I could already see the brewing conflicts between the orgs, the Field Auditors, and the Sea Org. It was openly discussed and debated at the grass roots levels, and quite a few people saw the writing on the wall and left, or tried to keep a low profile.
10 years later came the “mission massacre”, Bill Robertson taking off to establish “the Free Zone”, DM being Comm Eved and Declared by the OT Committee World Wide out of Europe, etc. People like to talk about “LRH was in charge”. This is bullshit. The genie leaves the bottle and events take off. It’s like trying to ride a wild Brahma bull – actually a whole herd of bulls at once. Or as Anonymous likes to say, trying to herd cats. That was true when Christianity got loose, and just as true with Scientology. You launch a subject like that, cross your fingers, pray a lot, and try not to get trampled. That’s reality.
I actually think it is an inevitable phase in the establishment of a temporal church organization. For more on this, read “Beyond Belief” by Elaine Pagels, about the establishment of the early Christian churches. The parallels are astonishing. The CoS has recapitulated in 60 years what Christianity went through in it’s first 600 years:
http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Belief-Secret-Gospel-Thomas/dp/0375703160/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1348260581&sr=1-2&keywords=beyond+belief
It looks to me like the pressures LRH faced were quite similar to the pressures the early Church Fathers faced back then. The results have been virtually identical, in that the “gnostic” nature of the original teachings were suppressed in both cases, and the “scriptures” were edited and sometimes re-written, in both cases. Both teachings were “bent” in the same direction, that of creating “sheeple” instead of free beings.
Coincidence? You tell me. But I believe that if you haven’t read “Beyond Belief”, your chances of understanding the history of the CoS are greatly diminished.
It’s not a long or difficult to read book at all.
Yes, now we move closer. Making people into cattle and getting control of them is the major benefit of religion.
LOL! Valkov, you feral white Russian you! I don’t think there is much geographical difference in our Scandinavian/Russian blood by now!
Elizabeth: “You got that right…. I have written about the effects of auditing more than once by now and I have not changed my mind, in fact I have discovered that one can change other beings outlook, space easily not only by putting them is session..
I am looking into this… since it is a topic which hold great interest…
It is not a basic-basic mistake; you have fears that you lose control of your thinking…
(then) . . . One’s own considerations are one’s own limitation. If nothing is impossible then there are no limits. I believe that and that is my reality because only MEST has limitations since it is limitation in itself..
Keep it in mind when one has no bank than one has no evil intentions either….”
Chris: No one can change another’s mind. This has been tried for many generations of men controlling men. Controlling others through force and also using the softer arts of sales, marketing, and hypnotism is not the same as changing another’s outlook. Only the individual can change their own outlook. You can invite another to change their outlook — yes. In your own mind, you may have infinite creative possibilities; however, in the material world you do not. Additionally, the “free will” that you do exert to impact the material world must follow the rules of the material world in order to appear. Any magical OT abilities involved take form in one’s smooth and seemless use of the tools of the trades involved and dovetail with the rules of the material world. Your experience of your existence is yours and yours alone just as is my own. OT abilities are limited to one’s own world view and aside from some sparkling generalities and heresay, this is indisputable.
Fallacious arguments seem to be a tool. I think the most beautiful and all encompassing fallacious arguments for Scientology is that the Tech is fine and it is just the COS but especially David Miscavige who is not fine.
The personal accounts of Sea Org life and life in and around Scientology beginning with the HASI here in my home town of Phoenix do not support this argument. An apropo example is Amy Scobee who yesterday wrote on “Free Scientology: Chat” on FaceBook that, “I was one of the top Sea Org Missionaires way back in 1969 for Ron, and I refused to allow third party, entheta or manhandling to occur on my missions, etc. I bowed out of participating in the third dynamic of the Church in 1973 when I saw the direction the group was being taken: off the rails in my humble opinion, and have been practicing on my own as a Field Auditor ever since, till now.”
Current “independants” seem to think they invented the war with COS but to my observation, the war has been ever so and beginning with the very first “Clear.” Today, the bickering and nit-picking at one another among those who consider themselves Scientologists continues, not to mention those who are rabidly antagonistic against the subject as a whole. The tools of Scientology seem to have fallen into disuse; never been in use; or possibly never worked to produce the result that they promoted. Did I cover the choices or are there more? Which is it?
Chris, your quote of Amy Scobee simply proves the very argument you call “fallacious” in your first sentences.
Amy did not care for the 3rd dynamic that was emerging in the world of established scientology organizations. She took “the tech”, which was working fine in her hands and with which she found nothing wrong, and took to applying it as a Field Auditior, outside the Org structure. And apparently she continues to do so to this day.
It ought to be plain as the nose on your face she herself is saying there’s nothing wrong at all with the “tech”, it works fine in the hands of one who is trained in it and applies it as written.
So how come that isn’t plain to you? It’s exactly what she is saying in your quote of her..
I am arguing that the tools of Scientology were not a 3 under LRH and >4 since that time. There may a word for this, I call it the “Camelot” argument. Miscavige is not “the” problem.
Sure sure but what you actually posted is this: “I think the most beautiful and all encompassing fallacious arguments for Scientology is that the Tech is fine and it is just the COS but especially David Miscavige who is not fine.”
Then you posted a quote of Amy essentially saying the “Tech” was fine but that she had to leave the organization in order to continue applying the tech correctly.
You can argue whatever you want, trying to fit reality into Geir’s “free will” scale, fine, but I am simply replying to what you originally posted. Which was to outline what you called a “fallacious” argument, then using a quote that actually supported just the opposite view. You quoted someone who manifestly actually thought the”Tech” WAS and IS fine, and was applying it to this day as a Field Auditor outside of the organizations.
I might add that she is not the only one – there are all of the Ron’s Orgs, much of the Freezone, and now the Independents who are all doing that too.
But you can believe whatever you wish to believe, in accordance with “free will”.
We’re dialing it in. What do you suppose was ruining the Tech for Amy Scobee in 1973?
You know what I’m talking about; in terms of your argument, the Scobee quote was a footbullet; or you wouldn’t be dishing up all this Q&A. Besides , you yourself think the Tech is OK, or you wouldn’t be solo auditing.
Valkov, I am not trying to get you to not use the tools of Scientology. I am trying to focus on the argument of how great it all was when LRH was there and how it all deteriorated once he “blew” — LRH definition. This is the clarion call of the independant movement. But is it true? Is David Miscavige the root source of Scientology’s trouble?
each invidual is the “self” the cause of their own trouble.. blame is low on the tone scale. no one cant give any one any problems ARCB’x’ unless that person agrees to have it…
Chris, the “clarion call” of the “independence movement”, to whatever extent it actually exists, is that the CoS, and that DM is actually making and keeping it that way, and that conditions in the CoS have progressively worsened in several major ways since Miscavige has been in charge.
In short, I think you are vastly oversimplifying or cartoonizing what is happening. There isn’t much of an “independence movement”, with slogans and uniforms and platforms like the political parties have. About the only thing “they” agree on, is the CoS sucks and that Miscavige also sucks, and some people who know him, think he is setting the tone. That’s about all the unity there is. The CoS is much like North Korea and other such regimes, that’s obvious to me, but my family and I hail from that part of the world. I’ve learned that it’s not very obvious to most Americans especially, and they have little idea of what North Korea is really like,
Also,in another post you mention Miscavige having purged young people; but in fact I have the opposite impression; the Flag MAAs at this time are almost exclusively teenagers who know zip about scientology and come on like Hitler Youth or Soviet Komsomol, or neo-nazi kids. They are taught to think “the future belongs to me!” and act that way.
I believe this is very deliberate on Miscavige’s part, to recruit extreme youth because it is easier to indoctrinate them.
Part of this sentence got erased- “is that the CoS, and that DM is actually making and keeping it that way, and that conditions in the CoS have progressively worsened in several major ways since Miscavige has been in charge.”
This should read: “is that the CoS IS A HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT, and that DM is actually making and keeping it that way, and that conditions in the CoS have progressively worsened in several major ways since Miscavige has been in charge.”
got it!
“Ruining the Tech for Amy in 1973”? I don’t know, but I would guess it was someone from the Sea Org.
@Valkov (and Marildi), Even while whining and complaining about David Miscavige’s abuses, present-time “independant” Scientology practices excommunication. You are all over these lines and know what I am writing about. Standard Scientology approves of and practices disconnection, this is indisputable. Up life’s road, if some denomination does not emphasize this or ignores and doesn’t practice it, that Tech will still be waiting there in the scriptures for another to discover and resurrect for the next Jihad. Your friend Marty Rathbun is also a practioner of censor and excommunication as you very well know. Since you are a student of history, I believe it’s then plausible for me to suggest that Marty will make a run at Pope of Scientology when his timing is right. My question to you two would be whether you want to support him.
Ron got one thing particularly right when he formed the COS and that is that religion is a tool to be used by people who need and want to lord over others. Your Marty Rathbun is quite competent and uses the tool of Scn at a level 2.
I’m not sure that I “am all over these lines”, as you put it. You are imputing knowledge to me without stating what that knowledge is, that you are imputing I have. This is called innuendo. You indulge in it a lot.
