The blog post, “Scientology – does it work?“, fueled the biggest discussion I’ve seen on any topic, on any blog, ever. With more than 1500 comments, that thread has long since worn out WordPress as a platform for discussions. Its mammoth size makes it cumbersome to handle. And so I decided to put up this blog post to carry over the discussions – if there is anything left to discuss.
The question to discuss follows the scientific method of falsification: Is there any part of Scientology (philosophy or method) that is false or does not work?
Also, any personal experiences as to its workability (or not) would be helpful as anecdotal evidence.
Geir Isene - uncut 
Have you compared with other Scientology spiritual development techniques yet? Like, really tried. With real effort, like you have with Scientology? I guess not. Then talking about if Scientology works or not, is like talking about if a fork works or not. “Of cours a fork works…. But a knife is better!”. “Better at what?”. This does not make sense.
Go an learn mindfullnes meditation. Do it for 30 minues every day for a year, then go to a 10 day mindfullness retreat with a monk that has 30 years of meditation experience, and do a silent retreat. Then you can start to talk about if Scientology works or not.
That would be like sa”you cannot evaluate a physics theory without spending a comparable amount of study of some other theory”. Why not? One can surely evaluate the workability of something based on testing that very thing. This seems a red herring to me.
Ok. Then Scientology works for shure. Scientology tells you that the results you have gained is enlightenment. And that is true. Because the way Scientology defines enlightenment is the result you got. And if you don’t feel that it is enlightenment, that is because you have a missunderstood word (becasue the way scientology defines the words “define” and and “missunderstood”). So according to Scientology, without any reference, everything scientology is true, and will always be true.
So you should refrace your question then: Does Scientology work from a convinced scientologist perspective of Scientology?
You claim. I counter the claim. Then you go off on a tangent. Could we go back to discussing, please?
Hans: So you should refrace your question then: Does Scientology work from a convinced scientologist perspective of Scientology?
Chris: This has been my model for a while now. System of thought, closed or open? So within the bubble of Scientology, it works more and from outside that bubble looking it works less.
And your mind is a bit more then a pysics theory.
It looks like you are in a mindset where you are unwilling to learn. You only want to win a discussion. In scientology one important rule of learning is thinking that you already know, is a big obstacle to learn. That is a good rule, that works (hey! Scientology works 🙂
You have to try on a theory – a belief. If it does not work, then you can go back to your old belief.
Because your mind only perceives what it already know. Your strongest belief is the one that your mind conceives to be true. It’s like the eye that thinks the world is in the color of the rainbow. Even though it is just a small fraction of the electromagnetic field.
You have to learn to perceive new truths. And the more you argument for your own truth the more true it gets. That is how the chinese convinced american soldiers to become communists (se brain washing). And that is also the reason why The Church of Scientology needs enemies. That is what causes “cognitive dissonance”, which you need, to become a real Scientologist.
Look at your own mind now! Do you feel resistance towords this message? Maybe the resistance is hidden. Look for it. Maybe your belifes are hiding it for you…… Maybe your inner voice is covering up with logic and reason. Reason inherited from Scientology….. Did you missunderstand “covering up with” with “fealing resistance”?
Ok, now you have the choise. Will you open your self to learn?
I call a pot/kettle on this one.
You won!
If you want to see a comparable level of debate logic to yours here, take a look at my comment below.
Is that an admission that we are both in this mess?
Also, have you read any other of my posts on this blog?
Not all of them, but the ones I read, does not tell me what other kind of “mind technology” you have tried.
It may well be an interesting discussion. But, as I pointed out, it is irrelevant to the OP. Anything can be tested for workability without comparing to other workable or unworkable methods.
I was not able to make a commont to: https://isene.me/2013/03/07/scientology-does-it-work/#comment-32445 So I’ll do it here.
Ok, i understand then. I think I missunderstood what your origial question was. But then I don’t understand the point of the question. Because you are asking for a isolated system analysis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolated_system).
I think I would understand the question if you tell me why you want to know, and why it is interesting.
And, from your last comment I finally realised that you understood what I meant 🙂
May I politely point out that you are acting like a jerk?
The link to “isolated system” is not pertinent to the OP, as Scientology’s workability can indeed be evaluated as to how well it produces the results it claims or intends to produce – objectively testable and not confined as in any isolated system. It is interesting because then we don’t have to put up with emotionally loaded arguments like we see here. And there are plenty of other reasons as well – such as the general interest in finding out why anything works, and the interest in finding specific workable tools for any given situation in life. HTH.
To your last question: Yes you may. But it wasn’t my original intention to be a jerk. I’m sorry, but net-debates are not so easy. And sometimes I get carried away, and I should not do that.
I did not say anything bad about Scientology. I’m sorry if I did not ask my question in a bad way. And I see now that I have formulated myself in a rude way.
I hope you can forgive me, and see that this was just a stupid discussion that should not have gone this way.
Thank you for a very polite and respectful comment. You are indeed forgiven. No offense taken. Back to happily discussing 🙂
Scientology basic premise: man is a spiritual being
Observations relating to spiritual inquiry:
1) the spirit is not directly observable
2) indirect observations are largely anecdotal
3) indirect observations under scientific conditions are typically not repeatable
Premise of advancement by Scientological means:
1) “case” interferes with personal spiritual awareness and ability
2) diminishment of “case” is possible resulting in a return of awareness and ability
3) methods for diminishment can be defined and can be repeatable
4) the primary method of reduction of case is by observation (through recall) of events that precipitated the manifestation of case
5) difficulties in observation of the case can be addressed by an appropriate undercut – by the location and handling of the elements that block observation
Difficulties in uniform application of Scientological method (apart from expense and required time):
1) individual case entry points vary greatly
2) use of a uniform set of processes (the Bridge) may result in missing the correct entry point for an individual
3) rote application of Scientological procedure can miss addressing the real item that needs to be addressed
4) missing the real needs of the case can cause discouragement in continuing
5) mishandling discouragement can cause animosity
6) the proposed gains (EP of a rundown) may not match the individual’s perception of personal gain but the attest process can result in the individual feeling forced to attest to some unattained portion, resulting in a false attestation which tends to have adverse effects
7) many external or personal factors can arise that, if unhandled, will limit, stop or reverse gains
Uniformly noted results when case is successfully addressed:
1) the individual is not bothered by things that used to bother him
2) the individual becomes more extroverted in one or more areas of life
3) the individual will wish to continue
4) at some point the individual will gain some awareness of the spiritual self
2ndxmr, thanks for the thorough, objective, and very well thought out post, which was especially appreciated since I believe you are the one who regularly posts here who has the most first-hand experience on the delivery side of tech.
The section of your post on “Difficulties in uniform application of Scientological method…” is the one I think we should focus on since a major purpose we’ve had on this blog is how the tech could be improved and how the pitfalls could be avoided. Based on your overall understanding of Scientology philosophy and tech as well as your experience with it, can you add one other section to what you wrote, in which you would list out any ideas you have on how the 7 difficulties you named could be corrected or improved upon?
For the record; This is the type of discussion I’d rather see left on Facebook (see my wall for this one):
Вадим Долгов Scientology works! It makes a person feel better about oneself and the surroundings. SUBJECTIVELY.
Вадим Долгов Scientology doesnt work. OBJECTIVELY it doesn’t make a person be better than he was before. Or his surroundings better than they were before.
Вадим Долгов Drugs do to people the same thing that Scientology does: both Scientology and Drugs make them high. For some while.
Geir Isene Any claim of workability or unworkability are alike unfounded until actual tests are applied. Most claims of “It always work” or “it never works” are in my experience based on an emotional need for the claim.
Вадим Долгов Well said. IMHO, Scn both works and doesn’t work. Everything depends on the viewpoint. If the viewpoint is SUBJECTIVE, it may work wonders. If the viewpoint is OBJECTIVE, Scn doesn’t work. At all.
Geir Isene Again, such absolutist claims are ridiculous. What OBJECTIVE tests have you done that verifies your seemingly emotionally biased claim?
Вадим Долгов Assists work. Right? Someone feels better. SUBJECTIVELY.
Geir Isene I am querying you OBJECTIVE tests. Do you have any?
Вадим Долгов OTVIII doesn’t work. Right? You don’t feel the powers that Hubbard told you you would have. OBJECTIVELY.
Geir Isene Do you have OBJECTIVE tests to back up you claim of absolute objective unworkability? Yes or No?
Вадим Долгов I’m full of shit crammed into my head by Hubbard. And you, too (even more so).
Geir Isene I am asking you a simple question. Are you able to answer?
Вадим Долгов No. Do you? Do you even care to test whether Scn works or not?
Вадим Долгов It’s all nothing but subjective. Prove me wrong.
Geir Isene I didn’t claim Scientology works or do not work objectively. You did. And then you admitted you have no proof to back up your claim. And you admit you are full of shit. Nuff said.
Вадим Долгов Objectively, Scn procedures (starting from Assists to OTVIII) do NOT work. I.e. they do not make people other from what they were before Scn.
Вадим Долгов SUBJECTIVE means how one views things, personally. I.e. his/her “Reality”
Geir Isene You continue your rant of absolute statements even when admitting you have absolutely nothing to back it up with. Are you drunk?
Well, considering the guy’s nationality, he could have been pretty likely drunk 😀
Yes if flat out works…however if you look at it from thew viewpoint of “does it always work 100% of the time?” then I would say no, not 100%
Here is how obvious it was to me, and anyone who knew me, before and after, Scn…imagine a man couldn’t walk–and then could walk. Imagine a blind man suddenly could see….imagine someone who was horrified to fly becoming a pilot…
That is how blatantly obvious it was to me, but just not from my own viewpoint, but all my family who saw the changes. I got monstrous wins and gains that just keep on keepin’ on. I’ve given some examples of my wins and gain and I’ll do so a little later today, as duty calls…not doodie 🙂
When the examiner at Flag used to say “do you want others to experience similair gains?” I’d would always think to my self…absolutely, but I wouldn’t want them to have to put up with the bullshit attached to it. F/N everytime
@gaeagle — LOL. Great post.
gaeagle: “. . . however if you look at it from thew viewpoint of “does it always work 100% of the time?”
Chris: I’ve been striving to convey an idea about a fractal construct of the world which agrees with extant rules of mathematics. This would be in the area of set theory. Relating these to social constructs I raise questions about Scientology. Scientology defines itself as being complete. It also defines itself as being consistent. These two conditions are mechanically impossible to reconcile together. Therefore, what is going on?
Thanks Chris…To me Scn is neither complete, nor consistent. You can not get two humans to completely duplicate anything in the exact same manner from my experience. Close but no cigar.
I took my mother in law to a Flag World Tour at a local org several years back. Her first experience with Scn. After hearing the event she said “well if Flag says they are 100% standard tech, does that mean the local org isn’t?” Hmmmm
gaeagle: “well if Flag says they are 100% standard tech, does that mean the local org isn’t?”
Mom’s are great huh? 🙂 That used to bother me some, meaning one had to go to Flag to get the real thing, sure and for more money. Not Nice! A put down on the org and the training, even if they were doing it standardly. But when you’re in that bubble like I was, it’s hard to see clear.
Mom’s flat out Rule!
Tom – that is interesting. I did this also on my last sec check when routing out of the Sea Org. The addendum was: “yes – but I don’t want anybody else to get all this shit that I got!!!” (restraining myself to not vocalize it). FN! It felt so correct to add this.
Were/are there more people who handled it like this? May be it is a hidden piece of tech to handle mentally the BS. – Karola
Hey Karola…Yes several of the people I’ve talked to who were in the church and now out have told me the same thing. It is a universal truth! That is how I got my wins, got through the examiner and rode on down the highway!!!
Here was another great piece of tech for you I used many times:
DofP….”Tom you can’t leave”
Tom….”I can and I am”
DofP….”No you can’t leave”
Tom….”Let me ask you a question….who is the auditing for?”
DofP…”Well obviously it’s for you.”
Tom…”Great well I don’t want any more at this time. Doing any more now would not be on my own determinisim”
DofP…”Okay you sound pretty Tone40 about it.”
Tom…”Cya next trip”
“DofP…”Okay you sound pretty Tone40 about it.””
LOL I love these golden age of definitions for ‘Tone 40’, ‘Action’, ‘8C’ and so on. You can practically be near -40 and be labelled a stage Miscavige release, for submitting to his infernal ethical authority.
LOL — funny!
Awesome Spyros!!!
For the record:
When I left the Church of Scientology and started blogging, I used to claim that Hubbard’s life and character had no bearing on the workability and merit of the philosophy and technology he developed. I called such arguments Argumentum ad Hominem (attacking the man) and likened this to finding faults in the theory of gravity by finding faults with Newton’s character. See here: http://elysianchakorta.wordpress.com/2010/06/24/to-be-even-more-clear/
I was wrong.
Looking at Hubbard’s life is pertinent to evaluating his technology. Because what Hubbard developed was a method to improve people. And it is pertinent to the evaluation of his methods to see how well he himself fared with his own creations. I would rather buy a weight loss regimen from the 160 pound guy that the 400 pound mountain of fat in the booth beside him.
Evaluating Newton’s theory of gravity had no relevance to his character and life. Evaluating Scientology does have relevance to Hubbard’s character and life. I am not saying this is very important or a main criteria for evaluation, but it is not irrelevant as I used to argue. I believe it was Alanzo that tried to correct me at one time on this, but stubborn as I am, I deftly brushed him aside. So, I apologize for that, Al.
No problem whatsoever, Geir.
Alanzo
Are you talking of when he was in his prime (1950’s and 1960’s) or when he was an old man of 75 years in the 1980’s that was betrayed by the same organisation he started and people he helped?
Mind you, at age 70 he still wrote battle field earth and the 12 volume mission earth. Show me a 70 year old men doing better. At age 68 he was directing movies, show me a 68 year old man doing better.
Regards
Kin
Oh-oh. I believe a few guys here will have a field day with your comment here. How many 70-year old men doing better than Hubbard do you want in a list?
I will let Alanzo answer this one. I will grab the popcorn and watch… after I say WELCOME ;-D
I am sure I opened a can of worms 🙂
Oh I am sure we all by now know the short comings of the old man, I am sure he had one hell of an ethics file (or should have) but so do I and most of us on the list.
I think that if Kin himself would look at his own statement of:
Mind you, at age 70 he still wrote battle field earth and the 12 volume mission earth. Show me a 70 year old men doing better. At age 68 he was directing movies, show me a 68 year old man doing better.
And find his own examples of a 70 year old man doing better than LRH did.
From the very end of Lawrence Wright’s book “Going Clear”, page’s 363-365:
Alanzo
Well, I still like the old man, I applaud his effort. His overts are probably a mile high, so are mine – I suppose I can thus relate.
I do think he did a good job with the tech he borrowed/stolen/discovered, take your pick. He did save a lot of lives with his tech, and bettered the lives of others.
Anybody here without a reactive mind, tell me you want it back and in exactly the same state as before you start using the tech and I will agree that LRH failed.
I think he was brilliant to take tech, new/old/stolen (what ever makes your bum hum) and make it workable or get others to make it workable and put it out there to be used. I think he succeeded in taking lots of work, research and made it available to the man on the street that can use this data to co-audit with another to better one’s live.
If you are with the people that say the tech do not work, and by all means everybody have the right to that viewpoint, then I would say yes – to hell with the old man and good for you, at best the old fart wasted your time.
If you however feel that the tech do work, to an extend that one can say it is a workable technology that does produce results then at least give the old man some recognition and gratitude for the work and effort he put in.
I don’t know why all the bad thing LRH did does not bother me or why I do not care about all the supposedly horrible things he did. I do not know why I never thought of him as some sort of a god or saviour either.
What I do know is that I use the tech and it works for me. Although he got many of his ideas and probably most major tech from others it is he that put that tech together in a workable format and made it available to me.
I thus have no quarrel with the old man. I have no reason of my own to feel it important to broadcast his overts to the world forgetting I have/had many of my own. I have very little attention on the negative side of the old man , on the CoS and the tech. I have no intention in getting involved in “LRH the ass-hole” games either.
