OT Abilities
Interesting subject. One I’ve been meaning to write about for a while. A subject that I’m sure will elicit strong opinions.
The promise of OT Abilities was one which first attracted me to Scientology. I avidly read the “OT Phenomena” stories from OTs in Advance Magazine. Then in the 1970s, I became the Editor of Advance Magazine, and eagerly collected and published these stories. In some ways I was the perfect candidate for Editor – I was not yet OT myself and held an eager fascination for the subject. My sense of awe and anticipation translated itself into the magazine and helped to create a sense of mystery and wonder surrounding the OT Levels.
And the stories certainly were amazing. Stories about communicating over long distances through the mind (telepathy), remote viewing (extrasensory perception or clairvoyance), influencing matter, energy, space and time as a spirit (telekinesis or psychokinesis), supernatural healing, predicting future events (precognition), remembering past lives, dealing with ghosts and haunting, and more. Exciting, heady stuff. Exhilarating and empowering.
And the LRH articles reinforced the sense of wonder. Hubbard told us that we could become a super-being: “A thetan who is completely rehabilitated and can do everything a thetan should do, such as move MEST and control others from a distance, or create his own universe; a person who is able to create his own universe or, living in the MEST universe is able to create illusions perceivable by others at will, to handle MEST universe objects without mechanical means and to have and feel no need of bodies or even the MEST universe to keep himself and his friends interested in existence.” (Scientology 8-8008)
When I actually did go OT, I was looking forward to beginning to exercise these types of abilities. I eagerly tried out my remote viewing abilities, my mind-reading abilities, my abilities to move or effect matter from a distance. The results were, well, disappointing. Oh well, I thought, maybe it will happen on the next OT level. Or the next one after that.
I told this story to a doctrinaire Scientologist one time, a Freezoner, and got an interesting reaction. This person implied that I was the odd man out – that everyone else had achieved these abilities and that there was something wrong with me that I hadn’t. Well maybe so. Maybe I was the only person who hadn’t reached these types of abilities due to some personal flaw, but everyone else was happily levitating objects, reading minds, viewing far-away events and so on. But somehow I don’t think so. In fact, in my 35 years in Scientology, I never met a single Scientologist who could actually demonstrate these types of abilities. I never met a super-being. Sure, I met a lot of wonderful people, intelligent people, dedicated people. But no one who could demonstrate what the Church promoted as “OT Abilities.” (I would be happy to hear from anyone who has a different experience.)
But before we go any further in the discussion, let’s define a few terms:
Psychic Abitilies vs. OT Abilities
Scientologists tend to collapse these two terms. But let’s be clear: the general term used in society to refer to these things is “psychic abilities” or “paranormal phenomena,” or similar terms. OT Abilities should be used to refer specifically to those abilities gained by Scientologists as a result of going up the Bridge to OT.
If you don’t clarify these definitions, then you get into this kind of a discussion: A skeptic questions the validity of Scientology’s “OT Abilities.” The Scientologist then argues that “psychic phenomena DO exist, and accuses the skeptic of being a materialist who negates any sort of spiritual ability. The Scientologist may then quote selectively from the many, many studies that have been done over the last 100 years on paranormal phenomena to demonstrate that such things as telekinesis or remote viewing DO actually exist. The skeptic is put on the defensive and the discussion becomes all about “do these phenomena exist?”
No, let’s keep on track here. The point is not “do paranormal phenomena exist?” That discussion could go on and on endlessly. The question is “does Scientology produce these abilities?”
Phenomenon vs Ability
The other thing to differentiate is phenomenon versus ability.
A phenomenon is something that happens, an observable event. I have personally experienced what could be termed paranormal phenomena – and this was before Scientology. In one case, I was in a strange city and somehow remembered being there before, and in fact I was able to find my way around without a map. On another occasion I was able to accurately see something without using my eyes. If you talk to a dozen people, non-Scientologists, you’ll probably get a dozen such stories. Many people have strange, unexplained things like this that have happened to them. These are phenomena – strange, odd or bizarre observed events.
An ability, on the other hand, is something one has learned to do. Playing piano or programming a computer are abilities. One can do them any time. If asked to demonstrate these abilities, one could do so without hesitation.
Ability also contains the idea of permanence. They are not fleeting. One does not play the piano one day and then forget how the next. One doesn’t suddenly become unable to play the piano because someone looked at them wrong or invalidated their performance. It might upset them – but they can still play the piano.
It’s no accident that the stories in Advance Magazine were called “OT Phenomena.” They were singular occurrences. Sure, they sounded amazing, like my finding my way around a strange city. But they were not something the story teller could necessarily repeat at will. I recall one story about magically finding a parking place in a crowded city. Fine, but can you find a parking place every time you go to the city? Or “I thought of my aunt Martha and she called me.” Great, but can you get anyone to call you at will just by thinking of them?
So a valid challenge to someone claiming OT Abilities would be to ask them to demonstrate those abilities. That isn’t unreasonable or “entheta.” If someone says they have an ability, then demonstrate it. If you have the ability to view things remotely, then tell me what’s in the next room. If you have the ability to move objects, then move one. If you can read minds, then tell me what I’m thinking.
Of course, the minute you suggest this, you tend to get things like “Asking for proof is an invalidation of an OT,”or “I don’t do parlor tricks,” or “that’s a hidden standard.” (No, it’s not hidden. It’s in scores of Advance Magazines and LRH references. It’s not hidden when you’re promoting it. It’s only hidden when you’re asked to prove it.)
And another added one I hadn’t thought of: “People who demand physical universe proof of OT abilities are down tone brain dead skeptics and cannot perceive spiritual things anyway. Why waste my precious time tossing pearls to swine.” Really? I’m sorry, but I don’t see how asking for proof of these claims is either downtone or spiritually unaware. What, it’s “uptone” or “spiritually enlightened” to take these things on faith and not ask for some kind of proof??
And of course, you hear that OTs that cannot demonstrate these abilities “have out-tech on their case” or “are PTS” or “are the effect of David Miscavige.” Sure, they could play the piano if only it weren’t for all these SPs!
Or people will begin citing paranormal research that has nothing to do with Scientology. Like quoting Ian Stevenson’s research on reincarnation to prove “past lives exist.” To repeat, the point is not “do these phenomena exist?” The question is “Does Scientology processing actually reliably produce or create these abilities in people?”
Well, maybe my Freezoner friend was right. Maybe I’m the odd man out, the only one who didn’t get these kinds of paranormal abilities from the OT Levels. Maybe everyone else got these things and kept it a secret from me.
But what are your experiences? What abilities did you gain or not gain from the OT Levels? And remember, we are not talking about phenomena you have experienced, we are talking about abilities you gained. Can you knowingly and at will perform the sorts of paranormal feats that were hinted at in the “OT Phenomena” stories?
I yield the floor…
Hubbard instructed the “OTs” not to show their abilities because it would make it harder for others to go up the bridge. Apparently it’s very discouraging to see that magical thing you’re working on actually produces results. There are no OT abilities, it’s part of the scam.
Phenomena do exist, I saved my brother’s life after having a precognition, but if there’s something that can be discovered and taught, Hubbard did not find it. Not that he was actually looking, IMO.
“One doesn’t suddenly become unable to play the piano because someone looked at them wrong or invalidated their performance.” Brilliant, my first laugh of the day.
Detractors love this kinda thing because its about objective phenomena, something they can disprove and say GOTCHA! Much more fun than leaving people to their own realities.
Personally I never got into Scn for these abilities and was always skeptical about them. Also, no one I know (who is out) expects OT levels will give them these types of abilities either.
I think most Scientologists are looking for transcendence and I believe Scn can help with that. To me this is more important than reading minds or levitating teapots.
Yes, Hubbard was WRONG on this – get over it!
I think you missed the point of this post.
I second that.
It’s not about making anyone right or wrong – it’s about being straightforward about what these levels can and cannot do. If the OT levels “can help you with your transcendence” as you say, then that’s what Advance Magazine articles and ads should state – “OT – help with your transcendence!”
One could argue that no one who has actually done the OT levels expects them to produce these kinds of abilities – because they don’t. But that’s how they are promoted.
Dear Routeplanner,
You’ve got some good points. So, OK, and thanks.
But, riddle me this: Let’s say I had talked you into selling everything you owned to buy a tract of land that had vast mineral and natural resources. And, once you dig down to these resources, you will be rich beyond your imaginings, and will be able to solve all America’s energy issues. You will be king in your own country. I convince you to sell your house, liquidate your kids’ college funds, cash out your IRA, and spend the best years of your life working on this for no pay. Then, as it turns out, this tract of land has no mineral resources on it at all. It is just a big, dry, scraphole in the middle of nowhere. Further, it turns out that I had no real, solid reason to believe this land had any resources at all. It was just an idea off the top of my head. Even further, you now find out that I never had any real training in Geology. I can’t tell crude oil from hair oil, or quartz from diamonds. I was just someone who was very, very, very good at talking people into things. Further yet, I have this whole time lived like a king on the money you invested: footservants to do my bidding, a big steak every meal, the latest sports cars, indulged my movie director fantasies, the whole 99 yards (at your expense). Now, you are in your late 50s, bankrupt, and have to start your life over. Same with your kids who have spent their youths and young adulthoods working for me for no pay. They have no high school diploma, no college degree, no job skills. Just years of labor working on The Dream. Oh, by the way, you don’t get to see your wife anymore because she is still immersed full time in the Great Quest for the Ultimate Treasure, that is (always) just a few more levels down.
What would be your reaction to all of that? Could I turn to you and say: “I was wrong on the mineral deposits. GET OVER IT!” And that would make it all OK with you? You could be big about and just move on? You wouldn’t “motivate off of it”? You wouldn’t want to wrap a chair around my head? Honestly? Hmmmm . . . ?
FL
Good one.
I’m not disagreeing with this. I just think it’s a non-issue for most unless you’re into constantly making self right. Had anyone here not already come to those conclusions? But, by all means have at it 😉
Oh c’mon. Every ten year old kid wants to be invisible and to fly around, and so does anyone who has any sense of adventure and curiosity. And Hubbard sold that dream and made millions. I never encountered a Scientologist – ever – who wasn’t excited about that promise.
The OT levels don’t makes OTs, and that – all silly “oh, I never wanted that anyway,” denials aside, is what Hubbard sold, and also what Hubbard used to justify the deceits and abuses of Scientology.
This isn’t Hubbard “being wrong” about something. Being wrong is faithfully believing something, usually something reasonable. “I think my car keys were left on the table” when they were in fact on the bookshelf is “being wrong”.
Compare above example to saying “People can have superhuman paranormal powers!”, without any known evidence (no evidence of a single classic Clear or OT). That’s not being wrong. That’s being stupid and deluded (from a charitable angle) or just plain being a liar (more likely IMO).
Does it not occur to you that if LRH “was wrong” about that, what else might he be wrong about?
He couldn’t even be “right” about the details of his own childhood and career.
At least 50. C/S’s = LRH, Webb, Walker and a couple others during ship.
Grade 4 through NOTS (includes, Original 7 ep’s, etc.)
Was looking for “wins/stories” for promo on some. Now, there WERE quite a few early ones (pre 84) that had it for a day or 2 but none longer.
So now you admit that quite a few actually did go “stably” ext to a degree even if it was just a couple of days.
I mean “stable” is a relative term especially when you consider that a *Major* Stable Win on TR0 is measured in hours.
Also a sample of 50 is a small number.
Considering the fact that several hundred at least have done L12.
Did you do a follow up on the others who said they remained exterior for more than just a couple of days?
I’m asking because I’ve had several cases who had been audited on old R2-10 and 12 who originated on their own that they had been exterior which could be confirmed by the fact that they had what is called a persistent F/N for years after receiving this action.
I also known several execs who did the original FEBC which included the Ls who said they could go exterior at will.
That said:
The fact is that you wouldn’t want a case that was always and continually exterior after auditing because you can’t audit a PC or Pre OT who *is* exterior.
Also the objective of L12 is not to exteriorize but *extrovert* the person from his or her case.
Of course a Pre OT exteriorized with the expected meter phenomenon would indicate that he or she had definitely achieved that EP but it *isn’t* required.
This would be a bonus.
Ron always personally C/Sed toward giving the person more then they expected on any rundown or action.
You can believe that or not but I frankly don’t care either way.
You have your view of the subject and I have mine.
Not true that you can’t audit a pc who is exterior.
We did it for years in the early 50’s before any HCOB to the contrary was written.
True, some cases hung up after exterior because they “went in” and stirred up mass.
True, you can’t audit someone who just went exterior with a “big win”. You have to stop and let them have their win.
But all the original upper levels were done exterior. If a person isn’t exterior he can’t even handle the original OT VI.
If there is anything I am certain of in all these years of auditing it is that I am exterior. I am not “in” a body. I am not “out” of a body. I am neither “in” nor “out” of the physical universe. Body is “in”. I operate the body from my location of no location:)
Now to me that is OT. What else does one want from me in this universe to show and tell? The universe is an illusion really anyway. How would I demonstrate that to someone?
Every person has their own interest, their own abilities. It is the same with OTs. There are states of being far more valuable than the mesty ones of knocking off a hat at 20 paces. Granted that might be fun on a dull day, but think of Truth revealed! Truth revealed! The ability to spot the truth–a really high level of ability to differenciate.
How am I supposed to “prove” that I’m exterior, or that I can spot “truth”. Some who doesn’t know the truth has no idea of the value of that ability.
My husband and I run a freezone group. To me, that is a demonstration of ability. How many OTs can do that? A few, of course. But it takes a skill, a knowingness, an ability to communicate, the ability to audit, a knowledge of lines and terminals, and the end result of this is enough OT’s auditing the unwanted conditions on this planet that we can free humans from the revolving trap they are in, alleviate suffering, and give us a safe playing field should we elect to continue living on planet Earth.
I had an ex-husband who could demonstrate ability so anyone could see it. He like playing that game. He would spend hours and hours working on the ability to move objects. More than once he slam a window or otherwise “show” his ability to me. Once he unhooked his leg muscles in front of me and a couple of my kids, showing off. Looked like a stork leg. Then he connected them all again to have a normal leg. Perfectly clear.
Do the kids remember it? No. They either accepted it as “normal” and thought nothing of it, or they simply not-ised that it happened. Instant healing of a cut–the person with the cut blinks–and the cut comes back. That person just couldn’t have it.
What legacy did this man leave? Nothing for the kids to be proud of. He never finished the bridge, never did the OT sections (although he was certainly aware of the phenomena) and died of cancer. So we choose where we want to have abilities.
To cut this short, we each have an idea of what ability we want to achieve. While it might be fun to relocate an object from point “a” to point “b” without using ones hands, I consider far more important to free beings from their state of entrapment, known and unknown.
@RJ “So now you admit that quite a few actually did go “stably” ext to a degree even if it was just a couple of days.”
Nice try RJ. A couple days is not stably (not liable to fail or vary). Clear your words.
So, as I stated and have NOT been successfully rebutted, contrary to LRH claims, L12 DOES NOT produce a thetan stably exterior with full perceptions. Face it, the LRH claims don’t hold for that or his claims for OT 8.
Outside of Scn this is called a scam.
Maybe you should clear the word “static” as in in unchanging.
Stable is a relative term like “the patient is in a *stable* condition”.
As a noun as in “this chair is stable” which at anytime both could become unstable.
So maybe you should clear the word yourself because there is nothing in the definition about permanence of any kind.
That said
The fact is that stably exterior is *not* the EP of L12.
Check this out for yourself if you don’t believe me.
That as I said and you’ve already admitted, it occurred on L12 *is a bonus*.
As in not the required EP of the RD.
Yet it seems you are claiming that it is.
Much like claiming that a sales man who sold you a car “scammed” you because it didn’t really fly when he said that it would.
@RJ “Stable is a relative term like “the patient is in a *stable* condition”.”
No, LRH was VERY exacting in his use of words. He didn’t make up definitions on the spot without defining in the text. Sorry. FAIL
“Detractors love this kinda thing because its about objective phenomena, something they can disprove and say GOTCHA! Much more fun than leaving people to their own realities.”
Irrelevant. A scientist testing for “remote viewing” in order to advance science isn’t “out to get you”. They aren’t all Martians or FBI agents. Unless of course an individual is in a certain metal state…
So, remote viewing isn’t about YOUR “reality” vs. another. It is about Yes or, no.
Oh, Jeff, you continue to rock the house!!!!!
A simple googling of the Sanskrit word “siddhi” might be a nice complement in education on that subject. And it gives an interesting time perspective to it, too….
This article is another blaze!
Fidelio
Of all the blogs regarding Scientology I read, yours is by far the best.
I think the reason for this is that you are a marketing person, and marketing is about knowing how people think, so that one can effectively communicate to them.
This of course also tells one that Scientology will never be able to effectively market to “wogs”, as Scientologists know not how they think, and do not want to learn either.
Thanks for your valuable contributions–you are putting into words things which most of us have never been able to express so clearly and effectively.
Ditto..
Great post Jeff! I’m looking forward to reading the comments on this one. 🙂
I can predict the future: I predict there will be hundreds of replies in relation to this particular post of yours, but that at the end of it all, no OT abilities will be effectively demonstrated (except for my prediction of course.)
>no OT abilities will be effectively demonstrated
Oh yeah? I am typing this reply WITH MY MIND. I defy you to prove otherwise.
Booyah!
ML,
Caliwog
hahahahahaha
My prophesy has been fulfilled. Thank you all.
Brilliant!
But what are your experiences? What abilities did you gain or not gain from the OT Levels? And remember, we are not talking about phenomena you have experienced; we are talking about abilities you gained. Can you knowingly and at will perform the sorts of paranormal feats that were hinted at in the “OT Phenomena” stories?
Jefferson,
I did some copy paste with your last paragraph so that I stayed on track. This is an outstanding post, truly it is. And beautifully and objectively conveyed! I can see how this stayed on simmer on the back burner for a bit.
Qualifications
OT5. Auditor trained public co-audit from 70’s. Made my well announced decision to leave C of $ in 2008. No family or business ties to anyone in Cof$. After 1979, most always working my business(es) and family things and would go in for a spiritual enema every 3-4 years. Get this—once even lived next to a Federal Wilderness Area for about 4 years just so they wouldn’t pester me and I could work unobstructedly!
Damned pests…
From the bottom up:
Your last question: I cannot knowingly or at will perform the feats hinted at.
But you are one Helleva good marketing guy. I’d say you operate on that plane in that subject matter. The occasional failure keeping your interest…
Everything above:
“…we are talking about abilities gained.”
Abilities gained? To me ability is just that—ABLE to get things done. You’re referring to abilities being like a task or an act or something along that nature.
I’m not going to do that when I use the word, “abilities”.
I got that, that’s what I was after.
As a child I came from a rough place. I was pretty screwed up and wasn’t a happy guy.
I am now. Living up somewhere north of 2.0. Typically 95% of the time. Nice deep insights into life…perhaps from my age as well. (Who cares or gives a shit to “investigate” which?)
A compassionate man and a gitRdone guy. I love my life, my friends—all sorts of things.
Did I pay retail? And I mean that in more ways than one but money is certainly one of them.
On all counts I paid more than retail.
But what’s that worth is what you have to occasionally ask yourself.
My closing before yielding the floor back to you:
I don’t like what happened to it. If you can give people a better life, fine. Keep it at that. There was no sense of benevolence to it, the way it was run. It got a little carried away. It could have been different, perhaps still can if people can ever damned well learn to differentiate.
Everyone wants a more peaceful and a wiser way to live life.
As far as LRH goes?
A human being with all the vagaries of most. Some insights of remarkable clarity, some clearly not. I keep my own counsel on all that.
He was selling you ABILITES.
Some got it and some didn’t.
But there was a rather remarkable marketing guru behind it. Now that sonnabitch was OT.
Give me a call sometime, Jeff.
🙂
Cowboy Poet,
You rock dude!
Love ya man.
Let’s do lunch some time 🙂
You can reach me at:
archangel88@hushmail.com
Jeff damn good article. I’m sure you’ll have many defenders and detractors on this one.
Personally I think you are incorrect about the “error” of conflating OT Phenomena with Psychic Phenomenon or a sixth sense or whatever.
To me they are all the same.
Scientology can never *give* you these abilities since you already *have* these abilities and they inherently are part are part of your psyche’ or more accurately they are intricately a part of you.
For instance Scientology can not *give* you the ability to communicate since you already possess that ability
All an auditor does is merely to *improve* that ability by running grade 0.
It’s the same with OT Abilities.
This is why Ron emphasizes actual auditor training for Pre OTs as opposed to just doing a solo course.
Since most auditing in the OT band is done solo.
What they call “OT” delivered in the orgs these days has very little to do with rehabbing those abilities for the most part and is merely a continuation of OT III known also as the “Second Wall of Fire” which is a deletion process similar to lower level Dianetics designed for OTs.
The reason it is called *New Era Dianetics* for OTs even though it for the most part doesn’t use the same Dianetic procedures it still produces basically the same result
What is called “negative gain”.
I won’t quote the Dianetics and Scientology Dictionary or the actual ESTO lecture it comes from but let you look it up yourself.
I guess you could call it removing the held down 5s or 7s at a higher level.
Anyway with few exceptions there really haven’t been any real OTs being made since the late ’80’s due to the fact of a huge *Technical Degrade*.
However before that I’ve seen actual OTs made that for the most part could operate exterior to the degree that they could be anywhere they decided to be and were good at intending things.
The key abilities addressed on the original *Pre* OT levels to what was originally full OT 7.
On some these abilities were quite stable particularly those who were trained auditors prior to doing those levels.
However and again I disagree with you on this point as well.
These abilities have to be continually *practiced*. Just like a painter or a musician has to practice their *art* since these abilities exist near or above the aesthetic band as you can see when you review 8-80 they are not similar or the same as learning to ride a bike, drive a car or robotically play some tune on the piano by setting up a preprogrammed circuit or machine of some kind.
Also these abilities haven’t been practiced for eons especially in world that mechanically has the ability to Remotely Sense things , communicate using a telephone or video conferencing at vast distances using Geo Stationary Satellites and uses the internet and wikipedia as their surrogate mind.
Having *replaced* their imagination with video graphics and you-tube.
One could ask that even if these abilities exist who needs ’em anyway?
I mean why walk when you can drive to anywhere you want to go?
Why attempt to telepathically communicate to someone when all you have to do is reach out and touch someone using your cell phone?
It’s like back in the old days when they first started issuing calculators to kids in school to do their math on.
Now very few can add, subtract, multiply or divide without one these days.
With the advent of TV and graphics very few kids now bother learning how to read these days.
In fact the functionally illiterate rate is back to where it was prior to the beginning of the twentieth century.
Those who can read somewhat get all their information off the internet or wikipedia.
Eventually you won’t have to know how to read at all.
All you’ll have to be able to do is push a button like a lab rat or Chimpanzee and have all the information “required” fed to you audio visually.
Beyond that there are governments working on hypno-learning techniques and synthetic telepathy where all information “required” is fed to you either by hypnotic or electronic transference.
As the old song says:
“What a wonderful world that would be.”
The only thing that these “Einsteins” haven’t considered is what happens if someone pulls the plug?
Like the scenario given in the Sci-Fi classic “The Day the Earth Stood Still”.
Thanks but no thanks.
I’ll continue working on my “OT Phenomenon” whether you or anyone else “believes” they exist or not because I figure some day I may need ’em.
Not to display to some brain dead skeptic who wouldn’t believe the evidence presented even if it was true which really isn’t at the top of my to do list anyway (I mean I’m not into tossing a few pearls to swine) but just in order to basically survive.
Scientology can never *give* you these abilities since you already *have* these abilities and they inherently are part are part of your psyche’ or more accurately they are intricately a part of you.
100% agreed. 🙂
Like RJ, my experience has been that “going OT” is a gradient process that reveals repressed abilities reined-in abilities that I already had.
Even though I’ve completed OT5, I don’t consider that I “went OT”. It’s not like Clear…a specific point before which the person had his own reactive mind, and after which he did not have that.
There’s no assurance that “at the end of OTx, you’ll be able to levitate ashtrays”.
To me, “going OT” is a gradient process. There’s no “theta universe ballcock” that magically turned on ALL my OT abilities, PERMANENTLY, ALL at once.
But, I didn’t get into Scientology to levitate ashtrays, either. I didn’t get into Scientology in order to walk through walls or read God’s mind.
So, the things I’ve noticed are a bonus.
If I had expected to get be able to hypnotize a woman into sleeping with me by intention alone, then Scientology has failed me. And I’m not complaining one bit. My own sense of ethics wouldn’t let me leverage such an ability, anyway.
Even though I’ve had hundreds of experiences of transient phenomena that I classify as OT Phenomena, and could write them up for that article, I never have written them up and never will. My OT abilities are intermittent at best. I feel my OT abilities are for me and my life, not to frighten or impress others.
But I’m not upset, because the description of OT Jeff cites from 8008 isn’t tied to any specific, Church-certified OT level, and I recognize that.
I’m not upset because none of the OT levels I’ve done guarantee PERMANENT, UNSHAKABLE, PROVABLE-IN-A-CIRCUS-SIDESHOW MEST-violating OT abilities.
And I have to remember that THE AUDITOR article No.18 (WHAT EVERY AUDITOR SHOULD KNOW), clearly says that “Standard Technology is not contained in any of the books of Dianetics and Scientology. Standard Technology is contained in Hubbard Communications Office Bulletins.” So having someone say that “the OT abilities I concluded I would have after reading 8-8008 didn’t occur” doesn’t upset me, either.
A lot of people have Hidden Standards about this stuff.
I had a preclear on the Briefing Course who, mid-NED session, suddenly went floating TA and got off a huge cog about the origin of his own reactive mind. The auditing supervisor was looking in and saw it. It was properly reported. But the pc was perfectly happy to go on auditing…as it turned out, BECAUSE THE SCAR ON HIS CHEEK HADN’T DISAPPEARED.
That’s a hidden standard. The pc ended up being audited WAY past Clear, because his attention was still on something that hadn’t been “cured”.
The same thing happens with pcs on the Purification Rundown. They sit and grind, and grind, and grind way past the EP, because they were “expecting some other EP”, like Exterior with Full Perception.
Hidden Standard.
POT,
Yes the good ol’ hidden standard is one of the key reasons that many PCs and I dare say Pre OTs claim they don’t make gains in auditing other than bad auditing or no auditing.
In some cases it’s not entirely the PC or Pre OTs fault but the reg who promises the PC or Pre OT the moon, sun and skies in their next intensive.
For instance we were piloting a Rundown called the Livingness Repair Rundown at ASHO which wasn’t even an auditing action per se but more of a life sort out using various actions like Exchange by Dynamics, Ethics by Dynamics, Order vs Disorder and things like that.
It wasn’t even advertised as an *auditing* Rundown yet some of regs were selling as cure all for “everything” that ailed the PC.
In fact I did an interview on a PC who honestly believed that this Rundown would bring him to a point where he could actually levitate his body!
I kid you not!
I asked where this idea came from?
He said a reg told him if he bought the RD now he could guarantee it!
Talk about a hidden standard!!!!
RJ,
I think I get what you’re saying now. All the Scientology “OTs” in the entire history of Scientology have never, ever demonstrated verifiable “OT Powers” just because every OT forgot to practice.
Sure, that makes sense to me. If I had the potential to be total cause over MEST, I’m sure I’d forget too.
Good points! I also think viewpoint has a lot to do with “OT Abilities.” I forgot where i read this but Ron mentioned the Lion Tamer once, and how others were frightened for him because his job was so dangerous being in the same cage as the Lions.
But since the Lion Tamer did this every day is was kind of second nature to him. Even Mr. Hawkins could be considered to have “OT Abilities,” maybe not telepathy or moving MEST with the mind, but being able to communicate to a large audience so that your message actually impinges IS an ability.
I remember “seeing pictures by peoples heads” when I was younger. It got me into trouble when I talked these things (imagine your Dad’s best friend having sexual thoughts about your mom {my mother}… it’s weird to see that Sh*t when you’re a kid), so I stopped “seeing.”
You’re right though, it was more of a phenomena than an ability because I couldn’t do it at will, it just sort of happened. I think that Ron believed these phenomena could be turned into abilities through training… and perhaps they can.
I have not done any OT levels but even the lower grades promise “increased abilities.” I can not recall any ability being increased except the ability to communicate. I believe I am much better communicator than I was… but there again it is a subjective thing.
I think I would have to go find all my friends who knew me before I got into Scientology and who know me now (very few except for family) and get their viewpoint on my “communication ability.”
Jeff may have hit the nail on the head here. I mean we all know about (even if you only have heard about it) paranormal phenomena, and, I believe we all want to be ABLE to do these types of things on command. So if we notice a better condition in one thing, like an increased ability to communicate, maybe we’re willing to hang on until “the next level” to see if some secret super power is finally awakened from within!
perhaps in the end it is a leap of faith that things will get better… just like every other religion.
That you must fully believe; without ANY reservation that such and such will occur.
And if there’s even one iota of doubt, your dreams/prayers/abilities will not materialize as long as this doubt is with you…
DOES ANY OF THIS SOUND FAMILIAR???
@RJ “Not to display to some brain dead skeptic who wouldn’t believe the evidence presented even if it was true ”
The universal cop out I’m afraid. Like I stated earlier, people researching this are all “out to get you.”
Newer,
Really!!!!
These “brain dead skeptics” are “out to get” lil’ ol’ me?
Wow what a waste of time!
🙂
RJ – of all the comments this one resonates with me most.
And Jeff – you opened up quite the controversy here and I appreciate you for doing it because, it’s the “elephant in the room” that we too often decline to talk about.
Ken Ogger (The Pilot) found on Freezone archives, kept this quest alive and had many interesting things to say. He neither dismissed nor promoted OT ability, beyond the thrill of his own experience – but sure worked hard to push the envelope. I recall enjoying his enthusiasm on the subject and helping to renew mine.
First, to clear up some misconceptions of LRH, since a lot of people in their ARC break with him tend to generalize it and declare the whole subject a fraud.
At the risk of grossly oversimplifing things, it seems to me that LRH opened up the Philadelphia Doctorate lectures with some amusing OT phenomena (implied promises?) but then worked his heart out the rest of his life to figure out a way such things could be attained by others and more consistently. I note stories (mostly kept far from public consumption) where he privately expressed and demonstrated his own frustration with various failures along this line. But finally, I have trouble finding any other area of his lecturing or writing where he could be said to have himself “oversold” OT ability (there is no argument that he permitted mystery and myths to emerge around the subject of OT and “parascientology”).
Remembering my formative years in Scientology, others – myself included – seemed to be willing to “put there” what was not there – and speculate as to where on the chart we’d get this or that ability.
I myself have experienced what others think of as “magic” in my better times – usually coming on the heels of an incredible session “win” but also in listening to LRH lecture on OT ability and the things that he was discovering as barriers. I would be delighted to share such “miracles” at some point, knowing that I created them myself for sure, but was also helped momentarily to believe in myself and released temporarily from limitations in making such happen. As an artist I can tell you that it’s akin to inspiration – some of my greatest works were also created in that same purity of space – my own – in which I felt free to create.
Interestingly enough, I attribute the greater portion of those type of “OT abilities” gained in Scientology to the Upper Indoc TR drills 6-9 (particulary 7 – placing of intention drills). These are actually positive-gain OT ability drills if done with good coaching.
I once daydreamingly (listening to a PDC lecture in the car!) allowed myself to run a red light through a busy intersection with a potential tangle-up of 6-7 vehicles. I “altered time” and weaved through 3 near-collisions and everyone came out unscathed. But as Don Juan of Castenada’s tales would probably say. “what were you doing getting into a crowded intersection in the first place???”
This sums up a lot of human activity and response – in other words, a textbook “game” at work. We do stupid things and then we sometimes miraculously “resolve” them – out of part necessity – part survival willpower – and part ability and belief in ability gained in inspirational books, art, movies or auditing (I’m not throwing auditing in the same exact class – I believe it can create more profound and lasting changes than a temporary aesthetic uplift).
Back to the point, in RJ67, the Sea Org’s recruit lecture, LRH gives this datum: “…one cannot be OT in a world gone mad…” alluding to the sensitivity of this pursuit as he was finding it. So I think he recognized how flimsy these abilities could be in a hostile environment.
These abilities too often are found to be “fleeting” in nature and I have noticed that for pre-OTs in today’s church, that is no less the case. For many, it doesn’t go smoothly and for them it’s just a plain sham. MisSavage, the source of the “world gone mad” in the very organization charged with handling it, exploits this very thing: “OTs aren’t making it – they need more…” (fill in the blank – Basics, Objectives, NED, ethics, FPRD, NOTs, training, Ideal Org duties and posts, IAS donations, shiny books without typos, spinning-whirling microphone studio versions of the PDC with recently discovered charts, ad nauseum…)
And I do not know all of the story surrounding the replacement of original OT levels, but from what I have been able to piece together, they were not actually supposed to replace original OT IV-VII but pave the way to better results in those levels. These original levels reportedly did excercise real OT ability and Pierre Ethier has delivered some compelling arguments as to why a dictatorial power push with government sanction (if not actual backing) could work to force these out of the reach of people in the church.
(also Internet search: “Pat Price, remote viewing” for a story of how government mind control research stole these original levels and accomplished consistent and verifiable remote viewing feats. The main reason LRH established the Sea Org and the GO was to prevent the theft of these levels by a suppressive group, so can anyone tell me why MisSavage brags about that CIA use of our highest-level, secret materials, in a 2009 International Event???)
OT feats seem to be “inspired” – if not by necessity, then by some inspiration of the moment. I think we all recognize that the artist and his/her creativity are subject to similar factors and limitations. And the PTS/SP tech is done and overdone in an effort to make a safe environment for such to occur. In theory, someone rising way above the ordinary limitations of man – artists and leaders especially – would be subject to the most rabid opposition (like MisSavage having a cow?).
That said, it puts figures like Ghandi and Martin Luther King among the greatest OTs in our planetary history – the ability to love and inspire love in times of the greatest oppression and opposition and with every reason not to. And certainly amazing, historically significant results they did actually get. In LRH’s “What is Greatness?” article he also underscores this as a rare and tremendous ability.
LRH points very much to the “disagree” factor in violating physical universe and group, agreement (which in Scientology terms is really what an OT ability demonstrated boils down to). Did the above two persons “agree” that all was “lost” and hopeless? Did the Scots, or any historical underdog for that matter who make the “miracle events” of history happen – agree that outnumbered, they stood no chance?
Jeff, I think that the answer to the unwillingness of one with such an ability to demonstrate in groups is this very thing. It’s an additional ability required in itself to go up against disagreement. That makes two high-level abilities required for any one ability to be consistently demonstrated.
I think for anyone who hasn’t given up completely on the idea, it’s worth revisiting the concept of games, as LRH once did in an early phase of research. Let’s face it. OT phenomena – most of it anyway – is very touchy, since over-used, it “ruins the game”. I know that I can honestly say that I have considerations that I don’t want to know what’s on the other side of that card because I do not want to slip into a “no-game” condition, even if I’m to be the winner of all the loot in Vegas. In theory, we lost these abilities because we misused them – to the point where some of the abilities are biblically punishable by death. So paths to knowingness unavailable to other players are naturally fraught with considerations like these.
RJ further makes a very interesting point on something LRH also referred to somewhere in the Art Series in terms of “gadget reliance”. Or if you will, the spiritual being relying on a “machine” – whether internal (mental) or external (physical devices or body senses). Aren’t these gadgets or machines the very opposite of necessity level and self-reliance? Aren’t they key factors in discouraging non-physical ability to emerge?
On another related line, what about the Nazi’s (and their Operation Paperclip descendents in the US) use of water Flouridation to lower IQ? (and even less-known, to calcify the pineal gland, out of which OT abilities are said by older practices to proceed from). Did you know that Prozac is a Flouride drug and that it’s getting in our water systems? I hate to agree with MisSavage once in a while, but the Purif might do wonders for some pre-OTs (of course this R-factor is far better accomplished through education than the random and destructive case evaluations I have heard about). Because the Pharmaceutical-Medical-Chemical cartels have been hard at work on genetic and environmental pollution and, depending on your level of what’s credible, quite possibly even a directed assault on the spirit of man using known toxins inhibiting spiritual awareness and ability.
But some will argue that body has nothing to do with all this – well, does it? Nutritional factors have been part of this and other spiritual practices and at the very least, it seems wise to be aware of these developments and have any such distractions out of the way.
So those who aspire to such abilities would theoretically need to overcome all of the above self-imposed limitations and perhaps physical universe or body barriers, as well. Which brings us back to LRH’s Scientology and the point of Jeff’s wonderful arguments and the question on everyone’s mind:
“I thought that was what the OT levels were supposed to handle!”
Well, if you talk to people who have done them, they do help. The emphasis is on “negative” (deletion of charge) gain however, and apparently LRH (let’s give the man his due for breaking new ground – mistakes and all), the well-intentioned tech terminals of the earlier church, and too many of the rest of us, have wisely decided that excercising and developing these abilities is too problematic to make promises about or put too much hope in.
So it’s back to an esoteric level until we can greatly improve the security of the environment both inside and outside of today’s Mis-church and practice these in an even better spirit of cooperation, security and freedom than was found in the golden age of early OT 70’s.
That said, I’m joining RJ in believing that as a spiritual being, it might come in handy someday to have a certain degree of control and ability in maneuvering my way through whatever awaits. Even if it does turn out to be as mundane and silly as answering St. Peter’s riddle at the gates of heaven.
But more so, placed in proper perspective, assuming I’m maintaining reasonably good non-destructive and orderly progress on all my dynamics, I’m ready to increase my capacity to do good right here and now. But for right here, right now, like so many others I fear, I’m still trying to unravel the consequences of not having made all the right choices…
Ah, but that is probably the very reason we should be getting over to a reputable Independent (or whatever you can find – any auditing…) and get oneself in the frame of mind that such a pursuit is indeed worthy – especially if we open up the gates as LRH stated he wanted it, so that any person can aspire to it.
Adding to that, and back to LRH’s “Free Being” lecture, I think that the whole loss of OT ability – the dwindling spiral of spiritual beings – is best answered by renewing our responsibility for all dynamics (fully supporting the restoration of ability) and this includes as LRH points out, our willingness to cooperate (notice I did not say “form organizations”) as OTs and put in our “Act One” (full willingness to restore ability of the preclear) on ourselves and each other – in particular along this very line of OT ability.
As to the speed of progress, a bit of persistence and patience seems required. The Clean Hands Congress is a good one for putting the dream and its failures back into perspective (LRH talks there of disappointments with the promises of the tech – leaving Scientology and coming back, all that being totally okay and understandable to him, etc.)
>it puts figures like Ghandi and Martin Luther King among the greatest OTs in our planetary history
And look how much Scientology training they had. This is one of the issues I have with Hubbard and Scientology – crediting Scientology and “OT abilities” with things that are simply part of the human experience.
Thanks for the detailed reply, by the way – I always appreciate when people take the time to share their viewpoint.
ML, CW
Thanks Watchful Navigator,
There is very little I’d like to add except that I’m astounded, as in nonplussed that Miscavige would include the CIA’s Remote Viewing program as a Scientology “win” especially since it may have directly or possibly indirectly set off a series of events that led to the FBI’s infamous “Chain Saw Massacre”.
I mean the reason for GO 1361 was to lift the veil of secrecy the Government had placed over their interest in Scientology under the tired old rubric of “National Security”.
Not to mention Miscavige’s utter disingenuousness regarding the possible reason for the success of the Remote Viewing Project which to large part was possibly based on Pre OT levels that are no longer available to the general Church of Scientology public.
The fact is that none of the “newer” OT levels are directed towards any enhancement of the abilities used in Remote Viewing.
Not to mention the fact that he’s bragging about the use of Scientology technology by the Intelligence Community as a weapon in the Cold War.
I remember when these SRI experiments were being conducted and the wins had nothing to do with Cold Warfare but were mainly about a changing paradigm of consciousness and a greater awareness of psychic phenomenon.
Sigh…..
How things change.
Watchful Navigator,
You have duplicated each aspect of my viewpoint, understanding and experience with OT phenomenon. The only time I ever noticed a significant loss in ability, apart from the games/responsibility aspects was when I was directly under suppression. Once the suppression was no longer in my environment, the abilities returned 100 percent.
I was asked to show proof once by my (at that time) 2D who was OT 4 and seemed to have a similar practical experience as yours. It was a simple request, he wanted me to make it rain. There were no weather patterns for rain in the area. I thought proving myself was a weird idea but agreed to do it. I really didn’t know how to do it but decided to BE rain. When I had fully done that, it started to rain. His response to me was, “I am 99 percent sure that you did that.” I decided to never prove myself again, not because I felt invalidated but because I realized that we were at very different reality levels and what I could do was out reality to him. I realized this is true for many people and I think to some degree it can create a feeling of invalidation to others who aren’t certain of their abilitites.
As far as your specific questions Jeff, my experiences may be disqualified as I have not completed an OT level but I am certain I have OT abilities. I believe that everyone has OT abilities even if they have not realized them yet, more inherent to the being rather than having attained an OT level.
By the way, great blog topic!
I’d like to add another aspect to the calls for “proof” and “verification” of “OT powers”, aside from the marketing aspect.
RJ has touched on this in one of his posts.
Personally I think that no-one in his right mind, who did have an OT “power” (siddhi) under reliable control, would submit to “proving” it’s existence and his ability to control it.
Think about it – would you? If you could actually “see another’s pictures” ie “read minds”, would you demonstrate this to the world at large?
I sure as hell wouldn’t! Why? It would be a sure ticket to have your government and it’s intelligence agencies seizing you and sequestering you for the rest of your life, at the same time as the intelligence agencies of many other countries were trying to terminate you because you were a threat to their “security”….
And that’s just for starters….
I’m sure the readers here can proceed to develop their own scenarios of the social, political, military, business implications of having any kind of demonstrated “powers” like mind reading.
Societies are largely built on secrecy, privacy,and the ability to NOT have others know what a person is thinking, feeling, planning, or has done. Many of these “powers” would violate that principle and any person known to have such”powers” would be considered a threat by many, perhaps a majority of others..
This has been explored in volume in speculative fiction for over 70 years, in very realistic ways.
Think about it. Would you marry someone you KNEW could read your mind and thus know everything about you? Would you hire such a person as an employee? Would you attempt to bargain or negotiate a contract with such a person? Would you let him anywhere near your “State secrets”?
This is all speculative, but if a being had super-powers but was too afraid to demonstrate them, I would not peg him at “total cause.”
>If you could actually “see another’s pictures” ie “read minds”, would you demonstrate this to the world at large?
Of course I would, especially if I believed in Hubbard’s vision of planetary salvation. What better way to prove that LRH was on to something than to show that he could deliver the abilities he promised? I mean, come on – don’t you want others to have the knowledge you have gained?
>Would you marry someone you KNEW could read your mind and thus know everything about you? Would you hire such a person as an employee?
Well, Scientologists believe OTs have these abilities, and Scientologists marry other Scientologists (and hire other Scientologists) all the time. I’ve heard people talking about the “OT abilities” of their spouses.
So it appears that in the real world, “knowing” this isn’t a barrier to marriage or employment.
>It would be a sure ticket to have your government and it’s intelligence agencies seizing you and sequestering you for the rest of your life
I think that only happens in the movies (or in Hubbard’s vision of the wog world). IRL, such a thing is difficult, at least in the US (Gitmo Bay notwithstanding).
Besides, if you had these abilities, you would know when the gov’t agents were coming and you could hide!
ML,
Caliwog
Valkov,
I agree with what you say from personal experience and from what Schnabel writes in his book ‘Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America’s Psychic Spies’ particularly of the incident of Pat and Ingo giving a fairly accurate description of NSA’s super secret Sugar Grove facility in the Blue Ridge mountains which had the immediate effect of the NSA and CIA unleashing their internal security hounds on the luckless officers of the OTS and DS&T responsible for the experiment.
Obviously it was close enough to a “hit” for security to ask them a few pointed questions about how they came across this intel.
Also Puthoff writes in his article about the CIA Initiating the Remote Viewing experiment that much research was directed towards devising counter measures against psychic snooping.
Personally I think one of the most effective has been to discredit or invalidate the ability or to character assassinate anyone who claims to have these abilities.
Actually according to Marchetti in his book “The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence” one of the least effective methods of “damage control” is to assassinate the leaker because this pretty much confirms the leak.
Instead they either ignore the leak or impugn the reputation of the leaker as in the case of Gary Webb the investigative reporter who wrote the ‘Dark Alliance’ series about CIA’s involvement in drug trafficking.
Also they may send someone in to as they say “muddy the waters” by including information that is to good to be true which is what I think was the intention behind the release of the famous MJ 12 documents that “proved” of the US Government’s involvement with extraterrestrials.
In other words they have their own methods of “dead agenting” the source many that have been copied by our “friends” at OSA who I believe still maintain ties to various Intelligence agencies and assets.
I mean what does it matter that the mother of a Scientologist is an “alcoholic” when she is questioning why her son is being held in virtual captivity and has been ordered to disconnect from her?
Or what does the indication that the critic may be a pedophile when exposing the now abundant crimes of the Scientology organization have to do with whether the fact that these crimes have been indeed committed.
Defense and prosecuting attorneys use this tactic all the time in order to discredit the witness’ testimony even though it has no bearing on the fact that the person witnessed the crime or give the defendant an alibi.
There is more than one way to “neutralize” any threat.
In fact KGB after they had shelved their more direct approach of assassinating dissidents through SMERSH were much more successful with what were known as “Active Measures” which included forging documents and spreading disinformation about a target.
In fact one of the major reasons why many of the American public think the CIA was directly involved in the assassination of Kennedy was because of one such campaign that was run out of the KGB directorate responsible for active measures.
Jeff, I said nothing about “beings at total cause”.
I think my post was clearly about what society’s response would be to a person or people who demonstrated having even one such ability, for example “mind reading” – the ability to see the metal pictures of others.
I even prefaced it by saying that what I was posting was an aside to any marketing considerations. It was about how would real people really respond to someone who had such an ability, whether you call it an”OT power”, “siddhi”,”paranormal ability” or whatever. Let’s not get hung up on exactly what to lable the phenomena. that won’t change my point at all.
And Caliwog, I think your generalization about “scientologists believe OTs have these powers” is a red herring. “Scientologists” may believe OTs have these powers, ortheymay say they do, but they also know no-one is actually achieving OT these days because they haven’t seen anyone who has achieved these kind of abilities probably since the 1970s, if they have ever seen them. At best they are paying lip service to the idea; it is just a pious catechism to them.
In any case, what you posted does not respond to my post at all; I asked if YOU, not some theoretical” scientologists”, would marry some one who could all the details read your mind, or hire someone to work for you who had that ability?
I’m really not up for totally abstract discussions without a basis in reality.
Jeff,
Another question that aligns with yours.
Is why an individual who had such powers would even be interested in demonstrating them to some biased “skeptic”?
Especially if such abilities gave the person an edge over average mortals.
I mean if you could prove beyond any doubt that you could read minds or predict the future it’s doubtful that they will be comping you at the best Casinos in Vegas.
In fact that is one way of ensuring a meet and greet with their security and a guided tour out the front door.
I knew an original OT VII who never mentioned any abilities he had and attributed his “winning streaks” which he had often to just being “lucky”.
Another one who was a professional card shark who had an uncanny ability of knowing when to fold and when to bet.
And another one who always knew what horse to bet on even if “Greased Lightning” was considered a long shot at 20/1.
In fact we were making good money betting on the ponies with this guy until the wet blankets in ethics hit the kill switch on our fun.
Re: the idea that if you had OT abilities, may not be safe/adviseable to show/use them
Dear Valkov (March 16, 2011 7:14 am) and Sidewinder (March 13, 2011 10:22 pm):
I totally dig it. Good point.
But, there is another angle to this: Let’s say that someone did have the “OT Ability” to see others’ pix (to whatever extent). Wouldn’t there be all sorts of ways to utilize this ability, without being selfish or destructive, and without garnering any undue attention, to one’s benefit?
It would be great to know what is really thought/planned by other persons across a business meeting table, a poker table, a police lineup, etc, etc. You could, very fairly, make millions from that, without giving away any unusual abilities. There are lots of examples you could see where it would work fine, safely, and discreetly.
And, if the above were true, would it not also be true that one would see a marked and consistent difference in the lifestyles of these . . . “OTs”? They would be at a much higher level of income, abundance, and survival. Right?
But, OTs are not, per observation, any different than the ordinary person. They have the same money problems, etc, that everyone else has. OTs are not, consistently, surviving any better than the average person. So, it doesn’t seem that these abilities (as Jeff described in the original article) exist, or can in any way manifest themselves in the actual world.
FL
>“Scientologists” …know no-one is actually achieving OT these days because they haven’t seen anyone who has achieved these kind of abilities probably since the 1970s, if they have ever seen them.
Who is generalizing now? 🙂 I know several Scientologists, younger than David Miscavige and in the Church since the DM era, who believe that OTs have these abilities. And still they marry. And hire.
>I asked if YOU, not some theoretical” scientologists”, would marry some one who could all the details read your mind
Here I thought you meant the rhetorical “you.” (And by the way my Scientologists aren’t theoretical, they are actual people. Whether one calls DM-era Sns “Scientologists” is, I understand, open for debate.)
Anyway – sure, why not? I have no secrets from my wife, and she seems to know what I’m thinking anyway.
Regardless, I think you and RJ are avoiding the subject. Phase 3, as outlined above.
If they can’t be shown, then can’t be shown. Tell us to “take it on faith” like members of other religions say about God. But to answer with “Showing our powers would only cause trouble” is just avoiding the question.
LRH said going clear improves your eyesight. Should clears wear glasses with non-prescription lenses, so as to avoid riots by opticians, or being kidnapped on the street to have their eyes dissected?
ML, CW
> had the immediate effect of the NSA and CIA unleashing their internal security hounds on the luckless officers of the OTS and DS&T responsible for the experiment.
Not only that, they got blacklisted by every casino in Las Vegas.
ML, CW
“Not only that, they got blacklisted by every casino in Las Vegas.”
🙂
CW, the “people without glasses” scenario would be a little more analogous if everyone in the world was fitted with glasses that made things murky at an early age and “everybody knew” that one could not see without glasses. Then a few adults started showing up without glasses and seeing perfectly well.
CW wrote:
“Well, Scientologists believe OTs have these abilities, and Scientologists marry other Scientologists (and hire other Scientologists) all the time. I’ve heard people talking about the “OT abilities” of their spouses.
So it appears that in the real world, “knowing” this isn’t a barrier to marriage or employment.”
So now you consider Scientologists to be living in “the real world’? Ha ha ha. I thought they were living in a rather closed and secretive cult?
I’m talking about the other real world, the one outside of Scientology.
RJ, thanks for those references. I wish I had time to read up more on those – but there just aren’t enough hours in a day!
That bit about “discrediting” and “character assassinating” rather than out right killing someone, points to another view of why some are so determined to do both to Hubbard’s name. He is already dead, but his legacy is still around…. and I suppose to some, it must not be seen as having any plus value…..
Valkov,
Killing someone may have an immediate effect but it is no way permanent since you can’t kill an idea whereas Character assassination has a more lasting effect per se that is until it is found to be based predominantly on disinformation and black propaganda.
CW posted,
“Besides, if you had these abilities, you would know when the gov’t agents were coming and you could hide!”
Well CW, how do you know this is not exactly what is happening? “Move along now, gov’t agents, there’s nothing to see here…..”
On the other hand, some of the gov’t agents could have OT abilities of their own which they could use to counter the OT abilities of the people they are looking for…..
It has been thought that the reason the US gov’t was interested in OT abilities was they thought the Soviets were researching the area…
C’mon, Valkov. Lots of people here are full of anecdotal evidence that OT abilities exist and come from Scientology. They are talking about things they have seen. But when I or someone else brings up a demonstration of these abilities, it’s “Oh, no, the gov’t will come after us,” or “why scare people” or (my favorite, from Marty) “I will only show them to people who believe in them.”
If there was ANYONE here who could actually demonstrate the OT abilities as promised by LRH – the ability to manipulate matter, energy, space and/or time without using a body – do you think anyone would hesitate to do it and prove us wrong?