So please put up or shut up. In other words state what you are talking about,or keep it to yourself entirely. Don’t mealy-mouth around it by telling me I’m “all over these lines”, whatever you mean by that. I have no clue. Cut the bullshit.
@Valkov, “These lines” means these internet lines and blogs. . . information about COS, anonymous, independant Scientology, and the like.
I barely have time to read or digest Marty’s blog comments and the ones on this blog. I would appreciate it if specifics were posted rather than vague generalized references that seem to be casting a cloud on someone without giving specifics. That I see as an unworthy tactic – “Well, everybody knows Marty practices “excommunication” and being all over those lines of course you know that” etc. is the rankest bullshit, as i know little or nothing about it.
I call that innuendo.
in·nu·en·do/ˌinyo͞oˈendō/
Noun:
An allusive or oblique remark or hint, typically a suggestive or disparaging one: “innuendo, gossip, and half-truths”.
Synonyms:
insinuation – hint – allusion
definition of innuendo by the Free Online Dictionary …
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/innuendoin·nu·en·do ( n y – n d ). n. pl. in·nu·en·does. 1. An indirect or subtle, usually derogatory implication in expression; an insinuation.
You are essentially accusing me of being complicit with Marty in something bad, right? You can stick that up yours, OK?
Align yourself with Marty Rathbun if you want. I am not aligned with him.
Miscavige is “the” problem in present time. He is currently the Kim Jong Il, the Stalin, the Fuhrer of Scientology. It’s incomprehensible to me that the person who is the person in charge is claimed to not be the problem, if that person is incompetent. Oh, I get it – he’s not responsible because he “had a bad childhood”, right? Just like Stalin, Kim Jong Il, Hitler, Senator Joe McCarthy, or the Grand Dragons of the KKK were never “the” problem. OK. So what was “the” problem in Nazi Germany? What was “the” problem in the Soviet Union under Stalin? What was “the” problem in North Korea? Or in the USA?
Who said Miscavige was “the” problem, and what was meant by that? I think you are pulling a straw man here yourself. What exactly are the quotation marks around the word “the” supposed to mean, when you use them? Is there perhaps a logical fallacy being displayed here?
Do you deny that Miscavige is a major problem?
Do you not yourself practice “disconnection” or “excommunication”? Don’t you in fact decide and choose who you will talk with and who you won’t talk with? Who you wish to read or hear from, and who you don’t? Who you will associate with , and who you won’t associate with?
Come on, those are normal rights. Don’t you practice them and feel you have a right to do so?
I’m getting the hang of your style of debate, I think. You cast negations over an argument but put forth no position of your own. It’s all indirect nullification on your part. “Miscavige is not “the” problem”, you say, but you fail to then definitively say what IS Miscavige if he is not “the” problem?
And what IS “the” problem, then, in your view?
Or do you like Vinnie, simply “neti, neti” anything someone else puts out, without ever putting your own neck on the line by saying what YOU think IS?
If it seems I am having trouble grasping where you are coming from, you got that right. I sometimes think you don’t want people to know where you are coming from.
Valkov: “Do you not yourself practice “disconnection” or “excommunication”? Don’t you in fact decide and choose who you will talk with and who you won’t talk with? Who you wish to read or hear from, and who you don’t? Who you will associate with , and who you won’t associate with?
Come on, those are normal rights. Don’t you practice them and feel you have a right to do so?”
Chris: Comparing avoiding people whom we don’t like to Scientology disconnection is the perfect Straw Man. No. It is not the “right” of anyone to disconnect in the Scientology sense of the word. Even when murderers sit excommunicated on death row, their families and friends are not barred from communicating and carrying on with their lives and normal activities. Wives and children of death row inmates are not enforced to disconnect from their loved one. So no, Valkov, I have never practiced disconnection in the Scientology sense of the word and I plan never to.
OK Chris, I don’t know what you think the “scientology sense of disconnection” is, but when I was more or less “in scientology” in the 1970s, “disconnection” was a temporary last resort towards one specific person, but it could be towards a group. It was viewed as an undesirable and sometimes necessary action. The Ethical thing to do was to handle, not to disconnect. This was per LRH, by the way.
I got my first intensive of auditing when I was working at a mental hospital. My “disconnection” consisted of taking 2 weeks off from work to be away from that rather suppressive environment.
So perhaps you and I have slightly different ideas of what “scientology disconnection” is.
NEVER ASSUME YOU KNOW WHAT ANOTHER PERSON’S IDEA OF THE MEANING OF A WORD IS.
So you get it now? Because if you are confusing the two, which from your language you are, then that is an important mistake. I won’t assume anymore that you are studying the internet on the subject since you let me know not to but LRH’s hateful disconnection is not something I can abide. And the children in the SO? You don’t have that right or your data is old.
Chris, I think we are talking about 2 entirely different things. I was never in the Sea Org, and was never much involved with Organized Scientology at all, to some extent precisely because of my negative view of the Sea Org. I view the Sea Org as largely an aberration, at best a failed experiment which does not represent the original philosophy of scientology as set forth by LRH. At the same time it is obvious that there were many good people in the Sea Org at one time. They are almost all out now, as far as I can see.
Since I was never directly subject to it, I do not feel the same hatred and bitterness about it, that you do. I do resent the extent to which I feel the Sea Org prevented me from pursuing Scientology for myself. I looked at the viewpoint they were pushing, and said no thanks, not for me.
Even so, I think the way LRH originally envisioned it, as an org composed of all auditor-trained Clears and above, it may have not been a bad idea. The way it was executed and actually developed turned out to be the opposite of that. How much auditor training did you get while in the Sea Org? Case closed right there, I bet.
The Sea Org was not synonymous with the entire Church and Scientology Field back in the 1970s. It did not represent what most “Scientologists” thought and believed. That’s why so many left, even back then. They looked at the Sea Org, and said “That’s the future? I’m outta here!” I have posted about this quite a few times before, but I get the feeling my posts are not read or understood, much less remembered.
You are right about that. Out of the “millions” to “do Scientology,” maybe 10,000 combined SO, staff, and public are left. This means millions of people quit Scientology. A weird way of looking at that statistic.
But you are right about the intentions toward KSW. That tool was meant to nail Scientologists tightly to the tech for all time. KG, too is right about the mechanics. My disagreement that KSW as a tool was, is, or could be effective for its original purpose is different argument.
Chris, I don’t know what you think I am confusing. I think you are A=Aing what you experienced while in the Sea Org, with the original design of Ethics tech as a tool for a person to use to improve his own life.
I get the impression you do not even know that exists – you think it is only the fascistic 3rd dynamic administrative/political use of it that exists, and that’s all that Ethics is. That is not ALL that Ethics is. Ethics as a helpful 1st dynamic tool has been suppressed, and disconnection and suppressive person declares as political tools are an abuse and misuse of Ethics.
As a person coming from a psych background, I see a validity to classifications such as sociopath and criminal. They are a different breed of cat, I hope you are never again affected by contact with such. It’s not a good thing to succumb to hating them, but neither is it a good thing to be oblivious to the existence of one as he takes possibly lethal advantage of you. Or a child of yours. I’m sure you instinctively know this, or you wouldn’t have left the S.O. to save your child.
Nothing wrong with what you are saying and I don’t mean to represent myself as someone with their head in the sand. Having tendencies to be dramatic and angry earlier in life, I’ve found the softer arts have served me better and so as the cliche’ goes, I have “mellowed.” This doesn’t mean that I don’t remember the reason that “Ol’ Yeller” had to be put down. I’ve pulled that trigger many times in my life and am willin’. I just think in run of the mill day to day living that the runway for that can be quite long. Again, not talking about “home invasions” and all, which of course are a different situation.
Chris, I assume what you mean by “scientology disconnection” is the other determined enforced dictatorial ordering of who you can and cannot associate with.
I am confusing nothing, buddy.
I am saying there is another meaning to “disconnection” in the LRH technical issues – not administrative issues. Which you don’t seem to recognize the existence of. So who is confused, or confusing things?
By the way, I hear the movie “The Master” is a very well done quality movie and goes into this issue specifically.
Yes, I am very interested for an opportunity to see “The Master.” I am very curious to see how Philip Seymor Hoffman portrays LRH. And I would love to see an open and truthful critique of the movie by Diana Hubbbard Horwich.
On disconnection, here are the Luglis on Italian national TV discussing it because one of their sons disconnected from them 2 years ago. He is in the Sea Org. They were spurred to go on national TV by the death of Alexander Jentzsch and the fact that his mother Karen was not only not informed, but was not allowed to view his body.
http://vimeo.com/49998287 (with English subtitles)
Also, the Fairmans recently won a lawsuit against 2 scientologist doctors of chiropractic who disconnected from them at the Church’s behest. This sets a good precedent for others to follow, who are discriminated against by scientologists.
Valkov: (First) “People like to talk about “LRH was in charge”. This is bullshit. The genie leaves the bottle and events take off. It’s like trying to ride a wild Brahma bull – actually a whole herd of bulls at once.
(Then) Miscavige is “the” problem in present time. He is currently the Kim Jong Il, the Stalin, the Fuhrer of Scientology. It’s incomprehensible to me that the person who is the person in charge is claimed to not be the problem, if that person is incompetent.”
