How to think About The Technology of Scientology
| How to think About The Technology of Scientology | |
|---|---|
| Author | Nomen Nescis |
| Type of Article | Category:Articles |
Introduction[edit | edit source]
Nomen wrote the following after he had heard the discussion on clear and auditing on the following YouTube site: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLPLekjVyhY&feature=youtu.be . It was published on 20 Sep 2018
How to think About The Technology of Scientology[edit | edit source]
Many Scientologists after leaving the Church have continued to have great respect for or faith in the technology and philosophy that Ron created. Many of these, having separated themselves from the source from which they first received it, have attempted to re-create that technology in some form, outside the Church, as best they could, with whatever case level, insight and general ability they achieved in the church or earlier.
Some have set up actual organizations, sticking to standard tech, others have changed things in the tech which they found unworkable, and others yet, probably the majority of those creative people, have invented an entirely new philosophy and technology which could be said to be inspired by rather than based on either the tech (with the philosophy on which it is based) or simply their realization that case gains are possible. The inventions of these latter have but a superficial resemblance with Scientology, for a science is a whole, and its parts only make sense in relation to that whole.
Whatever they do may be fine, but many permit themselves to state their opinions about Scientology or Ron, which are based solely on their ARC breaks or other charge, personal experiences - which may be quite factual but not necessarily informative about the tech - or simply poor knowledge of the original subject. In the other camp, a conviction that all is good when it comes from Ron or his spiritual heirs, is of course equally non-informative.
One cannot evaluate what one does not understand. In an early Philadelphia Doctorate Course lecture Ron states, only half facetiously, that society hasn't understood Scientology, for it's a general rule that anything that is thoroughly understood will as-is (vanish). It certainly does, at least as a subject of discussion and public interest. In present time, the subject of computers and cell phones are still objects of debate (e.g. in relation to work and school). Well, a hundred years ago electricity and telephones were much debated. Electricity could kill people, and who would want to have one's privacy invaded by whomever pleased to ring, at any time? Today we understand about electricity and telephones as such, and they exist no more as a subject of discussion the way they were. Predictably, computers and cell phones will undergo a similar fate.
Do we want Scientology to vanish, then? No. As long as we want it as a tool to promote our goals, we will continue to create it as needed. People may need to study it to audit and arrange to get auditing, but that would just be done as a natural part of life whenever it was relevant. We do want it to vanish as a subject of strife and dissension, and since Dianetics and Scientology are basically sciences, we want to continue to develop them in order to refine them, apply them in more areas on all dynamics, keep them workable as society changes, and, at this time very importantly: We want to clear them of any and all fixed ideas, superstitions and fantasies founded on aberrations and false data. This can all be achieved by a fuller understanding of Scientology.
Understanding everything that Ron said would not be possible, nor is it important. One should get a good grasp of Scientology before one presents one's opinions as facts to others. In studying Scientology, one should distinguish three kinds of data, and this is the central point in this article, this is how one can evaluate facts of the tech. They can be formulated like this:
One needs to distinguish
1. What Ron said and wrote - not just the words, but the meaning
2. The phenomena which exist in fact. These Ron observed and perceived, and he interpreted and understood them according to his viewpoint, including the theories and facts known to him (which is all an honest scientist can and should do)
3. Your own reality, i.e. those phenomena as they are or can become real to you: Can you perceive those phenomena for yourself, and does your reality fit with what Ron considers about them?
4.
It's okay to accept an expert opinion tentatively, but when you study the matter in depth, that is the base on which you should evaluate what you study, and having done that, you certainly are entitled to your opinion about it (which is not the same as the facts). You are also entitled to change your mind as you become wiser, and nobody should fault you for doing that.
I want to point out a few points that can be confusing to the student of Scientology.
The "Different" Rons[edit | edit source]
Ron's viewpoint changed during the years, and in studying Scientology one should not automatically think one can take data from one period and apply them to the context of another. Sometimes one can, sometimes not. We no longer go for prenatals at all costs, which were essential in 1950. We do stop a process on a floating needle and V.G.I.s etc., which were irrelevant earlier. If a thetan goes exterior, today we end the process, in 1955 one might have begun drilling the thetan exterior. Often it's not enough to know what Ron said, you also should ask when and in what context.