LRH was what he was, it is history and it is done. The tech however is left here for the use, it is available, it is there for the taking. That is of cause for those that chose so, I long ago realised that everybody is just not that into Scientology. That is ok too.
Excellent comment!
Kin, this is one of the wisest posts I’ve seen. Thanks for speaking out. 🙂
Kin
HaHaHa…..I like your humour and what you say! YOU say! Oh, just perfect!!!
Kin: “Anybody here without a reactive mind, tell me you want it back and in exactly the same state as before you start using the tech and I will agree that LRH failed.”
Chris: “(Hand raised) Scientology for me was a decades long detour. To quote Hubbard, ‘Those rocks were pretty but the way out didn’t lead that way.’ Now Kin agrees that LRH failed.”
Mmmm, let me see if I understand this Chris. You are a clear, you have no reactive mind, you however want to have your reactive mind back?
If so then a big YES, I have to admit, LRH failed miserably for YOU and I am very sorry that you do not have your original reactive mind any longer. The good news is that you can create a new one 🙂
Kin: “If you however feel that the tech do work, to an extend that one can say it is a workable technology that does produce results then at least give the old man some recognition and gratitude for the work and effort he put in.”
Chris: With few exceptions, pro-Scientologists do not audit. Is there another type of recognition and gratitude that would stand-in for the work and effort he put in? Not in my opinion there isn’t.
Scientology should have been about the auditing. Compared to the more than 60 years that it has been in “business” Scientologists, with exceptions of course, became used to “waiting until they got their money together” to pay for and then participate in Scientology. Very few Well Done Auditing Hours were accumulated, even though the people were there, they were studying, they were ready — but always held back. Simple solutions like community co-audits could have been set up but they weren’t “standard” and anyways “who would pay for the C/S’ing” etc.,. Scientologists finally just got used to waiting to do Scientology and stuck there.
Scientology is a religion in the same character and great traditions of 50,000 years of man’s religions and little else. Scientology has been way too busy making money to be of any social or spiritual help to the public at large.
No fight here.
From your previous post I can not see why you should have any gratitude towards LRH. He took your reactive bank away and you want it back right? In his defence though, he did say that is the goal of his tech.
BTW, did I miss-understood this topic? I thought we are talking about if the Scientology tech is working. From your post above you are talking mostly about the CoS.
Kin: “He took your reactive bank away and you want it back right? In his defence though, he did say that is the goal of his tech.”
Chris: “Nice try, but I never said that Hubbard took away my reactive bank and neither did you. Re-read your post.”
Kin, I see that you have already learned that there are some people here who cannot or will not differentiate between Scientology and the CoS. I’ve been trying for quite a while to point out that there’s a difference.
Let me say that one for one I love the approach you’re taking on your posts. You are GOOD! 🙂
Marildi: “Kin, I see that you have already learned that there are some people here who cannot or will not differentiate between Scientology and the CoS.”
Chris: No Marildi, I am not one of those people who cannot differentiate. Conversely, though you have written that you are giving an inch, you continue to neatly parse falsifiable Scientology under the heading of COS and workable bits under “true-Scientology,” and so the world shrinks.
Generalities as usual.
Marildi: Generalities as usual.
Chris: Are they?
Marildi: “Kin, . . . You are GOOD! :)”
Chris: “Yes he is if you are hungry for confirmation of your bias.”
Chris, talk to Kin, not me. Unless Kin has already realized that it isn’t going to go anywhere.
Kin: “I thought we are talking about if the Scientology tech is working. From your post above you are talking mostly about the CoS.”
Chris: “Nope, I am clear about the difference. True believing Scientologists are confused about the difference and red herring is not on the menu at Geir’s blog.”
For some reason I can not reply to the comments below so I do so here. Thank you for the guys and girls that find my comments interesting 🙂 I hope we can stay in comm and contribute to each other’s comments
Chris, thank you for your comments as well. I have nothing else to say to you.
Hi Kin –
I’m one of those people who got his reactive minds “taken away” – if you can say that something that never existed in the first place could be “taken away”.
You do remember that the reactive mind was always just a model for the mind, a metaphor, actually, of “held down 7’s” on a computer or calculator, and never really existed as anything other than that, right?
A “clear” is someone who made himself believe that he had a reactive mind, and that he as-ised enough of it for it to “blow”. So he mocked up a reactive mind and then he stopped mocking it up. And then he is a “clear”!
That’s all it is, it’s just a trick. Yes, every once in a while auditing will address something that is real and because you looked closely at it in an environment that was designed for you to look at it, a person from time to time got “wins”. And those are good and fine – if a might expensive.
But that does not have anything to do with whether the reactive mind ever existed as anything other than a belief in a metaphor, or a belief in an ideological model for the mind. And it certainly has nothing to do with whether Scientology ever created a “clear” with the attributes Hubbard claimed they had by scientific testing.
So no, I don’t want to believe in the reactive mind again.
That trick has already been played on me.
Is it being played on you?
Alanzo
Alanzo; Regarding your take on the reactive mind: I tend to agree.
Chris: Scientology should have been about the auditing.
SP: I might say 99.9% should be about auditing. Admin and ethics were there to make auditing available too. My local org had over 40 staff out of which only 2-3 were auditors. Go figure. SCN is a zombie 😀 But I personally blame not Hubbard for it.
“SPyros: I might say 99.9% should be about auditing.”
Chris: Nothing to stop you now! If this is still your path of favor that is.
Chris: Nothing to stop you now! If this is still your path of favor that is.
SPyros: In the past I wanted, but had no like-minded twin. Now, I’m elsewhere. I’m glad to be where I am.
Spyros: Now, I’m elsewhere.
Chris: I get it. I really do.
Wow. Strong post Geir.
I only can say whether Scientology did work for me. I am not able to speak for others, but have observed that others has improve with Scientology.
So, what part of Scientology did work for me?
1) Study Tech. I was able to learn English (written and spoken) just by applying the study tech. So, this part worked out for me.
2) Through Auditing I got rid of suffering from heavy depression. If I say heavy depression, then I mean real heavy depression. I wanted to die and had all the phenomenon of heavy depression. Now that is history for me, I hardly can remember what it means to be depressed.
I am now a happy person and able to live a normal life, I am able to feel happiness and to enjoy life. Auditing did definitely work for me.
3) I became much more self-confident and successful in my job, with the result that I could earn more money. TRs, training and auditing did help me in finding a better, healthier and more successful life.
4) I feel that I have obtained a higher awareness about life and spirituality. When I listen and read books from spiritual leaders like, Deepak Chopra, Eckhart Tolle, Armin Risi and others, then I am able to understand very well what they are talking about. Without studying Scientology I would not be able to duplicate them. In this regard Scientology did also work for me.
5) And so on…
Is this enough proof for others to know whether Scientology works? I don´t think so. But I can for sure claim, that it did work out for me. And to be honest, this is all I am interested in. I do not care if you think it works or it does not work.
Finally, just one final commend, just for Information. I did the first 10% of the bridge with the Church of Scientology and the last 90% at Rons Org.
Thank you. And Welcome!
What I could experience is that if it is really Scientology it works. But in the church the real Scientology is poisoned by suppression, no real care of preclears, but plenty for their money. Besides the major problem is that Scientology is not really known and understood because the study of it is only on paper and is always missing a teacher, the one who can explain you the full details which give the complete understanding and use of the subject. Today I had a lecture about the technical subject of HELP. The lecture has been given to me by an old time scientologist and I could really understand the concept of help and as this is the base for problems and service facsimiles: I studied the tech bulletins as an Academy certified auditor, but the teacher had a 360° knowledge derived from many other written materials, from old films of OTII (no more shown) and from teachings received from others directly trained by Ron. Scientology needs teachers or the subject cannot be understood or used. My experince shows that I learned enginnering not only on books, but mostly from the source of knowledge professors of various subjects. With good professors I could pass the calculus difficult examinations in 2 weeks of study. Studying chemistry on my first year of engineering by myself it took 10 weeks to get a similar result, but I only passed the exam, while I KNOW mathematics 40 years after, because I have been correctly trained.
Hello Geir, (my mother tongue is French so… sorry for my poor English)
I am very surprised about your evaluation about the LRH Admin Tech.
My story: I have discovered this technology by chance in a moment when I just was selling my business in order to open a mission.
But, after having discovered that a mission can be open only by auditors (by LRH bulletin or HCOPL), as I was only trained as a Book One auditor, and as I have discovered the Admin Tech with the “Exec Status One course”, and as I was amazed by the rightness and simplicity of this Admin Technology, I decided, to open a new business to help business owners in developing their enterprise.
And now, 25 years after, I am still amazed with the level of help I can bring to them with this Admin Technology.
So, maybe the reason is that I have not studied the entire LRH Admin Tech, only the basics? But I can tell that with this Tech, also if I deliver seminars with satisfaction guaranties, in 25 years I have had zero refund!!!
THE ADMIN TECH REALLY WORKS… and amazingly in an very simple and very effective way!!!
This is my viewpoint.
Now… is the actual Church Management really understanding and really applying this Admin Technology in the right way? My answer is NO!!!
But I am also sure that the reason of the too slow developement of the Freezone is also 100% connected with the poor understanding and application of the LRH Admin Technology!!!
This “LRH Admin Tech” totally works as also every single piece I have learned in the whole Ethical, or red or green LRH Tech.
Monique
I was teaching the Admin Tech for 20 years. I am an interned course supervisor, an acclaimed public speaker on the subject and have introduced thousands to the Admin Tech. I was a main speaker at several WISE events, and several of my lectures came to achieve some sort of legendary status. My specialties were the Admin Scale, the Org Board, Recruitment and the Personnel Series, Personal Efficiency, PR tech and Esto tech as well as Hubbards guidance for leaders/managers. I was a strong proponent of the Admin Tech.
Until I applied the Admin Tech onto itself. As Hubbard says, you have to look at the stats. And so I did. I tried – long and hard – to find really successful businesses that applied it. I looked and looked and have asked on my blogs and on forums for others to give me examples that stands tall above other companies using no tech at all – only common sense. Such as Google, Apple, Wikipedia, the Linux Kernel project, Zappos, Atlassian, Valve, etc., etc., etc. and etc. I have found None. Despite that LRH Admin Tech has some of the most die hard proponents of any such tech in the world, and despite the fact that they push the tech on thousands upon thousands of companies and despite the fact that several thousand people have trained for years on the understanding and application of this tech.
There are gems in the Admin Tech, but as a whole body of knowledge, I am hard pressed to find anything similar that has so strong adherents that has failed so abysmally.
So you may understand why I am no longer a proponent of LRH Admin Tech. I say: “Let common sense rule along with a few healthy tips from people who really did expand organizations beyond what others thought was possible. You think LRH did an incredible jog expanding Saint Hill back in the hay days? He is easily dwarfed by so many executives that have done so much more.
BTW: WELCOME! 🙂
Hi Monique.
I belonged to a Wise business expansion club for many years and saw only one business person there that expanded his business due to the admin tech. I later on realise that it was not the tech alone that made him succeed, it was also his business sense, being innovative, clever ideas etc.
I think the admin tech have amazing tools in it and many technologies like the tech on Dev-T, confusion and the stable datum etc. It however is also true what Isene say, one needs common sense.
Kin
Shades of de javu here 🙂
I know a fellow named Kin and I think I know the successful guy you refer to. That makes me the key player in growing his business. If so, Admin Tech had nothing to do with it, it was all about delivering the product and caring about the customer’s real needs.
I’m Alan McKinnon, are you my old buddy Kin, and are we talking about Eric?
/*sorry couldn’t resist, the parallels are just striking*/
Mister McKinnon it is I, your old friend Kin. And yes, we are talking about Eric 🙂
How you doing buddy?
I thought it was you! I read the words and could just hear your vocie saying them out loud!good to hear from you again.
But first I owe you an apology. Remember that time in your house around 2005 when you were looking into FreeZone and I talked you out of it and into going back to the Org? Well, I shouldn’t have done that. I thought you should know 🙂
I’m still doing what I always did best – being a techy geek. Unix still rules, WIndows still sucks, android is cool and Macs are tolerated. I haven’t changed much!
I’ve mostly put Scientology behind me now, it was an interesting experience but I have little use for it these days. I use it as a bunch of tools that can work, but I have many tools in life. Like speaking another language, I can do it and it’s useful, but the language doesn’t become this vast hugely important thing that is more important than everything else, you know? Perspective, that’s the key.
You might wonder about my nic. splog: snarky, pedantic, lazy old git
It’s a Unix thing, I know you’ll get the joke right away 🙂
No problems and no apology needed we all thought at some stage in our lives that the CoS is the only route out and without the CoS we are doomed for eternity:-) Yip, I get your nic 🙂
WOW!!! I am really impressed about how you master the Admin Tech and especially with your fantastic achievements with it… CONGRATULATION!!!
About your statistical observations… you are right, something seem to be totally illogical: a so simple and so efficient Technology and so poor results…
I maybe have an explanation: it is not so easy (maybe also technically not possible) to be PTS on the 4th dynamic and really powerful on the 3rd dynamic … also when the LRH Admin Tech is applied…
And the PTSness is the weakness of every Scientologist because this condition is a 4th dynamic condition. I think that the actual condition of the Scientology itself (in AND out the Church) as a group is a PTS condition.
And this fact is the real reason of the “so poor results” we can observe concerning the Admin Tech, also if it is a 100% workable tech.
Just my viewpoint 😉
I always wonder how it can be that the group armed with the best PTS technology in the world (or even the universe) could come to be so PTS. That is also rather strange.
Yes, this seems to be strange, but… one thing is to have the correct technology, and another thing is to really UNDERSTAND it and become able to APPLY it with right results.
And THIS is the real problem for the Scientologists with the LRH Ethic Technology.
I agree with you: the LRH Ethic Tech is the best PTS technology in the world (and even the universe)!!! 🙂 and I really LOVE it…
BUT…
There are really not enough of Scientologists who can really understand it and apply it in an effective way… 😉
And without this piece of LRH Technology, it is really not easy to succed with LRH Tech and LRH Admin Tech (and also technically not really possible).
I think that a very important “WHY” for the present scientology situation is THIS ONE!!!
Could it be that the problem with the ethics or admin technologies is that they are to difficult to apply. I mean, Google had very little technology and they expanded like crazy. Same with thousand upon thousand of other companies. And even the average organization is far more ethical than the Church of Scientology. Maybe we should not rationalize or justify the statistics (as LRH says)?
Can it be that ” PTS-ness ” is a ” 7th dynamics ” condition ? ( the root is then thought itself as a substitute for perceiving and acting). Just asking.
One definition of ethics is common sense. Isn’t the order: ethics, tech (auditing), admin?
What I saw in many cases was that the first two were missing and admin was “pushed”. With this I don’t mean to say that the Admin tech is good or bad as I know a fraction of it (it works). In life people with common sense seem to like living too (more life) and usually love what they do for the activity itself (your recent drawing).
Playing with the word…common sense : common sensitivity….producing based just on what is perceived to be needed without any thought of reward just for the sake of the joy of creating…also lots of interest and curiousity in the process. I know people and companies like that….all successful.
The LRH Admin Tech very simple when you master it, and the Ethical Tech too.
But the difficult we have, we scientologists is this:
Because a very important part of the scientologists don’t really understand and don’t use the Ethic Tech and the Admin Tech in a efficient way, they fail as a 4th dynamic group… and because of this WE ALL FAIL (as a 4th dynamic group).
THIS FACT creates the PTSness of all the group.
Maybe we should discard those technologies and use the methods that have proven effective by thousands of organizations before? After all, it is only the results, without any justifications, explanations or rationalizations that count (according to LRH).
ooops… all the successful business you have spoken about are 3rd dynamic groups… and on this 3rd dynamic, some of them can have some success during a little time…
BUT
Without the LRH Ethic Tech and LRH Admin Tech it’s IMPOSSIBLE to be successful on the 4th dynamic.
So we have to better use this so precious Technology and we have not to think to throw it away before to be certain to master it and really use it in an effective way… because we don’t have something more efficient for now to do the work!!!