Chris: Which is it? Was LRH in charge or not? Is David Miscavige in charge today or not? What about the rest of the dictators? Were they in charge or just trying to stay atop the bull? This is interesting because I can find ways to agree with both things that you say.
Chris, I think the difference is that a person can be nominally in charge, but the degree of actual control he/she has can vary a lot. Is the President of the US “in charge”? Of what is he “in charge”? How much control does he actually have over events in the country?
A determined dictator has, for awhile, more control than the President of the US. But only in certain ways. If Kim Jong Un now suddenly tried to radically change the country of North Korea he would quickly be deposed or assassinated. So he rides the bull as best he can.
It is simplistic to talk about leaders on those levels being “in charge” or especially, “in control”. They have influence at best. Miscavige has had 25-30 years to cultivate his environment and develop his influence, and it does show.
. . .and LRH had 36 years plus the 1940’s so I think it’s a poor argument. I am not going to make absolute statements about either one these men. DM did a good job as Capo for LRH and made his bones and got his reputation. That’s why he got the call.
Chris, I think DM did a lousy job for LRH. He started and facilitated the decline of the entire network of Scientology organizations, and to this day continues to sock away money which is raised to supposedly further scientology. Of course he doesn’t use any of it for that; who knows what he’s saving that money for?
The claim that he is doing the same thing LRH did is in my view, complete and utter bullshit. LRH expanded the scientology network by making sure some of the income was always allocated to expansion, DM is contracting it.
Well, I only meant to interpret why DM was LRH’s pick. I didn’t mean to imply that he has done a “great job for LRH” and that should have meant a great job for Scientology, right?
Do you think DM will run when the noose tightens?
Chris, I do not think Miscavige was “LRH’s pick” to succeed him, if that’s what you mean. DM simply progressively wormed his way into LRH’s confidence and then over years eliminated anyone who could challenge him for power in the organization and re-structured the organizations to make himself as secure in his position as possible, until he became the “only one”, a la “in the end there can be only one”. It was politics all the way, a perfect study of how any grasping despot comes to power, whether in Rome, Libya, Japan, Africa, South America, Europe, Soviet Union, wherever.
There has been a lawsuit recently initiated that may bring more of the details of this history to light: http://kraftmstr.com/lawsuit/1stAmendedPetitionfiled9-20-2012.pdf
I actually don’t speculate about what anyone will do in the future, so I have never bothered to think about what Miscavige will do. I simply don’t care what he does.
@Chris: Was LRH in charge or not? Is David Miscavige in charge today or not? What about the rest of the dictators? Were they in charge or just trying to stay atop the bull?
Was LRH in charge or not? Not really. He thought he was and he had enough control points to make that stick somewhat. But the fact is that during his time there was little / no instantaneous communication – no email, Internet, fax, cell phone, digital video, skype, etc. and long distance costs were prohibitive. Air fare was also extremely expensive. The Missions of the day were autonomous, and pretty much ran at the discretion of the Charter holders. What is not generally known is that the OEC volumes were released in 1978 and the bulk of the Mission personnel refused to implement the policies. The charter holders simply refused to apply them and there was nothing in their charter requiring them to do so. It is important to understand that they did REFUSE to comply with LRH policy and orders. This was well before the DM Mission Holder purge in 1982. As to the Class 4, 5 orgs, they were supposed to apply policy, but in reality there was little means to make them do so other than on-site Sea Org missions. All of the Missions and all of the class 4 and 5 orgs had their own income, properties, bank accounts and signatories, which their staff controlled. The LRH Comm type posts in each org were to ensure compliance to policy but typically these posts weren’t manned.
Is David Miscavige in charge today or not? Far more than LRH ever was. The differences are the control points. Instantaneous communication now exists and air fare is cheap in comparison. Under DM’s regime, Mary Sue was stripped of power and the GO put under the SO, the original Mission charters were canceled, replaced by heavily supervised SMI. Field auditors who once did whatever they wanted to now under heavy supervision by IHELP. Memberships once under HASI and controlled by individual orgs now under IAS with IAS funds completely under DM control. IAS memberships mandatory for services, Computerized routing forms in the INCOMM system. Ideal Org buildings and funds completely under DM’s control. Mandatory fundraising. OTs under mandatory programs controlled by DM or taken off the levels. All dissenting voices purged as much as possible. Events controlled by DM and he is now usually the sole spokesperson, delivering the messages he controls.
In reality, DM does directly control people (IAS, OTs, SMI, ABLE) via trademark and intellectual property laws, substantial funds (IAS and SO reserves), properties (Ideal Orgs), the influence (events, OT mandatory programs) and the mailing lists (IAS). He still cannot control what the orgs and Mission do when he or one of his staff are not onsite and they still have their own bank accounts, which he does not personally control. But he sure as hell controls the IAS and SO reserve funds in an autonomous fashion. And the buildings purchased in the Ideal Org program are also controlled by him. In fact, he could leave the country today, transfer all the IAS and SO reserves into his own accounts, put up all the Ideal Orgs for sale and no one could do anything about it. The AOs, Flag, SO and Freewinds properties are no doubt under a similar ownership scheme as the Ideal Orgs. He now has voluminous tomes of sec check confessionals to use as leverage, scanning technology makes it possible to put it on DVDs or hard drives. LRH never had such control and leverage during his entire life.
In fact, if DM went into hiding today or died, what would be missing are the big slush funds of the IAS, SuperPower, Ideal Org funds and properties. The impact on the SO and OSA operations would be catastrophic, although the delivery orgs would still have their own bank accounts. But they’d have to find new quarters to replace any held by DM. The class 4 and 5 orgs in Ideal org buildings would have to find new quarters. The Missions and IHELP auditors would be unaffected, probably relieved.
So its really an illusion of control, one that is fast dissolving under the onslaught of the Internet, the release of the materials in digital form, the whistleblower information. Consider the Haifa, Israel org — all they had to do was say, as a group, NO MORE. They had their own bank accounts, quarters, mailing list, materials, etc. so all they had to do was refuse any more orders. DM was in charge only so long as they agreed he was and so long as they thought he controlled the auditing materials, the only thing they really care about.
Despotic leaders always think they are in charge. And their followers always think they are in charge. And for a time, they are. In reality, it takes real military presence, with real guns and 100% loyalty to the despot, guarding every control point to truly enforce being in charge. i.e. do as you are told or you will be shot. Even then, the control factor relies on the military’s obedience. And they are not always obedient. If fact, most coups are contrived by a new would-be despot with their own military or a turned military. But, always, in the shadows and darkness created by such operations, people continue their lives as the despots come and go because the military really can’t be everywhere at once.
Were they in charge or just trying to stay atop the bull?
Both — trying to stay atop the bull by creating the illusion of being in charge and getting on the control points so they can exert as much authority as possible.
@ Was LRH, the full OT, in charge or not ? this question doesn’t make sense to me .
I know. It was in response to Valkov’s assertion that LRH was not in charge but that other despots are in charge. You have to read his rant at me then my rant back at him!
It is somewhat curious how LRH in his later years, having traversed the whole Bridge, would not be in control (something that is much stressed in Scientology) of what he considered to be the most important creation in the history of the universe – and then, armed with the best tech for evaluating people since before the Big Bang, would put an apparent SP in charge of Scientology – an SP who then subsequently became in full control of his mentor’s legacy.
@Rafael SN: I wrote that badly – Read Me and Valkov ranting https://isene.me/2012/09/16/tools/#comment-22995
Valkov said LRH was NOT in charge but that other despots ARE in charge… That’s where that came from.
Chris, I got that, thanks.
Chris, I got that thanks.
That’s what I see too and is why I told Valkov that I could find ways to agree with each thing he said. My chiding was to expose what to my mind is a mistaken bias against David Miscavige and in favor of LRH.
In the coming coup, I suspect that DM will leave corporate Scientology quite the wreck as you described as DM’s possible application of Simon Bolivar. I see another improbable scenario of a leader rising from the ranks to take over. The reason I think it improbable is that DM cleansed the children from the SO years ago. Children have the energy and self-righteous anger and lack of “middle-class PTS’ness,” as DM did when he took over! Existing SO are aging – DM is actually among the youngest and middle aged people tend to keeping the fire warm and sitting close and not rocking any boats. (three metaphors in one sentence – I should be shot). I don’t imagine DM yearning for a life outside the SO as he is the emperor of his own creation. The SO have no wiggle room to evolve and so will perish.
Yeah Chris, I’m biased against sociopaths/criminals, and for social personalities.
Aren’t you?
That type of geezer talk is not for me, so no. next thing, you’ll want to be telling me who the good guys are and who the bad guys are… not good.
@Chris — regarding a scenario of a leader rising to take over: Diana Hubbard is still there. She is one person I can think of that could pull it off. I would think that having one’s daughter leave the SO would be a big wake up call.
@Maria: Diana Hubbard is a brilliant choice. I had to think for a moment to see why I had never thought of her in this context and realized that I was sitting on 30+ years of 3rd party against her. Diana is a good choice for more than a couple reasons. First thing is as a symbol and second because of her foundation, life long education in and service in Scientology. Who would have a better grasp of command intention than she?
