What's new

Understanding valid antecedents of Scientology

uniquemand

Unbeliever
I don't know what you'e going on about. No matter.


Let's get on to the Kabbala. (How many b's and l's are required here?)

The thing to really understand about it is that it is a philosophical engine. It chugs along and generates all sorts of ideas. People have spent their entire lives studying it and getting deeper and deeper into the significances that it churns up. This connects to that and that there links to this on the left here and that relates this way to the other thing and then you get something else and that follows on from there and so on and so on. It never ends. You can keep on studying it till the cows conme home and it will just keep on producing new ideas. And you link these ideas up just as you please and they all mean just what you want them to.

Why? Just that. It is a fuzzy diagram into which you put your own ideas. And then you shake them all around and you get them out again, Whooppeee!

It is such a fuzzy construct that you can get it to mean whatever the hell you like. It's like those I-Ching sticks the Chinese have - they mean exactly whatever you want them to mean. And so if you want them to mean the Scio Grade Chart then that is what you can see there, and if you want them to mean always eat with your mouth closed then that too is in there waiting to be revealed.

Who knows, perhaps LRH was studying the Kabbala when he clicked onto the Conditons of Existence. Maybe it was so. But that does not in any way make them an antecedent, because those as-is concepts are NOT contained within the Kabbala at all. You have to PUT them there first.

This is why you tell me to really think it through so deeply - then it will all be revealed. Duh. You're wanting me to dub in what you have been dubbing in and then I will cognite!

wow.

So keep all of your so called antecedents. They're all phoney. I prefer the real stuff.

The antecedents are in actual abreactive therapy and in Crowley's occultism, just as LRH said. Wish I'd known more about them before I met LRH's "space-age" hodge podge.
 

uniquemand

Unbeliever
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Jung/Association/

Excellent reference to see how early word lists and GSR meters were used by Jung in psychoanalysis.

This was ripped off rather directly by Hubbard and Mathison, though there is no doubt that Hubbard and Mathison DID improve methods of probing these sorts of "complexes" (Hubbard called them GPMs), though they did so at the expense of hundreds of their student's minds (the guinea pigs trusted Hubbard).
 

Gadfly

Crusader
I don't know what you'e going on about. No matter.

Let's get on to the Kabbala. (How many b's and l's are required here?)

The thing to really understand about it is that it is a philosophical engine. It chugs along and generates all sorts of ideas. People have spent their entire lives studying it and getting deeper and deeper into the significances that it churns up. This connects to that and that there links to this on the left here and that relates this way to the other thing and then you get something else and that follows on from there and so on and so on. It never ends. You can keep on studying it till the cows conme home and it will just keep on producing new ideas. And you link these ideas up just as you please and they all mean just what you want them to.

Why? Just that. It is a fuzzy diagram into which you put your own ideas. And then you shake them all around and you get them out again, Whooppeee!

It is such a fuzzy construct that you can get it to mean whatever the hell you like. It's like those I-Ching sticks the Chinese have - they mean exactly whatever you want them to mean. And so if you want them to mean the Scio Grade Chart then that is what you can see there, and if you want them to mean always eat with your mouth closed then that too is in there waiting to be revealed.

Who knows, perhaps LRH was studying the Kabbala when he clicked onto the Conditons of Existence. Maybe it was so. But that does not in any way make them an antecedent, because those as-is concepts are NOT contained within the Kabbala at all. You have to PUT them there first.

This is why you tell me to really think it through so deeply - then it will all be revealed. Duh. You're wanting me to dub in what you have been dubbing in and then I will cognite!

wow.

So keep all of your so called antecedents. They're all phoney. I prefer the real stuff.

I really liked this post.

