Mark Jones
| Mark Jones | |
|---|---|
| |
| Deceased | Yes |
| Died on | June 4th 2005 |
Introduction Roger Boswarva[edit | edit source]
Taken from Ex Scientologist Message Board (http://www.forum.exscn.net/
Mark was beloved by many. Alan [Walter] and I once had a discussion about states of case of folks we knew, and Mark was the one person we could agree merited recognition as An Ascended Being. Those who knew him know what colossal integrity he had. What colossal commitment to truth he exhibited, and what colossal love for his fellows he had. He, perhaps more than any other, held the field together in the dark days after 1982 when the church began demonstrating just how mad it had become. It was Mark with the Free Spirit (later entitled Free Spirit Journal) he created that kept the tech alive for many, and helped hold folks true to their belief they could optimize their condition and recover their true, full spirituality and innate powers. Mark suffered from Alzheimer's for many years, and during his final years had very poor memory.
Remembering Mark Jones by Hank Levin. USA[edit | edit source]
This article first appeared in International Viewpoints (IVy) 75, Jan 2006
MARK JONES WAS THE FOUNDER of the Free Spirit Journal , which he started in 1984, and edited until 1989 when he passed the editorship to me. Mark was a key player in the promulgation of Clearing1 technology on a world-wide level. Here in the following paragraphs is a short biography of this remarkable and wonderful man. Mark gained his early business experience as a farmer and as a cashier in a small bank where each person had to learn to do all of the key functions. Many years later he studied investment banking at Johns Hopkins2.
He did his undergraduate work at the University of Oklahoma and got his M.S. degree from MIT3 . In addition, he studied industrial management at the University of Minnesota, journalism and psychology at George Washington University and counseling at Saint Hill in England. Mark subsequently held many key managerial positions successfully. He owned and ran a motion picture theatre. He served as the Program Manager of Fighter Aircraft Armament Systems for the U.S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics, Program Manager of Fighter Aircraft Programs, and Program Manager for the Navy's Advanced Airborne Missile Systems in the Bureau of Naval Weapons.
Mark served in the Marine Corps as a pilot in WWII, China and Korea. During the Korean war he was also in charge of aircraft maintenance for the Marine Wing. On his last active tour he commanded one of the early jet squadrons, operating off a carrier in the Mediterranean. At the end of this tour the squadron was selected by the Commandant as the top fighter squadron in the Marine Corps for combat effectiveness.
Mark steadily developed extensive experience as a successful workshop and seminar leader and management consultant. He contributed articles which were published in a number of magazines, and addressed hundreds of sales and management groups across the country.
Scientology[edit | edit source]
Mark's interest in Clearing (auditing) technology began in 1963, when his wife Ellen introduced him to the works of L. Ron Hubbard. He went to England in 1964 and trained at the London Organization and Saint Hill in East Grinstead, training to Class VII and graduating with honors.
He then became highly instrumental in the supervision and expansion of Hubbard's Scientology organization, holding both technical and administrative positions at a world-wide level until 1968. He served as Tech Sec of the London Org, then Org Executive Secretary, then Qual Secretary, and finally Public Secretary.
In 1968 Mark became Technical Secretary World Wide of the entire Scientology organization, and then the Organization Executive Secretary World Wide.
He later helped start the Santa Clara mission (which later became Stevens Creek and Palo Alto missions).
Mark and Ellen then left Santa Clara and moved back to Los Angeles, and in 1970 he achieved the status of Class VIII auditor at The Celebrity Center, Los Angeles.
With his wife Ellen, he started the Washington DC mission, and also started a mission in Tokyo in 1971. In 1971 he also helped establish the Narconon drug rehabilitation project, and directed its expansion from one to twenty-five programs in communities and prisons! This program was given the Intra Science Award in 1972 for its effectiveness. He returned to England in 1973. After six months there, Mark moved to Washington DC to start the Washington DC mission, where he spent four years before passing it on.
Independent.[edit | edit source]
Mark returned to Los Angeles in 1979, where he remained active in the field until 1983. In 1984 Mark founded the Council for Spiritual Integrity and The Free Spirit magazine, in an effort to effect reforms of organizational inequities within the Scientology organizations. Finding this impossible, he resigned from Scientology and continued The Free Spirit as a free and ethical forum for other independent users of the technology.
After he had turned the editorship of The Free Spirit over to me in 1989, Mark continued to be active as an associate editor, organizing the printing and making numerous contributions of articles and commentaries. He also served as mentor to me and to The Free Spirit, with invaluable help with financial and editorial policy, subscription and advertising concerns, and other issues. His advice was always full of insight and wisdom.
Having officially left Scientology, Mark proceeded to investigate many other paths in his persistent search for modes of healing and self-realization. He co-authored, along with Dr. Pat Collette, the self-help book Realizing Your Dreams, along with an accompanying tape. He also occasionally sponsored proponents of healing and enlightenment systems that he considered worthwhile, organizing and promoting presentations of Avatar with Harry Palmer, and Access with Gary Douglas. He also explored (and avidly shared) the channeled lectures of Lazarus, Bashar and Abraham, the shamanic success workshops of Mike Horner, and events featuring the renowned Brazilian psychic healer Fatima.
Conclusion[edit | edit source]
Later in life, Mark struggled with physical difficulties. Most notably, an early back injury sustained while he was ejecting from a damaged fighter plane came back to haunt him; he also contended with some serious heart difficulties. Toward the end, whenever I spoke to him he seemed alert and appropriate, albeit subdued by the accumulated physical effects of an in tense and eventful life.