I’m trying not to repeat myself as per Jeff’s request. But I’ll say again: Put up or shut up. I’d like to see someone demonstrate these abilities. If that happens, then we’ll deal with whether they came from Scientology.
For starters, I would like to see anyone here who can do “remote viewing” tell me my middle name.
ML,
Caliwog
Great article Jeff,
I don’t think you are the odd man out, but I do think this is an evolution in ability/awareness.
Like you, I have had some interesting phenomena. I did at one time repeatedly have various individuals call on the phone. The 1st time I thought it was coincidence, so I tried it a number of times and lo & behold, I found it easy to do. This I would attribute to my auditing.
Could I repeat it now? I don’t know … haven’t tried – really do not feel the need for it. If I want to talk to someone, I call 🙂
There are a few other interesting times with intention, etc., but it is not something I really think about.
Are the abilities there to regain? I think they are. When? … when I get there.
As I said, to me the whole thing is an evolution … when you get it, you get it.
I don’t think that having 2 OT VIII’s side by side is something you can compare or gauge. I frankly never agreed that there should be specific EPs laid out on whole levels … there is just too much variance.
One gets an ability or awareness when HE gets it. To compare who has what, where … can act as inval and puts a hidden standard there that some may not attain at that point on their path.
Thanks for the article … see you Saturday! 🙂
Jeff,
Interesting that you’ve defined ability as something learned. Is “knowing” an ability? If so, by your definition, how does one move from not knowing to knowing? How does one learn to know? Can one learn without knowing? Ah, the conundrum of knowing as ability.
As the physical universe has certain laws which pertain to its operation, is it possible that there are certain laws which apply to knowing and consciousness? Is knowing merely an aspect of the physical universe, part of some accidental process concomitant with the fortuitous and spontaneous generation of bodies? Is that which is capable of knowing part of the physical universe?
And if that which is capable of knowing is not part of the physical universe, then one could posit that this separate thing might operate according to its own laws, perhaps similar to those of matter, energy, space and time. This thing that knows might have its own matter, energy, space and time.
And if this thing could create its own matter, energy, space and time; if this thing could be cause over the laws by which it operated, then I would find that to be a desirable aspiration.
I tell my kids that imagination is perhaps the greatest ability they have. Everything they see around them is the result of imagination, be it buildings, desks, jacks, cars, roads, pools, I-tunes. Even the creation of forms in organisms stems from the imagination of whatever designed, formulated and created them.
So, is imagination only an ability because it is learned? If your imagination soars one day and thuds the next, do you not have imagination as an ability? After all, imagination suffers from impermanence and inconsistency?
Say you come up to the best joke writer the world has ever known and demand he invent right there a new, never-been-heard-before-funniest joke ever! Do you think he could? Yet, daily he comes up with amusing ideas.
I think Hubbard greatly exaggerated the results that could be obtained through processing. And I think that what he did develop was seldom applied realistically so the actual results often got lost in expectation and justification. It was all so unreal.
However, as an epistemology, as a method of learning how to know and think, Dianetics and Scientology added a great deal to the pot. And ultimately, Dianetics and Scientology both had the same purpose: learning to know and think without “held down sevens.”
And “knowing” and “thinking” way up there at some level includes causation and creation. For me, the simple act of lifting my hand in front of my face brings a sense of wonder and marvel at how that hand came into being, and how we are able to translate thought into the movement of that hand. How is this thing that is mostly space and force made to appear solid? How is life able to move these forces, manipulate and rearrange and control these forces to bring about change?
I wonder of the emphasis here. As an example, let’s take reading minds. Minds are very, very complex things. I’m constantly thinking at a thousand miles an hour along multiple vectors. And I don’t think that’s unusual. So, you set up this test, where you are going to “pick the card” that I’m concentrating on. And you keep getting images of someone shoving a bowling pin up a rabbit’s ass, but you just can’t get the card. I don’t want you to know about all the times I wanted to and proceeded to shove bowling pins up a rabbit’s ass, so I block you off. And I don’t even want to know I think such ridiculous thoughts, so I block me off. But,… such is thought.
Even though I may be “concentrating” on the ace of spades, human “concentration” tends to represent a very slight fraction of all thought occurring at that moment by me or anyone else in the vicinity. My ace of spades is accompanied by all the card games I’ve ever played, all the exposure to cards I’ve ever had. And that doesn’t even include all the offshoots connected to those card games, such as all the times I got drunk or stared at the tits of the girl sitting across the table or ate pizza or, or, or, or. Strings of ideas branching out with so much complexity that a forest of tree branches seems simple by comparison.
Maybe you picked out the ace of spades that I was “focusing” on–along with thirty other cards that flitted through my thoughts, each garnering as many attention units as my “focused” ace of spades. And that doesn’t even count all the cards your memory has, uh, “brought to the table.”
Thing is, we are probably all continuously reading and denying and blocking thoughts from others. My wife and I do it all the time.
Just as we can read our own minds, but don’t have a friggin clue what we’re really thinking or knowing as precisely as we would like, we suddenly expect this leap in ability to pick out the exact thought another might be holding at that moment. To do so would be comparable to hitting a flitting fly at a thousand yards with a sling shot. That’s just the reality of reading minds as they exist on this planet at this time.
Solving any problem requires some realistic assessment of all factors involved and how those factors interact. How much/how oftens compared to other how much/how oftens. And a lot of both successes and failures in “OT abilities” stem from an unrealistic assessment of all factors involved.
Not that I’m trying to claim that the Church of Scientology was delivering what it promised. It wasn’t. And it couldn’t. Too many lies and exaggerations and attempts to control for “the greatest good” rather than an honest attempt to improve the study of knowing through thought.
But, I’ve got to go feed the cats and hug my wife (who just woke up and walked down stairs.) Ah! A good hug! Now that’s some realistic knowingness. That’s enough godhood for me.
(ps: if I were really OT, I wouldn’t need Turbotax. I could just postulate all the money in the world with no taxes for me. My that sounds good. I think I’ll write up a success story about how I made all the money in the world and didn’t have to pay a penny of tax.)
As always, Michael, you’ve made me do some mental chin-ups with your thoughts. Thanks for this contribution (and I hate chin-ups but love to be mentally challenged). (Oh, great, I just gave everybody a nice straight line with that one…).
lunamoth
Outstanding!
Love your posts! Great thing that imagination! You had me in stitches on the reading minds bit and I don’t think I will be able to sleep tonight without thinking of rabbits a hundred or so times.
You have such a great ability to express yourself in writing and play the piano so well. Can I ask? What is your training levle?
I think you could be a poster boy for reasons to get trained!
Karen B,
Poster boy? I assume you mean poster boy for why training would be valuable as in: “Would you like to grow up to be this thug? Of course not! Get trained. Learn to shave and stay out of jail.”
As for official training, when I was dabbling in Scientology, I trained up through Class 5, way back in the early seventies. I saw all these problems being discussed today brewing way back then, so put my time and money elsewhere. Came back for less than a year around 1980 while disillusioned with the work world; joined the Sea Org to supervise the FEBC, but could never get fitness board certified even though they kept my ass in Clearwater for 9 months or so because I was productive and they wanted to find a loop hole. (Never missed a day off for down stats.)
I thank my lucky stars for being such a misfit. (Think the character played by Toshiro Mifune in Seven Samurai.) This was about the time that one DM was falling and another DM was ascending. I remember him spitting in someone’s face way back then. I would have spent my career in the RPF because I don’t play well with others and I don’t take orders very well and I don’t agree just to be agreeable.
But, thank you for the compliment. If you asked a rabbit, I probably don’t deserve it.
Michael
this was very refreshing to read, thanks
Hi Jeff
Thank you so much for writing this post. I agree with you 150%. I have asked OT’s inside and outside to show me their “OT Abilities” and in their moment to shine they failed or gave me some lame example of something they had happen. I have had some OT’s that did agree with you. They are still waiting for their OT Abilities as well.
I am from Missouri so “Show Me”
Jim Little
Jeff, if one of the OT abilities is to cut through the fog and expose the heart of the topic at hand, then you have it in spades. But I suspect you brought that ability with you into Scientology.
Like you, and just about everyone I’ve talked to on this subject, I’ve experienced a few clairvoyant and other psychic phenomena in my life, both before and after doing Bridge, up through OT IV. In fact, it was an occasion of being out of the body with full perception that I credit with getting me into Scientology, because it seemed to explain what I had experienced. These instances were not under my control, then or now, and are still as rare as they ever were.
Of course, there was nothing about the OT levels I’ve done that I would expect to directly increase psychic abilities anyway, and I understand that the higher levels are just variations on the same theme. If I had to name the essence of what I’ve gained from the OT levels, I would call it a calm stability, and I’ve noticed that same quality in others at that point on the Bridge. Certainly welcome, but hardly paranormal.
I’ve heard that the original upper levels actually did drill paranormal abilities, but that these were replaced. Any of you old-timers have first-hand data on that?
I did the old OT7–the bit in-between old 3 and 3X.
Intention.
Still loads of fun and there’s certainly something there but I aint knockin any cans off the fence posts.
Probably sh*t my pants if I did!
you’re funny
Much as I agree that existing OTs are as PTS as all get out, I do have to say that in my reality the most basic measuring stick of OT is one’s ability to cause things, to make things go right. The EP of OT III is not “ability to see through walls” or ability to fly to the moon or ability to read minds. It is freedom from overwhelm. I personally I have noticed that when you see an OT III rolling through life the guy has to be hit with a mac truck before you even get a flinch. Screw seeing through walls, thats an ability gained that 99.9999% of the people in the world would give anything for. Now of course DM has worked out a handling for this and has gotten thousands of OTs into a state of permanent overwhelm.So one could say that it isn’t an ability. But back in the day, before DM’s time, I saw it, felt it and knew it was true- freedom from overwhem. Also if you go right back to the very early OT 7 completions, the first one’s off the line back in 83-84, long before anyone dreamed of 6 month sec checking or all the rest of the squirreling, these people were incredible. Most of them were older, long term Scientologists, well trained, well audited- they created a huge sensation in the Scientology world because they actually did have incredible abilities and they could turn them on and off and demonstrate them and even do parlor tricks. But they were something of a fleeting breed. It was like a huge spike of activity and excitement that just crashed and disappeared after the release of “OT 8”, the first OT level – written and edited by DM. OT 8 killed it. Suddenly all the wild success stories disappeared. And not to say that every completion was like that,I know of several “pretenders” who slipped through. But generally it was pretty damn wild. After DM’s OT 8 release the subject of OT just took a nose dive of unbelievable proportions. So its fair enough to be bitter. But this planet, for just a few brief years, did have real OTs. It could have them again. Any that did really complete at that time were either quite old and have since moved on, or have been put through, OT 8, then OT 8, the ot 8, then more ot 7, then more ot 7, then FPRD and then ot 7 again, then put back on dianetics for more NED – I bet those who have not succumbed to some illness have trouble tying their shoelaces.
@Free and Clear
>I do have to say that in my reality the most basic measuring stick of OT is one’s ability to cause things, to make things go right.
With all due respect, F&C, that’s not what Hubbard promised. He specifically said, in writing, that OTs could do a lot more than that.
I know/know of a lot of people who do have the abilities you cited and have never read a word of LRH.
You’re illustrating what I see as one of the biggest elements in the Scam of Scientology: People credit positive elements in their life to the Tech. And they assign “softer” goals to OT that are easier to achieve. Which, when you think about it, is squirreling.
LRH tried to make wogs sound like they were totally lost and incompetent. I think a lot of Scns were feeling lost/looking for answers when they joined. Scn preys on that. But the wog world is nowhere near as incompetent as Data Srs 1 makes us sound.
If what you want is serenity, ability to be cause, and to make things go right, there are cheaper/easier ways to accomplish this than Scientology.
What you stated are not OT abilities, they are abilities that lots of people have. As for the actual OT abilities, Jeff is correct, you don’t get them from Scientology.
ML,
Caliwog
Free and Clear
I was very much involved in scientology back in the years you quote as producing those OT VIII”s with real OT abilities, and I knew several of these people personally but am at a loss as to what “huge” abilities you’re talking about, and I certainly never saw those “parlor tricks, either.” Could you please be more specific?
CW wrote:
“As for the actual OT abilities, Jeff is correct, you don’t get them from Scientology.”
Well, I read Jeff’s post, and I didn’t see where he said this. He said he didn’t get those abilities from his OT levels, and never met anyone who did.
You then drew the global conclusion “Jeff is correct, you don’t get them from Scientology”. Jeff was relating his own experience, not stating it as a global conclusion.
I however knew a guy in 1972 who could create illusions for others and demonstrated the ability to control mest objects without handling them manually, and he attributed his abilities to having done the original OT levels as well as having studied the philosophy. He would be the first to say he did not have “total control” over the mest universe, but he could do what he did at will.
See latest post on anecdotal fallacies – applies to my anecdotes as well as anyone else’s.
Hi All – This is perhaps my biggest question in and around Scientology!! It feels like the BIG lie and it seems like it’s the most covered up one.
A few weeks/months back I found a great article describing OT and the “OT abilities” and what they originally were vs what corporate Scn marketing/advertising/PR stunts developed them “into”. It was a phenomenal article. I will have to put a lot of attention on it to remember where I read this, but I will find it and bring it back here. It really solved the mystery for me, made so much sense and answered why you don’t have OTs who do all things you described above.
Now, on to another story – who remembers Mitch Televi?? I remember early 90’s he was a top FSM who came to org regularly and talked about his OT abilities. I was there when he told us about a couple of things he’d done (told to us in a very nonchalant way) how he had to take a PC in session and the folder admin had just left for lunch. He just “got” the folder from the locked folder closet and took the PC in session. When the gal come back from lunch and met Mitch in the hallway coming out of session, he said she went white and looked like she was going to faint when she realized what he had done. He described an incident where he was called upon (because of his abilites) to get a car unlocked when someone had locked the keys in it. He says he just went and got the keys. Anyone remember he used to tell these stories all the time. Then, one event he came in and said he was no longer allowed to do his OT things anymore as he was shown the reference on “Two Rules for Happy Living” and he was creating effect that others could not easily experience. I wonder if he really had all these abilities. Does anyone know more about this guy or what he did or didn’t really do? Who knows, he could have been handled in ethics on his LYING and he just said he was told to stop doing these things……
Ok, that’s it for now, I’m off to find that article I was telling you about.
Love your posts! One day, in July this year, I’m going to shake your hand!!
Hi Meshell,
Yes, I remember Mitch Televi. The last time I saw him at an org event, he told the audience that he had “microscopic vision”: he could see inside the molecular structure of plants and objects and see them at that level. At that same event, Mitch also claimed he could see miles ahead while in traffic and predict what would happen (and thus prevent accidents). Of course, Mitch had no real way of demonstrating any of these abilities. And: all of these abilities “proved themselves”. (“I drove to the org today and did not have any accidents. See!?”)
I wonder if any of these “Pro FSMs” had any feelings of remorse when public borrowed huge sums and spent years on services, and the “microscopic vision” and “remote traffic viewing” never happened. The Pro FSMs never seemed to have any conscience about that.
FL
You’re asking for proof?! Blasphemy! Just because Scientology shares its first five letters with “science” and Dianetics calls itself “the science of the mind” do you really think it’s fair to apply scientific standards to them?! You do? Damn, let’s make this thing a religion then!
One of the first things we all read in Scientology “what’s true is what’s true for you” is anti-scientific. This “rule” uses the guise of “anti-dogmatism” to open the door to superstition and make up for the low scientific standards of LRH’s research. Science dictates that what is true is that which is proven to be true. If LRH had played by those rules, he would have had a lot less to write about.
Science has put men on the moon,
You are not the odd man out, Jeff. Your observations are absolutely spot on. I wish you were wrong, though. I wanted these OT abilities so bad back then.
I’m commenting from my phone and accidentally published that last comment without finishing.
Anyway, I was going to say that since scientology’s founding in the 50’s science has put men on the moon and put the world into communication via smartphones like the one I’m on and blogs such as this one (as well as much more). In the meantime Scientology has denied scientific standards and has very little to show for itself besides broken families and big buildings. In the war between superstition and science, scientology chose to side with superstition and become a pseudo-science. For this reason, Scientology is a step backwards to the mentality and morality of the Middle Ages. You need look no further than the “witch hunts” (SP Declares) and “demonic exorcisms” (OT levels).
Science is a wonderful thing and produces thrilling and predictable results, but science also falls far short in attempting to explain life. Science may help us build a Corvette, but doesn’t even begin to answer who we are, why we are, how we are.
It may just be a matter of values. What is more important: better gadgets or improved knowledge?
Science still flounders with the question of how we know. Science is driven by rigid standards that serve as thought stoppers, such as the problem of measurement and perception. We claim that science provides perceptible and measurable results. But what do we use to measure those results? How do you measure something that is not physical? How do you measure those forces that bond subatomic particles? How doe you even perceive those forces?
Science makes it possible for me to have clean clothes and movies on demand. Smelling good and being entertained are certainly important. But there are more important experiences in my opinion. Like a Tibetan Monk, I could easily relinquish all the scientific gains and live a life of meaning and joy.
So, using the impressive results of science as a measure of philosophy or religion becomes disingenuous. Science is actually quite a failure in those fields. Science can measure neither.
Which moves us to answer why philosophy and religion are such pains in the ass: and that is answered by fixed ideas and the obsession to be right. “My answers are right, which makes yours wrong.” More thought stoppers.
Knowing is dynamic and is senior to what is known. When a datum, when a “known” becomes more important than the capacity to know you have trouble. The “Knower” must always be free to cast aside any “known.”
And that is where Scientology went astray. The “Knowns” became more important than the “Knowers.” The “Knowns” of Scientology began to deny the “Knowers” the right to inspect or reject what was said. We are right and any who disagree are wrong.
But, in my experience, two opposite sides of an argument can be equally “right.” You get in the strata of opinion and values, who’s to say that one opinion is more right than another? Opinion isn’t truth. It’s just an opinion.
But opinion serves as a standard for choices. Opinion serves as a dictating datum. And there’s nothing especially wrong with that as long as you always maintain the ability and right to change your opinion any time you choose. As long as you recognize that you are operating on opinion rather than fact.
But the point here is that despite the impressive record, science operates according to dictates based in opinion. These opinions have lead to workable solutions, but they are still opinions.
Of course, you could argue that science has nothing to do with opinion, but that fails to trace back the philosophy that formulated science and the standards demanded in science.
You can also argue how the God of (fill in the blank) is not opinion but fact with even more certainty than provided by any scientist. Those who follow a religion are almost always more fixated on the “truth” of their ideas, whereas scientists (bless their souls) are sometimes willing to change a “truth” when new data comes in.
“Certainty” is one of those things that science can’t really explain with hard fact–just with more opinions and best guesses.
At least, that’s my opinion.
Michael
Science indeed does not operate on “certainty” but probability values. It may get to 99,99% certainty, but in the end never to 100%. You may check the law of gravity in thousands of experiments, but not everywhere all the time all over the universe.
Science knows about this limitation and someone trying to say otherwise is not a scientist. It also accepts that it does not have all the answers to the questions that preoccupies alot of people.
This is the gap that religions, spiritual groups and yes, cults fill. Some people may find fulfillment in this quest, but it bears the danger that this void is filled with empty promises. Look at Scientology, which is the best example. This is why logical thinking should not be abandoned when venturing into the realm of spirituality. You get my meaning? There’s a difference between open-mindedness, and plain gullibility. Or am I just too young that these questions “who am i?” and “what purpose am i here for” is not a cause for sleepless nights for me?
Certainty is not a fact or a thing, it’s a feeling, or a state of mind. I can achieve it by becoming convinced that something is true. I can protect that certainty by never telling anyone what I have decided is true (so they can’t disagree with me or disprove my truth or belittle me for it), and by never exposing myself to dissenting, outside viewpoints.
Sound familiar?
This tug of war between science and religion goes back at least to the ancient Greeks and probably much further. The late science writer Steven Jay Gould observed that the debate produced a lot of heat and very little light and decided to weigh in. He coined the term “magesterium” to define a self-contained body of knowledge, and concluded that trying to evaluate one magesterium by the rules of another was a pointless exercise.
Specifically in the case of science and religion, they had so little in common with each other that he added to the definition and referred to them as “non-over-lapping magesteria”. It doesn’t seem to have resolved anything for most people. The scientists dismissed it out of hand even though Gould was one of their own, and the religious scholars probably weren’t aware of it at all.
Hubbard wasn’t the first and won’t be the last to try to cobble together these two “magesteria”, but it’s still a long way from being a smooth fit. IMHO.
As Dr. Faust mentioned, science doesn’t really trade in certainty. What you are calling “truths” are just the best current theory.
However, they achieve this status by a reasonably opinion-free process in that observable reality has not contradicted them and you can rely on them to do real-world things (build things, make predictions, etc.)
Furthermore, when things are superseded, they are refined rather than entirely scrapped. Newtonian physics is “wrong” but it is still a good enough approximation for most practical purposes.
You can have an opinion on whether a scientific theory is “true” or not but you are on shaky ground if you want to opine that something demonstrably consistent with observable reality is actually not.
I respect religions that are on good terms with observable reality. Believe God causes us to evolve as we did and injected the soul at some stage? Good for you. Believe we were created in our present form on 23 October 4004 BCE? You do realize science brought you the internet.
A lot of Hubbard’s theories are not explicitly contradicted by science. But Hubbard constantly pretends that his theories are not only scientific but proven. This means that either he doesn’t understand science at all or he does and is making up the “scientific” claims to sell the tech.
Before “wogs” can take Scientology seriously, Scientologists need to commit Hubbard’s ideas to either the scientific camp, which means encouraging “brain-dead skeptics” to prod them, or to the religious/philosophical camp, which means they may provide a useful way of looking at the world but have no claims of being (or need to be) demonstrably true.
Scientologists could even put some ideas in each camp.
Some ideas people are just over-enthusiastic about their own ideas and I’m being generous I could put Hubbard in that category.
I worked for a small company for a while whose founder was a great ideas person. However, he would frequently equate, “I have a general idea on how this could be done” with “this is easy to actually build”. He needed other people to look critically at his ideas and explore how workable they were.
@onceupon Why do Scientologists have this infatuation with “certainty” and “knowing”? These traits are completely at odds with progress and development. I prefer the Socratic philosophies that question everything and hold that “the only thing we can be certain of is what we don’t know”. That leaves the mind open to progress and development.
Scientific method requires a balance of both open-mindedness and skepticism of new information AND existing information. It isn’t perfect but so far it’s the best thing mankind has got.
From Wikipedia: “Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge” There’s no certainty or “knowing” involved.
At this point in human history, science may not be able to give all the answers to the spiritual and emotional aspects of life but psychology and psychiatry (cue the haters) have made leaps and bounds in that direction over the last few decades while Scientology is stuck with 1950’s “truth” which it is “certain” about despite scientific evidence to the contrary.
I would rather be certain of nothing and keep discovering the marvels of life than be “certain” of a cognition just so I can feel confident and feel the “warm and fuzzies”!
@Faust Excellent point! “am I just too young that these questions “who am i?” and “what purpose am i here for” is not a cause for sleepless nights for me?” I feel the same way…
I had some comments on that subject in an earlier post.
Jason,
After a little thought, and I do little thinking, I notice how easily discussions tend to degenerate into generalities. Me included. “Science” is really a generality. Science covers a very broad spectrum, some of it effective, some of it silly. Scientists do not all agree about their theories and results. Some are as you describe open to awe and discovery, some are fixated with absolute certainty on their data and conclusions. The rigors of scientific method are merely a tool, to be used honestly or not. Many discoveries turn out to based in vested interests: did you know that smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer–there’s “research” to substantiate this. Did you know that some Christian scientists can prove that Earth is only 10,000 years old?
So, in reference to science, we have to understand what science, what scientist, what discovery.
And a lot of the wonders of science come from technicians and craftsmen and geeks who apply the discoveries rather than from the scientists themselves. Even businessmen should get some credit. The internet is more a result of techno-geeks than so-called scientists. Application requires vision and imagination.
Many scientific “discoveries” are the result of unintended accidents. The scientist publishes his “discovery” (result of an accident) and someone with great imagination (often not a scientist) transforms that information into something useful and practical.
Scientific method is a philosophical approach to acquiring data. It’s not a bad approach. It produces good results. But it falls short too often. As an example critical to us is the tendency to attribute life to only the physical universe, and to attribute thought only to the brain, and to dismiss the possibility of life on other planets and to dismiss the idea of multiple lifetimes.
But, science is a broad field with many disparate elements, and some scientists (a minority) are researching past life phenomena and psychic phenomena and the aspects of the soul.
As for the question about Scientologists being infatuated with “certainty” and “knowing”, I just have to smile. “Infatuated?” Wow. A virtual love affair. Why are Christians infatuated with God? Why are scientists infatuated with “facts?” Why are skeptics infatuated with proving they’re willing to not know?
It sort of reminds me of someone who’s justifying his unwillingness to commit to a relationship–what if he’s picked the wrong woman? What if someone better comes along? If science is the model, you have a theory, commit to your results but maintain a willingness to change your mind as new data enters. (not that all scientists do this.)
Like most human conditions, “skepticism” covers a broad scale of attitude including an unwillingness to believe anything, including a willingness to test any idea and commit to a result.
I don’t make the mistake of defining “certainty” as fixation. “Certainty” also covers a broad scale of definition and experience. I know that anytime one has sacred cows, the certainty tends toward fixation. When you have sacred cows in a religion (including science) you’re going to defend those sacred cows with all you’ve got. Grrrrrrrr! How dare you question my sacred cows? How dare you question their TRUTH? Grrrrrrrr.
Indignation over someone wanting to know and be confident in what they know doesn’t strike me as admirable or healthy.
As for knowing, I’d rather know than not. I’d rather know how to get to the store than not. I’d rather know how to make a roast than not–it’s expensive ruining food. I’d rather know how to earn money than not. I’d rather know how to control my destiny than not. I’d rather know how to fix the damned computer when it starts acting strangely. I’d rather know how to calm the storm when my wife and I get into an argument. On and on and on. Knowing is good.
Jeff,
I don’t always have time to read all the blogs, so I missed that post you reference. Could you give me a clue so I don’t have to go back and read them all? I’m just lazy.
The link is in my comment.
@onceuponatime…. I also want to clarify I’m not pitting science against religion. I’m pitting science against pseudoscience and Scientology is a pseudoscience. It presents its “truth” as if it’s scientifically proven yet doesn’t warrant the skeptical inquiry and experimentation of real science.
You’re right about this: Science can’t compete in religious fields (yet?) and religion can’t compete in scientific fields. Pseudoscience meddles in both and therefore insults and degrades both.
@jeff That’s a great post especially this: “The difficulty arises when one’s inner spiritual “knowingness,” one’s beliefs, is confused with actual real-world knowledge.” In other words, keep pseudoscience out of both science and religion.
@Once
>did you know that smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer–there’s “research” to substantiate this.
I’ve heard this. In fact, I’ve heard from a reliable source that *not* smoking will cause cancer:
http://www.xenu.net/archive/multimedia.html#smoking
ML, CW
Caliwog,
Yes, and I’ve got the hair on my palms to prove it. Not smoking does cause cancer.
Michael
@Once You’re right! Science is far from perfect… it just happens to be the best we can do! There are wacky Scientists on the fringes trying to prove hair-brained ideas like the earth is only 10,000 years old or that we live past lives. They might be laughed at by the mainstream but they are part of scientific progress because science has learned that every once in a while one of the hair-brained guys is right! This isn’t a short-coming of science. That’s part of the open-mindedness and skepticism that is part of the scientific method. On the other hand, Scientology (or most pseudosciences) doesn’t permit open-mindedness or skepticism. Read KSW and PTS tech. These attitudes are explicitly prohibited which has kept Scientology in the 1950’s (if it was ever that advanced).
Obviously we agree with each other that knowing something is better than being ignorant. Science is fueled by this thirst for knowledge. I think the confusion you and I have stems from different definitions and Scientology’s’ bastardization of the word “knowing”. When I speak of “knowing” in a negative sense, I am specifically referring to Scientologists’ desire to “know” with “no doubts or reservations”. Getting back to the subject of the blog post, Scientologists use those words to attest to each OT level despite having no proof of the OT abilities they are attesting to. In this case, I would rather be aware of my ignorance and inabilities than “know” and be “certain” about abilities that don’t exist.
Rather than generalize, let’s keep this discussion in the context of the blog post which is about OT abilities. If I finished OT VIII and walked up to 50 Scientologists saying “I am cause over the physical universe”, the majority of them would believe me and congratulate me. If I walked up to 50 scientists and said the same thing, they would all laugh or demand proof. If you see the problem with the Scientologists’ gullibility here, then you agree with me that SCIENCE>PSEUDOSCIENCE. That’s my only point.
You seem like a rational person since you want to know how to cook a steak and make money (two very important things in life). But do you really want to be certain of being able to do these things without actually doing them consistently? I would rather take the scientific approach to both of these activities any day (taste-testing my steak on friends and family until I made the perfect steak or managing my business based on the proper metrics to get stably profitable).
The difference between cooking a steak and OT abilities is that I know a good steak is possible (go to Bern’s Steakhouse in Tampa for proof). When it comes to OT abilities, I certainly don’t want to waste my time trying to levitate if I’ve seen no proof it’s even possible. If you want to spend your life trying to do Jedi mind tricks we’ve seen only in the movies, I congratulate you for walking to the beat of your own drum. Let me know how that goes.
“I know that I know nothing” -Socrates. I might be young and full of myself, but I won’t pretend to know any more than Socrates did.
Once Upon A Time
What it comes down to is that “Science” is MEST organized into a usable configuration by “life”. Science is created and animated and used by “life” to understand, create, learn about, and control it’s world. To discuss “science” we are discussing the activities and desires of theta. “Science, like a car without a driver, is ultimately “junk”
Science, like Philosophy,and perhaps even Religion, is the result of beings on a quest for knowledge, understanding and control of the MEST and spiritual universe. Your OWN, actually. I feel that what you “bring to the table” and what you”take away with you” are always, ultimately part of the bigger quest to create optimum survival across the Dynamics, YOURS. (Your Dynamics, of course, incorporate everybody else’s dynamics, by definition.)
The “wonders of Science” are a reflection of the “wonders “of the creativity of Theta.
When you look at science you are looking at this “airy fairy” thing called “OT ability.” One should be cautious about miss assigning cause here.
It becomes apparent to me that, given postulated truth that a being is senior to MEST, in that it is his creation, then all “gain” in ability by a being is, generally “negative gain” in that the being is rehabilitating his inherent abilities, rather than acquiring new ones.
So, yes, we have the observable fact that beings at all levels have demonstrable “abilities” that may fall into the category of OT abilities. They may experience phenomena that could be considered “OT” phenomena. (because they are!) I consider “OT” abilities as a gradient scale, ranging from vague observation to anything you could conceive of.
Of course I have redefined the terms here, and it does not answer the question put forth by Jeff.
Where I go on this one is that perhaps we are looking at “potential” here. One may no longer have an “inability” but that does not necessarily give him an “ability”. What he has is “potential”. LRH said: “…your potentialities are a great deal better than anyone ever permitted you to believe”. (Self Analysis”)
Processing is designed, for the most part, to get rid of the stops and barriers, and misunderstandings, and miss assignments of cause, that prevent a being from reaching his “full POTENTIAL”. Some things we have not done for so many millennia that we simply may have forgotten how, or maybe never knew.
Do “OT” abilities exist, as defined by Jeff (abilities created by Scientology processes)? I do not know, as I have received no OT levels myself. Do I have “OT” abilities, as defined by myself, certainly. Did Scientology processing “create” them? NO. Scientology processing has opened the doors, in many cases, but I am the one who ultimately creates MY universe and the universe I experience.
Can I knock hats off at twenty paces? Not yet, but I am working on it.
WW
Jason,
Interesting that you bring up Socrates and his statement (as quoted by you) “I know that I know nothing.” That’s an easy statement to misconstrue when taken out of context. Obviously, he didn’t mean that literally, but he did mean that when you ask a person a question, you should listen to the answer, when you study something you shouldn’t let preconceived ideas get in your way.
His method of teaching, as I’m sure you know, consisted of asking questions to guide the student to understanding. He knew this. He knew a lot of things and he knew that he did. You can’t understand something unless you admit to some knowledge. The approach was to draw the answers and truth from the student, making the student cause and source of the understanding.
Which makes for a very effective education. You don’t want to feed the student answers, you want to develop the student’s ability to think and reason.
Scientology auditing parallels Socratic method in many ways. It’s based on questions and answers leading to a moment of increased understanding. The auditor (meaning a person who listens) does not feed the person answers.
The guy’s having trouble with communication, so the auditor finds who he especially had trouble communicating with in life. Aunt Maggie is the worst. “If you could talk to Aunt Maggie, what would you talk about?” And the guy thinks it over, hems and haws, protests that he would never be able to talk to Aunt Maggie about any God Damned Thing! So, the auditor continues to ask, and the guy finally answers, “Goldfish, she loved goldfish. Loved fucking goldfish more than me, that’s for damned sure!”
So, the auditor asks, “Cool, now if you were talking to Aunt Maggie about goldfish, what would you say exactly?” The auditor doesn’t tell him what to say. He just asks. Much like Socrates. Searching for understanding.
After a while, the person starts coming up with more and more subjects that he could talk to Aunt Maggie about and how he could communicate with her and suddenly he says, “Hmmmm, you know, I was always so afraid of Aunt Maggie, never really looked on her as being a person with problems of her own. I ought to give her a call. She had a hard life, but loved me to death–just never knew how to express it. She was more afraid of me than I was of her. She wanted me to be successful and thought being harsh would make me strong enough to face hardship. Yeah, (smiling) I guess I’ll give her a call.”
And, like the Socratic Method, auditing was designed to lead a person to increased understanding of himself, his family, those around him, life and the universe.
And just understanding yourself as a human being without all the OT stuff would have been a pretty neat accomplishment.
But, way back in 1950 auditing started to reveal the spiritual side of the individuals who were coming to understand their lives. So, what are you going to do as an auditor, say, “Look buddy, these so-called memories of laying on a stump after the battle of Gettysburg are just a bunch of crap imagination. We ain’t going there. I want you to try to explain that pain in the shoulder by recalling when bully-Bob hit you with a baseball bat in the shoulder. And any more of this other life times crap is just going to piss me off! You’re a body and that’s that! Got it?!”
A good auditor goes into session not knowing. He does not know what the individual will reveal to him. He does not know what understandings will come. He knows that there is a certain anatomy to the elements being addressed and that most of the understandings will concern those elements. But often, the understandings are jaw-dropping surprises.
Such as past lives. Such as going exterior.
A person who truly believes that a beneficial approach to life is “The only thing I know is that I know nothing” would never passionately resist the beliefs and understandings of others. Such a person would be fascinated by those beliefs and their origin rather than launch a campaign to disprove or correct. The idea of Scientology would make Socrates go, “huh, fascinating. How did you say it worked? What are the elements that comprise this subject? What are the experiences of those who have been exposed to it? Why do you think they believe this? Is there any benefit”
Questions and answers that increase understanding rather than claims that disprove and make wrong.
Socrates would not be going, “Yah, yah, yah, that stuff’s just a bunch of hypnotism invented by a conman who only wanted to earn some big bucks. None of it works. I don’t care if you do have hundreds of people claiming that they had benefits. Yah, yah, yah! A load of crap. How wrong can they be. I know all about that stuff. Know it all. Know they’re full of shit. Know they’re suffering from hypnotism. Know they couldn’t think their way out of a tampon wrapper. Yah, yah, yah. Spent hours reading criticisms. If they really wanted something workable, they should have studied my method–available if you act now, not for $30,000 but for two hundred easy payments of 99.95 a month. Plus shipping and handling.”
Everyone has values. Money isn’t the only value. And most of us are “selling” what is valuable in one way or another. We’re exchanging what we value for new value. We give a smile and are rewarded with another’s smile. We put forth our ideas and are rewarded with the ideas of another.
My reward is learning what others actually experience. The true rewards in my life have always been based on understanding others and sharing their experiences.
Rewards come in many forms. And the markets that deal in what is valued and what is exchanged come in many forms.
Jeff’s blog is a market place of sorts. Values offered. Values traded. Values expended and consumed.
So, see, if you hadn’t invested the idea of Socrates, this comment would never have appeared. And there are those who will value it. And there are those who will devalue it.
Such is life.
I offer a smile.
Michael.
Aeolus,
Stephen Jay Gould, eh? I missed that particular idea of his myself. Magesteria. I like it!
Sounds a lot like how Hubbard defined “universe” – “a whole system of created things”.
Definitely along the lines of Creation of Human Ability and Hubbard’s essays on the multiplicity of universes and the varying degrees of overlap thereof.
Perhaps the Beatles will come back and do a song and an album titled “Magical Magesterium Tour”? I can hope.
Windwalker,
Actually, I think what you suggest has an certain brilliance. Life at every level is science in action. Life is continuously conducting experiments, gathering data, considering outcomes, formulating solutions.
Science really isn’t a bunch of individuals in lab coats following a unique methodology. A teenage boy, experimenting with approaches to attract girls is conducting a scientific experiment of sorts. He has theories, tests, results. He learns workable patterns and laws of attraction–or not. An amoeba does the same thing. Ant colonies and termites. Foxes and rodents.
Every life form could be considered an hypothesis, a test. From this test information is gathered and understandings are reached.
We, as humans, believe that “thinking” really only occurs on a linguistic level, that without language information can not be passed from one individual to another. But, our DNA and RNA are storehouses of data, formulated from centuries of scientific experiment–and not a word to be found.
During the seventies there was a focus in Scientology on reaching “native state.” Los Angeles was all abuzz when Bill Franks had attested to having reached “native state.” As if the original state of theta were something exceedingly powerful and all knowing.
But, my experience with the native state of theta is this: native state is in continuous flux, despite its existence outside of physical universe matter, energy, space and time. Original state of theta was very crude. The universes created were very simple, very rudimentary. As universes were created, knowledge and understanding was gained, and universes became more complex and sophisticated by applying what was learned. From the beginning of existence, we have been inclined to run “scientific” experiments from which we learned and created anew.
This universe is far more complex and sophisticated than earlier ones.
Theta is the building block of universes. From theta, you can make matter, energy, space and time. And you can get an individual segment of theta which isn’t too bright and sophisticated to become pretty much any element of a universe you can imagine. I’ve found theta being particular force fields that have lasted longer than this universe.
Not all theta is equally intelligent. And the really, really intelligent theta probably isn’t operating anywhere near this planet.
Organisms can be simple or complex. The more complexly engineered an organism, the more intelligence is required. Stupid theta did not engineer the organs and interactions of a human body. Stupid theta did not engineer the method of transferring information along body re-creation channels. But as smart as this theta might be, there is theta that is much more intelligent. Much.
That level of intelligence is not, thus far, manifested in human thinking. Humans, even the brightest, are idiots by comparison. But, hey, we’ve got our pride. And our genitals need blood circulation as much as our brains, so it’s not a fair comparison.
Just think of how much computing power is required to create and maintain a single sparrow, much less procreating and maintaining an entire species of sparrows. Multiply that by all the different organisms on this planet. Something sure is smart. And it ain’t us.
And we wonder why we don’t become OPERATING THETANS. I have a guess.
So, maybe some of what we glimpse in our experience is this intelligence. Maybe we are that intelligence, which is blocked by human form and human mind. Or maybe we are just a figment of that intelligence, passing briefly, remembered at some future date by another figment that can contact those memories in a common storehouse of experience.
But, regardless, life is constantly experimenting. What we deify as science is a poor cousin to the intelligence of the SCIENCE being conducted by life in general.
But, hey, we’ve got our pride goddamned it!
Michael
@Once:
>A teenage boy, experimenting with approaches to attract girls is conducting a scientific experiment of sorts.
If this is what you think, then I think I see a big part of the problem: You do not understand what is meant by the scientific method.
A “scientific experiment of sorts” can prove anything. But to truly have a scientifically proven result, one must apply the scientific method. A single teenage boy trying different methods to attract girls is a poor example. Too many variables.
Suggestion: Stop using Hubbard’s definition of science and start using the wog world’s. Your arguments will be more convincing.
Preparing myself a Phase 2 or Phase 3 answer. (FiatLux, that’s now part of my vocabulary!)
ML, CW
Caliwog,
You made me smile, sort of like when Marty made a similar comment to me about when I had studied all of Hubbard’s works I would understand Scientology, implying that I lacked his insights. Being told that I don’t understand scientific method is pretty amusing. I set the curve in every science class I’ve ever taken.
But, hey, I can always learn more. I’m always aware that my understanding can improve and my range of knowledge expand.
I’m scratching my head about where I’m using Hubbard’s definition of science. I’m far to vain to rely on his work. Some of it I accept as useful, some of it I reject as silly or nonsensical or unworkable. I
Just how did he define “science” in your opinion?
Now, since you believe I operate off a particular definition of science, let’s use a twist on Voltaire’s admonition, “If you will argue with me , define the definition of the term you’re accusing me of defining.” I’m just not sharp enough to grasp exactly what you mean. And I’m curious what you’re perceiving. Fascinating.
As for “scientific method of sorts “not having anything to do with a teenage boy, let’s just examine this. A scientist observes phenomenon to arrive at a hypotheses. Aaron (the teen) notices that guys with better cars get dates with hotter girls. He asks a few hot girls out and can’t get a date with them. He hypothesizes that if he had a cool car, he’d have an easier time on Friday nights. So, he talks his dad into buying him a new Camaro. He’s collecting data, experimenting, seeing if his hypothesis will produce a predictable result. After he’s been showing up in the parking lot with his new car, he notices that girls are coming up to him to initiate conversations, something they hadn’t done before. Even some of the girls who had rejected his date offers are now smiling at him in the hallway and saying hello. Data, data, data.
And he’s recording this data in his head, forming new theories, forming new hypothesizes.
One hypothesis is that if he now asks Karen who snubbed him royally (she’s now grinning foolishly at him–data collectiion) she’ll accept the offer. He asks her (experiment), she accepts (proof).
So, he’s made observations, formed an hypothesis, conducted an experiment that can be replicated and measured, gathered objective data to support the hypothesis, tested the hypothesis for measurable result, produced reliable and predictable outcomes.
From this, he can extrapolate another hypothesis: if a man makes more money and has better assets, his chances of getting a hot wife greatly improve. Of course, I have no idea if this is true. I look around at hot women and they all seem to be married to men with lousy jobs, so what do I know?
Now, the more rigid a person’s thinking, the more exactly information must conform to that thinking to be accepted as correct. Fixated thinking results in fixated expectations. The less understanding a person has, the greater the tendency to rely on fixed ideas. Dogs, for example, live their lives according to very fixed patterns.
So, will being fixated on scientific method advance mankind?
Oddly enough, fixated thinking has not been the source of advance in science. The advance of science can be traced more to soaring leaps of imagination that scientific method. It’s after the leaps of imagination that scientific method comes in handy for separating delusion from fact. But, you had to have those moments of insight and genius that takes you beyond what is in front of you.
Even in the scientific community, the procedures of scientific method necessarily vary. The means of measuring data in sociology differ from measuring data in chemistry. Astrophysics presents peculiar problems not found in molecular biology. Chaos theory developed to explain much that made precise outcomes less than predictable. Quantum physics developed to explain what could not be seen and measured. String theory is very much a part of science today, but how good a theory is it?
And physicists are still baffled in explaining exactly what holds the unseen elements of the universe together. What is that force? Where does it come from? They don’t know. So, where is the success of their methodology on that point? How do you use scientific method, which demands, which requires observation and measurement, to observe and measure that which exists beyond their ability to observe and measure?
Do you just give up your pursuit of understanding and knowing? Isn’t the quest of science to know and understand?
Just because I recognize the serious (and I mean serious) limitations on scientific method doesn’t mean that I don’t respect it as a necessary tool in making life more understandable, more comfortable, more predictable.
I had a friend who could lift the front of an old VW bug. Easily. But he couldn’t do the back. I respected his ability but recognized his limits. If I had to lift the back of the bug, I would use a jack or a hoist. Just being practical. And no slight to him.
One other point: scientific method might subscribe to a generally specific pattern (talk about oxymoronic) but that pattern can be applied in varying degrees to a broad spectrum of life. The pattern remains, though its form seems to vary. It’s not a black and white issue. You can apply scientific method in varying degrees. And using the logic which supports scientific method can help you in any area of life. Including getting a date.
Goodness, I just feel furious, feel insulted that someone thinks I don’t know what I’m talking about! Just kidding. Some of my best insights come from being challenged. I’m just too dumb to see where I’m dumb. I need the help of my fellows to boost my ability to see.
Michael
Michael,
Your teen Aaron has collected data and may have a hypothesis, but has not conducted a scientifically valid experiment. To be valid, he would have to re-create the exact same circumstances without a Camaro. There could have been other factors at work. Maybe every other guy in the school moved to Toledo, and he was the only boy left. Maybe he grew two inches and girls like taller guys. Maybe they just needed time to get to know him. We can’t rule out other factors that may have affected Karen’s decision.
But I am glad Aaron and Karen wound up together. Think they’ll name their first kid Darren? Or Marilyn? (Closest I could come.)
Anyway, your example echos what people are saying here about “OT abilities.” They say, “I became a Scientologist, and when I had a motorcycle accident, time seemed to slow down.” So they credit “OT abilities.” Meanwhile, you’ve got other people (non-Scns) saying the same thing happened to them. In fact, this is a very common phenomenon in a vehicle accident. Happened to me, too — a two-second event that felt like it stretched on for much longer. It’s a human condition, and people here are crediting OT.
They are making the same mistake as our teen. Aaron credits the Camaro with getting into Karen’s Daisy Dukes, our Scns credit OT with otherwise-inexplixable, but they are not looking at any other possible sources of data.
Don’t forget that humans have a hard time understanding that there are things we just can’t understand. It doesn’t fit well with us – we are kings and queens of the Earth, after all. It is in our nature to find explanations, just as it is in my dog’s nature to find every last scrap of food I drop.
Anyway, I repeat: I don’t think you have a good understanding of the scientific method.
But I am glad you aced your science classes.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I gotta go buy a Camaro. Hey, it might just work.
ML,
Caliwog
CW,
Sigh. It’s just a simple allegory to demonstrate the range, the shades of application of the logic that underlies what became “scientific method.” Just an informal example of how living beings learn that was dashed off in a couple of minutes. It was not of great importance, certainly not of sufficient importance to merit my meticulous re-examination of approach and presentation so that I could satisfy someone’s ideas of what I must do to prove that I have a grasp of the subject.
But such is life.
I’m fascinated by the ideas expressed that got no response. Why didn’t those ideas draw interest? Why were they not worthy of comment? Why was a comment such as “The advance of science can be traced more to soaring leaps of imagination than scientific method” not worthy of response? There was such a wide array of ideas that I touched on. Of the things I wrote, what you responded to had little importance to me, but for you it seems very, very, very important.
I’m fascinated by how a simple informal sketch came to be judged by formal standards applied to detail works. Did you not recognize that it was a sketch? Does your salad fork have to be exactly aligned with your dinner fork and dessert fork even when all you’re having is grilled cheese and tomato soup?
I’m fascinated by how ideas clearly presented as “sort of” came to be the object of such exacting scrutiny. What mind set serves as the basis for such a valuation and analysis? Wouldn’t that be an interesting study?
A critical aspect of logic is evaluation of importance. Not all data are of equal importance. The data from one circumstance does not always carry over to another. For example, you see some guy flop down in the grass like he doesn’t have the energy to stand up. You say, “Man, he’s lazy. There’s no way he’s going to be able to run the half mile very fast. He just lacks focus, lacks energy. What a bum.” (Actually happened.) The guy gets up, takes off his track suit, lines up, gun goes off, the guy wins his race. Different conditions in which he was operating and responding.
I wonder why it is so important to you to prove that I don’t have a “good” understanding of scientific method. “Good” is a pretty low standard. Not excellent, not perfect, but simply “good.” Most high school science students have a “good” understanding of scientific method. Not excellent, not perfect, but certainly good.
Syllogisms are interesting quirks of human thought. “Scientific method is the apex of human logic for arriving at truth. Anyone who doesn’t agree with this statement doesn’t understand scientific method. Michael doesn’t agree with that statement, therefore he doesn’t have a good understanding of scientific method.”
The validity of a conclusion in the syllogism depends on the validity of the major and minor premise. Having a vested interest in a premise tends to distort its honest statement. But, what the heck, who said our premises have to be valid when our conclusions already existed and made us feel so damned happy? Might as well make up some workable premises to fit the conclusions. I like Scientology so all of Scientology is wonderful. I hate Scientology so all of Scientology is horrible.
Could it be that if I had an excellent understanding of scientific method, the argument that “those who give Hubbard any credit are idiots” would be undermined? Does my crediting Hubbard somehow prove a flawed ability to grasp how truth and fact come into being? There’s just got to be some MAJOR FLAW in Michael’s ability to reason or he wouldn’t be so stupid as to agree with anything Hubbard said or wrote. A truly intelligent person would see the scam, the ignorance, the ridiculousness of Scientology. Scientology is just a joke and anyone who sees merit in it is just plain blind. Therefore, Michael cannot possibly understand the rigors of blah, blah, blah.
Hmmmm.
Now, that’s some of the hypothesis that drives critics. But, has it been put to the test? Since scientific method is so crucial to disproving Hubbard’s works, has scientific method been applied to proving how stupid Scientologists are? Both those still attached to the church and those independents outside the church. And have these figures been compared to population norms? Are Scientologists that much less intelligent than social norms?
If enough Scientologists are not simply dumb enough to be mislead, the arguments of critics lose force. And if enough non-Scientologists see merit in Hubbard’s works while not being tempted to join the church or the movement, the arguments of critics also lose force.
For the critic’s position to maintain power, it must be proven that Hubbard was a scam artist and that those who fell for his ideas are nothing but flawed thinkers who would fall for the scam.
Wow.
And those are the two main thrusts: disprove Hubbard, disprove those who see value in his work. See how many lives were ruined by those exposed to Scientology! This proves that all of Scientology is worthless! Sometimes the attacks are overt, sometimes covert. “See how nice I am to you Michael, I’m just trying to help you understand how lacking you are in the ability to think. If only you were able to reach my higher intellect, my greater grasp of life, then you would certainly have a better chance in life.”
Uh, … thanks… I guess.
I do understand that a lot of lives have been ruined by church practices. I detest many of the practices of the Church of Scientology. But I can differentiate what has constructive value in application and what has destructive impact in application.
And this argument that, “well, it’s all subjective, not objective” kind of falls flat. Do you like the way your wife smells? I remember watching the old Jack Parr show that became the Tonight Show. He had gone to Africa and his group had offered a couple of tribesmen a ride. He was showing the audience some pictures of these natives and said, “notice their hair. See those jewels in their hair–those aren’t jewels. They use cow dung to shape their hair. Those are flies. When the tribesmen were in the car, they had to hang their heads out the window because the smell of soap on us made them sick. We could hardly breath because of how they smelled and they thought we smelled terrible. Isn’t that interesting?” (just the gist, not actual quotes.)
All subjective. Subjective enough to make the subjects want to vomit.
Experience is a collision of the “subjective” and the “objective.” (Think Quantum Theory.) And there are as many questions about the validity of “objective” as there are about “subjective.” So a fixation on the need to prove the subjective against the objective becomes moot.
But how does one differentiate the delusional from actuality? A simple test is does one produce the result imagined. Can you drive your car to the store and get the milk you wanted? If you believe yourself to be the greatest novelist that ever existed, can you at least write novels that meet with wide acclaim? If you think you can psychically predict the outcomes of sporting events can you put the results on a piece of paper before the game begins, make a few bets and win a lot of money? Can you actually produce what you believe in the arena in which you claim to be able to produce? Are your observations accurate and applicable in that arena so you can reach predicted outcomes?
Of course, a person can go off and clear a planet while sitting down for a while, but, hey, what’s a girl to say? Can’t win ’em all.
And if you believe that an informal comment is a meticulous demonstration of understanding…
Sigh.