I also studied a great deal of the Kabbala, along with Crowley and other "systems". These sytems are HEAVY on SIGNIFICANCE. Very HEAVY on significance. For example, in various forms of Magick, there are "correspondances" and "symbols", and these have meaning for the practitioner ONLY. When people study Crowley's system of some other magician's system, they make the mistake of assuming that "these ideas represent things just as they are". That is NOT at all true. Each magician should (but rarely does) create his or her OWN set of symbols and significances. Few magical pactitioners realize or are aware of the fact that ALL thinkingness is arbitrary, and that each can and should MAKE UP his own set of correspondances and symbols - that WORK for him or her, that resonate deeply with his or her view of all-that-is.

I found the same thing, that these sort of systems SUCK people in by tricking you into contributing THINKINGESS about all sorts of things that do not actually exist. They trick you into FEEDING the mountains of "meaning" and "significance", by your own active association of ideas, concepts and labels.

If you want to look for "valid antecedents" of Scientology, notice THAT aspect, because Hubbard designed Scientology to do exactly the same thing. That is why he has all the "made-up words", Scientology-defined terms, nomenclature, acronyms, and more. Scientology is carefully setup to trick members into FEEDING the "significance machinery". The "significance machinery" is HUGE in the soggy heads of most devoted Scientologists. :omg:

I would add that, to me, a system such as Buddhism is FAR MORE legitimate, because it aims to eradicate significance and meaning, by destroying associations and identifications (attachment). Simply, it aims, with various exercises and practices, to bring about LESS MIND - less "thinkingness". These other systems, far too often, do exactly the opposite, and they bring about MORE MIND and increased thinkingness.

I have spoken to various people over the years who have gotten deeply into the Kabbala, or magick, or Scientololgy, and they all have an exaggerated degree of SIGNIFICANCE banging around inside their mushy little minds.

My opinion is that any legitimate path to truth and spiritual improvement acts to DECREASE thinkingness. Scientology, all too often, and its various occult and New Age antecedents, do exactly the opposite. They do not actually get you to just quietly BE THERE, with all the noise of the mind turned down or off. Granted, there are forms of magick that teach meditation, and that require a "calm mind" before entering upon the imaginative (ritual) work of the inner space ("mind"). But THAT is far different than the "conceptual machinery" that is loaded with significance and meaning.

Another antecedent is the use of hypnotism. Magic, visualization, and affirmations use self-hypnosis. They might not call it by that, but they do. Hubbard took it a few degrees "higher" by creating a system that takes the USE of these tools OUT of the hands of the practitioner, and locks members into a strict framework of restrictive meaning and significance. Instead of using techniques to hypnotize self, in accordance with ones own goals and purposes, Scientology does it TO YOU - the system hypnotizes YOU (without your awareness).

Hubbard was an asshole. :yes:
 
I suppose a response is required from me.

Firstly I have read a good deal about Gurdjieff and what he aspired to - all of it is certainly to be supported. What I have not found in any substantial bite-into-able quantity is anything about the methods which Gurdjieff recommended for attaining these goals. In fact the supreme bit of "tech" I have leared there - and this was from one of his disciples in the UK - was tghaqt you get the guy to do mest-work which is repetitive and boring and thereby get him to key-in his bank (forgive the Scientologisms) and then you keep him working until he rises above the key-in and keys out again. This technique gets applied rigourously by a Gurdjieffian group here in Christchurch where I live.

Secondly, the idea that the founders of psychology (in the broad sense) can somehow be regarded as valid antecedents of Scientology - in a word, no. The all sought academic acceptance over and above workable results, they rejected thoroughly the notion of man as a spiritual being - excluding here some later ones who are breaking away from the previously laid down pattern, for which dianetics may validly be considered as an antecedent.

Hubbard never did this. He wrote and lectured about what he found and the hell with any academic who disagreed. For this alone he deserves a vote of thanks. But beyond that he came up with some ideas which I have never come across or even seen hinted at by previous researchers, and if anyone else has found such I would be most interested in it. For example his use of gradient scales in evaluating datums, ie that things need not be either True or False (and provable as such by one's peers) but merely "more true" or "less false", and that this would indicate an acceptable and perhaps valid avenue of exploration. Also the package of as-is, alter-is, not-is (which is really just a particular type of alter-is) and isness. This is Hubbard's own. And then also the amount of work he put in to build a route by which people can attain what he reckoned they had as inherent potential. These are just three of his original contributions. There are more.