As a young woman, and you will remember this, she was a pianist and has some aspirations in this artistic direction — I am not privy to the truth of her motivations. But it was “murmured in the orgs” that she had left the SO in favor of a personal career. I think that at the time, it was the late 1970’s, I cast a critical thought in her direction and then promptly put it and her out of my mind. A few years later, 1987 I think, I met her mother but never Diana. Yes, RoAnn leaving the SO would be jolting to her mother, but I very easily can shift my viewpoint into that true believer place and understand how a parent lets a child go and vice versa without changing my own mind toward the cult. This happened in my own family and also in the family of one of my close friends in the SO. It is gut wrenching when it happens but one rationalizes and moves on.
@Maria An accurate assessment, as usual. One further distinction between LRH and DM: LRH was primarily interested in research – he wrote policy to put an organization there that could cope and develop while he continued research. He did not seek the lime-light. DM is just the opposite – he has no interest in research or advancing his own case; he is only intyerested in the lime-light; he ravages his public for buildings rather than seeing that they are made more able by training and processing at strong organizations.
@ Geir “It is somewhat curious how LRH in his later years, having traversed the whole Bridge, would not be in control…” He may have traversed the bridge, he may have mapped it out but that doesn’t mean he fully audited every aspect of his case. The Otto Roos story would indicate he had many unhandled areas. As I commented once on Marty’s blog, LRH should have written a policy titled “Do As I Say, Don’t Do As I (Sometimes Aberratively) Do”. I speculated at that time that it was a monkey-see, monkey-do sort of contagion of aberration that evolved with his closest aides and filtered down from there. Further data indicates LRH sanctioned some of the ruthless behaviors we now find despicable. Alright, some seriously insane things happened and became even more insane in the Miscavige era. HOWEVER, I believe it is still very easy to use our own collective sanities to discriminate the good, the sane, the applicable, the workable parts of Scientology from the bad, the insane, the unworkable. How does that apply to an endorsement of KSW1? I endorse its workable parts. I endorse point #1 “Having a workable technology” to the extent it applies to the lower part of the Grade Chart. The upper levels? That’s another topic. Points 1 to 10 could be applied at the lower levels without much detriment to students or pcs. Where a pc suffers due to the limitations of the lower Grade Chart there are experienced upper-levels field auditors to sort them out.
Perhaps the simplest way to say it is that cherry picking is necessary. I don’t have a problem with that. Use your sanity sifters. There is no reason to continue the identification “this part is insane therefore the whole thing is insane.” There’s simply too much good in the subject as an entirety to be discounted by whatever singular instances of “bad” that you find.
Marildi. ”There’s simply too much good in the subject as an entirety to be discounted by whatever singular instances of “bad” that you find.”’
I am with you on that. sister…
Elizabeth, from what your wrote in your comment it seems that you thought I wrote that sentence instead of 2ndxmr – or else you simply know me well enough to know that it spoke my mind precisely. (Or maybe you read the future and knew what my reply to him would be, before I even wrote it. ;))
M; you right i though it was yours, and I know you believe that so I agreed to it.. I know your reality on that… You have mentioned before when we talked… remember, I said yes, all the bad shit can be audited out in session and the good still will be there… that part cant be erased.
Well, I loved that you recognized “me” in a kindred soul. Thanks, sister. 🙂
🙂
2ndxmr: “LRH should have written a policy titled ‘Do As I Say, Don’t Do As I (Sometimes Aberratively) Do’”.
That may not be in a policy letter (although I think it very well could be) but I recall clearly from somewhere in my study of the materials that LRH did state that in so many words. His wisdom, without a doubt, extended to a clear awareness of his own imperfections and fallibility. He also said that he was just a man, like any other, and did not wish to be viewed as a god as that would only have been detrimental to the philosophy itself.
You also said: “I endorse point #1 ‘Having a workable technology’, to the extent it applies to the lower part of the Grade Chart. The upper levels? That’s another topic. Points 1 to 10 could be applied at the lower levels without much detriment to students or pcs. Where a pc suffers due to the limitations of the lower Grade Chart there are experienced upper-levels field auditors to sort them out.”
This, IMO, is by far the main subject worth talking about, as THIS is what has the potential of most impacting the future. That’s why I’m interested in what you said about “not much detriment” at the lower levels, since that sounds like you think there is a not insignificant measure of detriment as relates to standard tech (not corrupted versions). I know you have a good amount of experience with the tech so please say more about that, specifically – from your own experience or what you know of others’. And also the specifics of what you meant where you said, “The upper levels? That’s another topic.”
Lastly, you couldn’t have summed up my own viewpoint better where you said, “There’s simply too much good in the subject as an entirety to be discounted by whatever singular instances of ‘bad’ that you find”. Best comment on the thread, IMHO. 🙂
@Marildi
David St. Lawrence has a wealth of data on his site:
http://workabletechnology.com/
This data is really in the “must read” category as it is a great sort-out of the reasons why the odd case ran too fast or too slow. The bottom line is that for some cases the overarching reason for recurrent difficulties at lower levels was the unknown intrusion of the upper-levels case. There is nothing in the repair tech at the lower levels that will point to upper-levels case being in restim. This is a huge outpoint.
2x, I have read at least some of what David has to say about the upper-levels case impinging at lower levels. But I never got HOW OFTEN (percentages of pc’s) that phenomenon actually acts as a detriment and HOW MUCH OF A DETRIMENT it is until the person gets to the upper levels and gets it handled. I wondered about it because in my years around orgs at all levels, from missions to Flag, I never got that too many pcs were “failed cases” or “odd cases” in whatever ways.
With respect, unless you were the director of processing or directly case supervising a case, why would you have been in an information loop to have known about the success or failure of cases? This information which is kept mum. You certainly wouldn’t have gossiping about it would you?
Chris, I agree that I wasn’t particularily in the inside loop and that’s why I asked 2ndxmr – he was apparently on those lines and for a long enough period to have come to some confident conclusions.
2ndxmr, one other thought with regard to your comment that “a pc suffers due to the limitations of the lower Grade Chart”. As an example of what I’m looking at, I remember a session one time where I got off a whole-track overt and at some point afterwards there must have been an out-indicator (can’t remember what, even if I knew at the time), because in session the next day the auditor assessed a correction list. The item “Not your overt?” read (to my surprise) and in short order I was handled. That’s an example of how I view the tech – as a complete, or “holistic”, system that picks up any eventuality, one way or another.
I can’t imagine that LRH wasn’t aware that the factors handled at upper levels are capable of affecting lower level pc’s, and thus he would certainly have provided for handling such in the body of tech. I mean, a truly failed case would be one in which we could be reasonably confident had been given standard tech to handle any poor result, and yet the pc still wasn’t handled.
Your comment about do as I say and not as I do is funny, but hits too close to the truth to be funny.
2ndtransformer: ” There is no reason to continue the identification “this part is insane therefore the whole thing is insane.” There’s simply too much good in the subject as an entirety to be discounted by whatever singular instances of “bad” that you find.”
Chris: With respect, I see no reason to make generalities about the goodness of the subject or of LRH. Let the chips fall and let the outcome be what it will. I would not say that Scientology is too good good to fail. I don’t even think mankind is too good (or important) to fail. Looking at the fragility of all factors involved and considering man’s statistics, I think the smart money is not on man, let alone Scientology.
Chris, auditing part wil continue because it is all ready out in the universe. Why and how: how that happens is part of the OT levels..
@Chris
I don’t really care “where the chips fall” when any truths come out about LRH. I am in favor of full disclosure. In fact, there ought to be an emoticon for “Bring it on, baby!” 😛
😀
2 Thumbs Up, Maria! At last some actual fine analysis amidst all the rhetoric about who’s in charge. And so clearly and concisely expressed!
Last I heard, Who was on First……
Valkov, Regarding wanting people to know where I am coming from…
My days are filled with structure and engineering and business and how things have to be. It’s a life I’ve chosen and not complaining. This blog for me is like an escape hatch from that structure and gives me freedom and a peaceful and safe place to explore ideas, even heretical ideas without having to endure a negative consequence for having had or voiced an odd idea. I like to read others ideas and utter upon or counter them without fear.
I do like to be understood and to have people know where I am coming from but sometimes, maybe I am just tossing a ball up and down and not particularly coming from anywhere. I do desire to have communion with you and if I’ve been off color in an offensive way, I’m sorry.
OK Chris, that’s fine. I hadn’t been looking at it that way but I actually can. And actually I prefer to. It’s like people getting together at the bar or coffeehouse and shooting the bull, or potheads geting high and free associating. That’s actually my style anyway.
However what actually happens sometimes is I get challenged as to my inferior logics and lack of knowledge of logical fallacies etc. I have dubbed it “Logic as SerFac.” Well, perhaps I just don’t express myself as clearly as I might, or even as I might wish to express myself. OK, I can clarify. I don’t mind slouching towards clarity, it’s better than not getting there at all.
So go for it, shoot from the lip, and I will (continue) to do the same! 🙂
ONE QUESTION: “Based on your article ‘On Will’ do you think it is possible for a free-will being to choose to enter a universe where free will cannot be manifested by your own decree, and in doing so would create a reality where free will would be desired but unattainable regardless of any ‘tech” that existed within said universe?”
And if so …
What do you think could be learned from such a choice?