What is is what is. I tried to get my kids to understand this by having them think thoughts at the wall and then look to see if their thoughts had changed the wall. They grasped this simple concept long before they went to grade school. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks about you; it only matters what you truly are and what you are truly capable of. Not one of their thoughts changed the wall’s color to green or made the wall die.
It doesn’t matter how desperately someone is to prove you to be what you aren’t or prove you not to be what you are.
What does matter is an honest willingness to understand others, understand life, understand the universe–without the desperate need to correct and prove inadequate. It’s comforting to hold ideas as valuable, but sometimes understanding requires looking beyond those ideas, and maybe even casting those cherished ideas aside.
Sigh. Timer just rang. My five minutes are up. Guess I won’t have time to go back and proof read my “formal dissertation”, lay in the footnotes, and get the printing bound. That’s sure to fuck up my grade with you, but, hey, I’ve got to go pee. A man’s got to have importances.
Michael
>I’m fascinated by the ideas expressed that got no response. Why were they not worthy of comment?
Because there are only so many hours in a day, and I feel that those have been addressed, and I’m already partially responsible for the fact that this post, if printed, would consume one-fifth of the trees in Oregon. 🙂
>Did you not recognize that it was a sketch?
I did, but seeing as you seem to tie your example to proof that Scientology causes OT abilities, you don’t seem to. Huge leaps of logic, with no real connection, are Hubbard’s stock-in-trade. They sound good unless you really think about them. Scientologists are trained not to really think about them. Or to put intense thought into details, and gloss over the huge leaps.
>Does your salad fork have to be exactly aligned with your dinner fork and dessert fork
Yes, but is that relevant to our discussion? 🙂
>Does my crediting Hubbard somehow prove a flawed ability to grasp how truth and fact come into being?
Yes.
>For the critic’s position to maintain power, it must be proven that Hubbard was a scam artist and that those who fell for his ideas are nothing but flawed thinkers who would fall for the scam.
I’m not into this for power. But Hubbard was a scam artist. I would hesitate to call those who fell for the scam “flawed thinkers,” as that sells them short. But they did fall for the scam, and part of the scam involves altering how one things.
“Fall for the scam” is not my origination, by the way. It’s how many ex-Scientologists describe their own experience.
>And those are the two main thrusts: disprove Hubbard, disprove those who see value in his work.
Incorrect. Disprove Hubbard: True, but this was accomplished before I was born. There is more than adequate evidence that Hubbard played fast and loose with the truth, and that he claimed others’ achievements as his own.
But the second part is NOT to disprove those who see value in his work. It’s to try to help them to see the truth about Hubbard, so they can make their own decisions.
When people leave Scientology – and I don’t mean leave the Church, or break ranks with Marty Rathbun; I mean well and truly come to the personal decision to no longer have Scientology as part of their life – it usually happens the same way: A crack in the wall of lies. Maybe it’s just not working for them, or maybe they see something that doesn’t ring true, but whatever happens they start to look further, and it’s as if they are seeing daylight for the first time in years (and figuratively, they are). It all falls apart.
I’m not generalizing – more often than not, that’s how ex’s say it went.
People who have not reached that state are not out of Scientology.
I cannot make that happen. It happens inside the person. I can simply make the arguments for people to look. And more importantly, I can make sure people who aren’t in, but are considering, see both sides.
And by the way, I do NOT believe I am smarter than you, or any other Scientologist. I do not think I am better than you because I see through Hubbard. And I know that there are lots of Scientologists who look down on me because I’m just a poor wog who doesn’t believe in past lives and will die and get trapped and implanted and slammed back into a body to do this all over again.
Me, I simply see things differently than you.
>Timer just rang. My five minutes are up.
You typed all of that in five minutes? Impressive!!! You get an A for effort.
ML, CW
I’m sure I’m not the only one who has noticed the lack of these abilities — if they were being produced with regularity seems to me the cos would not be in such awful shape. If OTs WERE OT, we wouldn’t be here having this conversation.
Now, wait a second, Jeff. Before you dismiss OT abilities because *you* didn’t get them, let me ask: Did you go past a misunderstood word? Did you have a present-time problem? Were your rudiments in? Were you PTS? Were your shoes too tight in an auditing session?
LRH said there are many, many reasons why the tech wouldn’t work, and not *one* of the reasons he listed was “because I made it all up” or “I wanted to string you along so you’d pay more money.”
But because I am such a big being, I am going to restore your OT abilities. Ready?
I believe, Jeff, that you have full OT abilities.
This is now true for me. And according to LRH, if it’s true for me, it’s true!
No need to thank me. Now, I think I’m going to fling my laptop across the room, blame it on YOUR OT abilities, Jeff, and send you the bill. Can’t wait to get my new Mac!
ML,
Caliwog
Laughing my butt off!!!! OMG!!!
Caliwog: You are priceless and hilarious. FL
LOL! Caliwog, not only is it true for you, but it’s also in writing. And we all KNOW that if it isn’t written it isn’t true. So Jeff, you got to have those abilities now.
A thought-provoking article! It unmocked some of my long-standing assumptions about Scientology.
I took a look at my Scientology track and found, to my surprise, that the significant ability I gained was being exterior at will and seeing other’s mental image pictures. All the rest were REGAINING abilities I had as a child or in the distant past. I would have to say that this “regaining” abilities activity is still incomplete.
My training and auditing produced a heightened awareness of the OT phenomena I encounter and occasionally exhibit. All of the OT phenomena I have seen in my 34 years of Scientology, I had also seen or exhibited before Scientology.
I also gained knowledge with which I can help others regain abilities.
I think there is much more that can be done outside the suppressive atmosphere of the church. One does not easily become more able in the presence of such suppression.
I look forward to seeing what can be done with the tech in the independent field.
David~Reading your response reminded me…I gained the ability to look at others’ pictures as well. That was something I did not have or at least was not aware of having before LRH processing. 🙂
Re: “the ability to look at others’ pictures”
Dear David and Tara,
Thanks for your posts.
But, I just have to ask: regarding your “ability to look at others’ pictures”. Does this mean that I can think of a picture of a red Pontiac Firebird, and you can tell me, “You are thinking of a red sports car”. And, I can focus on the farm where I grew up, and you can tell I am thinking of a farm, and describe to me, in whatever detail, the farm I am picturing?
Or is this OT ability something that can only be sensed, measured, and experience by you and you alone, totally & completely subjective, and can in no way be demonstrated at all to another person?
FL
FiatLux,
This is a good question.
I can tell you from my own experience that I am better able to see the pictures of others than I used to be, but the experience is not something that is under my conscious control and I don’t know if it was improved by auditing or simply by spending thirty years in a culture that nurtured that ability, or if it would have happened anyway as I got older. It would easy to attribute it to auditing because so many people believe that’s where it comes from, but I don’t honestly know that.
It just happens sometimes. And while I would not say I have the ability to see these pictures at will, when it happens I DO seem them. And this is something that has been confirmed, objectively, over and over, by the persons with whom I’m talking. Very often (especially with my husband), he will begin to say something and I will immediately get the full visio and full conceptual understanding of what he is going to say before it comes out of his mouth. When it happens in this way my comprehension is always correct. ( I get impatient for him to finish explaining it, too. Actually talking takes so much longer than just “getting it.”)
Hi Lunamoth,
Thanks for telling me your experiences. Interesting.
FL
Hey Lunamoth,
Same thing here regarding the pictures, or in my case, getting the concept immediately or before the other person even starts to speak. The wait for the comm to start and finish was excruciating for me … a lot of toe-tapping waiting for the other to finish.
But, I have tempered my reaction a bit … I even say what the person is going to say ahead of time, so all they have to say is ” Hey, that’s what I was going to say”.
Makes for a much speeded up comm cycle. 🙂
FiatLux~With me it is more as Lunamoth described with her husband but usually when I decide to look at the picture instead of waiting for the communication to come across. It’s hard to describe but I do it most with people I do not know because I think it’s a courtesy to let someone to communicate to me rather than look at the picture. So I don’t do it much with my family since I consider it a bit rude. LoL 😉
I agree that abilities can be learned. Taking off from that viewpoint, it seems reasonable that the OT Phenomena we have exhibited sporadically over the years could also be learned or enhanced if already available.
What the independent field needs is an academy for drilling OT abilities. It will happen and I feel it will begin sometime later this year.
Writing the mission statement will be an interesting challenge.
Far more challenge than actually drilling others to have OT abilities.
Anyone who has ever successfully coached the ashtray drill involving putting intention into a particular spot in the ashtray has exhibited the ability to see another’s intention and has coached the other person to control their attention.
David
Yes, I totally agree on the ashtray drill. One of my favorites to coach because it heightens my ability to observe “intention” coming from others. It has served me well.
I have an anecdotal story.
Often I find myself flying in my dreams. You know, me with my body cruising about in the air, practicing how to get higher, faster, etc. Improving my ability to simply “be” somewhere without “going” or traveling there. I have also assisted or coached others in being able to fly too. Interesting thing though, is that even though it is a dream, and it would seemingly be the easiest place to create whatever I want, I still find I cannot always “fly at will”.
But the story: So there I was flitting about one time, and I happened upon this large barn-like structure. I went in, and there,to my apparent surprise, were lots of others flying about. LRH was there, curiously enough standing on the ground, and when he saw me enter, he said, “Come on in and join us, I have been expecting you. Now that you have gotten this far we will help you hone your skills.” I felt very much “at home” and totally acknowledged.
So, one may have pause to ask me: Can I really fly? Well I certainly cannot yet demonstrate it in a reality that would be observable or acceptable as “scientific proof” by most people. ( unless they can see my pictures) Their inability to experience my reality on this, and/or my inability to communicate it at their reality and acceptance, does not “prove” that I do not do it. Totally controlling moving this meat body through the air of this planet, in this universe, without the assistance of other MEST, I have not mastered or even been vaguely successful at, but in my dreams I can fly!
I do not tend to agree that “science” is the only “proof” of reality. I am guessing that we all see pictures, have thoughts, and dream. Curiously, “science” has not yet developed a means of accurately sensing the content of these “things” at the reality with which we each experience them. Using a purely”scientific” yardstick , since they cannot be sensed by this “science” then they do not exist (for this “science”). “Science”, in this case, is not “science” at all. It is DOGMA.
So I ask… Do we have to draw a line? Where would you draw it? It is perhaps a gradient scale as LRH describes it.
If what I have told you about my “ability to fly” is true (in that I have experienced it for myself), I ask you, can I fly? ( and I ask you to trust me on this one. Flying is not as important to me as truly duplicating another being, or getting a data evaluation right, or creating a more optimum philosophical or physical environment.)
When, or if, I become capable of bending the solid portion of this MEST universe to my will and do a flypast with this MEST body, I will no doubt be as surprised as you.
What are OT abilities? hmmmm…..
WW
This is EXACTLY the meat of the issue of OT abilities and whether scientology delivers what was promised.
Perhaps “promised” is not the right word anymore. From what little I see of the church promo as it goes from my mailbox, directly into the garbage, they seems to be shying away from overtly stating any specific gains anymore. But there is no denying that 60 years after Dianetics first described the state of Clear, a mythology has developed about what that state and the state of OT entails. It’s engrained in the culture at this point, and this works well for those who sell it because through no effort of their own they can sell these levels by only peripherally referring to what “everybody knows” about them.
It would be interesting at this point to examine for oneself what one believes (or has been lead to believe, even obliquely) OT abilities might include. You may never find those assumed characteristics of an OT in any definition in a book or a magazine, on the grade chart or even in a piece of promo, but once it has become embedded in the culture of scientology, it becomes “true.”
The differentiation you make, Jeff, between phenomena and ability is crucial and one I had not teased out before. Thank you for pointing it out. I can tell you that if I really could play the piano, especially if only a handful of other people on the planet could do so, and if I knew others would benefit from being able to do it, wanted desperately to do it, and I could hook them up with a practice that could enable them to do it, too, I would bloody well demonstrate my ability to play the piano anytime anybody was interested to see it.
Improve of abilities implies practice.
I don’t know of OT paranormal abilities but I know of a lot of singular paranormal occurrences, like you said, even with people who are not scientologists.
Nice picture, the drop of water into the pool.
Okay, I’ll bite. Let’s test my ability to predict the future:
I predict there won’t be as many commenters as usual willing to wade into this pool and argue with you…
(One week after my post above)
Well…ehem…I guess I need some work on my ability to predict!
Besides “Phenomena” and “Abilities” there is something called Peak Experiences.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_experience
I’d suggest taking that into consideration as well.
Such experiences alone may give meaning to a person’s life and make him feel that life is worth living just because of having had those or hoping to have them in the future (like Satori and Nirvana).
Well, looks like Maslow’s research has nothing to do with OT Phenomena…
Maslow, being “a darn psychologist”, couldn’t undersand neither “OT abiliteis” nor “OT phenomena”.
The fact that that man has described , thru his thorough studies of the subject, doesn’t matter.
“Who is he, after all?” – “Just a psychologist”.
Had to say that… This post was disregarded…. During all that hot battle about whether OT abilities exist or not.
I say OT abilities DO NOT exist. What exists is Peak experiences that may be temporary or may be permanent (and don’t depend on a level of a person in Scienology but only depend on his level of awareness, and how close his awareness level is to a need in self-actualization)
Jeff,
Thank you for clarifying and putting into words EXACTLY what I’ve been thinking since the day I entered the church.
I have zero intention of invalidating anybody who has gone up the OT levels. That is not my point in the following at all.
At the same time, while asking scores of OT’s over the last two decades to show me something miraculous, anything at all, (almost desperately at times), ……I get a comm lag, missed w/hold phenomena, and then the discussion is immediately turned around to invalidate or introvert me for having dared ask.
If anyone can produce a miracle at will, reliably, please step forward. I’d honestly love to see. There are even wealthy individuals out there in years past who have offered massive cash rewards to anyone on this planet who can reliably demonstrate one single paranormal ability. Not a rare phenomena. But a reliable ability which can be performed over and over with complete control.
And why is it wrong to ask for this? Really. Why?
I believe it’s an absolutely sane request.
You tell me that if I spend enough time and money I’ll be able to move mountains…….well……show me the product first.
Hi Bryan,
Great point.
It is also noteworthy that Hubbard mercilessly blasted every other aspect of society for their inability to produce results: the government, the military, the medical community, the space program, ad nauseam. They were all quacks and fools because they could not produce results up to Hubbard’s standards. (Look at HCOPL Planetary Dissemination (the “almost” planet)). Yet, when it comes time for Hubbard to demonstrate even the slightest “OT Ability”, which was the foundation upon which the entire religion rests, along with all the extreme demands made upon group members, suddenly the demand for viewable results goes away and we have to take it all on faith.
FL
Not only that, but with the thousands of research hours Ron put in the whole time he should have been able to spot micsavage from afar and predict the scenario we have now and thwart him with his mind.
I believe he did. He did not name Miscavige specifically, but he predicted the exact scenario that has come to pass.
Here’s just one way he did that in a short short story:
http://www.freezone.org/LRH/a_story.htm
Jeef ,You are covering a topic that has been dilemma for a long time since having myself done the “clear” & OT levels.
I had witnessed some paranormal occurences prior to being in the Cult of $.
I myself had some occasional occurences that were more than just finding a parking spot scenario prior to and also being in the cult.
I do not disbelieve that such abilities exist and have existed prior to Hubbard’s commercializing and trying to corner the market on them.
Overpromising and being short of the claims with mere concepts of achievement has been the reality of Hubbard and his methods is my view.
You are very correct in stating the use of “invalidation” PTS and so on being the tools used to obscure any real demonstration.
I have in the 1970’s witnessed a very few who did possess some of these “powers” and saw undenibale examples of demonstration but they were not stable .
These were again a rarity as opposed to a norm and I suspect it was more related to the individual’s inherent ability than any thing produced by the Cult of Hubbard.
I am sure if one was to practice Crowley’s Black Magik rituals enough some type of questionable phenomena could be invoked as Hubbard himself did with Jack Parsons.
I found much truth in Joseph Breuer’s (the real originator of “Dianetics” in my view) statement of the cause of psychosomatics being pathogenic ideas.
I have reached the opinion that Hubbard found a method to have his “preclears” imagine,animate and bring forth these pathogenic ideas with hypnotic and suggestive procedures resulting in an illusion.
This illusion then is accepted or rejected depending on the strength of the trance or the subject’s gullibility or his making a game out of it is my opinion.
As the subject or preclear gets good at this sort of thing then you can say it is an ability of sorts and the concept of it can be declared as such.
This Hubbardian concept seems to be being stretched out to mammoth proportions as one goes up this “Hubladder’ or “Bridge” with these “OT” levels out in the stratosphere in their claims.
To debate this is difficult as one cannot have participants of a dialogue being a fanatic or one with a commercial motive such as selling “auditing” as their livelyhood is my opinion.
Another insightful post.
The only nuance I would add is that “ability” is a gradient scale. It is not like a light switch, either off or on.
Somedays a golfer can putt and some days he can’t. That does not mean he doesn’t have the ability to putt.
My own paranormal experiences only started happening after I started moving in Scientology: being exterior from the body for weeks at a time, looking at the floor below me and the floor above me in the Main Building in PAC, riding on top of the car to turn in my solo folder on Old OT IV, etc.
And don’t forget that an ability is something you work at and gain bit by bit. Someone who can play the piano worked at it.
A lot.
People who went up the pole, so to speak, about the notion of “OT Abilities” are explained in C/S Series 77, Quickie Defined.
You want it? You work for it.
Scientology is what I discovered was the most efficient way of gaining them. Or at least in my case, or opening my eyes to them.
Right now, I am getting pretty good at touching my toes.
🙂 Love this.
Love this, too. Common sense — what a concept.
Dan,
you had a good time exterior and I’m sure you would like others to have the same wins, or at least the same opportunity to get them.
Are you stably exterior now?
Ron’s (good) way to have someone master an ability was to drill, drill, drill it.
Yet, so far, people who felt they experienced some OT phenomena did it randomly on different services (TRs, objectives, auditing, OT levels) that were not specifically addressing these abilities.
Some promo piece claimed that one of the Ls had exteriorization as its EP, but all the people I know who did them were not stably exterior with perceptions after.
What drills or TRs there are in Scientology that specifically address the mastery of Exteriorization and other specific OT abilities ?
MostlyLurker, not that it’s in use generally, but see “Creation of Human Ability” by LRH for exteriorization drills.
Get and read a book titled “The Creation of Human Ability”. Lots of drills in that.
OK, interesting, “Creation of Human Ability” (CoHA) is the book with exteriorization drills. It is not even confidential. What is its success rate? How many people here are stably exteriorized with perceptions having followed that book drills?
Maybe (just speculating) the purpose of that book is not so much to get people exteriorized but to amaze readers: “In Scientology you learn how to do these things? Wow! I want too! Where do I sign up?”
Much like the purpose of selling Book One today, which is to amaze readers with an hyped description of the state of Clear. “Wow, no illnesses, no aberrations, perfect memory, I want to be Clear!”
400.000 $ later you are still not that “Clear”. You may had other wins, may have clearer mind, improved memory after thousands of auditing hours, certainly a cleared bank account, but still not fit the Book One Clear description nor you have the CoHA abilities to Grand Tour the universe, or just the next room, by thought alone.
My point is that experiences like Dennis Stephens had with LRH (see http://www.antology.info/index-8.html , Transcript part 1, from page 11 – a must read! ) are the exception, not the norm. His exteriorization too faded away with time, though.
I have in my opinion acheived many things that are hard to “prove”. A lighter personal space compared to before auditing. An ability to read intentions as opposed to just words, etc.
These are all pretty much subjective and I don’t feel the need to prove it to anyone. I am happy with the results and that is what matters to me.
I agree that I have met NO ONE that has acheived the OT abilities that LRH describes, at least on a permanent basis.
I have met many people who say that what they have gotten from auditing is valuable and worth getting. That in itself is some sort of proof of the value of auditing.
I think it is obvious that there is some value to be had from auditing, otherwise I don’t thing that so many people would be doing it.
Jeff is your idea that auditing has no value at all?
I think at the minimum it could be said that when used in a benevolent fashion that auditing helps people live a better life in their own estimation. Not everyone of course. It doesn’t work for everyone. The reason for that can be debated.
I do think that even if no stable OT abilites were ever had, auditing is still worth doing (to me).
I do object to the operating basis of the cult that we should FRANTICALLY expand Scientology at any cost and abuse anyone geting in the way based on the idea that we are all going to make it to OT and save the planet. This to me is a gimmick and destructive. I am for unmocking the abusers and allowing the tech to spread in a free and benevolent fashion.
For those who believe in the spiritual side of life, I feel that Scientology offers some good answers.
If you believe only in the physical universe then I guess it doesn’t mater that much. If we live only one life and that is that then it is all black pretty much after you die.
Tony, thanks for your comments.
Just to be clear, I didn’t say in the article, and in fact have never said, that auditing has no value.
I also have never said that I believe only in the physical universe, or that we only live one life. In fact, if you re-read the article, you’ll see I pretty much said the opposite.
I think that one of the problems in discussing this is that the minute you start questioning so-called “OT Abilities,” you get accused of being a materialist, a one-lifer, or being anti-auditing. I am none of those things. As I said in the article, the point is not whether or not these phenomena exist, it is whether or not Scientology can create the OT abilities it talks about creating. And to question the efficacy of some auditing is not to question all auditing. I think you understand these points.
Hi Jeff.
I wasn’t asserting that you thought any of that. I am just curious.
What value do you feel it has?
I find it sort of amusing that Jeff is a “sceptic” Scientology believer, as opposed to just being a sceptic and not believe in anything at all, or to be an overly enthusiastic Scientology believer.
Enlightening article.
I do believe somehow that full OT is attainable, although there’s no proof for it. Perhaps loads of more auditing is needed? Perhaps more people have to get up the bridge? Perhaps more training is needed?
Tony, sorry for not answering this sooner – this thread has gotten huge. I have written about this elsewhere, but I think some auditing is beneficial, particularly, in my experience, the Grades. I think that as you go higher and higher, you get more hype and fluff and less return for your exponentially escalating payments. Just my opinion, results may vary.
Thanks Jeff.
Jeff, I’m reposting this with the correct quotes to which I am replying. Otherwise it looks like the entire post is a quote of Caliwog! It’s not, it is my reply to him.
CW wrote: – “If you’re a Scientologist, it’s not up to you, my friend.”
I disagree 100% with this.
This is in fact the existing CoS party line, not the LRH philosophical line. Why forward it? (Well, this is a rhetorical question – I know why you do.)
If it’s not up to me, who is it up to? It is exactly up to me and no-one else, to say whether I am a Scientologist or not. There is no “higher authority”.
You are presenting logical fallacies of reification and appeal to (non-existent) authority. I or anyone, can take a philosophy and develop
an understanding of it, for myself and by myself.
I don’t have to, and neither do you, accept and be bound by another’s understanding of it. Oh, you can if you need/want to – some people need/want to follow priests/gurus/authorities instead of thinking for themselves. Some people need the structure of dogmatic belief. That’s actually OK. That’s what institutionalized religions are for. It’s comfortable and often does no harm at all to have some good rules to follow. But it can be used as a control mechanism, too, and is not a total substitute for thought and judgement, See quote below. And some people have other agendas.
But I can study a philosophy and call myself a Scientologist or a Buddhist or a Zoroastrian without reference to any other outside authority, based simply on my understanding of the teachings themselves.
I am a Scientologist or not, based on my perception of and agreement with the philosophy, nothing else. I could start my own “church” or “religion” and it could be very different from the CoS in letter and in spirit, just as there are many different churches and groups, but all “Christian”, based on the same basic teachings. That’s the difference between a “philosophy” and a “religion”.
CW wrote: – “So what LRH is saying is that if you follow Scientology tech/policy you don’t need additional policy.”
I disagree with this also.
This is your interpretation in which you are dubbing in and adding arbitrary significances. He clearly says ‘policy’, meaning any and all policy, not ‘other policy’ , or ‘created policy’ or ‘wog policy’ or anything else.
Here is a discussion from another blog that has already said it, and better than I could, with references:
Old Auditor wrote:
“I remember an LRH comment in some early HCOPL that Third Dynamic Tech was “material to think with” rather than an exact procedure like
auditing commands, etc.
It struck me as quite appropriate at the time because I was already beginning to notice how rote following of policy caused upsets with
public and diminished the credibility of church management.
Brings to mind the Admin Scale. At the top are Goals, Purposes and then follows Policy. Goals and Purposes are senior to Policy. Somehow
the Admin Scale has flipped and Policy has become senior to Goals and Purposes within the Church and sometimes within ones own thinking.
A new day dawns when one really gets it that Goals and Purposes are senior and that Policy is the SUGGESTED route to achieve said
Goals/Purposes. If the Policy doesn’t work, find out why. If necessary, toss it out and formulate one that does.”
Jim Logan // January 29, 2010 at 6:13 pm | Reply
Old Auditor,
That PL is 11 May 70, Third Dynamic Tech:
“In its present state of development, like early auditing material, Third Dynamic Tech is used to think with, and only the bright mind will achieve its full potential in action. L. Ron Hubbard, FOUNDER”
Old Cuff, WH, and FT,
I found the one I was thinking of. FT, it was in the time period of the Time Track of Theta and Milestone series, it’s from the Hubbard
College Lectures of Mar 52, #27. Here’s the part I was thinking of:
“…because whenever a religion- you see, a religion is different than a religious philosophy, very different
– a religion is that thing which is given as a package to a people about which they are not supposed to reason, and under thought and duress is used to control that people onerously.
And you find many of these religions are completely bare of aesthetics. And then when they come up to higher levels of action, they actually get up toward theta for a while, and then they will slide back into a MEST religion wholly. They very seldom rise up.
That is why an individual is almost never a mystic and a religious person at the same time.
We need differentiation in those categories in order to understand that anything used as a control mechanism is the MEST universe.”
So we’re back to this:
HCO PL 23 Oct 63, Refund Policy, OEC Vol 3:
“The more thetan you have present, the less policy you need and
the better things run.
Only a thetan can handle a post or a pc.
All he needs is the know-how of minds as contained in Scientology. That
was all he ever lacked.
So, given that, sheer policy is poor stuff as it seeks to make a datum stand where a being should be.
That’s the whole story of the GPM’s. So why not have live orgs?”
** NOTE TO JEFF: Trying again with my comments on Jim deleted (I had a feeling that would get zapped). I wanted to make these points to Valkov, so if there’s something else getting me deep-sixed here, can you let me know? Thanks, CW.
>This is in fact the existing CoS party line, not the LRH philosophical line.
Who wrote KSW?
>This is your interpretation in which you are dubbing in and adding arbitrary significances.
Again, I quote LRH (from your quote): “Only a thetan can handle a post or a pc. __All he needs is the know-how of minds as contained in Scientology__.”
>Here is a discussion from another blog
We can play policy and counter-policy all day, Valkov. I used to do that for a living. I was famous for writing CSWs that made it sound like I had LRH standing at my shoulder saying “Go ahead, I DARE you not to approve this.”
Here’s the thing about LRH: He was horribly inconsistent. He said you would get certain abilities from Clear, then he said you wouldn’t, then he said you would again. He said you didn’t have to listen to policy, then he said that not following policy messed everything up, then he said it was fine, then he said it was a crime punishable by lower conditions.
If you really want to understand what Scientology is *really* all about, stop debating fine points like you’re re-writing the Talmud, and look at where LRH *is* consistent: The ideas that critics of Scientology are criminals, that psychiatry is evil, that Scientology is the ONLY group that can save mankind, and that the status and income MUST continue to rise.
On those things, he never wavered.
The first three are BS. The last is the true purpose of Scientology.
When you are *truly* out, when you are *truly* free of LRH, I think you will see that — as just about every ex-Scientologist I’ve ever read about has.
ML, CW
CW wrote:
“We can play policy and counter-policy all day, Valkov. I used to do that for a living. I was famous for writing CSWs that made it sound like I had LRH standing at my shoulder saying “Go ahead, I DARE you not to approve this.”
I totally understand that CW. Being Russian, I know a lot about manipulating existing systems and bureaucracies. It’s in the RussianDNA. That’s exactly my point AND Hubbard’s. Systems can be lifeless, suppressive things that stop. They can be veryCI to the individual. Either because they are administered rotely, or are used by some to achieve their own ends, not particularly furthering the actual purposes of the organization.
You weren’t following Hubbard’s policies in the spirit in which they were intended, you were USING Hubbard quotes you cherry-picked in order to accomplish your own agenda of getting your own CSWs approved! It was totally CYOA, and that’s exactly what’s wrong with the current iteration of the CoS. Sounds like you helped make it what it is today, God help you!
The only reason for the existence of an organization is to deliver the auditing tech and train auditors so more auditing can be delivered.
That is the TOTAL PURPOSE for organizations. That is why PURPOSE is senior to POLICY, and why Hubbard said what he said in the quotes I posted – that Policy is a set of guidelines best used to “think with”, not to be applied rotely and robotically in a literal and unthinking way.
The limitations of Policy are due to the nature of existence. As some old guru guy once said, “You can never step in the same river twice”. Hubbard said essentially the same thing – the MEST universe changes from hour to hour. It never stays the same, that’s why yesterday’s advice or policy may not apply today. It maybe a good guide for getting oriented, but the existing situation needs to be perceived and evaluated on it’s own merits, and the appropriate response developed with the overall PURPOSE in mind.
Bureaucratic, robotic application of Policy can often be the wrong thing to do.
Hubbard wrote KSW but I already have the feeling you and I read or interpret it quite differently. All the emotional melodrama in it aside, it simply says, “I fit’s not broke, don’t fix it. Just apply it as exactly as you can. It works well enough if applied exactly”.
And the main point which gets overlooked is, KSW is about the auditing technology, not anything else. Because Hubbard himself placed Policy on a lower echelon, as per some of the quotes I posted.
As for “consistency”, again, “You can never step in the same river twice.” If you don’t adapt your decision making and behavior to the ever changing flux we call existence, you will be sunk.
This quote is from Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay, Self-Reliance:
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”
Emerson believed that people need to stop foolishly following everyone else, and become self-reliant. To break it down into plain English:
“Foolish consistency” – doing something the same way over and over without a good reason
“hobgoblin” – a monster or demon or, in this case, it means the thing that trips you up
“little minds” – people who cannot think logically and rationally
“little statesmen and philosophers and divines” – small-minded politicians, philosophers, and church officials
Thus, following rules without reasons is the thing which hampers small-minded people.
@Valkov: Quick note, I worked for green-on-white companies, not the Church itself. (Heaven forbid!)
>You weren’t following Hubbard’s policies in the spirit in which they were intended, you were USING Hubbard quotes you cherry-picked in order to accomplish your own agenda
Funny, Valkov, I don’t remember you being on my approval lines! How many of my CSWs did you read? (And didn’t you lecture me about stating things as fact…?)
I had an IA line with ex-Sea Org members and OT VIIs and OT VIIIs, one of whom knew the admin tech cold. I could never get away with anything like that. Besides, I had too much pride in my CSWs.
>Hubbard said …the MEST universe changes from hour to hour….yesterday’s advice or policy may not apply today.
And yet Hubbard also said that following policy was the key to success.
>Bureaucratic, robotic application of Policy can often be the wrong thing to do.
I agree. And NOT doing it can also land you in cramming.
>KSW is about the auditing technology, not anything else.
Then why is it written in green ink, and not red?
>Thus, following rules without reasons is the thing which hampers small-minded people.
Again, I agree 100%. And that’s why LRH is such a brilliant con man. He essentially gets good people to act as if they are small-minded.
BTW, I should add that I was 100% on-policy at work. In my personal life, no way. I saw things like you do – and I saw exactly what Hubbard was doing. That is why I am not, and never have been, and never will be, a Scientologist.
ML,
Caliwog
As an additional comment, even if OT phenomena sporadically occured, such as telepathy etc, from auditing I think that would be a good thing.
If you treat Scientolgy as a journey, similar to living life and use from it what is valuable and don’t use what is not valuable to you, I think you can get somewhere.
Also, for critics making the argument that it’s all bad I think it only fair to hear what your philosophy of life is, so it can be picked apart too. Fair and balanced.
>Also, for critics making the argument that it’s all bad I think it only fair to hear what your philosophy of life is, so it can be picked apart too. Fair and balanced.
I don’t think it’s all bad, but I do think that Scientology was designed primarily to separate people from their money and/or use people to make money.
But your request is a fair one, so here’s mine:
Try to do the right thing and treat others as you would like to be treated.
For the record, I do not claim original authorship.
Pick away.
ML,
Caliwog
Hi Caliwog.
Nothing to pick apart there.
What are your views on the spirit? What are your views about what happens after you die?
Hi Tony –
I think we are who we are. I don’t believe that there is a separate spirit. I think the human brain is a truly fantastic thing – all the beauty and magic of nature, wrought not in colorful plumage or stunning foliage, but rather in a magnificent organ that allows us to feel, to reason, and to truly enjoy the world around us.
I don’t think human life requires a deeper explanation. I think there are forces outside our understanding, but they are part of the natural world. And we’re very lucky to get the chance to experience it.
The human brain has its limitations, and there are things we simply cannot conceive. Large numbers, for example, like the number of changes that must occur for something as magnificent as a human being to evolve. So we search for ways to explain them, because we can’t accept that there are simply some things we can’t conceive.
The problem comes when we waste our lives trying to figure out “why” and miss out on enjoying this wonderful treat that is life.
What happens after death? Nothing. When we die, we die. This, our lives that we lead – *this* is the experience.
ML,
Caliwog
Thanks Caliwog.
I decided I don’t want to pick apart your beliefs the way you do to others. I don’t necessarily agree with them but I respect your right to have them.
I do agree with Jeff that when someone sells their beliefs then they can have their feel held to the fire so to speak.
Peace.
Why not, Tony? I’ve put them out there with the agreement to have them picked apart. I appreciate your consideration for my feelings, but you’re not going to upset me. Please, go ahead and submit my beliefs to the same kind of scrutiny I have applied to yours.
ML,
Caliwog
Hi Caliwog.
Sorry but it doesn’t interest me that much.
I guess if you are going to die after this life, it must seem rather bleak. Maybe that is what happens. I personally don’t think so. And no, I don’t have any proof.
That’s the thing, Tony – the idea of death after this life is *not* bleak. Not at all. Because the life we life here and now can be a beautiful thing. At least to me it is.
If 70 years is all I get (I’m shooting for 95) then I’ll look back and say I made the best of it. And if I’m wrong, and there is something else afterwards – then all the better!
Maybe I am a bit OT! 🙂
Anyway, your not being “interested” in picking apart my philosophy doesn’t surprise me. I’ve seen similar reactions from other Scientologists. Offered a chance to step outside the comfort zone, Scns tend to hit the “off” button. Part of Hubbard’s programming. I think you guys call it an implant.
ML,
Caliwog
Caliwog,
Not being interested does not equal being implanted. How very rude and presumptuous of you.
Tony Dephillips said: “If you treat Scientolgy as a journey, similar to living life and use from it what is valuable and don’t use what is not valuable to you, I think you can get somewhere.”
The sad thing is you can’t use Scientology this way. It is crammed down on your throat the moment you get into contact with any Scientologist or any Scientology organization. And at that point Scientology becomes useless and destructive. You can’t even get away from it the moment your name is registered at a Church.
And when you realize that it is a carefully arranged trap, you either hide or you are declared.
This is not a religion, as it is afanatic faith. It is simply a destructive cult. It does not matter you speak of the Church or Scientology.
There are people like Marty who ant to get the best of it, but this effort does not lead to anywhere because Scientology is booby traped.
And if you leave the mad antagonism of Scientology (against critiques) out of Scientology than all you get is for the best is just a self-help system. It is not a religion as it leads to nowhere and it answers specifically nothing regarding God or the 8th dynamic or whatever. But it is a third partying system against anything that moves outside of Scientology (for example: parents, police, governments, wogs and even PCs just read Book One) and watch your back against other Scientologists with ethics technology 🙂 everybody is your and the group’s potential enemy…
Lunamoth, perhaps I have an MU on implants. But I don’t think this is disinterest, I think it’s avoidance. And it’s part of the tech.
Sincere apologies if I said something rude or insulting – that was not my intention.
ML,
CW
Hello Caliwog,
Re: “What happens after death? Nothing.”
It is interesting how “Athiests” are often much more decent and merciful than “religious people”. An Atheist believes that this life is all a person has, and you don’t have the right to take that away from anyone. Whereas a religious person may feel that killing someone is no big deal because they just come back next time, or the “Big Creator” will take care of them, etc. Also, an atheistic person may well do everything they can to make the most of this (one) life, whereas a religious person thinks it is OK to have someone toil away their life for a big reward later.
FL
Hi Caliwog,
It’s not that I am implanted, it’s just I don’t feel the need to try to convince you or make you wrong for what you believe. I say live and let live. You can call me names if it makes you feel better.
Hi God,
I have been wanting to talk to you for awhile now… 🙂
I am not in the “official” cult church of Scn. I left that group because I feel it is destructive. No argument there.
As for the applied philosophy of auditing, it is delivered in the Independent feild and I have had great wins from that and earlier inside the church too.
Nobody will ever be able to convince me otherwise and I don’t see why they would want to if they were sane.
As far as it being a religion that is up to the individual to decide for their self.
My religious beleifs are mine. In the USA we have that right and even if we didn’t I would still say that I do.
I do agree that religion has done great harm at times and justified it for different “spiritual” reasons. This too is wrong. Christianity has done more things destructive than Scientolgoy ever did. I haven’t see anyone in Scientology be burned at the stake yet. ( but give them time)
Peaceful application towards spirituality is a good thing and the Scientolgy philosophy has been a great asset to me. If it is not for others that is fine with me.
I am putting out lots of energy to stop the abuses coming from the (now) cult. Iam against thier abuses.
I pray for the people of Japan as an aside. Ihope they quickly overcome this disaster they face.
Peace.
Tony, you did originally request that we put our beliefs out there to be picked apart, hence my invitation to do so.
As for calling you names – the only name I would call you is “gentleman.”
ML, CW
Tony, I have not too much against Scientology. The main point is fraud and aggression. Scientology does not “deliver” what it’s promising. This is true even if we do not consider the Church just the scriptures. It can be a great help for some but it is not an all-in-one solution and it does not fit for all.
Parts of Scientology is great as a self-help philosophy but in my view it does not stand it’s ground as a bona fide, authentic religion.
It is a “research” and collection of pieces of knowledge led by Hubbard who falsely claimed himself Maitreya. That’s lamentable even if there are some great achievements in the subject.
Make it some 20-30 times cheaper , friendly and not compulsury “It is true what is true for you” and I have nothing against it as a self-help subject.
Just because it deals with earlier lives and has ceremonies to preen itself as a religion, it is not a religion. It is only a religion in the sense of “manipulation in the name of some higher entity”.
By it’s nature it is not a religion as the route ends at OTVIII. (That is approximately the ability of an UFO operator in the past. Am I correct?) There is no route to anywhere. There is no belief in anything except your own EGO. It’s a dead-end.
Peace
GOD said: “Parts of Scientology is great as a self-help philosophy but in my view it does not stand it’s ground as a bona fide, authentic religion.” Are you a religious expert? If a lot of people feel that it is a religion then that is a major factor. Also I know that several religious scholars have said that it is a religion. To me it is spiritual in nature and as religious as Christianity or any other major religion and it could be argued that it increases spiritual awareness more than other religions. I don’t like it when people like you try to be the judge and jury of other peoples religions. You could call it intolerance. Now the cult and it’s abuses is a totally different subject. I am not defending their right to abuse as I would not defend Catholic Priests for abusing children.
“Make it some 20-30 times cheaper , friendly and not compulsury “It is true what is true for you” and I have nothing against it as a self-help subject.” Thanks, mighty big of you.
“Just because it deals with earlier lives and has ceremonies to preen itself as a religion, it is not a religion. It is only a religion in the sense of “manipulation in the name of some higher entity”.
By it’s nature it is not a religion as the route ends at OTVIII.” From this statement I see you don’t know that much about Scientology. I suggest you do more study before making such God like statements.
“(That is approximately the ability of an UFO operator in the past. Am I correct?)” I have no idea of what you are talking about here, really.
“There is no route to anywhere. There is no belief in anything except your own EGO. It’s a dead-end.” More examples that you don’t know much about Scientology.
“Peace” And peace to you as well.
Tony, I have to say I side with God on this one, though not for the same reasons.
I think describing Dianetics and Scientology as a self-help philosophy or a form of therapy, rather than a religion, is more accurate, and I believe that was Hubbard’s original intention. From all I have read and studied, I believe that Hubbard made Scientology a religion in order to avoid legal scrutiny and taxes.
Whatever his motivation, Hubbard was serious about generating funds and avoiding interference. One can attribute that to a desire for profit or a desire for expansion of Scientology. Religious status was an expedient.
For what it’s worth, whether or not Scientology fits the definition of a religion does not affect my opinion on its validity or lack thereof.
ML, CW
@God,
Quote: “It is crammed down on your throat the moment you get into contact with any Scientologist or any Scientology organization”
You are mixing two different things … Scientology & the Church of Scientology. It is unfortunate that you have run into some goofs who call themselves Scientologists.
Hopefully here you will get a better idea of what we’re really about.
Tony DePhillip “Are you a religious expert?”
No, Tony, I am just someone who uses his mind to think. Religious experts discussing Scientology are probably working on an assignment for Scientology. Or they are shown specifically selected documents ny the Church and their opinion is so biased. I know Scientology inside-out from long years. And I know other religions as well.
There is a well-known example of the Jedi religion from Australia. Their worship is based on Star Wars. You can say it is an authentic bona-fide religion. You can say… Or a religious expert can say… but I judge my way. And I can assure you that on those terms along juridical criterias it is not too hard to draft a couple of religion and religious experts cannot do else than agree.
Now, “intolerance” begins where Scientology does not let you to be critical (it’s well designed) although it speaks about truth. When someone speaks about truth then it invites and should stand critique. But instead it attacks you there and then and it is demanded in Hubbard policy so the whole system is set up for creating fanatical followers. That is a point where religion goes bad and mad. And that system was created by Hubbard. That is “intolerance”. Now an intolerant religion does not have the right to ask others for tolerance.
“the cult and it’s abuses” you can’t separate it from Hubbard’s instructions. Sorry, it is clear as follows from the above I’ve just wrote.
You quoted me and wrote: By it’s nature it is not a religion as the route ends at OTVIII.” From this statement I see you don’t know that much about Scientology. I suggest you do more study before making such God like statements.
So, where the route ends? At Total Freedom? Who achieved this? Hubbard? I doubt he achieved even the earlier stages. OT XII – Future. If he achieved this stage, it is sure he created the Church the way it is. And if you actually look at the OTs created today, or Scientologists, there is one very common qualities in them. EGO. They are “thetans” after all. And they must be successful. And upstat, and in control, etc…
And aside from this. Do you think, a technology for the mind exists? Technology? Mass-production? Like automobiles coming out from the production line? That is technology. Scientology is a soulless subject.
“What a lot of people don’t realize is that Scientology is black magic that is just spread out over a long time period. To perform black magic generally takes a few hours or, at most, a few weeks. But in Scientology it’s stretched out over a lifetime, and so you don’t see it. Black magic is the inner core of Scientology , and it is probably the only part of Scientology that really works.” – PENTHOUSE INTERVIEW WITH L. RON HUBBARD JR.
Black magic “works” for sure.
This is my viewpoint. Not written to incite hatred. And I understand there are many good-hearted Scientologists, and I also know that their basic goodness were hijacked in the process of the whole subject of Scientology whether they call themselves indipendent, or freezoners, whether they belong the Church.
This is also an answer to Quicksilver. I know Scientology. It is very hard to recognize what it really is.
Tony, I agree. “even if OT phenomena sporadically occured, such as telepathy etc, from auditing I think that would be a good thing.” I agree. I think it would be great. And if auditing produced full blown OTs with OT abilities, that would be great too.
And I agree with you about taking what is valuable and discarding what is not.
“As for critics making the argument that it’s all bad…” Well, that’s not me. I have never said “it’s all bad.”
Here’s what I think: If someone is presenting a service for sale, and making claims for that service publicly, then they can expect to have those claims picked apart, challenged and questioned. I am not selling any service and I make no claims. If I were then, sure, you’d be welcome to pick apart those claims.
Well said Jeff & Tony,
I got what I got out of my auditing, and I am happy at what I got.
Could I use a bit of a repair right now? Sure … $hit happens, but what would life be without adventure.
Would I do it all again? Probably about 98% of it.
I think if the levels/training were advertised to simply ‘Improve your own life’, or ‘Life Skills’, or, “Tools for Living’, it would go over a lot better.
I always liked the idea of looking at it as a philosophy rather than a religion … you know: Read it, pick it apart, discuss it, analyze it and after all’s said & done: What is true for you is true for you.
The naysayers and fanatics alike are on either end of the spectrum and are equally nuts. As I am optimistic and have the idea that pretty well anything is possible, I would place myself on the far right – just a hair’s breadth from being a stark-raving fanatic 😛
I agree Jeff.
I guess my point would be if you were picking apart a service and found that some of it was a mis-representation but still had value otherwise, wouldn’t it be a more fair critique to include the good with the bad?
Example: Ford is selling a truck that can go 250 mph and can fly. It sells for $75,000.
Those claims were proven false, but it was found that it was an incredibly reliable vehicle and was far superior to other vehicles in it’s class. It has a fantastic engine, but the transmission is average…
I am just pointing out if you are trying to analyse acurately something I feel listing what is good about it is part of that process.
>Ford is selling a truck that can go 250 mph and can fly…Those claims were proven false, but it was found that it was an incredibly reliable vehicle.
Yeah, but I wasn’t promised an incredibly reliable vehicle, I was promised a vehicle that could go 250 MPH and fly. I’d been lied to, defrauded, and bilked out of $75k. I certainly wouldn’t see having a reliable truck with an average transmission as an upsde, since if that was what I wanted, I could have bought one from Chevrolet for one-third the price.
I’d call the Attorney General, I’d sue to get my money back, I’d tell all my friends, and I’d never believe anything Ford said or wrote ever again.
And by the way, your scenario is an *excellent* metaphor for Scientology.
ML,
Caliwog
Calliwog,
Thanks for the compliment on the metaphor.
It’s true that all those things could be done and the differences pointed out. But to say that the truck doesn’t run, it is a peice of junk etc. would simply be untrue. It isn’t what they said it was but it wasn’t a peice of junk. That would be a lie. To say that the Mr. Ford wanted to bilk you out of money all along would be a thought stopper and a false hood.
>To say that the Mr. Ford wanted to bilk you out of money all along would be a thought stopper and a false hood.
How so, Tony? Mr. Ford told me the truck could go 250 MPH and fly. Instead, he sold me what is essentially a $25,000 truck for $75,000. How is that thought stopping, and how is it false that he bilked me?
The fact is that the gains that Mr. Ford actually sold me – a reliable truck with a good engine – are available elsewhere.
If I offered you a week-long vacation to Paris, France, for $9,000, then took your money and flew you to Austin, Texas for 3 days in a Motel 6, would you be okay with that? After all, Austin is a lovely place!
ML,
Caliwog
Caliwog,
Mr. Ford has long since died. (in my metaphor)
The owner of the car lot is the one who is now using lies and deceit.
I don’t know that LRH ever siad that the pre-OT levels would accomplish the OT abilities.
Anyways, I am not here to argue about it. I do think even LRH oversold his product.
I don’t agree that this product of auditing can be obtained elswhere. Maybe other good products can be obtained but they would be different products. I think if auditing is sold truthfully and at a reasonable price it would be a good thing.
You seem to be changing the argument from : tell the good and bad about something for a true evaluation.
to: If you are told lies about something and are oversold something then it means that the whole product must be bad and the whole company must be destroyed.
Tony, I get your point about weighing the good and bad, and certainly one has to do that. But I think your example is flawed. If one sold a flying car and it didn’t actually fly, they could be legally prosecuted for fraud, regardless of anything else the car had going for it.
>You seem to be changing the argument from : tell the good and bad about something for a true evaluation.
Not so. It’s about what is promised vs. what is delivered. Scientology attracts people and keeps them going by promising abilities it does not deliver. People who get involve justify this by crediting lesser gains to Scientology. (IMOH, that’s a gradient way of dealing with it.)
But the fact still goes they did not get what they were promised and paid for. And that’s wrong. Just because a few good things come of being wronged, does not change the wrongness. Again, see my Paris/Austin analogy.
>I don’t agree that this product of auditing can be obtained elswhere.
Fair enough. Please understand that the lower levels of Dn/Scn are not original to Hubbard. Some research will show this to be true.
>tell the good and bad about something for a true evaluation.
A true evaluation of a paid-for service must include the promised and/or expected results.
>If you are told lies about something and are oversold something then it means that the whole product must be bad and the whole company must be destroyed.
I don’t recall saying that the whole product is bad, or that the company must be destroyed (although I wouldn’t mind seeing the latter, same for the Ford dealership that sold me a non-flying flying truck).
What I am saying is that if you are told lies and oversold something, then you have been wronged. And if you find yourself in the position of defending the entity that wronged you, then that entity has obviously done deeper damage than you realize.
Caliwog
Jeff,
It is not supposed to be a perfect analogy. Yes, if someone is saying things untrue and breaking the law they should be arrested.
My only point was to say if something is analyzed, the good and the bad should be looked at. That is all.
I am all for the cult being punished for their misdeeds. I am not defending individuals. I am talking about auditing. It has good in it. Some here (not you) try to make the argument that it is all bad. They seem to argue that LRH is bad therefore the tech is bad. That is sort of an A=A. I am sure LRH was not perfect. Marting luther King was not perfect but a lot of the ideas he espouses were great. Same with LRH.
Caliwog.
I am not defending the entity that wronged me. If you think that you do not have good duplication abilities. I resigned form the cult.
Would you like the tech of auditing banned?
Hi Tony,
I see the entity that wronged you as L. Ron Hubbard. And no, I would not like to see auditing banned. What I would like to see is greater understanding about where the technology of auditing comes from, what bits are valid, what bits are not.
And most of all, I would have liked to have seen Hubbard be more honest about the goals his followers can be expected to achieve.
Hubbard had some good ways of looking at things. I don’t have a huge problem with Dianetics as a self-help philosophy. But the overselling is a real problem. I feel a similar way about the Admin Tech: It has some really great stuff in it, stuff that I use to this day. But Hubbard says it is the ONLY way to do things, and it’s not. And in my experience, a business run by the Admin Tech will expand to a certain point, then cease growing or contract. It’s inherently self-limiting. But that’s another subject.
I do appreciate your patience and perseverance in continuing this discussion, Tony.
ML, CW
Caliwog said: “I see the entity that wronged you as L. Ron Hubbard.” Ok. That’s your opinion. I disagree but I appreciate your desire to help me.
” And no, I would not like to see auditing banned.” That’s good.
“What I would like to see is greater understanding about where the technology of auditing comes from, what bits are valid, what bits are not.” Ok, I don’t have a problem with that.
“And most of all, I would have liked to have seen Hubbard be more honest about the goals his followers can be expected to achieve.” I understand this. Just as a point of debate, would you like to see Jesus be more honest about telling people they are going to Heaven? One could say that this is dishonest and ask Christians to prove that heaven exists. That all the tithes they pay is a rip off. Etc. My point is that you have to draw the line somewhere between letting people think for themselves and preventing abuses and allowing religious freedom.
“Hubbard had some good ways of looking at things. I don’t have a huge problem with Dianetics as a self-help philosophy.” Good.
” But the overselling is a real problem.” For me too. Lots of religions oversell themselves IMO. But Scientolgy took it to obscene levels. although Jimmy Swaggart was pretty good too I think.
” I feel a similar way about the Admin Tech: It has some really great stuff in it, stuff that I use to this day. But Hubbard says it is the ONLY way to do things, and it’s not. And in my experience, a business run by the Admin Tech will expand to a certain point, then cease growing or contract. It’s inherently self-limiting. But that’s another subject.” Can’t argue this topic that much. I did some admin training and it helps me in my business. It isn’t that religious in nature to me. Though , the subject of ethics is important in relation to spirituality and being honest and decent. The cult has perverted ethics and justice to an incredible degree.
