Another thought provoking article from Terra Cognita.
Now that I’m Out of Scientology…Am I Still a Thetan?
I grew up in an atheist home where religion was the “opiate of the people” and spiritual beings were the stuff of fairy tales. I kept these beliefs to myself when I first walked in the front doors of the local Org.
A few years later, George Lucas had discovered the Force, and I began to accept that there was more to me than my corporeal self. Maybe there weren’t enough gray cells inside my noggin to hold all my memories after all. The majority of people on the planet believed they were spiritual beings in one form or another. Was I a fool to think otherwise?
I was taught in school that all life began in some cosmic mud puddle millions of years ago, and that I was nothing more than an evolved and animated collection of elements assembled from the Periodic Chart. Darwin declared that my ancestors used to swing from trees, and beer commercials cautioned me that I only went around once in life. LRH had other ideas.
The Big Trifecta
According to LRH theory, we are thetans—spiritual beings—that have minds and bodies. I got the body thing. The thetan/mind part was harder to “make my own.” That I’d lived for quadrillions of years was slightly unreal to a meat and potatoes guy.
How does one prove the existence of something with no mass, no wave length, no nothing? By the fall of an e-meter needle? Or from the memories of past of lives? Or do we just take the word of someone who claimed to have thoroughly researched the subject and guaranteed salvation?
It’s one thing to discard LRH’s work as fiction. It’s another to reject the possibility of a spiritual existence.
Soul vs. Meat
After having thought I was a thetan for the last few decades, it’s hard to wrap my head around becoming a lonely piece of meat again, and thinking that when I die, that’s all she wrote. Religions commonly prey on this inherent human fear and most promise a better existence in the “next life” if we just follow their strict guidelines.
Whether out of fear or naiveté, it’s tough to believe I’m nothing more than a bag of bones, and that there isn’t some kind of “force” or “other world energy” behind all my synapses and neurons snapping and popping in a pre-determined manner.
Do I have proof of any of this? Not a shred.
LRH said in the beginning there was a “cause.” Which I guess was as good a place as any to jump start the universe. From there, though, things get a little sketchy.
An aside: I loved an episode of Star Trek, The Next Generation in which Captain Picard asked his Klingon officer, Worf, if he’d like to say or do something for his fallen comrade before they shoved him out the airlock. Worf’s response was to tell his captain to do whatever he wanted with the body. It was but a vessel for the soul and his friend was long gone. If a warrior like Worf believed there was more to us than mere flesh and bones, maybe I could, too!
Past Lives
That one is a spiritual being doesn’t necessarily mean one’s lived past lives. Then again, it’s hard to divorce the two concepts.
Are we gullible to think there’s a next life waiting for us? Nobody likes to be duped. Lots of people, however, swear they remember incidents from past lives. Others contend these are mockups—mere figments of the imagination. I never bought the whole heaven and hell idea. Nor that I was a cockroach last lifetime, even if the MAA thinks otherwise.
Per LRH’s model of the universe, we’ve lived quadrillions of lifetimes. Or was that trillions of lifetimes over quadrillions of years? How about a thousand? How about a hundred? Six? Two of which were spent in the bodies of cocker spaniels?
So many of his “theories” on spirituality don’t make sense—not the least of which are his one’s on how we arrived on this planet. If I’m not mistaken, we flew here via Pan Am on a DC 8, and the blonde stewardess’s name was Sally, right?
But what if LRH was partly right? What if we really have lived before? Just because my memory sucks and I can’t remember what I had for breakfast, doesn’t mean that some sort of mechanism—be it biological or metaphysical—isn’t preventing my recall from when I used to make the run from Orion to Andromeda.
On the other hand, these memories may well be the result of a fertile imagination. One way or the other, take care, Ron; I hear Karma’s a bitch.
Thetan vs. Operating Thetan
One of LRH’s favorite carrots was the incredible powers and abilities members would attain by going OT—becoming an operating thetan. Everything from total recall of one’s “whole track,” and “cause over life,” to freedom from bedbugs was promised. Of course, none were ever achieved. I never did win the lottery or get that spoon to bend, and those that attested to these lofty states were forced to rationalize like mad.
A person can’t help but operate, whether he’s spiritual being or not. From the bum napping on the sidewalk to the runner breaking the tape at the finish line, everyone makes decisions all day long. Deciding to get out of bed in the morning is OT. How can one not be an operating thetan?
By being a T-bone steak?
Last Word
If I’m reincarnated after I die, great. If not, I won’t care.
I’d be interested to hear other’s views on Scientology’s influence on their spirituality. Have you lived other lives, or is this it for you? Are you a thetan as described by LRH, some kind of hybrid, or a steak sandwich?
Still not Declared, Terra Cognita
P.S. Cheers to Mike R. for providing this platform and for all he does.
Terra Cognita,
I believed I lived before this life, from a very young age. I had an out of body experience when I was electrocuted to death, literally, at the age of 11… I had recall of things that were from previous lives but being raised Catholic, never heard of such a thing, so thought I was crazy. It wasn’t until I saw the 1987 TV miniseries, Out on a Limb, by Shirley McLain, that I went, WHAT?! OMG!!! You mean there are other people in this world that believe the crazy things I do?!?! I was 22…
And Terra Cognita,
The idea of heaven is spiritual and gives my religious friends great comfort, especially knowing that they will one day reunite with their deceased loved ones when their body dies. (I am referring especially to three women I’m close to who have lost a child.)
One thing that I would like to alert others about – specially ex Scientologists – is about the possible dangers that exist in the decompression stage of getting free of a cult, and recovering our critical thinking.
In realizing that we had been fooled by LRH in his many promises for higher and “powerful” spiritual states, the usual tendency is to begin to reject ideas/concepts that we have not previously rejected. Ideas such as “Past Lives”, “Reincarnation”, “Life after Death”, “OBEs” (Exteriorization or “Out-of-Body Experiences”), “Mind over Body”, etc, etc; can become a charged subject after realizing that we were part of a cult, and that our trusted “leader” wasn’t exactly honest in his “research” and claims about such subjects.
As many of us – if not MOST of us – did not have any prior experience to amount to anything in those subjects before our involvement with Scn, we can erroneously begin to think of them as silly and unreal, and start developing an unnatural and exaggerated sense of skepticism towards those paranormal or esoteric subjects. A skepticism that divorce itself very easily from rational inquiry and open mindedness, and fixate oneself in dogmatic denial.
I don’t think that the greatest harm from Scn comes from its cultish aspects which trap us all under the undue influence of it all, while suppressing our critical thinking. I think that Scientology’s greatest harm comes from making us to abandon our beliefs and interest in subjects that were previously interesting and real to us. And with such a desertion, an unusual skeptical attitude is born to avoid going through the pain of believing all over again. We do not want any more disappointments and hopes that would only turn into dissatisfaction and failed purposes. And thus, many of us prefer to go back to a “normal” life where the original dream of achieving higher levels of spiritual awareness and abilities is but an ancient memory of some “stupid” dream that we once had.
What many of us does not know, is that those subjects had been INTENSELY studied by dozens of researchers over the last decades, in competent, objective, and totally scientific ways. They have been studied under strict experimental settings by well known and respected scholars with REAL credentials and scientific knowledge. And their findings are fascinating to say the least.
But there is a door-stop to the dissemination of such knowledge due to fundamentalists who dismiss any evidence that threaten their fixed beliefs and their “convenient truths”. Just as there are religious fundamentalists believing w/out any evidence whatsoever in supernatural causes because of a charismatic leader who condition their thinking process; in the same way we have dogmatic deniers who see any evidence as “absurd” and “impossible” w/out even examining them. This is the other face of the coin of fundamentalism, not unlike those “scientists” that attempted us to believe that we were just animals driven by survival instincts. These are the hardcore skeptics; the shatterers of dreams and hopes.
They are not after truth with an open mind attitude believing that anything is possible; they are after the status quo, and the destruction of the hope for the new and different.
Skepticism is a good trait of a scientist. It keep us objective and unbiased. But it can easily turn into an irrational “It is not real” attitude not born out of facts, but out of confirmation bias and fear of the unknown. Skepticism needs to go hand to hand with open mindedness, reason, and the willingness to accept what the evidence point us towards.
Today, these hardcore skeptics dominate the mainstream media and the academia, and they can mold the “public” opinion with their coordinated and insidious efforts, and turn hope into hopelessness, and the thrill of discovery into a dull existence.
So my advice to you all, my friends; do not lose hope for a life of higher spiritual awareness and abilities, but read and educate yourselves in those subjects that you used to love and be interested in. Use competent researches carried out by competent unbiased scientists. Be open minded about knowledge, and do not reject the obvious evidence, w/out losing objectivity and critical thinking neither.
LRH fooled us all, and broke our hopes and dreams. But we can always dream again and achieve real success this time around. Just never lose your power of choice over data again nor your critical thinking; never replace your capacity for observation for the authoritarian ideas of ANY leader or ANY “expert”; never violate the Human and civil Rights of others with the excuse of “Freedom of religion”; and if you do all that, you won’t ever be fooled again by anybody, and most importantly, you won’t be fooled by yourself.
Live long and prosper the human spirit! Use these links as you see fit.
http://www.skepticalaboutskeptics.org/
http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/Pioneers/index.html
Best,
Peter
Peter, I think it’s perfectly respectable to believe in things strictly because I WANT to so long as I admit that’s the reason and so long as my beliefs can’t be disproved. I believe in reincarnation because I want to. I couldn’t care less about seeking supportive evidence for it.
The funny thing about many people, the spiritual types and the militant atheist types is they don’t care so much about their experience of life as they do about their INTERPRETATION of their experience. It’s what they THINK about it that matters to them, not what it actually is! Does that make sense?
Indeed LRH fooled us for a while and maybe broke some peoples’ hopes and dreams but those hopes and dreams needed to be broken. In my radical, non-humble opinion, hopes dreams are just self-righteous substitutes for having a good time.
When I was 16 I had my first psychedelic experience with LSD. Before you dismiss anything else I have to say because of it being “DRUGS” related please stop that thought stopping device and give yourself a chance to look. It is NOT true that “all drugs are essentially poisons” and it is not true that all drug experiences are invalid purely because they are drug experiences.
That first single experience utterly changed my life forever. It was only about 8 hours long but was without a shadow of doubt the single most profound experience of my entire life. I have since become a father of three children. Those experiences are not of the same order of magnitude at all even though they are obviously very significant.
I got into the church some 6 years later as a direct result of not having found anything else at that time that came remotely close to explaining what I had experienced with LSD.
It is a fact that the set and setting and your expectations going in have a great deal to do with how a psychedelic experience will go. It is also true that expectations can be made through suggestions of others as to the nature of the experience. For instance when LSD was first being researched it was believed to mimic a psychotic state and those research subjects pretty much experienced some kind of psychotic state whether or not the experience was a tough one. Later the belief changed and you would now be expected to have a “religious experience”. And indeed that is what many people experienced.
So it can be dismissed as all being down to suggestion. Whatever you believed the experience was about is what it turns out to be about. Perhaps this is so. But it leaves a lot of things to be explained, including my own experience.
I shan’t bore you with all the details but I want to pose a question I have yet to see answered in a satisfactory way and perhaps it cannot be answered.
As an apparent 16 year old kid with no past lives and no real notion of what a spiritual being might even be I saw a tremendous range of religious “visions”. These can of course be dismissed as hallucinations as indicated above. So I may have read something about LSD providing a religious experience.
What cannot be explained by suggestion alone – which at most would consist of a few words and some ideas – is what the visions were like. Not so much how “real” they appeared but their actual construction, the architecture, design and artistic elements. I can assure you these were of a quality far beyond anything I could have purely imagined on my own at age 16 or even today.
How this kind of experience can be explained, or explained away, has been with me as questions ever since.
I make no claims as to what I believe they were as I really have no idea at all. But I can absolutely say they were not merely the result of suggestion.
Interested party, I had a similar experience to yours. And… This experience with acid (it was a “yellow sunshine”) actually determine that a bit later I started scientology to attain without LSD those higher state of beingness I experienced with LSD and also with grass.
I took LSD about 8 times, starting in 1971 and the last time in 1972. When I reached scientology I told this story. And was sent to qual to a class VIIII who entirely duplicate what i experienced, thus I continued with scientology.
But let me describe the most spiritual one. First when I take LSD I had no idea what it was about, only that you had hallucination and it was funny. And the first trip I had I felt that I was so fast thinking, pretty much smart. One has to know that before having psychedelique experience I was mainly interested in seducing pretty girls, that was the game I had most fun.