But organizations like Wikipedia, the Linux Kernel project, Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International, Wikileaks, All World Gayatri Pariwar are 4th dynamic organizations far more successful than any Scientology organization ever was – and without any LRH ethics or admin tech. Not only are they more successful in terms of expansion. They are also far more ethical, polite, helpful and nice.
“But organizations like Wikipedia, the Linux Kernel project, Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International, Wikileaks, All World Gayatri Pariwar are 4th dynamic organizations far more successful than any Scientology organization ever was – and without any LRH ethics or admin tech. Not only are they more successful in terms of expansion. They are also far more ethical, polite, helpful and nice.” Isene
Yes, I totally agree with your assertion…
BUT
I am 100% sure that WITH the Ethic and Admin LRH Tech they could be still much more efficient and powerful. And also…
You certainly know this proverb: “Fish rot from the head down”!! So… because we still have an SP at the head of the Church, we have to assume the consequences!!
So… please don’t question this so efficient LRH Technology just because nobody for now have an answer to this question: “how to change this head???” 😉
But – where is the proof of its efficiency? There is not one single example in existence that I have heard of that even shows it CAN be efficient, even under Ideal conditions – let alone the normal human conditions. LRH tells us to look at the stats and not to rationalize or justify them I really believe he speaks the truth when it comes to that statement, don’t you?
I have “the proof of its efficiency” with my clients… I can see them “before” and “after”… and the result is systematically the same: “before” they are “effect” and they become much more “cause” with the managment and the developpement of their business.
Maybe you don’t have this evidence but with my job I have it, definitely!!
You may have personal evidence that small organizations have benefited from the tech in certain areas of their operation, but do you have proof of outstanding expansion? And do you have proof that the tech will work on what you call 4th dynamic groups? Large scale proof? Or do we believe this just because LRH says so or because we believe that if we take something that seems to work in a small scale, it will automatically work on a much larger scale or in entirely different settings?
You are right, my specialisation is with little and middle entreprises. And for them the Admin Tech is really very helpful.
And this because the difference between this technology compared to others is the deep understanding of people. The human knowledge under it.
So this tech is very very helpful in delegation and so it creates real MIRACLES in this area!! (and also in other areas but this is an example)
Will a better delegation be helpful for expansion??? Totally sure! 😉
So………… YES for sure it will automatically also be successful on a much larger scale or in entirely different settings!! 🙂 🙂 🙂
Did you read my article, Processes, Automation and Human Potential? See here: http://a-circle.no/wiki/index.php?title=Processes,_Automation_and_Human_Potential
It details why one should not rely on policy, dictation and bureaucracy to facilitate expansion, like in LRH admin tech. One should rely on the immense power inherent in the free will of people.
Please get back to me on what you think of the article 🙂
WOW!! Great and very interesting article!! 🙂
Now about your idea: “one should not rely on policy”… (with my poor English it’s not so simple to develop my viewpoint, but I will try to do at the best I can)
There are three kind of people:
– the ones who need 80% unpredictable in their job (maybe 20% of the people),
– the ones who only need 50% unpredictable and feel not safe with more than this,
– and the ones who need 80% predictable in their job because without this level of percentage they can never give the quality necessary to be reliable in their job.
All of this because there are different emotional tone levels with people and so there are different conscious levels, and different responsibility levels.
I totally agree with you for 20% of the people which don’t need many policies to be efficient. But for around 80% of people, intelligent policies are very helpful.
Because only 20 to 30% of people are able (and interested) to think about these foundamental questions:
Is the business operating in the right market?
Does the company deliver the right products or services?
… to the right customers?
… with the right suppliers?
Do they have the right personnel?
… with the right competence?
… with enough initiative and creativity?
… and with sufficient sense of responsibility?
Does the company have the right management?
Is the company organized in the best way?
… with optimal responsibility sharing?
Do the marketing and public relations generate the required impact?
And if the executive doesn’t have some policies to be sure that his staff can ensure with their daily work, he very soon will be submerged by too much things, that he becomes forced to contrôl and correct. And so he becomes totally introverted in the daily basis and he does not have enough energy and outside view point to be able to think about the future and to the very fondamental questions here above.
So yes, policies are a “must” in the management of a business. (my observation)
And in distance management, policies are also very precious for control and correction.
And here is my conclusion: Way more than 90% of the people can be at the point where they can take independent responsibility in a job. The only reason they do not is because they are in the wrong job or not properly trained. LRH had the wrong solution. He advocated a big front door and a big back door (recruit anyone and test them out, then scrap those who doesn’t work out). It’s very disrespectful IMO. And then he relied on heavy breaucracy and policy and dictations to “keep people in line”. Because he didn’t trust people with responsibility. He evidently didn’t trust other people (which is seen from his years as an executive as well). Such reliance on commanding people quenches responsibility and initiative. More respectful recruitment, respectful training, trust in other’s intentions and ability to be responsible – THOSE are the ingredients that make for fantastic expansion. And THIS is the reason why the organizations I mentioned above expanded like crazy – much more than any organization relying on LRH admin tech could hope to achieve.
I think you have pointed the way to a major reason for me why LRH admin tech is a failure – the inherent distrust of employees. Maybe this is also a problem with the ethics tech? I will have to reflect on that. Thanks for the enlightening discussion.
Yes, thank YOU for this really interesting discussion 🙂
With respect to you mokimmy, your post has one nonsense, followed by another, then another.
mokimmy: “Yes, I totally agree with your assertion…BUT. . . Chris You actually disagree with every point of Geir’s “assertion.”
mokimmy: I am 100% sure that WITH the Ethic and Admin LRH Tech they could be still much more efficient and powerful. Chris: Using your certainty as evidence in this argument is unpersuasive.
mokimmy: And also…You certainly know this proverb: “Fish rot from the head down”!! So… because we still have an SP at the head of the Church, we have to assume the consequences!! Chris: Fish do not actually rot from the head down. This metaphor is social or political rhetoric from god knows where but has nothing to do with the biology of a fish. Not that it really matters, but a fish would rot from the guts out and maybe this serves your metaphor better. “Leaders are not leaders if there are no followers” will get you farther down this road than blaming Miscavige.
mokimmy: So… please don’t question this so efficient LRH Technology just because nobody for now have an answer to this question: “how to change this head???” 😉 Chris: Thought stoppers like “don’t question this” are caught and rejected quickly here. To refer to your own metaphor, I would say that “the rot is ever only from your own head down.” Change your own head. Fix that and the rest of your reality should line up neatly.
Welcome to Geir’s blog!
Chris, you changed what mokimmy said when you left out the qualifier she stated to “don’t question this”. Her full statement was “don’t question this…just because nobody for now have an answer to this question…”
I’m 100% sure that if those technologies would be introduced, those groups would develop so much dev-t with that that they would sooner or later go bust.
That’s how it goes with certainty one cannot support with evidence.
I think the high point of the Admin Tech was How to Live Though an Executive, that’s 1955 stuff. Human groups live or die by communication, without it nothing can get done. With it, things are possible (but still not guaranteed).
Everything else is either common sense (like sensible stats to measure how things are going without becoming an end in themselves, good comm lines that are open and communciation flows, and training – no member of a group can function without knowing how to do what it is they do.
Admin Tech from ’65 onwards seems to promote the idea that everything nicely fits into a pre-arranged pattern that always works out just fine, exhibit A being routing forms, exhibit B being the ProdOff/OrgOff system and Estos. That could never work as you so often point out: you cannot use a fixed process to obtain a fixed result.
Or. as we IT chaps like to phrase it: you cannot put software where a human belongs.
It seems to me that there may be a confusion between does it work and does its results persist. Taking something mundane like a car, I can ask — does it work? Yes it does – for a while. For how long? Well, we’ll have to see about that. Oh. It has stopped working because it wore out. The car worked for 15 years and then it didn’t work. Now when I see it not working can I say the car doesn’t work?
Okay, how about producing a rise in tone. Does it work? Yes it does. How long does it work? Oh. The tone level has shifted. So it stopped working? Does it have to stay put and keep on working forever to be considered as working?
What about it works?
How do you know it works?
How long does it have to remain in that working state to work?
I look at many comments here and it makes me think of guys that stopped smoking for a year or longer that starts again and then immediately regrets the decision.
The reason is that one forgets how it was when smoking because once stopped the bad effects stops as well. One forgets the constant coughs, the low energy levels, low sex drive, constant craving, cost of smokes, stinking all the time. Of cause once starting again the bad effects return instantly.
So, I am wondering how many wins, improvements, disabilities and pains were as-ised and now forgotten.
Kin: So, I am wondering how many wins, improvements, disabilities and pains were as-ised and now forgotten.
Chris: Good question. I was wondering this as recently as yesterday and was noticing that I’ve audited out my fixed viewpoints of Scientology until I am no longer in that bubble.
Hi kin. If I understood you correctly, you are saying that people forget what wins and improvements they got from Scientology, and I think you make a great point. LRH also said that this is what commonly occurs and that people lose sight of how far they’ve come. Thanks for your comment. 🙂
Yes Marildi, you understand correctly what I am saying.
On top of that is improvements pc’s do not even see themselves and only learn about it later from their husbands and wife’s. I for one did not even realise that my chronic headaches disappeared after the purif until 3 weeks later when the wife mentioned it. I only remembered it now again, while typing this, after forgetting about this for 10 years.
Kin
Very interesting points Maria. One thing I found to be very true for me about auditing….if I went to an Org or Flag simply because things were going great and I wanted some audting then it always ended up a great thing. Whenever I went for auditing because I was down, bothered, PTP’d, or to handle something, it wouldn’t. Your post reminded me of this. I would key out, but then come back to the real problem and it didn’t last.
The last few times I went for audting this is exactly what happened. Things were not going well, so I went for auditing. I would key out and feel good–then have to deal with the DofP saying “you can’t leave” or being regged to death and I would get all enturbulated again. So generally by the time I left I was about the same I was when I got there. This is when what I knew deep down was becoming more and more real. The shit was becoming greater than the gains.
Yip. One needs to be able to turn more entheta into theta than the entheta one receives from the mest universe 🙂 Like you say, that becomes nearly impossible in the CoS today.
Geir, as I have mentioned I’m kind of a newbie here. Did I understand correctly you did L11 outside the church? I saw recently you mentioned doing 10 and 12. If this is correct, could you share who the auditor was? If you need to email me that is fine. 🙂
I am doing right now L10 outside of the Churche and most likely I will do also L11 and L12. My Auditor is from the Rons Org in Germany. Webside of the Rons Org can be found in the inernet. There do also deliver the original OT-Levels.
It’s here: https://isene.me/2011/06/26/significant-change/
…another mammoth thread 😉
That’s it…thanks! I had stated before I got more from Grade 3 and 4 than L11. But it may have been that 3 swing F/N thing at Flag that screwed it up.
I would suggest you do the Ls outside the church 🙂
That’s the plan…since you loved your L11 I wanted to look at the same auditor
Since I have been busy pointing out arbitraries, maybe it’s time I say why I got interested in SCN the first place. The truth is that I was looking for it, and found it in a teen age, and I wasn’t looking for any COS, of course. But I haven’t regret a thing.
I really shouldn’t start mentioning one by one all the cogs and releases that I had –but just take my word that they were too many. And for that reason I can read any criticism and see it as criticism, as I know what I experience, you know, and I don’t need another to tell me that I don’t experience what I experience, and that I experience what he/she tells me that I experience. Granting another his beingness and his self determinism is such a huge thing, For this way you become less effect yourself. I can have it if another thinks that SCN this and that, and it wont upset me or anything. I acknowledge that it’s what is true for him, and I can have it. And I don’t think that SCN is the same for all. Nor that it should be the same for all. And if somebody think that SCN as a whole is a lie and horrible, I don’t find it wrong. It is his truth. Deep down it is what you make it be for yourself, just like with everything in life.
Maybe a good ‘win’ I had in SCN is that I stopped being interested in my self. I don’t have much of a game anymore within myself. I can determine how to feel like, and feel like it. And so I am interested in how others feel like too and what they think and so on. So that is nice that I have sort of clean up my own room and I can play games further away from myself, without having myself to hold me back. And that is because I had this big cog -what ‘myself’ is, and more importantly what ‘myself’ is not. Actually, I lie a bit when I say I no longer play with myself. I do. It’s just that I have a different concept of what ‘self’ is. In older times I would worry about not being able to do things with my body, but now my concern is also about doing things as a spirit. And that means I also play on a different playground, but I haven’t lost grasp on my previous playground. That is the good thing about it. Other than some fixed ideas that I thought obsessively, I didn’t lose anything through this process. So yeah, if we are talking about original LRH tech, one can make it work well, if he wants. And I’m sure there are and will be more techs to come, and they are and will be nice too. And I’m happy about it, because this way you wont depend on anybody. And if you think you depend, you’re not doing it completely right, which means there’s another ‘win’ for you to have 🙂
“Scientology will decline, and become useless to man, on the day when it becomes the master of thinking. Don’t think it won’t do that. It has every capability in it of doing that”
Spyros, very nice post! You are a shining example of Scientology. 🙂
Here’s a bit the surrounding context of that great quote you posted:
“It [Scientology ] is not in itself an arbitrary, fascistic police force to make sure that we all think right thoughts. It’s a servant of the mind, a servo-mechanism of the mind. It is not a master of the mind.
“Scientology will decline and become useless to man on the day when it becomes the master of thinking. Don’t think it won’t do that. It has every capability in it of doing that.
“Contained in the knowable, workable portions before your eyes, there are methods of controlling human beings and thetans which have never before been dreamed of in this universe. Control mechanisms of such awesome and solid proportions, that if the remedies were not so much easier to apply, one would be appalled at the dangerousness to beingness that exists in Scientology.” (PDC Tape 20 “Formative State of Scientology, Definition of Logic”)
Haha Thanks so much 🙂 🙂 🙂
Yes, LRH tech is not a control operation in itself. It can be used as such, if you apply a little change and also make some other things disappear. So don’t use it as such, and don’t allow others to use it as such on you. I point out arbitraries mostly for this purpose. The only control, from person to person, that I know in SCN, is that which is done with the full consent of both persons, in each tiny bitty moment of time. If control is forced, it is suppression. Ethics were meant to deal with people that enforced control –PTS/SP conditions. Now they do the opposite. They enforce control themselves. Forget about SCNists. Bettter listen to a lecture pack.
As the foremost connoisseur for the dramatic on this board, with few exceptions, let’s examine a sentence from LRH for its drama.
Marildi unabashedly quoted this sentence from LRH, without batting an eye.
“Contained in the knowable, workable portions before your eyes, there are methods of controlling human beings and thetans which have never before been dreamed of in this universe.”
“….the knowable workable portions before your eyes…”
What assumption is being made here?
“…there are methods of controlling human beings and thetans…”
What assumption is being made here?
“….which have never before been dreamed of in this universe.”
In this universe? Are we now assuming that once you are a Scientologist, with just a few months or years studying, you can know everything that has happened in this whole universe, or that LRH can?
How many Scientologists, having adopted these assumptions without inspection, just whisk on by a sentence like this, file it away, and never examine or question it?( Looking up words, by the way, is NOT a form of questioning a statement, or testing its logic, or examining it for its veracity.)
How did a Scientologist get the status of being able to assume knowledge of all the methods of control in this universe? Just by listening to LRH lectures? By being audited and going down the time track “billions of years”?
That is assuming these incidents that are run in auditing are TRUE, right?
Do Scientologists assume that LRH can know every method of control in this universe?
Why would they ever allow themselves to assume that?
Marildi, have you ever questioned this sentence by LRH like you question sentences that Alanzo wrote?
Why or why not?
I put to you that this sentence has more drama per square letter than any sentence ever written by Alanzo. And because LRH said it, very few Scientologists notice the amount of drama they are consuming.
Why is that, do you think?
Alanzo
Frak, man! That’s one hell of an angle.
Voted up to someplace at the top of the hall of impressive posts
Well, G, I was going to write something about how the concepts of “Scientific” and “Falsifiability” in your OP were being glossed over here in the discussion, because these are so important.
But then I read this sentence that Marildi quoted from LRH to “validate” a point and realized we are no where NEAR becoming more scientifically literate while we are letting statements like that one from LRH go by.
