Ragbag -- was "in Preparation"
Dear reader of this,
I set this Antology.info Internet site up because I felt it quite important that early experiences of mine in Scientology should be recorded. As you see I've got quite away with that. However, the Scientolipedia site appeared on the scene and to my mind that was a far better method of preserving knowledge of the past in Scientology than my fairly one-sided attempt here.
As you probably know from reading this I've been in Scientology and connected to it since 1954/5.
Working with Scientolipedia has been somewhat frustrating. Here I go out of sequence a bit. When the great split, at that time called the splinter movement, of Scientologists from the Church of Scientology occurred (early 80s) it was remarked that it was similar to the Reformation in the Christian religion. What was not observed was the fact that while under the Reformation the Catholic Church (Roman Catholic Church) remained united the various "splinters" split further and further into different churches and groups.
They were out of ARC with each other. I presume they didn't know the mechanics of ARC, which to my mind is an integral part of Scientology. Reality has been regarded either as agreement or solids. So when working with Scientolipedia I have been careful not to emphasise my disagreements with what they're doing. But I have disagreements and not revealing them anywhere is what I find frustrating, bordering on out integrity. So you get a basin full of them here.
This is a very rough statement, things are gradients and I'm ignoring the gradients here: I made very little case progress from the time I started OT III, in 1967, until the time I gave up trying to do audited NOTs (late 80s). In that long period I did the Happiness Rundown course and internship and learned a lot which was useful later with regard to auditing. In the late 80s I started to co-audit with two others doing sort of research. We started working with John Mace's work. Since that time I've made loads of progress but I cannot say that I am able to communicate with anybody and anything easily in any sort of circumstances and I conclude from that that I'm not Grade 0 (a Scientology term).
As a result of my experience I'm not in agreement with talking about completions, because it tends to imply that the person has achieved a certain state which will last forever. I am also in disagreement with auditing run downs insofar as they are regarded as completed actions with an end phenomenon. My basic approach to auditing, what has work for me famously in the last few years, is to find things which the preclear is dissatisfied with in himself (unwanted conditions) and handle those. If the preclear can't find any specific unwanted conditions you can offer him the grades (or better said, grade processes) to improve his abilities. So I would run grade processes but OT processes and run downs like the L's are an anathema to me.
Added 13th of November 2015.
Amongst the auditing I got was about three or four years of telephone auditing for an hour six days a week. That's a lot of auditing!
I am sceptical of success stories taken shortly after some auditing. My success story is something like this. About 10 years ago my girlfriend/partner was diagnosed as having Alzheimer's. At that time it was a little bit newer than it is now and the Ministry of Health here (Denmark) organised meetings to help people understand it and I went to these. I was extremely shy and uncomfortable (and you can add embarrassed), amongst other things worried about what people thought about me and if I ought to say something to a nearby person. Now when I go to this sort of a meeting I am not very sociable but all the shyness and uncomfortableness has gone. That I call a very significant gain. But as I say I am not a Grade 0 (communication) release.
One of the Scientology basics I learnt, and this was first when I ran a Personal Efficiency course in Dublin in 1957, was the question of Stable Data and Confusion. People who've been in the church at a specific time have certain stable data. One datum they have is the importance of the bridge, a datum I do not have any stability on! Another stable datum they have, as far as I can see, is that L.Ron Hubbard, was, and always has been a sort of super hero. Following on from this you get the idea that everything which he has instigated through the Church of Scientology is fantastic. My present idea is that a lot of it is a sort of trap, including for example the idea of and the importance of grades and OT levels. Another one is that his methods of organising things, including the way the church is set up, is exemplary.
I think I'll leave it there for today.
Added 14th of November 2015:
this morning I sent the following message out to a number of people and mailing lists:
14th of November 2015. Early morning.
Overnight there has been a terror attack in France, with at least 140 people killed.
It is likely that many will be in a state of shock, trauma, confusion.
It is perhaps useful to remember the Scientology data on Stable Data and Confusion. If that is the case a good course of action is to check around for things that still are stable.
The list/people I sent it to were former Scientologists, and perhaps like me consider themselves Scientologist still. However, I wondered as I have done previously in referring to some of what I consider the basics of Scientology (for which Stable Data and Confusion have for years been one of my choices as a basic) whether most of the readers really understood and could apply basic data like that.
I consider that a very thorough knowledge of ARC, and its component parts Affinity, Reality and Communication are essential parts of Scientology but I wonder often whether those who consider themselves to have been Scientologist, or still are Scientologists, have this deep understanding.
As a simple example, I feel I have a very basic knowledge of how charge is blown. It's just a matter of looking, the complexities of how beings avoid looking are many (and possibly increase as modern civilisation becomes complex). And, doubting Thomas as I am, I wonder if these people who have training in very high areas like the Ls and Class XII understand this. (I'll end off this now as I'm pretty busy, there's going to be a get-together here shortly and I need to tidy up the flat, prepare some refreshments, and I have sent out an extra message inviting others to come if they want to discuss this tragic and in fact terrible occurrence in France.)
Tuesday, November 17, 2015.
The last few days I have been a bit busy: terror attack in France (where I felt I should tell those listening/reading about Stable Data and Confusion, even though I didn't feel they would understand it in that context!), a concert where I lost my keys (!), the meeting on Saturday here which was a little get together, where six (Ex)-Scientologists chatted informally. At this last four of them, in the course of the conversation handling other things as well, told of places where they had used Scientology quietly and discreetly and sometimes not proclaiming that it was Scientology. One of them use it on his son, the study Tech, and rescued him from going into small criminality. I was also busy yesterday co-auditing (using Skype) and today a friend has been round and reorganise my furniture here so maybe I would be more efficient, and certainly I won't die prematurely of tripping over all the loose wires under my feet when I'm working with the computer!