But let me tell the experience that changed my life : I was with some friends in Amsterdam. We were kind of hippy. And we took a yellow sunshine. We were walking on the street. I stopped in front of a church, and I just looked at it. A friend of mine told me earlier that the key to enlightment was to be fully in present time (that was before any contact with scientology) So I started to do a kind of TR0 with the church. Under LSD things seems to change of significance, it’s what I understood. Hallucination are caused by a phenomenon of going through layer of significance that you project on things. So in front of my very eyes that church became a temple of a long forgotten religion, always I had a feeling of “deja vu”, It was like a trip through the time track, each metamorphosis having a taste of long gone emotion, perception. Then the hallucination became a mix of colors, no actual form… Suddenly all the particule of the univers seemed to do “quack” and all became clear again and it was full present time and the experience was such that it was almost unbearable of beauty.
I felt I was as tall as the monument I was looking at. I was not in my head but like a little cat I was like on my inside of the shoulder. I didn’t have any thought I was fully aware of the environnement perceiving it with more dimension, like if it was more real, more depth. I was free of time, there was no time. I had no identity, no history, and inside of me explosed a feeling of joy, actually it was there. I realized It was the normal state of me. This thought was painful as it reminded my day to day state… a miserable state of someone who is the shadow of himself.
And this thought (key in) ended that state of release. And then I was feeling lost. I knew I had lost myself.
I studied many things to return to what I called a native state : Krishnamurti, Buddha, a lot…. But none of them gave a practical key how to return to that state.
When I read Dianetics Evolution of a Science where LRH describe the state of Clear, I knew that I was after that.
At my second session of solo not’s a I reached again that state, it was incredible, and now was stable. I didn’t have any mind nor any interference and was in full empathy with the universe. That was spiritual freedom, Scientology had delivered what it promised.
But under the guidance of Miscavige, scientoloy has become a treason where someone would be punished now if he ever reached such a state. Being OT, I became very perceptive, and I knew management was lying.
I was suppressed when they percieved that I didn’t like management, felt they were betraying Hubbard and that Miscavige was an SP who would oppose spiritual freedom.
And here I am, and I am glad to see that the most of you have not abandonned their spiritual inclination.
My life is hard, 30 years of Miscavige was like living under a totalitarian government. I was young, I am over sixty and being not in a perfect health I spent 40 years trying to reach the state of OT, gave all my money to the church. I am a failed homo spiens.
I will never blame Hubbard, he did his best and was not perfect but could duplicate this desire for the state of OT.
Miscavige is an ennemy of spirituality, he is younger than me. I am affraid I’ll die before him and never see his fall. Be aware of that, he is the cause that you didn’t fulfill your hope with scientology.
He has destroyed Hubbard legaçy.
You’re delusional if you think that Hubbard did his best. Wake up. Scientology was a fraud from day one, orchestrated by Hubbard and unleashed on gullible people whose life has a spiritual void.
John MacGhee I don’t think Hubbard intended a fraud. It became a totalitarian group. But Hubbard worked hard to developpe the tech. It doesnt fulfill all it’s promised, but appiled with intelligence and kindness it can help.
Correct John. He never did any real research. He just made up crap then lied about it. That is documented well enough so that only those who don’t want to know the truth are scammed.
Beautifully written and thought-provoking!
Reincarnation or just dead and gone are both the same thing in this life. The you that you are in this life is gone either way, so what does it matter? I am amazed more and more as I read all this Scientology stuff and learn more about all the garbage that this so called religion has managed to get their followers to believe in. I feel for all the X-scientologist who are now trying to sort thru all the BS and come to a new and comfortable place in their lives. As a total outsider, I see two pressing matters. 1 – Something needs to be done to get rid of this psychopath David. 2 – Disconection policies have got to end.
I will keep watching and hoping with all I have to see the day when this “church” will fall.
Good luck to all of you.
Great article! I have read that that science answers the “what” and “how” of creation. However it can’t answer the why. That is where faith comes in. My personal journey leads me to a Creator who loves his creation. I think the difficult part of faith is accepting the “mystery”. As created finite beings, we can not fully grasp the cosmic “why are we here”. Mccaren made a great point, to paraphrase: live in the now and show compassion to others.
I believe Mike’s blog provides a positive safe space. He is an example of someone who has experienced the “siege mentality” of KSW, but has been able to heal in a beautiful way. I am thankful to see that he has kept his humor and empathy. Unfortunately there are those who can’t seem to let go of the attack mentality. So sad.
Ann, science cannot answer the “how” at this time. Thus there is no extant theory of origin of life. There are loose ideas but no actual scientific theories.
Ann/Mike
There is a scientific theory (eternal inflation) which attempts to explain the “why”. The implication is that in an infinite multiverse you exist because you have to exist. There is no why, your existence is simply inevitable.
I can’t possibly do it justice, but if you’re intruiged I would highly recommend a book by Professor Brian Cox called Human Universe which discusses the theory in part. In fact I would go further and say everyone on the planet should read this book.
The conclusion towards the end of the book was so stunning and shocking to me, with a strange ring of truth, that I still feel quite emotional about it.
Personally, I don’t feel at all spiritual. I’m a scientist at heart (albeit extremely amateur) so a theory which explains the “oddness” of our existence was very welcome to me, and may be to others.
I’ve read it Sid. It isn’t a qualified scientific theory as there is no real way to test it and thus, falsify it. It is simply an idea. Nothing more.
It suffers from the same fatal flaw as any of the past proposed “theories on origin of life) have.
I’m sorry to nitpick but it is a theory. “theory” does not mean something can be proven. You’re right though, it is an idea, and is also a theory. Idea and theory are synonyms for each other. You obviously don’t like this theory, although you don’t explain why. Is it because it doesn’t involve a God?
The problem is that the “why” is not relevant.
The “why” is a human question. The universe isn’t human. Asking questions like “why is there something” or “why are we here”, we expect answers to make emotional sense to us and to revolve around us. When observing the natural world, asking “why” is like asking why people don’t fall off earth in Australia – it’s a mistaken reference system. The gravity that build your sense of up and down does not apply when you leave its influence.
It’s the same when you leave the sphere of human influence. The universe does not revolve around us. It wasn’t built by humans or for humans. It’s a cold dark place mostly hostile to life, where our end is not a question of “if” but of “when”. The slightest fluke in the vast energies that surround us might signify our end. It has happened to the dinosaurs before us. No angels, demons or grand battles – a banal, tiny, on a cosmic scale, piece of rock hurtling towards our small blue home, and all of us are toast.
This is understandably frightening.
Holy Mackle there, Kemist, that’s a bleak summation of our existence! I will agree the “why” question is a false one but the gloomy reality you’re describing is not the universe, it’s your state of mind! If we must be treated to somebody’s summation of existential reality let’s hear from somebody who will report lots of fun and a down-to-earth philosophy. The ‘Surfer Dude’ doctrine for example.
This discussion has been so much like sitting in front of a fire with friends. Granted friends that differ from my past scilon friends. I always wanted to discuss tech, talk wins and dissect concepts. I got subtly shut down for years.
Here and on this blog I’m finding those campfire friends who will wile away the hours, telling their opinions and rebutting other ideas. It is stimulating, and mind opening. My mind needs to be opened.
I went into the cherch because I’d already experienced past life memory and no one was ever safe to discuss it with. And for many years only my auditors knew this as you weren’t supposed to talk about your case.
Geesh, way to shut me down when I thought I’d found the right place people.
But now that I’ve left, I find I’m not alone, and it’s OK to talk about my case. Before I joined the cherch I remembered a past death in some detail and it freed up a freaked out part of me.
So I dived in to go up the bridge. And it got weirder and weirder on the upper levels. We called ourselves pioneers to justify our rough treatment in auditing, re-studying changing tech, screaming at ethics, awful directives from management that were just so wrong and yet we stayed. Because we were thetans and we were tough.
Well now that I’m out, it turns out I can be me and me is kind and is spiritual and still knows I’ve lived before and loves to discuss, and pick apart old tech I lived with to decide what to do with my old stable datums.
I knew I wasn’t my body before, and sometimes I dressed up my body like it was a doll and was proud of it. Like a game, and sometimes I lived to fast and full I felt neither man nor woman, I just was.
Well one of the labels I have shed is scientologist. I’m still tough, I’m still strong, but now I’m more alive because being alive for me means being that spiritual being I am by whatever name the wise thinkers of the ages have called it.
And I can talk about it.
Mike, thank you so much for this forum of spiritual thinkers you have gathered and for supplying the kindling to voomp into the fire that lights my smile.
Terra, keep it up. Can you talk about friendship and the withering effect of it in the light of the cherch?
Love your attitude
“Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?” — Douglas Adams
You mean…there’s not fairies at the bottom of it? Wow! I’ve really got to stop drinking so early…
Well written.Your articles illuminate the decompression process exceptionally well.
Seems useful for current Koolaid drinkers who are starting to to think.”Just image there is no pony under that pile of manure”
But also useful for people are are decompressed and still have an interest in helping those who are still in but cannot achieve your clarity of writing because we are not stewing in the soup anymore.
It seems the decompression proces easily takes10 years for those of us who got out at an older age.It is a little bit like learning to walk and talk after a stroke.
I cannot recommend David Eagleman’s work enough when it comes to this topic.
Next time anyone is bored or not sure what to watch of an evening download his 6 part series “The Brain”.
He even uses Scientology as one of his test subjects.
Hands down the best deconstruction and presentation of what we know today about consciousness.
The series is on both BBC iPlayer and I believe PBS.
Even before scientology I thought I was not a body. Very simple point. On is a point of awarness or aware of being aware is quite a good definition. The point is can you from a subjective viewpoint imagine not to be ?
You are ! Actually it’s a prison of beingness. You can’t stop to be “I”. In any state you are. Is it so after death ?
Well, nobody knows, but for sure one cannot imagine not to be, because if he would imagine a state of not being he would still be to perceive it.
Aside “near death exerience” tend to demonstrate the existence of beingness and perception beyond the body being dead for a short time.
But spiritualism is the “natural” idea regarding the experience of being. A philosopher like Bergson was disserting well on that subject.
Now if you believe you are a spiritual being you of course are concerned with the quality of your journey in the after life. Thus come the idea of a confortable eternity, heaven and hell, and at this point they make you pay the toll, those son of a bitch !
Garanty of good eternity is an old eternity insurance. Very much practiced by Christians with donations, now by Muslims (If you die for Allah you go in paradise), and of course by Miscavige to garanty your eternity in giving to the IAS, and make sure scientology will be there when you come back.
“Secure your eternity” is how they pay for IAS. Don’t waste any minute go up the bridge before it’s too late and you become a lost soul in the dark. (you secure your eternity but didn’t secure your home in this lifetime and have a life of financial crippling)
This is not scientology, but basic religion which was used by Miscavige. Hubbard when he was alive and well would laugh about this argument and would demonstrate how it is used to suck money out of superstitious people.
“If you die for Allah you go to Paradise.” And every male gets 72 dark eyed virgins….
Hubbard (and definitely Demento) strikes me as having a solipsism view of the world, “I think, therefore you are.”
I live, therefore I surf…..
I like the idea that I am a spiritual being.
People believe all sorts of things and really nobody knows for sure.
That being said, I think it’s a good idea to live this life as if it might be the only one. The cult liked to use the idea of “coming back” as an excuse to get you to die in debt and miserable because “next life” you will be in a higher condition. (That sucks)
“If I’m reincarnated after I die, great. If not, I won’t care.” This is exactly the conclusion I came to and the decision I made. Who cares? Whatever happens will happen and there’s sweet blow all I can do about it. What will be will be. What’s the point of getting one’s bowels into a knot about it?
If you read Carl Sagan’s book, A Demon-Haunted World, you’ll find out that there isn’t a shred of evidence about a life hereafter (nor to support the landing of UFO’s either, for that matter). It’s an easy read and I highly recommended it. It certainly helped me unravel a few misconceptions about it. The book is in print and can be ordered.
Another very interesting book I recommend from the bottom of my heart, is Lyall Watson’s, Lifetides. In it, you’ll see that the DNA of clay crystals is very similar to the human DNA, so there’s a chance that Darwin’s idea that we come from mud takes on a new dimension. Did Darwin say we came from mud or was it Hubbard who said he said this? Hubbard loved to trash the professionals and did it arrogantly and with regularity.
If anyone does read these two most interesting books, I’d love to hear what you thought of them and if they changed anything for you. I must say, I decided that I could take or leave the whole question and just get on with my life as happily as I could and it was a good decision. No more taking life and myself so seriously. What for, for heavens sake? It’s paying off!
Your writing just gets better and better, Terra Cognita. Brilliant.
Bravo, Terra Cognita, for throwing out a meaty bone to chew on!
It is therapeutic to revisit foundational concepts I’ve accepted as fact when indoctrinating myself into the cult.
My response to the question posed in the title of the post: Short Answer…it doesn’t matter!