I think that before we begin to discuss what parts of Scientology work and what parts do not, we need to examine basic critical thinking skills like:
“What is evidence for a statement?”
“What is proof for a statement?”
“Are these the same?”
Hell…
“What is a statement?” would be a good one to ask.
“How can a statement be examined?”
“How can a statement be evaluated?”
“What statements have been made for the workability of something in Scientology and how can we examine these statements for their testability, and their veracity?”
Assumptions are killers. And assumptions are EVERYWHERE here.
Alanzo
Al, one has to use “evaluation of information” and “evaluation of importances” when studying anything, including LRH. In those three paragraphs, you managed to find the least relevant phrase, not even a whole sentence: “never before been dreamed of in this universe”. Maybe he got that wrong, I don’t know. I do know, however, that when LRH first came out with the idea of “prenatals”, for example, it was thought to be preposterous too, but now a large portion of the medical community considers it quite valid.
I also know that LRH made it clear that we should discard what was just his opinion and, more to the point in this exchange, that he didn’t include tape lectures as part of the actual tech, only HCOB’s.
In any case, the important part of that excerpt is the statement of what Scn is, “a servo-mechanism of the mind”, and because of what it is he predicted what could occur – and it did in fact occur in the CoS:
“It [Scientology ] is not in itself an arbitrary, fascistic police force to make sure that we all think right thoughts. It’s a servant of the mind, a servo-mechanism of the mind. It is not a master of the mind…
“Scientology will decline and become useless to man on the day when it becomes the master of thinking. Don’t think it won’t do that. It has every capability in it of doing that.”
How about this:
HCO BULLETIN OF 30 JULY 1973; “SCIENTOLOGY, CURRENT STATE OF THE SUBJECT AND MATERIALS”:
“Scientology now has more than enough data and technology to handle even the broad problems in the humanities.”
and
“Scientology is the fastest growing Religion on the planet by actual surveys and statements by sociologists.”
and
“These materials contain the full basics of the only game in the universe where everyone wins, the game of triumphant life itself.”
This is Tech Proper (it is contained in a technical bulletin).
Geir, what you quote isn’t tech as such. There is a lot of theory behind tech in HCOB’s as well as various other kinds of commentary, including opinion. But those kinds of things aren’t actually in the category of technical procedure itself.
In other words, the statement that all tech is only contained in HCOB’s is different from saying all HCOB’s contain only tech.
Hubbard: “Scientology will decline and become useless to man on the day when it becomes the master of thinking. Don’t think it won’t do that. It has every capability in it of doing that.”
Chris: Maybe then that’s what happened, sir.
Marildi: I also know that LRH made it clear that we should discard what was just his opinion and, more to the point in this exchange, that he didn’t include tape lectures as part of the actual tech, only HCOB’s.
Chris: If Hubbard’s books and tapes are solidly part of Scientology courses of study, then how are they not part of the “actual tech?”
The books and tapes give the student an understanding of the theory underlying the tech. Sometimes they also contain actual tech as well, i.e. technical procedures and processes, but those may have been revised or even discarded and no longer constitute PT Standard Tech – which will be found in the HCOB’s on the course.
For me the question is not does scientology work but what are you drawn to…. based on the old saying “when the student is ready, the teacher arrives”. So that while scientology may show up as fascinating and very “workable” for one person or one part of your life, as you move through your life things change and what “moves” you changes. You develop different values for different times simply by the process of engaging in what is holding your attention. Ultimately your teacher is you… just coming through different guises.
So eventually after a cycle of lives where you’ve had your fill of trying out different perspectives, roles and situations; been rich, poor, ugly, beautiful, struggling, masterful, etc you eventually come to accept it all as valid and move on…. perhaps to do it all over in a completely different format.
I tried scientology for 29 years and experienced change, had frustrations, met friends. Things that appear as immense in importance eventually diminish to being just a choice like all the rest.
To address the question… yes, of course it works: you’re the one making it work… or not. Or to view from a quantum lens: you as observer are perceiving the version of yourself that matches how you are viewing it. Ooops I’m employing the bullshit effect… trying to sound learned without knowing what I’m saying;)
hehe.
Neat.
“when the student is ready, the teacher arrives” – YES. Just each instant. ” …from a quantum lense: you as observer are perceiving the version of yourself that matches how you are viewing it” – yes. …..Like what you are writing about…..lots of experience here.
maxim: Ooops I’m employing the bullshit effect… trying to sound learned without knowing what I’m saying;)
Chris: Join the club.
The Wikipedia article on Falsification is interesting. Evidently philosphers of science agree on it about as much as the commenters on this blog agree about anything. Some think Popper was wrong, some defend him, some go off on a tangent. Clearly one can make statements about Scientology that are eminently falsifiable. Statements can be made about anything, that are falsifiable.
I guess I should now read the article on the “scientific method” to make sure I understand what is meant here by that.
Good luck Valkov! I went down that road and you know what, they have built a beautiful self-perpetuating mythology that is continually violated. This is because all science is based on core assumptions that are beliefs. Those core assumptions (beliefs) are extremely useful for tracking down and verifying manageable physical predictions and building machines that will repeatedly produce consistent outputs given consistent inputs under specifically constrained conditions. I wrote up a list of the assumptions at one point on this blog. I found at least twenty such assumptions. Take out those assumptions and all bets are off.
Maria: ” . . . they have built a beautiful self-perpetuating mythology that is continually violated.”
Chris: “But the salient difference of the scientific mythology from other mythologies is in its core belief that if it can be falsified, then it should be falsified.”
No. Falsification is not THE core belief of science. It is the core of the philosophical / logical ATTEMPT to form a demarcation between science and pseudo-science by POPPER, who was a philosopher, NOT a scientist. Its value was refuted and its naivete was demonstrated by Kuhn and several other PHILOSOPHERS. In scientific practice, It is used as an important tool, but one with very real limitations, in the sciences.
This essay sums it up very well:
“To sum up: [The hallmark of empirical progress is not trivial verifications: Popper is right that there are millions of them. It is no success for Newtonian theory that stones, when dropped, fall towards the earth, no matter how often this is repeated. But, ] so-called ‘refutations’ are not the hallmark of empirical failure, as Popper has preached, since all programmes grow in a permanent ocean of anomalies. What really counts are dramatic, unexpected, stunning predictions: a few of them are enough to tilt the balance; where theory lags behind the facts, we are dealing with miserable degenerating research programmes.
Now, how do scientific revolutions come about? If we have two rival research programmes, and one is progressing while the other is degenerating, scientists tend to join the progressive programme. This is the rationale of scientific revolutions. But while it is a matter of intellectual honesty to keep the record public, it is not dishonest to stick to a degenerating programme and try to turn it into a progressive one.
As opposed to Popper the methodology of scientific research programmes does not offer instant rationality. One must treat budding programmes leniently: programmes may take decades before they get off the ground and become empirically progressive. Criticism is not a Popperian quick kill, by refutation. Important criticism is always constructive: there is no refutation without a better theory. Kuhn is wrong in thinking that scientific revolutions are sudden, irrational changes in vision. [The history of science refutes both Popper and Kuhn: ] On close inspection both Popperian crucial experiments and Kuhnian revolutions turn out to be myths: what normally happens is that progressive research programmes replace degenerating ones.
The problem of demarcation between science and pseudoscience has grave implications also for the institutionalization of criticism. Copernicus’s theory was banned by the Catholic Church in 1616 because it was said to be pseudoscientific. It was taken off the index in 1820 because by that time the Church deemed that facts had proved it and therefore it became scientific. The Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party in 1949 declared Mendelian genetics pseudoscientific and had its advocates, like Academician Vavilov, killed in concentration camps; after Vavilov’s murder Mendelian genetics was rehabilitated; but the Party’s right to decide what is science and publishable and what is pseudoscience and punishable was upheld. The new liberal Establishment of the West also exercises the right to deny freedom of speech to what it regards as pseudoscience, as we have seen in the case of the debate concerning race and intelligence. All these judgments were inevitably based on some sort of demarcation criterion. And this is why the problem of demarcation between science and pseudoscience is not a pseudo-problem of armchair philosophers: it has grave ethical and political implications.”
[http://www2.lse.ac.uk/philosophy/about/lakatos/scienceAndPseudoscienceTranscript.aspx]
“Thomas Kuhn’s influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions argued that scientists work in a series of paradigms, and that falsificationist methodologies would make science impossible:
No theory ever solves all the puzzles with which it is confronted at a given time; nor are the solutions already achieved often perfect. On the contrary, it is just the incompleteness and imperfection of the existing data-theory fit that, at any given time, define many of the puzzles that characterize normal science. If any and every failure to fit were ground for theory rejection, all theories ought to be rejected at all times. On the other hand, if only severe failure to fit justifies theory rejection, then the Popperians will require some criterion of ‘improbability’ or of ‘degree of falsification.’ In developing one they will almost certainly encounter the same network of difficulties that has haunted the advocates of the various probabilistic verification theories [that the evaluative theory cannot itself be legitimated without appeal to another evaluative theory, leading to regress][47]”
The exercise of falsifying a theory is not just a matter of creating a line between science and pseudoscience. That completely misses the point, Maria.
This exercise, and the vital skill which results from it, creates the bright line distinction between a statement that is testable and statement that is not. That, in my understanding, is the most important contribution to science that Popper created.
Where does a thetan exist? is an untestable question, and we get no where asking it.
Where does a thetan NOT exist? provides an instant pointer toward exactly where a thetan does exist.
THEN we can begin to crawl out of the morass, even as our biases are instantly challenged.
Geir’s inclusion of the concept of falsification was an essential part of this discussion, if we are to get anywhere. And without the critical skills of being able to falsify a theory, recognizing a statement that is not testable, and crafting ones that are, there is no hope of creating a better Scientology.
But like I said above – I don’t think we are there yet.
First we have to gather and thoroughly examine the statements made for the workability of Scientology, look for the nature of the evidence that is used to support those statements, evaluate the quality of the nature of that evidence in relation to other forms of evidence, and move forward from there.
After we do that, we may not ever have to discuss Popper, or falsification, or anything at all on the question of what is workable in Scientology.
Alanzo
Hells bells Alanzo. I was arguing with Chris on the point on what science is and is not! I get tired of the myth of falsification. It simply isn’t true that it is the CORE of science. It is true that it is a useful tool that science employs.
IMO you don’t even need falsification to examine all too many of LRH’s grand pronouncements. Fallacies abound in LRH’s materials. You just need to identify the fallacies in his materials. Its not hard to do.
A worthwhile exercise would be to go through his materials and delete every single fallacious statement he makes because they can’t even be classed as assumptions. More like puffery.
Weirdly, it is the FTC that has the best handle on this particular phenomena:
The FTC stated in 1984 that puffery does not warrant enforcement action by the Commission. In its FTC Policy Statement on Deception, the Commission stated: “The Commission generally will not pursue cases involving obviously exaggerated or puffing representations, i.e., those that the ordinary consumers do not take seriously.” e.g., “The Finest Fried Chicken in the World.”
Then you have to go through and delete all the stories and anecdotes and opinions and jokes.
Then you have to go through and notate all the obvious instances of contradiction.
Then you have a realistic starting place to look at what needs to be examined. There’s no science there at all, no philosophy, just grand claims and puffed up representations.
The trouble with LRH was he loved loved loved the sound of his own voice and he continually collapsed his PR/marketing claims and puffery and opinions and grand oration into the teaching materials.
Cripes. Don’t mix a Maria and EPO.
😉
What’s an EPO?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythropoietin
Alanzo. Having worked very hard on writing the above, I then noticed you had an earlier post that says the same thing I am saying! LOL!
Example, you analyzed this quote:
“Contained in the knowable, workable portions before your eyes, there are methods of controlling human beings and thetans which have never before been dreamed of in this universe.”
There is nothing to analyze here. Its pure puffery.
So you can just cross out it.
LOL! Hmmm… yep, better not mix me with EPO — I’m already jacked!
But I did mistate something in my post when I said: “Then you have a realistic starting place to look at what needs to be examined. There’s no science there at all, no philosophy, just grand claims and puffed up representations.”
I meant to say: Then you have a realistic starting place to look at what needs to be examined. There’s no science in the bulk of what LRH orates, no philosophy, just grand claims and puffed up representations.
What remains can have value heuristically, and some of it may be amenable to scientific methodology, and some may be valuable contributions to philosophy. There is also a large body of data / observations that point in directions that could and should be explored.
But that has to sifted out from the endless yaddy yah that LRH just loved to get into.
LOL, I was in the middle of writing a reply to that earlier line, “There’s no science there at all, no philosophy, just grand claims and puffed up representations.” I couldn’t believe you had written that! This one is more like it. And more like you. 🙂
Btw, LRH himself did say that his opinions were to be taken as such and that the tech itself is limited to what’s in the HCOB’s. Anyway, good post, this one.
Maria wrote:
When did this awareness about LRH and puffery happen for you?
I remember exactly when it happened for me.
I was still a Scientologist back in the late 90’s. I had done the Data Series Evaluator’s course, and then the Ethics Specialist course, and I began to really value the subject of logic, and the idea of “reasoning”. I had always valued them really, and I had always assumed that I had all the logic and reasoning training I needed from LRH (mostly because he had told me that, over and over, in his materials).
Then I heard there was something called a logical fallacy. Which was somehow different than an “outpoint”.
I was in this bookstore one day and I saw this book called “The Art of Deception” by Nicolas Capaldi. It isn’t a book about deceiving people. It is a book for low level law students for that is an intro into critical thinking and how to craft an argument that will win in court.
http://www.amazon.com/By-Nicolas-Capaldi-Deception-Introduction/dp/B008UB7LQC/ref=sr_1_sc_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1362768579&sr=8-2-spell&keywords=%22The+Art+of+Deception%22+by+Nicolas+Cipaldi
In this book, the author has two very clear paragraphs on what a “construction” is vs. a “fact”.
This must have been the support for the whole false foundation upon which my entire career as a Scientologist was resting, because the floor caved in on me when I read that.
Ever since then, every time I picked up any book, or PL, or HCOB by L Ron Hubbard, all I saw was total shit and puffery.
I mean it ALL collapsed!
Before that, his poof just streamed straight into my mouth, and I swallowed all of it whole.
I finally began to gag on it, as I should have years before.
When did this happen for you?
Why doesn’t it happen to Scientologists more often?
Alanzo
We’re not falsifying ‘theories’ here, We mostly can’t even identify which statements made are falsifiable and which ones aren’t.
For example, the statement that “Scientology is the only way”, is that falsifiable?
Valkov: For example, the statement that “Scientology is the only way”, is that falsifiable?
Chris: For a Scientologist the answer is no, and for a non-Scientologist, the answer is yes.
My first visit to the subject of rhetoric, critical thinking, argument and propaganda was courtesy of a merciless current events social studies teacher who had us do exercises like analyzing the news, striking out all assumptions, opinion, puffery, propagandist claims, etc. leaving only the facts. And then we had to analyze what facts were presented and what context had been left out that would cause those facts to be misleading. We had to write essays on this and he graded them ruthlessly. I got my first D in school on my first assignment with him. I was quick to get the hang of it after that!
By the time I encountered Scientology I had been studying all kinds of philosophy, religion, and human potential materials for several years and had developed a style of studying where I just focused on finding useful information and pretty much just ignored the rest. Hey, I was happy if I could extract one useful concept from an entire book!
I just kept doing that when I studied Scientology. I was pleased to see the statement: what is true for you… Yep. That’s what I had been doing all along. And the registrar made it VERY clear that the books and tapes were a record of whatever was found and were not to be considered as current technology or taken as claims for current services. I even had to sign a enrollment form saying that I understood that.
I had learned along the way that it was almost pointless to argue with most people on logic as most people didn’t have any training or experience with it and would just get all offended. So long as they didn’t try to force erroneous notions down my throat I pretty much ignored it all, and that included LRH’s orations.
It comes up now because of the nature of the discussion. I really can’t think of any discussions I’ve ever been involved in that seriously considered what would have to be done to properly analyze the materials of Scientology.
BTW I’ve read that book you mentioned — that’s a great book!