“I do appreciate your patience and perseverance in continuing this discussion, Tony.” Thanks Caliwog, I have enjoyed it. Tony.
ML, CW
Hi Tony,
The Jesus analogy doesn’t hold (and besides, St. Paul was a squirrel 🙂 )
While you can legitimately make accusations of insincerity about many religious leaders, Christianity doesn’t tend to promise tangible benefits in the current life.
Even Christian groups with some sense of progression don’t have an increase in tangible (non-MEST) benefits as you progress — the pope isn’t more “saved” than any other Catholic.
Maybe this just means that Jesus was a more clever marketer and didn’t promise anything verifiable.
If Hubbard had only said that you would gain thetan powers once you dropped your body there would be nothing to argue here.
Regards
Special Frog.
I am not an expert in Christinity much like many who post here are not experts in Scientology.
It is my understanding that Jesus and many of his principles have promised Heaven and eternal life. This to some degree is promoting a benefit. This benefit cannot be proven. Many churches get their followers to pay 10% of their income to the church.
Hi Tony,
I specified “tangible benefit in the current life”. By contrast, Scientology does offer tangible benefits in the current life.
If Scientology only offered things that can only be taken on faith there would be no issue. One could still question Hubbard’s motives but one can also do the same thing with many other religious figures (looking at you again, Paul).
But by offering something allegedly demonstrable he opens himself up to charges of fraud.
Additionally, I’d be happier if Scientology practiced some form of tithing rather than a fee structure. It means the benefit delivered is not related to ones ability to pay.
Tony,
I’m not a Christian, but AFAIK, Christianity did not make any claims that its promised benefits were scientifically provable. In fact, the argument I hear from many Christians is that these things must be taken on faith.
LRH said his results were scientifically provable (see comments elsewhere on this planet-sized thread).
Also, while some churches do get large donations, you don’t need to donate to study the scriptures. Nor do you need to sign on to do work at slave wages.
ML,
Caliwog
Hi SF,
SpecialFrog said :
“I specified “tangible benefit in the current life”. By contrast, Scientology does offer tangible benefits in the current life.: Got it. That was my misduplication sorry. I would say that there is an implied tangible benefit this life promoted by Christianity, a sort of Life insurance by being a true believer. Definitely implied IMHO.
“If Scientology only offered things that can only be taken on faith there would be no issue. One could still question Hubbard’s motives but one can also do the same thing with many other religious figures (looking at you again, Paul).” I do think that Scientology puts enough disclaimers in writing before a person does a service to cover their ass. It is not really fraud unless they say you will get what we say for sure. They also say that you can get your money back if not satisfied within a certain time frame. Hell, I am not arguing the point that the Official cult needs to be reigned in. That is obvious.
It’s funny to me that Christianity could be sort of an “earlier similar” for this charge on Scientology abuse. The Christians slaughtered heretics and ruined many a life with their zealotry. It went throgh a Reformation where people that got sick of the abuses said “ENOUGH” and made benevolent changes. I really think that is all that is going on now.
“But by offering something allegedly demonstrable he opens himself up to charges of fraud.” I think this is an exaggeration. Give me a specific example where the church says you will get ( ability) and if you don’t get it then too bad. In every case they offer your money back if not satisfied. This could and should be improved upon for sure but I don’t think it is fraud.
“Additionally, I’d be happier if Scientology practiced some form of tithing rather than a fee structure. It means the benefit delivered is not related to ones ability to pay.” I think it would be better if the prices were lowered significantly. I takes real work and time to deliver auditing and to leave it up to an individual recieving auditing to pay a fair price for the service is not fair IMO.
Caliwog said:
“I’m not a Christian, but AFAIK, Christianity did not make any claims that its promised benefits were scientifically provable. In fact, the argument I hear from many Christians is that these things must be taken on faith.” So what if he said that? If a person decides that the results are not Scientifically provable then don’t do them. Or if you wanted to get real strict on it then make a law that says they have not been scientifically proven, but show the testamonies of the people doing them and let people decide for themselves.
“LRH said his results were scientifically provable (see comments elsewhere on this planet-sized thread).” Ok. if they are not then probably those claims should be stricken from the records.
“Also, while some churches do get large donations, you don’t need to donate to study the scriptures. Nor do you need to sign on to do work at slave wages.” Christians buy bibles. Scientologists buy books. Scientoloogy offers services that require time and energy to deliver. You can’t expect them to be free. I do think that they should be priced at a fair exchange if anyone delivering wants to survive. Also a willingness to return money if not satisfied with the final product. As far as slave wages, I agree the Sea Org is a total rip off exchange with the people working within it. The Christians had priests and monks that dedicated their lives for no money too I believe. That is why a Reformation is needed for Scientology. It is like Scientology Inc, is in the Dark Ages and need to be snapped into present time.
Nice talking with you.
Tony
Gosh, it takes longer and longer to scroll up to the “reply” button…
>if they are not then probably those claims should be stricken from the records.
I *totally* agree, and it really bothers me that this hasn’t happened. Forget about DM; Hubbard had 35 years between Book One and body death.
>Christians buy bibles. Scientologists buy books.
Well, Christians also give away bibles, and Scientology charges for a LOT more than books. (I don’t want to get into the position of defending Christianity, I’m just sayin’.) Anyway, my point is that Christianity was designed to survive without income. Scientology was designed around generating an income.
>That is why a Reformation is needed for Scientology.
Again, I agree. But that raises the question: Can it be reformed? A lot of the aspects that people complain about Scientology (myself included) are hard-wired into the tech. They are the origination of LRH, and you have people like Marty Rathbun trying to blame all the bad stuff on Miscavige. (Luckily, LRH’s “tech” shows the truth.)
I think a reformed Scientology wouldn’t look much like Scientology today, or even Scientology in 1970.
ML,
Caliwog
Caliwog said:
“Gosh, it takes longer and longer to scroll up to the “reply” button…” LOL.
“>if they are not then probably those claims should be stricken from the records.
I *totally* agree, and it really bothers me that this hasn’t happened. Forget about DM; Hubbard had 35 years between Book One and body death.” Ok, get over it. Let’s get it changed and move on.
“>Christians buy bibles. Scientologists buy books.
Well, Christians also give away bibles, and Scientology charges for a LOT more than books. (I don’t want to get into the position of defending Christianity, I’m just sayin’.) Anyway, my point is that Christianity was designed to survive without income. Scientology was designed around generating an income.” I don’t think there is anything inherent wrong with wanting to make income. When you do it to the detriment of the purpose then it is wrong IMO.
>That is why a Reformation is needed for Scientology.
“Again, I agree. But that raises the question: Can it be reformed?” Yes, it canbe done by those who want it done. I don’t think you are one of those.
” A lot of the aspects that people complain about Scientology (myself included) are hard-wired into the tech.” This is only your opinion and maybe the opinion of some others. Quite a few people are happy with it. If people don’t like it then don’t use it. If it is your opinion that all the tech is sabotaged and it is ALL DANGEROUS then you are biased and I don’t think anyone could change your mind because you have an agenda. People could day that Christianity is hard wired to do you damage or Islaam.
” They are the origination of LRH, and you have people like Marty Rathbun trying to blame all the bad stuff on Miscavige. (Luckily, LRH’s “tech” shows the truth.)” Are you one of the people who said that LRH didn’t invent the tech? You can’t have it both ways if so. If not and you do think that LRH came up with the tech then ok. I don’t think people are complaining about the tech so much as the suppression and misuse of it to a marked degree by dm.
“I think a reformed Scientology wouldn’t look much like Scientology today, or even Scientology in 1970.” I agree. I know quite a few ex-members who still like the philosophy but disagree with the harsher tone LRH seemed to adopt after the late 60’s and with the concentration of overts etc. I think it will be Reformed into a much more benevolent form. Whether or not some say it will work or not, I say it will and I am alwasy right!! Ha, ha…
This concludes my debating on the subject for now. Thanks Jeff for providing this buffet of ideas, I am satiated for the time being.
Hi Tony,
While I’m not overly fond of the FDA, some of their rules make sense. One way to get in trouble with them is to get a product approved for a specific purpose and then market it for a different purpose, even if you. If your disclaimers and your marketing say opposite things it is still fraud.
Additionally, I can convert to Christianity without seeing a disclaimer that heaven does not actually exist. Well, I assume so, anyway. 🙂
Another thread of this conversation (below) discusses the benefits claimed in Dianetics, which has generally been the entry point to Scientology.
I am glad to hear you agree that the “scientific” claims should be removed from all material. I agree that testimonials are valid promotional material.
As for the fees for auditing, yes it takes real work and time but so do the official duties of virtually any religious official. Having the transactional approach to religious service just makes it all too easy to prioritize parishioners with money, to encourage — even indirectly — people to spend beyond their means, etc.
Regards
Oy, Tony, I keep saying I’m done, and then someone posts something I just have to reply to…
>” A lot of the aspects that people complain about Scientology (myself included) are hard-wired into the tech.” This is only your opinion and maybe the opinion of some others.
Not an opinion, Tony. Fact. This happens commonly on Marty’s site: Marty (or someone else) will point out a specific crime that DM is committing. I will find and point out the LRH PL that explains what DM is doing.
And then Marty censors the comment, and I have to start my own blog to get the truth out there. 🙂
>Are you one of the people who said that LRH didn’t invent the tech?
No, to clarify, I said that LRH didn’t invent all of the tech, and other parts he lifted for the tech but claimed as his own. Regardless, he signed off on all of it.
ML, CW
This issue of what is “hard-wired into the tech” seems almost entirely a “Tower of Babel” issue to me. Many people argue endlessly about this without ever finding out what the other person means by “the tech”.
In fact there are a lot of different areas of “tech” in Scientology. Knowing little about any of them, I have th effrontery to consider most of them to be “semi-tech” at best. When I say “the tech” I am specifically referring to the auditing technology as I encountered it in the early1970s, and the Grade Chart that goes with it.
I do not mean Admin, Management or anything else. Those may have a lot of good ideas in them and I believe they do, but to me they are not “tech” in the sense a technician means “tech”.
Because of this not being on the same page about “What exactly are you referring to when you say by ‘the tech’ “, many times people are just flapping their jaws talking past each other and no agreement or understanding is ever reached.
This is complicated by the accretion of a lot of ‘verbal tech’ over the decades, and the development of idiosyncratic individual understandings of various parts of what Hubbard said/wrote.
I believe any understanding is in any case always “individual”. This is what makes keeping unaltered copies of all original materials archived and available so important.
And I too am thinking of starting my own blog for similar reasons. Then I can ‘bloviate’ to my heart’s content.
Except I believe all I can make known is “my” truth, which is not necessarily THE truth. This is in keeping with my belief that any understanding is ultimately individual.
Jeff is excellent at doing this; he presents his own unique understandings from his own unique viewpoint, no more no less. He does not pretend to know more nor less than he knows. That is integrity of communication as I see it.
I’ve said this before but one thing I would like to see is what independent Scientologists consider “the tech”. Maybe a wiki or some guide explaining all the documents and their purpose.
You can avoid copyright issue by not including any of the actual documents, just references and the odd quote.
Besides, it’s not tricky for people to find the documents themselves at this stage. 🙂
@Valkov:
>When I say “the tech” I am specifically referring to the auditing technology… I do not mean Admin, Management… to me they are not “tech” in the sense a technician means “tech”.
Valkov, this is an arbitrary. From what I’ve studied, LRH had several types of “tech” but all were considered valid source data and were to be followed.
I believe LRH wrote a specific policy defining the meaning of HCO PLS, HCOBs, HCO EDs, advises, etc., defining what was valid and what was senior. HCO PLs are part of The Tech and are senior, stable data and are to be followed. That’s LRH policy.
If you do not consider all policy as part of “The Tech,” that’s fine, but you must recurs yourself from the conversation when we talk about what LRH promised in “the tech,” or at least don’t say “That’s not part of the tech” because it doesn’t fit your definition.
That’s akin to a devout Christian saying he only believes in 6 of the 10 commandments.
I understand that the tech thing is true for you, but that doesn’t make it true. 🙂
ML,
Caliwog
@Caliwog-
“Valkov, this is an arbitrary. From what I’ve studied, LRH had several types of “tech” but all were considered valid source data and were to be followed.”
It’s true that I give HCO PLs a lot of weight. Whether they are the same echelon of certainty as HCOBs, I haven’t yet decided.
So here’s the HCO PL I am following:
HCO PL 23 Oct 63, Refund Policy, OEC Vol 3:
“The more thetan you have present, the less policy you need and
the better things run. Only a thetan can handle a post or a pc. All
he needs is the know-how of minds as contained in Scientology. That
was all he ever lacked. So, given that, sheer policy is poor stuff
as it seeks to make a datum stand where a being should be. That’s
the whole story of the GPM’s. So why not have live orgs?”
Right there, LRH is saying don’t blindly follow policy, think for yourself and use your judgement.
Apparently LRH himself distinguished some “source” as being “sourcier” than other “source” and needing to be followed more strictly – like auditing tech as contained in HCOBs.
The Dilbert Principle is the reasonLRH had to write so much policy.
>It’s true that I give HCO PLs a lot of weight. Whether they are the same echelon of certainty as HCOBs, I haven’t yet decided.
If you’re a Scientologist, it’s not up to you, my friend.
>Right there, LRH is saying…
I disagree with your assessment. In a non-Church org, there is both org policy and LRH policy (tech). When he says “less policy” I believe he is talking about created policy, ie org policy. Note that LRH tech is senior: “All
he needs is the know-how of minds as contained in Scientology.”
So what LRH is saying is that if you follow Scientology tech/policy you don’t need additional policy.
In other words, Father Ron knows best.
>The Dilbert Principle is the reasonLRH had to write so much policy.
I always thought he had diarrhea of the typewriter.
ML,
CW
Correct.
LRH stated something along the lines that SCN isn’t something to make people feel good but leads to the ability to break the mest body cycle. THAT is why he said he went down the road.
Now, show me someone who has done that?
Everything else is great but, NOT why he said he developed the subject.
I think outright communicating about OT abilities, is a walk on a thin wire. If one mentions something which is unreal to annother person it could cause antagonism and heavy invalidation. (as an back flow). Just look in the net. Its full of that stuff. It also could be overwhelming for the other person. And if the person can´t see it, with her eyes she probably asks for “evidence”, which brings other troubles to that OT.
Though I am not OT per grade chart I experienced abilities on myself, which i usually don´t mention to others. Its great that I got them. 🙂 and i keep them with me confidential. 🙂
Hi Jeff,
I read (and enjoyed) your book, and regularly follow your blog.
This post is by far the most relevant one you have ever made.
Thank you for making it, and thank you for your blog.
After almost 30 years in Scientology, 10 years (off & on) on “OT7”, 100s of 1000s of dollars, plus conversations with (and personal inspections of) numerous “OTs”, I can authoritatively state: “No. OT abilities do not exist”. And they never did. And Hubbard knew it.
FiatLux,
I have had a long term involvement with the cult and Hubbard’s many contradictory statements as you have it seems.
The term OT has been for me a nebulous concept of the cosmology of the beyond implied by Hubbard that one could exert his will over matter, energy ,space, time objectively and subjectively.
This definition was on the old grade chart for OT*
This would then qualify a god of some sort so Hubbard said you could be a god is the way it reads.
To then soft peddle it and say no he meant blah blah bah is defending an outright lie as far as I am concerned.
Otto Rank of the Freudian era does cover this idea of the cosmology and the beyond very well in his book the “Trauma of Birth”.
Hubbard’s son commits suicide,his wife ends up in jail following his orders along with 10 other persons going to jail for doing the same.
Hubbard dies a fugitive from the law alone with Visatril in his blood per the official autopsy report with millions stashed in bank accounts all over the planet .
He had the IRS looking to serve him for unpaid taxes and illegal inurement from his “church ” that he had been sucking dry with slave labor as the backbone.
We all pay our fair share of income tax yet he was above the law and evaded his “gargantuan” share .
It was about money and more money for Hubbard all along.
If there was something good that came out of it it was incidental. .
Miscavige is just following Hubbard’s blueprint in promising the the status of becoming a god to all gullible marks that buy the con.
I know I was one of them but I don’t regret it as I have learned to look across the vast area of knowledge that exists to know our potential is not limited .
We can evolve to higher states with the burning desire to learn going forward knowing is that is it truly free for everyone.
You can start with the Rosecrution theories,Socrates,Plato Joseph Breuer,Otto Rank ,Nordenholtz and his Scientolgie which came well before Hubdard’s and many many other real contributors to humanity.
We have a treasure house of knowledge and well intentioned people who shared it for FREE.
I agree with your post wholeheartedly.
Those that want to continue with their illusions I will respect them as long as it does not harm or pauperize others.
I also exepct those same persons to not try to throw any more sand in my face when I look at the facts.
Advanced Soul, if Jeff’s blog had a “like” button for comments, I’d click it for that one. Well said.
ML, CW
Fiat Lux and Advanced Soul: Yes!!!!!!! and yes and yes….
Let’s look for the REAL contributions to humanity and their authors to learn from and be inspired by.
Again: One helluvan article, Jeff.
Fidelio
Fidelio
Dear Advanced Soul,
Spot on. So spot on.
Thanks for the research ideas, as well.
FL
Hi Jeff,
I have not yet done my OT Levels. Although as a last lifetime Scientologist I did achieve something having to do with being OT. From what I have heard this would probably be invalidated in today’s Church. One of the reasons I am staying away.
But, I have definitely observed the “Free from Overwhelm” ability in an OT 3. And have seen another older person who, on OT VII started a new career like he was in his 20’s. It was real to me that this was an OT VII win to be able to do this.
Regarding the more magical OT abilites. I think these abilites can be regained. But it seems to me that the more magical side of Scientology has been surpressed these last few decades. Just like the more theta, benevolent side of Scientology-the magic lost in the church seems to be more alive with old time Scientologists in the Freezone or Independent Field.
@One:
>have seen another older person who, on OT VII started a new career like he was in his 20′s. It was real to me that this was an OT VII win to be able to do this.
Can you expand on this? How is this an OT VII win? I’m not trying to be argumentative, I really want to know.
ML,
Caliwog
Hi Caliwog,
Just knowingness really. Observing the person. Observing others around me. This is true for me. But, ofcourse I can’t prove it to be true.
I am excited about seeing what happens when Scientology is once again practiced in freedom.
Thanks for the answer, One.
ML, CW
“[I] have seen another older person who, on OT VII started a new career like he was in his 20′s.”
Since “older people” who are NOT Scientologists ALSO do this … how can you specifically assign THAT “ability” to OT VII, or any Scientology process?
What you are demonstrating was discussed earlier. Scientologists get “wins” by ascribing positive, but perfectly normal, events as if these were the results of Scientology.
I started a new career when I was 58. Had nothing to do with OT abilities – it was just my general cussedness.
Dear General Cussedness,
Good job on starting a new career. You’ve had a very nice effect on several aspects of our lives as a result.
lunamoth (Major Painintheass)
“But, I have definitely observed the “Free from Overwhelm” ability in an OT 3. And have seen another older person who, on OT VII started a new career like he was in his 20′s. It was real to me that this was an OT VII win to be able to do this.”,
This is an interesting comment. However to me, a pure observer of Scientology, it is an odd association.
Some of the successes I’ve read about that have been credited to auditing or the OT levels, have read to me, nothing more, than the benefit gained from life experience aka growing older and wiser.
Happily many of us gain confidence and perhaps a calmer acceptance of life as we move from our forties on. A lucky few feel it earlier.
I changed my career completely in middle age. I went through an unbelievably steep learning curve and jumped right into doing it, with some success. Why? I had lived long enough to understand how important it is to do what makes me happy, I had the self confidence of age to know I could do this successfully. I had the maturity to truly understand that my career, or my surface appearance, or my belongings, did not define me and the worst could happen is that I would fail.
In my 20’s the thought of failure would have put some brakes on my experimentation, now I see failure as insignificant compared to loss of a friendship or loss of sense of humour.
I have has some astounding experiences, one being a “visit” from a parent’s deceased best friend, telling me that my parent was ill. I have had intuitive help when driving and avoiding an accident. I have had premonitions of negative things about to happen as well as positive. They may have all been coincidences, or over active imagination, but I have felt grateful to have experienced them.
All this, and I have never, and will never, do any auditing or go up a bridge or get a framed certificate to make me OT.
It is just part of the magical thing that is this human experience. You don’t need to learn it from a manual, it is within us all.
Aldebaran, wonderfully put!!
The trouble with successes and wins close to an environment of SCN activities is that they are – all too often openly and/or covertly mandatorily(!!!!!) assigned to SCN. Gradually more and more, Scientologists are indoctrinated along the line into assigning cause to whatever SCN procedure instead of to personal effective looking and to effective learning and maturing in the course of life while dealing with the problems it poses to the individual.
By signing away one’s own cause to Hubbard, that character is bloated into a Superhuman “OT” Cause having contributed enormously to mankind whereas the truth about his very own existence and true “contributions” is ravaging and devastating.
We would not have that discussion were it otherwise.
Given that pile of lies, distortions of truth and proven failures, it is hard to understand how anyone could defend that source of bad “religious” fiction one minute longer.
Fidelio
Jeff,
Love your perspective and love your article.
It reminds of the old TV commercials where the elderly lady yells ” WHERE’S THE BEEF???”
As for my OT abilities, I got zilch for my $300,000……. and instead got my head stuffed with illogical crap that’s taken years to remove.
I agree with Jason Beghe, Scientology is a fraud and a ripoff!
Beghe has stated that there are “fantastic opportunities in Scientology if not involved with CoS”. This was after he left CoS.
No matter what, I’m still floored at the price tag. THAT is a scam.
If they want to do it ethically, charge everything “at cost” … and if on a truly self-determined basis the person wants to give more … THEN let them give the other $280,000. The insane crush reg’ing and stat worshipping has decimated the CoS more than anything else, imho.
Hi Jeff,
thank you for this site. i love this site, mostly becuz of the freedoms of speech, thought, etc. that are afforded here. i have not done the OT levels, but i got a lot out of studying various writings of LRH and doing classes of various sorts. i got a lot out of just the basic concept of ARC. back when i could have gotten into Buddhism or some other religion, i got into Scn ( the western bent was more my speed) and what a journey and experience it was, on staff, etc. – i am thankful for the unique experience i was party to – i dig the unique, and it was a heck of a trip.
everything on this planet is a mixed bag, everyone of us is not perfect. LRH was not perfect, and the whole truth will “out” eventually. The Church has it’s vagaries, many of which Jeff has commented on ……. to be expected, as human behavior is involved. But i take LRH for his word when he wrote “For I know no man who has any monopoly upon the wisdom of this universe. It belongs to those who can use it to help themselves and others. ” (My Philosophy) …….
and so ………… on this 100th anniversary of LRH’s birthday,
(i hadn’t realised it earlier, but yeah, it’s #100) i ask you who know that a lot of what LRH
had to say and write had value to it, and can be used to help themselves and others – to GO FOR IT ! and i hope this post doesn’t get deleted cuz somebody figures i’m off subject a bit.
i can’t say much about OT phenomena. i just know that the tools i gained in the study of Scn
made this life a lot more palatable. Sure i could have found some of the tools elsewhere,
put in other words, etc., and i have – but i like the way LRH put them. i like other philosophers too. i’m a liker, not a hater ……….. you’ll give yourself an ulcer if you go around hating everything that is wrong on this planet …… and that’s all you’ll give …….. don’t get caught in that trap.
happy birthday LRH xxxxxxxoooooooo
🙂 InTheNameofLove
march 13, 2011 7:50 pm mountain time
Wow!! Did you send him a post card for his birthday too??
Jeff, you really write great articles! That being said, I had an epiphany one day when I realized that the “new” grade chart does not include ANY actual OT levels. They are all pre-OT levels now, from OT 1 to 7 at least. OT 8 is the first “real” OT level section.
I say this because I used to go to my Mission’s events and the OT 7s there had done the original OT sections 4 to 7, were perfectly willing to talk about it, spoke of their abilities and man, did they have abilities! They actively created an environment that welcomed such abilities, they validated people for them, but most importantly they SPOKE about them freely and without reservation. This was in the mid 1970s.
I also encountered a couple of guys before I ever encountered Scientology who had done a bunch of auditing back in the 1960s and they spoke freely of their abilities as well. They had left scientology in the late 1960s because they really disliked the new Sea Org attitudes.
I personally think that the current culture of the C of S is extremely deterimental to developing or activating any sort of OT abilities. I have found that various abilities of my own that have been developing all along (I didn’t notice or even think to notice) have become stronger and more “developed” since I no longer interact with the incredibily materialistic, effort ridden, closed communication, “don’t reach or you’ll get in trouble” mind set of the C of S. Cripes, pretty much every staff member I deal with treats me like I am a bloody idiot who has to be told every little thing to do, has to be ordered about, must be threatened, must be a perpetual student on and on, in short they are cause, I am effect. And it does not matter how much auditing I have done — I am still treated like a dodo head, an incompetent fool.
Yes Anna, I also met people back in the early1970s who had done the “original” OT levels. This links to a page that has an early Grade Chart on it:
http://www.wiseoldgoat.com/papers-scientology/hubbard_story_of_mayo3_grade_chart.html#gainedlost
Each level had a “Ability Gained” and an “Inability Lost” beside it for their EPs.
The chart is about half-way down the page.
I believe OTVII was done after OTIII and then OT III Expanded was done, then the rest of the levels.
Those people had a lot of abilities. Most of them left “organized scientology” before long, as the Sea Org impinged more and more in a jackbooted kind of way. A lot of the missions the S.O.sent out were little more than press gangs
The thing is, going Clear and more had made those people more independent, more self-determined, and free-thinking.
The Sea Org was trying to press as many of them as possible into S.O. service, and they just walked away saying “We don’t need or want this sh*t.”
Can you be more specific? Which people? What abilities? I keep hearing about these “earlier OTs.” Well, I was there and I have no idea who you are talking about.
I think that the more free theta there is in an environment, the more potential there is to express one’s ability. The church has become more and more solid and in doing so I see that the public in general has fallen more into the effort band than anything else. Not surprising that OT abilities are not easy to see in the current church.
Back in the 70’s there was a lot of free theta, a lot of communication. The major emphasis was that you were a thetan with unlimited ability. There were no exclusions, we all had unlimited abilities. Some people took this to heart and tested out these abilities simply based on the idea that they were told they had them. No one told them they couldn’t do them because they weren’t OT whatever yet. This would be similar to a person reading 88008 and the experimenting and testing out these concepts on their own.
Traveling 60 miles in 45 minutes without going over the 55 mile an hour speed limit, changing weather, theta comm (full two way comm cycles without verbal words) was all considered pretty normal and routine where I started at.
I did notice a huge difference in free theta and ability after two particular events. One was the arrival of the Int Finance Police and the other was after the Mission Holder meeting. After that time I did not consistently see OT abilities being demonstrated broadly. Of course they still happened but not all the time. Sort of like the difference in being able to go exterior and being exterior all the time.
This also occurred at a time when you were allowed to talk about your wins, cognitions and abilities.
Bob Musack was one. He was a Class VIII auditor and had done the original pre-OT levels. Ari Klopp and his family from Southfield MI including his daughter Marian who has long since been a TIR practititioner.
@ Jeff
I don’t remember everyone’s names — this was a long time ago and I only remembered about it when I read your article. But I do remember some of the abilities that they spoke about:
– Visiting locations without their bodies – some of the wins included confirming with others they had seen at those locations what was happening. Note: this was never in terms of “flying” to a location, they just saw and knew.
– Lots of premonitions, previewing future events.
– Manifesting things into their lives in impossible ways
– Throwing a car sideways to avoid an accident
– Slowing down time or speeding it up
– Directing another’s actions by intention alone (no words)
– Setting up an emeter and auditing “disembodied” beings – saw it myself – the meter was definitely reading but no one was holding the cans!!
-Knowing about what had just happened in a room or things that had happened in the past — again confirmed with people who had been there
– Healing others from a distance, easing people’s upsets, getting messages through to them
– Handling restimulation in others by communicating directly to them (not using a body)
– Lots and lots of reports of either being above or behind their bodies, lots of funny stories about getting used to that new operating basis
-Lots of memories of past existences with some confirmed
– Manifesting roses blooming on a rose bush in winter
– Thriving plants, growing faster and more luxuriantly than expected by granting admiration/attention
– “Fixing” ideas in others so that they would go along with their ideas of what to do
– Routinely knowing what another was thinking without any doubt and confirming it (I routinely experience this myself with people I have great rapport with)
– Knowing when someone was lying or falsifying information
– Staying away from a place because of a bad feeling and they turned out to be right about it
It went on and on, every week at graduation wins were given and people met up on Sundays and had great discussions – more numerous than I can possibly remember.
Anna,
This was my experience as well as a new Scientologist in the late 70s and is what I was trying to get across in my earlier post.
I did experience one of the things you mentioned. While on a motorcycle that had been hit from the rear by a truck, (in bumper to bumper traffic, on an oil slick road from a new rain and I was not wearing a helmet)the bike was falling to the ground and pulling hard into the right lane of traffic. I got a picture of what was going to happen, said no way and my 2D and I simultaneously pulled up the bike, defying gravity. All traffic had suddenly disappeared and we coasted to the side of the road. Upon inspection, two thirds of the foot peg had worn off as it was scraping the road. We were the front of a ten car pile up and walked away. I actually knew ahead time that we were going to get hit because I was watching the driver behind us going faster than we were, it wasn’t something he could control. I chose not to alert my 2D because he was wearing a helmet and I felt he might turn to hear me better if I spoke. I knew that he would have to be able to maintain control of the bike and I knew he could handle the impact if he was looking forward.
It really was a clear cut intention with no counter intention, something learned on upper indoc. I think most OT abilities are simply that, an intention with no counter intention.
*Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds* for sure.
I have gained abilities from Scientology, some fleeting or transient, some stable and perhaps even permanent.
However they seem to have a common nature that makes them hard to “prove”.
I believe it is because they are spiritual.
If I can just get what people are thinking how do I prove that? I could possibly produce some people in my life who would agree that I seem to know what they are thinking at times.
If I have been or can be “exterior” how do I prove that?
If I can sense, see and communicate with spirits or ghosts how do I prove that. Maybe it’s my imagination, but it’s been validated a number of times by others sensing the same thing.
Often I can tell people what happened when they describe to me a situation that is troubling them. I can just look and tell them- you left the keys on top of the cabinet. They come back the next day and say yeah, I found it. What is that? How do I prove that?
I’ve been where I’m a fraction of a second from hitting another car on ice at high speed and just decided that wasnt going to happen and it didn’t- I was suddenly to the side of the other car. I’ve done similar a number of times. Something about things that just cant happen make me drop considerations or something. A little girl was falling backwards and was going to hit her head on the concrete hard. I went from three feet away standing to catching her an inch from the ground and I do not think any time actually passed. People saw this and were very shocked. I caught her before her parents and others standing closer to her could even begin to react. Maybe I could ask them to recount this incident?
The other day someone was handing me a fork at a barbeque. She was old and it flipped out of her hand as she handed it to me. I reached over and grabbed it out of the air as if time had stopped. She definitely noticed and said “HE JUST GRABBED THAT RIGHT OUT OF THE AIR!”. I just laughed and she was the only one that saw it.
I guess what I’m getting at is this stuff is not MEST. It is not thought. It is not science.
To have somebody go into a lab and “prove” something like that is a tough thing to do. It’s like two different worlds. Demanding someone prove it is IMO lower toned than the OT abilities and is a MEST oriented human thing to do, thereby they repel each other. It’s incompatible, like two of the same pole of magnets.
Could it be done? Possibly. But how would you determine if the person had the abilities or they got them from Scientology. Also on that- the person always had them anyway according to LRH right? Scientology is meant to get you to discover and unbury these abilities. You never really lose or gain them. Some use “OT” abilities who have never done any Scientology.
That’s great DFB.
I thnk the fact that if people get things from the tech and want to use it, is a sort of proof in itself.
I think some people that are down tone cannnot see things from a spiritual side and want physical universe proof. How do you prove that someone loves you?? How do you prove that you like someone? By buying them some candy or a diamond? Is that proof to you?
>I think some people that are down tone cannnot see things from a spiritual side and want physical universe proof.
Hey, I resemble that remark! 🙂 It’s not a matter of not seeing things from a spiritual side. What I’m questioning (and I can only speak for me) is whether these gains you’ve had actually come from Hubbard’s tech.
There is a further element to the desire for proof – Hubbard was very adamant that Scientology is made up of scientifically-provable facts. That’s how he sold Scientology. All I want to see that backed up.
My motivation is not, as Hubbard says, to keep people from getting gains. I’m not a down-tone individual. (See what Hubbard did there? He has set you up to be disinclined to believe anyone who might get you to question things.)
My motivation is not to see good people taken advantage of. And in my opinion, that’s what Scientology does. I’m not trying to cover up my crimes; I’m trying to expose Hubbard.
I do it out of love and respect for Scientologists. Talk about making it tough to prove someone loves you! 🙂
ML,
Caliwog
Er, clarification: My motivation is to see that good people are not taken advantage of.
ML, CW
Caliwog,
Well if you are an expert and want to know so bad then why don’t you tell us how it could be proven or disproven?
I am not an expert at convincing others of what I feel and perceive.
A person can use a radio an d know it works but not be able to give the theory of how it works. This is even harder if you are talking about things of a subjective/spiritual nature IMO.
Your assumption is that anyone who doesn’t engage in thoughtful emotion or nebulous self-examination, someone who looks to science and observation, is inherently non-spiritual.
Did you ever stop to think that many people get immense spiritual satisfaction from wholly scientific examination? Do you not think that some people might find scientific discoveries spiritually uplifting?
An expert I’m not, Tony, but it’s very simple. A clear should be able to display the gains laid out in Dianetics, and an OT should be able to demonstrate the promised OT abilities (ie manipulation of MEST), any time, as desired.
If we’re going to do this properly, we would have to establish that a non-trained Scientologist can *not* do these same things, but I’d settle for a demonstration of OT abilities. 🙂
I should add that I do not doubt the abilities people have talked of here. I believe these things happen. What I do not believe is that they happen as a result of following Hubbard’s technology.
Many people experience changes in perception of time, especially in crisis or stress; sensitivity to input data that we are not consciously aware of; and seemingly superhuman reflexes in emergencies. I don’t know that these are OT abilities.
But if OT abilities exist, like Jeff said, an OT should be able demonstrate them.
Caliwog
Tony, I should emphasize that Hubbard said his technology is scientifically valid and provable. That is why I feel that should be backed up.
If Hubbard hadn’t made those claims, I wouldn’t be so eager to see proof.
ML, CW
Caliwog, what specifically did LRH say that you disagree with? There may be some confusion between his early attempts to define and discover the nature and capabilities ot full OT and the Bridge as is released or exists now.
Just because he postulated (non-Scientology definition) that a being is capable of existing without a body while controlling MEST or whatever “OT” means to you, does that mean everyone who does up to OT8 is guaranteed to reach this state? Or anyone who does OT8?
Were you promised something specifically that you did not receive?
The only thing I can think of like that is that sometimes promo or descriptions of some advanced services mention exteriorization. I’ve never seen, even in the Church any promise that I would be able to change physical form, fly and shoot laser beams out of my eyes after doing a specific Grade Chart step.
>Caliwog, what specifically did LRH say that you disagree with?
Oh, man, DFB, I wouldn’t even know where to start the list.
>Just because he postulated… does that mean everyone who does up to OT8 is guaranteed to reach this state? Or anyone who does OT8?
Well, Hubbard didn’t postulate. He said that OTs would gain certain abilities if the tech was followed 100%. So yes, I would take that as a guarantee.
>Were you promised something specifically that you did not receive?
Personally? No, because I never made any attempt to practice Dianetics or Scientology. But I did see plenty of promises, or more specifically promised results (i.e. you must do this, and this will happen) in the Admin Tech. Sometimes the promised results happened, sometimes they didn’t. (The Condition Formulas are a great example.)
And the same thing happened there that is happening here. If we got the results we wanted, it was a win for the tech. If we didn’t, someone went to cramming. In my experience, and that of fellow wogs, more often than not we’d followed policy to the letter, so we had to find something little technicality, because the tech could *not* be wrong. Huge waste of time.
Once or twice, when there were no mistakes to be found, I’d let things drag on for a while and then the poor cramming officer or word clearer a break by stumbling on the definition of “for” or something similar. They needed their stats and I needed to get back to work.
Ah, those were the days.
ML,
Caliwog
Oops, forgot:
>I’ve never seen, even in the Church any promise that I would be able to change physical form, fly and shoot laser beams out of my eyes after doing a specific Grade Chart step.
I haven’t seen those either, but I don’t know the HCOBs as well as many here.
But I believe Hubbard said OTs could go exterior at will and manipulate MEST. I know he said clears would have perfect recall and better eyesight. I have heard Hubbard in his own voice talk about interstellar travel.
I’ve known plenty of OTs, I through VIII. A couple of VIIIs, matter of fact. Didn’t find them any more or less impressive than ordinary humans. All really nice people, though.
Suggested reading: A blog entry I wrote entitled A Tale of Two OT8s.
http://caliwog.wordpress.com/2010/06/11/a-tale-of-two-ot8s/
Only the names have been changed to protect the thetans.
ML,
Caliwog
Caliwog, I still think you are confusing LRH’s early postulations and speculations on the potentials of Theta with the much later “OT levels”. I guess you are saying that someone who has done OT levels should be able to levitate or some standard that you hold as proof of OT. What I am saying is that there is no statements or promises given regarding the OT levels that promise or promote magical warlock powers. If you have a specific thing you want to discuss lets hear it. Maybe we can clear this up.
>If you have a specific thing you want to discuss lets hear it. Maybe we can clear this up.
DFB, unless I can get some help from those more familiar, I’ll have to do some reading to find the references on OT abilities.
But meanwhile can we start with Hubbard’s claims about Clears in Dianetics? Only because I have those close to hand.
ML, CW
Here are some scientific claims from “Fundamentals of Thought”
“No other subject on earth except physics and chemistry has had
such gruelling testing (proofs, exact findings).” (p. 2)
“Life is a game. A game consists of freedom, barriers and purposes. This is a scientific fact, not merely an observation.” (p. 15)
“Probably the greatest discovery of Scientology and its most forceful contribution to the knowledge of mankind has been the isolation, description and handling of the human spirit, accomplished in July, 1951, in Phoenix, Arizona. I established along scientific rather than religious or humanitarian lines that that thing which is the person, the personality, is separable from the body and the mind at will and without causing bodily death or mental derangement.” (p. 19)
“There are no tenets in Scientology which cannot be demonstrated with entirely scientific procedures.” (p. 25)
“Scientology is such a science. It was born in the same crucible as the atomic bomb. The basic intelligence of Scientology came from nuclear physics, higher mathematics and the understanding of the ancients in the East. Scientology can and does do exactly what it says it can do. In Washington, D[C], there is an enormous file cabinet filled with thousands of case histories, fully validated and sworn to, which attest the scientific thoroughness of Scientology.” (p. 42)
Given these above statements it seems entirely reasonable to demand proof.
Ok guys. What I’m saying is PROOF OF WHAT? Can you state specifically what you are looking for? Is there some specific reference that promises something?
Like maybe LRH wrote that if you do Grade II you will be able to run faster or something? If you do OTV you will be able to walk on the ceiling?
What you have is two things:
1: His early attempts to discover and define the potential and nature of Theta (spirit).
2: The “Bridge” as his attempt to get man closer to those potentials.
A study and application of Scientology might be necessary before one says “it doesnt work”, or that it fails to deliver whats is promised.
If LRH had said, “These are what I believe are the potentials of Man as a spirit. The Bridge is my attempt to get Man closer to these potentials. I make no promises,” then we wouldn’t be having this discussion, would we?
DFB: Proof of anything Hubbard says is scientifically proven would be a good starting point. The existence of the spirit, for example.
If it was phrased as Jeff suggests it would be fine. But I’m not really inclined to spend several years and thousands of dollars to determine whether or not something is scientifically proven.
>What I’m saying is PROOF OF WHAT? Can you state specifically what you are looking for? Is there some specific reference that promises something?
Sure. Let’s go with something simple: Dianetics.
“Cleared, ‘I’ is able to reach all moments of his lifetime without exertion or discomfort and perceive all he has ever sensed, recalling them in full motion, color, sound, tone and other senses.” — LRH, DMSMH (2007 ed) page vii
“In a Clear, full memory exists throughout the lifetime, with the additional bonus that he has photographic recall in color, motion, sound, etc., as well as optimum computational ability.” — LRH, ibid
There are two exact claims written by LRH and still in print as of 2007.
No study of Scientology required; I simply want to meet a Clear who has perfect recall and optimum computational ability.
Does anyone know a polite way to say “Put up or shut up”? 🙂
ML,
Caliwog
Special Frog,
It wouldn’t cost you thousands of dollars to prove that you are an immortal spiritual being.
All ya gotta do is try not to be three feet back of your head.
There are also other methods that are a bit more drastic if that doesn’t work
But what’s a body?
Especially when you have definitive proof 😉
Ok, Jeff.
First, you guys can believe what you like, it’s fine with me. I’m just throwing thoughts out there for discussion so I hope no one is taking this too seriously.
Secondly, I would like to expand on your Grades comment if you don’t mind.
It sounds like you had some gains on your Grades. Maybe we can use that as a provable example. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone go through their Grades and not have huge life changing wins. Granted, I have not seen anyone do their Grades for a long time. I don’t think orgs deliver them anymore.
If you had to bet on it would you bet that a study on a group of 100 people, before and after Grades, to see what the results would be, would produce scientifically (at least as much as the Pharmaceutical companies or psychs) valid positive results? Do you think if properly delivered that the standard EP of each Grade would be reported as having been atained by the majority of study participants?
I don’t have the $ or time or reason to do such study, but anyone who has been around in Scientology would probably take this bet. I sure would.
I think also the number of people who claim positive results from auditing is proof of something even if only subjective.
And lastly, I still think you guys are mixing up LRH’s early work in lectures (PDC’s etc) with the OT levels or something. You are expecting to get the full abilities as he postulated may existway up the tone scale, possibly much of it beyond the limits of a bodily existence.
RJ: Seeing as that quote appears to be from OT6 I would argue that it would require spending thousands of dollars to get there. 🙂
Anyway, Hubbard wrote some specific things about scientific proof of his “discoveries”. All I am asking is whether or not the details that validate his claims actually exist.
DFB: I don’t think anyone is arguing that auditing cannot be of benefit, though I would certainly question whether it is more effective than other methods of self-examination. You can lose weight on most any (non-crazy) diet because the simple process of examining your own eating habits is likely to have an effect on them.
But again, Hubbard says a lot more than, “I have a technique that I think will have some positive effects on people.”
I don’t know the ins and outs of supposed OT abilities but I’ve read Dianetics, Fundamentals of Thought and some other things and I feel the bits that have been quoted by myself and Caliwog are reasonably representative of the claims Hubbard makes in those works.
@DFB
>Would you bet that a study on a group of 100 people, before and after Grades, to see what the results would be, would produce scientifically (at least as much as the Pharmaceutical companies or psychs) valid positive results?
If the study was conducted properly – i.e. the people were not Scientologists and were not told about the the process or the expected EP, and it was double-blind (an additional 100 people were given the same introduction but subjected to a different program, i.e. auditing sessions with just small talk), and an overwhelming majority of Group A (Grades) people showed the EP, and Group B (placebo) did not, then that would be a scientifically valid study.
Tell you what, I’ll volunteer. Don’t tell me which group I’m in.
1 down, 199 to go.
ML, CW
Jeff said: “If LRH had said, “These are what I believe are the potentials of Man as a spirit. The Bridge is my attempt to get Man closer to these potentials. I make no promises,” then we wouldn’t be having this discussion, would we?”
That is a great point. I think it could have been promoted much more honestly.
I do think it can be argued that auditing does bring a person closer to those potentials. In my estimation maybe about 15-20%. I think it started a very good foundation on which to build. It does need some tweeking. If I never got anything else from the auditing and training I have done, I would still say that I am glad that I did it. Should it have been easier and less painful? Yes.
Me:
>No study of Scientology required; I simply want to meet a Clear who has perfect recall and optimum computational ability.
Nothing? Anyone?
ML,
Caliwog
“No study of Scientology required; I simply want to meet a Clear who has perfect recall and optimum computational ability.
Nothing? Anyone?”
Caliwog, sometimes you have to go get something if you want it.
Just posting some demand on the internet that you want satisfied may not produce results for you if that’s what you want.
Maybe go talk to some clears and ask them if they have anything like this?
I could demand that scientists prove to me that germs exist and when no one responds I could say that they don’t, but I may have to go look in a microscope or two to really get the truth.
>Maybe go talk to some clears and ask them if they have anything like this?
I have talked to plenty, and they don’t. Some of them even wear glasses.
I even went to a Vegas casino with a couple, and they didn’t get thrown out. (I actually do have a story about a Scientologist (not sure of his level, pretty sure he was on the OTs) and a slot machine. Seriously. Bottom line, I took his word and it cost me $20.)
>I could demand that scientists prove to me that germs exist and when no one responds I could say that they don’t, but I may have to go look in a microscope or two to really get the truth.
FiatLux, is this a Phase 2 or Phase 3 answer? 🙂
ML,
Caliwog
DFB
I share many of the subjective gains you observed , and your conclusion that spiritual gains cannot be quantified of “proven.” Thanks for sharing them.
Too bad the church sells something else. Kind of like gilding the lily. Idiots.
Thanks Lunamoth
I attended an OT 8 Q & A at AO a few years ago. About eight OT sats at a table on a stage and the audience could submit questions.
The OT8s were asked how life was different for them now. The difference–the Cause over Life ability–meant that they were cause over their own mental mass. In other words, they could move through life effortlessly. Things just didn’t bother them anymore.
Now that is cool. I would like to be true for me. What ever came my way, no problem–full-on zest for life 24/7. That is a very cool thing.
But Jeff, you are so right, that is not how it is sold and that’s the rub. That’s not right.
I remember one of my friends who was on OT 7, she was so excited because she thought of someone and they called her. That was proof to her of her OT abilities. That was so sad to me.
Lady Lancelot,
I would wager that those same OT VIII”s, if they are still in the church and were asked today, would not feel it was so effortless to move through their lives. I’m just guessing here. I would also like to
point out that I had the very same gains from leaving the church.
lunamoth
Amen Sista Lunamoth!
About OT8s explanation that “Cause over Life ability–meant that they were cause over their own mental mass.”
I know people who reached that state of mind with just a few hours of Idenics processing.
Any Clear attested to be “cause over their own mental mass”. I don’t see anything “OT” in that. “OT” has been defined and sold as a totally different matter. Maybe they feel “Clearer”, so Mayo may have had a point in writing about “harmonics of Clear”, but from OT’s I would expect “operating” in the MEST, without the body.
So, we know OT8s don’t get to it.
We would expect OT9 to OT15 to deliver the true “OT” abilities then.
But we learn from Marty that OT9 to OT15 don’t exist. LRH lied?
That’s the fraud. Selling something you can’t deliver.
We learned that in 1982 LRH wrote Mayo to develop new OT levels. Mayo was busted by Miscavige/LRH shortly after.
“From 1979/1980 forward into 1982, I began to develop and release new technical procedures and began a long term project of ‘studying and researching, reviewing and correcting and possibly replacing the existing levels and developing new ones,’ (a near paraphrase of how Hubbard described my work in a memo he wrote on or about April 14, 1982, in which he outlined what he expected me to continue to do in the event of his death). Until that time and even for a few months after, Hubbard thought highly of my work, frequently commended me and considered me to be his replacement for ‘technical’ (i.e., relating to auditing techniques) matters. He went further in that memo, to say that it would be up to me to develop OT VIII (which contrary to PR statements, did not exist at that time) and subsequent levels. I was rather dismayed by this news as I had really been expecting him to do that; I wondered, if he as ‘The Founder’ of the subject had not managed to develop these OT levels and the OT powers he had claimed for them, how could he expect me to able to fulfil his obligation — he had just tossed me the ultimate Hot Potato!”
David Mayo, 1996
“He went further in that memo, to say that it would be up to me to develop OT VIII (which contrary to PR statements, did not exist at that time) and subsequent levels. I was rather dismayed by this news as I had really been expecting him to do that; I wondered, if he as ‘The Founder’ of the subject had not managed to develop these OT levels and the OT powers he had claimed for them, how could he expect me to able to fulfil his obligation — he had just tossed me the ultimate Hot Potato!”
Mostly Lurker,
OT VIII has existed in HCOB form since 1969.
The other 15 OT Levels above that have existed in note form since the early 70’s at least of which parts have been incorporated into the L Rundowns
Mayo should have been aware of this fact since he supposedly was a “Class XII”.
Much of the theory behind the OT Levels has existed since the early to mid ’50’s and is known as “Route 1” and maybe they hadn’t been “developed” but they did certainly *exist*.
RJ, my only questions on this (and really, these are serious questions, I’m not just being snarky) are:
Has anyone actually seen these notes (the 15 OT Levels)? Have you? (I’d be interested in anyone else’s first-hand experience on this as well).
Do you know where these notes are physically located currently?
My other question would be “why hasn’t the Church released these levels?” but I know the stock answer to that, “Miscavige is an SP.” But really, why hasn’t the Church released them, even if you assume they are only after more money and power?
Jeff,
I’ve never seen these notes myself but I know people who have.
As far as I know it’s a stack of handwritten notes and observations that were turned over to Pat Broeker after Ron’s personal demise.
Ron also mentions his research on the levels above what was then OT VII in the Ex Dn lectures and the level of “OT 22” that’s 15 levels above OT VII which is basically what he says in the the HCOB ‘The Current State of the Subject and Materials’.
Also anyone who has done Cl VIII knows of the HCOB directly relating to OT VIII released in October of ’69.
So either Mayo is prevaricating or went blank at that point on his Class VIII course.
Anyway it’s no surprise to me that the Church has not released the levels above OT VIII at this point since they have totally botched the delivery of “New” OT VIII.
(According to a source who was a member of the team who first delivered it they omitted the original research on the Rundown as covered in the ’69 HCOB.
My source also informed me that those who hadn’t completed the *original* Pre OT levels had difficultly in most cases completing the level and ended up as we say “copping it”.)
Thus the possible reason that these levels haven’t been released is that the levels below them have been unintentionally or as I suspect *intentionally* sabotaged and that any OT doing them wouldn’t get the expected result or worse there may adverse affects attributed to actually running those levels.
(We’ve all read about the increase of incidence of cancer of those either auditing on OT VII or “completing” OT V)
Mind you this is just my opinion of the whole scene from my own observations.
Personal observations I made while working at New World Corp which was supposed to export ‘Super Power’ to Saint Hills which unlike the OT Levels above VIII exists in HCOBs yet has not been broadly released to the public even though quite a number of cases were actually successfully completed on the Super Power Rundowns.
In this case it isn’t a problem with compiling the data into a usable form but training auditors who can actually deliver the rundown.
This was the problem Ron sought to solve by introducing the Pro TRs course and developing Key to Life and the Life Orientation Course which are prerecs to training on or receiving ‘Super Power’.
According to the directives:
All Staff are to complete KTL/LOC then “Super Power” prior to the Org delivering it to public.
Yet instead of doing this.
They broadly released KTL/LOC directly to the public and very few staff as of yet have received this action which was supposed to align with the release of DeOp (De-oppression) tech.
More tech which has never been fully released either that was supposed to prevent creation of an authoritarian command structure.
As we can see there are certain individuals within the Management structure of the organization who have a vested interest in an authoritarian command structure.
Jeff I could go on and on about the tech at lower levels that hasn’t been released because it wouldn’t serve the clique that currently controls the Church.
Never mind the OT Levels above VIII.
To say Ron was merely conning everyone by saying the OT Levels never existed when they in fact do in note form as he has said many times over the years is in my opinion a very narrow minded and cynical perspective.
The *fact* is that the Advanced Orgs are incapable of delivering them at this point and it is doubtful if they will in their current off policy and out tech condition.
They can’t even deliver what they currently have available to them standardly enough to obtain a stable result.
Thanks in no small part to the Golden Age of tech.