Another commenter said, to paraphrase, if when you die, you’re dead and that’s that, then you won’t know any different and it means it doesn’t matter.
But let’s say one is a thetan, or some version of discrete Consciousness, well that complicates things quite a bit. It means the whole question of what happens to one in an afterlife is wide open.
Probably the healthiest approach is, “WTF, I’ll get to that bridge when I cross it.” To try to divine, while still here on earth, what happens in the afterlife means entering a densely-packed minefield of Opinions, Dogma, Agendas and all sorts of other human attempts to manipulate people to other ends.
The reason for this is that there is simply no objective evidence regarding the afterlife, and to open an inquiry into this subject means sifting through human ideas about it.
Commenter Thetaclear posted a link to an interesting researcher but I just can’t even start with it because I can’t muster the give-a-damn-factor. But that’s just me.
The whole subject is enough to make one throw up one’s hands and say, “religion is the opiate of the masses.”
Okay. All that said…
It is my belief that there is msomethingmore to Life than just, “grabbing all the gusto you can becausen you only go round once in life.”
What that something is, I’m still working it out, on sort of a casual basis. For now, I’m having a ball having discussions about the nature of Consciousness with a very smart, perceptive long time friend, now also out of Scientology altogether.
Gawd life is good!
So…if anyone gives a damn about John Doe’s opinion about whether or not one is still a thetan;
1. I belive there is a spiritual existence beyond the life we know as humans here on earth.
2. Existence as a Thetan, or a discrete unit and identity of Consciousness may or may not not be a stable state.
3. I think the point of us being here may vary from individual to individual. For me, I’m here for the Comedy. But to understand the Mask of Comedy, you have to also understand the Mask of Tragedy. There is a reason they are always shown together.
4. The Beatles were right. It is all about Love.
I was going to go on, but my dinner has arrived. Love to all of you!
Right John, it is all about Love.
I believe in spirituality, I believe we are spiritual beings but I think it is a lifetime journey to understand that really.
Being or not a spirit is how far you are on collision with the physical universe. So much bad experience, pain, grief…. Too many losses and you only rely on physical experience.
The mental universe has space, pleasure of it’s own thought, pictures, memories, an inner knowledge of being of a spiritual nature.
Counter tought, invalidation, pain proove you that you are meat. Sometimes BPC like outlist make someone who was happy and winning to fall on his head. The alteration of the tech by Miscavige and co has made the universe of winning scientologist a pure chaos.
Miscavige is a monster. He has destroyed the tech has made the universe of scientologist shrink. If we could we would judge him and throw him in jail where he belongs
the DM doesn’t belong in jail (for a specific period less time-off for “good behavior”, he deserves a stint in the RPF (run by recovering RPFers who hate his guts), for the indefinite period (many months, years, even decades) he’s subjected so many to for no reason better than questioning his infalibility
When it comes to superimposing some kind of meaning onto our direct experience we can go spiritual or mechanistic. Spiritual people like to escape from reality through believing in higher states of consciousness or heavenly after-life realms. The mechanistic atheists like to escape from reality by drawing a line beyond which they refuse to contemplate as they seem to know full well to go past that line requires a humility their intellectual vanity just won’t abide.
As for myself, I do psychedelic drawings with Prismacolor pencils some of them are pretty good too.
Am I something Hubbard dreamt up?
No !
I refuse to be reduced to sub-human and sacrificed as a product, reflection of Hubbard’s well-illustrated alter-ego. Atop his global pedestal he places his model “Operating Thetan”, as if it were something real. As if that, and all the tech attached to that wretched lie, were worth something and I was some sort of currency. We are fools no more.
Thanks, Cat daddy.
Hi bug, Thank you & cat daddy from me! Love your posts.xo
Hubbtards narcissism always placed him in the center of his universe. Everyone else is just set decorations.
You’re right Cat daddy, you’re not. But I am….I’m just a fig newton of his imagination.
TI: A marvelous piece of thoughtful writing. Thank you for inviting comments.
When I was about 8 years old, playing with three other similarly aged friends in a huge New Jersey field, I suddenly had the fascinating view of myself from about 15 feet above and watching all four of us scramble about. The viewpoint lasted for about 30 seconds. I later spoke to my mother about it and her response was, “Oh, darling, you’ve always had the best imagination!” I never spoke to her again about such things. Though I had no information prior on such subjects, I was fascinated. “Something” had definitely occurred, though I knew not what it was.
In my teens, I discovered that I had a rather strange ability. If someone was in pain and pointed me at a specific area, I could pass my hand over it and realize that the pain was actually coming from another area and that by gently massaging that other area, the claimed area of pain was relieved. That ability is still with me.
My scio experience was primarily 60s and 70s. For the most part, it was terrific experience. I got a LOT from auditing and, other than oatie3, got made gains with everything. (My cog on 3 was simply, “this is Ron’s case, not mine”.)
I really don’t care much “where” Hubbard found it. (It would have been nice had he acked ALL of his sources. But that wasn’t the case.) I don’t think he was “out to get everyone”, as some people do. But his ego sure got the best of him.
Using a lot of the tech, I was able (and still am) to help others. I don’t have to give it a name or identify it. Often just an off the cuff remark can make a shift happen with someone’s life. When it does, it makes me feel good. But I never (any longer) believe that it was the individual who made the change they get all the credit for it.
Auditing gave me another way to looks at things. When I went into session, I was *there* and digging deeply. Why else would I be spending the time and money? It was MY session, not the auditor’s or the CS. No matter what the question or process was, it was mine to dig into. That was what I was there for. And if I made a shift, I took the credit internally for being willing to see and make the necessary changes. I never let the auditor, CS or LRH become the source of my life or “case gain”. (That’s not what I said to the examiner, of course, nor what I wrote in “success stories”. (I always believed that forcing someone to write a success story right after a session or completion was a surefire way of “stopping” the cognition(s). I worked later in a mission which didn’t require that. Instead, we’d let the pc have and keep his wins, offering to listen to him/her whenever s/he felt like telling us. It was amazing at how a long string of cogs could build from a single one when the original one wasn’t “capped” to suit the organization’s purposes.)
I could go on and on, but to what purpose. I just wanted to support your views and congratulate you for your sane approach to the subject.
Love, Peter
Here guys and gals, check this out from an objective viewpoint, and arrive at your own conclusions about it. The way that Dr. Stevenson conducted his research, is the way that I would have done it myself :
http://reluctant-messenger.com/reincarnation-proof.htm
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Souls
“I would have done it myself” shouldn’t be an authenticating sentence for anyone here — unless you’re a credentialed scientist?
That’s just nonsense; speak for yourself, dude; what do you care? What are YOUR credentials?
Unfortunately he missed on the scientific part. As there is NO 100% way to ensure that the subject’s disclosures were NOT fed to them prior, the entire “research” has no real scientific value…
“He missed on the ‘scientific’ part”? That’s nonsense. “There is no way of knowing that the kids were not fed with the data”? Well, did you read/study the whole research in detail? I bet you didn’t, yet are assuming wild things. How’s that for being unscientific about it?
What are the chances that a well known and respected doctor who have been dealing with the subject of past lives for decades, is going to take kids and “fed” them with data? And I thougt that only LRH was paranoid!
Real research, unlike what you think it is, is about two things : 1) Being objective, and 2) Remaining open minded at the same time. It isn’t about accepting only the data that fit with our own personal beliefs. It isn’t about a “Can’t believe it” out of cultural conditioning.
This fixation that “modern” mainstream science has with having to have “physical evidence” to prove the existence of anything is just that, a fixation. Evidence also comes in others forms, like the recording of observable phenomena, and “anecdotal evidence” as well, as the PRIMARY evidence in the field of mental healing. What psychiatrist and clinical psychologist publish in the science journals is basically the accumulated anecdotal evidence of any one method of therapy. And that’s considered as valid.
It is the same with the subject of “Past Lives”. One can only have what others have recalled, and then the verification – physically speaking and by filed records – that such recalled data is true. And that’s ALL there is to it. That’s enough – if done with enough subjects where the pattern is obvious – to at least not deny the existence of past lives. We might not yet know the “How” and the “Why”, but we can establish the “What” (that it does happen). And if others repeat those experiments with other subjects, and observe the same phenomena, then that’s more than valid.
In the past science wasn’t so fixated on “physical evidence”; the “structure” part of it. It concentrated first on the aspect of “Function”, and then on the “structure” part later.
Take for example the subject of electromagnetism. Most of what we know today about it came BEFORE the discovery of the electron (1897) and the atomic structure. We knew the “What” (the observable phenomena), but we didn’t know the “Why” and “How” (structure). We couldn’t (can’t) “see” the electricity, but we could observe its manifestations. And the most used equations (Maxwell’s) of it that explained all observable phenomena to that date, were designed almost 30 years! BEFORE the discovery of the structure part of it (the flow of electrons).
In fact, we knew already how to produce electricity and transport it w/out knowing ANYTHING about its structure. We knew only its function aspect.
So let’s not be so fixated on proving anything by only understanding its structure, and by being stuck on “Needing physical evidence”, and having to “explain” the new phenomena with only known laws. As I said, we might not understand how something works, but we can understand what it does and how it behaves. And that’s valid enough to accept it, and to inveatigate it further. Scientist needs to BOTH, objective and open.minded at the same time. And only the open minded see the light.
Yes, I read both the books/ accounts. 1960 and the early part of this century. What I stated is correct. His methodology doesn’t stand up due to the omission I noted. I’m sorry, I don’t make the rules for scientific research of this type. You will have to argue it with those who do the peer reviews.
His methodology is fine and expected in this type of research. He was through and competent about it. Do not expect “reviews” from mainstream “scientists” to be necessarily objective, Mike. They seldom are. Read Bryan Wallace’s “The Farse of Physics” so that you can understand how many good researches are stopped and burried, when they threaten the status quo, and demolish the theories of science “authorities”. But if you read Stevenson’s research in detail, and it did not convince you that he was into something real – which is rather strange – then I am okay with that.
??? “This type of work”? LMAO!
Dude, go get an actual science education. There is scientific methodology and .. everything else.
No, YOU go and get a REAL education, asshole scientist-want-to-be. I laugh at your “scientific” methodology, which are mere fixations and manifestations of your pathetic and irrational skepticism.
Perhaps you are the same crazy lunatic, John Locke that used to post here and antogonize everybody until he attempted to mess around with Rinder, who busted his ass. You guys come into this blog pretending to be the fucking Einsteins of science, and that only you know about what true research ought to be, when you guys are only the reflection of your own prejudices and self-righteousness. Go fuck yourself, you jerk.
Sorry, the last sentence should have read, “Scientist needs to be BOTH, objective and open minded at the same time. And only the open minded ones see can the light.”
Wishful thinking– if there was real evidence that consciousness of any sort could live absent a brain (what ever that even means) then real scientists would be testing that evidence to find out more like they do with x–rays, atoms, electricity, and everything else that is real. If you cannot establish that something exists you cannot know more about it… you can only imagine you know– just like every believer of every religion/myth/superstition/delusion ever. I trust that when things are real, real evidence will accumulate, and there will be much more evidence 1 year from now than there is now… and much much more 10 years from now… etc. Consciousness is the product of an evolved brain– it helps it’s possessor survive and reproduce; the concept makes no sense outside of a body– it doesn’t map to anything coherent; it’s like sound in a vacuum from a scientific perspective.
On the other hand…consciousness cannot be studied empirically because it has no attributes so there is nothing to look at. Thoughts and emotions are not themselves conscious. They are objects of perception within consciousness. You are conscious because you are consciousness itself. There is only one thing that is conscious and that is consciousness. You know thoughts and feelings but they don’t know you.
Consciousness does not itself have thoughts or feelings. Those are the products of the body/mind apparatus. Consciousness is the self-knowing, uncreated substrate of existence out of which all things precipitate. Like clouds out of a clear sky. When reflected in the mind it becomes an individualized consciousness capable of knowing something other than itself. Therefore it cannot be assumed that since a body/mind apparatus has expired consciousness has been affected. This knowledge is confirmed by your direct experience as self-realization.
That’s just nonsense and pure gibberish, and only shows a very poor understanding of REAL scientific methodology. So many scientists-want-to-be.
thetaclear. I have a science degree. Do you?
You told us to review and come to our own conclusion. Why are you now angry that we are? Why don’t YOU go get a formal science education? You are falling into the same unscientific pattern of when you used to defend El Con and his scam.
PLEASE, don’t regress.
Wynski, I think that you are replying to a comment that was not directed at you, judging by what arrived at my e-mail.
Degrees don’t mean necessarily nothing, Mike. One of the ones considered as the greatest experimenters had no formal education, but was mostly self-taught. His name, Michael Faraday, and to him we owe the motor and the principle of induction, and a dozens of things about electrical behavior.