But the things I've been talking about or writing here recently have been simmering on the back of my mind, so we go over to that.
There have been subtle, what you could call gradient, changes in Scientology from the very beginning. One I had my attention on was that in the beginning, in the 50s, and this where a lot of good Tech was developed, Ron proclaimed that we would not expand Scientology, or work towards it, until he felt we had all the tech. In the 60s, probably around the time when he developed Gradation Chart he said, so to speak, now we could pull the plugs out and expand.
He introduced the Seven Division Org Board and in a lecture he gave on 23 August 1966 (I believe) he told us it was based on org board from a very ancient civilisation which survived many, many years. But in that civilisation they didn't have a Qual Division and that was their downfall! I was left with the impression that we would survive many, many, many years! But we didn't expand, apparently, to the degree that he wanted us to. And he gave lectures saying this, perhaps in the direction of that we were good but we had a little weak point which was getting new people in. The last division (actually Division Six, it was last in the way the org was written up) was expanded into three divisions, giving us the Nine Division Org Board. And this would now cause us to expand (exclamation ;-) ). It didn't. Ron introduce more pugnacious methods of expanding like The Birthday Game!
Added fourth of February 2016:
this is edited from a letter I have just written, someone I recently established contact with who had been Flag Word Clearer for some years. It is an excerpt and I have slightly edited it.
I'm still willing to review my basic attitude to auditing, and certainly to discuss it, as I think is extremely important. Actually there are so many aspects to it. One aspect is of course one of the early sort of sayings of Scientology and I haven't a clue where it comes, but it is the idea that a person (being) is basically good. So I suppose you could say an attitude I have is to let the person grow. That ties up with not invalidating or evaluating. It ties up with granting beingness.
With regard to the question of CRA, [in the 50s Ron talked about CRA, and communication being the most important, and my correspondent had disputed this order of importance] my background is that very early on (1957) I spent (and this could be of interest to you as an experienced word clearer) six months where every evening I got people to tell me what their understanding of the words affinity, reality and communication were and on top of that to get them to get a sort of consensus among themselves on what it meant (this was groups of I suppose 7 to 15 people, a new group every week). For me you can't have affinity or reality on anything unless there is some communication with it - you can't perceive it without communication - but then this emphasises the importance of really word clearing affinity, reality and communication!
2016 February 27 – "no breakfast for me thanks"
For many years I did not eat breakfast. I think it began in the 1970s but my recollection is poor.
In the 70s I went in for being of vegan in of rather extreme form called Natural Health. Amongst other things it was based on an account they had found where a conqueror in the Middle East/Asia Minor area about 2000 years ago had conquered a nation and that nation was forced to feed the conquering army. In the account it was stated that an ameliorating factor (for the country's economy) was that the army only ate once a day in the evening and the conclusion Natural Health drew from that was that you can certainly conquer countries on one meal a day not eating breakfast! I also heard later that breakfast (Break Fast) was introduced in England in the 17th or 18th century amongst upper (or middle) class ladies where they started to drink chocolate in the mornings to pass the time of day. (Chocolate had recently been introduced to Europe as a result of colonisation.) Implication breakfast was not eaten, and then at first only among the leisured classes.
In that period I was living a normal life, often cycling daily into Copenhagen and back which some of the time was 26 km and doing standing work running either a printing machine or copy machine, and in the early 80s on Scientology courses and getting auditing.
I left natural hygiene on a gradient, but stayed a vegetarian for some time and even today I don't eat mammals, only (above vegetarian things) fish, milk and eggs. I only started eating a light breakfast when an alternative (to medicine) therapist seemed concerned (heavily) about it since I was eating 10 pills in the morning (seven "alternative" vitamin D and minerals, and three pills against strokes and brain haemorrhage). I could see the possibility of that on an empty stomach might be destructive to stomach walls, although now writing this I rather doubt it!
This was recently brought to my attention when I went to a practitioner of Chinese medicine to get a tendency towards balancing difficulties when cycling handled. The practitioner asked me a lot about myself. Looking back it's possible that she either did not listen to me carefully, or asked the wrong questions, and there is also the possibility of a language difficulty in that I've only been speaking Danish for half my life! I suspect that she imagined that I was not eating breakfast at the moment. Anyway I got a good deal of talk about how important it was to start the day with a good breakfast, including rather specific instructions about what I should eat.
Although it's possible that the balance problem is handled and I certainly seem to got a lot more energy, these results may have come from the acupuncture and I certainly feel that my philosophy about looking after one's body is vastly different from hers. However I bring this up here because of another aspect. I am 86, and despite six attacks of cancer and some other things which have been handled well by the Danish health service I'm in very good form. I do spend some time wondering what that is due to, and I think the fact that I came into Scientology is largely responsible for my being able to live beyond the age of 40 or 50. And apart from luck, there must be 20 to 50 other factors which help me along the way physically. However this little incident got me to wonder whether the fact that for years I didn't eat breakfast also is a contributory factor to my being fit and active at this age.
Of course the important thing is what works and in writing this I came to think of having heard on the news about children who didn't have a good breakfast before they went to school having difficulty in school which was handled by their having breakfast. So you use what works and not some (logical or not logical) theory that sounds great but doesn't work!
Perhaps I should explain that an idea that I got from Natural Hygiene (I think) was that one's digestive system worked best when one rested especially sleeping, and if you were using your body, especially manually, energy required for physical activity could not be used for digestion.
And that's the end of that little ragbag stuff :-) .
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The above edited slightly on 29 November 2015. If you care to comment on anything drop me a note using the Contact Ant box on the left. Unless you forbid it I may print it here (so mind your language!).
The following two links (to be used later) were put there when I first started this page.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDGy2Q9qR70
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmations_(L._Ron_Hubbard)