You know as well as I do that running an Advanced Level is much more than just handing the Pre OT a platen that says OT IX and hoping he or she runs it right.
It requires review auditors, C/Ses and a cramming section who are themselves familiar with the rundown or level.
Right now they have none of those things and the way things are going they probably never will.
RJ, understood. Just to pursue my original questions for a second – I really am curious about this:
1. The person who said these upper OT Level notes exist – had they seen them? And who was this person, if I may ask? (You don’t have to answer that, but if they are out, I’d love for them to weigh in on the subject.)
Sorry to be such a skeptic, but I don’t consider the fact that LRH said these notes exist, or even the relayed statement of an anonymous third person that they exist, as evidence that they exist. I’d rather hear directly from someone who has actually seen them. Anyone?
@Jeff – Releasing OT9 would bring in a HUGE influx of cash. To me, the fact that OT9 has not yet been released is strong evidence that David Miscavige truly believes in Scientology and is trying to run the Church in compliance with LRH policy.
ML,
Caliwog
Jeff,
I’ll give you two names.
Marty Rathbun and Pat Broeker.
Well, Broeker isn’t weighing in – in fact, no one has talked to him in 20 years as far as I know. I’m in touch with Marty and have pretty much heard what he knows. Anything else? Anyone?
“the fact that OT9 has not yet been released is strong evidence that David Miscavige truly believes in Scientology and is trying to run the Church in compliance with LRH policy.”
I fail to see how this one factor would be irrefutable evidence that Miscavige “trying to run the Church in compliance with LRH policy.”
For I can assure you from personal experience that this is *not* the case.
Giving something lip service like the Government does at times with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and being in *compliance* are two different things.
There can be many other reasons why Miscavige hasn’t released the upper OT Levels aside from the oft asserted mantra of critics that they don’t exist or that Miscavige is simply following the Ol’man’s wishes which many of the faithful believe.
To assume that because he hasn’t released the upper OT Levels because he is faithfully applying policy or something similar is as far as I’m concerned either a leap of faith or logic.
RJ. I agree. Personally, I think he doesn’t release them because he doesn’t have them. And that I heard from Marty. So I guess that makes us both “critics,” repeating a “mantra.” But the burden of proof is on Scientology. If they’ve got these levels, prove it, otherwise stop saying they have them.
Possibly Lyman Spurlock as one of the Trustees to CST, the Executor Of Ron’s Estate Norm Starky and Ray Mithoff.
Of course you won’t be hearing from any of the above anytime soon.
Myself I know of a CST mission fired into AOLA back in the late ’80’s that vacuumed up any of Ron’s handwritten notes and C/Ses of Pre OTs AO Staff or Public who received any special rundowns at Flag which might have included research on those upper levels.
Man if CIA had such a thorough clean up team they wouldn’t have had to worry about “The Family Jewels”!
Personally I think what you are looking for is safely locked away in a vault in Petrolia with maybe *one* person or a small number people who know the combination.
Don’t you think that it’s kinda strange that Pat one the few people who knows for sure is somehow mysteriously “out of reach”?
Well, I’m not looking for them. No interest. But I do see the plot of a new Indiana Jones movie forming up: “Indiana Jones and the Lost OT Levels.”
Not having them is another possibility. I see the Church not commenting on them in keeping with the policy “Don’t promote what you can’t deliver.”
But if they do exist, why not release them? The best reason I can see is that LRH said not to – that “Old Saint Hill” thing. Is there another technical reason?
ML,
Caliwog
Jeff,
🙂
Jeff,
I never wrote anywhere that the rabid squirrel had ’em.
In fact I’ve written many times that they were probably locked away in one of CST’s three facilities.
Even if he had them squirrel breath probably wouldn’t know what to do with ’em anyway.
Him and what’s left of the upper echelon of “technical” personal probably couldn’t even run a standard touch assist at this point.
If Sue “David Miscavige is Scientology” Wilhere is any exemplary example of their technical acumen.
Besides ask Marty again.
I’m pretty sure he didn’t say they didn’t exist.
Only that the rabid lil’ rodent didn’t have ’em.
Those are two different things.
Thus your mantra may never return any state of total bliss.
CW,
This orgs must be Saint Hill size.
Is *not* a technical reason.
It’s an arbitrary.
Even if it was a “why”.
It wouldn’t be a technical but an administrative why.
Technical reasons are reserved for case phenomena.
Like the fact that most cases that reach OT VIII have been by passed.
This is evident in many of their so called “success stories”.
RJ,
Another example of “copping it” (if I understand the term correctly) is creative processing. An OT should be able to mock up anything, yet creative processing tended to beef up the bank so was abandoned. At some point, a person would have to practice mocking up matter, energy, space and time to go OT. You can’t be an operating thetan at a high level without the ability to mock up matter, energy, space and time across the dynamics.
Somewhere along the line, this problem had to be solved. John Galushi allegedly came up with a solution in Idenics. Perhaps LRH also arrived at a solution that was part of the OT levels beyond 7 and 8 as delivered currently in the church.
I know that Marty is adamant on this: that the church does not have any levels above 8, and that there are no notes. I don’t doubt that this is his experience. I also don’t doubt that a person can only know what he knows and can’t really claim to know what he doesn’t. But people claim to know things all the time which later prove to be untrue. All he can really claim is that he has never seen them, nor does the church have them anyplace he’s looked.
As you alluded, there were all sorts of upper OT level material in the fifties which are not included in the current OT levels. This stuff has to fit into a level somewhere. Yet, it does not, or does not appear to be.
And the other point is, no one is going to get a bit of gain if they lack actual reality on what they are doing or running. If you’re not ready, you won’t get any gains. Imagining yourself going exterior is not the same as actually going exterior.
Yet, how does a person differentiate? And how does one know that what is unreal is unreal? How does one, wanting to be OT, realize he is not up to the point where he can make this happen? If you watch the auditions for “American Idol” you’ll witness a parade of individuals who (to varying degrees) can’t sing at a professional level, but who are convinced they can become the next Idol. They just don’t know they don’t know. They don’t realize they lack the talent and ability to accomplish their goal.
Kudos to their dreams, but, reality is reality.
To often, we only know what we know and seldom entertain what we don’t.
Michael
OUT,
Some very valid points.
First I don’t remember Marty saying that there were no notes for any level above OT VIII.
The Ol’man was always making notes and observations.
For instance back in ’73 he said that these notes consisted of 15 levels above what was then OT 7 and also much of what are now known as the “Ls” came directly from this research.
Not to mention the fact that the datum he gives in the Targets PL ‘OT Orgs’ comes from data he says is above OT VIII since VIII deals with mock ups which is covered in the various HCOBs at non confidential levels.
Also he says that the research which produced the FPRD came from levels above OT VIII.
So right there you have various comments and statements that Ron was involved in researching and developing levels above OT VIII.
Never mind the fact that he had already assigned names to many of these various levels like “Orders of Magnitude”, “Future”, “Character” etc.
Now it’s a known fact that the original levels above III are based on earlier research already covered in the PDC and particularly on what is known as “Route 1” and as you know he says that his main objective has been to undercut these levels.
So it is possible that many of these notes go back to his research in the early ’50’s which included creative processing as covered in 8-8008 and an even earlier texts such as 8-80 and many of his notes and lectures relating to Technique 88.
Also he said on a ExDn lecture that he himself had been researching OT 22.
Further he might have given specific instructions on how to convert these notes into actual OT levels that could be audited by an OT.
This is possible and might have been overlooked by the current regime who seem more fixated on MEST than Theta.
I’ve personally seen handwritten notes by the Ol’man that contain technical information even at lower levels that hasn’t been released to the staff or public.
For instance many of the instructions he gave us on the CCRD Pilot on how to handle Pre OTs who did their Pre OT levels in an earlier haven’t seen the light of day since the pilot.
In fact if someone says they’ve gone clear or an OT before this lifetime they are usually given what is known as the CCRD Series 15 R Factor and told they are not Clear.
As if past lives are now considered “delusional” in the Church these days.
As I commented to Jeff.
It isn’t just the OT Levels that seem to be the best kept secret in town but much lower level tech that hasn’t been released broadly.
In my opinion may be an effort to obscure and invalidate the technology for some malicious purpose of some kind.
It is obvious to me that the Golden Age of Tech and especially the seemingly mandatory three swing F/N has virtually destroyed tech delivery at lower levels.
I mean if someone wanted to wipe out Scientology all they would have to do is eliminate any technical result from any process and this new Golden Age of Tech does that extremely well by generally over running the case beyond any release.
Anyway this is purely speculation.
American Idol… a great example of people perceiving themselves to have abilities that they don’t actually have. 🙂
ML,
Caliwog
RJ – So is the “Saint Hill size” order not valid? Honest question here, btw.
ML,
Caliwog
RJ,
Did Marty say there were no notes? I don’t honestly know. Just an idle observation from a general impression while reading some of Marty’s replies. I’ll leave it to others to read what he wrote. For want of time, I only scan these blogs rather than read them meticulously for understanding–so I’m not qualified to say who said exactly what.
And I normally wouldn’t comment so much, but I had a couple extra days to play, so…
I do know that writers write, and that includes copious note taking. That LRH would not have notes on upper levels would not be characteristic–a glaring out point in logic. It would be akin to saying that there were no needles, fabrics or threads at the tailors.
I have seen critics bring forth this statement of Mayo’s about LRH wanting to go exterior. Another glaring outpoint. The person who gave all those lectures between November 1950 through the early sixties had definitely gone exterior. What was said and written was an expression of experience. His work was an explosion of information and insight into gnostic experience from a Western viewpoint.
A lot of the harshness that came later probably had less to do with government interference than with some feeling that time was running out for the planet. He didn’t have time to be nice. He felt he had to raise the necessity level of others to get the job done. Turned out to be a mistake, but he was trying. He never stopped caring, never stopped trying to help individuals get better.
If anyone would care to look at Buddha’s work, he too was trying to end the endless cycle of death and rebirth. It’s not a new idea. But that was without the threat of nuclear winter hanging over the planet.
So, there was some valuable work that had been accomplished that was worth saving. And he went into a hard sell mode to pass on that info.
Who wants to come back to a planet blown to cinders? There wouldn’t be any bodies. We’d have to start all over. It was a tough job. A tough sell. People on this planet don’t like to listen. We’re mostly idiots.
I’ll just go out on a social limb here with the following statements. I’ve been around this planet for more than three thousand years, heavily involved in gnosticism and mysticism and religion. There were a bunch of us that hit this planet about five hundred years or so before Christ. And our entire pursuit was truth. We wanted to find answers to the mystery of life. We wanted to find a way out. (God, this is going to raise some hackles. Oh well.)
Just why we ended up on Earth is another story, but I do know the insights available from LRH’s material in the fifties far surpassed anything a single individual that I know of ever accomplished in the field. Very impressive stuff.
That I’m impressed doesn’t make me an acolyte. And those who try to raise my necessity level with force usually find themselves facing an opponent rather than a willing assistant. So, I’m not always a fan of LRH.
But, I do have some insight into what he saw and what he was trying to accomplish and why he tried what he tried. His methods wouldn’t have been mine, but then again, I didn’t create Scientology, nor could I have.
But, just studying that early material would be sufficient to get one a pretty good grounding in what any upper, unpublished levels might contain. If it were understood. All the OT levels except reliable OT8 are readily available on the internet. Or were. A compare and contrast and extrapolation just screams that parts are missing. High level parts that would have to come beyond what was formulated as standard levels.
And, I get the impression, you know what I’m talking about.
Does processing produce OT gains? Without training and understanding, I wouldn’t think so. Getting charge off a case only makes it possible to see better; it doesn’t guarantee the individual will look. And if the individual gets processing in the middle of a persistent present time problem, all bets are off. And if the person gets processing while out of valence, then the charge doesn’t come off very well.
Just from a technical viewpoint, all spiritual confusions about viewpoint and placement and identity and matter, energy, space and time that get handled on “OT” levels 3 through 7 would indicate that actual “OT” abilities are not yet directly addressed. Differentiating the sources of all these thoughts and mock ups is not actually the same as learning to create and control matter, energy, space and time as a Prime Source. Hell, these levels don’t even include the “old” OT 7 drills on intention as far as I know.
It’s no wonder individuals don’t get the wild gains they expect. They don’t know what’s sitting between them and the other side. It’s like trying to convince a six year old that he needs to practice certain fielding drills to become a better baseball player: he has no idea what it takes to actually become a professional ball player.
So, my answer to whether processing will produce OT abilities: depends on the person. Depends on the training. Depends on the understanding. Depends on how well the processing was done and whether the auditor and c/s actually understood the actual pc in front of them.
Does Scientology processing produce individuals with the courage to pour gasoline on themselves and calmly burn themselves in protest like Buddhist monks did in Vietnam? I don’t think so.
Do other studies produce “OT’s” that could match anything produced in Scientology? Seems like they do. Natural or trained.
Has anyone ever gotten up enough confront to go completely exterior to the physical universe and end the endless cycle of birth and deaths? I don’t know. They didn’t stick around to tell me.
Is Scientology worth studying for a perspective on gnostic insight? I sure have liked what I’ve studied. But, I refuse to put up with the bullshit.
Time has run out. Time for bed.
Michael
OUT,
Actually I remember Marty writing something about recovering the notes from Pat sometime after Ron’s requiem but I don’t know what they did with them after that.
According to Jeff: Marty told him that Miscavige doesn’t have anything above VIII and I tend to believe that because these notes would not have necessarily been turned over to RTC but to CST instead.
I mean practically every thing that Ron wrote or recorded was turned over to CST at some point.
As I wrote there was a CST mission sent to AO to retrieve every handwritten C/S, case note etc ofn any Pre OT that was C/Sed by the Ol’man.
They also took all the master copies of various early taped lectures that field auditors had donated to AOLA over the years.
As I wrote they were extremely thorough.
Also I totally agree that Scientology is a gnostic philosophy or science. I know Ron mentions this fact in an article of the early ’50’s but doesn’t mention it again.
Probably since the concept of gnosticism is not that well understood and it’s actually easier to say that it is a branch of psychology that deals with the human spirit which is also true as well since as we know psyche basically means spirit and ology is study of.
Anyway I imagine it was difficult conveying the idea of what Scientology was since it wasn’t at least back then a “faith” of any kind as most religions were.
This sounds like Clears I knew in the ’70s, not OTs.
Squirrels come to me when I call them.
LoL 😆
Really? Then you can settle the debate between Church-goers and Independents once and for all. Which ones are the real squirrels? 🙂
ML,
Caliwog
Actually Alanzo, they might.
All animals communicate if you listen with your theta ears.
Horses are easy, you might try them first.
DFB,
How about an ass, which is so like a horse in many ways?
Well, Once, if that’s all you have to hand I guess have at it. Keep us posted.
Great article!
If recalling prior lifetimes at will an ability…I got it from LRH processing. The rest of my psychic abilities I already had and they’re hit or miss, depending on my general state of being.
Regarding the OT Phenomena-stories, I communicated with an ex-Sea Org (Flag), OT VII, more than a decade ago on mIRC and he claimed that most of those stories were made up. I asked him why he didn’t protest against that and he said “And risk losing my OT-levels?”
He claimed though he had lots of gains from Scientology, “too many to list”, but no OT kind of abilities, more like “being more able to get along with girls” and so on…
Hubbardianen,
How did he know they were made up? Did he edit Advnace! sit there with others and just made them up? Or was it just his opinion that they were made up?
Jeff, you edited Advance! — did you and any others (that you know of) just “make up” those OT phenom stories?
I didn’t make them up, they were solicited from OTs. Maybe they made them up – who knows?
Jeff, I agree. That’s the problem with anecdotes, there is no way to know if they were made up. The claim, by Hubbardianen’s contact above, could be interpreted that “the editor’s of Advance” just made them up. That’s why I wanted to get your end of it clarified.
I remember he stated that he had worked at Flag and he was now an ex-SO, OT VII. Does Advance! come from Flag? Is there any other magazine from there? We had an informal discussion on mIRC and he felt honest and open about different things, claimed he had gotten “too many wins to list” from Scientology and so on so he didn’t feel biased or like a troll since he was nuanced in his critique.
Some of those early OT-phenomenons also felt quite exaggerated and nowadays they are quite modest. This could only be because of two reasons:
1. Early auditing really worked in terms of OT-phenomenon and the auditing of today doesn’t work as good.
2. Early success stories were exaggerated or made up and success stories as of today are more honest.
Nobody have yet received the Million dollar prize by Randi in terms of paranormal proof so my guess is that (2) is more likely.
I used to receive all kinds of these OT Stories from Scientologists when I was editing Advance. You never saw the most bizarre ones. One guy, I remember, claimed that he had left his body, gone to another planet, cleared that entire planet, and then returned to his body – all in an afternoon while sitting in his easy chair. I didn’t publish that one as it was pretty obviously delusional. But of course where do you draw the line? I recall in the late 1960s and early 70s there were a lot of these wild stories making the rounds. And not just about Scientologists, there were stories about gurus and mystics who could do all sorts of things. Carlos Castenedas, etc. All very exciting, but the fact is, I never actually saw anyone demonstrate any such ability. I heard a lot of wild stories. To me, this sort of anecdotal material doesn’t really prove anything except that people love a good story.
Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t it a requirement of most Scientology processing to describe your “win” and if you don’t have one you have to re-do the level (at your expense)?
Can you think of a method more likely to produce embellished testimonials?
“Can you think of a method more likely to produce embellished testimonials?”
That may be true SpecialFrog, but most of these “testimonials” in Advance were from people just living life after/during the OT levels and describing their experiences there in.
They were a different breed than the “required success story after everything”, which was/is actually a “stat” of the Qual Dept.
Hubb wrote: “Nobody have yet received the Million dollar prize by Randi in terms of paranormal proof so my guess is that (2) is more likely.”
Randi hasn’t yet been able to replicate the SRI results in the exact same scientist-controlled environment using “stage magic” Hubb; so while entertaining, I’m not sure that the Million Dollar Challenge compares very well to the controlled scientific experiments. At least until Randi’s demonstrated — in the real world — how it could have been done with stage magic.
Jeff wrote: “You never saw the most bizarre ones.”
I always suspected that that might be the case Jeff (not an “OT ability” … just a deduction based on some of those that were published). 🙂
All in all though, anecdotes, combined with empirical evidence, do a make a pretty strong case that something real is going on.
I’d say that the evidence I’ve seen suggests the possibility of remote viewing, but the evidence linking it to Scientology’s OT Levels is far from conclusive.
Conclusive? Certainly not. Suggestive, or even promising? Perhaps.
Of course, I doubt that the current toxic environment of the CoS would ever foster or nurture these kinds of abilities. Even with the “public” largely insulated from the insanity in the SO and on staff … the pressures and influences from them (and elsewhere) would make it nearly impossible, imho.
Margaret,
I was asked a number of times for an interview re: OT Abilities by an Advance! mag representative.
I declined each time but she kept coming back.
Personally, I wasn’t into relating my ‘stories’. I felt others may assume they would get the same abilities I had at the same level I was at. This I found to be untrue. One gets (regains) the ability when it happens.
Back then, people lower on the bridge in general were in awe of OTs. Not a bad thing but it could create hidden standards and then be a disappointment if those same abilities were not realized.
Frankly, I wouldn’t even volunteer what level I was at – I wanted others to feel comfortable talking to me rather than wondering if I ‘knew’ or whatever other consideration they had. I would purposely steer them away from getting into it. I was interested in them.
One of the other posters above mentioned that OT abilities and and other phenomena were commonly talked about early on. This was also true in the Mission & Orgs I was at … it seemed that the free flow of communication and discussions of ability helped to blow thru considerations that would stop one from having or exhibiting these abilities/awarenesses. There were many who had some great abilities, maybe not stably so, but a very common occurrence and a thrill when they did occur.
The common consideration was that these abilities could & would happen … and they did.
I would think that the opposite would also be true.
To me,
Hubbardianen wrote: “I remember he stated that he had worked at Flag and he was now an ex-SO, OT VII. Does Advance! come from Flag?”
No, Advance! doesn’t come from Flag, it came/comes from AOLA. Sounds like the guy might have been guessing that they were made up Hubb, and didn’t necessarily have any solid evidence of it.
Quicksilver wrote: “One of the other posters above mentioned that OT abilities and and other phenomena were commonly talked about early on.”
That was my experience too in the mid-70s, QS, at the mission where I did services. It really was like a dark veil fell over Scientology in the early 80s. I stayed around till just a couple years ago, and communication just got more and more stifled and the focus just got more and more mest- and money-oriented.
What magazines are there? Advance! and Source… ? Is Source from Flag? Are there any other magazines? Saint Hill have a magazine too huh?
I think the pre-OT levels should perhaps be called the Wall Of Fire-levels or similair without any promises. When something like 90-95 percent of a group doing an OT-level really gets OT abilities, that’s the level they should call OT I. Th other levels should be relabeled Wall Of Fire levels, Personal Development Levels etc.
Well, Hubbard exaggerated a lot, but he also found a lot of interesting stuff. I would love to see more serious research in these subjects, perhaps the time will come soon with the publishment of the AWARE study next year 2012 where Near-Death-Experiences have been researched at 25 hospitals from UK and USA.
To make a LONG story short, in the early ’90s I was pregnant and perceived what I felt to be “negative spirits” in my vicinity. (I had a terrible miscarriage not many months prior.) I talked to an OT7/BFF who traveled to Flag often about how I could change this – get “positive spirits” to come and be my baby instead. I asked her to find an elderly OT at Flag, tell them my due date, tell them what a wonderful mother I’d be, trained auditor, etc. basically sell me as a mother. She did. I never knew exactly who the person was…and actually didn’t care because the “negative spirits” had gone away and that’s all I cared about.
I had an ideal at-home delivery. A couple of days later, I actually heard the voice of this adult person advising me to do certain processes, kind of fussing at me because I hadn’t done any yet. So I did.
Now, this person was an OT8 and very elderly and had agreed to be my baby to my BFF, but I had absolutely NO CLUE who it was nor anything about them. The person was French and English speaking.
My baby would jump OUT of my arms into my BFF’s arms from really early on. It was very obvious whenever she’d come around that my baby only had eyes for her! My baby also said very specific things to my BFF that she NEVER said to anyone else, particularly about beautiful flowers and dancing. (My baby also called all of her toys by their French names, when NOBODY spoke French around her.) My baby also would ask for her brother by name – she was my first child.
This was when I had to ask my BFF just who exactly agreed to be my baby and she told me. She described their personality and how they’d enjoy flowered artwork and dancing together on the ship and how much they adored each other. She told me of their brother whose name my child was actually asking for who was still alive.
You find the OT abilities in this story. I certainly have.
Beautiful!
Tara,
I’m just feeling so naughty: I’ll show you my past lives if you show me yours.
Michael
Haha Michael. I know, feels naughty, huh? But we’re free to communicate these days! It has worked out GREAT for both of us to get exactly what we wanted!
Now let me read yours! 🙂
Only his highness Hubbard was allowed to talk about his past lives .
Anyone else was sent to find out who their friends really were with by guy named ‘Guido” in the morals department of the Cultification Org.
Tara,
The above comment to you went to the wrong spot. Oh well. Out of context, out of mind.
I loved your baby story.
Here’s another one. We had planned to have three kids, but ended up changing our minds and decided to stop at two. As my wife was a stay-at-home and finances were tight when planning for college educations down the line, we just figured two would be more manageable.
The third being who had lined up for the body was furious. And I mean furious. I hadn’t even especially been aware she was hanging around. For weeks after our decision, “Kellon” let me know with furious abandon how pissed off she was. I mean molten lava and lightening bolts displays of furious.
I just hadn’t realized how important such a decision would be to someone waiting for a body. Just like losing a loved one can cause so much grief, this being had lost an opportunity and felt a profound sense of betrayal, expressed in fury. I think beings make contracts with one another at some level and expect them to be honored.
Oddly, I always had the feeling that Kellon would have been the only one of my kids to actually understand the stuff I study. My loss as much as hers.
Mea culpa
Michael
Thanks Michael. Awesome you got it too. At least Kellon was duplicated. 🙂
How would you prove love exists?
Good point. But then again, no one is selling love.
Oh SNAP!
Well, if the whole debate is over whether or not the cult and LRH has over sold the product of auditing I think the answer is YES.
That being said, what’s next?
Ban abuses? Yes!!
Ban auditing that is sold with no hype? NO!!
Throw dm in jail?? YES!!
Hi Jeff,
The love question is relevant in terms of how do you prove things that you feel subjectively. If you want to say that you have benefited from auditing and have a greater love for mankind then that is something hard to PROVE. It seems that you have to take someones word for that.
However if someone says I can absorb all the data in the Moscow library while I am sleeping then that could be something that could be proven or disproven.
There are alot of great things that can be had from auditing that are more like the first example and few that I have seen like the latter.
I would prove love exists by taking a group of people who said they were in love, a group of people who said they felt filled with hate, and a group of people who said they felt neither overwhelming love nor hate for anybody.
Then I’d do a series of MRIs or PET scans (not up on my medical terminology) on the subjects’ brains, and try to find the commmonalities and differences between and within each group.
From there I could come up with a theory based on my findings. Included in this theory would be the exact procedures I used to come up with my conclusions. At that point, others would be able to replicate my experiments. They would also be able to add their own procedures. Over time, results that agree with my original theory would strengthen my theory, and any ONE result that ran contrary to my original findings would immediately negate my theory and I or someone else would have to start from scratch.
That’s the thing about science (and someone mentioned this upthread) – no theory is EVER 100%. Never, ever ever. So even things that you may think are “proven”, like gravity, really are just very strong theories whose experimental results have, over long periods of time, agreed with the original idea.
So, yeah, you could prove love exists just as easily as you could prove gravity exists (which is to say, there is no such thing as 100% proof)
Wow Dagny.
No comment on that one. Except maybe you could inject some radioactive chemicals in there too to see if the love lights up.
If you stick to the MRIs you don’t need radiopharmaceuticals. 🙂
Dagny~I wish I had a pre and post MRI. I feel quite certain they would be very very different pictures. 🙂
Oh, fuck me. This is what comes of having a Science Channel on TV.
Tony DePhillips,
Have you ever heard about PEAR?
Link: http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/
About 2-3 in 10 000 outfalls were affected by paranormal powers according to those experiments. Mikro OT-powers is a better definition.
It is not a big deal that there are no OT abilities widely or even narrowly demonstrated. It would be also hard to demonstrate the abilities of a bird (OT) under water (physical universe)…
However, Hubbard made a parallel between Scientology and Theravada Buddhism, stating that Mahayana was squirrel. He seemingly did not get the idea that Mahayana was Buddha’s higher teachings transmitted not by words but by different manifestations. And interestingly those Tibetan buddhists were able to manifest real OT phenomenas who were following the Mahayana and Vajrayana or Tantric teachings of Buddha. Tummo, the developing of inner heat is one example of this.
And there is the long tradition of rebirth in Tibet. There is the lineage of Karmapas since 1110. There is the lineage of the Panchen Lama since 1385. There is the lineage of the Dalai Lama since 1391. Hubbard probably knew more about the “human spirit” than these masters knew… At least that’s what he suggests…
Hubbard made fun even of Tibetan buddhists when speaking in a lecture that they thought they are bullet proof and than were shot down by Chinese soldiers. Hubbard had no respect for anyone or for any faith in real besides his PR talks. And when he made fun of Tibetan Buddhism, I think he did this in an effort to divert your attention from really workable methods and from methods which does not make you into a Super-Ego which is basically the big trap.
*sigh*
I don’t think you’re the real gOD.
What’s wrong with what I’ve just said, Margaret? I do not actually think Hubbard knew more. But that is apparent if you read what I wrote after.
I state again, there are many useful things in Scientology. And even breakthroughs. But the whole subject as it is is an entrapment.
How true you speak as I have read some parts of those
really workable methods you mentioned.
Much like the “bullet proof monks ‘ Hubbard ridiculed we will soon see how much the Scientologists’ faith in the claims of their “Nuclear Physicist “Hubbard on Niacin unfolds when they are asked to go to Japan and be exposed to the deadly radation doses there.
But before they go on the suicide mission let me put here this quote from the official record of Mary Sue Hubbard ‘s testimony from the Gerry Armstrong trial as a warning.
” Mary Sue Hubbard, in the later trial over these “Armstrong” documents,
admitted Hubbard was not a nuclear physicist and that she and Hubbard used to laugh about this claim being on the cover of All About Radiation.
If they both knew it was fraudulent then why did they both snicker and let it persist?
I can imagine the denials and explantions that will spew forth on this one.
Okay, let’s cut to the chase on this one. What the hell are we talking about when we talk about “OT abilities?” What is an operating thetan? What is a thetan capable of? Does a thetan even exist?
First, let’s set the stage for who I am so you don’t think I have some ideological agenda to forward. I got into Scientology in the fall of 1970, fresh out of Vietnam, looking for a little love. While in New York, I ran across someone selling Dianetics out of Port Authority, bought a copy, went to a lecture, thought the whole place was weird, but decided to take the comm course because the reg was friggin cute and I had testosterone oozing from my pores. I bought a few books to read, as I was still in the Navy and coming down to New York on weekends. The books made a lot of sense to me. And I started to understand the gnostic aspect of Scientology: that man was basically an awareness that existed independent of the physical universe and persisted long after the body perished.
Without a bit of auditing, I started to go exterior. Once when walking down 42nd street, I saw this bum up ahead. I had been reading about spacation and felt exterior so I wondered if I could reach out spiritually to him. He was about two hundred feet ahead so I felt my consciousness expand until I was also occupying his physical space. He jerked around in absolute terror when I started probing his “mind.” “Wow!” I thought, “pretty interesting.”
That experience wouldn’t stand up to scientific rigors as proof, but it offered anecdotal evidence to me that something profound was possible.
However, I never was able to shake the feeling that something was “off,” that something wasn’t quite right in Scientology. And over the few years I was involved in Scientology during the seventies, I was always a bit embarrassed by my association with the subject. I tried to think of myself sometimes as a Scientologist, but the shoe just never fit. I never really honestly could.
But I was fascinated with the truths that underlay the subject. These were things humans had pursued for a long time.
Now, what is a thetan? It’s a unit of consciousness that exists as an apparently independent entity. Independent of what? From other such units and from the physical universe itself. It’s an individual bit of consciousness. It is capable of knowing. It is capable of experience. It is capable of communicating with others and with the physical and mental universe. You’ve got this body, mind, spirit thing going on. And all three are interlinked though awareness.
Way back in fall of 1950, L Ron Hubbard was encountering past life phenomenon in pcs. He was positing an explanation of this. How could a person be merely a body if he had images of past lives? What was this awareness that persisted from life to life? How was consciousness possible? How was it possible that we know?
These were questions that had been asked for several thousand years. You had mystics, epistemologists and gnostics who had studied the exact thing. And Hubbard was aware that early that Dianetics had walked into the field of religion. (So, the myth that he just had this wild plan to start a religion to make money doesn’t really make sense because he could have started one in 1950 had that been his intent. He wasn’t the kind of personality to mess around and comm lag. He just jumped in and did things.) He even talked in lectures about having someone back on the east coast concentrating on this phenomena of the thetan and past lives and what this meant and what it encompassed.
The question was: what was a thetan and what was a thetan capable of? And the early 50’s were full of answers to this. And the answers summed up as: a thetan was an awareness that was not inherently located in the physical universe and was capable of operating independent of the physical universe, but was also involved in the physical universe. The thetan could create energy and could create space in a variety of ways. The thetan could mock up images and view these images. And other thetans could somehow view these images.
I was in La Jolla listening to a lecture by an OT (Mark Waterbury) and he mocked up this “persona,” this image that he superimposed on his body. There were about twenty of us in the audience and almost all of us saw what he mocked up and agreed on what it was.
So, an “operating” thetan would have more than just awareness, but would be able to mock up things that others could perceive. I have anecdotal “evidence” of this. And “evidence” is merely that which can be perceived.
An “operating” thetan would be able to communicate with others without a body.
I have so many experiences of this it wouldn’t be possible to include them. When we conceived our first child, I knew right then that my wife was pregnant and I described to her the individual that would become our daughter. We still marvel at how accurate the description was, and how I “knew” that a child had been conceived at that moment. A few years later, we conceived another child, and still wrapped in each others arms, sweating like mad, I described to her the little boy that had been conceived and the problems I would have with him. I gave her a physical description of him. He turned out exactly like that. And she can verify it.
I know a lot of you probably experience having the same thought as someone at the exact same moment, of knowing what song will be playing when you turn on the radio, of knowing who is on the phone (without caller ID) before you pick up.
The question here is whether Scientology processing can provide some kind of super abilities, can create super powerful thetans capable of levitation, capable of blowing up bridges at a distance, capable of creating a parade of bodies that others can perceive. Can Scientology processing make us so powerful that we can mock up a Porsche and drive our friends out to the lake in it? Can we create energy beams that knock hats off at a thousand yards? Can we mock up a banquet for five thousand people without having to pay a caterer?
I don’t have any evidence of those super powers. You can run incidents of being a thetan capable of blowing up a planet, but what would differentiate that “incident” from a dream state or a drug state where you imagine doing such a thing? Sure we can imagine this stuff, and we have incidents on our track that show us doing incredible things, but where does this experience apply? I can imagine moving the planet with an energy beam, but that experience doesn’t really apply to the physical universe.
Being ‘crazy’ is being unable to differentiate where data apply. Experiences that apply to the mind and imagination become superimposed on the physical universe experiences we share, and the individual can’t differentiate where those experiences apply.
Maybe that is why religion and politics are so fraught with insanity, we try to impose our opinions and imagination into a pool of data where it isn’t relevant. The good god Muggoo may well have created a beatific universe in our imaginations but really had nothing to do with creating the physical universe. People may well be willing to contribute according to their ability and receive only according to their needs in our imaginations, but not in the actual social environment. In our imaginings, Scientists may well operate only according to perfect logic and reason and evidence without fixed ideas that hamper investigations, but not in the social world I’ve experienced.
Optimally, Dianetics and Scientology processing addressed differentiating these experiences. Where did this experience apply?
But this is getting too long. I think the goal of a spirit or thetan is to gain sufficient control of awareness and conditions to be able to impose conscious will on existence. In other words, you aren’t trapped in an endless cycle of rebirth. You can decide what you experience. You can decide where you exist. Those were the goals of Buddhism, mysticism and Taoism. Control of consciousness.
At its best, Scientology pursued these ends and offered workable solutions. But, Scientology didn’t always operate according to those goals. Too much craziness got superimposed on those goals.
Michael
OnceUponaTime, any words I have thought of to say would somehow be “lowering” my impulse to simply communicate to you. So there it is. 🙂
One thing I see here is lots of amazing stories of psychic phenomena and past life awareness. If anyone has gone over to blogs that talk about psychic phenomena and/or past lives, they would see pretty much the same kind of stories.
Which means that these things happen and are not isolated to Scientology.
Second, I see a lot of stories from people who have done the OT levels who did not experience any such phenomena.
I would posit that if people who haven’t done the OT levels have experienced such phenomena, and people who HAVE done OT levels don’t consistently experience such phenomena, it’s pretty clear that the OT levels DO NOT have anything to do with it.
Instead, I’d guess that putting one’s attention on “higher spiritual matters” makes one more likely to be aware of such things — whether it’s Scientology or some other belief system.
That fits all the evidence quite nicely. Just my 2c.
William, you’ve got a point there.
William~That is valid. Through LRH processes I cleared up a whole lot of funk that occluded any higher perceptions I could have experienced. I had only been Catholic before and that hadn’t done it at all. But that’s ME and where I was at. If I’d seen Buddhism before LRH’s work, perhaps I might have achieved or revamped OT abilities there. But I didn’t.
I would posit that if people *didn’t* have certain “OT abilities” before doing Scientology, and *do* or *did* have certain “OT abilities” while or after doing Scientology, that Scientology *did* have something to do with it.
Nobody ever said that other practices can’t bring out “OT abilities”. In fact, if one understands the Scientology model (i.e. that OT abilities are native to all of us), it would be preposterous to think that OT abilities couldn’t be brought out by lots of other practices.
The real question is: how consistent are Scientology’s results (especially comparing the past 20-30 yrs, with the previous 20-30 yrs)? Anecdotally, the results seem to have gotten worse in the last 30 yrs. Both anecdotally and scientifically/experimentally, the results looked much better during the prior 30 yrs.
Scientifically?
Yup, scientifically. See my comment below.
Well,
This thread has certainly strayed from its original argument, that OT ability is different from OT phenomena.
And to assist with the stray, since the subject of spirituality vs materialism has come up a few times here, I wonder how the following story (marty posted this a while back on his blog), can be explained…
There are tons of these stories around – see Ian Stevenson’s research. And quite often it is young children. Personally, I believe we come back – I’ve always believed that, before, during and after Scientology.
But as I stated in the original article, the point isn’t “do these phenomena exist?” but “does Scientology enable a person to cause these phenomena at will?” If Scientologists have full recall on their past lives, then they are the ones who should be releasing stories like this. Now that would create a huge interest in the subject. Out-reality? I think not – the above story went viral. And all it took were a few verifiable details, a little (to use an apparently dirty word) proof.
Jeff said: ” Personally, I believe we come back – I’ve always believed that, before, during and after Scientology.” Love it!! You are a cool cat Jeff.
ARC,
Tony
I agree with you 100% Jeff,
I remember when there was this promo for the book ‘Have You Lived Before This Life’ and the response was incredibly positive.
Couldn’t agree more. And I’ll definitely check out Ian Stevenson.
I posted that story/video not in response to the article (as the two subjects are not tied together in any way, shape or form), but in response to some of the comments. Mostly it was just to get some feedback from the community here, as I’m personally struggling with reality on my own immortality currently and I appreciate many of the viewpoints.
Not sure if that’s the direction you want to take with this thread so just let me know.
Again, Jeff, you took the words right out of my mouth with this article. I duplicate and agree with it fully.
Prior to Scientology I personally experienced many things which could be called “OT abilities”. So when I walked into a small Scientology mission and read the Advance magazines, listened to the PDC lectures at the tape plays and was told how the “Bridge” made real “OTs” who were cause over matter, energy, space and time – I believed it (daaaaa).
I joined the Sea Org after doing just one $50 course. I persisted in the Sea Org for over 27 years until I was OT 7, had audited others on just about everything short of the L Rundowns, had done most of the SHSBC, was OEC/FEBC, studied the pc folders of Class XIIs and many “OTs” and finally I “got it”. While there was lots of interesting information and wins to be had – the making of “OT’s”
was pure BULLSHIT in my opinion. I saw absolutely NO evidence of it. Actually what I experienced and observed in others was the opposite – lost natural abilities, trapped and confused people.
Dear Mr. Pesch,
Regarding the “making of OTs”: my experience exactly.
FL
Matt,
You just need to get back onto the Level and start soloing again!! LOL!!
But seriously, maybe if you were not under so much stress in the environment you were in you would have had better results. It was sort of a suppressive environment from what I have heard. I haven’t seen any of the “OT” stuff really but I have had gains that I am real happy with and I know othes have to. I have shifted my orientation to just getting auditing that I am intersted in and that gives me pleasure and benefit. The pie in the sky I am not so interested in. If it happened in the process that would be groovy, but I am not really counting on it.
We will see if my abilites will allow me to take some of your money next time we play poker.
🙂
Tony
🙂 You rock Tony…give me your money. ahahahaha Did it work? I’m a pro reg Tony. I can sell you some swamp too. 😉 That’s an OT ability I gained for sure! I use it all the time.
Matt, That’s great firsthand data. Thank you. Pierre Ethier, Class XII auditor, felt to some degree the same way when he left the CoS in the earlier 90s. Now that he’s been delivering the Bridge and the Ls in real unsuppressed, distraction-free environments, he feels differently. You might find that Marty feels the same way too.
The environment in which one delivers — and receives — auditing, makes all the difference in the world.
Jeff,
great post, but you know that.
This is the exact reason why I consider Scientology to be a fraud. It promised “OT powers”, “Total Freedom”, “100% workability”, yet delivered very little. There are some subjective results, for some people results are life changing and spectacular, for others are less than that, down to many others who would have been better off without Scientology and its abusive practices. But the point is: it didn’t deliver what promised. No OT abilities, no 100% workability. David Mayo told us that LRH was still working on his goal to go exterior when he was auditing him. (When was that, 1978?). If LRH was ever exterior, visiting the Van Allen Belt or Venus as he was claiming in the ‘50s, in 1978(?) he was not. Alan Walter wrote on ESMB about an instance where on the Apollo LRH has been caught pretending to see what was happening on his back. An OT8 I know told me he actually went exterior once, but as a kid, long before joining Scientology.
Occasionally, I can foresee events. Often with friends we have the same thoughts at the same time. All these things are phenomena, not abilities, and can be found amongst wogs too no less frequently. With my wife often words aren’t necessary, she predict my needs so many times that she amazes me and she never was Scientologist but she knows me. Scientology offers a lot of knowingness about these phenomena, but how much of it is pretended knowingness?
When I was a kid I knew I was not my body, I was drawing spaceships but I don’t remember wanting to go “exterior” nor wanting to gain OT powers. Then I meet Scientology, it acknowledged many things I knew but implanted in me that desire to gain OT Powers. It was not my own. It was LRH’s goal. It was LRH that, with his fictional/theoretical/subjective fake descriptions of the State of Clear and State of OT, created in me a need to reach what he was promoting and promising. My two decades spent in Scientology to “save the Planet” (another implanted goal, not my own) passed with great sacrifices, disconnection from family, no education, and I got almost nothing of what was promised. I am certain that my life would have been much better without Scientology.
Much of the knowledge I acquired in Scientology is turning out to be pretended knowledge or even blatant lies. How do I know? Because there are no consistent results. Look at the Church, it’s a cult that enslaves people. It is evident to anybody that Miscavige is a criminal, but OTs, Clears and preclears in the church are blind and as puppets they will throw family and their own lives under the bus for him, looking forward to the day he will give them the key to the “Total Freedom” that LRH promised. Except, there is no key.
Back to the OT abilities. Auditing helps people change their ideas and points of view and that’s all it does – it never delivered any ability. To gain abilities you need training and practice. With auditing you may get the idea that you can do something, where before you had the idea that you can’t. This is mind manipulation, most of the time desired by both the auditor and the preclear. The value is that by turning those “I can’t” into “I can” you may accomplish things that maybe you wouldn’t have even tried doing. Therefore is not impossible to recover abilities with auditing as it is not impossible with self hypnosis and with other self help systems. But it opens the door to delusion too.
Unfortunately Scientology is not just desired mind-manipulation done in session but hidden mind manipulation as well, designed to control, to get people discard own purposes and interests and to assume LRH/Miscaviges purposes and interests. Facing Life, the perfect Ron-droid would not ask himself “How I would do that?” but “How would Ron do that?” I used to think that way for 20+ years living someone else’s life. But that’s another topic, another can of worms.
MostlyLurker, this is a great comment and I’d love to post it on my blog if you’ll give me permission. Caliwog at hotmail-dot-com if you’d like to discuss.
ML,
CW
Very interesting exchange of views.
What I realized when educating myself on what Hubbard might have meant and thrived at with his “OT Abilities” was, that I really had no clue on what spirituality is all about but had thoroughly bought into Hubbard’s prolific misinformation on it wholesale.
Having gone from there, I realized that nothing – and I mean nothing in SCN even touches spirituality how it is described in ancient Eastern teachings ( how Hubbard claimed having started his OT- Research from).
Dianetics stays strictly in psychological realms and SCN deals exclusively with the mind, too. The mind is however then invited to wallow in beautifully mocked up religious fiction which can then be handled in years and years of soloing on them.
Yes – as there exists science fiction apart from science, there exits religious fiction apart from religion, too. And that Hubbard could write is seemingly out of question. He just took advantage of the common Western ignorance re spirituality to sell his religious fiction.
I knew “OT phenomena” before, during and after SCN. They certainly exist, they can be observed and trained and with astute witnessing one will find they are all over the place and find their proof.
What they really are, I only learned from scriptures outside. My time in SCN just heavily postponed that education.
…oops, forgot my answer to the question of the post:
SCN teachings just acknowledged to me with certainty that these psychic phenomena and abilities exist and can be trained and developped where I previously just embarrassedly wondered. I had stopped to doubt them when they occurred but rather explored them on a personal subjective level. That’s about the “gain” I had from SCN with regard to that. For the rest it rather blurred them with wrong connotations.
Hi Jeff,
I have noticed that, when pressed on this question of OT Abilities (and other topics), Scientologists will go through 4 phases in sequence:
1. The outright lie.
(“I can go outside my body at will and see things.” “All the staff at this org make their living solely on staff pay.” “Scientology never recommends or enforces any form of disconnection.” Etc.)
This first phase is easily disproven/discredited on the spot, which takes you to phase 2:
2. Ducking the question.
This is the nonanswer drill from STCC. Or the “straw man argument”. You answer a question that was not really what was asked. “Hubbard was a great humanitarian” when the question was “Can you demonstrate any sort of visible OT ability?“
If you press past phase 2, it takes you to phase 3:
3. Trivializing the question.
“Oh, you want to see OT Abilities? So you want to light cigarettes from a distance and levitate pumpkins? Tee-hee-hee-hee.” In other words, how silly of you to ask such a question.
But “3” as a response is bogus because you are asking about the entire foundation of the religion, and something Hubbard trumpeted continuously to get followers to make great personal sacrifice.
Press on past “3”, and you get to the final phase 4:
4. Blowing up at you.
“Fine! The why don’t you go take some f*cking Prozac, F*cker!” (actual quote). This is the equivalent of “winning” the discussion by storming out of the room and slamming the door behind you.
If you press Scientologists on the various questionable claims, you will see them go through the above sequence pretty reliably.
FL
Wow nice attempt at a stereotype!
Needs a little work though.
RJ, I’ve seen that happen. In fact, phases 1, 2 and 3 are happening in this very comment thread. We haven’t gotten to phase 4, which is why I prefer having the conversation here on Jeff’s blog.
Over on Marty’s blog, it’s straight to Phase 4. Try to point out that “Look don’t listen” does not actually appear in KSW1, and it’s “Get the f— out, OSA troll!”
ML, CW
Phase 2
CW,
The fact that you wrote that “step 4” occurred immediately proves my point big guy 🙂
FL said and I quote “I have noticed that, when pressed on this question of OT Abilities (and other topics), Scientologists will go through 4 phases in sequence”
Not a stereotype, RJ. Happens quite often on Marty’s site. Go see for yourself.
ML, CW
CW,
I understand,
But not *all* Scientologists are the same.
Marty views on the subject in general differ from Jeff’s or mine.
For instance I’ve never bought the idea that Miscavige all by himself is the sole reason for the decline of the Church of Scientology or Western Civilization.
I think Jeff agrees with me on this point but for different reasons than I do.
Yet there sometimes it’s like COAST FM but instead of “Love songs” it’s “All Miscavige All the Time” 🙂
However despite our differences in opinion we still remain friends.
Bigotry is bigotry, regardless of which group is being belittled with derogatory generalizations and thinly veiled contempt.
You might want to tone that down.
(the last comment was for FiatLux)
Phase 4
fiatlux
Sorry, I’m not a scientologist. What else you got?
Dear Lunamoth,
Whoa!
Calm down & relax.
Don’t take it personal.
If my entry came across as an insult, I apologize. That was not my intention at all.
Fix yourself a cup of herbal tea, and give me the chance to make a few points:
You’re not a Scientologist? Well . . . . . you sound like one.
Whenever Hubbard was asked an unwanted question, he masterfully handled it with the approach Scientologists have learned:
1. Derail the question.
2. Redirect attention negatively to the inquirer.
Ever notice how any spoken disagreement of Hubbard was termed “persecution”?
Classifying my observation as “bigotry” is just a verbal smack down that doesn’t address accuracy. (I guess I better retract my observation. After all, I don’t want to be a “bigot”, do I?)
“Bigotry” is a bit over the top, wouldn’t you say? What’s next, a civil rights march?
You’re just recasting my remark in a different direction and in a negative light. (Phase 2 & 4).
It is not stereotype & bigotry to say that surfers are territorial.
It is not stereotype & bigotry to say that salesmen exaggerate.
It is not stereotype & bigotry to say that teenagers push the envelope on mischievous behavior.
It is not stereotype & bigotry to say that business people in South America use a tactic of portraying the US as a bully (“El Ganadalla”) to keep US competition away from local firms.
Still want to fight about it? OK, but I can assure you:
1. If you swim at the beach with the surfers, the surfers will beat you up. I know, personally.
2. If you sign a contract with a salesman who is desperate to make the sale, without enforcing that the agreement is real and doable, the deal will collapse and you will end up in court resolving it. I know, personally.
3. If you leave your teenage daughter with the house for the weekend without clear guidelines, she will invite her girlfriends over, who will call up some boys to come over, who will get into the alcohol, who will resist any efforts by the girls to bring the scene back under control, and you’ll have a mess to clean up. I know, personally.
4. If you put together a deal in South America, without making direct alliances with the locals, cartels in the area will shut you out by saying you are the US bully. I know, personally.
Sure, you can find exceptions, and poke holes in technicalities, but such observations are “pretty reliable” as I originally said.
I merely observed that Scientologists go through this sequence when pressed on “forbidden” topics. If you haven’t observed that, no problem. My observations have no more weight than yours. I simply found the phenomenon curious and a bit amusing. (Phase 1, the outright lie, is often particularly hilarious.)
Anyway . . . if I came across as nasty, or if I struck a nerve, or if I hit the nail too directly on the head, I apologize.
Pax Vobiscum.
Vaya con dios.
No physical harm intended, brother shamus dude.
ML,
FL
Fiat Lux,
Wow, condescending much?
Here’s the thing: your description of what “all” scientologists “always ” do when asked a question is not only a gross generality but it is insulting and derogatory to scientologists. I am not a scientologist, but if you had made the same sort of remark about muslims I would have objected to that, too. Perhaps you are too close to your own prejudices to see them, or perhaps you have had your viewpoints so solidly admired and agreed to by other people with the same opinions that you have lost perspective. At any rate, your comments fit the definition of someone who is intolerant (to say the least) of another based on their religion.
Secondly, your system for categorizing the responses of ALL scientologists is nothing but a thought stopper in itself. Someone disagrees with you? They sound like a scientologist! That means they’re responding with one of the steps! When you respond to my post with a number (Level 4), rather than addressing the point I’m making, you are trying to reduce me to a stereotype that fits your “system,” and thereby nullify the validity of my viewpoint. Then when I object, you claim it was not meant to upset me? Really? Was I supposed to get a chuckle out of your wit?
Lunamoth:
Reread my post. I never said “all”. I never said “always”. You did.
The prejudice is yours.
You are totally welcome to object to mine, or anyone’s, remarks. As long as you object to remarks they actually made, not a version you altered to recast the remarks as objectionable.
Besides, lighten up!
Remember what Ron tells us in Spirit of Play!
What is your next post? An SP declare on me?
Chill out,
FL
Fiat Lux, this is my last post on this subject. If you’d like to reply, I’ll read it. You can have the last word. Too much time on this as it is.
I stand by my observations regarding the essential bigotry of some of your anti-scientologist remarks. Other readers can judge for themselves.
I know you must have noticed that some who post here (and by extension, who lurk here) consider themselves independent scientologists . So why you would want to couch your viewpoints in a way that generalizes in the most derogatory manner about the behavior, integrity, etc., of that group of people, I won’t expound on here. Having now been lumped into that group by your references to declaring you “SP”, having been told to “calm down, ” etc. it looks like your problem is not just with them, but with people who disagree with you.
This thread is of huge interest to a lot of people – the comments are at 447 as I write this! Everybody has an opinion, a viewpoint, an experience or simply thoughts to share on this subject. Let’s not relegate any portion of this crowd to second-class citizen status because you consider them inferior in some way. I’m going back to the main thread, now.
Dear Routeplanner,
Re your March 15, 2011 8:15 am post “I’m not disagreeing with this . . “
I get your point. And, honestly, I commend your bigness as a being, and ability to rise above the human pursuit of personal right and wrong. Impressive, and, well, rather Christ-like, really. Well done.