Clarity: “by your own decree” means that a being would choose to enter a universe where nobody had free will but deeply desired it and delusion of attaining it was rampant.
I believe I have answered this in my article. Having read the article, what is your answer to this question?
Yes, you did, but not in this instance.
The instance I describe is one way the free-will mythology of your article could work in our current world if such a reality as you describe is possible.
Nobody can demonstrate supernatural abilities to satisfy James Randi’s challenge. James Randi hasn’t proved such abilities are impossible, but he has shown consistently that they don’t show up upon structured observation.
And the case for “no free will” is very strong right now in neuroscience.
So IF free will exists for people of this universe, and IF scientific observation nullifies a beings abilities because of previous postulates made outside this universe, then ONE way the current universe would match a free-will reality OUTSIDE of it would be IF everyone made a permanent free-will assignment to follow the rules of THIS universe until the end.
Which would mean that nobody could get out until the universe ends or else they would have to break their own postulates to themselves (assuming its impossible for a being of perfect integrity to lie to itself).
Beings desperately seeking freedom in such a universe could easily become spiritual wackos who think they can get free when they are merely forgetful concerning the agreements they made earlier. The only freedom in such a place would be to embrace reality itself and wait the fucker out.
In such a world, beings can pray, meditate, audit, co-audit and whatever the fuck they want to, and it cannot break the postulates they aligned with an uncompromising committment before the said universe was created.
Why? A God of integrity cannot lie to itself.
In Scientology’s current mythology, the universe is forced upon beings by overwhelm (prison planet, Xenu, yada, yada, yada.. ). So free will was TAKEN from beings according to this mythos.
In the mythos I describe, free will is lost by a free-will agreement and only retrievable upon completion of said agreement.
So … if free-will beings exist in this universe and nobody can fly by James Randi’s office or do demonstrable telepathy, then for the mythology of a free-will being to exist in this universe as you describe in your article, perhaps it was because we set unbreakable rules upon ourselves. And if so, the only escape is in waiting. Because a being of integrity can never cheat himself/herself.
In such a universe, religious delusion could abound among those impatient and ignorant of their status. There would be wins-a-plenty but no real gain. People would “talk to the dead,” tell stories about how their car teleported 40 miles to their driveway, share miracles AND BE DELUSIONAL AND FULLY CONVINCED FROM DEEPLY, BELIEVABLE EXPERIENCES THEY HAVE ABILITIES THEY AGREED TO LEAVE BEHIND BEFORE THEY GOT HERE.
In such a world, nobody leaves the movie theater until the movie house’s walls fall down. Sorry, you agreed ahead of time folks. ((AND NO, I’M NOT CLAIMING THIS IS TRUE))
Regardless, Neo can’t fly or stop bullets in such a universe. He signed away the “OT abilities” at the beginning.
So, Neo would just have to sit down, shut up and wait it out.
Therefore, another option:
A. We are a meat-only beings and free will is something our brains came up with as a survival mechanic.
B. We are body/spirits who are overwhelmed and still cannot fly or lift ash trays with our minds in front of James Randi or another observer because we just haven’t done enough tech yet.
C. ((NEW)) We are spirits who assigned away all powers freely and have forgotten our promises, but are still bound to them and are fucked till the end of this universe or until our lease expires.
In any case ice tea tastes like iced tea.
Cheers.
You can do better. There is an option “D”. Can you spot it (no, I will give no clues at all – you’re on your own on this one)?
Option D is currently my favorite.
KG, That’s a good synopsis of plausible scenarios. I wonder if infinite possibilities somehow extrapolates to infinite realities.
. . . and really, why would there be infinite possibilities without corresponding infinite realities?
A “God of Integrity” would be a limited god, perhaps a mere demi-god.
Possibly the Higgs Field is a god of integrity?
Bingo !!!
Thanks Rafael SN. And you know, all joking aside, the Higgs Field may represent all the best attributes that we assign to god such as omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, as well as being as much as we can comprehend about what would be eternal. I’m not trying to be flippant but you know, there is integrity to the idea of a Higgs Field.
Chris, the scientific study of the higgs boson will unveil a lot of the natural characteristics of the higgs field as is being shown in the CERN and the Fermilab. we need to be ready for some huge revelations.
🙂 i never even met one…. and i been around.. no.. no.. there is no such a critter out here who mocked -him self up as ”God of Integrety”. that would be a very one sided condition where only ”good” exist… so no game can be had. but out of the MEST where there is no good or bad exist than there are no needs for any kind of gods… useless employment that would be..
so William what was your point asking that question? Was it for yourself, to get your ownd answer?
I see nothing wrong in that, since i do that all the time… I hope you gotten the right one.
+1 🙂
I entertaining the expansion of mythologies, that is all. .
William
“I entertaining the expansion of mythologies, that is all. .” That is the answer -comment I like the most.. simple…..just exercising the vocal cords as I would say it in Hungarian [interpreted from] adding a few grains of sand to Sahars and saying I have contributed…
William, I am bored as you can see… love ya kid..
KG, that is two questions… hmmm what can be done about this? (joke)
May I? Based on my understanding of free will, the answer is yes. And what could be learned from it? I need to know what other constraints does the being have placed on him? Are his memories present or erased or just suppressed? Lay that out a little bit more. No free will possible? So he is not conscious? or what?
Generally? Yes, God can make a rock so big he cannot pick it up. So we might learn to be careful what we wish for — just in case we get it.
Thanks Chris for staying on topic and not asking me leading questions while dangling a carrot.
The purpose of my post is to expand mythological considerations. That is all.
If there is free free will, that is how I see it as well. Free-Will traps in many cases would be self-imposed and if a being has integrity and will not break a promise it make to itself. In such a setting stuck one is indeed.
And NOTHING short of a change in cause and effect could change the trap other than by following the rules of the game one signed onto or breaking ones integrity.
Especially if a “no exit and no breaking of integrity” postulate was agreed upon before entering the trap. I agree with Elizabeth that this would be stupid.
The question I’m demonstrating is “Considering the thousands of conflicting testimonies by spiritualists concerning HOW we are trapped, how would anyone here know how their spirit was trapped in the first place based on the rampant, deeply moving delusions demonstrated by so many spiritualists?”
You don’t.
Trap identification would be the big fuck over. And IF you think you go free, odds are you just deluded yourself again.
The traps could emerge a huge sea of conflicting mythologies – each with it’s own parameters.
Traps would vary, but the outcome of said traps could be EXACTLY the same: A human life that feels just like ours.
So what would be the best practice in such a setting?
I come back to goalless Zazen and ruthless doubt. In any trap, it is the long slow way out to reality, even if the trap itself is a made-up illusion in the first place.
“Self nature is indescribably wondrous. In the Dharma of oneness, not distinguishing between Buddhas and sentient beings is called ‘Not slandering the three Jewels’.” – Bodhidharma
_/!\_ (gassho)
… “Goalless Zen, ruthless doubt AND raging paradox.”
Yes, Elizabeth, I guess I was answering my own question after all.
thank you William and a good answer it is! 🙂
“”Goalless Zen, ruthless doubt AND raging paradox””.
When one confronts those raging inconsistencies conflicts’ – since it can be done than one arrives to certainty than one just knows…
If ones faith leads one into such a condition than one should question that path.
Yes. One should question said path with ruthless doubt.
Emperor Wu: “How much karmic merit have I earned for ordaining Buddhist monks, building monasteries, having sutras copied, and commissioning Buddha images?”
Bodhidharma: “None. Good deeds done with worldly intent bring good karma, but no merit.”
Emperor Wu: “So what is the highest meaning of noble truth?”
Bodhidharma: “There is no noble truth, there is only void.”
Emperor Wu: “Then, who is standing before me?”
Bodhidharma: “I know not, Your Majesty.”
“Questioning our path” is our path. I don’t think this has been lost on KG.
william..”Yes. One should question said path with ruthless doubt. “‘
Right on that one…. since 73 i must have asked a million question and no day passes by when i dont ask hundred more… do you know…of course you would not, i even asked why the rose canes have thorns? the answers are alway there….
PS william please, in the future when you addressing your comment to me write my name? i never know who is talking to whom otherwise.
William. I got you kid…. I been reading your post over a few times. You talking about traps What do you mean by “Trap identification would be the big fuck over.. “ ???
That is your own reality; it exists because you say so, that is your supposition deduction from your own experience. But it really applies to every one?
Your second one is: The traps could emerge a huge sea of conflicting mythologies – each with it’s own parameters.
You can bet your lost tomato from your garden that that is the fact..
But unfortunately for you, you never really understand what auditing can accomplish… I know you know the theory behind it but that is not the experience itself is it no.
If you really would understand-could experience what auditing can accomplish you would not say “””Trap identification would be the big fuck over.. “ that is nonsense by my reality a total nonsense..
William if there is a trap, that trap exist by consideration and agreements than there is a opposition to that and that would be freedom- not having trap, not being in a trap,
And you not once mention what are those traps…But I know them I have found every one of those because it can be done.
One more from you’”””’ Traps would vary, but the outcome of said traps could be EXACTLY the same: A human life that feels just like ours. ‘’’’
There you go again that is your assumption.. and nothing more because that is just yours but that do not make it a fact for everyone, now that reality is not mine and I can’t agree with that because my experiences are different than yours.