Oh, I guess I should also clarify that there is what I call the “dunnage” factor. I see it all the time in speeches, conversation, writings, etc.
An entire book might be pushing the idea that love is the most important principle in all life. There. That’s the principle.
348 pages later, amongst various arguments and examples, the author has also included a huge amount of dunnage which serves to facilitate the writings but isn’t particularly profound. It just reads better, sounds more interesting, kind of greases the wheels with platitudes and so on. People do it all the time.
You see it in conversation:
Hi. How are you?
I’m fine.
How about you?
Doing great!
How’s the wife?
Oh she’s sick today.
Oh that sucks.
Well, she’ll get over it.
Yep, suck it up baby!
Especially in coffee rooms of large offices. Its chit chat. Shorthands of bygone conversations.
Yep. Jim sent my report back to me.
Ah, what an ass he is.
Yep. He drives me crazy, I can’t stand him.
Me neither. But men will be men.
Valkov wrote:
We’re not falsifying ‘theories’ here, We mostly can’t even identify which statements made are falsifiable and which ones aren’t.
For example, the statement that “Scientology is the only way”, is that falsifiable?
From the wikipedia article Geir linked to:
Alanzo
Al, you went to all that trouble to not answer that question? If you’re going to invoke ‘falsification’ at least know how to apply it to simple sentences!
Valkov wrote:
Al, you went to all that trouble to not answer that question? If you’re going to invoke ‘falsification’ at least know how to apply it to simple sentences!
OK, Val.
I’ll rewrite a portion of that for you, and add some more “mass” for you too in the way of real life examples.
________________________
The statement “All swans are white” is falsifiable because it can come in conflict with the observation “this swan is black.”
But the statement “White swans do exist” is not falsifiable, since no counter-example is possible. No matter how far and wide you look, they just keep existing.
So you need to recognize a statement which can create a possibility that would make it false.
The statement “You are a thetan” is not falsifiable. Neither is “All people are thetans” because you can not observe a thetan.
However, the statement “Grade Zero creates a person who can communicate with anyone on any subject” IS falsifiable. All you have to do is find one person who has done Grade Zero who can not talk to someone on a certain subject. Like he can’t talk to his mother about masturbation, or he can’t talk to his daughter about her period, or he can’t talk about Scientology with an Ex-Scientologist.
It is good to examine the EPs on the Grade Chart this way. It begins the process of really confronting whether Scientology works by first examining the CLAIMS made for Scientology “working”, and really scrutinizing those, and then going out and finding examples which make the claims false.
If you can find them, great. If you can’t find them, great. But the process of actually confronting the claims and the real life results of those claims shows you what Scientology actually does.
This process is not condoned in the Church of Scientology, and maybe not even in independent Scientology – no indie that I have ever read is interested in confronting this. This observation of the results of Scientology on a critical basis – a very critical basis – is something that LRH said to do, but then made it a high crime to do so with a State of Clear, for instance.
I don’t know any adherent of a religion who really wants to confront the religious beliefs that make him feel so good inside. They don’t want the good feelings to go away, and so they are not going to go around finding where their beliefs are false.
But if they are not beliefs, but facts, and they are being sold for so much money, with indentured servitude contracts on staff to deliver them, someone should actually LOOK and SEE if all this time and energy and money being spent on Scientology is actually worth it.
Don’t you think?
Alanzo
Al: “I don’t know any adherent of a religion who really wants to confront the religious beliefs that make him feel so good inside. They don’t want the good feelings to go away, and so they are not going to go around finding where their beliefs are false.”
Chris: Which dovetails with my comment to Valkov about context.
That’s a very relevant comment to the OP. And a very good one, too.
I dunno. Are EPs absolutes, then?
Is that statement, that “Absolutes are unobtainable in this universe”, falsifiable?
In fact, is it even appropriate to try to apply the concept of falsification to such statements? I think not.
It’s a handy cop-out though, innit?
Obviously not. And Al explained the reason to you. Re-read.
Valkov: I dunno. Are EPs absolutes, then?
Chris: Yes they absolutely are in Scientology. When you get your mind around that, then you can begin to begin to grasp the incongruous nature of that subject.
Is an “Ideal Scene” an absolute?
Valkov: “Is an “Ideal Scene” an absolute?”
Chris: If you want to call an ideal scene an EP, we can go there. Depending on whose reality is judging and whether that Ideal Scene is sufficiently described, it might be. You can say that absolutes cannot be achieved like you can say that perfection or ultimate truth cannot be achieved. Then we have ideal scenes which also are relative, conditioned, and impermanent. Like asking what the temperature is — we have to be specific what we mean when asking that question. So if the person judging the scene has too specific a description of the ideal scene, then that ideal scene may be unachievable and therefore an “absolute” so to say. If we get picky enough, an absolute can also be picked apart. If we are going for and willing to be satisfied by a relative, conditioned, and impermanent answer, then an “absolute” can be achieved such as “12 eggs in a carton of a dozen eggs” . . . “what time is it? 8:19 AM.” “We absolutely must get to the bank before 5PM” . . . Or as Marildi might say, “It depends on what you mean by absolute.” (humorous jab only)
To the degree that we ask questions which are underpinned with understanding, that is the degree to which we can obtain an accurate answer. To the degree that I understand the woof and warp of this universe seems to that degree that I consider context, then relativity, then conditioning, then a degree of permanency, then my use of the word absolute may become relative, conditioned, and impermanent as well.
So now I’ll ask, were you wondering that yourself or trying to herd me into a corner? (Trust thread?)
Maria: “This is because all science is based on core assumptions that are beliefs.”
For example, that there is a RWOT?
I think part of reason why SCN and SCNists get vulnerable to being invalidated is the make-wrong towards non SCNists too. I mean it’s different to say that SCN works for me and it doesn’t work for you because you are ‘lesser’ or ‘wrong’ or some other invalidation overt, than to simply say that it doesn’t work for you –actual granting beingness, you know. There’s nothing wrong with a person that doesn’t create an effect onto himself through SCN. And I can do that too. I can go in session and not only end it without gain, but also create more charge than I had before. It’s the person that does things to himself, not SCN. And I know great many things that wont work for me either. So what?
I think this goes along with the fact that some would like to make SCN appear as the only way, or the right way etc. And ‘Clear the planet’ by means of dominating it, through SCN. Nobody can have the copyrights over one’s personal truth and freedom etc.
That’s why I disagree with the scientific approach to some degree –because you cannot make SCN objective –only some phenomena. Not only I couldn’t prove my ‘gains’ to another, but I cannot make it work on another either, unless he makes it work onto himself. That’s why we talk about freedom etc. If we were reality-bound, then freedom my behind. Science means that it always works and that it always doesn’t work, because it’s MEST-universe-reality-bound and it’s always like that. But no, SCN is about one’s personal creations and MEST is part of his creations too. Trying to prove a thetan through MEST is like trying to prove a baker through his bread.
Hi Spyros,
I agree with you about Scn becoming vulnerable to invalidation because of the make-wrong of non-Scn’ists as well the claim that Scn is the only way. These things are wrongheaded and bad mistakes. I also agree that there is truth to the idea that the effects Scn produces on a person depend a lot on the person. However, I don’t believe that the difference from one individual to the next is the only variable that determines whether or not a person will benefit from Scientology.
In other words, I wouldn’t agree with the idea that Scn is no better or worse than any other system for creating beneficial effects or that they all equally and only dependent on the person. I think that the Scn system itself, inherently, probably has a greater chance of benefiting more people than many others, if not most or all other systems. Your take on this point?
This pretty much sums up my view.
Marildi
“….has a greater chance of benefiting more people” – as it is precise and quite thorough concerning manifestations, it can be the case (as with a system). But also, there is a reference, where Ron says that auditing is not dangerous but non-Clear, or non-Theta-Clear audtitors are (my wording, perhaps you will find the exact reference). In my reading it has consequences at an energetic level during auditing. The auditor’s “energy” can have an effect on the PC in different ways. My point is, giving an example from a different part of life, that the presence of an enlightened being is so “theta-clear” that that alone “destilles” the “enturbulated” theta in another….
Absolutely, Marianne – so many references about the auditor’s part in auditing being extremely significant.
As for what you said about “the presence of an enlightened being is so ‘theta-clear’ that that alone ‘destilles’ the ‘enturbulated theta in another – I think the most basic reference on that is in Science of Survival. That was where LRH made the statement that given a large enough quantity of theta, entheta will disenturbulate. This is the reason that healers can sometimes heal just by the person being in their presence, IMO
p.s. I should add that the “dangers” of non-Clear auditors is accounted for in the tech itself, by such things as TR’s and specific procedures and commands to be used.
So, give me a precise definition of the tech (as you see it), then.
LRH sure didn’t make it easy on people when he managed to throw such stuff into the HCOBs themselves. Why on Earth did he do it? It is sure to blow lots of people off.
I see tech as the application of precise procedures and processes. It’s the know-how and doingness of auditing or wordclearing or supervising. To me, LRH made that much clear.
But I don’t disagree with you that LRH made things difficult at times. That’s why I also don’t disagree that improvements could be made.
But you would consider books such as the Creation of Human Abilities, Self Analysis and Handbook for Preclears actual tech, or? And how about How To Live Though An Executive?
Geir, there obviously is tech in those books, but most of that tech isn’t included in the current Standard Tech used on the Bridge. For example, Book 1 Dianetics tech had many changes to it as research continued, and at one point it was called Standard Dianetics, etc.and finally became New Era Dianetics – which is now Standard Tech and can be found in HCOBs.
And the point isn’t to invalidate the use of older tech, such as in Div 6 courses; it just means that Standard Tech that is used on the Bridge is now also in HCOBs, differentiating it from what is no longer Standard Tech.
Hey Marildi 🙂
” I think that the Scn system itself, inherently, probably has a greater chance of benefiting more people than many others, if not most or all other systems.”
Most spirituality/religion that I know is totally black. Chakras, and effect of God, and we are all connected, and dont send me negative energies because I am effect etc etc
I don’t compare SCN to them. I’m talking about freedom, self/pan determinism etc. I’m reffering to systems that are and systems that are going to be. And generally, I would rather not start some antagonism game now about which one is better. I insist that it depends on the person 😛 But obviously, since I’m into Spiritologie, there is a reason why I preffer it over Scientology. Ask me why, and though shalt receive 😛
Spyros: “And generally, I would rather not start some antagonism game now about which one is better.”
My main point wasn’t to compare systems by saying which is better, but to disagree with equating them as all the same and only dependent on the individual. You yourself have had many positive things to say about Scn – whereas, now you say “Most spirituality/religion that I know is totally black.” 😛 😉
Therefore, my little Greek devil, it doesn’t seem that you actually do “insist that it depends on the person” Nevertheless, I am interested in why you prefer Spiritologie over Scn and expect that the answer shalt be received. 😛
HaHAhha I guess it would take an super OT to use that black spirituality successfully. And I wonder why would he need to do so anyway, if he’s that OT? When I said that it depends on the person, I didn’t count in dishonest/black spirituality too:P Also, When I reffered to black spirituality I didn’t count SCN in either. We have agreed that LRH tech is not black but has become so by the COS etc 😛 I’ve been using Spiritologie because it is how I would want Scientology to be like, now that it has changed. It reminds me of the SCN 50s spirit –unlimited OT and stuff. In Spiritologie one operates from the 8th dynamic point of view though. These two subjects are not the same. Also, I’ve had no conflicts with the group and most importantly I’ve had some great gains in practice. Too bad I spent much time handling the charge I had from the group Scientology! So, now you get why 😛
Yes, I got it now. And you got me interested. 😛 Can you recommend a link that would be a good one to find out more about what it is exactly? I won’t be able to get into it much until maybe later today because as usual you’ve lured me off from what I’m supposed to be doing! 😛 So I might have to get back to you tomorrow on it. 🙂
Marildiv, Below are some pdf files about Spiritologie.
Spiritologie, the book.
Click to access spiritologiebook_en.pdf
Ivy mag #102. Pages 8 to 14: An Scn Class 8 auditor experience with Spiritologie.
Click to access IVY_102.pdf
Ferenc, this is in reply to your post with the links regarding Spiritology. I just now happened to see it as I got no email notification of that post, which has been a problem for a few of us that I know of who don’t get them all. Geir figures the problem is with WordPress but you may have some other ideas about it too. Anyway, that’s the reason I’m using the closest reply button to reply to your post since the post itself doesn’t have one and I have no email of it to reply from.
I had not seen the first link you posted, for the whole book, but elsewhere I read the forward and the table of contents with the chapter titles – a lot of which sounded very much like Scientology phrases and ideas. As for the second link, I read that whole article written by Rolf Krause about Andreas Buttler. He posted it on a forum, which came up when I googled Andeas’ name. That was enough background for me to get a general idea. So your link choices were good ones. Thanks! 🙂
Btw, are your posts going into moderation now? I know that this one appeared later on this thread than when you posted it. Maybe Geir is afraid you might want to tease him again sometime and that makes you a real “risk” as a poster. 😉
Marildi: Yes, I got it now. And you got me interested.
S: The great mindless minds meet 😛
http://www.spiritologie.org/gr/the-book/foreword.html
Marildi: as usual you’ve lured me off from what I’m supposed to be doing!
S: You too! But I don’t complain 😛 Now I’m off to dreamlands –things to do there. Bonne nuit and have fun 🙂
Evenin’, Spyros. 🙂
I read the page you linked and immediately recognized not just Scn concepts but its phraseology! Then I googled “Spiritologie” and discovered that it is pretty controversial at best. Yikes! Well, I just hope you keep your theta eyes open. (Actually, I have confidence in the little devil known as Spyros the Greek, so I’m not too worried. 😛 ;))
I looked into Spiritologie a couple of years back and concluded that it is off-the-wall bonkers
Marildi: “Then I googled “Spiritologie” and discovered that it is pretty controversial at best. Yikes! Well, I just hope you keep your theta eyes open.”
Chris: Yes Spyros, please be cautious of controversial religious practices!
Dammit, I have some issue with replying where I should, as I don’t get e-mail notifications.
Marildi, the link that I gave you was a book, it wasn’t mean to be a page 😛 In other words…what is there to understand from a page?
It’s strange to read from a SCNist that you read ABOUT Spiritologie and concluded…What would had happened to me if I had (actually, I have) read about Hubbard, instead of reading his works?
Geir, I need to look up off-the-wall bonkers 😛
Chris, I’ll be careful indeed 😛
Spyros: “Dammit, I have some issue with replying where I should, as I don’t get e-mail notifications.”
None at all? I assume you did click on the little box next to “Notify me of follow-up comments via email” which pops up under the post you are writing (you only have to do it once to get all future notifications for that OP thread). I did that on this one and do get most notifications but not all – a few of posts I’ve discovered only when looking over a thread, or when I get an email that shows part of the post being replied to and I know then that I never got the email for that post.