By the way, I have an investment program that will make you absolutely rich, that is time-tested proven amongst hundreds of successful participants. Absolutely fool proof. It will require some initial self sacrifice on your part, but, wow, the ultimate upside is sweepingly fantastic and incredible. Contact me directly on where to send your money. You’re gonna love it! (This same program also slenderizes your waistline and makes any missing hair grow back.)
ML,
FL
Jeff,
As a self-confessed computer illiterate, I didn’t realize I could click on those words to go to your article. Wow, am I with it now.
Read your article about Certainty, knowing and blind faith. Impressive. I have to confess that I had somewhat dismissed you–primarily as an intellectual, and partially as one of the disaffected–someone with an ax to grind rather than someone looking for truth.
Oh well, I consume a steady diet of crow–tough, but nutritious. And when I can get myself a nice piece of fattening fried chicken, I’ll toss that crow back to the roadside and chow down. I have no shame.
Nor pride.
One thing I missed in that article and which is often missed has to do with channels of perception. What channels does one use to gather information and perception? For we humans, our primary channels center around the body. But, one has to ask how reliable that channel is.
If this world is subject to design, and it offers every evidence that it is, then the design of the body has a purpose. The design of the brain and the mind have a purpose. And that purpose is reflected in its function.
When we seek answers to spiritual questions, mostly we get mystery as a feedback. Mostly we get confusion, unconsciousness and disagreement. In other words, the body was not designed to provide a means to gain spiritual insight.
The proof is in the pudding. (But sometimes raisins are also in the pudding, so what does that tell us?)
So, does one trust the feedback provided through the body’s sensory and computational channels? Does one trust a Democrat to evaluate Republicans? Does one trust a Scientologist to evaluate Christianity? Just how reliable is the informational channel we are using?
OT ability has a lot to do with gnosticism as you describe it. And to wonder at where knowledge ends and belief begins, one has to ask, are we merely believing what the sensory input of the body provides, what the brain provides, what others using brains and bodies provide? Would I trust a cat to explain human thinking?
If you smash your head into a wall hard enough, the skull cracks and, if you are still conscious, you’re in a lot of pain. But, what actually occurred? The solidity of the head and the solidity of the wall are somewhat illusional because both are mostly space. What makes them solid? What makes this interaction? What are the forces involved? And what are the energies and forces and consciousness involved that permit us to experience this incident?
It’s easy to drop back to our agreed upon reality that the body is solid and the wall is solid and I must be crazy to not realize how REAL THIS IS, but….
Why is it designed this way? Who designed it? Who has that kind of power? (And this universe if filled with power that came from somewhere.)
I don’t think that the answer to spiritual questions will come from a human perspective. I don’t think that humans are designed to be spiritual. I think we are spirits trapped in a system antipathetic to spirituality. That’s just from observing the design and function of what exists around us rather than merely belief. It’s certainly not a belief I would want to adopt.
Once again, I’m not a Scientologist, but after studying the stuff LRH was pursuing in the early fifties, I’m impressed with his insights. Does that mean that I’m a fan of his approach? Not necessarily. I sure don’t need or want to pursue auditing. And I certainly am not a fan of the organizations that were formed to promulgate the philosophy of Scientology. But, I also think that the basic tenets discovered by Hubbard get confused with the organization. And the confusions regarding the organizations and sales pitches spill over onto the philosophy.
But then again, Christianity isn’t understood by most Christians. Buddhism isn’t understood by most Buddhists. So, why expect Scientology to be understood?
But, regardless of what Hubbard or anybody else found, I’m curious about what lies in the spiritual universe, what actually exists behind all of this design. I’m curious about the designers. I’m curious about our ability to design and create–not as humans, but as spiritual beings.
I’m not a great fan of intellectual ping pong, though I can appreciate the skills required. Playing games with words and definitions and rearranging those definitions as an intellectual exercise are simply above my pay grade. I’m just not bright enough for that. It leaves me confused.
I’m just a peasant spiritual being, consigned to the drudgeries of human existence, lamenting my fate without understanding it.
sniff sniff.
Michael
Michael, you lie like a rug. 😉
Before you get too riled up and wonder just what it is I think you’re lying about… 😆
Wait for it…
Wait for it…
I love the way you write and you’ll never convince me you’re not GREAT at it.
Reality.
Tara,
Lie? Moi? Let me put this in perspective.
This tongue knows not the taste of truth
preferring sweet to bitter,
it lolls languorously
in foolish bliss,
unresponsive to urges to logic and responsibility.
And writing? Writing well? If only I could master those errant fingers, always scratching in places too shameful for public revelation; always wandering to acts meant to embarrass. To write would require a mastery of fingers unwilling to be mastered.
Your compliments, my tongue will savor and my fingers steal; but, alas, my mind must blush: those vagrants are not of my command.
Michael
“I’ve heard this. In fact, I’ve heard from a reliable source that *not* smoking will cause cancer:
http://www.xenu.net/archive/multimedia.html#smoking
ML, CW”
Funny how some individuals misquote others to suit some kinda agenda.
Ron never said “that *not* smoking will cause cancer”.
Even in the sound byte cited (unless it’s been altered from what he originally said) doesn’t say that.
So one could ask if this disinformation was intentional or if the person attributing the quote never listened to the actual lecture or had misinterpreted it due to a misunderstood word?
Enquiring minds want to know?
RJ, you are correct; the audio says “Not smoking *enough* will cause *lung* cancer.”
In fact, he says it twice. In a row.
He then goes on to say that lung cancer is likely a combination of radiation and smoking, and if anything, smoking “runs out” the radiation dosage. And that smoking some is better than not smoking at all.
Anyway, let’s not argue about this, it was supposed to be a lighthearted comment.
Personally, I’m going to remain a non-smoker and take my chances.
ML,
CW
Fair enough CW,
Though I guess offering you a Peace Pipe is out of the question 😉
RJ — Hahaha! I actually LOLd. I’ll pass, but the sentiment is appreciated.
ML, CW
I’ve recently discovered the spiritual benefits of adding fiber to my diet.
Now, my “morning constitutional” is blessed with some truly “OT” phenomena!
But more to the point…
Jeff said: “Does Scientology processing actually reliably produce or create these abilities in people?”
The answer is No. Those who would look to Scientology processing to do something to them will invariably be disappointed. Scientology processing, and training for that matter, can do nothing TO a person. Positive or negative. Whatever gain, or lack thereof, is only a product of the person himself DOING something….or not. It’s not done to you. You do it or you don’t. You either understand the purpose and theory behind processing and thereby can apply it to your “case”, often with the assistance of an auditor, or you go into it with an expectation that something magical will be done TO you, and thereby fail.
Three other points:
The over-marketing and hyperbole by LRH and by extension the marketeers like Jeff, greatly contributed to the disappointment many felt when unable to bend spoons with their “mind” after doing some OT levels.
It’s been said by earlier posters that the “postulated” abilities of a thetan as described by LRH were not the “ability gained” promised at various pre-OT levels. Marketeers and registrars have created a lot of mischief with peoples’ expectations.
The QUANTITY of case impeding native abilities is grossly underestimated by most everyone. I think even LRH was probably surprised to keep discovering more of it as he went along too. Just my opinion.
What’s true for me is what’s true for me. I’ve achieved tremendous perception and spiritual stability from my application of Scientology. Among other things, I communicate to and have helped disembodied persons on many occasions. I could give many other “phenomena” stories and abilities gained of my own. These abilities are a direct result of MY application of Scientology principals NOT as a result of something Scientology did to me.
If you don’t believe it, try adding 3 grams of fiber to your diet. It’s quite spiritual.
David, I would disagree with what otherwise sounds like a very plausible argument. I had the most gains from the lower bridge as a very very green p.c. Later I trained through Class IV (interned) and had a fuller conceptual understanding of what had been addressed on my lower bridge, an understanding I could not have had and did not have at the time I was receiving my auditing.
I would also add that nearly all the auditing I’ve had since my training has been inferior, and in no way have I had the kind of or number of gains I had earlier. I’m telling you this not to contradict you, but to provide you with my very real experience as way of saying, there has to be another explanation.
lunamoth
>I had the most gains from the lower bridge as a very very green p.c.
From what I’ve read and heard, I think this happens a lot. I think this is because a lot of the lower bridge is copied or derived from proven psychotherapudic techniques. (Hoping that won’t get me yelled at like the implant thing.)
Cowering,
Caliwog
LOL Well, I see my plan to rule this blog through intimidation is succeeding. Next, I will make you all my slaves…
Caliwog, I think you could be right, but I don’t know that, either. Theories abound.
I’ve had some experience with other “therapies,” and I will say that the lower bridge auditing I had was in a league of its own, in a good way. Now, that’s my experience.
Have you had any experience with any kind of auditing?
>Next, I will make you all my slaves…
Yeah, baby!
>Have you had any experience with any kind of auditing?
Never bought and paid for, no. Back in my Admin Tech days, I did have a wonderful EO who, after someone said something that set me off a bit, helped me trace it back to something similar said to me as a kid. Felt better after doing that and it hasn’t bothered me since. Does that count?
ML, CW
Caliwog,
maybe the lower bridge works better because it is the result of a real research. There were many research auditors working for Ron from the 50’s up to the SHSBC. It was a teamwork. A lot of trial & err done. Many auditors come up with good insight that were incorporated in the Tech. That Ron never gave credit where credit was due is one of my biggest ARCXs with him, the first ARCX being his blatant lies to manipulate people.
>There were many research auditors working for Ron from the 50′s up to the SHSBC.
Many, I think, who did not even realize they were doing research for Ron! 🙂
ML, CW
ML,
Actually Ron does acknowledge the fact that he had a supporting cast of thousand and even mentions quite a few by name that is until the Winston Smiths at RTC deleted all these references to others from various HCOBs ,Books and even lectures.
In fact a good friend of mine is acknowledged quite a few times in the original references only to be redacted later.
This is what happened to Mary Sue and quite a few others who fell into disfavor with the current management.
It is amazing to what extent they will go to.
For example in the lecture Auditor Adminstration they have deleted any reference to his son Quentin.
In the Clearing Course Congresses they’ve managed to electronically edit out NIBs.
They have taken the acknowledgment to Mary Sue in the original History of Man and one I could never figure out which was to delete any reference to Diana in ‘Science of Survival’.
Who is supposedly an active Sea Org member.
Anyway I disagree with your assessment of there being some kind of “manipulation” because he didn’t give some kind of “credit” to every single auditor who worked on his behalf in research.
Does any researcher or scientist give credit to everyone who is involved in research?
Caliwog said “Does that count?”
Sure. It’s the same basic principle as some lower bridge auditing, and you got a good result from it. Now, imagine the effect if you could trace down a dozen of those things, some of which have bothered you for years and might even have influence how you live your life (as in, not as adventurously or not as satisfyingly), and you handle those all to a similarly good result. If you can conceive of that as possible and desirable you can get an idea of the value of one kind of auditing.
RJ wrote: “one I could never figure out which was to delete any reference to Diana in ‘Science of Survival’.”
RJ, SOS was originally dedicated to Alexis (Valerie Hubbard). At some point — at least by 1975 — it was changed to Diana. Diana was still in there in the 1982 version, but by 2001, it was removed. By 2007, even the acknowledgement of the “50 Thousand Years of Thinking Men” (with their names listed) was removed.
I understood the original change to Diana. Why it was then removed later by DM (along with the acknowledgement) makes no sense.
>It’s the same basic principle as some lower bridge auditing, and you got a good result from it.
True. It’s also a technique used in psychotherapy – going back and finding the origin of issues. Which I have also experienced. And which I also got very good results from.
Near as I can tell from my research, the “evil psychs” invented this sort of therapy before Hubbard “discovered” it.
ML,
Caliwog
Caliwog,
Agreed. Back in the day Hubbard used to credit Freud with providing the research he used as a basis for auditing. But that was a long time and many “versions” of the tech ago. It seems to me that he used that acknowledgment as as “in” to gain acceptance for his ‘science of the mind,” using that positioning to give the public something it already accepted as authoritative in the field of the mind with which it could then associate Dianetics. Years later, after Dianetics was a best-seller and his organizations were established, he certainly changed his tune. In KSW he stated that no individual other than himself had ever contributed anything of any value to the tech. I can’t tell you the exact origin of the “evil psych’s” thing, but you now it’s endemic to the whole c of s culture.
Though I want to make a point of saying “evil psychs” is not a term I agree with or use, but I get the implied humor/sarcasm.
>I can’t tell you the exact origin of the “evil psych’s” thing,
I can. Basically, the AMA and APA started saying that Dianetics was BS, and they were probably the first group with enough weight and influence to get people to listen. They were blowing his chances at the big time, so Hubbard made them the enemy.
I often wonder how things would have turned out had Dianetics’ popularity with the general public extended beyond a passing fad. Would the “research” have continued? Would Hubbard have created Xenu and BTs and “OT Abilties”? I wonder.
ML,
Caliwog
WOW, what a discussion. Just want to add my Personal point of view having done both the new OT levels and the Original ones up to OT 7. Since I was a child I have had many premonitions that have always come true, at some point in the future. It Got so I would call them Preja-Views in stead of Deja views because they ALWAYs came true and I knew the difference between imagination and
the visions of the future I would see. Just bits and pieces of the future, that when I arrived at that point I would always remember when and where I had already been shown this moment.
This was mine prior to Scientology, and continued during and after Scientology. With all these OT levels, one might think I would now have control over it, and am able to conjur these scenes up at will. I can’t — they were part of me before, during and after, and I can’t “make” one happen at will
All those OT levels and I already had that ability prior to Scientology, you would imagine it would get bigger and more under control.
I was once in Denver with a client of mine and I saw my husband buying a car we had thought of buying, I actually was right and when I got home it was the exact color and everything that I had seen. Sorry, no Scientology there. Schocked my client though…
There is one thing that I do consider amazing and have used to this day, is Admin TR’s. It’s always about getting someone to do something so you can move to the next step and on and on. And,, funny enough, even in the drills there is/was no screaming or meanness involved. I did gain the ability to Persist with intention rather than force. Always a good thing.
I felt a “shift during power, but still not sure what it was or how it happened.
OT3,4,5,and new 6 and 7, are all about getting rid of BT’s. Well I have always seen and felt disembodiesd spirits and it would only make sense that some would cause me confusion or over the top emotions.
But towards the end I truly felt that some of these disembodies spirits could be GOOD for me, so why was I getting rid of them all. They were not all bad. I’m sure many of them helped me in my life.
Otherwise, I cannot discern the placebo effect of being in a safe space, where no Exec could come and yell at me…. And how much of my feeling better was my own growing up, and cleaning off of drugs…..
Never know…
nancy many
What a nice post.
About Admin TRs. They are good. Many of the Scientology drills are good and being drills they are likely to increase abilities for real. Interesting also that people have bits of Scientology Tech that they like/liked more than others, even if they may consider Scientology as a whole to be negative.
About “But towards the end I truly felt that some of these disembodies spirits could be GOOD for me, so why was I getting rid of them all. They were not all bad. I’m sure many of them helped me in my life.” That’s the point of view of Alan Walter’s Knowledgism, they call them Teammates.
🙂
Nancy,
While reading what you wrote, I remember having a similar thought about some of the so-called “body thetans.” What was this obsession to get rid of them? How was it that I had more right to the space they occupied then they did? If I’m not a body, then I’m not this body, didn’t create this body, and am really only “renting” it. Wasn’t it a bit of an overt to kick other occupants out? Why not just raise their consciousness and allow a symbiotic relationship?
Before anyone goes apeshit over the idea of “body thetans,” religious belief has long held that a greater consciousness creates all that exists and that which we perceive is made from the “substance” of that creator. This can be a single deity, multiple deities or an amorphous deity that is neither singular nor multiple but manifests in ever changing form.
Animism holds that all objects are imbued with life. A rock has “life” or consciousness underlying its manifestation. Even a skyscraper is based in this consciousness.
Now, say that consciousness has the capacity to create independent or distinct manifestations. Jim and Pete and Rover would all be different beings. Granite would be different than steel, but each “alive.” Wood obviously comes from a life source. As does wool and cotton.
You start recombining these disparate elements, each based in a distinct life manifestation and you have a merger of consciousness. You have steel and concrete and wool (carpet) combining to make the skyscraper.
But, is a skyscraper based in life and consciousness?
Is a human body?
If we assume that evolution has some validity, you will see a human body evolving by taking disparate examples of physical engineering. Like workers in an office, each organ has a distinct and different job. Each organ is a symbiote in an organized effort. Each cell is independently alive yet dependent on the whole. Much like a skyscraper, you have a variety of life manifestations coming together for an engineered purpose.
And then we arrive as an independent soul to occupy that body with all these independent life forms comprising its operation.
We think of human consciousness as being a “wakeful” state. But look at all the admirable conditions of thought that operate beyond this state. Dreams work outside this wakeful state. Inspiration works outside this wakeful state. Imagination works outside this wakeful state. Insight works outside this state.
And most great spiritual guides come to the same conclusion: human consciousness is not only very limited and limiting, but more akin to spiritual sleep than spiritual awareness.
So, when we base our conclusions and assumptions and logic on data that arrives to us through a grossly limited source such as the human mind and the human sensory channels we’re going to reach limited outcomes. To dismiss other channels of perception, such as described by you, Nancy, would strike me as odd. Theta perception or spiritual perception has far fewer limitations than human sensory perception. A body was not perceiving the husband buying a car.
And it’s easy to pooh-pooh theta perception as unreliable and mere belief. How can we PROVE that theta perception exists? For someone fully aware of theta perception, the question becomes more of “how do we prove that human perception exists?” Why accept an inferior source of information? Why listen to an idiot’s advice when you’ve got the product’s inventor sitting right there?
If you think that pinpointing an exact theta perception is easy–such as what color the car a husband is buying hundreds of miles away, realize that you have millions of perceptions to millions of powers as a possibility. You have a number so vast you couldn’t write it. You take every person on the planet, every animal on the planet and imagine them being a radio station, each independently broadcasting, and imagine trying to tune into that channel with precision. If you’ve ever been traveling across country and tried to get a station that was competing with another station at that wave you get an idea of what I’m talking about. You’ve got thousands of similar (soul-mates) each operating at 97.6. The message gets garbled.
So, it’s easy to say, “Uh, I see that chair. That’s reliable. But, knowing what Smitty’s thinking over there in China? Can’t happen. It’s just imagination. Not reliable. And anyone who thinks that you can is crazy.”
But, each of us has perceived the thoughts of our particular Smitty. Even scientists. And to dismiss this experience is obtuse. It’s irresponsible.
Of course, if a person believes themselves to only be a body that somehow accidentally came into being and that offers only one chance for life, all of this would make no sense whatsoever. I tried to explain it to a rock one time and that rock just sat there, uncomprehending. I guess, because the rock didn’t respond, animism is a ridiculous belief, and I might as well go get drunk. First though, I have to go to the doctor. I broke my hand trying to communicate to the rock at a level I thought would break through. Guess the “breaking through” turned out to be my bad, not the rock’s.
Sorry for getting sidetracked, Nancy. I just liked your story. I love personal experience. I have little use for people quoting someone else as a pretense of validity.
Michael
>If you think that pinpointing an exact theta perception is easy–such as what color the car a husband is buying hundreds of miles away, realize that you have millions of perceptions to millions of powers as a possibility.
Yes, but you also know your husband really well (hopefully!), your husband knows you, you know how your husband values and balances your desires with his, you know the discussions you’ve had about the car, you know what colors it comes in, and you know what the selection is like at the dealership. The field of choices therefore narrows. What is difficult to count is the number of tiny hints that we perceive and don’t even realize it.
If I say I’m going to pick up something for dinner at the store, there’s a good chance my wife will be able to guess what I get. No OT powers here, just the knowledge of what I cooked… well, what I *prepared* the last 3 times I made dinner, and the fact that I’m pretty predictable.
ML,
Caliwog
Caliwog,
You’ve got a valid point, but not everyone is quite that predictable.
Recently, we were looking for a car for our son, spent quite a bit of time on car lots, looking at a wide range of colors, body types, engines, sizes, coupes, sedans, on and on. We checked out pretty much every manufacturer. And we balanced the car cost against reliability, safety, and insurance costs. My wife had no idea what we would end up with, even though she knew our tastes. Hell, I didn’t even know. It was between me and my son. There were so many choices, and the front runners all had different models and trims and colors.
Each element becomes a multiplier of possibility.
We ended up with a car that completely shocked both me and my wife–and my son. Shocked in a very pleasing way. Totally unpredicted.
So, from personal experience, I can verify that predicting what car you’re going to end up with isn’t such a simple matter.
But, if you were a Honda person, dedicated to driving the mid-level-trim Accord in whatever shade of light gray was currently available, then, yeah, the guess would be a snap. Caliwog’s got a new gray Accord. No brainer.
I suppose if you always ate the same thing, someone would not have trouble guessing what you would choose for dinner. But, if you love to experiment, that guess would become very difficult. We might end up with escargot one night, souffle another, baby-back ribs another, shrimp another, tilapia another, hamburger another, and on and on. Often we end up with something sampled at Costco that day that we hadn’t planned on getting.
I don’t know the preferences of Nancy’s husband so I don’t know how predictable his choice was. Because I make choices from a wide range of possibility, I read the story with a certain “wow.” (Pick a number between 1 and 1,000) Because you make choices that others know you will make, you read it with that viewpoint. (Pick a number between 1 and 3)
Once, how did you know I have a Honda Accord??? OT powers DO exist!
Of course, you did get the color and trim level wrong… So, no getting banned from casinos for you. 🙂 🙂
ML, CW
Nancy,
Do you belive in the OT III story? Just curious. I doubt the exact story is true, although parts of it might be true. I do however believe the auditing works but who says it’s BTs, or that all of them are BTs? Could be ridged energies or whatever? And what about those ideas of keeping good BTs, if they are spirits, would you want to be stuck in another persons space as a BT? *lol* 😉
I’ve been following this discussion for the past two days, and I have a hard time getting it through my head. Back then, when I was a young Scientologist, everybody “*knew* that people who had done the OT levels had psychic abilities.
I always thought that there must be some sort of process on the OT levels that created a discrete breakthrough, so that the person came out on the other side and suddenly was able to perceive as a being. I assumed that this breakthrough was what allowed him to then audit the OT levels.
I spent quite some time on the Internet these past few years looking for clues. On the Anonymous web site, someone theorized that in order to audit the OT levels, a person already had to have OT abilities.
But according to the story that Tory/Magoo posted somewhere online, it is the e-meter’s needle which guides your session.
I even wrote to Ron, very early on, saying that it made me uncomfortable that people near me were reading my thoughts, and asking for information about OTs. Since I was a very beginner student, maybe he thought that I just needed to clear MUs. He wrote back, but did not give me a direct answer as to whether OTs were reading my thoughts. He simply said to ask my Course Supervisor to clear up the definition of OT with me.
Just the other day, I was reading on Marty’s blog, where one of the posters mentioned the “theta” someone sent them. It seemed to me that they were speaking about it purely as a being, and not referring to a written e-mail or anything. From what I recall, someone else there mentioned that they picked it up also. It made me assume that all the OT’s there are sending “theta” messages back and forth between themselves, in between reading the blog in its written form.
So I am still trying to figure it out for sure. No one here has mentioned a breakthrough session in auditing. So far, some people seem to be saying that it is a gradual thing. OK, maybe that is a stable datum. But that does not rule out that it can be a gradual thing even for those not yet on the OT levels.
As for you, Jeff – for those of us who are still mystified by all this, and who might even feel a little intimidated by whether or not someone else can “read our minds”, your lack of OT perceptions to flamboyantly display around (and I am definitely not accusing anyone here!) probably has added to your being a “safe terminal”. What you have done these past few years has immensely helped many people, myself included.
And this thread, and all its contributions has really helped, so far. It has helped me undo a lot of misconceptions and charge on the subject.
Cinnamon,
You mention: “But that does not rule out that it can be a gradual thing even for those not yet on the OT levels. ”
I agree with you here … it seems to me that these awarenesses or abilities occur when the person is at that point – it doesn’t matter what level one is on. I remember times where someone mentioned a certain ability that I didn’t have at a higher level, and also me having an ability that another higher than me didn’t have.
I don’t even look at it as ‘higher’ anymore – just different. It happens when it happens
I think that every individual has his or her own special abilities and interest. We all have a instinctive nature to want to be free and make our own choices. Some wanted auditing to handle specific things in their life, others wanted it to enhance their own special abilities. I came in because I wanted to sort out questions I had about why I was here and why I kept coming back here…hence I was only interested in Technical Training. The Training it self answered a lot of my questions and the education alone enhanced many of my abilities by putting into perceptive what I always observed about myself and others, but really had no explanation as to why these things occurred. It made perfect sense to me and it is nothing I use, it is just something I know and have always known but with more certainty now.
There are many Technical reasons why a person cannot enhance their own abilities, whether on their own, through auditing/training, or in any other practice. Since the COS has become a institution of using Admin Tech or Flag Orders , etc, to keep people “under control”, whether it’s own staff or public, there is no reason to expect any permanent ability enhancement or not as much as there should of been. People who try to control others will always throw them a bone but never let them soar on their own.
Since most of my auditing was prior to all the stuff going on now, I must say that “I” have enhanced my natural abilities and I can use those abilities very well. Telling people about them is not important to me. I am not into telling any person that “I know something you don’t know” or “I can do something that you cannot do”, not before Scientology or now. Think about it, what would be the point of someone doing that to another person?
People are going to believe what they want to believe. Example: If someone want to die and be dead instead of coming back next life time, then so be it, that is their choice. Even if I think that may not be a very good idea, I realize that any person will only change their mind if they want to. If they don’t want to, there is no amount of talking them out of it. People can be helped only if they want help. People will only change their mind when they are willing to or ready to.
I agree with David above, Scientology doesn’t give anyone abilities, they are your own and only “you” can enhance them or learn to use them again. I believe that I had a lot more abilities a long time ago and that I have forgotten how to use them for varies reasons. Would I like them all back one day?, sure. Did I expect to get them all back while I still have to have a body on planet Earth in the state it is in?. NO.
I also agree with Jeff. To promote an idea of what a person could attain through auditing or an OT Levels is a lie. You cannot tell someone they are going to attain an ability that maybe someone else attained in a success story or change the meaning of an Ability Gained on the Grade Chart to something it is not by cleverly wording it to make you think it is some thing else. Boy, if you want someone to evaluate you, go to a shrink, still probably cheaper than the OT Levels.
Another related point is, the language(s) we speak condition our ability to perceive. One of the points of thought control in the book “1984” was to eliminate undesirable (to the State) words thereby eliminating the populace’s ability to think undesirable (to the State) thoughts and develop undesirable goals, purposes, and intentions.
Thus is true in real life. When it snows, we Westerners see “snow”. We may make a distinction between maybe kinds of snow, but it is said Eskimos have over 100 different words for snow which convey different states and aspects of what we call “snow”.
I have also read that originally, the Japanese language had no word for “privacy”. This would condition their attitudes and experience of social life in ways I can barely imagine.
What if there were no word for “freedom” or “liberty”? What if those concepts did not exist in society?
That would impact the way a person regarded life, himself, and others.
Any language brings with it a complete world-view. The European languages have a lot of similarities, but going outside that language family can take a person into literally another world, because a person can start to notice things he never did before because he never had the concept for it in his mind.
I think this is one of the valuable things about learning a whole new nomenclature, like that of scientology or any philosophical tradition or system. It opens and expands one’s mind and helps one to see the world in ways he did not before; to perhaps notice the existence of “theta”, a realm of experience he may not have noticed before simply because he had no word or concept for it.
> learning a whole new nomenclature, like that of scientology or any philosophical tradition or system.
It’s also a way to get members of a group to distinguish themselves from others. People are more likely to stay in a group if they feel different, special, superior. The goal is to create an “us vs. them” mentality, versus in the sense not of an active fight, but of the differences between.
ML,
CW
Valkov, an old-country lady (from Armenia and then Iran) I once knew used to say that for every language a person knows he is another individual, as in a whole additional person. Even from the modest amount I’ve studied of a couple other languages, I saw the truth in this. You presented the idea very well in your post here!
And by the way, it’s very much the same phenomenon when clearing words. At least with some words, you feel like a whole new window into the universe was opened up. Fascinating experience every time. 🙂
Having studied 5 languages besides my mothertongue and speaking three of them decently, I wholeheartedly agree when it comes to being enriched by the universes of different languages.
I don’t follow though when it comes to SCN re-definitions like of “reasonable” (just to mention one example and not further distract!!) Would that “open and expand one’s mind”? It certainly “helps to see the world in ways he did not before”…
Fidelio
caliwog wrote: “People are more likely to stay in a group if they feel different, special, superior.”
I suppose that is a true statement. But you should be aware that LRH felt that Scientologists shouldn’t be “stuck” with only using Scientologese … and that Scn’ists should be facile with the use of non-scientologese in the interest of best communicating concepts to others.
>But you should be aware that LRH felt that Scientologists shouldn’t be “stuck” with only using Scientologese
Margaret, with all due respect, you cannot know what LRH _felt_, only what he said and wrote.
LRH said lots of things, but made it clear in his writing that he wanted his followers to _do_ other things. It’s a form of manipulation. Except people don’t want to think they are being manipulated, so he made it seem like he wasn’t, when he was.
Hard to see from the inside, easy to see from the outside.
> Scn’ists should be facile with the use of non-scientologese
Perfect example. “Facile” with non-Scientologese? You make it sound like it’s a foreign language. Non-Scientologese, for many Scientologists, is the native tongue. But Hubbard made it secondary. The primary group is Scientologists.
See what Ron did there?
The “greatest friend to mankind” had his hands in mankind’s pants all along.
ML, CW
caliwog wrote: “Margaret, with all due respect, you cannot know what LRH _felt_, only what he said and wrote.”
Right back at ya, cali.
Marg: “Scn’ists should be facile with the use of non-scientologese”
Cali: “Perfect example. … Non-Scientologese, for many Scientologists, is the native tongue. But Hubbard made it secondary. … See what Ron did there?”
He did? Trying to correct a bad habit that he (and many of us) observed Scientologist’s getting into? How horrible! Clearly the mark of Hubbard secretly manipulating the minions.
@Caliwog-
“It’s also a way to get members of a group to distinguish themselves from others.”
I didn’t say it wasn’t, did I. Iwill agree that it CAN be away to foster a group identity.
But that isn’t what I was posting about. I was posting about how developing a larger vocabulary of words and concepts can enlarge one’s awareness and perception of things by providing mental referents to correlate with what he sees.
One can foster jingoism, chauvinism, nationalism, school spirit, etc by creating jingles using special words, indeed.
However I am talking about a person who creates a nomenclature in order to communicate his exact meaning better. Scientisits and philosophers have done this when they felt it was called for, not because they eventually wanted to have a following of cultists.
Now go eat your mesons, and don’t forget to add some gluons to make it a more balanced meal.
>I am talking about a person who creates a nomenclature in order to communicate his exact meaning better.
But that’s not what Hubbard did. Aside from dev-t, a great catch-all term, a good many of Hubbard’s made-up words and redefinitions were redirections, not clarifications.
Actually, it’s a little surprising what a poor communicator Hubbard was. Next time you listen to a lecture, listen to how many times he glosses over spaces where there should be evidence with “and so on.” And my favorite, “It’s very interesting.” There’s a lot of detail in his lectures, but not a lot is getting said. You’ll see that better if you ever get out, but if you want to get some idea of what it will be like, I recommend this:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/NOTs/gullibility1.html
Especially part 2.
ML, Caliwog
Now, I do have one OT Phenomena occurring as of the last year or so. Not an ability, mind you….a phenomena.
At least two or three times per day, upon looking at a clock, any clock, it’s exactly twenty minutes after the hour. 2:20, 7:20, etc.
I’ve perfomed this in front of friends enough that they now absolutely know I can do it. But, it’s not causative in the sense that when I “plan” to do it, it doesn’t work. It just happens.
Also, it is date-coincident with my getting back into drumming, a very time-oriented endeavor. Could be a factor, I’m not sure.
If only I could have a winning Lottery phenomena…
Hey! It’s 11:20
Tony,
If you try to guage your auditing wins based on your ability to beat me in poker you are going to spend a lot of time in “review”. LOL.
Matt,
You might be right. That will be my new hidden standard. If I am making case gain then I beat Matt in poker. If not then I am a NCG. 🙂
I’ve never been a Scientologist, but I’ve become interested in Scientology as a somewhat sympathetic critic. I appreciate this blog for its clear writing. OT or not, Jeff’s a smart guy.
I happen to be a physicist, and even though I’ve never even met anyone who claimed to be OT, I’m really pretty sure that there are no stable paranormal abilities being consistently produced through Scientology. The reason I’m sure is NOT that I simply assume current science must be right.
On the contrary, it’s this: if there were anyone with those kind of consistent abilities, we would all have heard of it by now, as huge headline news. Testable paranormal abilities of that kind would be one of the biggest scientific discoveries in history.
And there’d be no reason whatever to conceal them. One real proof of telepathy or telekinesis or whatever, by a genuine Operating Thetan at cause over MEST, and there’d be a Scientologist winning the Nobel prize in physics, with fame like nobody since Neil Armstrong. (The physics Nobel for demonstrable telekinesis would be an instant slam dunk win, absolutely no question. Einstein would be jealous. All the textbooks would be thrown out right away.) And that would really start clearing the planet.
The point is not that it couldn’t happen. Science is about making new discoveries. The point is that it couldn’t happen without the whole world hearing about it. We haven’t heard. So it hasn’t happened.
“we would all have heard of it by now, as huge headline news.”
Great points James. And welcome.
Many in the scientific community have heard about them. The stigma keeps them from being widely discussed as stemming from Scientology.
See my comment(s) below.
Aah really?
Hm, wonder where that stigma comes from – even considering the early glorious years….
Peace
Fidelio
Wonderful post. Wonderful point:
You say: “The point is that it couldn’t happen without the whole world hearing about it. We haven’t heard. So it hasn’t happened.”
That’s not only true for the “OT Abilities” but also for the planetary “4Dy achievements” by the VMs, Applied Scholastics, Narconon, Criminon, TWTH etc. the Church claims from the very beginning of the SCN travesty. Just google….. nada… not even on Wikileaks 😉
So, it hasn’t happened.
But what HAS happened instead was and is beyond ANY imagination. Inspite of spending millions upon millions upon millions of $, the Church could not prevent the whole world hearing about that one.
Fidelio
James Angelin
I guess I disagree 100% with this, that if it had happened we would have heard about it. Not on the planet I am living on, anyway. And it wouldn’t necessarily be in the newspapers, any more than automobiles that could get 50 mpg were headline news 20 or 30 years ago. The science and technology was there, but nobody except maybe the Japanese were interested.
How long did it take for the idea that the Earth went around the sun to get accepted? I’m sure someone willing to spend the time could find a dozen examples of scientific or technological developments that were bitterly fought right within the “scientific” community in which they were developed, sometimes for years or decades.
A good example was the discovery that many ulcers were caused by a bacterial infection. The man was pilloried by other medicos for saying that. What did it take, about 20 years for the idea to be generally accepted by the “scientific” medical community?
Or take the development of the automobile by Henry Ford. Some scientists predicted that most human beings could not survive speeds of over 30 mph!
I think the scientific community is as hidebound as any other, and perhaps more so, being afraid to commit themselves for fearof being proved wrong and becoming someone’s laughingstock.
Just my opinion, of course. Your mileage may vary.
Jeff
Thank you for this post. I have thrown in a comment or two earlier, but I think that this kind of question, and the responses and viewpoints that it brings out are very informative and perhaps even therapeutic. You, and several of the other responses, have provided me with food for thought and the associated realignment of certain aspects of my understandings. It is good to “shake the trees” from time to time to get out the dead leaves and to prepare for new growth.
WW
Jeff,
Just for fun, how about a little poetry that might be somewhat appropriate to this subject.
OT or not OT? Is one what one is or is one what one does? Or…?
It goes like this….
Bus Stop
A God was waiting for a bus.
He did not know , a God, he was.
He did not know that it was odd
that he did not know that he WAS a God.
He did not know for he had chosen not,
and even that, he soon forgot.
And so we find him in this muss.
A God,
just waiting for a bus.
WW
WW,
Good one! Great poem!
FL
Good poem WW!
This song was released by Joan Osborne in 1995 and enjoyed some popularity. Still does. It was written by Eric Bazilian, a kindred spirit.
Maybe a bit OT (Off-Topic).
By chance I came across this video of Jim Carrey:
He experienced a release/exteriorization/ascension experience/key-out/awakening, whatever and he liked it.
This is what I get from it:
1) Such phenomena don’t happens in Scientology only (we know that).
2) He was hit by the experience and wanted more of it, but it came and go, no control as in Scientology.
3) That experience made him stick with that group as we were stuck in Scientology for Scientology promised that such states would eventually fall under our control.
4) How many of us “have been wanting to get back there!”, and we put up with more money, more auditing, more abuses, we permitted to be exploited by Co$ with the hope Scientology would get us “back there”.
5) Jim Carrey is a good person!
Great clip. Yes, other people experience these questions and epiphanies too. He is refreshingly honest about his journey.
Jim Carey has had this thing called Peak Experience.
And he wants to live and do things in life and for other people because of having had that.
Wow. Brilliant article. Refreshing level of conceptual clarity (OT ability vs. psychic ability, phenomenon vs. ability). I loved your book as well. Thank you.
What an idea Jeff….
Indiana Jones and the Lost OT Levels….. now that would be a movie!! Tracking down Pat Broeker, followed by PIs, infiltrating Gold base, getting into the underground vaults, going hand to hand with DM after motorcycle chase, being put in hole, breaking free, beautiful girl and the right chemistry in tricked out van… make that plane, etc.
Great discussion.
OT Abilities/Phenomena vs. Peak Experiences
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_experience
The nature of peak experiences
Peak experiences are described by Maslow as especially joyous and exciting moments in life, involving sudden feelings of intense happiness and well-being, wonder and awe, and possibly also involving an awareness of transcendental unity or knowledge of higher truth (as though perceiving the world from an altered, and often vastly profound and awe-inspiring perspective). They usually come on suddenly and are often inspired by deep meditation, intense feelings of love, exposure to great art or music, or the overwhelming beauty of nature. Peak experiences can also be triggered pharmacologically. A 2006 double-blind clinical study by Griffiths and colleagues showed that psilocybin (the principal psychoactive component of various psychedelic mushroom species) induced intense peak experiences in a majority of study volunteers.[2] In a 14-month follow-up study, a majority of volunteers reported that the psilocybin-induced experience had been overwhelmingly positive and was among the five most personally meaningful spiritual experiences of their lives.[3]
Maslow describes how the peak experience tends to be uplifting and ego-transcending; it releases creative energies; it affirms the meaning and value of existence; it gives a sense of purpose to the individual; it gives a feeling of integration; it leaves a permanent mark on the individual, evidently changing them for the better. Peak experiences can be therapeutic in that they tend to increase the individual’s free will, self-determination, creativity, and empathy. The highest peaks include “feelings of limitless horizons opening up to the vision, the feeling of being simultaneously more powerful and also more helpless than one ever was before, the feeling of great ecstasy and wonder and awe, and the loss of placing in time and space” (1970, p. 164). When peak experiences are especially powerful, the sense of self dissolves into an awareness of a greater unity. Maslow’s theories appear to be supported by the recent reports from Griffiths and colleagues, in which community observers (such as close family members) reported a variety of positive personality changes in volunteers in the psilocybin arm of the study.
Maslow claimed that all individuals are capable of peak experiences. Virtually everyone, he suggested, has a number of peak experiences in the course of their life, but often such experiences are taken for granted. In so-called “non-peakers”, peak experiences are somehow resisted and suppressed. Maslow argued that peak experiences should be studied and cultivated, so that they can be introduced to those who have never had them or who resist them, providing them a route to achieve personal growth, integration, and fulfillment.
Sorry for quoting (instead of stating my own thoughts).
Well, at least it’s not Hubbard…
same source:
Sustained Peak Experience
Maslow defined[4] lengthy, willfully induced peak experiences (plateau experiences) as a characteristic of the self-actualized. He described it as a state of witnessing or cognitive blissfulness, the achievement of which requires a lifetime of long and hard effort, and also self-actualization.
Personally speaking:
I used to be afraid and in awe of OTs. I thought they could read my thoughts and my experiences. Even at a distance.
I used to think that OTs could effect me in just the ways I couldn’t have seem possible.
I used to think OTs can make things happen in the real world.
I used to think OTs (with their strong postulates) makes a difference in the World. – Where is the F&@king difference? – Japan, New Zealand, Haiti…. what have OTs prevented? Where they made a difference?
I see this community as intelligent and trying to figure it all out.
I have no faith in OT. I have no faith in their ability. I have a faith in Peak Experiences (those are not promised to anyone – and not sold – but can happen to anyone, free)
VaD
I believe I have experienced what you are calling “peak Experiences.” They might otherwise be called “enlightenment” by some.
I have had such an experience while under the influence of a drug. But where I have had them most consistently is through various Scientology processes. I actually payed for both, though the drugs were far cheaper, but I really would not recommend that one go the drug route, as the results are totally haphazard, and could as easily “fry your brains” as enlighten you.
But, yes, as far as the choices you make, it is important that you follow your own path. Maintain your own integrity, and keep your own council. But I implore you, please continue to look.
Also , I find it good advice to not compare yourself to others. You are unique, and what seems to satisfy or upset another has little or nothing to do with you.
Good luck on your quest.
WW
WW,
thank you for sharing your experiences.
SCN is – as I experienced it – a “drug route” looking for a cheap (not in terms of money though!!) short cut to enlightenment.
Hubbard himself went into the chemical division of that trapper game consciously but chose to sell the so gained ideas as the road to achieve psychic powers which he dubbed “OT abilities” and being spiritual – which they are not.
While not directed at me, I happily take your advices not to compare myself to others and always continue to look and explore and learn. Thank you!
Fidelio
I’ve read through all the comments. And I’m amazed that no one has brought up the details of the Hal Puthoff, Russ Targ, Ingo Swann, Pat Price et al research in the 1970s and 80s. I’ve studied their research (and its criticisms) in some depth, and the science is pretty hard to refute. (RJ, you did mention SRI … so you are one of the few who has apparently spent any time studying this research.)
Puthoff and Targ were, and are, accomplished hardcore physicists. They were able to demonstrate, repeat and document the “OT abilities” of Swann and Price under very controlled conditions. The tests were repeated by and with others — and improved upon — and were replicated successfully. At least enough to lead Carl Sagan (a pretty hardcore skeptic) to soften up his stance on the subject of the paranormal in his final book “Demon Haunted World” in 1995. My suggestion to all readers, if you haven’t already, is to pick up a copy of Puthoff’s and Targ’s book called “Mind Reach”. They give a blow by blow account of their research. Their various papers on the subject are also online.
Jeff, I think your article was brilliant (as always). And I think you make an excellent point about the existence of OT abilities vs. Scientology’s ability to bring them about. Personally, I hew pretty closely to RJ’s view in his original post above, i.e. the Scientology model is that they (OT abilities) are always there in all of us … it’s just a matter of bringing them out and/or helping us return to our natural, native state.
But to the point of your OP, as Asst. Editor and Editor of Advance! mag, what do you make of these quotes by Ingo Swann from Advance! magazine during the time after he had finished the original OT levels and the SHSBC, and was doing the research with SRI:
ADVANCE: How did these [psychic] abilities develop with relationship to your auditing on the OT Levels?
INGO SWANN: They are solely the result of auditing. Not particularly even the OT Levels. I had extremely good gains from the lower grades. And some had developed certainly by the time Power Processing took place. But steady good control over them, the control I have now — which is not perfect by the way — occurred after the completion of OT III Expanded, and is even better than ever now that I have finished OT VII. So they are solely the result of auditing. — ADVANCE! magazine #21, 1973
ADVANCE: How did your psychic abilities develop in relationship to your auditing on the Advanced Courses?
INGO: They are totally the result of auditing. The point of going Clear and attaining the OT Sections is to rid oneself of reactivity and to enable one to confront life better, more completely, more productively. And I view psychic abilities as only a part of that. — ADVANCE! magazine #53, 1978
—–
So we have Ingo Swann’s statements, and then we have documented, scientific evidence that Ingo Swann and Pat Price were able to perform “OT abilities” under controlled, scientific conditions. (We don’t know what Pat Price’s views were on whether Scientology helped bring these out, as he passed away in 1975 — but there is evidence that he was a pretty dedicated member of the CoS at the time and had completed OT V.)
I’d say that with the volume of “anecdotal evidence” in this thread (and elsewhere) along with the scientific evidence from SRI and SAIC, there’s a pretty good case that “OT abilities” can be enhanced by Scientology in at least some cases … with varying degrees of success in being able to control those “OT abilities” at will. Pat Price and Ingo Swann seemed to think so.
POSTSCRIPT: Ingo Swann went on to get services at David Mayo’s ACC in the early- and mid-80s, and in 1995 wrote about his experiences in Scientology at his website, where he effectively said: don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater (wrt Scientology).
I haven’t done a complete study of SRI and later experiments, but I believe there were also non-Scientologists who produced significant results. A good controlled experiment would be to test abilities before and after Scientology OT levels.
There’s no question that non-Scientologists also showed OT abilities. At the time, though, Pat Price and Ingo Swann were considered to have the most controlled, consistent results. It was tragic that Pat Price died in 1975 — he was the best by far apparently — but Ingo reportedly remained the front runner through the 80s (and also developed with Puthoff the first “Remote Viewing Manual” that others followed and later modified, which ultimately gave Ingo the title of “Father of Remote Viewing”.)
The SRI experiments were not meant to “prove that Scientology worked”. They were done for the military to see if “OT abilities” could be trained in others. The military’s ultimate (public) statement in the mid-90s was that there seemed to be evidence that the phenomena was real, but that the level of accuracy was not high enough (in the trained individuals) for military purposes. However, the research outside the military (and maybe even possibly inside) continues today.
For the most part, anyone involved in SRI/SAIC by the late 70s and afterward, distanced themselves from Scientology because Scientology’s PR had gotten so bad. And the leadership in the remote viewing community today all but denies that Ingo had any involvement in Scientology at all.
But if one is looking at the whole thing dispassionately and honestly — and knows Scientology well — there really is no way to deny that Ingo took Scientology principles and created “remote viewing” with them.
He even published a short paper on “Scientological Techniques” in Sep-1974 and presented it at a Psychotronic Research Conference in Prague of that year. It’s on the net. But the most telling book is “Mind Reach” and I really recommend anyone interested in the science of “OT abilities” to pick up a copy of it.
The main reason that Scientology (the subject) hasn’t gotten more recognition for all of this has far more to do with bad PR and stigma, than science, imho.
“A good controlled experiment would be to test abilities before and after Scientology OT levels.”
Yes, I do agree that that would be the right way to do it, along with a control group or two.
I agree Jeff,
Jeff, excellent points! The SRI experiment did not address Scientology at all, and did nothing to prove or disprove any of Scientology’s claims. It was, apparently, designed to test a few individuals’ “psychic abilities”. While there may be some dispute as to what the experiment “proved”, there is no doubt that people who claim it proved anything about Scientology don’t know scientific method.
The question I have is, since OT is the goal of Scientology, why hasn’t anyone tested for it? Why does Scientology insist that everyone “just believe”?
Ah, never mind, I already know.
William wrote: “there is no doubt that people who claim it proved anything about Scientology don’t know scientific method.”
Sort of like people who use the words “prove” and “disprove” in the same paragraph as “scientific method”?
“The question I have is, since OT is the goal of Scientology, why hasn’t anyone tested for it? … Ah, never mind, I already know.”
Apparently you don’t, William. These Scientologists — Hal Puthoff, Ingo Swann, Pat Price and others — were well on their way to using the scientific method to (a) show that “OT abilities” are real, and (b) that Scientology principles/techniques might be a method which brings them about. These activities were supported, at the time, by the CoS — evidenced by the fact that they were reporting on it broadly in one of the group’s most popular magazines, Advance. The CoS apparently even supported Ingo in his efforts to write and publish a paper called “Scientological Techniques” for an international research conference on psychic research, as that fact was also broadly published.
The fact that these Scientologists disassocated themselves with the official organization in the early 80s (for, frankly, completely understandable reasons once Miscavige took over) — but continued on their path to try to show that “OT abilities” (which they apparently believed were achievable, at least at one time, through Scientology) are real — shows more about the ineptitude of the Scientology organization (and its cultlke fanaticism with resultant horrible PR/stigma) than it does about the efficacy of the actual techniques (“the tech”).
Yes, more direct research should and could be done to build evidence (not “proof”) for the ability of Scientology to achieve — or not — its stated claims. You have no disagreement there. The Church of Scientology was apparently at one time fully supportive of efforts to do so (in the 1970s). With the ushering in of the Miscavige dictatorship, Swann and Puthoff were among the “declared SPs”, and so no doubt their interest in linking “Scientology techniques” openly and broadly to what they were achieving in “remote viewing” lost its appeal.
There are refutations of the scientific method used by the SRI, for example “The Psychology of the Psychic” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psychology_of_the_Psychic). It’s by a pair of psychologists, though. 🙂
Additionally, it appears that Uri Geller was another of the SRI’s test subjects, convincing Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff of his abilities. He has admitted to using stage-magician tricks at various points and no long claims to be anything more than an entertainer.
In fact, the Uri Geller wikipedia article has a quote from the DoD investigator that the SRI studies were, “sloppy and inadequate” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uri_Geller#Scientific_testing).
I haven’t dug into either side of the argument enough to be convinced either way (though I am about Geller 🙂 ) but there’s certainly reason to think that the SRI studies aren’t as cut-and-dry as some people think.
Marg
I do know for a fact that Ingo and Puthoff distanced themselves from the Church in the early ’80s after the coup.
Also during this time according to Paul Smith and Joseph McMoneagle in their respective books ‘Reading the Enemy’s Mind’ and ‘Star Gate Chronicles’ he began to personally train the Army’s Remote Viewers who were part of INSCOM at the time and also wrote a manual on Remote Viewing Protocols.
Following this Ingo with Ed Dames established a private company that many suspect was a CIA front known as Psi-Tech and the rest is history.
Anyway here is an interesting article written about an interview on Ted Bell’s C2C with Ed Dames:
http://sc-i-r-s-ology.com/veritas/cst/cst-cia.htm
SpecialFrog wrote: “He has admitted to using stage-magician tricks at various points and no long claims to be anything more than an entertainer.”
Dig into this a little further, SpecialFrog, and you’ll find that this was disinformation — and twisting of Geller’s word — spread by Randi and his crowd.
The initial SRI tests were done to convince the intelligence/defense community that these phenomena/abilities were real. There was no doubt that they were convinced of this. Their next goal was to see if these abilities could be trained into “intelligence officers”. They, apparently, weren’t so convinced that the results were sufficiently accurate to pursue it further. Puthoff, however, maintains that this is likely a cover and that the remaining classified documents (of which he is personally aware) provide the real picture. And that the results of some of the “trained psychic spies” were/are 80-90% accurate. And that the US gov’t maintains their classified status for the spies’ protection, and to not tip off “the bad guys” as to what the US gov is capable of.
The Wiki articles are very slanted, imo, because of the nature of the subject. Dig further in on both sides, and I think you’ll likely find a more balanced picture emerging.
RJ wrote: “Ingo with Ed Dames established a private company … suspect was a CIA front…”
I hadn’t noticed that Ingo was part of that, but I’m not surprised. I always thought that Psi-Tech was their attempt at making a living from it all, since Ingo never seemed to be very comfortable working for the IC. But who knows…
I would like to point out that neither Ingo Swann nor Harold Puthoff are Scientologists today, and that in their books/courses on Remote Viewing they make no use of Scientology.
Hi Margaret,
I’m just saying that it’s not as decisively proven as you seem to feel it is. Lack of reproduction by other testers is an issue.
Two other points.
No government anywhere has proven to be very good at keeping secrets so I’m skeptical of any claims of “CIA cover-ups”.
Additionally, the missile defense program is good evidence that the US military doesn’t need something to be at all viable in order to spend a great deal of money on it. 🙂
Marg,
I think that “making money” was only part of the plan.