You are talking from one trap and that is human life itself. Being a human, thinking like a human.. and there is no spiritual freedom in that.
Yes, I cannot speak for you.
🙂
William’’’’’ONE QUESTION: “Based on your article ‘On Will’ do you think it is possible for a free-will being to choose to enter a universe where free will cannot be manifested by your own decree, and in doing so would create a reality where free will would be desired but unattainable regardless of any ‘tech” that […]
William, you hit the nail on the head.. love your question…. In my reality: No FREE being, who has that free-will never ever choose the universe and enter where free will is not existing.
What would be the point? What would be the need for that or what is the free being would want in that universe? Yet it will happen and it has….
Yes, that being could enter… out of curiosity inquisitiveness interest, simply wanting to have that experience for self.
See my reply above. 🙂
Tools are the interface between our will and the world.
I am thinking that maybe “1.” on the scale is not really a goal and possibly it doesn’t belong on the scale. Rather, maybe we should understand the fractal competence potential of tools used at level “2.” We can continue to improve our competence and use of tools and thus use them “more freely.” For example, I’ve used typsetting tools to make bold, and italics type face. It is laborious for me and I won’t know if I did it right until I push with trust, the post comment link below. I wonder if it will work? (between 3 and 4 on the scale)
Chris, I know where William stands on the Path… dont forget i am his sweet mama and he is my petunia… and that should indicate a lot…. like we are friends?
Then I wonder if the scale’s two ends are nailed down with the material world stretching between or rather if it is an oscillating scale with a repetition of 1 through 7 at each fractally zoomed, frame of reference?
Geir,
While I don’t discount that just about anyone can have an idea about just about anything that will improve the thing, let’s put something into context:
1) a man – a founder – assembles the 10,000 technological arguments and methods that allow for the production of a “car”.
2) a million people think the basic concept of the “car” is good and want to contribute to an organization that will make the “car” available to anyone.
3) everyone is free to contribute ideas for improvement.
4) 50 of those ideas are excellent and if enacted would produce a better car.
5) 999,950 of the ideas are poor, benign or harmful. If enacted they would result in a “car” that is useless and unwanted.
6) 2% of the group heavily promote and push adoption of their ideas. That results in the adoption of 1 good idea and 19,999 bad ideas.
7) The founder looks at the numbers and decides it’s safer to take no fresh ideas than risk destroying the possibility of getting a workable “car” by allowing in every new idea.
In my decade on staff I observed that a very, very few students were “natural auditors” and could get good results repeatably as auditors. The rest had a variety of misinterpretations of the auditing method that got poor results and required pc repair. The students got technical correction. The pc’s got repaired either by a corrected student or by auditors who did understand and could apply the tech in the standard way. What is “standard”? To a group of skilled auditors “standard” is just as apparent and observable as “non-standard”. Back in that day an auditor coming in from LA or Flag didn’t audit differently than an auditor trained in our org. That uniformity in method and result was the display of “standard”.
As for a pc getting delivered to in the uncontrolled environment – the wild-west of anybody’s-method-goes, how much fun would it be to be audited by dozens of different auditors (who needs a PL saying there shouldn’t be a frequent change of auditors anyway?) and receives ruds audited dozens of ways and TRs delivered (or not) dozens of ways. Does that sound like fun? Even if 1/4 of the ways are fairly decent?
My advice to anyone wishing to try a new tech method was to first learn to do it to a full pass by Qual. If they didn’t agree with the way Qual wanted them trained they could leave. The same applies today: anyone with their integrity intact could leave if they disagreed with the 3-swing F/N or ballbuster sec check tech. But – regardless of where we perceive tech to be at today – bringing in some new idea before carefully examining and learning the set technology has probably, at best, that 50 in a million chance of being better than what is there already. And then there’s that 999,950 out of a million chance…
And i don’t disagree with you here. I am Not arguing that it is probable, likely or nothing but very, very improbably that a million monkeys could type out Hamlet given enough time. But I am saying it is not Impossible. That is ALL I am saying. I simply refuted Valkov’s absolute claim that any improvement to anything is Impossible without seeing it Clearly.
Beyond that, we could have a good and healthy discussion on how probable or possible it is to improve upon a subject. But with an absolutist view as Valkov put forth here, no such discussion is possible.
Presumably, making it Impossible to improve upon Anything without seeing it Clearly, Valkov could continue to hold it against åeople who are not Class XII or VIII (or something) auditors in that they are simply Unable to come up with Any improvement to Scientology whatsoever, so they should simply STFU. It’s a pretty cruel thought-stopping technique, really.
As for moving forward and beyond defending such silly and absolutist views, I am happy to discuss How probable or improbable it is to improve upon something.
I would assert that it is easy to improve upon a subject where the basic premises for that subject is obviously and glaringly wrong (such as the Flat Earth theories). In fact I would rate the probabilities along these lines:
1. The more glaring the errors are in a subject, the easier it is to improve the subject.
2. The more basic the errors are in a subject, the more probable it is for improvements to have a greater effect.
3. The more complex the subject, the less chance there is for a random idea to bear an improvement.
OK, I see what has happened here, and I guess I must take some of the responsibility for it,. for not stating my premises and their philosophical underpinnings more explicitly for the non-native-English speakers here. (OK, OK, I’ll stop with my 1.1 adhoms!)
Let me say at the outset, that whether he meant to or not, Geir has pulled a major Straw Man about my origional “absolutist” post, in whjich Icategorically denied thatanyonecouldimprove something without some knowledge of the “nuts and bolts” of the thing s/he was striving to improve. I will at this time affirm whatI originally posted about it.
Geir has misrepresented by globalizing or generalizing what I said and meant, and has subsequently gone to great lengths to invalidate what I said as WRONG WRONG WRONG! Here’s how:
In my post, I clearly referred to 2 people – him and me. And it was in the context of a discussion about KSW and his implication that KSW was a thought-stopper that closed off the possibility of
Standard Tech being “improved” by anyone.
One of my premises was that we were discussing in the context of INTENTIONAL changes or improvements attempted by responsible, aware, individuals. Not by random Brownian motion of molecules, mountains, or monkeys.
It was also in the context of discussing the complex technology of auditing. Geir stated that he thought “the tech should be squirreled”. Well he can squirrel or alter the tech to his heart’s content, but I sure wouldn’t be the guinea pig that went to him for auditing! Nor would I send anyone else to him to be audited up the Grades, to Clear, etc.
Sure, anyone can “improve” on any existing scene such as “the Receptionist was rude, and s/he should be polite and friendly instead”, or “the org staff need to make sure there is toilet paper in the org bathrooms, and it should be Charmin.” It doesn’t take the KSW PL for that. (Or maybe it does, for some people, I don’t know for sure.) It doesn’t matter what kind of toilet paper is there, but it does matter how the auditor calls F/Ns, for example.
Make no mistake, I have said it before, I see KSW as being all about the Auditing Tech and about Training Auditors. Not about whether the toilet paper in the org is Charmin or some other brand, or lacking entirely. It is about following protocols that are similar to medical protocols. They are there for a reason.
That’s the gist of where I was coming from, and why I feel Geir’s rebuttalofwhatI said amounts to a straw man situation. It’s one thing to survey the public for “improvements” to a product; it’s something else entirely to invite Joe Blow off the street into the operating theater to advise the surgeon on how to do the heart bypass.
Having now, I think, clarified the conditions or premises under pinning my post, I hope it is more clear what I meant. And I stand by what I posted.
If further clarification is needed/wanted, please let me know. But don’t just assume you understand what I am saying, when perhaps you don’t really. That is sometimes how “straw man” arguments develop.
2ndxmr, this is a pertinent and very well expressed clarification. Thanks for doing that. 🙂
BTW. Interesting idea Geir. If free will exists, such a concept, even if incorrect, points toward the issue at hand.
Without the input of the comments I will just say thanks for having me look at it. My tools in short are the computer and my mind.
One good tool and one excellent tool. 🙂
Maybe as a tool, “the common denominator of a group is the reactive bank” is not true. Yes, I see the way one person’s reactivity reacts off another’s until there is a thermal-runaway reaction. But maybe I don’t agree with the concept of the reactive mind with its engrams, secondarys, locks, etc.,. I don’t see any indication looking within my own mind that this is true.
Doesn’t it seem more likely that the root “common denominator” of a group is synchronization? This is a very different take on mental technology than Scientology’s. It seems important to me to understand this relationship between the individual and the group in order to better understand a “scale of free will.”
Chris, I’m not getting where you’re coming from.
I got the idea somehow, that you indulged yourself in Solo auditing sometimes. Therefore, I inferred you were Clear.
If you are Clear, you have erased your reactive mind, and if you looked within, naturally you would not see one in yourself.
The relationship between an individual and a group is a postulated one. Which is to say, an agreed upon one. A “reactive mind” is just some agreements that have been put on an automaticity.
Am I missing something?