However, when Ron states that everything he wrote in Dianetics: The Modern Science Of Mental Health is true, yes[1] , he is over-generalizing, but it's quite true that the phenomena he observed, e.g. the aberrations, could be handled, to a degree, in the ways he described. Book I Dianetics can still be used with the same results today because his observations and conclusions - of phenomena and how processes worked - were accurate and the technology validated. There were also unwanted effects. Also, some cases were difficult to handle, some techniques were neigh to impossible to teach, and new and better technologies were created. He wasn't lying, though. He did paint the best possible picture that could be hoped for, and he did operate on gradients, not absolute truths. But then, pessimists in some ways are evaluate reality more accurately, but it's the optimists that survive.
Truth is relative to environments, experience and truth[edit | edit source]
This is a passage from Logic 7[2] . Think of it in this way
1. Relative truth: When in Rome, do as the Romans or you won't be real to the Roman, but "untrue". Also, don't wear a thick fur coat at noon in Sahara, it's not the true solution to the heat. It's true that you should try to stay cool.
2. Experienced truth: If you see a guy walking on the surface of the water, or a man flying through the air, ask yourself: Have I any past experience that informs me that that sort of thing is possible? Would you believe your own eyes when you see something like that?
3. Truth: If you erase an engram, nothing is left once the feeling of relief has evaporated. Nothing, that is, except you. You are the basic truth of any mental MEST, because mental MEST is created, it is truly nothing, really, but once a sparkle in its fathers eyes (a lock that can be run out).
4.
I am elaborating a bit on the foundation for evaluating Scientology given above. But there's another point I want to make:
Very often the question should not be whether something is true or not, but under what circumstances it is true, and under what circumstances it is not true.
For instance, is Scientology good or bad? Is it true (workable) or not? I think most people would at least agree that it has some great truths, and that it may not be absolutely true in all respects. That's not much of an answer, really, but then, the question is much too broad. Much better questions might be whether you had any wins in Scientology, and any losses, and what specifically they were about. Probably everybody reading this has had both.
The great stupidity would be to espouse one's unshakable conviction that Scientology is all bad or all good. It's a violation of Logic 7, because if it were, that would be the absolute truth and then it wouldn't be there at all, nothing would be left but you (it would have erased like an engram). Another example is exteriorization, the old goal of auditing in the early fifties, for which many Scientologists still yearn. The silly thing is that the criterion for being exterior is that you know - experience - that you are exterior. If you can imagine yourself hovering as a thetan over the window sill while the body is sitting in a chair, you are exterior. It may be that you don't see anything, you have no thetan vision, but that's not part of the criterion. Or it may be that you still feel the body around you; well, do you also experience that you are hovering over the window sill? Then you are exterior, even if you brought some body perceptions along; you are allowed to have two viewpoints. And an example by Ron: While the body is sitting in the chair, close your eyes and mock-up (imagine) how the chair would look without your body, imagine the seat, back, arms of the chair but no body; could you do it? If so, you were exterior, for you were not in a body, placed as you were where your head is in the real world which you managed to not-know.
This is sometimes very disappointing to people who imagined the state of being exterior quite differently. But then, truth is relative to experience, environments and truth, and one's expectations may not fit your environment, of which Ron's philosophy and tech is a part. Your expectations did not truly represent what Ron meant. Nothing wrong with becoming wiser, to be sure.
That's what I wanted to say about how to evaluate Scientology, the technology and philosophy of. I'll end of with a quotation from The Phoenix Lectures. It is transcribed in an abbreviated form in Chapter 4 in the book. On the tape, speaking about the empire of Scientology and its organizations, Ron says, Not an empire of force, and particularly not an empire of convictions. In training a man to wisdom, you never tamper with his religious or political convictions (force without wisdom). You teach him the knowledge, the data of the subject, and a subject (a theory, a science) has no opinion.
ARC
Nomen Nescis
Further article by Nomen Nescis[edit | edit source]
Affinity is Relational
History of Axioms etc.
Wundt, Fundamentals of Thoughts and Scientology
References[edit | edit source]
- ^ Editorial Noteː I asked the author for a reference for this but he was unable to give one. So you will have to do your own research if you are interested! Ron's books are available for free on Scientolipedia in digital form. My recollection is that he made speculations what happens if you took held down sevens out of the mind. Antony Phillips, editor.
- ^ LOGIC 7 - ABSOLUTES ARE UNOBTAINABLE.