CIA and other Intel Agencies are notorious for placing their operations under corporate cover In-Q-Tel is just another example.
Psi-Tech:
The fact is that it was established in 1989 while the Remote Viewing program was still classified as a Top Secret Secured Compartmented Information Special Access Program yet they were allowed to go public with this technology six years before CIA declassified portions of the program.
Yet none of the individuals involved were ever charged for the obvious breech in National Security.
Doesn’t this fact alone beg more questions than it answers?
MostlyLurker wrote: “in their books/courses on Remote Viewing they make no use of Scientology.”
The words have been changed to protect the innocent, ML. It all may have been re-worded to avoid copyright, harassment, stigma, whatever. But that RV is ultimately based on Scientology principles, there is no doubt. Check out that sci-i-r-s … link that RJ provided above to get some idea of what I’m talking about.
Both Ingo and Hal, to their credit, do mention in their website and the above-mentioned book (respectively) scientology. Whether they consider themselves “Scientologists”, today, is immaterial in my view. The cultish and brain-dead monopoly that the CoS has pretended to have on the subject has decimated any social/scientific recognition that the subject of scientology may have ever received. And the result is the nightmare that calls it’s the Church of Scientology, with anyone with half an independent thought running away as fast as they can.
But please don’t mistake the subject of Scientology with the organization and it’s inanities. They are simply not the same.
SpecialFrog wrote: “so I’m skeptical of any claims of ‘CIA cover-ups’.”
Not necesarily cover-ups SpecialFrog, just not laying all their cards on the table. The CIA is us. The “us”, according to Puthoff, doesn’t want certain agents and their families to be put at risk if the remaining documents were declassified.
There may be more to the whole thing, but that’s at least the truth according to Occam.
[Sorry for the duplicate post]
RJ wrote: “Doesn’t this fact alone beg more questions than it answers?”
It seems that Psi-Tech were allowed to make use of the technology, but simply had to keep the IC’s involvement classified until the CIA et al were ready to declassify it 6 yrs later. That seems routine to me, no?
>we have documented, scientific evidence that Ingo Swann and Pat Price were able to perform “OT abilities” under controlled, scientific conditions
What we don’t know is whether they gained these abilities as a result of Scientology. To be scientifically valid, they would have had to be tested before and after taking OT levels.
Also, were the abilities among those that LRH specifically promised?
And more importantly, did these abilities get them arrested by the CIA, banned from Las Vegas casinos, or unable to find spouses and employment? 🙂
ML,
Caliwog
“What we don’t know is whether they gained these abilities as a result of Scientology.”
That’s very true, at least in a strict scientific sense. We do have, however, at least one individual’s “subjective assessment” (Ingo’s) — which, while anecdotal, is still of interest imho. And Price’s reported close relationship with the CoS shouldn’t be ignored (he reportedly sent “regular reports” to the CoS/GO on his “freelancing psychic work” with the CIA).
I would also be curious to hear Ingo’s views now, 30+ years later. But unfortunately, he didn’t answer my email. 🙂
Yet!
Marg,
I actually managed to get a hold of Ingo and asked him for a copy of the paper he presented to the Psychotronic Conference in Prague entitled “Scientological Techniques: A Modern Paradigm for the Exploration of Consciousness and Psychic Integration” .
This paper is also mentioned in the book ‘Mind Reach’ as well but is practically like trying to find the Holy Grail.
Anyway after cornering Ingo on it.
He told me that he didn’t have a copy of his own which seemed strange to me since he authored it but that the Church would have one.
This didn’t seem likely to me but I made some discreet inquiries anyway and received the answer I expected which is that they never heard of it.
So Marg over to you on that.
As far as I’m concerned Ingo just tossed me a red herring.
Personally I think that access to this paper has been made difficult because it shows a clear and definite relationship between Scientology Techniques and Remote Viewing.
Something the Intelligence Community has been trying to obscure for some time now and personally I do not think it has anything to do with “PR”.
“Personally I think that access to this paper has been made difficult because it shows a clear and definite relationship between Scientology Techniques and Remote Viewing.” Or maybe because it doesn’t.
Jeff wrote: “Or maybe because it doesn’t.”
Oh Jeff, so cynical. 🙂
RJ wrote: “So Marg over to you on that.”
I found the Proceedings (including the full text of Ingo’s paper) at ntis.gov about a year and a half ago. Took some deep searching, but there it was. If you can’t find it, Jeff and RJ, give me your email(s) and I’ll email it to you. It’s a PDF and Ingo’s paper is on page 125 of the PDF.
And yes, it’s all about Scientology.
p.s. Go to ntis.gov, go to “advanced search”, search on “proceedings psychotronic” and put in the year 1974. If you want to plunk down $25.00 (it’s 10 MB), go for it. Otherwise, for non-profit educational purposes only … I will donate my copy to the cause …
Marg,
I’d love a copy of that doc!
Please send it to me at:
archangel88@hushmail.com
Ml
RJ
““Personally I think that access to this paper has been made difficult because it shows a clear and definite relationship between Scientology Techniques and Remote Viewing.” Or maybe because it doesn’t.”
Wow Jeff!
I thought I was one of the few Parapolital researchers aka conspiracy theorists aka crack pots on this board.
But sometimes I must cede to greater more conspiratorial minds.
That makes what some people call a “Krazy Kult” better at covering their tracks than the vaunted CIA.
LOL 🙂
RJ: “Please send it to me..”
Sent. Let me know if it didn’t go through. I got a message on a followup message that the mailbox is full.
Marg,
Thankyou!
Thankyou!
I received it but it wiped out all the free Mgs I had on my hushmail account which is probably why you got the mailbox is full message.
No sweat 🙂
Just time for some spring cleaning.
Ml
RJ
Marg,
I agree Mind Reach is a excellent book.
Also it’s a fun read as well.
Not the usual dry scientific dissertation even though it takes the subject seriously despite the fact that was written by two eminent physicists.
Did you know that even though Russ Targ was declared legally blind it stop him from riding his motorcyle?
“Did you know that even though Russ Targ was declared legally blind it [didn’t] stop him from riding his motorcyle?”
No, that’s hilarious. Where did you find that?
Did you know that Puthoff was able to fund some of the early research/work by using his psychics to “play the stock market”? (I don’t remember where I read that, but I’ll try to dig it up.)
Also, have you seen this recent (2008) presentation by Puthoff?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2261890462723894860#
Actually I knew about this factoid while researching the subject of RV which is included in my novel relating to the subject.
However it seems that Russ has also published a book on his exploits which should make an interesting read on its own:
http://www.espresearch.com/blindbiker/
Riding a bike without sight reminds me of the exteriorization story where LRH exteriorized a volunteer during an auditing demo. It’s on pages 10-13 at http://www.antology.info/files/transcript1.pdf
Also, a few years ago I asked Puthoff about why he left Scientology. He quoted a response he had sent Martin Gardner,
“…. let’s take the subject of my brief involvement in Scientology in the early 1970s to which Gardner devotes considerable space. He notes, correctly enough, that I am on record as being no longer involved, but asks “but how much of it does he still buy?” What I “still buy” is that GSR (galvanic skin response) can be used to dredge up forgotten traumatic memories from youth, with some cathartic effect. I learned this first by accident during routine polygraphing for security purposes when I was an NSA employee in the early 1960s. It was this experience that led me out of curiosity to later investigate Scientology procedures from an empirical, firsthand viewpoint. It became obvious to me, however, that, in addition to the expected defects that accompany any circumscribed belief structure, the ethics of the organization in those years was developing some fatal flaws as well, so I severed all connections.”
For RJ; I have a question for you towards the end of the current comments (in case you missed it).
Wonderful quote from Hal Puthoff, Nomnom. Thank you for posting. Do you know if it (or the Gardner interview) are in print anywhere?
I also found this link on Puthoff helpful:
http://www.answers.com/topic/harold-e-puthoff
Here is the bit on his involvement in Scientology:
Scientology
Puthoff joined the Church of Scientology in the late 1960s and reached the top OT VII level by 1971. Puthoff wrote up his “wins” for a Scientology publication, claiming to have achieved “remote viewing” abilities.[5] In 1974, Puthoff also wrote a piece for Scientology’s Celebrity magazine, stating that Scientology had given him “a feeling of absolute fearlessness”.[6] Puthoff severed all connection with Scientology in the late ’70’s.[7]
—–
5.Puthoff, Hal, Success Story, Scientology Advanced Org Los Angeles (AOLA) special publication, 1971.
6.Celebrity magazine, Minor Issue 9, February 1974
7.Harold Puthoff, “Harold Puthoff Responds on Zero-Point Energy,” Skeptical Inquirer, September/October 1998.
The AOLO magazine is not “Advance!”, so it appears to be a different publication. I don’t yet have copies of that Celebrity or Skeptical Inquirer magazine.
RJ wrote: “Doesn’t this fact alone beg more questions than it answers?”
It seems that Psi-Tech were allowed to make use of the technology, but simply had to keep the IC’s involvement classified until the CIA et al were ready to declassify it 6 yrs later. That seems routine to me.
“RJ wrote: “Doesn’t this fact alone beg more questions than it answers?”
It seems that Psi-Tech were allowed to make use of the technology, but simply had to keep the IC’s involvement classified until the CIA et al were ready to declassify it 6 yrs later. That seems routine to me.”
Sorry I don’t buy that argument Marg since it directly violates NSCID 11 regarding revealing “sources and methods”.
It’s still a crime for any officers or civilians connected or *had* any connection to any Intelligence agency or any Government Department to release what is still considered “classified” technology ie *methods* even if they had obscured the *source* which they didn’t when they opened up Psi-Tech.
Anyway the connection was so obvious that only someone in a coma would miss it.
Besides CIA ostensibly didn’t decide to declassify the program until after the AIR report.
Back to Jeff’s “ability” definition.
Seems to me that there are two areas OT powers can manifest.
1. Supernatural abilities beyond human ability.
2. Unusually strong. natural abilities WITHIN human ability.
Both are promised.
In fact, Scientology promises to be able to cure addictions to drugs. So, here is a challenge to a specific group OTs to prove they have superior HUMAN ability to handle a drug.
I’ve kept a mental log of leading OTs that smoke over the last several years. I’ve gotten this info from interviews I’ve watched or read or articles written by these individuals.
Independent Smoking OTs of Stature:
Marty Rathbun
Jim Logan
Ralph Hilton
(I’m sure there are others)
So here you go guys. My Uncle died of lung cancer. My wife’s mom and dad both died from the effects of smoking. The world NEEDS and anti-smoking tech that works. If Scientology can get people off of heroin, how about busting out an OT move and show us all that being OT gives you the HUMAN power to be at cause over what you put in your mouth.
Just show us you can put them down. For good. For real. With back up tests.
I know LRH said that “Not Smoking Causes Cancer” but I think you guys are OT enough to not get cancer AND quit smoking. In fact, you could both use your OT powers to show us that you can overcome the potential of getting cancer from NOT smoking.
But you won’t. I know. “You don’t do parlor tricks or follow the whims of a Wog.”
I know.
But if being OT gives one the ability to leave nicotine out of your body, that would be great to demonstrate to the world.
And that way, other people won’t lose family members because they will have the power to say no to nicotine too.
So, please, if you REALLY are OT. PLEASE show us you can overcome the tobacco leaf and then show the world how to follow suit.
Oh, and no “e-cigs” or gum or any form of nicotine.
YOU GUYS ARE OTs!
And it doesn’t have to be the group I listed. Anyone OT III and above would qualify. Get a group of smoking OTs, pick a day to quit and then QUIT FOR THREE YEARS WITH MONTLY TESTS.
Prove that an OT is at cause of ANY drug, including nicotine and the smoking world will RUN to Scientology. They really will.
Bodies are Bodies, they will die. I see no ability now or in the near future that anyone can stop that from happening unless they change the body types on this planet. People make their own choices and have the choice of what they want to do their bodies ,even at times knowing full well of the habits they are forming by their choices.
We cannot tell people how to live with their own bodies or how to take care of them as long as we all want to remain free from others trying to control us.
I am deeply sorry for your loss of your family members, but at least they lived the life they wanted to and had the freedom to make their own choices. I find it always best to remember the good choices that our love ones have made and the good memories and lessons they have left us. I am sure they left you a lot of good to hold on to and in the end what a person has done for others is more important than what they did to their body.
Best to you
Hi. Having audited for several years on new 7 I can say there are a couple somewhat consistant “ot” abilities I have. The first I attribute to the constant practice of trying to recieve telepathic comm in the process of running 7 – and that is, more often than not, knowing who is on the phone before or as it rings – however – it is mostly successful with people I know on the other end of the line. I can’t ever recall knowing the identity of a telemarketer, so it is not all inclusive. Also, it won’t work if I try to make it work.
My ability to understand things I read has greatly improved. Got that from 7 altho it previously increased on key to life.
I have an unproven theory I’d like some feed back on. I think OT abilities are hampered / obscured by living in a body.
One time when I was on lines at AOLA back when it was on Westlake, I was at the Olympian and there was an interesting gab fest. The key point, was this: this OT was relating how he would be exterior to his body and a sexy girl had walked by. When he touched the body – he got a sex flow zing, when he didn’t touch the body she had no more sex appeal than a rag doll. Hence my theory, the body damps out/ overwhelms a lot of the “OT” abilities by all of the amped up perceptions / sen it puts out.
I’d really be interested in knowing from those who have / can go exterior, has there been any change in their exterior perception abilities from when they were first in Scn and later, after a bunch of processing?
Mimsey
Funnily enough I tried this today – predicting who was on the other end of the phone every time it rang. Reading this post I then decided to reply.
I was mostly very successful, except for the call I had from someone who has never called me before.
I have never taken a course in Scientology.
I do not attribute this ability to anything other than using my common sense and intelligence to work out who might be calling me based on the work I’m doing at the moment, how long since I had last spoken to them, when we had agreed to speak, emails I received (which often precede a call) and other smaller factors.
However, if I had taken a course last week which claimed to improve my telepathic skills then I would probably be wondering if my telepathic skills had been improved.
I used to be heavily involved in a church (until I wised up to that one). I used to pray a lot, and when the prayers came true I attributed that to God. When they didn’t work out, I believed it was God’s will and he knew better.
This is part of the trap of any belief system. You get some gains, and then start to attribute any future goodness to the belief system. Any negative aspects can easily be dismissed as “your fault”.
Mimsey – if you had told us you can identify the caller every time, and can tell when it’s a telemarketer and guess the first name of the telemarketer, or even their gender, I would think it remarkable. However you have merely said you can most often guess the caller, except when it’s someone you don’t know. To me this is not OT, this is normal.
Hi Sid,
I conceed that one can figure out who is calling and make an educated guess. However, none of these experiences I have had involved figuring out who was on the other end of the line. Phone rings – awareness that it is Neil or DD or whoever and picking up the phone. Or all of a sudden thinking about Pam and the phone ringing and it is her.
Test that out and see how it stacks up to figuring out who is calling.
MB
Hi Mimsey
I would have to say I suspect that although you might not be consciously working out who might be on the phone, you would be doing it subconsciously. Lots of people have the strange experience of thinking about someone just before they call, but it would be strange if that NEVER happened, since we are always thinking about people, often friends, who often call.
But, presumably if you have telepathic abilities there would be other things you could do?
(If you fancy a go at this…..I’m thinking of an object. I’m serious by the way, I have thought of an object in my office and as I type this I am looking at and thinking about this object. Do you have a feeling about what it is? If you’re right it would be awesome!)
Jeff, I have spent many years in the Cult and reached the so called level of OT8 with this amnesia handled thing indicated as the end result by Hubbard or whoever wrote that nonsense.
This brings to mind the movie with Ray Milland “The Man with Xay Eyes” that can be looked at on youtube.
Is this total recall of your past lives something one really wants?
Everytime you would look at someone you would be distracted by what has been not what is.
Everytime you go somewhere you would have this recall of something that has been not what is there .
Would this not be a serious distraction from the business of living a life to the fullest.
I find this proposed ability would be more something more demonical that good.
That statement came out of me as I worded this just now and I am not that religious really.
What is it we would be tampering with here is my question ?
Do we really want to be messing with this area that may be part of a larger cosmology and natural order of things?
Life is very very precious and a gift at that so perhaps just treating life and lives around us whether it be human,animal or vegetable with reverance may be the best ability we can demonstrate.
Advanced Soul, I am with you 100% on this. For me, life is all about grace and appreciation. I am happiest when living for today and creating my future and don’t give a rat’s bum about my “whole track”. The happiest and most successful people I know are continually creating their future and causing things on a daily basis. The unhappiest person I know spends her days doing nothing but reading LRH and thinking about her case and evaluating life and her past. The ability to create a happy and successful life IS an ability and I believe there are millions of people doing this every day who have never even heard of Scn. The evidence is right in front of all of us.
We all have a total recall of our past. There is no problem in recalling it. The problem is recalling it correctly and accurately and making sure it is your recall. Other than that I don’t see it as a distraction in living. It is demoniacal to use past experiences that a person is not looking at correctly or looking at from another point of view over and over again with the same bad or incorrect result? Yes, I would agree with you on that.
Advanced Soul said “Life is very very precious and a gift at that so perhaps just treating life and lives around us whether it be human,animal or vegetable with reverance may be the best ability we can demonstrate.”
I would agree with this! But whether or not it is the BEST ability we will ever be able to demonstrate, it is one which we’ll have to master and demonstrate fully before we go much farther in our spiritual evolution. I suspect we’re not going to survive on an environmentally damaged planet rife with nuclear weapons, violence and widely disparate political and religious viewpoints without getting significantly better at it.
At its height, in the early 1970s, Scientology couldn’t make itself sane. Let’s face it, Scientology was bonkers, but with a lot of youthful energy, in the 1970s. The Commodore was bonkers, the Upper levels were mostly bonkers – except for some re-cycled Rosicrucianism – and Scientology Ethics was bonkers, etc.
OT? Hell, don’t make me laugh. The lower rung of SANE wasn’t even achieved.
About scientific research on paranormal abilities like telepathy, remote viewing, telekinesis:
Yes, there has been a moderate amount of reasonably serious scientific research on this stuff. There has been some claimed evidence that the phenomena are real. That evidence has never been anything close to smoking gun, in-your-face solid. It’s been small statistical correlations, in small studies with small numbers of subjects, and often with subjective criteria. (Remote viewing studies, for instance, typically rely on judgement calls about whether a subject’s drawing resembles the target scene.) But yes, there have been claims of evidence at levels that would, if we were talking about a small refinement of current theory, convince people, not that the effects were clearly real, but that more study might be worthwhile.
The topic has NOT been ignored or suppressed out of orthodoxy or prejudice. Some of these studies have been published in major, mainstream scientific journals, like Science and Nature. Decades ago now, though.
And that’s the thing: this level of scientific attention to paranormal phenomena, and the results so far, amount to a really strong indication that the phenomena are probably NOT real. The investigations were made, the results were published. The issues are profoundly important. Nothing in the studies conducted was particularly hard to do; there were and are no obstacles to replicating them on massive scales. People have continued to look into these things for years now.
And the outcome, after all this effort on a topic so important, has been nothing more than those few very weakly suggestive studies, decades ago.
This is not what an earthshaking discovery in the making looks like. This is exactly what a speculation that hasn’t panned out looks like. And that’s the current state of science on paranormal phenomena.
Could there be strange, elusive phenomena that happen unpredictably? Sure; science can never say much about that sort of thing. But anything worth calling an ‘ability’, as Jeff defines it, remains extremely doubtful.
James Anglin originally wrote: “The point is that it couldn’t happen without the whole world hearing about it. We haven’t heard. So it hasn’t happened.”
James later wrote: “Yes, there has been a moderate amount of reasonably serious scientific research on this stuff.”
I’m glad you’re willing to modify your views on this James. Tell me, as a physicist, if you had a personal in-your-face, smoking-gun “paranormal experience” — say for example, shared with another person you trust — do YOU believe that there would be no stigma in running around announcing it to the world or trying to scientifically test it on individuals who have some control over these experiences?
The stigma is real. The lack of funding DUE TO STIGMA, is very real. There are very few, if any, purely “science for the sake of knowledge” grants available to fund this type of research. What would be the payoff? There’s no pill, “medical advancement” or “marketable product” at the end result of it. And what large, reputable research foundations are going to be willing to put their names behind “paranormal research”?
The evidence IS there. Convincing evidence. You don’t get guys like the late Carl Sagan changing/softening his stance when it’s not.
In my view, we’re in the middle of the modern-day equivalent of the “earth is the center of the universe” conundrum. Believing in “spirits” simply goes against the orthodoxy. Dendrites are king.
In the words of the late Dr. Ian Stevenson: “They said that the 90s were the decade of the brain. I hope this new decade can be the decade of the MIND.”
Good news? It’s better/easier today than it was 35 years ago. But the military/gov’t is no longer (apparently) funding it. At least not openly. And it’s still only done at universities at the chagrin of “real scientists” who are embarassed to have their “higher learning colleagues entertain this kind of nonsense”.
And p.s., it was not only done decades ago. The research continued through the 80s, 90s and continues today. But with the current CoS regime (and horrible stigma in an already stigmatized field), it continues very much sans Scientology.
I’ve immensely enjoyed reading the comments, but I felt two very important concepts in this discussion have been missing so far: causal relations and correlation. So I’ll just introduce them in my post.
What seems likely based on the responses so far, is that the proportion of Scientologists who have had paranormal experiences is much higher than the general population. This is called a correlation.
However, this does NOT necessarily mean a causal relation, in the sense that people have psychic experiences due to being involved in Scientology. It could also be that people who are prone to such experiences simply feel drawn towards Scientology.
Now, the question is: is it worthwhile to conduct scientific research to test whether such a causal relationshop exists? This has actually been done in the early fifties and no correlation was found between Dianetics auditing and increased intelligence or other abilities: http://home.snafu.de/tilman/krasel/dianetics_test2.html.
Apparently, since that time the scientific community hasn’t bothered investigating Scientologies’ claim. Personally, I find this a shame in one singular area: I feel that scientific studies on exteriorization would increase our understanding of how our brain pulls off this neat little trick called out-of-body experiences.
As far as telekinesis and other phenomena, well, I’m sorry guys but in many ways this thread feels like a prolonged Monty Python scetch. Loads of very intelligent people are having a very serious discussion about whether talking disemboded aliens through their mass-murder related traumas can get you superhuman powers. Really, a simple but resounding ‘duh!’ would suffice.
I’m afraid the scientific evidence is really not there. That is, there is ‘X% confidence level’ statistical stuff, which looks a lot like the kind of evidence that is accepted as significant in medicine, psychology, and social science. But in fact that sort of evidence is NOT really convincing. That’s why medical studies keep flip-flopping every few years.
It’s not incompetence; it’s just the limitation of that kind of evidence. Two dozen experiments are run — or maybe it’s only two experiments, but they each look at a dozen different things — and of course one or two of them find results that would only occur 5% of the time under pure chance. That’s 1 time in 20, and more than 20 tries mean you probably get a hit. If you only look at the hits, you get excited and publish. Scientific evidence, 95% confidence, hooray! But if anyone else follows up and tries to replicate, looking to pin the effect down more firmly, they find it goes away. And so it goes, all the time.
Sometimes medical studies do find real effects, of course. But a handful of studies that haven’t gone further is really probably not a sign that something’s there and needs to be dug for. It’s much more likely a sign that those first indications were flawed or flukey. It happens all the time; it’s the norm, not a special exception invented just to discredit the paranormal.
The main reason that medicine and psychology count as sciences is that their assumptions are based on chemistry and physics, which are hard natural sciences that don’t do confidence levels. They do a thousand data points with tiny error bars and the line runs straight through all of them, quantitative agreement with the model’s predictions to six decimal places, and a cell phone in your pocket that works. If you’re not leaning on that kind of hard science, you don’t get the same benefit of the doubt that medicine gets, when it brings in a statistical study.
Ananon wrote: “This has actually been done in the early fifties and no correlation was found between Dianetics auditing and increased intelligence or other abilities”
Was a very poor test, imho, as it only allowed 36 hrs (maximum) of auditing to be given, and the selection of tests was ill-conceived (mathematical ability?) Nevertheless, it’s an experiment and paper that should not be ignored.
There were additional tests conducted by researchers at the early Dianetics Research Foundation(with a larger sample base) in 1950/1951, which showed a correlation between dianetics auditing and increased IQ. The results were published in a paper of that time, and a summary was provided in the earlier editions of “Science of Survival” (since removed by Miscavige after the author’s death).
In my view, with reported advancements in auditing techniques over the years, I think a larger scale test is warranted.
But that’s just me. 🙂
“As far as telekinesis and other phenomena, well, I’m sorry guys but in many ways this thread feels like a prolonged Monty Python scetch.”
Goes to the point about stigma. Thank you for your views. The existing body of experimental evidence appears to contradict them.
“It could also be that people who are prone to such experiences simply feel drawn towards Scientology.” (sorry about the re-ordering of your text Anana — hope you don’t mind)
That is almost certainly true. Ultimately though, that wouldn’t negate the empirical evidence which seems to support the fact that we’re not just dealing with “subjective experiences” but that they are real, and even apparently repeatable and measureable phenomena in some cases. The combination of empirical evidence (i.e. past life reseach and remote viewing), also seems to support the idea that “mind” is not just sourced or emergent from “brain”.
As to the degree, or “superiority”, of Scientology auditing or the OT levels’ ability to bring those experiences/capabilities about … definitely not conclusive. But perhaps — based on the evidence provided here — suggestive. At least in some cases.
Margaret, not sure when that study was removed from Science of Survival, but I recall it was removed prior to Miscavige. Maybe someone has earlier editions, I have nothing here.
James wrote: “I’m afraid the scientific evidence is really not there.”
Ok, you’re welcome to your views. I’m a scientist as well, and we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
As one erudite statistician (Jessica Utts) from UC Davis put so well in 1995, after doing a meta-analysis of the available paranormal research at the time, at the request of a distinguished gov’t-sponsored panel investigating it:
The magnitude of psychic functioning exhibited appears to be in the range between what social scientists call a small and medium effect. That means that it is reliable enough to be replicated in properly conducted experiments, with sufficient trials to achieve the long-run statistical results needed for replicability.
…
It is recommended that future experiments focus on understanding how this phenomenon works, and on how to make it as useful as possible. There is little benefit to continuing experiments designed to offer proof, since there is little more to be offered to anyone who does not accept the current collection of data.”
Source: http://www.stat.ucdavis.edu/~utts/air2.html
Of course, those conclusions didn’t include the still-classified body of research that Hal Puthoff discusses (mentioned above), which apparently dwarf the results obtained in the research that Utts is commenting on here.
>the selection of tests was ill-conceived (mathematical ability?)
This was one of the abilities Hubbard promised for Clears in DMSMH. “Optimum computational ability” were his exact words.
ML, CW
Jeff,
I think the Introduction of the tests was deleted from the Bridge Publications editions of SOS as they are in my Pubs Org edition.
On Science of Survival, my 1982 printing still has the study … my 1991 version does not. I don’t have any versions in between.
Update on SoS … I found a 1989 version that had the study removed.
Hi Margaret. So. I read the summary of your article by Jessica Utts. I noticed that it has never been published in a peer reviewed paper. Never a good sign. I also noticed that her abstract contains some highly speculative sentences (which you conveniently did not quote).
So I went to Wikipedia and found Utts is on the board of the International Remote Viewing Association and that this paper was written as part of a review panel of Stargate. Her colleague on the panel, Ray Hyman, wrote another paper with a different viewpoint. Funding of Stargate was canceled as a result of both reports.
Obviously you have spent some time researching the subject, but you seem to be pretty selective in presenting arguments that coincide with your personal opinion.
Also, I want to stretch that I am in fact fairly agnostic towards the existence of a ‘soul’. But I am certainly less forgiving towards the concept that you can gain psychic abilities by talking to dead aliens. It’s absurd to even take that remotely serious. Sorry :-).
@Ananon
“I feel that scientific studies on exteriorization would increase our understanding of how our brain pulls off this neat little trick called out-of-body experiences.”
The phenomen exists, with or without scientific research, with or without Scientology. Ask LSD -cases, sometimes , not in every case, LSD causes “Forced Exteriorisation(with or without full perception)”. I met at least one in the early 80ies, when I was not yet in SCN. The evil thing about this is that the person:
a) cant figure out whats ongoing and become extremly scary. (because she
is not aware of the fact that she is a spirit)
b) the worst case happens is that they cannot interiorize again and stay in that condition until end of life .
c) what causes that most of these cases en up in a psychiatry institution doing strange things all the day.
LSD Exteriorization is absolute out of controll for this individual.
A friend of mine has been walking naked on the street until he was catched by police. Fortunately he returned and never took LSD again.
ML SW
@Sidewinder. The phenomenon is certainly real. But you know what the thing is? It does not require a soul or spirit to be explained…
Out-of-body experiences, or near-death experiences, or extoriazation, or whatever you wish to call it, can also be triggered by applying the right electric currents to electrodes on your skull. So you can actually conduct MRI studies about what happens in the brain when people are having these sensations. Such research was first published in Nature a few years back: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/10/08/MNGNELI3IO1.DTL.
It goes to show that the phenomenon is produced by our most magnifisant organ, the brain. And I hope you can see the beauty in that. There’s really no need to feel disappointed that it does not require a spirit or soul to understand.
And I really do believe that scientists in this field would benefit from co-operation by Scientologists, even though it will most likely not confirm your beliefs.
Hello Sidewinder,
There’s certainly reasonable grounds for suggesting that LSD-induced “exteriorisation” is actually the drug affecting perception. Additionally, someone being in a catatonic state does not prove that their spirit has gone elsewhere.
Perception and memory are pretty tricky things.
Regards
Ananon wrote: “I noticed that [the Jessica Utts paper] has never been published in a peer reviewed paper. Never a good sign.”
Oh, was your “dianetics research” paper published in a peer-reviewed journal?
“…but you seem to be pretty selective in presenting arguments…”
Not at all. For example, I didn’t take issue with the non-peer reviewed status of your “dianetics research” paper or the fact that it was being written by a PhD candidate for an education degree. I zero’ed right in on the weaknesses of the study itself. See, that’s called “sticking to the science” and not worrying about stigma and clout.
“Funding of Stargate was canceled as a result of both reports.”
Yes, which I clearly explained in my comments above. Did you notice that the studies and documents that Utts and Hyman did a meta-analysis on, according to one of the lead scientists (Hal Puthoff) involved, didn’t include the most successful studies and research because they have not yet been declassified (for national security reasons)?
“I want to stretch that I am in fact fairly agnostic towards the existence of a ‘soul’. But I am certainly less forgiving towards the concept that you can gain psychic abilities by talking to dead aliens.”
Wow, “dead aliens”. Sounds horribly unforgiving. If we called them “energies” or “souls”, would that elicit your forgiveness more readily?
Ananon, you’re clearly more worried about stigma or “the words used” or “how it appears to others”. These things have nothing to do with science. Look at the empirical evidence — don’t worry about popularity.
Ananon wrote: “So you can actually conduct MRI studies about what happens in the brain when people are having these sensations.”
Then wrote: “It goes to show that the phenomenon is produced by our most magnifisant organ, the brain.”
Huh? Wasn’t it you who talked about being careful not to confuse correlation with causality?
How does “what happens in the brain” instantly translate to “produced by the brain”?
Methinks you are jumping to a causal relationship, Ananon, when the evidence only suggests a correlational one.
Hi Margaret, I guess I’ll pass on responding to most of your last two posts. At the moment it feels more like a debate rather than a constructive discussion, which is a shame. I’m sorry for my contribution in that.
What I will say is this: I think it’s a shame that most Scientologists seem to have so much trouble to simply say ‘Yeah, you know what, in the higher levels of my religion, we believe you can get psychic abilities by exorcising dead aliens spirits. I know this probably sounds silly to anyone not initiated, but I feel I’ve benefited greatly from this’.
Fair enough, Ananon.
And on a related note, since we’re on the subject, to put another common claim to rest that the OT levels were made confidential because of PR reasons … the book “History of Man” (1952) and related lectures from the early 1950s (commonly referred to as “OT books and lectures”), talk freely about entities in the mind and “auditing them out”. That book and the related lectures have been broadly, publicly available since the time of their publishing in the 1950s.
>What would be the payoff? There’s no pill, “medical advancement” or “marketable product” at the end result of it.
Yes, but you can start a *very* profitable religion.
ML,
Caliwog
Hi Jeff,
Once again: great article. You really started a ball rolling on this one.
The “OT Abilities” promise was bogus, but it was necessary for the cult.
When you look at how Hubbard assembled his cult, the recipe is well worn historically, very standard, and actually fairly simple:
1. A fantastic future goal that will solve everything. (OT, Heaven, Workers’ Paradise, the transcendent future in your earlier blog)
2. An implacable enemy (totally evil) who must be destroyed in a desperate struggle. (The Psychs, Satan, The Capitalists).
3. Some prolonged passage or struggle that will consume one’s life. (The Bridge, The Rapture, The successive 5 Year Plans)
4. A superhuman and utterly virtuous leader who cannot be questioned or challenged. (The Founder/Commodore/Mettayana, Christ/Trinity, Marx/Lenin)
If you mix those 4 factors together, you have yourself a pretty strong cult.
Basically, Hubbard would feed ‘em fear from one direction, and feed ‘em hope from the other. That was the basic push-pull pressure that held the cult together, with “OT” and “The Bridge” forming up the other sides of the square that kept followers in and the cash coming.
And, you can adapt this basic cult recipe to anything: Sports, Military, Yoga, you name it.
Pretty simple, really. Kind of surprising it worked as well as it did.
FL
Fiatlux wrote: “The ‘OT Abilities’ promise was bogus”
It certainly sounds like it was in your case. I hope you demanded your money back, if you felt it was deserved. I know I did recently (at least for the money I hadn’t used yet) and I got it back. Took a freakin year, but they did eventually pay (the majority of) it back.
With all that said, however, the existing empirical (and related anecdotal) evidence so far does seem to contradict your experience, at least in all cases. Ingo Swann sounded pretty happy with his results (at the time at least), and the scientific evidence seems to support his claims of “OT abilities” as a result of Scientology auditing.
One thing I should mention, before I forget. Ingo’s “OT abilities” were also tested by researchers in the parapsychological community in NY, including at the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR), with successful results in 1971, prior to his being a test subject at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in California in subsequent years. In fact, it was the success that he was having in NY which ultimately led Hal Puthoff and Ingo to work together — it doesn’t appear to be related to their mutual involvement in Scientology. Ingo gives his account of the whole thing here:
http://biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/2.html
I don’t think you can take the experience of one individual, Ingo Swann, and say that proves that Scientology produces the “OT Ability” of remote viewing. That’s a real stretch. Even if the facts of Ingo’s ability are true, how do we know his particular ability wasn’t inborn? How do we know that certain individuals have this ability from birth? How do we explain non-Scientologists who can also do this? As I said before, take a test group, measure their remote viewing abilities, give them their OT Levels, re-test them.
If Ingo is representative of the gains from Scientology’s OT Levels, then where are more Ingos?
Dear Margaret,
Thanks for your post.
I haven’t decided yet on getting money back.
My experience in Scientology was, overall, very good. I’m glad I got into it, though I wished I had gotten out much, much sooner than I did.
That dream of OT was just so . . . beautiful and wonderful. I just didn’t want to give up on it until I had exhausted every resource I had trying to make it work.
Like Jeff and most of the other writers here, my perception of what LRH promised was that OT was obtainable in a systematic and reliable way for anyone, this LT, not some vague, far off, future dream. Hubbard use that dream to falsely keep followers on the hook and finance his movement and his personal lifestyle. Very cynical of him to do that.
But, who knows? Maybe the dream is still possible somehow.
ML,
FL
Jeff,
On some points I am somewhat in agreement with you though on others not.
For example according to the CC Interviews that Marg was kind enough to post Ingo does directly attribute his psychic ability to Scientology.
Whether he is lying or telling the truth in this regard is purely speculative.
Also I can name at least one other Scientologist who was just as capable as Ingo by the name of Pat Price and also another OT VII almost as capable Hal Puthoff plus at least a dozen more unnamed participants who were Scientologists according to the FAS’ Intel Programs Summary:
http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/stargate.htm
That said I do agree that psychic ability is a natural phenomenon and that *if* (I’m obviously saying this to keep the skeptics happy 🙂 ) it exists can only be enhanced by Scientology techniques not created.
Jeff wrote: “I don’t think you can take the experience of one individual, Ingo Swann, and say that proves that Scientology produces the ‘OT Ability’ of remote viewing”.
First, evidence is not proof. Even the scientific method can never “prove” anything. It can build a pretty strong case, but it will never fully provide “proof” of anything.
There is documented, scientific evidence that both Ingo Swann and Pat Price apparently had “superior OT abilities” compared with others who hadn’t done any Scientology. Tests were repeated, measurements were made, and the evidence seems to have remained consistent. It was convincing enough for the CIA to handpick Pat Price out among the many study participants to help them with “some things”. Was it absolutely, conclusive evidence? No. Could the testing procedures be improved and replicated by others? Perhaps. And that’s in fact exactly what SRI (and others) set about doing.
Do we have scientific evidence that Ingo Swann and Pat Price didn’t have these abilities before Scientology? Unfortunately, we don’t. So we don’t know.
But we do have Ingo Swann’s statement(s) that he believed that it was Scientology auditing that brought out these abilities in him. We don’t, unfortunately, have a similar statement from Pat Price. All we have is his apparently strong support of Scientology. This is all anecdotal evidence, so at best we can believe or dismiss it as we wish.
Do we have proof that auditing and/or the OT levels create “OT abilities”. No, but there is some anecdotal evidence. And coupled with the experimental evidence, personally, I believe it is suggestive, perhaps promising.
“If Ingo is representative of the gains from Scientology’s OT Levels, then where are more Ingos?”
Re-read the comments from various folks above. I counted at least as many folks who claimed to have similar gains as “Ingo”, as I did who didn’t have the gains. Considering how f**ed up the CoS has been all these years, it’s actually surprising to me that so many did have the self-reported gains that they claim.
Why aren’t the OT Scientologists out there leading the charge on “paranormal research”? In fact they were, until the new regime took over.
A question for RJ:
In the late 80’s/early 90’s. OSA had an operative by the name of Roger Stodola involved on a project having to do with SRI. It was very hush-hush. Any idea what that was about?
Suppose that for the sake of argument we accept Dr. Utts’ contention, that statistical studies up to 1995 had collectively presented psychic phenomena as a ‘small to medium’ effect by the normal standards of social science. My point has been that if we instead judge that same evidence by the standards of physics, it amounts to not a ‘small to medium’ effect, but to ‘there’s nothing here’.
Social science uses much, much weaker standards of evidence than natural science. That’s not because social sciences are dumb, but because social science is very difficult, and evidence that would satisfy natural scientists is impossible to obtain in social science. But that’s why natural science brings you jet planes and laser beams and stuff, and social science doesn’t deliver that kind of concrete result much. You can take natural science to the bank, but a social scientist’s ‘medium effect’ is not something you’d want to invest in.
If OT powers are an elusive phenomenon that can’t be pinned down in a lab, then maybe social science standards are the best that can be applied. And maybe they’re just fraud or chance or wishful thinking. This is the sort of foggy debate that’s not really worth pursuing here.
But if OT powers were an ability in the sense Jeff wrote about, then they could be proven to the standards of physics. If they really existed as consistent and useful abilities, by now they would have been tested to this level, and passed the test. That would have been historic news that we would all have heard of by now.
We haven’t heard that, so it hasn’t happened. Paranormal phenomena may or may not exist, but OT abilities in the strict sense Jeff has introduced are not an open question. The fact that we have to ask the question is itself the answer: No.
nomnom, are you sure it was SRI and not EST?
margaret, I’m 99% sure it was SRI as it surprised me when I heard about it.
I know Stodola was involved with the EST ops and the CAN ops. I was a public in the South Bay at the time and was asked to work on some projects which I turned down.
James wrote: “If OT powers are an elusive phenomenon that can’t be pinned down in a lab, then maybe social science standards are the best that can be applied. … But if OT powers were an ability in the sense Jeff wrote about, then they could be proven to the standards of physics.”
Fair enough. I think because of the nature of the phenomena, we’ll always be working in somewhat elusive territory. With that said, physicists Hal Puthoff and Russel Targ were able to bring pretty significant scientific rigor to the testing. Had more Pat Prices and Ingo Swanns stepped forward — and had the CoS been and/or remained cooperative — it’s hard to say how things might have turned out. But even without it, Puthoff at least is fairly convinced that the still-classified SRI/SAIC research paints an entirely different picture — which would have significantly altered Utts’ and Hyman’s conclusions.
I suppose only time will tell.
Hogwash.
To those who claim they gained psychic abilities via scientology or any other method, put up or shut up.
Lunamoth, question: You keep saying you are not a Scientologist, but you appear to be a follower of Hubbard and his Scientology philosophy. Why do you not consider yourself a Scientologist?
ML, CW
Caliwog
I’ve been posting on this blog for a year and half, and you’ve never read any of my posts? I was a scientologist for 32 years.
I’ve studied Hubbard’s philosophy, had auditing, audited others. I’ve lived in the culture of scientology. I left. I’m not a follower of anybody’s, and I’m not a scientologist.
Now, you’re turn. How did you come to be interested in scientology, and what is the extent of your personal experience with it? How did you come to an anti-scientologist?
>you’ve never read any of my posts?
Not enough of them, apparently. 🙂 Thanks for answering my questions.
It sounds like you believe in the teachings of Hubbard, but you say you are not a Scientologist. Is that because of the direction the Church has taken? Or because you disagree with some of Scientology? Why do you not identify yourself as an Independent or a Martyologist?
I’m not going anywhere with this, just genuinely curious.
>Now, you’re turn.
I started when I took a job with an admin tech company. I didn’t realize how much of it was based on Scientology, so I had to do a little research and decide if I was supporting something that was doing evil.I came to the decision that working for this particular company would not be doing harm (though I didn’t think about all the $$ employees donated to Scientology, nor our WISE fees, etc.). I learned the tech inside out, and it became pretty obvious that Hubbard was a bit of a fraud, laying claim to “discoveries” that really weren’t his discoveries at all.
Actually, there are things about the Admin Tech that I like, and reasons that it works (not because the tech itself is particularly insightful, but because everyone is singing off the same sheet of music).
But, anyway, that’s when I knew that Hubbard was full of hot air. And as I got to become friends with Scientologists – all of whom were great people – I realized what Scientology did to people, how disconnected they were from the real world, how they are encouraged to follow Hubbard’s guidance rather than think for themselves. Great people, very smart, but also shockingly ignorant about many things.
I stayed on the sidelines of the protest movement, commenting here and there. It wasn’t until Marty Rathbun started selectively censoring comments that I got really active. I’ve never had a problem with the Free Zone, but Marty’s efforts to whitewash Hubbard, and then censor those who would present an alternative viewpoint to his adherents, really bothered me. That’s how Caliwog’s Blog started.
So I guess it was Hubbard that made me an “anti-Scientologist,” and Rathbun that made me such a vocal one!
I wrote a bit more about why I do what I do on this blog entry:
http://caliwog.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/a-note-to-an-anon-and-why-i-do-this/
ML, Caliwog
Caliwog,
Nobody likes being censored, so I understand your anti-Marty position. You should be aware however that one of the purposes of Marty’s blog is to provide a safe landing place for those with one foot already out the door of the Church. A free-for-all discussion of Hubbard or the tech is antithetical to that purpose, and Marty moderates accordingly.
Once people have both feet out, they can benefit more from exercising their critical thinking processes which may have gotten a little rusty in the cult, and Jeff’s blog is a great place for that. I read them both (Marty and Jeff’s) but having been out more than a year, I find I’m more likely to get involved in the discussions here on Jeff’s. Although Jeff also has censored posts, including mine, when they get too ad-homonym.
Hi Aeolus,
That’s valid to a point, but you can avoid being critical of Hubbard without engaging in hagiography or blaming all problems within the CoS on Misciavige alone.
That goes beyond being tactful to a sensitive audience and arguably discourages the development of critical thought.
Regards
@aeolus:
>A free-for-all discussion of Hubbard or the tech is antithetical to that purpose, and Marty moderates accordingly.
And I’d understand if that were the case, but the fact is that Marty censors anything that makes him look bad or shows him to be factually wrong. And I don’t mean factually wrong about Hubbard – I mean facts, like Heber Jentschz seeing his family 3 days after Marty’s “Where’s Heber?” post or pointing out the pre-’86 HCO PLs that DM is following. And of course any justified criticism.
It took me a while to figure this out, but Marty’s blog is basically a sales tool for his auditing services. He moderates anything that’s bad for business.
Again, he’s welcome to do that. Jeff uses this blog to promote his book. But Marty’s telling his followers that he’s starting a revolution, trying to save the universe. In reality, he’s drumming up business.
Just like Hubbard.
OT VIIs and OT VIIIs are his next target. They have the deepest pockets.
ML,
Caliwog
Jeff, 411 comments (now 412), is this a record?
ML, CW
Wait, what? Is it Thursday 2pm already?
LOL. Good one! Jeff is winning The Birthday Game amongst Scientology blogs! 🙂
In order for OT powers to be proven (believed) they must both be repeatable and measurable.
If $cientology is to be believed, then anybody who has reached OTVIII has these powers, all they need to do is demonstrate them in a well-controlled test. Why is this so hard to understand?
It only takes ONE, just ONE OT to demonstrate these ‘powers’, wouldn’t you think that the cult would be all over the news if that had happened?
I have a one-dollar bill here, can one of you OT’s tell me what the serial number is? Just one?
Just one? How about two? Seems you missed the research that was done in the 70s, 80s, 90s and continues today William, beginning with Scientology OTs Ingo Swann and Pat Price. Don’t think they could have read the numbers on your dollar bill (though I could be wrong) … but one of them “went to” and described in detail the rings of Jupiter years before the NASA probes did.
Hey I’ll give you an amazing phenomenon: in both Jeff’s post and now Marty’s similar one, I arrived at it and read it BEFORE A SINGLE REPLY HAD BEEN POSTED. And yet in both cases I DECLINED TO POST A RESPONSE because I had nothing to add. Until now because, ironically, I’m certain I have a new ability; it is very stable. I’m certain I can repeat this when I encounter it again.
Can I be an honorary OT?
I think the COS missed a bet. If they simply had said “Give us a few years and lots of money and you may end up with a pretty good shot at knowing who was on the phone before you answered it” the bodies in the shop would have been through the roof. Caller ID would have killed it though. They always said Scientology was a 50’s philosophy stuck in a modern world.
Whether this thread is a record is one thing, but someone needs to go back and count up how many actually relate a new ability. Sadly I don’t have the time to do it myself, but count a +1 here on new abilities boss…just from reading threads ABOUT Scientology. Now that’s what I call a powerful technology.
I live very close to where the new Church of Scientology Headquarters is going to be located in Hockley Valley, ON., Canada. Should I be worried? There’s a local radio guy doing an interview with Yvette Shank (Canadian Church of Scientology President) this Saturday about this topic and then he’s holding a phone-in session after the interview. I would love it if some of you with experience in the Church could call in and share your thoughts. You can listen online between 1-5 pm here http://www.drewmarshall.ca/ . Thanks.
You personally should be safe so long as you and your family don’t join.
Though if they apply to close / re-direct the Bruce Trail (which is likely) and put up spiked fences you may want to steer clear of the property.
Though you have reason to be concerned about what might go on there. Google “Daniel Montalvo lawsuit” if you want a sense of what happens in their US compounds.
Or read Jeff’s book (http://counterfeitdreams.blogspot.com) 🙂
Thanks, I’ll have a look at the article.
Marty’s blog is the first thing I read in the morning. I was lucky to be the first response to his post where I challenge Marty Rathbun to Randi’s Million Dollar prize:
http://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2011/03/18/ot-abilities/
I thought I’d let the Skeptics chime in:
http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,34337.0.html
So Jeff (or anybody else) if you are so sure that Marty Rathbun doesn’t have OT abilities, go ahead promise a stunt to do if Marty proves he has OT powers.
Personally, I promise to read out loud the entire Dianetics book on Time Square in my Speedos.
that’s not a fair bargain at all, and you know it Anon Orange. You’d read Dianetics on Times Square in your Speedos for fun, for free, anyways! Not even a fair “deal.”
Naw, if Marty and or anyone wins the Randi challenge money for demonstrating any supernatural powers, then YOU should promise to DO the whole Bridge to Total Freedom at existing church prices! THAT would be a burden and big challenge for ANYONE!
Careful you don’t get sued by the Naked Cowboy. 🙂
All of the above is interesting reading. Some very good points have been made. Hubbard did talk of OT abilities and this likely does keep some interested in the topic. It did me.
There is a published Bridge- A Classification Gradation and Awareness Chart. On it are listed the abilities gained for each level completed. None of them say “Ability Gained, The ability to make a table raise up off the floor to amaze your friends”. The grade Chart makes well and happy human beings, when properly done. Improperly done makes something less no doubt.
The lure of other abilities is attractive but not the promised result. The grade chart is the promised result.
I wish to make a clear distinction between the CoS and the methods developed by LRH. The current Church is not compliant with Hubbards developed materials.
There are simply far to many people that have personally experienced gains and life improvement to ignore those results. I know of none that can levitate, but this was not the objective. Personal and occasional experiences of the type discussed seem to have individually occurred here and there, including myself. None I am aware of are demonstrable on demand as this current discussion challenges as the requirement. The occasional errant occurrence may not satisfy some who want it always and on demand but for me it speaks of possibilities.
If you beleive you are simply meat, then why in the world are you wasting your time reading this blog?
If you beleive that you are a living being separate from the body, then what are your abilities? And who are you, really?
If you are a living being separate from the body, what are you doing, where are you going, where have you been? Why can’t you remember your past? Are there things there negatively impacting your life and existence? Surely you have noticed that people live in patterns. What is the pattern of your existance? Some peoples patterns are obviously very bad. Why? What determines those patterns? If you beleive you are a living being and not a body then just who the hell are you and why can’t you remember?
If you believe not, then a quest for yourself is not your desire. If, on the other hand, you are interested these things and interested in finding out, the methods developed by Hubbard may assist you with the answers you seek. I can say they have for me.
I still can not levitate a chair and I have to admit that I would love to be able to do so. If your only desire is to be able to raise that chair to impress and amaze your friends then you may be on the wrong road. If the only reason for pursuing Scientology is to move stuff around with your mind then you are ignoring the benefits of a sane being as your neighbor.
OT phenomenon is an alluring topic. A sane neighbor makes for a better life and a better world.
Ones choice says a lot about yourself.
>If you beleive you are simply meat, then why in the world are you wasting your time reading this blog?
I’m not making the connection.
ML,
Caliwog
>There are simply far to many people that have personally experienced gains and life improvement to ignore those results.
But we have to consider the source.
If you bought a Honda Passport, and it broke down all the time, there’s a good chance you’d never buy another Honda, and you’d blame Honda for the bad experience with your car.
Now, would it be helpful to know that the Honda Passport was actually designed and built by Isuzu?
Wouldn’t that knowledge affect your ability to make a well-informed decision about your next car?
It’s the same thing with Scientology and our argument here. People credit Hubbard with positive gains from his technology, although he didn’t come up with it. So really, your gains are courtesy of someone or something else.
Likewise, people credit David Miscavige with the harmful policies of the Church, when in fact many of those policies originated with L. Ron Hubbard.
Isn’t that useful information to have?
ML, CW
Dear Ann,
Excellent points.
I, too, have experienced excellent gains from the (lower) Grade Chart.
And I still support the dream of accomplishing a better state for Man.
But the “OT Abilities” issue is this: Hubbard held this out, and promised it, as a Game-Changer. A total ticket out of our existence. If you could leave your body at will, and (without your body) do anything (and more) that you could do with your body, that would totally and completely change your approach and strategy to life. You would, logically, align your whole life to accomplish that. Because it would utterly change the entire game you are playing.
Death would become a non-event. You would be accustomed to managing your affairs without a body.
One would not be overly concerned with the appearance and status of the body because you could operate your affairs without it.
It’s what we call in business a paradigm shift.