Maybe you are right. Maybe I should let that one drop. The mind was taught to me in a particular way. Then I audited it and it became more familar territory. Then the further I went it changed a little bit like milk clearing toward transparent. My concept of mind changed and changed and that seems to be a pattern so arguing about whether mind is a certain way is inconsistent. Today I imagine my mind being like one of those bulbous prickly appendages of the Mandelbrot Set (a beautiful mathematical graphic) The pointy iteration patterns remind me of my voluminous considerations. Viewing and dissolving these considerations from the points (most low hanging fruit) back toward the axis shrinks the entire set. If I continue my current practice the effect is to reduce the entire set (mind). Ultimately there is a large empty area in the center which might be space and it might be nothing. The outer set, I seem to understand. It is that nothing at the center which is the source of much conjecture for me (Theta, Higgs Field, etc.). My mind provides for me all the ego and scaffolding on which is built the perception of an entire existence. Minus that, dissolve the mind entirely and it seems my rudimentary essence will have dissolved back to where it came — One-with-the-Great-All (figure of speech)
Per L. Ron Hubbard, the Dianetic track is 350 trillion years old. From where I am today looking back it seems implausible to me that anyone can successfully and effectively run date locate and have and run meaningful MEST incidents that precede the big bang by 337 trillion years.
Is there some other factor or definition of year that I am missing to help me understand this the usefulness of this tool?
Anyone blogging here run 3 hundred trillion “year” old incidents to a win?
And thinking about it, wouldn’t “living through” the big bang be an incident on the track of greater scope, scale, and importance than being frozen in glycol and blown up with nukes around a volcano? Anyone remember the big bang? How was that in comparison to OTIII? Does anyone remember whether they were in Las Palmas, Hawaii, or one of the other locations? Seriously.
Chris……. seriously? I never ever recalled the Big Bang outside of war time when the bombs were exploding around us.. now they made really big sounds!!!!!
Again in MY REALITY the universe did not start out as a big bang…
That may very well be, yours may not have.
Where were you in the year 1054?
what day, what hour, what minute?
Tuesday, July 4th, 1054 — All day long.
Elizabeth, there are hours of videos on the big bang but you have to rummage a little. Here is a place on YouTube where you can try:
I read some of it… it don’t do a thing for me thank for telling me…
I am fine with it if science want to have it their way..
I see the universe very differently… I like the universe, I like the idea how the first lite has come about… I like the flows, of the universe, the so called empty space which is not empty art all… I love the beings the Free Spirits, I love to be one with them…
I love everything what is Outside of MEST… the free-ness, where thoughts, considerations don’t corral one… when having-ness doesn’t exist. Here I don’t have to look for search out things, here there is no need or want…. no loses, no defeat and no one is winning, no desires exist to have and because of that these missing considerations one is whole-complete….
🙂 if i remember correctly i set on the potty most of the time that day… sour apples you know…. 🙂
You asked a silly question you got a silly answer.. you cant audit me Chris.. you cant..
@Elizabeth — Whatever! My point is that I don’t use date locate except to organize my thoughts in relation to the incidents/considerations themselves. Then later, if I am contacting something related and the time is mixed up I re-fix that index then.
“Date locating” to a time or place which didn’t know what year it was, didn’t have a year, or even have a calendar or had a different calendar (e.g. Mayan, other planet) is meaningless to me. Just my reality as you say.
In your example, Tuesday July 4th 1054, the bright light of a star blowing up was noticed on earth. The thing is, on that date, the light was just reaching earth. The star in question had blown up 6,523 earth years before that date. So if a person is date locating that incident, well, the event is actually an event of varying importance all over the known universe but at different times and places and around almost the ENTIRE universe this event hasn’t happened yet. Do you follow my problem?
So the way I apply this is that I worry about straightening out my own mind and let those other chips just fall wherever.
Chris, thank for that…
I have not date locate thing I guess for 30 years, one of the first thing has blown from my universe is time the meaning of time….
And I have blown out of this place when I Walked Over and that was some years back.. I don’t solo any incident here about the Earth, I have erased severed as-ised all my connection to Earth when I walked Over..
The body and Earth is a remote recall… It is very difficult to explain because you can say: yes you have a body in BC Canada… really? is it my body? The last time I looked I did not have one… Difficult to comprehend? Not where I am, Not from my reality how I see things.. and here one do not look with the eyes..
There is nothing need to be organised by me, so explosions have no meanings at all, you cant immegine just how many there are continualy going… hehehe.. one is more beautiful than the other, watching the universe is like watching a chinese fireworks while one dangles ones invisible legs in the void, sitting on a invisible planet eating invisible popcorn…
Excellent. My life is structured around pleasing many people. Auditing is an activity where I truly only worry about pleasing myself.
OH old kid… but when you pleasing your self at the same time you pleasing every body also!!
that is the way the crumpet crumbles in the universe!!!
It starts to get interesting when the date locate goes down to seconds – and the seconds do run while the PC or auditor starts saying or thinking the whole date. It is also odd that the second – which has changed in definition over time, and which itself changes depending on one’s location – is so firm in the mind of a PC that this does work. I have yet to see a person with such a grasp of time that he can, on the dot, ring a bell one hour after you say “Go!” without looking at a watch in the meantime – let alone pinpointing the time on the second after days, years or millions of years have past.
My take on all this is that it doesn’t matter as it is all subjective. Whatever helps the PC spot the charge. Whatever helps placebo.
Geir, when you use the word placebo with regard to auditing, I don’t think you mean to say that there is no actual workability in the tech itself and it’s all a matter of the pc believing he is being given something workable. That would mean ANY process would work as long as the pc believed in it. That sounds plausible enough, taking into account the power of considerations; however, pc’s often don’t even know what to expect or what to “believe” will occur and are happily surprised and amazed at the results they get by the end of the action. Of course it’s true that ultimately their considerations from way back are in play, but if that’s what you have in mind then it seems you are expressing a tautology.(And if I have that right, it’s because I’ve learned it from you pointing out to me on more than one occasion when I was guilty of it myself. :))
I believe that everything that works is placebo in its deepest sense. So, whatever triggers placebo is what works.
But what about Popper and the “method of falsiification”. Would that pass the test?
You right First yes, it was great fun to know down to the second and i was so proud that I COULD RECALL WHEN the incident happend but later the timing the incidents become confusing and I very much doubted if what I said to the auditor about the ”time” was real, because i realised the incident was not on this planet… and that too was confusing…. and what was the difference when i was swingging that ax, or dropped the body? At first I missed the concept of time- timing and i had ARCB’s and problems to adjust… I had to have sessions on time–concept of time..
By now, I dont have reality, no sense what so ever, since even the concept of ”life time” and all what that concept contained from birth to death to has been erased, with that when to eat or sleep, to do anything is gone, the day or night lost their meanings too..
From what I recall in my auditor training, it wasn’t just the date that would get the pc zeroed in on the incident – there wass also location and significance. I myself was notoriously bad about dates and at best would usually get just a ballpark figure. And I don’t see how a pc could not or would not come up with at least one of the three, even roughly, or that it wouldn’t be enough to run the incident.
yes”’ locate the time!” bingo…. instant creation of the battle field, chopping away with the axe… hehehe… I people wonder when they are going to become OT’s!!! just think old girl, that creation is a ability of a powerful being!
Creating IT FOR THE FIRST TIME KNOWINGLY in control and looking at that creation and understanding the reason why it is being created, what is the reason behind that creation, the need to do, the desire to have such…. what a power the tech has. it is on incradible tool.
Chris you are fishing… deep sea fishing i think… 🙂
But i would loooooove to know about the big bang theory….whos is it. etc…
I suppose that I am. There are dozens of videos on YouTube.com describing the big bang.
here’s your missing tool, Chris:
e·ter·ni·ty (-tûrn-t)
n. pl. e·ter·ni·ties
1. Time without beginning or end; infinite time.
2. The state or quality of being eternal.
3.
a. The timeless state following death.
b. The afterlife; immortality.
There is no evidence that this is the first universe, or the only one that’s ever been. There are many cosmologies that postulate otherwise. For example, the Vedic/Hindu cosmology includes the idea that there are endlessly repeating cycles of universe creation, persistence, and destruction. This is Brahma inhaling and exhaling, according to one version.
Thus, using years or whatever units of time-measurement you wish, you could date back to before the existence of this particular MEST universe, to previously existing universes. There is really no way to”prove” this isn’t the way it really is.
If you are God-oriented, no problem. As Jesus says in the Bible, “In my Father’s house are many mansions:” God, being eternally existent, could have created many universes, and kept them or destroyed them as He wished.
Time is not a factor. In time without end, a “big bang” could have occurred repeatedly, actually an infinite number of times.
A thetan, being not-MEST and existing basically “outside” of these universes, could date his facsimiles back an awful long way.
As far as having any recall of a big bang, why should he? He might have simply been looking the other way at the time.
These theories of physicist today, are all based on looking from within this universe as MEST beings(created things), rather than from the viewpoint of existing eternally.