Your point about what would have happened if you had only read about Hubbard was a valid one, I grant you. But as for the link you gave me, did you really expect me to read the whole book? 😛 I thought you would give me something that rang of truth but not requiring a complete study! 😛
But, as I said, I have faith in your ability to determine truth for yourself. Even though you are a little devil. 😛 🙂
Hmm…Marildi to be honest no, I hadn’t checked that box gh h h h h 😛
Well, yeah I thought of it as somewhat improbable that you’d sit and study a whole book, But since you didn’t ask what my own point of view was, and you asked for a link, I thought that the best link would be the book itself. I have read some stuff about Spiritologie as well as about Scientology and I don’t want to play this game now explaining how and why the claims of a person about these subjects are correct/incorrect, honest/dihonest etc –maybe later on. For the moment, I only say that I haven’t spent a penny on Spiritologie (I solo by myself), my sessions end at EP and I haven’t spotted any 1.1 theta traps –I would have to sort of trap myself with my own technique 😛 But yeah, as with everything, what is true is what is true for you and me too and so on 🙂
Spyros: “Hmm…Marildi to be honest no, I hadn’t checked that box gh h h h h :P”
M: LOL 😛 😀
S: “For the moment, I only say that I haven’t spent a penny on Spiritologie (I solo by myself), my sessions end at EP and I haven’t spotted any 1.1 theta traps –I would have to sort of trap myself with my own technique :P”
M: I’m very happy to hear that. 🙂
If you are willing to tell me about it, what I would be interested in is what Spiritologie may have to say about The Factors, since that is the basic subject of the thread on the blog post “Can there be a beginning?” (a couple of blog posts after this one). Can I coax you into playing just that one little game with me? 😉 😛
I know that there are some lectures about the Factors in SCN, and I regret that due to laziness I didn’t read them :p
In Spiritologie the Factors are similar but expanded into a full story with some details. It is the chapter ‘God defined’. But I’d rather not preach what it says. I would like to talk about my own ideas,
It makes sense to me the assumption that in the beginning there is nothing, but there is potential for something. I’m using present time because that never changes –Static. For me, it is a story that repeats. Every time you wake up in the morning, you sort of re-live this story of becoming aware out of nowhere and out of no-time. It’s very interesting. It is how 7th dynamic is born out of the 8th –the decision to be…
Wow, thank you, Spyros. Very cool. I like it so much. 🙂
Sweet dreams in the land of nowhere. 😉
(Oops, can’t post a reply to you without a :P)
The Dynamics are put there in reversed order of creation. First there is just potential (8) then beings (7) then MEST(s) (6) Then MEST(s) populated with lifeforms (5) Then beings take bodies (4) and so on…
Hehe I’m glad. Goodnight!!
SCIENTOLOGY “DOES IT WORK?”
My Objectives…This was the first time (looking back now) that I got the awareness of being a spiritual being. Simply walking around and touching things in the room and WOW. My auditor puts me back on the cans and says END OF SESSION. That sensation–at that time–was the inner peace I never felt before. The funny thing was my bank was pushed back 100 miles from my head, BUT when I went to work I had a hard time functioning. i called my FSM who laughed and laughed, but I said I loved the win/gain/feeling, but it was a liability not an asset.
So I go back to the org the following day, and get on the cans, and my audtior looks at the meter and says the needle is floating all over the place. No session. Dang I was bummed, but understood. Since that day, I gained the respect for what a simple process can do. Now, of course its become an asset.
Now, when I meet someone new, I can perceive that persons reality and from all 4 flows. It is absolutely wild and it’s been incredible in business. However, I can’t train anyone to duplicate me. I don’t know how to tell them to do that, so when I’m on the line–stats are superb, but I can’t get others to do the same. And you know what, I’m cool with that.
Thanks for this opportunity Geir, and a wonderful morning to all my friends on this fine site 🙂
Tom: “However, I can’t train anyone to duplicate me. I don’t know how to tell them to do that, so when I’m on the line–stats are superb, but I can’t get others to do the same.”
Your post reminded me of something LRH said about realizing that others weren’t getting the same results as he did when auditing pcs. And if I remember right, that was when he realized that they weren’t acknowledging the pc. So then he began his on study of the whole subject of communication and its laws.
I guess what I really wanted to say is that you are obviously a very able being and I’m glad that you give as much credit as you do to Scientology – and I’m sure that part of the credit belongs to you too. Anyway, top of the mornin’ to ya. (Guessing that you might be Irish. :))
gaeaglefan1023 – Tom: the needle is floating all over the place.
Awesome 😉
Geir, such a nice Rundown your topics have been. Had both charge and cogs. Thanks 🙂
It sure is awesome, Spyros…glad you’re blowing charge too!
No Chris, in the context of this OP and the link to the Wiki article on the subject of falsification, any statement ought to be classifiable as falsifiable or not falsifiable.
Get with the program, man!
Valkov: “Get with the program, man!”
Chris: No problem, you just need to locate your context, then it becomes more apparent. When you search for consistency out of context you bang your face against the anvil . . . not a fruitful exercise. Of all the stupid things I’ve written, if I could choose a point to make, I currently pick this one. Because of that, my answer to your question is still good.
OK, since I don’t understand what you said, I ‘ll try a different statement.
“An omnipotent God created the world and everything and everyone in it”
Is this statement falsifiable? We’re playing by Karl Popper’s (and Isene’s) rules here, which you refused to do with the previous statement.
Are you in the game or not? If not, then just let the ones (if any), who wish to play by/with those rules, let them play. Otherwise you’re just derailing.
Valkov, you need to understand what you are about to write before you write it.
I write in response to what the meaning I seem to be getting from someone’s post.
I I have misunderstood something , please be so kind as to point out what I have misunderstood, and the correct understanding of it, instead of just telling me in a supercilious way that my understanding is deficient.
Al at least has been doing that.
I don’t believe I can explain it any better than Al did. So please re-read his post.
Actually you’re right, I am thinking about other things and have less than half a mind on this discussion. I’m not really in it.
I am somewhat interested in examining specific statements, but beyond that, not much. It has little or no relevance to my life, it seems to me.
I don’t disagree with Al’s statement about distinguishing the hype from the real results at all. That has always been my orientation towards things, maybe that’s one reason I never really got deeply involved with the CoS.
But that ship sailed a long time ago. Who are you gonna find today, to survey about ‘results’, in numbers large enough and controlled enough for it to be ‘scientifically valid’?
Valkov: “Who are you gonna find today, to survey about ‘results’, in numbers large enough and controlled enough for it to be ‘scientifically valid’?”
Chris: I’ve been wondering the same thing since we first mentioned applying the scientific method to Scientology.
Would it be an Indie? Probably not, and why would they? They aren’t trying to do anything but practice a religion that they are already sold on.
Would it be an independent behavioral scientist? How could they even do it without much training and experience?
Would it be someone like me? I’m not going to say “no” but I am thinking that ship already sailed for me as well since I seem to be sitting here passing judgement on a subject that I think that I’ve outgrown. That I have finally acknowledged its religious status has for me dowsed any hope that can ever be proved or disproved because it seems to work as well as people think it works and this tautological truth is relative, conditioned, and impermanent.
Will it be Geir? Is he that interested or has that ship sailed for him as well? Having dipped into and mastered most of what Scientology has to offer, would he hold out hope that the few remaining percentage points of learning would result in the states of being which he hopes for? He would have to comment on that one.
The entire subject of Scientology shouts of absolutes while denying they exist. This can be confusing if I let it be. In the bubble of Scientology, for those who believe, Scientology works. Outside that bubble, for those who deny that it works, reasons can be found. I have to say that I am not on fire to prove or disprove it. I gave very good time and attention and service to this subject only to sort of land back in that recursive and self-similar construct in which I started. I could be put out by this as though I’d failed as Hubbard felt.
On the other hand, I can know what I know (tautology) and study and learn and mix it up with life the best way I can and in the same manner that I have and call that good enough for I seem to be happy in life; I know love and family and friends. Each day I fill with purposeful activity — triviality has not set in. To that end, I have already fulfilled my purpose on Earth and I shall continue to do so.
Chris: “I can know what I know (tautology) and study and learn and mix it up with life the best way I can and in the same manner that I have and call that good enough for I seem to be happy in life; I know love and family and friends. Each day I fill with purposeful activity”
Like your post. Sure is nice to be free, eh?
deE: Like your post. Sure is nice to be free, eh?
Chris: Without cutting across anyone’s purpose to imagine “super-states of being” and to strive for the same, yeah it sure is.
Chris, I’ve been trying to grasp your use of ‘tautology’ in various contexts.
In your post above, you refer to “know what I know” as “(tautology)”. This is not my understanding of it. As “awareness of awareness” is not a tautology. It describes a relationship, of the awareness of one level of awareness, of another, ‘lower’, level of awareness.
Example: A camera is ‘aware’ of whatever it is pointed at. The camera operator, by looking at the display screen (viewer or viewfinder), is then aware of whatever it is the camera is ‘aware’ of.
There is no ‘tautology’ here. We are talking about 2 discrete awarenesses, with one being ‘senior’ to the other. The ‘operator’ is aware of himself holding the camera, and also of what the camera is ‘aware’ of. However the camera is not aware of the operator in any meaningful sense, it is only aware of whatever it is directed to be aware of.
One awareness monitors the larger context and the other more limited awareness at the same time.
That is how I understand it.
Valkov: Chris, I’ve been trying to grasp your use of ‘tautology’ in various contexts.
Chris: Thanks for asking and for your view. It more or less dives off into the circular way in which we end up chasing out tails in these discussions. It is part serious and partly tongue in cheek. Something I’ve been playing with that word tautology. I’ll try to write a better explanation a little later, but I can’t right now. Maybe you will find it interesting –
I’m looking forward to reading that, Chris.
Keep in mind that I go by dictionary definitions. So what you call ‘my’ view is really no more than the commonly accepted and agreed upon definition of ‘tautology’, and not something ‘I’ made up. I guess if you want to make up your own idiosyncratic definition, thenyou do owe it to your readers to post what that is.
Valkov: Otherwise you’re just derailing.
Chris: Science has context. The better you find the context, the less relevant your paradoxes.
Chris, anything you can name has context.
Valkov: Chris, anything you can name has context.
Chris: On this point and in this moment I don’t know if you are telling me that you are tracking with me or if you are arguing about it. Yes, anything we can name has context, but to understand anything we have to name its context.
I find the direction of this discussion depressing. I say this because the very nature of subjective reality is that it is not objective. And yet any sense I have of meaningful existence is subjective. I would venture to say that there is nothing in Scientology that cannot be dismissed by the concept of falsification, including me.
Maria, I found your posts very, very interesting and some OMG moments, also find some good clean fun in the discussions. I think I know what you mean by “there is nothing in Scientology that cannot be dismissed by the concept of falsification, including me”. Could you clarify the “me” part as I don’t understand quite what you mean. Thanks 🙂 Dee
I do not really exist except as a some kind of spooky state, ghost in a machine, associated with an aggregation of particles in space time. I am nothing. There is no means of proving anything on this one way or another. It is not possible to frame a statement about me that can be falsified.
I might add, this is why Scientology can only be dismissed as the fundamental premise of Scientology is that the ghost in the machine is real but can only be perceived subjectively and cannot be measured by any means. All of Scientology is based on this fundamental idea.
I will also add that on this basis, it seems very unlikely that any of the life sciences are sciences at all. At best they are belief systems and perhaps mechanical arts.
In fact, I doubt there is any such thing as science because on the basis of falsification there is never anything that can be said to be a discovery, accumulated knowledge or any kind of progress. There is never anything truly known with 100% certainty and no possibility of anything different. Only carefully framed statements of speculation awaiting falsification. And the truth is that most of the sciences have had their very foundations falsified already.
Maria: “At best they are belief systems and perhaps mechanical arts.”
Imo, SCN is a belief system. Not know about mechanical arts, unless that means providing applications that those people could benefit from who like the philosophy.
Maria, if memory serves me and my understanding is correct, the idea of falsification is basically that a theory is a scientific one if it COULD be falsified – meaning, if it can be TESTED and possibly shown to be false. If it is a statement for which there is no way it could ever be tested and thus POSSIBLY falsified, then it is not “falsifiable” and thus not a promising subject for scientific study. This is a pretty good rule of thumb that Popper came up with but even he didn’t feel it was more than that, or that it was always valid.
I think it’s very confusing sometimes to people to hear that some theory “can be falsified”
or that such and such theory is “falsifiable” because it sounds like what is being said is that it can in fact be shown to be false! And that’s not at all what is being said.
At the end, where I said “…because it sounds like what is being said is that it CAN in fact be shown to be false”, to be clear I should have said “…because it sounds like what is being said is that it WE ALREADY KNOW IT CAN be shown to be false. And that’s not at all what is being said.”
Good point of clarification.
Falsifiable = Testable
In my article “On Will” I do present exact predictions for a theory where a cause exist independent of effects.
That which you write can be experienced. I find your conclusion true. From then on no theory (mind) is needed. Theorizing “about” something is a substitute for something which can be first-hand experience. The “why” for the people not “going for” that experience, as I find it, can be found in the Tone-level of the person, where the bottom line is the fear of non-existence as a separate person. When I was doing research in linguistics, I was searching for and also theorizing about the source of language and language acquisition. Then I looked at it in “my mind.” I found the answer. That minute I got out of it. No more search and theory. Earlier I was at a conference on “death”. Two camps, researchers and those who went through. No real communication between the two. I went up to one of the researchers and asked him whether he was willing to experience death by a simple technique. He said scared – no. Understandable – one can rarely be….hm. curious? innocent? strong? enough….god knows what….
Beautiful and true article……a gem of the YOU….don’t mean it as an evaluation….its truth can be tested…..
Maria: “spooky state, ghost in a machine, associated with an aggregation of particles in space time. I am nothing.”
Thanks for clearing that for me. Way to Go — and can relate from another ghost.
Aah, but your ability to use the tools and machine with all the particles, are extremely well accomplished.
Maria
“there is nothing in Scientology that cannot be dismissed by the concept of falsification” –
yes – perhaps this is what Geir said that what happened on the Bidge was the letting go of all which was not “me”. So the last “cognition-experience” is I AM ME. And then he said that
he wanted to know-experience the “What/Who AM I “. (if I get him right) Hmm…..I asked Geir
what the “nature” of that ME was but he didn’t answer. I will ask him again.
Hmm…that picture, the guy standing at the end of a bridge is a perfect illustration of what the “next step” is to get an “answer” to the question ” Who/what am I ? ” The next step is to
be willing to “jump into” that immense no-thing (“ocean” , “air ” ) that the picture shows. Be willing to experience that there is the “body” and there is the “ocean” “air” but there is no entity as MIND in between. Each and every “thought”, when created, dies in the moment of creation.
And it is true for the ” I ” concept too. When ” I ” really look “inside”, there is no ” I ” (filter). It never had an “existence” on its own. There “is” just a “Flow” (Life). This Flow creates or uncreates. Different manifestations (body, thought, emotion…). It has no “place”,
so it cannot be “spooky, a ghost in a machine”. It is ALIVE. Perceives and knows. Knows
but not in the sense as “knowing by thought” (thinking). The only reason I posted videos by Adyashanti here is that in those videos, if you stop, and “observe ” that “source-nothing” and the “manifestations” (thought-manifestations-as-pointers, movements of the bodies, especially in talks with other people ) show almost “visible” examples as a means of differentiation of the “invisible” the “flow” and the “manifested”. I know-met-meet other “realized” “enlightened” (words, but what else can I use) beings in life. In their “presence”
what I am writing about can be “experienced”. No-mind —– “softer” “layers” of Life (consciousness). As in the video – What do you really want? – that question needs an innocent-honest answer. Me answered it. Surely you too! That’s why I am writing it to you.
I have already posted this song but I put it here again….the pictures in it too…hm…
Sure — I understand that it means testable. However, under strict application of this method, I doubt that there is anything left that could be called science for it negates a preponderance of evidence and the great majority of what is called scientific progress is based on a preponderance of evidence and the BELIEF that the preponderance will continue to be preponderant.
Under this falsification method, you only need ONE fail to dismiss a theory as false. This assumes that ALL elements in complex systems can be rigidly controlled in every iteration. That has already been tested. ALL elements in complex systems CANNOT be controlled in every iteration, you can only observe predominating characteristics in complex systems. Yet, under this premise even one instance of failure negates the theory.
Even in the most simple experiments, with the smallest possible particles and the greatest and most rigid constraints on variables, what is ignored is that no element stands alone in experiments, but are part of a vast system – including the vast system called the observer. In reality there are no isolated experiments or tests — we are hurtling through space in a system that is constantly in flux, observers apparently living in a physical mechanism that no one has been able to isolate, duplicate or even study successfully on any other basis that preponderance. There is no average observer. There is no perfect observer. No one can even identify the observer except subjectively or by observing the effects of observing, which of course, vary wildly from one observer to another.
Maria: I find the direction of this discussion depressing.
Chris: Let’s don’t have it be that way. My own feeling is that of “overrun” which is to say having carried on too long in one direction. I feel that I am forcing it. We’ve had some very good comments and good fun but if I would guess at what is going on is that there are resolutions to some of these issues followed by reaching too far. Maybe the model of taking a win and resting a bit is in order. Regroup and take things up another day.