I’ve never been false about my backgrounds at ANYTHING, Mike. I’ve told many times here when exchanging comms with some posters, that I did 3 years of electrical engineering. I dropped from it to become staff, one of my greatest mistakes. At the time I was going to be part of a special group to be recruited by NASA due to our academic performances. I did not have to pay but only the books due to my grades.
I kept on educating myself in the subject of engeneering and pshysics over the last decades as a self-thought endeavor, using not only standard textbooks from world renown authors, but I engaged in an intense study in the history of science. I learned how each subject developed over the years, studying them directly on the original sources as for example, reading Maxwell and Farady’s original works. Also Newton’s original from his masterpiece “The Principia” translated and commented by the famous science historians Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitmam. I learned how calculus EXACTLY was discovered by Newton and how he used it to discover the equations of the Laws of Motion.
I have studied in the detail most of the classical physics experiments DIRECTLY reading the original sources. I learned how Vector Calculus developed (“A History of Vector Analysis”, Michael J Crowe) from Hammilton’s quaternions, and all systems of Vector Analysis in chronological order. I studied the chronological development of the subject of Electromagnetism, from De Magnete (William Gilbert) to Tesla.
Quick question, did they teach you that on your “official” science degree? I bet they did not. I bet that you just bought everything they taught you like a noble student who followed the “authorities”. See, I didn’t followed the authorities, I followed common sense, objectivity, intellectual honesty, and open mindness.
ANY TIME you or ANYBODY here want to put my science and mathematics knowledge to the test, be my guess, I’ll be very happy in any public challenge from ANY of you “scientists”.
As to “defending” LRH, you got it all wrong, buddy. My opinion of LRH as an alleged “researcher” is well known here by most posters; I need not to repeat myself.
I do not mind of you or anybody here not accepting my quoted research from Dr. Stevenson. But how can you dismiss a research w/out even having studied all evidence? That’s not being “scientific”, that’s being self-righteous. And That’s nonsense. That’s what I was referring to, and not to wheather or not you agreed with it. Science is also about remaining open minded to any possibilities, dispassionately. Take a serious look at Stevenson’s works. Study all evidence. Then, and only then decide upon it. And bring good arguments against it, and not just emotional responses. I respect a researcher who keep an open mind about things, w/out losing his objectivity.
http://www.skepdic.com/stevenson.html
The “Skeptic Dictionary” ? Really, Mwesten? Give me a fucking break, please, those people find as “invalid” ANY researched topic that doesn’t fit with the known “laws” of science, even if the accumulated empirical observations that validate its serious consideration is astronomical. They are fundamemtalist science freaks, that’s all they are. Show me REAL official academic articles about it in known science journals, and then we can talk.
Did you read the article? It is clearly referenced. What don’t you agree with, specifically? Are you suggesting standards are unimportant in research?
Yes, I read the article, Mwesten. And yes, it was conveniently referenced to show mostly the weak points in the research, or the weak cases, by only quoting the articles (and only parts of it conveniently picked up) that opposed to the research.
The creator of the Skeptic Dictionary Robert Todd Caroll, is not even trained on science. He is a retired philosophy professor, who by his own admissions, is a materialist and an atheist; the PERFECT combination to use confirmation bias on his “analysis” on anything whose phenomena can’t be explained by mainstream “show me the ‘physical’ evidence” science. It is even laughable that many posters here frequently quote the Skeptics Dictionary as a source of “Truth”, just because ONE individual who isn’t even trained on the sciences has allegedly “researched” a topic.
What Carroll do is to find those articles- which will ALWAYS exist even in the most objective and controlled researches – criticizing the findings, and he then quote these allegedly “impartial” articles, frequently OMITTING the ones that scientifically back up those findings. There is absolutely nothing objective about most of Caroll’s opinions. Check this out, dear posters :
http://www.skepticalaboutskeptics.org/examining-skeptics/richard-milton/richard-milton-the-skeptics-dictionary/
I am not (nor wasn’t) saying that Stevenson’s research is the most perfect of all, neither that it doesn’t have some holes in it here and there. But out of those 3,000 + researched cases, even his most ferocious critics knows that there are at least 30-40 of them where they can’t just explain them, and who were performed in the most strict controlled experimental settings.
When Stevenson was criticized because he used subjects from countries (India, etc) where superstition and the belief in reincarnation could be culturally conditioned, he then studied 40 cases from subjects from Europe, and found similar results.
Seriously Mwesten, subjects that had not been at a certain location, and who had not read ANYTHING from such location, recall a specific past life deaths of theirs with specific details of how they died, where were they burried, etc, and the verification of this information perfectly match. Not only that, but many of those subjects had specifc scars and birth defects on EXACTLY the body parts and areas where they had been injured on that past existence. Stevenson found hundreds of such cases.
Now, let’s say for the purpose of discussion that he made errors in the experimental settings such as being a little leading on his questions a few times (which there is no evidence that he was) here and there, and not being careful enough to spot when he was being fooled. But there were cases (read the ACTUAL academic articles criticizing, positively or negatively, his research, and not just convenient quotes out of them as Caroll does) were NONE of such “errors” could be found. Isn’t this enough to AT LEAST conclude that he was REALLY onto something REAL that merited FURTHER research from others instead of biased skepticism?
I grant it that his research was not perfect, but it is so far the BEST there is on this subject. And it should be studied IN DETAIL, dispassionately, open mindedly, and w/out confirmation bias.
There is a GREAT article from Stevenson himself titled, “Scientists wih Half-closed Minds”. It is very revealing. I do not have the link, but just Google-search it like that. Take the time to read it. You’ll understand my main problem with mainstream science’s methods to approach the analysis of subjects that threaten the status quo. Some skepticism is not only expected from a scientists, it is healthy. But it can EASILY become an irrational resistance to change, instead of a tool to keep us objective.
TC, I admit I was a sucker for Stevenson and have read a great deal of his work as well as the work of others critiquing his research. I even flew his flag over at the bunker for a wee while. As fascinated with science as I now am I’m still open minded to the idea of reincarnation and the spiritual. Let’s not pretend, however, that Stevenson operated “in the most strict controlled experimental settings”. That is a joke, surely. You may find it easy to make leaps of faith on questionable, erroneous research, but I simply refuse to do so. Not anymore. Personally, I am far more interested in the work of Sam Parnia and his global studies into NDE phenomena. Even without a paranormal prejudice, his research into clinical death and resuscitation is fascinating, imho.
“TC, I admit I was a sucker for Stevenson and have read a great deal of his work as well as the work of others critiquing his research. I even flew his flag over at the bunker for a wee while. As fascinated with science as I now am I’m still open minded to the idea of reincarnation and the spiritual. Let’s not pretend, however, that Stevenson operated “in the most strict controlled experimental settings”. That is a joke, surely.”
I never said “under a strictly controlled experimental setting”, Mwesten. But it certainly was a much better one than any past life researcher before him. If you read all his reports and the reports of those supporting and criticizing his research – as you said you did – then you must have stumbled upon the fact that at least 25-40 of out of those 3,000 + cases, were studied under very strict settings that even the most ferocious critics couldn’t find errors with them, neither any logical explanation for the phenomena observed and recorded.
And with only 5 of such cases, it is more than enough, not to assert that past lives are a fact of life, but certainly to merit the encouragement for further research under more strict settings, instead of all the irrational skepticism that I assure you, that had more to do with resistance to change and confirmation vias than with being objective.
“You may find it easy to make leaps of faith on questionable, erroneous research, but I simply refuse to do so. Not anymore.”
I wouldn’t classify it as perfect, but neither as “erroneous and questionable”. It could be justly called, “incomplete and insufficient”. And I am not into any “leaps of faith”, Mwesten, but I am open minded enough to allow for the unusual and not explainable under the known laws of science. I am not naive, but certainly not irrationally skeptic, neither.
If you read Stevenson’s article on “Scientists with Half-closed Minds”, you’ll discover how many famous scientists that made great discoveries totally and irrationally dismissed new ideas as “impossible” and “absurd” w/out even having examined them in detail. And those new ideas turned out to be facts of life. You do not have to agree with the article, but just read it first, and arrive at your own conclusions. What do you have to lose? I’ll read your quoted research below. Fair exchange?
I don’t have a clickable link, but you can Google-search it like this :
Stevenson Scientists with Half-closed Minds 8pp.pdf
When you click on the search result with the above, the article will automatically begin to download.
“Personally, I am f ar more interested in the work of Sam Parnia and his global studies into NDE phenomena. Even without a paranormal prejudice, his research into clinical death and resuscitation is fascinating, imho.”
I’ll take a look at it, thanks. There are lots of excellent researches into the paranormal by well known and respected scholars, most of which have PhDs on psychiatry, psychology or are M.Ds, and are professors at well known universities. But their collegiate, prefer to stay away from controvertial subjects, as a reaction to this silly authoritative science system that does not encourage research into the paranormal.
One great research is the one from Dr. Bernard Grad into healing/Therapeutic Intent by using placing-hands healers. Grad was very through. Check out his research. I am currently studying that field. This website quote the works of Dr. Grad and many others. Analyze it all and arrive at your own conclusions. But do not dismiss the data before studying it in detail.
http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/Pioneers/index.html
Best,
Peter
Scientology cosmology no longer has any influence on my beliefs about a soul or transmigration of the soul. The conclusion I have arrived at is that the identity of Thomas Weeks will not survive death: no memories, no personality, no essence. I do entertain the idea that consciousness exist separate from the physical (MEST, if you will) universe. This paradigm is possible as it is unclear how or if the brain creates consciousness. Clearly a body/brain can experience and express experiences about consciousness. That doesn’t mean that only brain/body organisms have consciousness. The nature of consciousness is a very deep and rich topic.
Recent rigorous scientific work has shown the the heart responds to situations much faster than does the brain. We haven’t yet even really scratched this subject. Having had several other life experiences, I have a different take on it. And I keep my options open all the time. As Einstein has been quoted, “We don’t know one millionth part of anything.” Always loved that one. And the older I get, the more I respond with “I don’t know about that.”
Peter
thegman77, I’m with you. As my awareness increases, there’s more and more that I don’t know.
Ditto.
Keep adult education going, mainly reading more and more. Get smarter and realize how vaster one’s ignorance is.
Evolution says your body (including your brain) is the end result of a very very long process of natural selection. It is possible that is all there there is to it. My internal mental state doesn’t feel like a bunch of neurons blinking on and off but we have ample evidence that feelings are not a reliable means to knowledge.
The real problem is that we don’t allow our ‘feelings’ of spiritually to leave us open to frauds like LRH or Creflo Dollar. Feeling spiritually is fine, just don’t let it be an excuse not to think.
I’ve been reading a lot recently on gains made on the subject. Natural selection is no longer the yardstick for what’s going on. There are some great books currently on these advances.
Books which shall remain nameless.
Those are my favorite kind of books!
Nicely put. To anyone who is a mind/body dualist, my question to you is at what point in the continuum of human evolution did the non-physical mind become attached to the animal body. Another question is has a mind ever been observed in the absence of a functioning brain.
I saw one case in Canada where a brain had ZERO activity, no electrical activity at all, total brain dead. (ALL modern machinery hooked up monitoring.) Later the person “came back to life” and told of all the conversations the doctors had while brain dead, what they people looked like etc.
That would satisfy your last question.
On OT2 I separated from someone who was totally happy existing
in a disincarnate state and sent the most powerful flows of affinity
I’ve ever experienced.
A related question is why existence? We have a beautiful
universe and planet and bodies. What is the source of these?
I’ve never seen anything that could be. [ disregarding the mechanics of birth and evolution ] I have not seen any evidence of a supreme being. Whats left, as I see it, is something of a spiritual nature.
Terril, go babble insanely about El Con on someone else’s thread.
Mike stupid fucking Wynski, antagonizing everybody. I don’t who are worse, if the KSW fanatics, or jerks like this one, who is possible a retired loser who doesn’t know what to do with his time.
I noticed that when John Locke disappeared from the blog that about that time Mike Wysinski appeared.
Hi Cindy, Observant,and I enjoy your posts.Always
Yeah Cindy, my thoughts exactly. These two characters certainly operate in an extremely similar “wavelength”. The wavelength of invalidating and denigrating others who doesn’t share his fixed and extreme ideas.
John locked stopped posting here when Rinder basically – and VERY correctly as John ASKED for it – called him stupid (he tried to make Rinder look bad). John didn’t have the balls to confront that, picked up a motivator and left with his fucking tail up into his ass. But as he was apparently a retired loser with nothing better to do than antagonizing EVERYBODY, it seems he couldn’t resist boredom anymore and “reincarnated” as “Mike Wynski”.