Now sure, I fully and wholeheartedly agree that he plagiarised certain things, that he was very slap-dash in much of his research, that he had an ego of monumental proportions and that he threw curves into Scientology which derailed it completely from the goals and the philosophy that we all saw as being sufficiently worthwhile so that we devoted our lilves to its pursuit. All of that is true and he was a cruel and venal liar as well. No disagreements.

But he also did much that we can benefit from, and these are benefits which have never been available anywhere other than in Scio and its derivatives. And to try and minimise these by claiming that it was all plagiarised or all derived from antecedents in psychology is just plain NUTS. Any attempt to do this indicates to me quuite simply that the person making such a claim does not know his Scientology materials. He is assertions are rooted in his ignorance of what is there in Scientology.

CoS wants whitewash ron and calls his work original. The usual esmb template is to blackwash ron and call him a plagiarist. i am willing to say he adapted the work of others into a unique recipe which includes much original work and much imaginative but specious work
 

MattD

Patron with Honors
I really liked this post.

I also studied a great deal of the Kabbala, along with Crowley and other "systems". These sytems are HEAVY on SIGNIFICANCE. Very HEAVY on significance. For example, in various forms of Magick, there are "correspondances" and "symbols", and these have meaning for the practitioner ONLY. When people study Crowley's system of some other magician's system, they make the mistake of assuming that "these ideas represent things just as they are". That is NOT at all true. Each magician should (but rarely does) create his or her OWN set of symbols and significances. Few magical pactitioners realize or are aware of the fact that ALL thinkingness is arbitrary, and that each can and should MAKE UP his own set of correspondances and symbols - that WORK for him or her, that resonate deeply with his or her view of all-that-is.

I found the same thing, that these sort of systems SUCK people in by tricking you into contributing THINKINGESS about all sorts of things that do not actually exist. They trick you into FEEDING the mountains of "meaning" and "significance", by your own active association of ideas, concepts and labels.

If you want to look for "valid antecedents" of Scientology, notice THAT aspect, because Hubbard designed Scientology to do exactly the same thing. That is why he has all the "made-up words", Scientology-defined terms, nomenclature, acronyms, and more. Scientology is carefully setup to trick members into FEEDING the "significance machinery". The "significance machinery" is HUGE in the soggy heads of most devoted Scientologists. :omg:

I would add that, to me, a system such as Buddhism is FAR MORE legitimate, because it aims to eradicate significance and meaning, by destroying associations and identifications (attachment). Simply, it aims, with various exercises and practices, to bring about LESS MIND - less "thinkingness". These other systems, far too often, do exactly the opposite, and they bring about MORE MIND and increased thinkingness.

I have spoken to various people over the years who have gotten deeply into the Kabbala, or magick, or Scientololgy, and they all have an exaggerated degree of SIGNIFICANCE banging around inside their mushy little minds.

My opinion is that any legitimate path to truth and spiritual improvement acts to DECREASE thinkingness. Scientology, all too often, and its various occult and New Age antecedents, do exactly the opposite. They do not actually get you to just quietly BE THERE, with all the noise of the mind turned down or off. Granted, there are forms of magick that teach meditation, and that require a "calm mind" before entering upon the imaginative (ritual) work of the inner space ("mind"). But THAT is far different than the "conceptual machinery" that is loaded with significance and meaning.

Another antecedent is the use of hypnotism. Magic, visualization, and affirmations use self-hypnosis. They might not call it by that, but they do. Hubbard took it a few degrees "higher" by creating a system that takes the USE of these tools OUT of the hands of the practitioner, and locks members into a strict framework of restrictive meaning and significance. Instead of using techniques to hypnotize self, in accordance with ones own goals and purposes, Scientology does it TO YOU - the system hypnotizes YOU (without your awareness).