This happens when I try to reach or resolve to an absolute result. This seems to be a mistake for me. Each of us writing here can only see what we see and no more. Maybe we should grant one another that beingness and call it a night.
Chris, yes it does seem futile at times to come to a absolute discussion, probably will never happen out here where we are free to all be individuals and think for ourselves. It is fun for me to read the discussions but it hasn’t made any big difference in my take, tho I’ve learned more about individuals and about the subject.
Have a good nite 🙂
Good comment, Chris.
Marildi: “Good comment, Chris.”
Chris: Thank you Marildi.
I have long had reservations about Karl Popper, et al, and from time to time study up on critiques and information on scientific methods, so I can better isolate the key elements in the concepts offered. I have been able to find the following treatises that have helped me to identify the problems with Popper and his proponents:
This is from an essay critiquing the rationality of the Popper philosophy of science:
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In Unended Quest Popper observed bluntly that “there is no such thing as an unprejudiced observation” [UNQ 51]. Although this appears to rule out the possibility of objectivity, that was not Popper’s intention. Rather, again following Kant perhaps, he thought the basis for objectivity lay elsewhere: “the objectivity of scientific statements lies in the fact that they can be inter-subjectively tested” [LSCD 44]. He later restated this slightly differently: “it is the public character of science… which preserves the objectivity of science” [POH 155-6].
Unfortunately, these assertions do not bear the weight placed upon them. For if Popper’s Kantian premise were true (i.e., if anticipatory theories are genetically incorporated into our sense organs and, therefore, there is no such thing as an unprejudiced observation) then senses would not cease to be prejudiced merely by being multiplied. The defective logic could hardly be more clear. One cannot offer as an universal affirmative proposition ‘all human senses are prejudiced, i.e. subjective’ then ask one’s readers to accept that pooling the senses of many persons yields objectivity. If senses are subjective individually they are subjective collectively.18
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You can read the entire essay here:
[http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/philn/philn065.htm]
You can read more about the problems with Popper et al in the book Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists by David Stove. From the preface:
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This book is about a recent tendency in the philosophy of science: that tendency of which the leading representatives are Professor Sir Karl Popper, the late Professor Imre Lakatos, and Professors T.S.Kuhn and P.K.Feyerabend.
These authors’ philosophy of science is in substance irrationalist. They doubt, or deny outright, that there can be any reason to believe any scientific theory; and a fortiori they doubt or deny, for example, that there has been any accumulation of knowledge in recent centuries.
Yet, with a partial exception in the case of Feyerabend, these writers are not at all widely recognized by their readers as being irrationalists. Indeed, this is so far from being generally recognized, that Popper, for example, is actually believed by most of his readers to be an opponent of irrationalism about science.
It is from these two facts that the question arises to which Part One of this book is addressed: namely, how have these writers succeeded in making irrationalism about science acceptable to readers, most of whom would reject it out of hand if it were presented to them without disguise?
My answer to this question is: by means of two literary devices which are characteristic of their writings.
**************************************************************************
The book is online at:
[http://nekhbet.com/popper/index.html]
Maria on Irrationalism: ” . . . that there has been any accumulation of knowledge in recent centuries.”
Chris: “Though not a student of these men, this comment about accumulation of knowledge rings true for me on the subject of consciousness for it seems very hard to accumulate a knowledge which by definition might be personal. It seems that I strive to learn from the great minds but ultimately, I only know what I know and that knowledge is both personal and lost upon my demise.
To say more, my sense of the essence of myself is that of a program running, one which computes and tries to organize the results of its computations. I claim to be “self-aware” and yet hardly can define the meaning of that except for tightly wound up in my programming constructs — my considerations.
I have a sense of a basic and vast ocean of consciousness yet for myself and as myself I appear to be no more than so much flotsam and jetsam bobbing about on the surface of this great consciousness, and I see my fellows as being likewise pimples on the skin; little more than a surface tension upon a great and common sea of consciousness.
For whatever it might be worth, this is not depressing but is both sobering and exhilarating all at once. Sometimes I have to just let myself rest and float on a cushion of faith until my strength and curiosity build up to reach out to explore once again.
Maria, quoting an article: “Unfortunately, these assertions do not bear the weight placed upon them. For if Popper’s Kantian premise were true (i.e., if anticipatory theories are genetically incorporated into our sense organs and, therefore, there is no such thing as an unprejudiced observation) then senses would not cease to be prejudiced merely by being multiplied. The defective logic could hardly be more clear. One cannot offer as an universal affirmative proposition ‘all human senses are prejudiced, i.e. subjective’ then ask one’s readers to accept that pooling the senses of many persons yields objectivity. If senses are subjective individually they are subjective collectively.”
This paragraph is based on an assumption – the assumption that objectivity in fact exists. So, this is not really pointing to any illogic – not if objectivity is defined as the sum ob subjectivity – in that the world is created subjectively by all and the sum is what is referred to as objectivity.
Okay. So now apply Popper to that statement.
I put this here, as I find it a very interesting question that warrants its own thread:
Valkov: “Is an “Ideal Scene” an absolute?”
I have pondered this myself – especially when doing Admin Scales with people I coach. I have applied a non-absolutist approach in my coaching and referring it to something akin to “What you could practically hope to achieve”. Otherwise, one gets those Theetie-Weetie “A Clear World”-type of Ideal Scenes that will do nothing but drive the person to inactivity or even apathy.
And that has merit too. On the other hand, I do think that most of our modern devices would not exist if their inventors had not challenged the realm of what is practical to achieve. I wonder if we would have airplanes if the Wright brothers had followed strict scientific protocols as outlined by Popper, et al.
Popper presents just one leg of progress – the removal of false paths. There is the far more important path of creativity. But for Scientology, we have had plenty of the latter with LRH as the source. We could do with a bit more of the former.
I agree. What I am seeing though is a dogmatic use of falsification. Every bit as dogmatic as the other direction. The fact is that based on the Popper premises, all of science has already been dismissed. The core assumption of Popper is that any failure to repeat an experiment negates a theory. Yet no experiment is actually ever repeated in any but the most stringent and controlled circumstances. i.e. the larger system is ignored, and assumed to not have any bearing on findings. This works fine in tiny, tiny slices of observation and dismally in large, complex systems where direction can only be charted from predominating probabilities.
Maria: What I am seeing though is a dogmatic use of falsification.
Chris: I could follow this thought better if you maybe give an example.
The assumption is that if Scientology worked, it would work in every circumstance. It does not work in EVERY circumstance. This is a consequence of ignoring complex systems and insisting that one instance of failure negates the whole. In a complex system, there can only be verification of predominating possibility for you cannot control and constrain every aspect of the complex system. Scientific progress is not based on absolutes, but this premise is absolute — one fail = falsified. That would be fine if we lived in a simple construct. But we do not and never have lived in a simple construct. The best we can do is observe predominating possibilities and the artifacts that are the results.
Most of the work to be done in sorting Scientology is identifying the PR puffery and opinions that LRH is so fond of tossing into the midst of his materials. This has nothing to do with testing or falsification. If you can strip those out then you have a starting place. But it is never going to be wholly testable because it is working with a complex system called a human being, that lives in a complex system called the world. You can then observe predominating possibilities and probabilities in a feedback loop and you can challenge the constraints and continue to observe. But that is not strict testing or falsification.
However – one failed test case Does invalidate absolute claims of workability.
Maria: “. . . This has nothing to do with testing or falsification. . . ”
Chris: Ah good. I got it. It’s natural I suppose to pick on the easiest of the targets though your point is well taken.
Maybe your “worries” are correct and maybe at the end of the arguing there isn’t anything to win anyway… I don’t know about that in an ultimate sense. Maybe all we ever know is a placebo- or nocebo-type-effect.
I’ve come to respect Vinay’s harping on “the self.” I seem to be getting traction from that. The sort of obvious mental leap for me it to point at an intelligent underpinning and purpose for this “self.” Whatever, it certainly lowers my sense of ego and gives me a sometimes giddy feeling of “other-determined” status in life… Hard to write in a sentence and its conjecture anyways. Puppets on strings, if the puppets are granted limited intelligence and free will, might be a metaphor that gives the flavor of my experience. It might be hard to make another believe that I could have that concept without it being a worrisome thought . . . I dunno if this communicates or not.
“It is never going to be wholly testable because it is working with a complex system called a human being.” Yes – Geir’s article…..also, the question of the OBSERVERS ( PC,
auditor, CS), even from a QP point of view.
Yes, it certainly does invalidate claims of absolute workability. Hell, I am not even sure it should be framed in terms of workability. perhaps it would be far better to frame it in terms of processes that facilitate exploring potentials and abilities. I just do not see how this standard result is ever going to come out of such complex systems as what being-in-the-world is working with.
No. The Ideal Scene is an ideal illusion in the minute of creation. Then there are the steps to reach it…..but the Ideal Scene can also be modified….why not? For me it’s the “steps” in the now….will they lead me to an Ideal Scene? Well, beyond the mind “realities” show, there can be….can be….we will see…..
“Considerations are senior to the mechanics of matter, energy, space, and time”
If we take the above as granted, how can Scientology work? Isn’t it that it works when one considers so? Doesn’t it mean that if one considered whateverism to be more workable, then it will be more workable?
If I free my potential to do something, that I didn’t do before, what is subjective workability, how can another know about it, unless he directly observes my universe?
I’ll tell you what. With regards to SCN I had been very SP. I knew that people considered it to much more limited in workability, than I considered it myself. So, here is a little confession. I wanted to be the one who would pick those unaware Scientologists up, to realise that is more workable than they thought. But I wouldn’t let them make it be as workable as it was for me, because I wanted to have the upper hand. That’s what I created and exprienced and protested against. It is a valence I bought in SCN groups. It is very popular. “I’m going to pick you up. Then you’ll be grateful to me”.
Nobody picks anyone up. One picks up himself, or not, no matter the -ology and the preaching done.
The theory that one is not good enough, OT enough, this and that enough, and Scientology makes him be so, is a product of SPness. One is basically himself and never changes, no matter the -ology and the hours invested. The only thing that changes is the awareness of what he is and what he can do. I will never make anyone better. But if I tell him that -in a way- he is wrong and try to ‘pick him up’, I will put there that he needs to be picked up! He didn’t have this consideration. Now he is having it, because of me. See? It’s gross invalidation…and for a ‘good’ reason.
Like what you write, Spyros! If you like, read what I have just posted in the Brainwash thread by Adyashanti. Many questions are answered in it….mind, belief, difference between thought-emotions and pure emotions, saving the world, death etc. his own “awakening”. Wonder what you will say (only if you are interested in it).
Thanks Marianne 🙂 I checked it out –it looks looong! I need to rest now, because I had a hard night and I’m not up to this task right now. I’ll let you know when I watch it.
Spyros
Yes, it’s loooong! The written interview part answers a lot of questions…..Have a beautiful rest!!!!! No need to rush ! Also, if you don’t feel like it, don’t read it…the YOU always knows!
Thank you 🙂 I’m fine now.
About the basic self, I found that it cannot be adequately described, as it is not a thing. It’s creations are it’s creations, for as long as they are created. And that’s all there is. The only way to know them, is to know them. Logical sequences, evaluations, guesses, observations through viewpoints are what they are, but they are not the exact knowledge of those creations. “AXIOM 32. ANYTHING WHICH IS NOT DIRECTLY OBSERVED TENDS TO
PERSIST.” –observed by the static, I add.
Just saying… 🙂
This one’s more explanatory:
“A Static has no mass, meaning, mobility, no wave-length, no time, no location in space,
no space. This has the technical name of ”Basic Truth”.”
“All persistence depends on the Basic Truth, but the persistence is of the altering consideration, for the Basic Truth has neither persistence nor impersistence.”
Go figure….you can’t 🙂
Interesting, Spyro
🙂 😉
Hey, you mentioned in fb something about 3D art, but I can’t see anything in those links. Do you make 3D graphics?
Scientology works. This is an undeniable and proven fact.
Jeez, I can’t believe the misunderstoods you all have! Scientology WORKS!
If you go and join the Sea Organization, you’ll be putting in 120 hour weeks without a day off for about a billion years.
If you’re a lay scientologist, you have to work two jobs and as much overtime as you can to pay for your services.
If you’re in Scientology, you WORK!
It WORKS!!
(I copy and pasted this answer, originally posted by a John Doe on another blog)
LOL. Sure does cause one to work. Def. 19 Influence; persuade: “work men to one’s will”
After some serious debates and cogs with a senior SP-C/S that I respect so much (who now I guess is on the free zone), an squirrel who claims he was clear but shows no gains at all (also he was very PTS and started a group of esoterism), and lurking around in debates between scientology skeptics and scientology interested people, and after searching all kind of data from the free zone, after seeing the stronger arguments in favor of Scientology and being a defender of Scientology Abstracts against trolls and very entheta SP people, all of this along with my own experience and suffering working on the staff in a Mission class IV on Argentina, I came to this conclusion on my epistemological investigation:
– Scientology workability depends on the E-meter workability.
Besides that, the rest is only philosophy. I see everyone is searching empirical statements for their claims.
I point to the “skin resistence galvanometer” as a matter of fact or not. I discussed this with engineers and they could create a more sophisticated device like the c-meter and way long further than that. But they never provides me any evidence of that. The theory were so complicated to explain something very specific, wich is the base of the mind structure as stated by Hubbard (or an improved version, wich automatically drops Scientology hubbard-fixated structure down)
IMO, the objectivity depends on some device like this one, beyond the observer’s subjectivity, “human-err proof”, with inter-subjective reports, duplications, etc. Scientific method.
So… a rhetorical question:
¿Do you know what the e-meter is, what it does and how it works?
Hi,
it seems to me the blogpost approaches the question from a wrong angle entirely. Consider the question: How successful is Scientology in making the practitioners believe in successes of Scientology where there are possibly none?
Also Irene seems to imply that Scientology is a placebo, and that all placebos are equal, and so Scientology is acceptable as any other placebo that achieves the same result.
However, not all placebos are equal, they are different with respect to how fast they achieve a result, how expensive they are, and how much damage they do as a side-effect. As an example, the question “Would I pay the same amount again to achieve the same result” is flawed, because it disregards the alternatives and thus opportunity costs. Assume for the sake of the argument that for all the money you have spend for Scientology, you could have bought a house in Spain, and you could also have had the benefits you believe to have from Scientology after 20 years for a fraction of the costs by just seeing an ordinary shrink for one year. Then the question boils down to: “Would I still waste
19 years and millions, instead of having a house in Spain and 19 years to study free will and help people in Somalia?”
That’s even without considering damage done by using Scientology. Being happy does not mean no harm is done.
And the problem for the discussion here is one of pride, by admitting you wasted 19 years and plenty of money harming others and possibly yourself in the process, you’d admit for having been a real fool. That would hurt your pride. Instead, regardless of what the truth is, your pride wants you to tell the world that Scientology is great and that you never did anything to regret (Even if this were true, you have to acknowledge that your pride would still want you to present it like that if it were not).
Also consider the harm you are doing by advertising Scientology as something effective when you do not know the cost/time/damage/benefit ration of the alternatives. You lure other people into this. While being a member of the CoS you have not just merely self-improved, you also helped uphold a cult under which humans suffer. maybe not you, but others. I saw no acknowledgement of guilt in your book.
Regarding the objective quality of Scientology, how can you say that it is effective, if for 20 years you remained blind / tolerant of all the flaws of CoS you list? If Scientology was great for self-improvement, would you not at least expect that a practitioner of Scientology can free him or herself of a mad cult within 2 months? A technique at self-improvement that takes 20 years to make a guy get out of cult does not seem fit to solve problems in life.
In your reasoning you commit further reasoning flaws. You assert that you want to take responsibility, but you place the responsibility for the improvements you have made in 20 years into Scientology, rather than in yourself. Maybe you achieved all the benefits you perceive not thanks to Scientology, but *despite* following Scientology. How would you know? That’s the second flaw, you believe that you can decide from your own experience what works. But at the same time many studies show that people are led to falsely believe into a causation where there is none, in particular when following the brain-washing techniques of the CoS. Constantly having to report own progress to others is such a technique, where the brain is led to believe such progress exists where there is none.