What Wynski doesn’t know is that I might look nice and gentle judging by my posts here and elsewhere, but I am one of the greatest son of the bitch when someone tries to fuck with me or my friends. And my friends are ANYONE who have the decency to let others be as they are regardless of philosophical differences.
It’s possible that in this case the diagnosis of “brain dead” was incorrect. One obvious question is how long did the brain in question show “ZERO activity”?
It was over 24 hours and the machinery used was the latest. With it they could image the brain and even tell that the optic nerve wasn’t transmitting to the brain in as far as no pick up in the brain. Truly inexplicable using current scientific knowledge.
The thing is, that’s not what a brain does.
The brain is not a computer, and it does not store or process data. It experiences it.
There was a nice article on that by a neuroscientist not long ago.
What it said is that the model of the brain as a computer has slowed down research in consciousness by making us search for things that are not there (like a place where memories are stored or a center for consciousness – there are no such places). Decades ago, the brain was imagined as a mechanical device, and people kept searching for things which are characteristic of mechanical devices and had nothing to do with brains.
It seems the brain is such a complex thing, humans keep trying to understand it with the most complex things they build, and constantly fail.
We’re all the proud owners of those excessively complex things we do not yet truly understand – it’s sad to see some refer to them as “meat”.
My shape-shifting hero, man on the inside, hello.
How fun, that your invisibility cloak is still working, ha.
So, because you inspire me, I wrote an essay … as follows:
Now What, Surviving the Bursted Bubble
If scientology is the problem, what is the solution? It’s demise?
What then?
Well, that leaves a certain void for the adventuring insider, yes, nervously sticking out his toe,
into the frigid waters of the wilderness…
The first trick, I would presume, is to start changing your thinking to include the plausibility of other sources of information, and then reinforce upon the capitalization of that precious knowledge with good old-fashioned contact.
Human contact.
The more the better. Blogs. Writer’s clubs, social clubs and networks, anything to get started, then see where the current takes you. Whether the common theme is war or games does not particularly matter, what keeps your interest does. Date. I do heartily recommend becoming well-known at the local library. Unlike your computer, there will be live humans there, for one thing. Contemplation about re-wiring the brain one way or another is an avenue of thought that, in a slow fashion, works for me. Taking my own advise, I should join a brain-studies blog. Really, it is much simpler than that. What it IS all about?… the pursuit of happiness, and the freedom to explore said pursuits.
Expand your sources of information. That does not have to be a blog, of course. It could start with a book.
There’s hope, that that void might be filled with some sort of tangible advise, that the wayward scientologist could find encouragement in. At least he or she has gotten the idea, that the belief-system is just that, a system of belief, something adopted as real as opposed to being some sort of cosmic pre-ordained law of the cosmos. Scientology and you. The once indoctrinated, or perhaps still inside… You have learned now, solidly, that it is ok to question the source. That is understood. That is the liberating factor.
Forbidden thoughts are only forbidden for as long as you remain inside.
I love these articles, cog-man of the territory. Holder of the critical-thought key. Thanks for coming around. Allow me to be the gatekeeper. Again. And I love the Happiness article, Mike. These are excellent topics that relate directly to the core reasons we are here, here in particular and here in the cosmos as well. Thank you.
BINGO! Very well stated.
say, ..theg…
da-da-MAN!
BINGO, ding da spittoon, another dead-on ringer.
I win.
World’s an oyster, cherry possum pie
an undone cloister for jus a word o mine. Ding!
and a dang and another ding ding dang.
[Bob Marley- “Redemption…these songs of Freedom.”]
Thank you.
Good start! Indeed, nothing is exactly solved, since most of what LRH invented was pure speculation, or worse, pure lies. This only suffices to put a package of doubts of anything he sold us when we were there.
I’m sometimes listening people believing they were living here or there. Why not, since I cannnot feel why or know if they disrupt somewhat from their brain celles when they explain?
What feels certain is that none of us ex-clear, OT whatever, have had the least evidence. If even LRH and his completely failed experience in Sardinia has had such a ridicule end, even if the ones present then did not cease to believe in his fantasies, that’s because beliefs are much too important for men: so, we can Wonder for life if there is or not something.
But we are here and there for sure, and we can think better than we do. I recommend listening and reading what Skeptics do. That’s how one get rid of inanities and délusions, since it is based on measurable facts rather than from what we perceive.
Enjoyed this and your previous posts, Terra. To compare notes with you and others here, even though my parents were not spiritually-oriented and did not discuss such things, as a kid I knew I had been around before and that there were spiritual beings around without bodies. I definitely had strong affinity for different time periods, more than others, and some vague and spotty memories, but I guess one could chalk that up to individual personality and taste if one wanted a prosaic explanation.
When I did the initial Scn. seminar describing the thetan and past lives, I thought, “Wow, that’s exactly what I believe”, and was surprised and happy to find a group that believed the same things. On the Comm Course, I remember walking home one day from course and feeling extremely “tall”, like I was several feet above my head, though still perceiving through my eyes somehow. Had not yet heard about “exteriorization”. Then after the objectives on HQS, I went exterior to the physical universe for a long period of time, several months, rain or shine, whether I was feeling good or bad. I was not fully exterior to my body, but could clearly perceive people walking down the street, pushing their bodies around. Women with make-up looked like painted dolls, and the physical universe looked something like a stage backdrop, almost two dimensional – houses, buildings, etc.
Thus, I became convinced that the physical universe and the spiritual universe were two separate things, and I could see how “theta” was impinged upon the physical universe. Even though I now consider myself Christian (yes, restimulated implants no doubt), no one will ever convince me that I and others have not lived before. I believe the “life everlasting” promised by Christ is the promise to finally escape from the cycle of birth, death and amnesia, and to remain oneself eternally, though I’m probably then not considered Christian by many. As to heaven, purgatory and hell, I believe these exist as places and/or conditions. Purgatory may have something to do with returning to Earth, but I can’t say for sure.
Finally, I think there is resistance to the idea of past lives for a few reasons – social indoctrination, blocked memories of enormous pain and suffering, and of course someone who had been a Himmler (if he came back) would feel very threatened by the idea of past lives.
Ditto on “not throwing out the baby with the bathwater” in regard to the best of Ron’s work, and ditto on your thanks to Mike for providing such a forum for exchange of ideas, sadly missing in the CoS.
My sentiments too, Paladin. And I am dating myself here, but I do remember that show, “Paladin.”
(singing) Paladin, Paladin, where to do you roam? Now that’s going back a looooong ways…
Thanks, Cindy. : )
Well stated Paladin…
Although still searching for “my truth” – your 2¢’s has contributed to my ever expanding pool of data to contemplate. And although I can’t ‘prove it’ – I can’t help believing that “I” am (indeed) an immortal being, and wish to express my appreciation to LRH for the opportunity to explore whatever this is I’m perceiving.
Peace
Thank you, Terry. Glad you found something of value for yourself in my experiences. Someone once said that faith is not a belief, it is an experience. So in a similar way, there is nothing you can prove to others who do not have your experience or self-knowledge. Good luck in your quest, and God bless.
PS – A funny story regarding past lives told to me by a friend – her friend was walking in town with her little boy when he suddenly stopped and pointed to an elderly woman crossing the street. “Look, mommy!” he said. “I was like that before!”
There are many stories like this from children who seem to be closer to the “other side” than adults, having been there more recently, and before they are too indoctrinated. ( Also would explain a lot about potential gender confusion.)
On another note which some might enjoy, here is Father Guido Sarducci explaining the afterlife:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7ykYHwG5i4
Terra, et al: belief in samsara of any stripe, and particularly Scientology’s ersatz variety, denies young capable humans of higher ambition and thwarts curiosity. Want to be an architect? “You were probably Frank Lloyd Wright in a prior life.” Like writing? “I bet you were Hemingway.” You’d already achieved satori. Compound this by “never evaluating” and the ego explodes. Then, after the Divorce, the decoupling, when mere mortals come to grips with their expiration dates, the actual “Life Repair” starts. I’m personally acquainted with a half dozen Very Bright Lights dimmed by Hubbard’s dirty electricity. They’ll never get back the energy “Past Lives” sucked out of them. Kundera shattered Nietzsche’s circle and we ought to be grateful for having had the magnificence of fleeting consciousness so sublimely illuminated.
These are truly questions for the ages and I’ve enjoyed the insight on everyone’s views but like has been said, these questions won’t be answered on a blog on the interwebs, and maybe, just maybe each one of us will arrive at our own right answer. I have exteriorized with meditation, I can see the draw. I haven’t belonged to “organized” religion of any sort for years yet I live a spiritual life and sometimes still fall back on habits and chants from childhood. As an ICU nurse I have shared moments of death with many. I’ve also witnessed testimonies from people we’ve “coded” who “came back” with fascinating insights. I didn’t believe in much of an afterlife until my parents both passed relatively young. Whether it’s my mind or something beyond I still smell my moms perfume when I need to or “feel” my dads hand on my shoulder. It’s the blame game in the he philosophy of Scientology that turns me cold. My daughter at age three went through three years of chemo, that beautiful little creature “pulled nothing in” (she is long since cured, healthy and happy). Blaming people for accidents, unforeseen failures and tragedy and then making them pay to have it handled or redoing the PTS/SP courses to blame someone else in your life is just plain wrong to me on every level. I don’t know if I’m eternal, but I’m here now so I like McCarron’s advice below… Be kind.
Hi justmeteehee, Your post went right to the questions for the ages and you answered that question with great sensitivity.I can only speak to this for me,that from a very young age I have always known there were other levels of spirit which I could access at will.It seemed perfectly natural to me and when around 11 I never talked about this ability.Not to my artistic eccentric late Mother who believed in a different concept of life each day or to my extremely rational logical Wall Streeter late Dad.I just thought everyone did the same as I experienced.Now I do see there are those who believe we are nothing more or less than our bodies.That is their opinion and they are most welcome to it.I however like the idea of pure energy or spirit if you will neither being created or destroyed in other words Eternal.And yes I too have some very specific memories of past lives brought about by auditing.These have stuck with me all the years out.I should see if I can look up a cemetery near where I passed.Find my name.I do need to add in all the four years I had or three and one half years I had of SO auditing only a total of three times did I feel I recalled a true past life event,the others not as sharp or detailed.
I want to send you & your sweet daughter all love and I am so glad you are here.Thank you Terra,you have opened another window to let the sunlight in on this Cult.XXOO
Yeah… looking back I think we had to be very naive and narcissistic to even want to become Gods, I hope I grew out of that, if every individual was a God the world would not be any better off imo, even lrh said a clear cannibal is still a cannibal, why would you even want that world? We are at the top of the food chain isn’t that enough? Most people live in paradise already they take it all for granted, no need for more more more more…
After i thought that through things started making more sense and I could see through the B’s more each day
Eernal intolerance for existing conditions in exchange for a life serving what? A graph on the wall representing (stat x) which must go up forever? A contract to do that for a billion years? Lol
And for me the fact that staff don’t go up the bridge before being put on post was proof that it’s not the solution, if it actually worked the obvious solution would be give those magical powers to staff and then they can just postulate the improved conditions into existence more efficiently
it’s one thing to share and discus theories…
it’s another to claim to be the ONLY ONE who can recall ancient history…
Another try claim to hold inhuman powers
And another level to copyright tomes rambling on and on about it and sell it all slowly for half a million promising it will give others the same powers as long as they don’t talk about it, or talk about their own ancient history or demonstrate their own magical powers with or to anyone but the paid auditor… whaaaaat?
Oh and by the way we will expect you to act like a “know it all authority on everything” same tom cruise, become a heartless vindictive prick and drop all ties to any non believer and tell you what critics to destroy utterly occasionally…
Starts out presented to be a free do it yourself science for the layman promising to make everyone perfect and evolved into a toxic secretive and genocidal cult caste system where only the elite can pay a thousand an hour to get served by staff that make pennies and are punished any time their production drops for any reason on earth…
To later claim to be Buddha and the Antichrist?
Went too far, way too far… way way way way way…. way too far there buddy
But what do you expect? When enough fools prop up your crazy ideas and supply you with suitcases of money long enough what else can you become other than a self absorbed arrogant guru?
I’ll just say as an Objectivist that Reality Is Real and that each of us as individuals can and do independently see and think about it.
Terra, honestly, you probably won’t ever be officially declared and if you are, you will be the last to know.
To the best of my knowledge, I have never been officially declared although I have been out well over 30 years. The closest I’ve come to a declare is in late 2011, Larry Jacobs told me I had been “blacklisted”. Actual SP declares are unicorns these days because:
1. People have lost most of their fear of them, with those of us who have truly escaped actually clamoring for our copies.
2. A declare is sort of final. You can’t spend a lot of money and make a declare go away but scientology does offer people the chance to buy their way out of trouble so there can’t be a goldenrod there.