Mark's personal manner was direct, straightforward no-nonsense, combined with a profound congeniality. Our mutual friend Thea Greenberg, who was a demanding judge of communication ability, considered Mark to be a paragon of excellence in communication. In all the years I knew Mark, he only expressed a negative opinion about someone on two occasions. (He turned out to be dead-on correct on both of them.)
Mark Jones died on June 4th, 2005, a few weeks short of his eighty-fourth birthday. Mark is survived by his wife, Ellen Jones, who is the author of several bestselling historical novels, including Beloved Enemy, published by Simon and Schuster, and by one daughter and a grandchild. When I spoke to Ellen recently, she said of Mark: "His lifelong goal was enlightenment. I think he's finally gotten it".
Note to readers of IVy Magazine: In this memoriam to Mark Jones, I have resisted the temptation to deal in depth with the story of the Free Spirit Journal founded by Mark in 1984. Nevertheless, Mark continued to take a deep interest in the magazine after he passed the editorship over to me, and was clearly dismayed when I passed the editorship to a successor in 2001, especially when the Free Spirit Journal ceased publication shortly after. Look for my subsequent article about the Saga of the Free Spirit Journal in an upcoming issue of IVy. [ see: http://articles.ivymag.org/pdf/IVy77.pdf page 16]
Added by editor nov 2014: Hank Levin is now continuing Free Spirit as a facebook page: see https://www.facebook.com/freespiritjournal
Footnotes[edit | edit source]
1. Clearing: The wider name given to Scientology and associated practice after 1983 (when there was some reticence in using the word Scientology). Ed.''
2. Private university in Baltimore, USA. Ed
3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Private university in Cambridge, Mass, USA, famous for its scientific and technological training and research. Ed.
A Danish View by Antony Phillips[edit | edit source]
1984[edit | edit source]
In 1984 I had been thrown out of the "Church" in March 1983, and a group of people still officially "in" the "Church" met at my flat weekly on a Copenhagen suburb to discuss goings on in the "Church". Three or four of the members of the group had contacts in various parts of the world, and we exchanged news and articles received from these people. We heard of Mark Jones and his Council for Spiritual Integrity and Free Spirit magazine with a certain perplexity. What on earth was this? Was it inside the Church of Scientology? But it could not be, could it? It would have to have had Issue Authority, and they would never give Issue Authority to something like that. And who would imagine they could reform the Church with a magazine? Issue Authority = official authority to issue by Scientology.
Understand that at that time there was a great deal of turmoil, uncertainty and conflicting data. One of our members came, at almost every meeting, with the remark in the direction of "Next week, I think the Church will have fallen". We were very much concerned about what was happening to Scientology.
Free Spirit Contents[edit | edit source]
As time went on The Free Spirit came out, I established a communication line with Mark, and made some effort to collect subscriptions for him in this area. I still have a number of those early issues. For us, the exciting thing about it was that it carried a Legal Review. Here in Volume X Spring '93 Issue 1 I see the following headlines "Mayo Decision Upheld; Counter-suit Begins" and "Suit filed by Scientology Church is Dismissed".
But Volume X Spring '93 Issue 1 contains much else. It is 20 cms by 28 cms, the type is generally small and there are 44 pages stapled. There are many advertisements, including for counseling, books and e-meters, Letter to the Editor, 12 featured articles, 6 shorter articles under the heading Independent Forum, and 19 classified advertisements.
Looking at it now, I am amazed at the amount of work that must have gone into getting that magazine out (also by Hank Levin, who took it over).
Writing Books[edit | edit source]
After leaving the Church Mark also wrote some books and he sent me an example of one Realising Our Dreams which he wrote in collaboration with Patricia Collette. This is 100 page book divided into four parts: part one – creating our reality and experiences, part two – limiting beliefs, part three – creating the future, part four – appendixes which was a section on identifying limiting beliefs in 13 specific areas.
Slight Disappointment[edit | edit source]
In 1991 I had been running a small magazine in Danish (others started it, and sort of dropped out, to some extent leaving me holding the baby). I was going to make an issue for Ron's birthday (though he was dead) – and decided to start an English language edition, which was called Independent Viewpoints (shortened to IVy, rather than the possibly confusing IV, Roman numeral for four). I had established in the Danish magazine a number of regular columns and wanted to do so in the IVy. The magazine was to be a Scientology magazine, and knowing Mark's keenness for reforming Scientology, and his tech background I asked Mark if he would write a column. He readily agreed.
Here came my disappointment. He did not write about Scientology, he wrote about other practices than Scientology (which was also the case with the contents of The Free Spirit). I found later that his concern (in The Free Spirit also) was to wean indoctrinated Scientologists away from Scientology and show them that there were other good things available. This was not my purpose with IVy, and regrettably (for me and for him) I ended his writing regular columns for IVy.
You can see the articles he wrote for IVy if you go to http://ivymag.org/authors.html (a list of IVy articles in alphabetical order of authors). Look up Jones, Mark. Note down the issue (first number) and page (second number) of those articles you want to look at, and then go to http://articles.ivymag.org/pdfs.html and find the issue you want in pdf format. There are about 40 articles, including one on Narconon's Early Beginnings. Here Mark describes his contact with Narconon - Single page 37 in IVy 50 http://articles.ivymag.org/pdf/IVy50.pdf )
Others?[edit | edit source]
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