Can you explain why it took you 20 years (and several coincidences) to get back out of CoS, with all your thinking skills?
Can you explain why so many practitioners of Scientology are still stuck in the CoS despite all it’s failings, all of them doing Scientology audits for self-improvement all the time?
Until you do understand the psychological reasons for both these questions, I find it rather silly for you to pretend to have understood Scientology and the CoS.
What’s the motto here? Maybe: “Practition Scientology and you’ll feel very happy and refined while being unable to even perceive that you are stuck in an opressing crazy cult.” What kind of self-improvement is that?
First; Welcome.
Secondly; It would help the exchange of viewpoints if you were briefer in your comment.
Thirdly; Your questions have been answered in detail on this blog several times. You will find it compiled in my two books – linked from the front page, upper right sidebar.
I had already read the book, and I felt I had to phrase my post as lengthy precisely because there are questions not answered in your book.
In your book, you do not answer what made you still in February 2013 say things like:
“I did all the available spiritual levels delivered by the Church – up and including
OT 8. And I have gotten personal gains from every level, every service”
“Did Scientology work for me?
Yes. Everything I did in the church gave me valuable results.”
While you later say you now reject everything, this does not provide any insight of why in February you still were stuck in believing you had benefits.
Minds can be deceived. People know well illusions of all senses, optical illusions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_illusion) are most prominent, but all other senses (hearing, smell, taste, touch) all have similar illusions that can be tried out in simple experiments. But that is not all, the mind itself is also prone to illusions, though those are less known to the public, though very known to science. E.g. look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies. All Scientology methods exploit such weaknesses of the mind into tricking the practitioners into believing that they gained a benefit, where there is none. While all humans are susceptible to those thinking flaws, that does not mean humans are generally incapable of detecting errors. It just means more effort and very different kind of training then Scientology offers. You now seem only to reject all techs, but you still do not recognize the techs for their power into tricking people. So I hope one day you will not merely admit that Scientology does not work at providing benefits, but explain *how* Scientology works well into tricking people.
In your march entry you write “I don’t want Scientology, Psychology, NLP, crapology, or anything else.” But that is still self-deception, as you equate the brainwashing of Scientology with actual science. You are right in being wary of all techniques, because those years in Scientology hooked you to the drug of promises of self-improvement, so you are now easy prey. But that does not make good science and good therapy bad. You cannot trust yourself anymore, and you should not trust promises of cure, but there remain authorities you can trust, mostly authorities which have nothing to gain from your trust. Any self-help book that does not promise you to get better, but promises you to understand better how you have been tricked is something you can right now place great trust in. Book recommendations by independent international associations of caregivers and therapists can be trusted. Wikipedia can largely be trusted at giving pointers. You can trust 12-step groups (Alcoholic Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous) and simlar. Wherever specialists from many diverging school of thoughts consent on something, you can put trust there.
About brainwashing, you write: “You may suspect a person is brainwashed in an area when he habitually rationalizes and justifies wrongs.”
While that is true, it is only one kind of brainwashing, and you still do not explain how brainwashing actually works, only how to detect (one kind of) it.
How about this: “You may suspect a person is brainwashed in an area when he habitually praises the benefits of something without sufficient *objective* evidence.” (“It worked for me and I know many people singing the praises” is not objective evidence, BTW)
In your post “Checklist for creating a cult” you list many factors that contribute, but you do not make the actual connection. You do not explain the relationship between “Sign the person up for more expensive service” to your own statements like “Did Scientology work for me? Yes. Everything I did in the church gave me valuable results.” There is a psychological connection, but you stop short of making it, as if you don’t see it. Also there is no mention of the Scientology methods in that checklist, and those methods are part of what makes SoC successful as a cult.
You have spent 25 years in SoC, regard that as a treasure (of shit experiences) that you can mine. You can look at those 25 years and find out *how* you have been deceived all those years. What made that community so successful in tricking you. Don’t just throw these years away by saying you’re open to new things and new methods and new ways. Use those years to understand *how* Scientology method tricked you to believe you were doing something good for yourself.
It would be great to have one blog post per Scientology technique, and the list of tricks it uses, or a list of thinking fallacies it exploits, into making the victims believe they just gained something. Approach Scientology under the assumption that every little detail works *against* the practitioner, and see what you can dig up by looking at the techniques like that. That’s different from “Does it work?”
In your book I saw no mention of you accepting guilt for what your participation in the CoS has done in harm to other people. If you accept that Scientology ruins peoples lifes, and you have been auditing others, then you need to accept guilt for having helped in ruining other peoples lifes. Even if you did it with the best of intentions, and even if those people wanted this, you still did something bad there and have to acknowledge the part you played.
Not merely rejecting Scinetology but understanding and then explaining how it actually works, how it succeeded into tricking yourself into believing that Scientology works, would be a way to make up for what you did.
As a good place to start, I recommend to you this book: “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert Cialdini. It does not have all answers, but should teach how to look at Scientology techniques to find out *how* they work at making people like you believe they gained something.
Again, whether or not Scientology works is a bad question that the SoC actually likes to be asked, because it has made sure it’s members will come up with raionalization fallacies. All SoC practices are targeted as SoC member asking themselves that question and coming up with “Yes, I have so much gain, yay!”.
The question of how Scientology contributes to self-deception is a question that the SoC cannot deal with as easily. The SoC would rather that be a blind spot of its members,something to keep them in SoC for 25 years and more.
I doubt that you actually read my book – at least not without a series of filters blocking out large portions of the visible spectrum.
An early premise in your comment above reads “While you later say you now reject everything…” As this is patently false and a blatant Straw Man, the rest of your comment fails to deliver.
My position is simply this: I have several objectively provable gains from Scientology and lots of subjective gains I appreciate highly. Still, I see many fallacies and negative aspects of both the organization (the CoS) and the philosophy and practice of Scientology itself. I explore and question both my gains and everything Scientology. I evolve and morph and my position will change.
And that is enough for me.
You seem to really want me to have other realizations. But you sell those realizations in such a poor way that I fall way short of being a buyer.
I do realize that neither of us have access to the truth about Scientology. The real clue for me is not the end product of any such truth, but the adventure of discovery. And I enjoy that adventure immensely.
I am not selling, I am commenting. That is precisely the difference to CoS, which is *selling* (persuading you to give your time and money). If I wanted your money, I’d try harder to make you buy. I don’t. I don’t care what you do, I comment for the sake of the other readers. One day we’ll all die, could be tomorrow in a car accident. What you do is of no concern to me. But ideas survive, and Scientology is a particularly evil set of ideas, and you are still spreading those. That’s what matters to me.
> My position is simply this: I have several objectively provable gains from
> Scientology and lots of subjective gains I appreciate highly.
Yes, and my position is this: Even if you had *no* objectively provable gains, you’d still appreciate the illusion of them highly, because that’s what auditing and the rest of Scientology did to your mind. It is not your free will, not a free choice of yours, the CoS has taken your ability to freely judge on this. Just as in the Stockholm syndrome, where the victim highly appreciates the kidnapper. The mind can be messed with. You still have free will about a lot of things, but not about appreciation of Scientology.
And you’ll be able to overcome this much quicker once you stop asking yourself what benefits you got, and start asking yourself *how* your mind has been messed with by the CoS to appreciate the illusion of benefits.
> I do realize that neither of us have access to the truth about Scientology.
That is not true. You have access to your own experiences with Scientology, and you have access to resources on the internet that help you find out *how* Scientology made a gullible fool of you for 25 years, and messed with your mind undermining your ability to judge freely.
And finding out *how* you have been made a fool of for 25 years is not an adventure to be enjoyed immensely, it’s a tragedy, a bitter pill to swallow.
There is no way I can truthfully sell this to you as a Tom Cruise adventure full of fun and glee. So i wont even try.
> The real clue for me is not the end product of any such truth, but the
> adventure of discovery.
Your 25 years with the CoS have been such an adventure of discovery, haven’t they? That is your drug. You can find other drug dealers than the CoS selling similar drugs. If you don’t want to remain an addict, understand your addiction.
Scientology left your mind with a craving for the gratification any false “discovery” creates. Every time something about self-improvement draws your attention (like L10), that’s your addiction taking over control. And as long as you do not understand *how* Scientology and similar mind-drugs keep you addicted, you’ll remain an addict.
I have no intention of selling to you any similar drug promising a great adventure of discovery. It’s only good old dull sanity that I advertise.
Doubt: How successful is Scientology in making the practitioners believe in successes of Scientology where there are possibly none?
Me: I don’t mean to take parts in this SCN vs anti-SCN thing now. Regardless of SCN, generally, what’s the difference between thinking that you succeed and succeeding?
TL;DR
Next time, be brief. Please.
Doubt wrote:
Even if you had *no* objectively provable gains, you’d still appreciate the illusion of them highly, because that’s what auditing and the rest of Scientology did to your mind. It is not your free will, not a free choice of yours, the CoS has taken your ability to freely judge on this. Just as in the Stockholm syndrome, where the victim highly appreciates the kidnapper. The mind can be messed with. You still have free will about a lot of things, but not about appreciation of Scientology.
And you’ll be able to overcome this much quicker once you stop asking yourself what benefits you got, and start asking yourself *how* your mind has been messed with by the CoS to appreciate the illusion of benefits.
Have YOU done this?
I think it is highly doubtful that you have.
I have done this. And what you suggest is the outcome of this process is not the outcome of this process. Only a person who has not fully done this process could ever be as delusional as you seem to be here.
You have a dark mind. And you are pushing it on people. Your dark mind is not the truth. It is filled with cognitive distortions (the variety laid out in CBT) and your dark mind is not a gift to give anyone, or any kind of improvement in thinking of even the most brainwashed Scientologist.
Alanzo
Al; You are amazing.
“Doubt”‘s logic would obviously be applied to everything within human experience, including his own. Which in turn makes his whole argument without any possible value as it invalidates any human experience. So, move on, nothing to see here.
Yup. I couldn’t think as fast as Al no matter how many 5 hr energy drinks I drank.
Alanzo: And what you suggest is the outcome of this process is not the outcome of this process.
Chris: I should’ve written that but gave the post a brush off. Sorry, that was disingenuous of me.
Doubt –
I’ve been a critic of Scientology for 13 years, after having been a Scientologist for 16 years. The negativity you express here, which you are pushing on people, is over the top.
And it is an extremely false view of Scientology.
Your viewpoint seems to be that any value, any constructive experience that a person who has been involved in Scientology retains, is in reality totally destructive and they are simply deluding themselves in retaining anything positive about Scientology.
Is that your viewpoint?
Because I have to say that if it is, then adopting the “truth” you seem to be presenting here is 100 times more destructive than Scientology ever could be.
The truth of Scientology is BOTH the good and the bad.
Each individual experiences Scientology differently, and from his own frame of reference. While there is an aggregate of experiences regarding Scientology, no one individual experiences that aggregate.
Yet you seem to be saying that individual experiences do not exist in reality, and any good that any individual experiences from Scientology does not exist in fact.
I am not saying that your viewpoint is actually true, but be nice to people. I am saying that your viewpoint is false. And I am saying that if a person adopted your ideas about Scientology they would be harmed more than Scientology ever could have harmed them.
I am saying that if they adopted your viewpoint they would be believing a very destructive lie, way worse than Scientology.
So stop it. Wake up and smell the coffee.
You seem to be the one who is deluded.
Alanzo
+1
Al: The truth of Scientology is BOTH the good and the bad.
SP: Did you actually type that?? Has your account been hacked?? 😛
I know! Al is gaining wisdom in his old age. 😀 (In recent days, I had already increased my ARC for you and your comm cycle, Al. ;))
Maybe Chris too. Who knew??? 😛 🙂
Marildi, you only need to take the locks off your own pendulum and let it swing to have a similar experience. The law of “HOLDING YOUR POSITION IN SPACE IS THE SUPREME HALLMARK OF AN OT” is false, it takes one nowhere, stultifies experience, it sticks one in the past, and it cannot actually be done at all. At a point, it will become apparent to you and safe to try and you will do it. Then you will wonder what all the fuss was about.
Chris, you only need to take the locks off your fixed ideas about me and you would see that I’ve already done what you propose – long since. And you need to get out of your condescending Preacher valence where you feel compelled (yes, compelled) to help “poor, blind little marildi”.
Actually, I think I misinterpreted your “+1” under Al’s comment. I think you’re view of Scn is as fixed as it is of me, and I doubt you have seen any good in it after all. So I take back the “Maybe Chris too.”
I don’t have fixed ideas about you, it is your blog writing which fixes your Marildi persona. That is all I ever mean to address when writing. If you feel that your writing is being misinterpreted, if Marildi is being misunderstood, you can always describe that as well. I don’t know you except by what you write.
“Actually, I think I misinterpreted your “+1″ under Al’s comment.”
Alonzo’s writing describing his viewpoints, attitudes, and general understanding of our lives is fluid. He is routinely demonstrating that he thinks for himself and does not letting an ideology do his thinking for him. He takes stands on what makes sense to him but then later if he gets another newer understanding, possibly even contradicting his previous opinion, he makes that known as well. It’s what Geir and many bloggers here have done as well. This is what I am +1’ing.
“And you need to get out of your condescending Preacher valence where you feel compelled (yes, compelled) to help “poor, blind little marildi”.”
I’m don’t look at blogging as a competition, but your writing comes across to me as forever debating while my own stress and attention is on understanding. When you write to expert Scientologists, continuously quoting dog-eared and well-worn scriptures and verses with the seeming intention to persuade us to change our minds about our very well studied opinions, that comes across as condescending as well. When you just write from your heart, beginning your sentences with the first person “I” it comes across much better. Just food for thought.
LOL
@Alonzo: Your writing is full of ad hominems. Your own experience does not make your arguments more valid, my experience does not make my arguments less valid. Arguments stand for themselves. Do i have a “dark mind”, or am I a “suppressive person”? I don’t see a difference, it’s the rhetorics of the SOC to counter true arguments with ad hominems.
Would adopting my viewpoints be harmful to anyone and would reading higher OT scripture be harmful to the mind when read by somebody low on the OT chain? Again, these rhetorics of scaring readers come from the SOC. There is no harm in taking my point of view for a change, and see whether the world starts to make sense.
My point is not that there is nothing good about Scientology. My point is that it does not matter.
Assume just for the sake of the argument that for a given person, of 100 Scientology methods, 20 actually do some good, 60 have no effect good or bad, and 20 are destructive. Does it matter? No. What matters is that all 100 of them make the individual believe that 100 of them work great. All 100 methods delude the individual into believing they all work.
How all those 100 methods contribute to the self-delusion, that’s what matters. Not how many or which of them work.
And ex-SOC members who try to retain something good from that time are still hooked into the brainwashed thinking. Maybe there was some good, how could I know for thousands of individuals that there was not? But I can know for 100% sure that ALL individuals have been manipulated in becoming self-deluded about successes. And thus, ALL individuals canafter SOC not trust their own experience about what works and what not. They have been made to delude themselves, and this delusion can work for the rest of their lifes. The only cure is understand HOW the self-delusion works, not which method works or works not.
@Spyros: “what’s the difference between thinking that you succeed and succeeding?” – Example: You can stare at a red traffic light real hard and visualize of green grass. Eventually it will turn green. You may then think your staring and visualizing was successful and feel great about yourself. But in reality, it would have turned green in any case. For people knowing enough about traffic lights the illusion is obvious, just as for people knowing enough about psychology the illusions of Scientology are obvious. But for a child not knowing traffic lights, the trick can work. And for any John Doe not knowing psychology, Scientology works great at creating the illusion of success that way, albeit not for traffic lights (as far as I know, but maybe there is a traffic-light-tech for being on time for dinner as well).
That’s COS instead of “SOC”, sorry.
dimensions
This show introduces the viewer to real-life Scientologists, such as one elderly couple who work to restore instruments. (Again, none of the Scientologists shown are celebrities.) In the same way that “Voices for Humanity” seems like the church’s response to the HBO documentary, this seems like the Scientology answer to A E’s Emmy-winning series, “Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath,” about ex-Scientologist and actress Leah Remini ’s harrowing journey and other ex-members’ ordeals.