3. If a person had in writing the “reasons” they were declared, this would be bad for scientology because they could be disproven.
4. There would be a worldwide shortage of goldenrod if everyone scientology considered suppressive was declared. In case you haven’t noticed, the ratio has flipped. It is beginning to look like according to Scientology calculations there are only 2.5% of the people in the world who aren’t suppressive.
Yes, I’ve often wondered how the “innies” deal with those lists. LOL
I guess if the “innies” don’t do well, the become “outties.”
I at some point in my life came to the realization that it didn’t matter if I had lived before or if I would live again, I had to be able to live with me in the here and now.
When I realized that and fully and truly did not need recognition or adulation and that being kind to others helped me as much or more than it helped them, I found what passes for my version of spirituality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awzNHuGqoMc
Never in, but I spent my formative years in a very fundamentalist church. I was terrified of hell, so I can understand why scientologists fear losing their eternity. I always had difficulty picturing heaven and by 18 I was an atheist.
As an aside I have been told by several close relatives I’m going to hell. My response is that I don’t believe in that either.
As an anthropology/archaeology/classics major I was exposed to lots of belief systems. As a critical thinker I know there has never been proof of gods or an afterlife. There is proof that consciousness separate from biology, but I think when we die, we’re gone except as memories . I’m ok with that.
Nobody asked, but that’s what I think.
You are still a Thetan after leaving scientology.
T Bone steak is just a steak.
I tried eating a stake once. I was a bit tough….
In Judaism, the emphasis is on God and good deeds this lifetime, not on heaven and hell or what comes next. Scn for me filled this void. I have remembered many other lifetimes both in and out of session that are as real to me as this one. In particular, I ran out many painful deaths on my way to Dianetic Clear and I shall forever be grateful. My mental pictures were/are not fantasy or anyone else’s. And from time to time I have been exterior to my body naturally without ever having done the OT levels.
Knowing I am a spiritual being is one of my great wins from Scn. I hope the best of Scn can be salvaged as Miscavige drives it to the bottom of the ocean.
And the GE in Judaism is a family man and proud of it. Disconnection my ass.
Wait…..what? Your ass actually got disconnected? Dude, that’s gotta be tough. I feel for ya….
Since those memories were as real as your current life, were you able to provide detail that could be checked and documented by researchers? That would take it out of the realm of subjective and make it objective — something Dianetics and Scientology would have to do to reach even a minimum semblance of verifiable truth. (BTW, I reached Dianetic Clear as well and beyond, so I do understand what you are stating.)
I know absolutely nothing and I’m fine with that.
At the beginning of this life I was a questing individual, asking “what is the point?” and seeking, seeking. I tried various things, found scn early, and dived in as teenager. Embraced it all and went to nearly the very top of the bridge. I found utter certainty as a thetan along the way, having that certainty cemented during the ot levels.
and now I know absolutely nothing. I’m too freshly out to do anything but exist and give myself leave to not worry about one damn thing. I’m absolutely fine, yet beneath this I feel as fragile as a butterfly wing.
I don’t know how things will evolve for me, but having spent the better part of my life being duped to insanity, I’m fine with being a nothing until I am dead.
for all I know, nothing is really happening anyway, maybe I only think I’m typing.
I don’t care.
I will have coffee and cakes and nice times with nice people and that is enough for me. I don’t care what anybody says about anything, except if perhaps this last cake was a bit dry. I’ll fix that.
Hi secretfornow, Wow did I echo your amazing comment on feeling” fine yet beneath as fragile as a butterfly wing “I do not see you as a nothing.Far from it.I am slowly coming about to the opinion that this fragile butterfly wing can reemerge like a phoenix no Ron not that phoenix lol,but can re-invent itself except now it is made of gold.Never tarnish,always glowing can’t destroy gold.Just like all of you here.Pure Gold.XXOO
Thank, Ann. <3 love to you.
These are great questions. And as you are out of the big bubble, and if these questions still motivate you in research, you will find that these “LRH theories” are verities that he studied in eastern thought.
The lie here is that LRH “discovered” these things. He did not.
But what he did do was muddy up the subject with problems sourced in his Sci Fi imagination and paranoid tendencies.
These is nothing new in this soul-body-mind subject, except for Ron’s wrong knowledge and delusional proclivities.
And as rebar of Ron’s thought prison starts to desolve, owing to your own rehabilitation of sovereign thought, you will find great wisdom available.
This wisdom was third partied by Ron. It was associated with unlettered rubes, OT 3 implants and Marcabian mind control.
Autobiography of a Yogi is a good book to start with. It describes the reality that Ron marketed but never attained.
It illustrates the attainments of yogi masters that Ron stole from and then condemned as implanted.
Autobiography of a Yogi will blow your mind or you will be repulsed by it.
It has been a best seller since 1945 and voted in the top 100 important spiritual books of the 20th century by book publishers.
Terra, every one has his own reality I guess. But if you are looking for a more solid proof you can Youtube “reincarnation” ot just watch this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk7biSOzr1k
http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/07/reincarnation_a.html
https://www.quora.com/How-can-you-prove-that-1+1-3
Great link, thanks. I never bought the reincarnation stories, the kid’s pilot stories sounded bogus even before I read the great debunking of it, thanks.
What do you make of the eternal return, which is infinite eternal recycling of the universe so that everything becomes everything else (almost, with minor changes) forever?
To me, infinite recycling seems more logical, all minus invisible soul matter/God. Just infinite cosmic recycling, like per Anaximander era thinkers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtkXpYmaWXg
Another insightful and incredible post, Terra. Thank you!
From my point of view, we are pure, unconditioned consciousnesses. We are aware of being aware. We are energy. And our true nature is unbridled, unconditional love. We are part of everything and separate from nothing. We are forever…
This is what resonates with me.
Or….it’s just one big cosmic joke!
I’ve always liked your resonance, Dude. Works for me.
You and I have the same take, OSD 🙂
My philosophy, stated succinctly!
Well, since I have 3 followers now, maybe I’ll start a religion. Hmmmmmmm….what should I call it? Hmmmmmm….OH! I know: The Church of Dudeology! Yeah, yeah, DAT’S da ticket!
as an agnostic, I hedge my bets… but I feel that it’s the deeds you do while here on earth that matter, whether it’s grand sweeping things or just simple kindnesses to animals and fellow man. whether this will matter afterwards, no one can say, but it always astounds me that those who claim to have a hotline to the next life often are the cruelest and most self serving.
+1!
Well, since the universe seems to be around for a long time, and since people have been thinking about eternity for all of human history, one of the earliest “long range” ideas about eternity was the
“eternal return” Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return
I was unknowingly a believer in “eternal return” prior to joining Scientology. And I’ve held that as my “faith” all through being in Scientology, and when I left Scientology I then finally learned of “eternal return” and thanks to Wikipedia, I’ve returned to my “eternal return” faith.
“Eternal return (also known as “eternal recurrence”) is a concept that the universe and all existence and energy has been recurring, and will continue to recur, in a self-similar form an infinite number of times across infinite time or space. The concept is found in Indian philosophy and in ancient Egypt and was subsequently taken up by the Pythagoreans and Stoics. ….” Wikipedia, “eternal return” article Jun 2016
In a nutshell it’s recycling of the universe forever into all possible recombinations of everything so that everything becomes and has been been everything already, an infinite number of times.
Infinite recycling of the universe, forever. Everything does everything, forever.
It’s what Deepak Chopra calls the “quantum soup”. EVERYTHING that can ever be already exists and just awaits our awareness of it.
I enjoyed your post Terra. It sounds like you are making quick progress in moving beyond the cult!
I too was raised an atheist. That probably is not quite the correct description because it assumes there is no god. In reality, the mysteries of the universe are simply mysteries. We can look and observe and formulate belief systems that explain our observations ……. or not. I prefer the ‘not’ approach. No need to try and con-vince myself of something that I truly don’t have an answer for.
def: con – 1) to swindle by first gaining the persons confidence.
2) to trick or fool,esp. by glib persuasion.
def: vincere – that can be overcome or defeated; conquerable.
Pulling this over on ones self is the ultimate con game. Deciding to adopt the ideas that someone else is putting forth (for some reason not necessarily known to me) has also proven to be a road into hell! I’m done with that, on with life!
Yo Dave:
How is your con – fidence game working out for you good buddy. And have you figured out who terra is? What’s the matter, his/her list of crimes too long for Mike Ellis to get typed up this week? At least your stats are in power for numbers leaving your con – troll.
Ok, but that’s not what con means in Latin , but I see your point.
Throughout human history minds sharper than ours have grappled with this question. Science cannot help us here as science deals only with the physical universe and thus cannot shed light on what is thought to be not part of the physical universe.
I HOPE I am as Socrates described.
But the claim that science can’t study a putative non-physical universe has consequences.
It means the non-physical universe has no detectable influence over the physical universe, which is contradictory to the doctrines of several very popular religions. In fact it contradicts, for example, any religions which include interventionist gods or animating souls.
Therefore if you are correct, then those religions are already proven wrong!
Dan said, “But the claim that science can’t study a putative non-physical universe has consequences.”
You didn’t understand what I wrote. The “other” universe may or may not be physical. The POINT is that using science from THIS universe, we cannot examine OTHER universes or items that are not measurable in this universe. As we are not THERE. The FACT that 1 is smaller than 4 also has “consequences”. But does NOT change that truth.
That just nonsense, Wynki; Of course we can.
Of course we can what? TC
Mike Wynski said: “You didn’t understand what I wrote.”
Did YOU understand it? It was implicitly self-contradictory!
I pointed out the contradiction, and your only response was to repeat one of your claims at greater length.
So I shall try to make it clearer what my objection is.
You said: “Throughout human history minds sharper than ours have grappled with this question.” The clear implication is that the question is still unanswered.
But what was the question? You didn’t provide any alternative to “Am I Still A Thetan?” which is the title of the post you were directly responding to.
If thetans are “not measurable in this universe” then they don’t influence this universe. (If they did influence this universe, their influence would be measurable in this universe.)
We may not have the ability in practice to measure the influence of thetans – but since you said “science deals only with the physical universe” it is clear the issue is categorical, without respect to any practical limitations.
You are facing a dilemma: either thetans are measurable in this universe in which case science can study them, or thetans aren’t measurable in this universe in which case the question is answered (the answer is “no, you are not a thetan”).
You are trying to deny both sides of the dilemma, when one must be true.
We may not know which side is true – but if you say that, then you are admitting you were wrong when you said “science cannot help us here”.
“But what was the question?”
Um. whether immortal, non-physical souls existed. 😉
Hi Terra
I got on OTVII, solo audited for couple of years and then joined the SO at Flag, trained to Class IX and audited at the Flag AO for 9 years. So I have mingled and communicated with OT’s for a little bit. With people on the upper levels of the Bridge and with some of the best technical team: auditors, case supervisors, cramming officers.
My views are that we are spiritual beings and with using LRH tech you can get into higher states of beingness. I saw it on myself and on others as well by auditing them.
LRH was or is not perfect and I do not necessarily agree with everything he wrote. The technology he developed is also not perfect, but it works! It can produce results and can improve a life. It can get one to higher state of existence. I am not saying that one will become a “super” thetan will have a total recall of his whole track. But he will have a better understanding of life, or some situations that happen to him. One will be happier and will use his/her potential little more. One will become more spiritual and less of T-Bone steak and that’s an improvement!
I believe I am not a meat body, I am a spiritual being who lived before.
Reincarnation is not something new, many other religions believe in it.
Thank you for the beautiful article. I enjoyed reading it.
Most people prefer to see what they believe rather than believe what they see.
The eternal salvation business is nearly as old as eternity.
Go to heaven with St Pete, the pharaoh goes back to the sun god Ra, the Muslims have the 72 virgins waiting for them. (LRH said well: There is only beingness but man believes there is only becomingness
Every feels it makes sense to invest time and money in part 2 is universal.)
Does it exist? When I started scientology the old line of being exterior line with full perception got.me.
Now I am OT 8. OT8(consisted of recalling all your supposed past lives and getting the meter to tell you it was not your own picture but that of some entity.
So OT8 proves you did not live before. My realization afterwards was. Either I was a fool or I have been fooled.
Oh I forgot OT 9would handle what you really was in the past. But eh that is being well worked on.
So essentially you doing scientology was as useful as going to a monastery or becoming an imam or shaman. Maybe some preconceived ideas or hopes got strengthened or you said it so many times and others did to that this is now your belief.
MAA´s and Jeff Pomeranz exploit this masterfully by insisting if you do not disconnect or pay you lose your eternity and the whole planet does too!
But if you have lived so many times before and you are still here you will still be here again.
