Sounds kind of circular, doesn’t it?
Well it is.
Most Scientologists are stuck in the circular trap of trying to use Scientology to understand Scientology.
You can see them on the Internet, using an LRH reference to explain another LRH reference.
For example: How do we know the reactive mind exists?
Because we have engrams that kick in on us when the present time environment approximates past bad incidents that are stored in the reactive mind.
And another: How do we know that we are a thetan?
Because theta postulates and perceives.
In order to fully understand Scientology, you have to step outside of Scientology to understand it.
For instance: How do we know the reactive mind exists?
Because Freud said there was an “Id”, an “Ego”, and a “Super-ego”. How do those ideas correspond with the “Analytical Mind”, “Reactive Mind”, and “Somatic Mind”? How does the neuroscience idea of a “Lizard Brain” correspond with the idea of a Reactive Mind?
When you start stepping out of Scientology in order to understand Scientology, you start to get somewhere. It is when a Scientologist begins to do this, that he starts to widen his understanding of Scientology, and the proper contexts in which its ideas exist.
Shift the proper context for an idea, or delete it entirely, and you can make a slave.
This, of course, is an application of Scientology’s Logic 8: “A datum can be evaluated only by a datum of comparable magnitude.”
Which of course originated from Alfred Korzybski, not from L Ron Hubbard. When you understand Logic 8 from within the context of Alfred Korzybski’s Science and Sanity, you get much farther than you would had you stayed within Hubbard’s bubble and only looked at its context from within Scientology.
If you want Scientology to actually free you, then you should never try to use Scientology to understand Scientology. When you can see Scientology this way, you can see that Scientology’s best and most constructive use is as a stepping stone to other spiritual ideas and philosophies, never a place to hole up and stagnate.
Ah, okay, I get what you´re saying. I agree, emphatically! Keep searching, fear no data. Give up the scientological fixation on CERTAINTY and embrace uncertainty and absurdity and paradox…and allow ¨i-don´t-know¨ to drive efforts to understand life and others and self…and , whoa, ENJOY the process. 🙂
Hubbard also advised people to look at the subject of scientology VERY CRITICALLY in an Ability magazine from 1959(yeah, the ol´ confusion method at work). Good advice, finally, for viewing any philosophy…Ironically, Hubbard setting himself up as ¨Source¨ and establishing KSW policy is the final, whacked-out sabotage of an already-shaky bricolage of ¨sciency¨ and ¨truthy¨ ideas…Ironic, too, that anyone who created or contributed anything workable or helpful to the ¨tech¨ ended up declared or simply left …
speaking of Will Durant, have you seen this:
http://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/1434/6496/original.jpg
That is quite a find!!
I would not recommend using scientology as a stepping stone to other spiritual ideas and philosophies. Bypass it.
Having said that…Nice post-again. 🙂 Thank you!
I understand, and agree.
But for those who have already taken the step of getting into Scientology like I did, I say don’t introvert into it. Use Scientology to keep moving.
(I’m trying to find positive and constructive – and accurate – ways of re-positioning Scientology to play the role – in hindsight – it actually played in my life.)
I see a lot of indies holding on to Scientology for dear life. And staying introverted into it. To the point of even cutting off the discussion of ideas that question Scientology. They must believe that Scientology was supposed to be an end in itself.
Well, yes, LRH did tell them that. So they believed it.
But enough time has passed, and more than enough evidence has emerged, to show that Scientology, at best, was only a means to an end, and never was an end in itself.
For me it was a great introduction to a lot of spiritual ideas. And it was a way that I could study a low level philosophy and interact with others who were also interested in doing this. But it was just an introduction. Even Hubbard said this in the beginning when he wrote Dianetics and positioned it with Will Durant’s work.