Is it my missing tool (eternity) Valkov? On the one hand a simple knock on the head and unconsciousness creates an engram and the wall of fire was a nuclear bomb combined with volcanoes which back around the time of the dinosaurs turned this sector of the galaxy into a desert. On the other hand you propose that the mind resides in such a dimension as to be successfully squeezed through multiple big bangs intact? I’m not saying its not, I’m just exploring this possibility. We need to take a look at what the mind is composed of and where it resides. Because if it is physical and it needs to be squeezed through a big bang, multiple times, then I believe it would be easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of the needle (levity plus cooperating with your biblical reference). The Star Trek transporter computer problems of saving bodies and sticking them together with their corresponding consciousnesses seem simple by comparison. (new direction in case anyone is squeamish about bible refs)
What makes you think a mind gets “squeezed” through any big bang? Perhaps a mind can exist in it’s own separate universe and remains untouched by any big bang. There could be many rooms, not just one room. One can slip from one room to another, or even leave the house. One may create a safe space and put his mind in it while all else crashes and burns. It is composed of whatever you compose it of, and resides wherever you decide it resides.
You are still looking at it as though the mind and life are other-determined, created by some outside agency over which you have control.
“…..over which you have NO control”, the last sentence should read.
@Valkov, I’m willing for it to be like that — that’s why I’m exploring. And really, I’m willing for it to be “like” a very many things more too. I’m willing for existence to be 2 dimensional video with fractal zoom to simulate 3 dimensions… I’m really just looking and asking.
According to LRH, all Charge (what the Reactive Mind is composed of) is MEST – that’s why the e-meter works. So, if the Big Bang theory is correct, a thetan could not carry MEST charge over such a barrier. But, that may not be an issue, as he is continually Creating the charge.. in an old universe, and now in the new one. Which brings me to this point: It doesn’t really matter if something happened at a certain time and place, it only matters that he is creating it right now. SO processing could be in its entirety moved from looking at “past” to looking at him creating, right now, the charge that you are addressing. That would be a far better and more effective approach. Better because it doesn’t “fly in the face of science” and more effective because it would also train the PC in spotting charge that he continually creates – and thusly bring him more in control of his own compulsive creations until he didn’t need any auditing.
Looking at Location and Time is an arbitrary action serving to enhance the placebo in the PC. It serves it well, but I believe there could be more direct approaches.
Excellent… You’ve said that better than I but that is the way that I apply it and it is working out very well for me.
”SO processing could be in its entirety moved from looking at “past” to looking at him creating, right now, the charge that you are addressing.””100% right, a totally different realty way it is and I believed it at first too.
This part people dont get, that one is not going back in”time” but creating that incident now.. experiencing it now….LRH never explained it…if he had I just dont know read it.. ‘I had figuted it out for my self…
Nobody lives throughthe big what ever….. when there are no bodies in existance than how one possibly live through something? On ifinite do not live through something just experiences that creation in that moment… There is no past or future has been esteblished yet..
There is no time of knowledge of time space or any concepts, thoughts or agreements in existence: nothing there is no thinking.or having since these are concepts the human race is using as in now….
Chris…… MY REALITY HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! on this .. I really dont believe that shit….
Well, see that is the beauty of science. It seems to work regardless of your faith!
@Eliz: . . . or did you mean my comment about the 350 trillion old time track? That is a quote straight out of “The Time Track” by LRH.
that is his reality not mine… We dont share much in common he and I.. and that includs his variety of track… Chris, there were immense amount of implants… every sector -planet had their own favorite. which they used to solodify… make thing common in order to have more understanding… to bring harmony into their life. What ever they wanted their life to flow:
Oh I take one soop vanilia and a thouch of coffee please or mine is whisky and soda…..
Again in my reality mistake he made that he put everything under one hat ‘Because I have it than you had to have it tooooooo” nonsence.
But regardle the huge diferences of the persons realities: because of the past experiences the auditing tech works same on every bodies item… since on item is just that. On item which is made out of energy..very simple…
That’s the simplicity of it to me, too. An item is an item. Whatever. If it reads, then run it. Doesn’t matter what another thinks of your item, it is yours and theirs is theirs. The tool is as useful as it works in the hands of the person using it. A shovel digs no hole sitting alone in the tool shed.
2ndxmr posted a really excellent link providing some historical context for KSW as well as some considerations about what is meant by “standard tech”:
“Re the technology being uniform: an article by Ant Phillips at workabletechnology.com is illuminating in view of what was standard at the time KSW1 was written.
http://workabletechnology.com/?p=454”
What was deemed “standard” apparently could change from month to month and even day to day. So I suppose my ideas of standard tech and KSW are peculiar to me and the sources I received them from back in the 1970s; your ideas are particular to you and whatever milieu and terminals you received them from.
Goes right back to “Don’t assume you know what I’m talking about, or that I know what you’re talking about.”
And don’t assume that what you perceive as me deliberately pulling a straw man on you; the straw man you see may be your own reflection in a mirror.
It made me realize that there might well be as many definitions of “standard tech” as there are people who are acquainted with it at all. This is likely to make the calls of “straw man” increasingly frequent and strident, as each person in the discussion has a different idea of what constitutes “standard tech”, and thus the meaning of KSW.
But, that’s par for the course of human communication and understanding…..
right you are, since i too believe i use the tech the right way… and I know I use it the right way!!
I just now finished reading it too and had the same thought as you – such different viewpoints depending on where you were and at what period of time.
Btw, the first, quite long article was actually written by The Pilot, followed by a very short article by Ant – who had a very different experience from The Pilot’s, in an earlier era and a different location. Ant said that “there was no atmosphere of fear of running a ‘bad’ process – atmosphere in the 50′s was different from when this thing called ‘ethics’ came into the picture.”
Whereas, from The Pilot’s experience in the 60’s, with constantly changing tech processes and harsher ethics being put in, he concluded “…we still bear the scars in terms of fixed ideas and
tough policies that were meant to solve a problem that is long gone.”
As for the 70’s, if I remember right from Dennis’ and Maria’s posts, standard tech was highly workable – except to the degree that the new slant on ethics tech changed matters. I’m looking forward to Marty’s next book, giving a detailed history, to learn more about the intentions and forces that were at play at different times.
Anyway, I think you and I had a similar realization, that it wasn’t all that good in the good old days of the 60’s, with ultra frequent changes as research developed. And I got a better picture of how authoritarian LRH could be. So that was good for me to read about, the kind of thing I have been interested in knowing – the data of those who were there and actually participated.
@ Chris:
Valkov: “This is what an auditor who has any judgement does (picks and chooses processes)”
Chris: “This is incorrect. Auditors who express this type of judgement are retrained at their own expense beginning with TR’s until they no longer do this.”
Actually this is correct to the best of my knowledge and was communicated to me by a Class VIII auditor right around 1973. Perhaps this was the prerogative of Class VIIIs alone. I believe part of the EP of that training at that time was to have achieved the ability to use judgement, rather than rotely following a C/S written by someone else.
What you describe may have been true when you were in, and may still be true today. But in my acquaintance with it in the 1970s, as Ant says in his essay about KSW, apparently ALL the processes ever developed were reinstated for use by auditors who knew how to use them
Here is a quote from a Briefing Course lecture. Please note especially the second paragraph:
The Classification Chart And Auditing, 26 Jul 66, BC Lecture #434
Pg. 245 “What is standard technology? Standard technology is contained in HCOBs. It actually isn’t contained in any of the books of Dianetics and Scientology. Did you ever realize that? Modern technology is not contained in any of the hardcover books, or any of the other books. It’s contained in HCOBs, Hubbard Communications Office Bulletins, and they just run off one after the other. And one of these fine days I suppose we will roll up our sleeves and publish them all in consecutive order, all corrected so that nothing ever corrects anything in the bulletins and make it very, very easy. But we will have to put them probably in about seven or eight or ten different volumes, because there are quite a few of them. But that’s standard technology. They’re on white paper printed with red ink. If I haven’t signed it, it isn’t true. And that’s standard technology.
Now, because we developed something later, we didn’t lose the standard technology of something earlier. The main bugbear of the person studying Scientology was that he – the bugbear was his, not mine – was that he conceived, every time he read something new, that that wiped out all the old. And this concept was brought about on just this one point – that he didn’t understand the old that he had read, so he didn’t realize that it integrated with the new which had just been issued. And at no time, really, in HCOBs, has the new wiped out the old. There are very, very few corrections.”
@Geir:
“Any improvement to a part of a system is obviously an improvement to the whole of the system.”
Is this universally true? I am thinking that some systems are homeostatic and alterations to one part do not necessarily improve the whole.
You may be thinking of something different, but I think there are examples in the realm of the effects of medical drugs, or any drugs, on a body.
I think defining what is an actual “improvement” can be tricky in practice. Don’t programmers run into this when they mess around with existing code?
Here’s an automotive example: You can “improve” a car to go faster, but you may in the process find that it is using more petrol. In this case the improvement of one “part” does not result in improvement of the whole system.
Or, you can make a car lighter to improve it’s gas mileage, only to find that it is not as safe in a crash. Again, improvement in one part of a system that does not result in an overal improvement in the whole system.
Hello, Merry Christmas and a good new year to all.
Nic ARC infinity
Elizabeth
Perhaps you could write about communication and the different
‘tools’ here…also the ‘no tool’ state…if you like. It might be worth
coming back to this excellent OP. Experiences may have changed
for some of us since then.
Hi Geir,
I would ask you whether you keep some ”tool database” where you have organized, classified and described a little bit all the tools you use and know. Thanks 🙂
I keep a “master HyperList” called “me.hl” where everything major I know and every major tool I use is described in the simplest terms I can for me to have an overview.