Of course questioning your future existence is a painful thing and it is much more convenient to say Scientology (or Allah, Jesus, The cookie monster or flying spaghetti monster did it, if you do not believe it you are an infidel possessed by the devil a psych puppet, a sp, a squirrel.
Could it be that the whole of scientology is a service fac. (a concept to make yourself right and others wrong) We asked David Pomeranz’s brother Jeff Pomeranz commissioned IAS reg to answer these questions
1. How does being a scientology make you right? (You have the only way out in quadrillions of years! yessir would you like some IAS fries with that?)
2. How does being a scientologist make others wrong? Everyone is wrong there is one Allaray .Allaray akbah hip hip hurrah.
3. How does being a scientologist help your survival? You are the chosen one. You get to live forever. Upgrade to Patron Suckertorius tonight
4. How does being a scientologist hinder the survival of others? All science is financed by psych dominated drug companies Listen to us not them and pay now otherwise you are a psych.
5. How does being a scientologist help you to dominate others? We have the only tech in the history of the universe because Allahray say so. Allahray is the only being who has figured this out in the last 75 million years. Everyone else is a wog.Now move over I need to send a telex.
6. How does being a scientologist help you escape domination? The FBI, justice system, CIA, psychologist, psychiatrist, medical profession everybody is wrong We are the only ones you should listen not to those guys. Now which card can we write that Patron Suckertorius on?
I’ve lost my religion and faith. Now I see it in the reverse light: being an eternal animating spirit would make life completely ordinary. That molecules come together to create RNA and DNA, coding information to make little machines that build proteins and bodies as a result of physics and chemistry… that’s what I see as miraculous. I do mind the idea that this life might be it for me, but I also think immortality might just be the human mind’s inability to conceive of its own demise.
Who knows? Life as such is pretty bloody. We’re in a luxurious position here at the top of the food chain. Would I even want to experience life through a body over and over and over again? What if we’re forced to be reborn and have no more choice in the matter than when we die, and we’re just part of an automatic process?
I think if I’m asking myself whether I really exist as a spirit, then I have an abundance of uncertainty and a dearth of evidence. Am I invested in the idea of living forever? Why? And if I could prove I live forever, what would that change about how I live my life now?
I’ve seen death a couple times. To me it seems like an inexplicable process, one I can’t get my wits around. Someone is there, and then they aren’t – and you know it. You can sense the emptiness.
If I am a spirit, why can’t I sense that the emptiness is still filled with life, with spirit? If I ‘sense’ anything, how can I know it isn’t confirmation bias, wishful thinking, the fear of non-existence?
It takes courage to question one’s assumptions and realise one may simply not know the answer to some questions. That nobody really knows the answer to some questions. Then you can decide to live with the uncertainty or spend your time seeking an experience that will answer the question for you.
I’m dabbling in advaita right now because for whatever reason, I’m stuck with the wish that life were a spiritual affair with me a part of it. But maybe I’ll only know (or not) when the lights go out.
Hubbard tapped into so many ancient ideas that were already afloat when he cobbled together what became known as Scientology that it is hard to dismiss the totality of “his” work without also dismissing thousands of years of pre-existent philosophical thought (which is where he got most of Scientology) and which he acknowledged several times before his own hubris – and later transcription editors – cleaned everything up.
Lol.
It is not proof (or even evidence really) but it is true that – by far – the bulk of humans on earth consider themselves to be part of a cosmos that contains a spiritual aspect. The idea of a future existence after the current one is again…by far…more common that the idea of a single life.
It is primarily a Western idea, especially in primarily secular nations, where the idea of “one life” is both a popular notion and and a handy marketing jingle.
I’m a total materialist (never in).
But one thing I have observed is that in scientology, the belief that you are really a thetan, while reassuring, is frequently used as a weapon against you. This is certainly not the case with all faiths that have a belief in reincarnation, but the way it is couched in scientology seems to promote its use as a weapon.
A weapon to make what you really want out of your life – your relationships with family and friends, the children you might have wanted, your career, your dreams – insignificant. So that scientology, being more important that all that, can suck out all the resources (financial, emotional, and, most importantly, time) you would normally dedicate to those things.
I think this idea cheapens life. You are given the impression that it’s an infinite resource, and that you can waste as much as you want. Someone who believe they only live once won’t squander their life easily. They’ll cherish that precious time they spend with their family and friends, because it might be the last. They’ll reach for their dreams, because they only get one try.
All this slapped me in the face when I read the comment of a disconnected daughter commenting on her father’s passing. “Choose a good scientologist family in your next life dad and we’ll meet again.”
What if you’re wrong ? What a waste.
Brilliant posting, especially for a never-in. I totally agree with your views.
Exactly! What if they are wrong, and you’ve merely slotted yourself into one of these Scientologists hoping that next lifetime they will “find a Scientology Org” and continue up the Bridge next lifetime.
I believed that, and it takes years to come down off that thinking, and I was an atheist.
You think, “well, if the Scientologists are right then…..” I will be coming back next life, and I can give Scientology a shot then, if next lifetime MORE Scientology OT superpeople actually start fixing the world.
Naw, the proof is no Scientologist is publicly making a dent in the world.
No “OT” superpeople are really helping the world.
What’s Tom Cruise doing?
He’s just being an entertainer!
Not even showing one miracle.
No Scientologist is demonstrating miracle powers.
Scientology is a major minor money draining modern sci fi cult that through Hubbard’s prolific wordage and the methods of indoctrinating the members just smothers the hapless followers enough to be part of the Hubbard show movement long enough to keep this movement going on auto-pilot with Hubbard dead now.
Well said!
Terra Cognita, you may not have seen the goldenrod but probably there is one somewhere. You are too good to be acceptable to the Church in any role other than “Suppressive Person”.
The question of “past lives” is an excellent question and not one that will be answered this morning on a blog in the far corners of the known Web.
But a few points – Hubbard claimed that he had checked gravestones and found physical evidence of past lives. As in, someone remembered details that could not have been imagined or found out by other means. Somehow no details are recorded so you can’t check on this claim. I suspect a careful reading of the popular 50s news accounts about “Bridey Murphy” could account for many of these assertions.
He also did a grandiose test of whole track recall, called the “Mission into Time”. If you have never heard of it, that is probably because it does not appear in the book lists anymore. If you poke around on accounts by Sea Org members who actually participated in the “Mission into Time” most say it was a dismal failure. The book itself is quite incoherent and does not present any credible proof of anything.
I recently read a fantastic book by Bart Ehrman: “Jesus Before the Gospels”. If you are not familiar with the Bible at all it may not be a good reference for you, he is one of the best New Testament scholars around and uses Bible examples all through the book. But the main point is a cogent one and directly applies here: when most people are asked to recall things they generally cannot directly do so. They cobble together “memories” based on some few very clear recollections and a lot of filler from general experience. But these invented “memories” are very real and convincing to the person doing the “recall”. If asked to recall more details, more details will emerge. But they will not necessarily have anything to do with what actually happened.
That is what went wrong with the attempts in the 80s to get children to recall being abused. Almost all of them could recall being abused if pressed. Horrific details emerged. In some cases it was all true, but many more were simply false memory. There is a case of a couple that recalled a very detailed alien abduction under hypnosis. Again, horrific details. Books and TV shows are based on it. All false memory, as it later proved. But very real to the couple, so much so that they had health problems.
The important point here is that these people with false memories could not distinguish them from real memories. They had unshakeable certainty that they experienced these things. And that the false memories were created by repeated demands for details, following indistinct leads. When Hubbard said “What is true is what is true for you” he deliberately created a movement of liars convinced of their own lies. He did not even have to lie to them beyond the initial setup. They would go on lying to themselves very productively. With the rule in place that you do not talk about your case to others, he effectively prevented families from cross checking stories with each other for example.
All this does not necessarily mean that there are no past lives. Or that there is no eternal spirit. There are also creditable researchers that claim to have found verifiable evidence by interviewing young children. I think the jury is still out on this. But we do know that Hubbard’s claims are unreliable.
i think i’m on the same page as you, bruce. it’s a miracle that i didn’t end up in scientology – my mom was into all that new age stuff. i grew up surrounded by books about edgar cayce, bridey murphy, astrology, and anything she could find about past lives. i know we had a copy of dianetics (which i dismissed as unreadable trash.) i was convinced i was jewish in a past life, and black in another…always felt drawn to hispanic culture, and was sure i was working out some karmic debt.
but i’ve always been a more head-over-heart type of person, and over time i got more cynical, discarded a lot of what i thought i believed, got educated about false memories, cons, and charlatans. i pretty much fell out of believing in anything specific and scoffed at my previous naivety in thinking i knew what was what.
then i had a granddaughter. my daughter lived in another state – we didn’t get along, and i’m embarrassed now to admit that i wasn’t excited about this news. (it didn’t help that i’m not crazy about babies.) but the first time i met her, there was something i can only describe as recognition. it was as if i’d been expecting her or had always known her.
fast forward a year or so, everyone calling me “gramma”, yet here was this child just learning to talk, and she’s calling me Bahya. (huh?) so i google it just for fun, and what do i find but a wikipedia article about a jewish rabbi who lived in the 1600s in spain and taught religion from the perspective of logic and ethics!
so, who the heck knows about anything? i agree that hubbard was a copycat opportunist (on top of a lot of other stuff) and i also believe his “tech” is a bunch of self-hypnosis mumbo jumbo that creates altered mental states. but i also feel like maybe my granddaughter remembered me from back in the day. so there you go.
Chris, thousands of individuals have had similar experiences like yours, and even with more details that can’t just be described other way other than the subject had a knowledge of past lives events w/out having been at those locations this lifetime, and w/out even having been exposed to such imformation as we’ll
Unfortunately, “scientists” today are fixated on materialism and therefore only look at what they call “physical evidence”. Empirical obsevations of a phenomena to determine the existence of anything, began to be totally dismissed. And that’s a joke if we analyze how many aspects of physics got “researched” by “thought experiments” like the ones that Einstein “performed” back in the early 1900s!!!! Talking about being “scientific”. Hilarious!!!
Physics became a cult to alleged “authorities” like Einstein and other silly “scientists” who “knew best”. But criticize him, and see how one gets attacked by the his fundamentalist followers. Just observe how other will attack myself for that comment, just watch it.
Before the 1900s we didn’t have those silly “thought experiments”, and research was conducted in a methodological way, being objective, dispassionate, but open minded at the same time; the three most important characteristics of any competent researcher. We were not so fixated back then in understanding structure, but understanding how something behaved was good enough. We might have not known why it bahaved that way, but be totally relaxed about it. If the observable phenomena didn’t match any existing known laws, this did not immediately invalidate what we had observed as true.
Take researchers like Faraday who wasn’t even formally trained in science, and who was not a mathematician. His researches into electromagnetism gave us the motor and the basic principle upon which the production of electricity is based; induction.
Take guys like Tesla, who I consider the best experimenter to ever having walked this planet. We own him so many things that we don’t even known he did. He discovered the principle upon which the production.of AC has been based upon ever since; a rotating magnetic field. We wouldn’t have AC w/out his research. Take Galileo and his experiments with motion and the inclined plane and the projectiles ; so simple but yet so revealing of nature patterns (laws). Take Arquimides and his experiments on the mechanisms of fluids. These guys were not fixated on structure. They OBSERVED and recorded phenomena, and recognized the patterns.
That’s what science should be doing more; recognizing patterns of behavior. Structure comes next as secondary thing. Gee, we can even have equations that explain and predict the observable phenomana w/out even understanding “Why” they happen. But science has become today an activity away from the simplicity into the complexity of forms and structure. And with that, came the dramatizations of “We can’t be sure”, “We can’t believe it”, “It violates the known laws”, etc, etc; and we lost the common sense and open mindness.
You know, that’s an interesting point, thetaclear.
Many of these pioneers were ridiculed, and only a few of them were fortunate enough to live to see themselves vindicated. Faraday, Tesla, Galileo, Archimedes (and many others could be mentioned in a similar vein: Rumford, Maxwell, Hooke, Berzelius) – huge amounts of our world depend on their work, from which they themselves mainly realized little benefit.
Just think of all the technologies we wouldn’t have if not for the discoveries of Mesmer, Blavatsky, and Sprague – they knew one needn’t limit oneself to the material world or to the so-called “scientific evidence”. Technologies like … well… but surely there’s something…
That’s a good point indeed, thetaclear. Can you name even one example of a widespread technology based on non-materialist principles?
That’s a good point indeed, thetaclear. Can you name even one example of a widespread technology based on non-materialist principles?”
So you even have a sense of humor after all, Daniel; even if a dark one, but humor nevertheless. Wow! Now you do not need to feel so tense when your science bubble is threatened, do you?, as now you have a method to release tension! 🙂
Let’s see how should I begin to deal with your fascination with the so called “Scientific Method”. First, you clearly misunderstood my post, and specially what I meant by the need for “physical evidence”.