So, the OT issue was not about parlor tricks. It was about Hubbard’s guarantee and certainty that you could live, consciously and certainly, past this life. Not just as a faith and personal idea, but as a practical, demonstrable reality.
That changes everything.
So, if “OT” is true, all the sacrifice and extreme behavior start to make sense. Without OT (as described above), Scientology becomes a robust self help technology, but not a brief breath in eternity.
Hubbard consistently held OT out as a practical reality. Here is your ticket out of this existence. Hubbard claimed it as a fait accompli. “Not only have I reached and colonized The Promised Land. I already have 2 housing developments there. Sign right here on the dotted line.”
But that was a lie.
Hubbard should have leveled with us.
ML,
FL
caliwog- If you are meat when you die that’s it. It seems a waste of time to ponder spiritual matters. Sorry if it was vague. If you beleive you are more than meat then one must concede a spiritual existence. What is that and can it be improved upon? Or are we simply on a spiritual treadmill? Death-rebirth-life-death cycle endlessly. Really, why be concerned with what Hubbard said if those procedures produce an increase in awareness and may break that cycle? If you are a spiritual being what, if anything, are you going to do about it?
Fiatlux- Too many points to cover with the time I have. I believe there may be some confusion between Hubbard’s tech and that of Miscavige. Miscavige has been altering the tech and the upper Bridge since the early eighties. I don’t know how old you are or your experiences within the Church but many Scientologists today have no living memory of the time before Miscavige or even his early years as its head.
Brief History_ Hubbard had developed and released OT levels through 1-7 well before NOTS came to view. OT 8 was done in 68-69 but not released. NOTs was released in late 78 as a rundown not as an OT level. RTC changed not only the NOTs materials but the upper bridge very early on. It was 16 years after NOTS release that RTC said, “we have found missing tech on NOTS” So, Scientologists were not getting Hubbards full tech for 16 years byt RTC admission. It was then re released how many times? Obviously there is something very wrong with RTC and their meddling with the materials. The original OT levels, 4, 5 & 6, developed by Ron, were removed from the bridge entirely and replaced with NOTS. This was not LRH’s doing but RTCs. I have old grade charts from the time period that reflect this. All the prior OT levels are on the chart with NOTS listed as a rundown to be done after OT3 or 7 EP.
OT8 was released and re-released and re-released, read: altered, altered, altered. Ron originally developed OT 8 in 68-69 but didn’t release it. He said he had put the finishing touches on it sometime prior to his death in 86. Naturally having done much more research between 69 and 86 it is reasonable to conclude that Ron had worked more out on the level. So you have to ask yourself what was RTC doing with it; releasing it, altering it; releasing it yet again and again? Ron had taken 18 years and much other discovery and developemment to polish it up. Are we to believe Ron didn’t have it worked out? The RTC announcement of it was New Years 86 .
What I am saying is that there has not been an unadulterated Upper Bridge for the past 30+ years. For 30 + years Scientologists have not been doing LRH’s intended upper bridge. How can we all sit around talking about resuolts when the product hasn’t been delivered?
The entirety of the discussion is absent this rather important point. It’s missing, unevaluated data, certainly dropped out time.
The entire upper bridge experience since NOTs release has not been Hubbards intended bridge with a very few exceptions. A few people made it through in the between transition years in the early eighties and there are some that have made it through in the independent field. For the most part there is no measure avaialble of abilities gained of Hubbards work because it was altered long ago.
The bridge experience for Scientologists who got in after the early 80’s has NOT been LRHs bridge, not on the upper band.
This is not to diminish any real gains one may get, but what is being delivered is not Hubbard’s bridge. I am not saying all the tech is bad or altered or that results can’t be had. I’m saying big pieces were altered and or removed entirely. I’m not wanting to step on any toes here and I intend no offense but the discussion here, while interesting, is moot. We can’t possible discuss the merits of Hubbard’s bridge as it has’t been delivered. How can we discuss OT abilities and the falacy or reality of them as Hubbard discussed when the plan (bridge) hasn’t been followed.
If you are disgruntled, I understand. You’re not getting ALL the LRH that LRH intended you get.
Dear Ann,
Thanks for this.
You’re right: I have no experience with upper Bridge pre Miscavage.
Anyway to see/access those earlier materials?
FL
@Ann:
>caliwog- If you are meat when you die that’s it…If you beleive you are more than meat then one must concede a spiritual existence.
But I’m not just meat, Ann. Meat is edible animal tissue. I am an amazing living organism, the product of millions of years of evolution. And thanks to the forces of nature, and the perseverance and ingenuity of my species, I get around 80 years to enjoy this fantastic world that help shaped us.
I find it funny when people say that because I don’t believe in anything beyond this life, my outlook must be bleak. Actually, it’s the opposite – I find life rather fulfilling, and I feel bad for those who find life so unsatisfying that they must look for something beyond.
BTW, Hubbard generalized about scientists saying humans are just “meat,” but I don’t think anyone except Hubbard actually used that term. I think many scientists share my admiration for and satisfaction with what we are.
ML,
Caliwog
Anne,
Don’t have time for commenting but, I think you’re good people.
Michael
” Nomnom permalink
March 18, 2011 5:02 pm
A question for RJ:
In the late 80′s/early 90′s. OSA had an operative by the name of Roger Stodola involved on a project having to do with SRI. It was very hush-hush. Any idea what that was about?”
Sorry Nonom I never knew anything about OSA involvement with a special project at SRI.
Personally I don’t know who Roger Stodola is.
All I know about is that we audited or counseled quite a few FIOs during the time period that you mentioned.
Thanks RJ. If you Google his name you’ll find that he was involved with some of the ops done on Werner Erhardt, including the 60 Minutes piece.
Ah yes,
Good ol’ Werner.
Well as far as I’m concerned Stodola was unsuccessful in achieving his ultimate objective which was to shut down EST.
All Werner did was change the name of his operation to Landmark and carry on.
In other words the group was never disbanded per the PL on ‘Enrollment in Suppressive Groups’.
However this obvious fact, at least to me, didn’t stop RTC from having RTRC compile a squirrelly “rundown” called the “EST Repair Rundown” and start delivering it to their rejects who didn’t happen to “get it”.
It’s also funny as in strange that Scientology became more ESTish after that with group confessionals what they called “seances” given at the base and how *Seminars* on Scientology became the in thing after that.
RJ, just for clarity’s sake (and hopefully you don’t mind the indiscretion), are you saying that when you were employed by the Church of Scientology in the late 80s and early 90s, and you were delivering the Grades and/or OT levels, you delivered them to Federal Intelligence Officers (FIOs)? If so, were they current or former FIOs? Can you provide more details?
No I can’t Marg be more specific because just like any PC or Pre OT they have a right to priest penitent privilege and confidentiality.
(Too bad the current Church violates this *right*)
Also I wrote FIO as in *Former* Intelligence Officers.
Though the old adage goes there is really no such thing as a “Former” spook the fact is when we audited them they said they had no current connection to any Intelligence agency.
All I was pointing out was there seemed to be a lot of FIOs coming on our lines during a certain period of time.
Why this was?
Can only be left to speculation.
The fact is Marg that there are people who receive Scientology services especially now with the PR as bad as it is who do not others to know that they are connected to Scientology.
This is what is called Religious freedom.
That is the right to withhold any Religious affiliation you may have to avoid persecution by the ignorant and intolerant.
I found Marty’s response (on his blog) quite interesting, if predictable. He said, and I paraphrase, “Yes I have OT abilities, but I can only demonstrate them to other true believers – and I can’t do it if you ask me to.”
Yeah. Me too. LOL!
JEFF: A FEW TANAGABLE ABILITIES I ATTAINED IN SCIENTOLOGY UP TO OT 3:
WHEN I AUDITED MY PC’S I COULD/CAN SEE THEIR PICTURES IN FRONT OF ME LIKE A VIDEO IN FULL DIMENSION.
I KNOW WHO IS CALLING BEFORE THEY CALL.
I THINK ABOUT SOMEONE AND THEY CALL OR EMAIL ME
I AM ALWAYS EXTERIOR FROM MY BODY
WHILE GETTING MY FIRST AUDITING ON THE BRIDGE I USED MY INTENTION TO MOVE THE RECORD PLAYER NEEDLE TO THE NEXT SONG WHEN THERE WAS A SCRATCH. MY HUSBAND AT THE TIME WOULD DO THIS WITH ME.
I WAS BORED ON AN AIRPLANE AND SO I STARTED MESSING AROUND PUTTING MY ATTENION ON PEOPLE BY PUTTING A LITTLE BEAM ON THEIR HEADS. IN EACH CASE THE PERSON WOULD LOOK UP OR AROUND OR TOUCH THIER HEAD. I STOPPED BECAUSE SOME PEOPLE WERE TRYING TO SLEEP.
MY HUSBAND AND I SAT AT A RESTAURANT WHILE EATING AND EACH TIME THIS PARTICULAR WAITRESS WALKED BY WE WOULD TAKE TURN TIPPING THE MILKSHAKE OR WHATEVER DRINK SHE WAS CARRYING. WE MADE SURE WE DIDN’T KNOCK IT OVER COMPLETLELY FOR AS TO CAUSE HER A PROBLEM. WE JUST WOULD MOVE IT JUST ENOUGH WHERE SHE WOULD PUT UP A COUPLE OF FINGERS ON IT TO KEEP IT FROM FALLING.
I LEFT MY SOCKS AT THE GYM ON A BENCH. I GOT HOME AND EMPTIED BY BAG ON THE TABLE. I REALIZED THAT THEY WERE MISSING. I TOOK OUT THE REST OF THE CLOTHES AND PUT THEM IN THE WASH. I ZIPPED UP MY SMALL GYM BAG AND LEFT IT ON THE TABLE. I STARTED DOING SOME DISHES AND THEN I REALIZED WHERE I HAD LEFT THE SOCKS. I SAW THEM ON THE BENCH. NEXT THING I KNEW THERE WAS A SMALL FLASH OUT OF MY RIGHT PERIPHEAL VISION. I WENT INTO THE ROOM WHERE IT CAME FROM AND THERE WERE MY SOCKS …SITTING ON TOP OF MY GYM BAG.
THIS LAST THING IS WHAT YOU CALL A PHENONMENON AS IT IS NOT USAUL THOUGH IT HAPPENED ONCE SINCE THEN. ALL THE OTHER STUFF IS JUST NORMAL TO ME NOW.
THE OTHERS ARE, I GUESS, ABILITIES BUT THEY MEAN NOTHING TO ME BECAUSE THEY ARE SILLY AND I HAVE ETHICS NOT TO CREATE SUCH IN ANOTHER’S UNIVERSE.
I TOO GOT INTO SCIENTOLOGY FOR OT STUFF. I HAD READ LOTS OF EASTERN PHILOSOPHY BEFORE AND DURING COLLEGE. I WANTED TO GO TO INDIA. INSTEAD, LONG STORY SHORT, I HAD AN FSM WHO HAD ME LISTEN TO LRH TAPE ON A REEL TO REEL BUT HE TALKED OF PAST LIFE AND ALSO I READ DMSMH AND MOSTLY I READ ADVANCED MAG!
I DO AGREE THAT THE PROMO IS BAD. I HAVE NEVER LIKED IT. I AM CERTAIN HOWEVER THAT THERE IS NOTHING ON EARTH THAT CAN GET RID OF A PERSONS CASE AND THAT CAN INCREASE ONES AWARENESS LIKE SCIENTOLOGY CAN….WHEN CORRECTLY APPLIED.
AND SADLY, THAT IS A HUGE HUGE FACTOR WHICH IS BECOMING MORE A MORE TRUE IN THE CURRENT CHURCH. I THINK THE BEST WAY TO DESCRIBE IT IS THAT AS ONE BECOMES MORE AWARE, JUNK THAT ISN’T YOU IS BLOWN AWAY AND YOU BECOME MORE YOURSELF AND YOUR NATIVE ABILITIES WILL COME THROUGH TO WHATEVER DEGREE. OT 8 IS ONLY THE FIRST OT LEVEL THE REST ARE PRE OT LEVLES.
SO I SEE WHAT YOUR SAYING, BUT I CAN’T DENY WHAT I HAVE EXPERIENCED. I FEEL SAD FOR THOSE WHO DID NOT GET GAINS OR WHO HAVE NOT FINISHED TRAINING OR WHO ARE ONLY PART WAY AND THEN GIVE UP BECAUSE OF VARIOUS REASONS. I DON’T BLAME THE PERSON, I BLAME THE PEOPLE WHO WERE DEALING WITH PERSON. HOWEVER, NO MATTER WHAT , I KNOW THAT THE RAW UNTAINTED SUBJECT WORKS LIKE MAGIC WHEN APPLIED CORRECTLY AND SO MANY OUT THERE THAT LIKE TO FIND FAULT HAVE NOT REALLY MUCH EXPEREIENCE WITH THE ACTUAL AUDITING AND TRAINING. IT IS ALSO SAD THAT BEING ON STAFF DOES NOT EQUATE WITH KNOWING THE TECH OR THE AUDITING.
WHOEVER POSTED THE FACT THAT OT PHEN. STUFF IS ALL LIES BECUASE SOMEONE ELSE TOLD THEM THAT IS EITHER REPEATING A STORY OR IF IT IS TRUE THAT AN OT SAID THAT, THEY OBVIOUSLY DIDN’T ASK THE PERSON HOW THEY KNEW THAT TO BE TRUE. THE FACT THAT THEY WANT TO POST THAT SHOWES THAT THEY ARE NOT OT THEMSLEVES, DIDN’T BOTHER TO QUESTION THE PERSON, AND WANTS TO DETER AND TO DEGRADE THE SUBJECT.
I HAVE READ MUCH OF WHAT YOU WRITE, AND I DON’T BELITTLE YOU FOR SPEAKING YOUR MIND AND FOR ASKING QUESTIONS, HOWEVER YOU DO ATTRACT ALOT OF PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT FULLY EDUCATED IN THE SUBJECT MATTER AS FAR AS BEING SUCCESSFUL AUDITORS OR WINNING PCS.
I HAVE INVESTIGATED, TO MY OWN SATISFACTION, MUCH OF WHAT STANDS FOR “SPRITUALITY” OUT THERE AND I HAVE LISTEND TO THE DALI LAMA OR EVEN DEPAK AND OTHERS WHO PEOPLE FOLLOW. ALL I CAN SAY IS THAT I AM GLAD FOR THE SUBJECT OF SCIENTOLOGY BECAUSE READING ABOUT AWARENESS EXPEREINCING IT ARE VERY DIFFERENT. I REALLY WANTED TO GET TO CERTAIN PLACES -AWARENESS WISE AND NONE OF WHAT I READ GAVE ME A TANGIBLE METHOD OF HOW TO REACH IT.
THERE ARE WAYS TO LEARN TO EXTERIORIZE, LIKE MONROE’S METHODS WHICH I DIRECTLY EXPERIENED THROUGH HIS SEMINAR BEFORE GETTING INTO SCIENTOLOGY.
HOWEVER, THAT IN ITSEFL WON’T HANDLE THE CASE. AND DESPITE MY ORIGINAL PURPOSE FOR ENTERING SCIENTOLOGY, I KNOW LONGER CARE ABOUT THE FACT THAT I CAN DO CERTAIN THINGS. I KNOW ABOUT THE THETAN AND ABOUT CASE AND FORCE AND THE SOLE REASON WHY AUDITNG WORKS, SO THE OTHER STUFF IS JUST SO NOT IMPORTANT TO ME, YET I WANTED TO HONESTLY ANSWER YOUR QUESTION.
I HAVE READ I THINK EVERTTHING AROUND WHICH DISCREDITS LRH AND IN MY OPINION THERE IS MUCH TO SAY….BUT THE BOTTOM LINE IS THAT DESPITE ANYTHING, WHAT HE DID WAS TO GIVE A WORKABLE SYSTEM OF BECOMING MORE AWARE ON A GRADIENT SCALE. WITH THAT, ALL ELSE PALES IN SIGNIFICANCE.
IT IS LIKE A POEM JEFF, IT STANDS ON ITS OWN DESPITE THE AUTHORS INTENTION. WHATEVER IS WRITTEN BECOMES ITS OWN BEINGNESS, LIKE A NOTE PLAYED…
IF MY GAINS AND MY AWARENESS WAS NOT ACHIEVED, THEN I COULD SEE “WARNING” OTHERS, BUT IT WAS. I AM CONTINUING UP THE ROAD BUT NOT WITHIN THE CHURCH.
.
Please, please, please, do not type your comments in ALL CAPS. And please spell-check your comments. Others may want to read your comment and you make it very difficult.
Great post Jewel, those are some pretty cool OT phenomena. Did you feel that any particular Scientology levels/studies helped bring those out in you, more than others?
You wrote: “It is also sad that being on staff does not equate with knowing the tech or auditing”.
So true. I felt exactly the same way when I joined staff for 2.5 yrs in the mid-80s. I was floored by it actually. How can the CoS expect to sell/teach/administer its own subject, when the people doing so don’t even know it? THAT is a pretty fundamental problem with the CoS, imho, right up there with the uber concentration on stats and money, at the expense of imparting wisdom and helping others achieve enlightenment.
You can win money or have it donated to a charity of your choice if you can recreate these phenomena. If you cannot or don’t ever desire to, I am not sure of the purpose of your recounting of them.
http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html
http://iigwest.org/challenge.html
Also, if you don’t wish to participate but can recommend someone who will (and they can indeed prove it in a test they themselves help top design), you will get a $5,000 finders fee from the IIG.
This is not a trick. If anyone passes a real test, it will be published in scientific journals and will change how we understand physics. It seems kind of selfish to keep this knowledge secret from the rest of humanity, don’t ya think?
Maria Abian wrote: “If you cannot or don’t ever desire to, I am not sure of the purpose of your recounting of them.”
What a ridiculous statement.
Jewel (or anyone else here who’s had these sorts of phenomena): If you feel you have any sort of control over these phenomena — and are interested — there are some very reputable researchers and universities working in this field. In particular, I would suggest you get in touch with the Perceptual Studies Division at the University of Virginia (http://www.medicine.virginia.edu/clinical/departments/psychiatry/sections/cspp/dops/home-page)
and/or the International Consciousness Research Laboratories (with some ties to Princeton):
http://www.icrl.org/home/
But even if it’s not your purpose to participate in these sorts of studies, or simply don’t have an interest, I’m delighted to hear that your life has been enriched with these experiences, and I’m very glad you shared them. As far as Randi, I would suggest stearing clear. It was serious scientists which ultimately led the scientific community to soften it’s stand on the paranormal (e.g. Carl Sagan) over the last few decades, not non-scientists and magicians like Randi.
I am a former OT V. I did not get any OT abilities as it was promised, and to me that was advertized to pull people in the Cult; however, I knew at 11 years old, when my grand-father had passed away, and when my family called me, I already knew. I was very close to him, love him dearly, and when he passed away, I felt an extremely hot and dread feeling at the exactly time of his death.
I had psych abilities as a child, teenager, and my whole adult life, prior to become Scientologist. I believe those things are innate in many human beings. I am no longer a Scientologist since 2002, although I was a Scientologist for 23 years. I had my family broken apart by the Cult MAAs, and other terminals. My spouse remained in Scientology, and I decided never to go back.
I’ve met people, who are not Scientologists, but can predict the future, as they are clairvoyant, or they can see things, or hear things. They have perceptions that are sharp, I would say. I have proof that this is possible, because I know many people who experienced that also, and told me about situation much before it had happened in the physical universe.
@Jeff, After word clearing these definitions, an indoctrinated scientologist naturally expects at least some the below stuff when paying for the OT levels:
ABILITY, to observe, to make decisions, to act. (SH Spec 131, 6204C03)
http://www.st83.org/info/techdic/a_tec.BAK
OPERATING THETAN,
1. a thetan exterior who can have but doesn’t have to have a body in order to control or operate thought, life, matter, energy, space and time. ( SH Spec 82, 6611C29)
2. willing and knowing cause over life, thought, matter, energy, space and time. And that would of course be mind and that would of course be universe. ( SH Spec 80, 6609C08)
3. an individual who could operate totally independently of his body whether he had one or didn’t have one. He’s now himself, he’s not dependent on the universe around him. (SH Spec 66, 6509C09)
4. a Clear who has been refamiliarized with his capabilities. (HCOB 12 Jul 65)
5. a being at cause over matter, energy, space, time, form and life. Operating comes from “able to operate without dependency on things” and thetan is the Greek letter theta (ø), which the Greeks used to represent “thought” or perhaps “spirit” to which an “n” is added to make a new noun in the modern style used to create words in engineering. (BCR, p. 10)
6. by operating thetan we mean theta clear* plus ability to operate functionally against or with mest and other life forms. (SCP, p. 3)
7. this state of being is attained by drills and familiarity after the state of Clear has been obtained. A real OT has no reactive bank, is cause over matter, energy, space, time and thought and is completely free. (HCOB 12 Jul 65)
http://www.st83.org/info/techdic/mno_tec.htm
*
THETA CLEAR, 1. it is a person who operates exterior to a body without need of a body. (SH Spec 59, 6109C27)
2. that state wherein the preclear can remain with certainty outside his body when the body is hurt. (PAB 33)
3. a theta clear, then can be defined as a person who is at cause over his own reactive bank and can create and uncreate it at will. Less accurately he is a person who is willing to experience. Theta clear is stable. (Ab1,1 92M)
4. theta clear would mean clear of the mest body or cleared of the necessity to have a mest body. (5206CM26A)
5. there are two types of theta clear, the theta being which is cleared of its necessity or compulsion to have a body and a theta being which is cleared all the way on the track. (5206CM26B)
6. the basic definition of theta clear is: no further necessity for beingnesses. (SH Spec 36, 6108C09)
7. this is a relative not an absolute term. It means that the person, this thought unit, is clear of his body, his engrams, his facsimiles, but can handle and safely control a body. (COHA, p. 248)
8. in its highest sense, means no further dependency on bodies. (SCP, p. 3)
9. an individual who, as a being, is certain of his identity apart from that of the body, and who habitually operates the body from outside, or exteriorized. (PXL, p. 16)
http://www.st83.org/info/techdic/tuvwxyz_tec.htm
According to these definitions and what Miscavige reported was the reason for LRH dropping the body, LRH was not even a Clear Theta Clear until the day he dropped his body to move onto further research.
“…in July 1952 in Phoenix, Arizona, I established along scientific lines (rather than mere belief) that: That thing which is the person, the personality, is separable from the body and the mind at will and without causing bodily death or mental derangement.”
– L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology the Fundamentals of Thought, 2007 edition, “The Parts of Man” chapter.
Further in the same chapter LRH says:
” …As you know that you are where you are at this moment, so you would know if you, a spirit, were detached from your mind and body.”
“…The usual residence of the thetan is in the skull or near the body. A thetan can be in one of four conditions:
“1. The first would be entirely separate from a body or bodies, or even from the universe.
“2. The second would be near a body and knowingly controlling the body….”
….
“…The most optimum of these conditions, from the standpoint of Man, is the second….”
“….And one of the many goals of processing in Scientology is to “exteriorize” the individual and place him in the second condition above (near a body and knowingly controlling the body), since it has been discovered that he is happier and more capable when so situated.”
-L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology Fundamentals of Thought, latest edition, 2007.
If only this were true and only if Scientology in the last 60 years churned out some persons who through their processing DID achieve routinely and stably, the 2nd condition above.
“For RJ; I have a question for you towards the end of the current comments (in case you missed it).”
I answered it Nomnom,
But as you notice this board is filling up with so many replies it almost takes real OT ability to match replies to questions or vis versa 😉
Anyway my answer was that I had no idea about OSA’s involvement with SRI.
Unlike the GO whose staff I audited they never confided in me.
I think one of the quals for auditing OSA staff was have your tongue removed or something like that and I wasn’t willing to do that 😉
Anyhoo as I wrote in my earlier response which but like a drop of water in this sea of responses. We did have Pre OTs who had “former” connections to Intel Agencies during the period you mentioned so some of us figured something was going on.
We weren’t sure quite what at the time.
Funny you should mention one our most famous “ex” spook Hal and his objections to “ethics”.
This was exactly made me decide to quit the organization as well and from what I understand was William S Burroughs’ biggest beef as well.
Well Nomnom I hope you find my response posted here.
Ml
RJ
RJ Thank you so much!
There is still so much that needs to come to the surface.
I wish Mike Rinder would fill in some of these holes. He’s bound to know.
Nomnom,
It’s possible Mike might know something about all this then again as I feel is more likely he probably doesn’t.
For instance Mary Sue had no idea about GO 1361 until it became a major flap.
Much like Nixon didn’t have any idea that the ‘Plumbers’ had broken into the DNC HQ in Watergate until after it happened.
You’d be surprised or maybe not at how much POTUS is kept out of the loop on some covert ops conducted by “our” Intelligence Agencies.
Sometimes the Execs of those same agencies have no idea what is going on in Directorates that they ostensibly supervise until the blow back hits ’em the face.
Just because the person has a fancy title doesn’t mean they actually know what’s going on below them.
In fact in many cases they are the last person to find out.
I wouldn’t be surprised if “Obstruction of Justice” (i.e. trying to hide or destroy the evidence) has sent more CEOs/executives/leaders to jail, than just admitting to the evidence in the first place.
About my own New OT V:
“I have more reality on what makes people have the difficulties they do. What it is that influences individuals. I’ve got more ARC for people and the environement. My space is much bigger and I feel very much myself. My perceptions have become much stronger.”
As far as moving the coffee table across the room from my chair in the kitchen, this remains to be seen. 🙂
Wow, Jeff! What a great blog post. Looks like you definitely hit a chord with this one.
I know I don’t post very often but I do appreciate your words. I’ll post up more another time — it’s getting late. 🙂
Perhaps someone can post this question to Marty’s blog. I tried and, apparently, it was not accepted.
Telepathy is one of the most common and least sensational OT abilities expected of someone who has done the OT levels. It would be expected that Scientology OTs here on Earth would be able to be in contact with a powerful OT such as Ron.
The natural question to OTs, then, is, “What’s Ron up to these days?” “How is Ron doing?” And, “What does Ron have to say to Scientologists here on Earth?”
So far, no response.
Is this an awkward issue? I mean, if one really is an OT, then certainly one should be able to communicate telepathically with an OT of the magnitude of L.Ron Hubbard.
Yet, there is silence…
Jeff,
One point, one wish I have, is since you promoted the OT wins and phenomena in your years as Advance! editor, I think it MIGHT be good for you to continue to let people continue to tell their OT Phenomenon in a sidebar part of your site.
THAT would be huge in terms of a continuing survey of Scientologists of their OT abilities.
Jeff you have incredible credibility in Scientology history, and the OT abilities discussion should go on for years and decades, and I think you somehow compartmenting off this discussion and continuing to allow Scientologists write their OT wins, live, in life, today, would be raw ongoing research. It would continue the tradition of the Advance! mag, but out in the freer discussion atmosphere that exists outside official Scientology’s self imposed contraints.
I’m not a believer, I think the OT phenomena, Scientology caused or not, are coincidence and hallucination, all of it. And I think William James’ writings about the variety of religious experiences, are a must that Scientologists should read and compare their Scientology experiences to.
I was sold on Scientology since it seemed like a poor man’s mysticism practice that claims to effectively and positively move a person up to the high spiritual powers states that other mystical groups and sub niches of other religions have supposedly also done for thousands of years on earth.
I’m an atheist (born again atheist today, I was before Scientology, and now again returned to atheism after my 27 years in Scientology), but if Scientologists want to gain for themselves more legitimacy, they would do well to do some MORE things in violation of LRH’s rules, and read and compare and write and position their Scientology experiences into William James’ writings, for starters.
Free online audio readings of William James’ extensive lectures/writings are free here:
http://librivox.org/newcatalog/search.php?title=&author=william+james&status=all&action=Search
I’d like to see some ex official Scientologists read/listen to William James, and compare Scientology and Hubbard to the main religious issues James covers.
Gordon Melton wrote me that there are no Scientologists taking on the Scientology historian/theologin role.
I guess this fallen between chairs occupation, is sort of shared amongst all persons commenting and writing on the blogs and chat sites, actually.
If I had to write the checksheet for WDC and Int Exec Strata members, I’d include William James’ lectures/book at the above link.
I still would like to see Pat Broeker show up on someone’s blog someday.
Pat Broeker wrote an amazing “win” in the Advance! Mag himself, back in the day, about him “getting in comm” with some ghost, and Pat’s realization of the thousands of other “ghosts” (“body thetans”) that would be so “easy” to help free themselves from their limbo like states.
There is a whole narrative LRH’s Scientology fits within, which is the gnostic tradition, helping re-enlighten all us supposedly “fallen souls” back to our long ago soul powers and former high powerful soul positions.
I think it’s pretty clear that Scientology sells itself as a “Bridge” to achieve stable progress towards the single soul powerful state, where the soul is aware and has no need of a body.
definition 3 in the Tech Dictionary “….3. an individual who could operate totally independently of his body whether he had one or didn’t have one. He’s now himself, he’s not dependent on the universe around him. (SH Spec 66, 6509C09)”
This OT phenomena and OT abilities discussion shows that NO person has risen up to single soul out of the body powers yet.
We have Star Trek episodes with the invisible beings communicating and operating, and I remember the “Star Man” movie with Jeff Bridges, where we had Hollywood show us a floating brilliant orb of energy (an operating soul) move and operate on the physical universe.
I had expected to see this in reality, in some Scientology setting, but that has yet to be demonstrated as clearly as Jeff Bridges, floating orb of brilliant soul energy, did in the “Star Man” movie beginning sequence.
The “Star Man” floating orb of energy soul, is what I expected to see demonstrated by Scientologists.
If like Pat Broeker, in his win in the Advance! mag, if Pat can perceive ghosts, well WHY can’t some Scientologists BE like ghosts, and wander about, and interact in even minor ways in the physical universe.
It seems ironic that “body thetans” and ghosts, who are supposedly in such inferior soul condition to Scientologists, are MORE causative of creating mischievous physical universe effects than our OT 8’s!!!
You would think the OT 8’s would be MORE causative than the ghosts reported in the OT wins section of the Advance! mag!
I’d like to see a soul operate like definition 3, just as provable and credible as we see these words we write on this page.
The discussion about promised psychic powers discussed here or at Marty’s just show:
These phenomena are/were not fully understood, neither in nor outside of SCN and Hubbard took advantage of that scientific vacuum to full-mouthedly pretend to know something nobody but his “OT”ness had ever discovered and researched before which is – like so much with this pathetic character – an outright lie working best on ignorant yet puzzled people.
I am happy and thankful that this discussion puts huge stage lights onto that puzzle and thus pulverizes Hubbard’s claims very beautifully whether intended or not. The multiple viewpoints bring about that wonderful result.
Science fiction, taken as THE truth, works wonders on (gullible) people.
Just sayin’
Funny how what is considered “Science Fiction” in less enlightened times becomes the truth or at least *fact* in more enlightened times.
For instance that the Earth was round and revolved around the sun was considered “Science Fiction” at one time.
More recently that man would go to moon was considered “Science Fiction”.
Even the fact that you could type such a comment into a computer and have it read and countered as I’m doing right now was considered *Science Fiction* as well.
Sure, science fiction tries to predict a future world. SOME of it comes true. Some of it doesn’t. Some we consider laughable today. It does not automatically become truth. And science fiction presented as actual past history is something else entirely.
You mean as in:
“A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away”
So what you’re saying is that George Lucas is wrong.
You think OSA’s a bitch Jeff.
Wait until you mix it up with Darth Vader and his gang.
Exactly. 🙂
>For instance that the Earth was round and revolved around the sun was considered “Science Fiction” at one time.
Actually, RJ, I believe that was a scientific theory that was considered to be wrong.
See the difference?
ML,
Caliwog
RJ, are you being sarcastic, or do you believe that Darth Vader exists?
ML,
Caliwog
Caliwog you’re so funny some times.
Of course Darth Vader exists 😉
I betcha can’t “prove” that he doesn’t.
(repost from ESMB discussion on same subject):
My answer is not what you are asking but it is another way of looking at the “OT” that Scientology sells.
[INDENT]In Scientology, if you make someone [B]feel better, cognite and laugh[/B] (e.g. thru auditing) that is a very theta, holy and religious effect of an OT.
Out of Scientology, if you make someone[B] feel better, cognite and laugh[/B] (e.g. thru writing a funny insightful post on ESMB) that is a very evil act of an SP. [/INDENT]
What’s the difference?
In Scientology you pay fortunes for those fleeting moments, lest you be deemed criminally out-exchange.
That’s all that Scientology has going for it in the “OT” department. Labeling & attributing those rare moments of elevation or elation to the “tech”.
They happen all day in the free world (away from Scientology in all it’s various forms). And they [B]are[/B] free–please see English dictionary definition of “free”; not the Hubbard abomination “the work was free, keep it so”.
Is there magic in life? I think so. Very much so. I don’t know how to always find it. I can sometimes experience such beautiful moments–but not at my own discretion and volition with rare exceptions.
Perhaps, making another person feel good is the most “OT” thing one could ever dream of. It is one of the divine components of love or creativity.
As far as humans being able to rise above what they actually are, metamorphosing into something beyond—that is the world of myths and dreams. If humans can do such things then THAT is part of being human, isn’t it? But funny–in recorded history, there is no “recording” of it that can be verified. That says a lot.
It such OT powers did manifest, they were anomalies, not re-producible.
If one Scientologist had achieved one OT power, no matter how modest, they would have been trotted out in religious revival tents across the world. They would have been scientifically verified and filmed and sold as proof.
None of it happened. People are still hoping it’s true.
Marty takes “ability” as OT phenomena. He makes something happen in life and that becomes an OT event. By that standard all successful people are OT, but Scientology would consider that a sacrilege because many SP’s are rich and powerful.
It all boils down to just this. If Scientology can use the term OT to sell Scientology then it does.
That’s all that Scientology is selling is the word and the buyer embellishes that word with their own hopes and dreams. OT then becomes equated with one’s own dreams and therefore sacred.
But all these OTs are just simple humans.
Marty is frantically doing spinning damage control on Jeff’s essay. It is sophistry and misdirection with no common sense foundation. It reeks of desperation, as it well should, for a con game so abruptly exposed.
The OT game is entirely dead.
All that remains after 60 years of unequivocal and continuous failure are those shocked and bereaved friends and family, in denial, trying to resuscitate a corpse long past rigor mortis. It is a rather pathetic accident scene that needs some policing and people need to be given instructions to move along and go home. The body of Scientology needs to be taken to the morgue and buried.
The autopsy is nearly complete with such brilliant sites as ESMB and others.
It’s hard to pry loved ones away from such a shocking end for their loved one. But, it’s better for them to know.
I’m so sorry to tell you, but….OT is dead.
Go home, please.
There is still a lot of life out there for you. In time maybe you can find some of it…
Helluvahoax,
So happy to hear from you over here.
We ARE Humans.
Some smartasses promise us that we will beocome “Superhumans”…. Nice promise, and easy to believe.
Takes mind to get over the idea of having to have Superpowers to live normal life.
Unfortunate;y, people just don’t want to let go of that idea (of having your “postulates” handle your life for you instead of you). They keep living in a dream… and love living in a dream… rather than finding a way of living in the REAL world (world that surrounds them).
In 1997, when I was mid “routing out”, while on the Int RPF out at “Happy Valley”, at a time I was being extremely recalcitrant, I read ONLY the RPF course room reference books, in particular, I started with the Encyclopedia Britannica article on “Mysticism” and branched off to a half dozen or dozen related articles, reading for weeks, only the Encyclopedia Britannica articles related to philosophy and mysticism.
I stumbled upon an admission, in one article, that these “higher states” sought for thousands of years, are transitory also. Just like in Scientology. In particular, the sub article on Plotinus, see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plotinus led me to a comment that Plotinus only “exteriorized” less than a half dozen times in his mystical quest life, but the out of the body moments had a particularly powerful impact on him. It solidified his quest.
Same I think with Scientology. Same with a whole host of mystical and religious practices, where the seemingly supernatural and out of the body experiences (I consider out of the body an hallucination) does lead a person to really get potentially stuck in that realm of thought that surrounds the experience (hallucination with attendant jolt of good physical feelings and emotions).
Scientology and Hubbard’s methods tend to push all the competing practices that deliver the exteriorization (hallucination) OUT of the picture for Scientologists.
Hubbard obviously is a blend of gnosticism and science fiction narrative, riding on the good physical feelings that these Scientology produced (sometimes) “high toned” (hallucinatory) experiences. When dreams become as real as reality, and a person gets the emotional positive jolt to go with those dreams (hallucinations) that are pumped up to the same level as reality, this whole discussion goes off the rails, people thinking out of the body hallucinations are real and their ESP experiences are real. To me, these experiences are just variations of powerful hallucinatory experiences.
I think Hubbard’s language used to describe things lets a person elevate their vivid dreamlike/intensely realistic self imagined mental pictures with perceptics/out of the body experiences and ESP experiences (all I contend are varieties of self induced or processing induced hallucinations) to people’s own satisfaction that all these experiences are as real as what we consider normal real reality.
All through history, maintaining these hallucinations is a tough thing to reduplicate causatively.
http://librivox.org/newcatalog/search.php?title=&author=william+james&status=all&action=Search
William James’ lectures are downloadable for free, of his “Varieties of Religious Experience”, 1902, which are a cornerstone coverage of mysticism and religion.
The comments here by those who are inclined to believe in psychic abilities or OT powers abound with anecdotal references to speculative literature or personal experience but I have yet to see in them a shred of hard scientific evidence that such claims have any basis in a common reality that transcends isolated self-delusion.
Please provide an instance in which the existence of psychic phenomena or OT abilities was established by a sustained series of double-blind controlled experiments along with the actual numbers involved.
And given the track record of the CIA in terms of its actual success in carrying out objectives, credibility is not the first word that comes to mind when you hear of CIA involvement in anything, let alone a program of scientific research.
Randi’s offering a million dollars. What about you? What are you offering?
RJ wrote: I did an interview on a PC who honestly believed that this Rundown would bring him to a point where he could actually levitate his body!
I kid you not!
I asked where this idea came from?
He said a reg told him if he bought the RD now he could guarantee it!
Talk about a hidden standard!!!!
It is NOT a hidden standard to expect to receive what one purchased. Your pc was sold levitation by the reg and because you knew and the reg knew that wasn’t going to happen doesn’t mean the pc didn’t.
Back in the early 1970s, when the “Ls” were first released, Hubbard wrote that anyone coming to the ship and receiving his L10 would not be allowed to leave (“the safest and sanest place on Earth”) until he was “exterior with full perception and able to maintain it.” When people didn’t get this “EP,” they’d be told, “Oh, you have a hidden standard,” and booted off the ship. The worst part was, they’d return to their Orgs and their Scientology friends, all of whom knew that Ron had guaranteed “exterior with full perception and able to maintain it,” and not be able to tell their friends and Org-mates what really happened, lest they “invalidate Ron and the Tech.”
Maybe I should ask you the same question I asked this guy who wanted to levitate.
Yes, the deception has been going on for a LONG time.
Newer,
Obviously you missed the gist of the implication.
The “icing of the cake” so to speak is OT VIII. Hubbard, in a tape says that, is handles amnesia on the whole track. Okay, that being highest OT level currently released with a specific, stated ability gained; I asked a number of OT 8’s on being able to recall specifics at will and got no satisfactory response. The last time I did this the OT 8 in question said that the level handles the “reason” for amnesia, not amnesia itself. My response was, “what’s the use of handling the ‘reason’ if it doesn’t handle the ailment?” Of course, I didn’t get a any reply worth typing…
Hello. Please read on I am not selling, or in need of anything I do research, Thank You. I AM UNKNOWN AMONG THE MEMBERS Of THE SC. GROUP. I LEFT THE CHURCH IN 83 WAS full ot 7 in 76. Since than I dedicated all my free times to explore the MEST universe. I have Soloed over ONE HUNDRED THOUSANDS OF HOURS. I know that number could cause doubt, have no reality on, hard to believe but the fact remains the same. Not all the beings are the same , have the same implants etc.. For me to be aloneoutside of the group and solo was great fun since I am new on this planet and I had a head start in spiritual matters Few of the so called ability bellow. I had no contact with the church or independents till last augustus when I come back returned from the …wandering about….
Ever since I can remember I wanted to know the Future, that item held great interest to me long before I got into Scientology. Of course when I could solo I was like a kid in the Candy Store soloing on all kind of items which held great interest, just wanted to know the origin of things how they have come about, . I wanted to know everything [still do] So over the years I soloed on the item “future” many times. Of course there are many layers to any subjects no matter what is that. One can solo, have a good cog. which is on the level on ones reality in that time. Later on of course as one gets into deeper layer, or ones confront comes up than there is another layer. more cogs. One can solo on the same subject dozens of time over the years Just how many sessions one need that is greatly depends how well the item gotten buried in deep shit over the eons. shit=consideration. Just how many societies one belonged to, how many Planets one lived in. How many Universes one explored, how many parents, teacher tough one on that subject, how many books one read in them different reality . After all reading any stuff become ones own, of course. So you can see, one could accumulate immense amount of considerations, agreements on the same subject .like Future Soloing, to reach the basic-basic on the item is no different. Of course some considerations of the item “future” automatically as-is ad as we solo out other items, if they have been connected in the past. So I had to take off many layers. Actually it is difficult to explain in reality how one start to see the Future. I think I need to give on example. Which is not very good one. But well. …………. If In one big barrel there are thousands apples, different other fruits many different variety, let say, there are about 10 of each variety. [ You are blindfolded and you never seen any of these items before] Each variety of apples, other fruits have different energy flows. as one takes out the apples, other fruit one by one one learns which variety one holds even if one cant see, since one can sense the different energy flows of each item. As one handles the so many items-considerations sooner or later because one becomes experienced recognising the different energy if they conntaion some faoults, if they are altered, [ i know when the person alters the story, since the energy is the original the words are secondery when the energy of the story is altered and new addition is put in which is the lie. in fact one can pick up the end than the search[ the person looks in the store room, the bank] for new addition and than the connection to the original story, sort of a bump in energy flow, ] Same happens in soloing, after while one just recognise each flow as they come in. Another thing, the conditions in the barrel is very crowded. So the energy flows of all varieties over lap each other. As one removes the the fuit one at the time one can experience the full energy flows. There is no trick to know the Future we all have the ability to know, but the items are to crowded in ones universe to recognise each and label differently. As one solo over the years more and more considerations are as-is ad than one can see, duplicate easier as the confusion is slowly giving away to knowledge, certainty. The confusion is as-is ad ones universe than the item can be seen clearly with out any other items, In actually every body have that ability but cant separate the items, cant see each item as they are, even if they would would not trust that , knowledge yet. To see the future of something one must have a communication line with that object, subject, item, person. One can see, is the much up, the postulate. Since the postulate is mucked up therefore it is on energy so it have shape color, there is a starting point[[ we also persive and know at the start of the much up the other items which they are around the new muck up ] and when it will end in other word will be un- mucked by different energy-muck up. Destroyed. Every energy piece is a picture in form of words they are the consideration , but the words are only addition to the original energy muck up. . Very simple. Today I have driven down to Seattle as I usually do that once a week . While at work I soloed again on future since the subject come up. I was told about a woman I have know 5 years back and when she got pregnant I was employed by her at that time, and I known she become pregnant soon after she become. Her energy flow have changed. She have not told that fact outside of her husband and she was truly blown away because I told her i picked it up and what I seen that the baby was not going to be normal. She fired me, Which was fine and I have deserved that. no one want to hear such a news. especially looking at the person and being remindedeach day of such. It was very inconsiderate of me. No responsibility or thinking.on my part. I never seen her again but today somebody said ” you know so and so. I said yes.[ They are very well know Micro soft millionaires.] The Child is now, Her second son little over 3 years old cant speak, have mental problems. This only shows one can see out comes. of everything After this conversation when the friend left the house I got into session on” Future ” again. This time I have reached the basic- basic. on knowing the Future, actually what is the reason we do not know the future. Which have blown me away. Taken me by great surprise since the cog was so simple yet profound. There is no “Future” that concept ” Future” same as any other consideration is part of the bank, part of on implants, there are many variations from different implants. When the structure of the implants were set up the implants were given that concepts to have in the structure as the ” past, present and , future” in order to have continuum. All considerations are part of the BANK there is no exceptions. MEST, is simply MEST. Just agreed upon considerations. Now, in this implant [ there are many different ones over lapping] the “future” to see or to know, was blocked off in order to keep the being going on the track. reaching for tomorrow, awaiting for tomorrow, makes plans for tomorrow etc…etc…. Also promises were given, if one did what ever, one receive a gift in the future. The dangling carrot thing.!!! Of course one as a spiritual being knows the future, one always have, and will. But just To Know is not enough one will not really see the future if they do wont believe it, comes from confusion] . But to reach the basic understanding one need to solo on the subject and there is a tremendous amount of considerations existing in order NOT TO KNOW !!!! Also there is a great fear factor. usually one is so afraid of the future because bad things could come at the being and the confront is very low of such, while having the bank. But it is good to know the Future what ever that is. I known when my new lap top arrived before I opened the box , jut touched the box un-opened that it have to go back since it is not working. The computer was exchanged later But first I was with the tech persons 3-4 times a week to fix the thing, it never worked properly. I could not just mail the boxed computer unopened back saying it do not work who would have believed that? there is great amount charge on the item knowing the Future. But same as anything else it can be soloed out. Now i have no idea how it affects what ever since I have lost the all my considerations on “past and the future” with the same cognition. Only the “now” have remained.
PS’ I can play the piano, which i never learned, i started to play age of 65. I play ancient Chinese songs and hum the same. they are 6 thousand years old. Verified by expert. Not likely any of the Ot’s will ever walk trough the walls, levitate, or move object by command. The solodity here was set up very differently than in other places in the Universe. The wins the so called ability have or is different what ever one thought they going to be. Ron Hubbard too had a bank which most people disegarded. He mixed military organization, with spirituality. Huge out point. He made so many wrong ‘LAWS’ regulations the heads are still spinning and the out come is , well you know where it went. Down the drain. the CoS. And no one ask the question how the hell he got the materials from. Ok he read, researched here and did great amount of guessing but the material is from different time and different place. He have re-called the material. Bits and pieces as he went along. You know of it so do I what is the material. and I know it’s origial. one bound to run into it if one solos so many hours as I have . After when runs out ones own stuff ones will automatically run-solos on others because what we know becomes ours even if we say it belongs to others have it do it etc…. Soloing becomes very interesting after the heavier stuff is as-is ad. I am worked a freat deal on’ reading others mind and do very well on that, but now I am workingin different reality level to hear the sounds the voices one have in they so called head. Since there is voice created, the thinking bit i am sure there is a wall, a lock, some sort of safety which is covering that thinking to keep it IN. Well i am having much more than fun. If you care to know more now we have computer emeters one can work in distance with. you can ask anything you like. My english is good but still second to hungarian. Best to you. Elizabeth
Elizabeth, I read the whole thing and your English is wonderful. How many hours a day would you say that you solo audit?
Another one that hasn’t been mentioned (at least I didn’t see it) is L 12. According to LRH, one of the EPs is STABLY (a : firmly established : fixed, steadfast) exterior with full perceptions. I worked in the L’s HGC. This was NEVER obtained by any PC I even spoke to there…
Newer,
Was this on the Flagship the Apollo or was this at the Flag Land Base aka the “Mecca of Technical Deception” ?
Both
According to personal conversations I’ve had with Pierre Ethier, a Class XII auditor (i.e. capable of delivering the Ls, including L-12), a small percentage of people do achieve this EP. A larger percentage experience exteriorization, but not necessarily stably.
Pierre is, today, traveling the world delivering the Ls (and the rest of the Bridge) outside of the CoS.
Pierre can’t deliver up a single person who can show this ability stably. Go get the names from him…
I’ll work on that Mike.
In the meantime, there doesn’t appear to be a shortage of people who believe that they have this ability. We already have people here saying that they are “always exterior” or “often exterior” after doing some Scientology.
Whether it’s their purpose to prove it or have it tested, is an entirely different thing.
Best we can do is make the suggestion, and if they have the same purposes and interests in expanding science as Ingo Swann and Pat Price did, then science moves forward. If not, then we wait for the next one so interested.
The next obvious question was how many “PCs” did you actually speak to on the Apollo or the Land Base?
By the way one or two representing “everybody” doesn’t count.
Also who were they C/Sed by?
And what was their case level before they did their L12?
Marty , in his “OT Abilities” blog post mentioned that Jeff looks at them as “glass half empty” while he looks at is as “glass half full”.
I won’t go into how “glass half empty” is being a description of pessimist (I don’t think Jeff has ever been)… I won’t go into how Marty is an “optimist (by that same description. – I don’t think of Marty as of an optimist).
I won’t speak for Jeff.
(Maybe he DOES think that “glass is half empty”. – From what I know about Jeff, though, it seems to be an assault on the part of Marty… Oh well!)
My 2 cents here:
There is NOTHING in that glass. NOTHING.
Just what you imagine (make up, mock up, dub in, feel true to yourself…. )
The glass is empty. Has been empty all along.
One fills that glass with his dreams, fantazies, imaginations… And then he tries to drink them… and feels like he has filled his soul and mind with something. That “something” being what he himself has “postulated” and “mocked up” and “made up”…
That is Scientology!
My last questons are:
Why do people want to believe in “abilities above human”?
What makes normal people doing well with their life go after those “Supehuman abilities”?
Is life as it is not good enough???
Yes … and may I add my last question?
What exactly are these “OT” abilities supposed to accomplish?
Fidelio
Wow Jeff, I guess your little “item on the backburner” set off quite a lot of interest. I have an announcement for some participants — hope you don’t mind:
A N N O U N C E M E N T
For those of you who have experienced exteriorization, or other OT phenomena, if there is any interest in getting this whole subject better accepted and understood in the world, I urge you to work with the scientists that are currently studying it. Even if you don’t know if you “have it well-enough under control”, I strongly urge you to still participate in the studies and research that they are doing (even Ingo Swann didn’t know the extent of his abilities, until he started doing research with scientists on testing them).
From what I’ve found, there are four reputable institutions in the USA that are studying these phenomena seriously. They are:
Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia
http://www.medicine.virginia.edu/clinical/departments/psychiatry/sections/cspp/dops/home-page
The International Consciousness Research Laboratories
(spun off from Princeton):
http://www.icrl.org/home/
The Windbridge Institute for Applied Research in Human Potential
(spun off from University of Arizona)
http://www.windbridge.org/
SOPHIA Research Program at the University of Arizona
http://lach.web.arizona.edu/sophia/ (website requires password)
Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health
Department of Psychology
PO Box 210068
Tucson, AZ 85721-0068
There may be others, but those are the ones I’ve heard of.
These places will take your experiences seriously, and allow you a calm, relaxed, anonymous (if you wish) environment in which to participate in their “OT research”.
With regard to James Randi, I would suggest stearing clear. It was serious scientists which ultimately led the scientific community and universities to soften their stand on the paranormal (e.g. Carl Sagan) over the last few decades allowing for the above institutions to get funding — not the non-scientist, entertainer James Randi.
Good luck!
I urge anyone who is just starting “The Bridge” to be tested immediately so that later, it could be determined what abilities were the result of Scientology and which were already there. This would resolve this “OT abilities” question, at least for that one person.
Very good point.
But don’t let it bar you from participating even if you’ve already “done lots of Scientology”. If a trend is noticed by the researchers, then larger scale testing on possible Scientology influence (with pre- and post-testing) might be undertaken.
Thank you Margaret. I would not know how to prove I see a pc’s pictures because I would have to completely break the auditor’s code by letting someone in the room and then say, “oh, there… you see that ocean and ship in front of her face” and then if the observer doesn’t see it then how do I prove that I do? Tell the pc: “Wait, don’t run that incident, tell me if the ship looks like….” Too funny!
There is an interesting thing I have learned, as I said before, people who want proof of someone’s abilities will never accept it anyway. If one raised a glass simply by intention in front of the demanding sceptic, the sceptic would say it was a trick. If I could do something of that nature which someone else could see, then I might. I can not do anything that someone else could see like manufacture or move material objects. Auditing removes the force off the being, and with me, my intentions simp