It is wrongly misunderstood that we need to totally rely on experimental data to support any given theory or hypothesis, and this is not always the case in many fields of science. Experimental data can also yield erroneous results due to the human equation, inadequate equipment, and wrong experimental settings like the many that allegedly “proved” the “Wave Collapsing” observation-dependent theory of QM.
Many times a scientist needs to trust more in his theories and mathematical computations, than on the experimental data. Let’s take the example of the The Nobel Laureate recipients James Watson and Francis Crick in the work on DNA structure. They theorized in their studies of the structure and functions of DNA, that it contained equal amounts of Adenine and Thymine, and equal amounts of Guanine and Cytocine.
But Edwin Chargaf, a famous experimentalist, had found that the relation APPROACHED 1:1 but was not exactly 1:1. But Watson and Crick trusted their theoretical computations, and assumed this equality to be EXACTLY 1:1, and that the experimental data was erroneous due to not yet known factors. They were awarded the Nobel Price, but Chargaf – who had ACTUALLY carried out most of the experiments – wasn’t even mentioned. [ “Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method”, Henry Bauer]
Take another case, the “Coulomb’s Torsion Balance” experiment, one of the most repeated physics experiments today. With his experiment, he allegedly discovered the Inverse Square force manifestation of electricity. But his experimental results did not yield EXACTLY a “2” as an exponent of the “distant” factor, but APROXIMATELY a “2”. Allegedly, close enough (1.97-1.99), but modern repetitions of the experiment using the same materials and methods (to the degree possible) of the time, does not yield a 1.97-1.99, but LOWER than that. Even with more advance equipment, this number is not exactly a “2”.
It has been said by a LOT of scientists, that there is no way in hell that Coulomb could have gotten those aproximations with the methods and materials of the time, and that he “adjusted” his experimental data, to “fit” with his theoretical and mathematical computations. It seems he “knew” that it should be EXACTLY a “2”, and knew as well that the discrepancies were due to errors in the experimental settings, and not errors in theoretical calculations, but he wouldn’t dare say that in his publication at the Royal Academy .
Today we use EXACTLY a “2” in our engineering calculations, and it works just fine. And I can quote you DOZENS more of such examples where the experimental data – even in the most strict of experimental settings – can yield wrong results, and where trusting the mathematical computations takes precedence. “Shut up and calculate”, said one famous physicist.
The above rather boring short dissertation, was intended to explain to you that the fixation on “show me the ‘physical’ evidence”, is not always representative of objectivity and truth. Take the example of the subject of electromagnetism. We had “no physical evidence” of the existence of “electrons” nor even had postulated their existence. We knew NOTHING of the atomic structure, in fact, and the postulate of “atoms” were just beginning to be considered.
But in spite of all of the above, we established and created – MOSTLY based on theoretical and mathematical constructs – practically all we know about electromagnetism, to the point of even being able to USE electricity w/out even understanding its structure nor WHAT it really was, neither HOW it all worked. Function was more important then, than structure. And many times function does not need a “materialistic explanation” as such.
And to FINALLY (wow! how much Q&A I did, didn’t I?) answer your question as to “Can you name even one example of a wide spread technology based on non-materialist principles?”
Well, based on your MATERIALISTIC view of existence, Daniel, I am sure that your definition of “technology” is only based on electronic type of “technology”, or pure “physical methods” sort of “technology” like medical treatments and the use of drugs. But if we CORRECTLY define tecnology as ANY method or procedure to accomplish something, then I can give you DOZENS of examples.
Let’s start with one of the fields that you indirectly mocked in your reply; Mesmerism. It was through Mesmerism that we studied and researched “hypnotism”. Hypnotism is a standard psychotherapeutic practice today TOTALLY accepted by the professional clinical psychologists and psychiatrists, and one TECHNOLOGY proved beyond any reasonable doubt that actually DOES helps the individual. Gee, it has been so much researched that we have dozens of institutions that officially certify hypnotherapists. Any “scientist” that negates the usefulness of hypnosis in healing not only emotional/mental problems, but even many physical ones, would be considered today as very outmoded, and even a little fundamentalist .
It is one of THE most used forms of therapy today. Is hypnotism based on materialistic principles? OF COURSE, it isn’t. It is based on the principle, “Mind/Thought over body”.
Scientists accept, by accepting the workability of hypnosis, that Thought can influence in our mental health and CHANGE it, and even influence bodily functions when physical healing occurs in hypnosis sessions, but have a real hard time believing that Thought can influence other people’s bodies and mental health as in “Distant healing” and “Placing-the-hands” healing. Isn’t this a contradictory assumption?
And I could quote you others examples like in the field of Energy Medicine and Medical Intuition (that DOZENS of M.Ds and hospital use today) , which are a “non-material” technology, but of course I am sure that you would just brush it all off as “unproved” and as a “pseudoscience”, even though that the evidence is astronomical to support this. But you know how the saying goes, “Once an skeptic, always a skeptic”. 🙂
Check out my other comment here (at the beginning of the thread) about the subject of “Skepticism” and how it can deviate from a truly sane attitude of being objective and methodical, but open minded at the same time.
Btw, I won’t be replying anymore on this subject. I said all I wanted to say, and I do not want to bore to death other posters here who might not be that interested in these boring scientific subjects. So if you or Mwesten, or anybody else here would like to keep the debate (which I always enjoy and welcome), please let’s do so at e-mails lines, or at science forums where you might be participating at.
thetaclear68@yahoo.com
Best,
Peter Torres
It helps to have had out-of-body experiences with full awareness. Although it hasn’t happened often, it’s happened enough to convince me I’m not my body, and I’ll continue on after my body is no longer of use.
As for “thetans” and past / future lives: it took me many years to let go of the connection I had with LRH’s “teachings” … which (as we know) covered pretty much everything. In some instances, his ideas pointed me in useful directions. But his “bridge to total freedom” contains a nasty twist: by insisting he (and only he) had the truth, his ideas, definitions, explanations, and so on, were (in fact) confining. Once I was able to put enough distance between me and LRH, I was able to see and experience a bigger, more accessible and authentic spiritual life … and there’s no way I’d have gotten to where I am, spiritually, if I’d stayed in Scientology.
The self-help section of any bookstore is a resource we were denied while being “good Scientologists”. It’s a resource worth hanging out with. Some of my favorites: “The Dancing Wu li Masters”, and “The Seat of the Soul”, by Gary Zukav; “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz; any book by Carlos Castaneda; even Shirley MacLaine has a couple of interesting reads.
However things go for you from here on out, I hope your journey is as much fun for you as mine has been for me. 🙂
“On the other hand, these memories may well be the result of a fertile imagination.” ‘Recovered’ memories are just that, imagination. When you leave this mortal coil, all that you have done to and for others is all you leave behind. And maybe a tax bill, please leave owing the IRS something that they can’t collect.
Regarding the past lives theory, if any Thetan on Earth did not have a past life this blog would not be here. Apparently. 🙂
As someone who made the journey from science geeky kid to anxious new ager and back again, the only thing I understand is that there’s exactly zero evidence for mind/body dualism. In my existential angst, I desperately wanted there to be reincarnation and life beyond our death. I was offended that I would cease to exist, and more than a bit terrified of the prospect. That drove me to solutions that calmed me and soothed the fear.
It took about ten years, bookended by two significant deaths in my family for me to lose my fear of death and see it as not mysterious and weird, but ordinary and banal. Just another thing you’ll do. I went from a universe with myriad spiritual rules and causes to just one: Shit Happens. That’s all we really know. Shit happens and we may know how, but the why continues to elude us because there may not be a why.
Our ego tends to demand that things revolve around us. We project our mental processes outward onto other people, animals (anthropomorphizing) and the universe (the antrhopic principal). We have done this to comfort ourselves since our species first came down from the trees. Science tends to burst this bubble over and over again. I used to hate that, but now I find comfort in all the things I used to fear. That I am finite is a relief on some level. That I will someday cease to exist is sad on one level, but the knowledge that I won’t know when I’m gone is okay with me. If I should wake up dead someday, then what the hell? Another adventure. I’m just not putting money on it anymore.
That may be the most succinctly accurate description of existence I’ve ever heard: “Shit happens and we may know how, but the why continues to elude us…”
Brilliant post, Artoo.
-Katherine (JaxNGold from the Bunker)
Loving your articles as a never in… We still just don’t know. The heavens and hell just doesn’t do it for me neither. Reincarnation as believed in some of the most ancient religions makes the most sence to me. I think Chuck Beaty said sort of like.. If enought time and enough mixes off all the element and numbers continue, we might just be recreated again…. Just one great mysterery and fate we all share. It’s nothing to fear, that’s all I am certain of….Phil
When I was in I substituted the word “soul” for “thetan.” I just assumed we were all souls on a spiritual path. When I was in I assumed everyone had to be on my spiritual path. Now I think we all have individual paths to our individual spiritual destinations. All of them are true (except for the ones that harm others). But the ones that make you feel the best is the truth for you. I would go for whatever beliefs uplift you.
Another nicely written piece TC – it’s a question I’d also pondered since putting distance from the organization and then the subject.
Coincidentally, I experienced my first ‘out of body’ occurrence just months prior to my initial involvement, so when I started reading this stuff about exteriorization I was pretty much sold. Subsequent similar phenomena only solidified this belief.
So much anecdotal evidence seems to exist too – outside scientology circles (kids recalling previous lives and deaths during past wars etc.) – which prompt the same questions.
I personally have a hard time believing that once we’re gone, we’re gone. It’s not real to me.
I think LRH recognized this too and exploited it to the full. Just as with some of the basic stuff, there’s enough truth and workability in it to get people hooked and committed. Thereon after, they’ll buy almost anything. And indeed sadly do.
Noggin. Is that not an English term? Looking forward to your reveal! Good work.
Thank you Terra, very enjoyable……
I too like many many others (I think) think like you do.
The formula for me…… is? To live life the very best I can, (i.e clean hands…… etc.) and leave the rest to whoever or whatever maybe the author of the cosmos.
Mike Moretti
Just read Plato. That’s all you really need. I actually think there may be something to the much maligned quantum collapse theory of consciousness, so if that idea comforts you too, have at it.
LRH didn’t create the concept of a thetan. He just put a new label on it. There are much better ways to get your woo on without having to pay one red cent to anyone. Just go to your local library or hell, most of Plato is on Google anyway.
Terra Cognita, thank you for your views.
Your article makes me think of the Hindu Philosophy where it is stated that there is no time, it is only eternity and describes how we came here to experience life. The periods of life are called episodes by the hindus and of course they do believe in re-encarnation.
The difference is that Hinduism does not evaluate how long have you lived, who were you before, what your future will be whereas scientology tells you that you are only a humanoid and auditing will make you a good, desirable being (invalidation followed by evaluation).
And to answer your question on how scientology affected the spiritual concept I had when I joined, well, for whatever reason I had the concept I was ‘me’ and I felt good about that conclusion. I mostly join to help others and did so, that was my main drive thus these OT Powers or whatever were not particularly my main concern then.
Morning Terra.. So well written, humorous and thoughtful. I became involved in SCN back in 1971 exactly because I DID believe I was a Spiritual Being, who had lived before and would live again. I was studying Eastern Philosophies at the time and those rang my chimes a lot more than traditional Christian based religion.
I just couldn’t wrap myself around the heaven and hell thing, the duality of it all. We as a species act out all that nonsense and we have a long way to go to get back to where we never left, so to speak.. (obviously my view point only folks)..but the “come on” for the church of SCN seemed to embrace more of that Eastern spirituality than anything else I had come across not warranting donning saffron robes and chanting. :0)
I also liked the “you are responsible” for your life.. which for me was the same as Karma. For every action there is a response.. make a wise choice and you shall receive the corresponding result. Make a bad choice.. etc.. Common Sense really. So.. the above, plus mightily wanting to make a difference on this planet and help others free themselves up by recognizing how good they are and helping them to take the steps to expand their awareness, was a powerful draw. 34 years out of the S.O now, and I know I am still a “Thetan”, or Spirit..that’s all I’ve ever been. lolol But now I have time off, vacations, and a life. That was a GOOD choice…
Hi, Terra. Personally, I can’t see life on earth as “life’s a bitch and then you die”. I don’t see my death as “ee blee blee blee blee! That’s all folks!” or something to that effect. I do tend to trust more in the material side of things than the spiritual but I have to remind myself that this life is a matter of “Here today and gone tomorrow”. That’s just my take on it.
Thanks again Terra. This was a well-written and humorous piece. I have nothing to add except that I agree with you – I don’t know for sure in what form I will live again or if at all. The bottom line for me is who cares. Live the life I have now and – be kind.
I agree 100%