Hubbard was an asshole. :yes:

I think scientology HAD the potential to eliminate the significance trap, but failed and shifted, and probably around the time the grade chart came out.

People buy significance and shy away from true freedom.

I am currently taking steps on the buddhist path and my scientology experiences are serving me well, as there are cults and control mechanisms in much of contemporary buddhism too!

But the purest thing I have found so far is VIPASSANA

Wouldn't it be ironic if this direct form of self discovery turned out to be more effective than the guided form with electronic assistance as in scientology, as we all know Ron WAS the Buddha. To bad he didn't STAY buddha.

:coolwink:
 
I think scientology HAD the potential to eliminate the significance trap, but failed and shifted, and probably around the time the grade chart came out.

People buy significance and shy away from true freedom.

I am currently taking steps on the buddhist path and my scientology experiences are serving me well, as there are cults and control mechanisms in much of contemporary buddhism too!

But the purest thing I have found so far is VIPASSANA

Wouldn't it be ironic if this direct form of self discovery turned out to be more effective than the guided form with electronic assistance as in scientology, as we all know Ron WAS the Buddha. To bad he didn't STAY buddha.

:coolwink:

I don't see it as 'either/or'. Decent auditing helps to eliminate some barriers quickly & directly which meditative practices don't. Meditation on the other hand raises awareness of the complexity of what is taken as "one's self" and how pointless much of that complexity can be. The two approaches together can promote fundamental shifts in thinking. The greatest difficulties arise where one approach is taken as being the 'only one'.


Mark A. Baker
 

Jump

Operating teatime
I really liked this post.

I also studied a great deal of the Kabbala, along with Crowley and other "systems". These sytems are HEAVY on SIGNIFICANCE. Very HEAVY on significance. For example, in various forms of Magick, there are "correspondances" and "symbols", and these have meaning for the practitioner ONLY. When people study Crowley's system of some other magician's system, they make the mistake of assuming that "these ideas represent things just as they are". That is NOT at all true. Each magician should (but rarely does) create his or her OWN set of symbols and significances. Few magical pactitioners realize or are aware of the fact that ALL thinkingness is arbitrary, and that each can and should MAKE UP his own set of correspondances and symbols - that WORK for him or her, that resonate deeply with his or her view of all-that-is.

I found the same thing, that these sort of systems SUCK people in by tricking you into contributing THINKINGESS about all sorts of things that do not actually exist. They trick you into FEEDING the mountains of "meaning" and "significance", by your own active association of ideas, concepts and labels.

If you want to look for "valid antecedents" of Scientology, notice THAT aspect, because Hubbard designed Scientology to do exactly the same thing. That is why he has all the "made-up words", Scientology-defined terms, nomenclature, acronyms, and more. Scientology is carefully setup to trick members into FEEDING the "significance machinery". The "significance machinery" is HUGE in the soggy heads of most devoted Scientologists. :omg:

I would add that, to me, a system such as Buddhism is FAR MORE legitimate, because it aims to eradicate significance and meaning, by destroying associations and identifications (attachment). Simply, it aims, with various exercises and practices, to bring about LESS MIND - less "thinkingness". These other systems, far too often, do exactly the opposite, and they bring about MORE MIND and increased thinkingness.

I have spoken to various people over the years who have gotten deeply into the Kabbala, or magick, or Scientololgy, and they all have an exaggerated degree of SIGNIFICANCE banging around inside their mushy little minds.

My opinion is that any legitimate path to truth and spiritual improvement acts to DECREASE thinkingness. Scientology, all too often, and its various occult and New Age antecedents, do exactly the opposite. They do not actually get you to just quietly BE THERE, with all the noise of the mind turned down or off. Granted, there are forms of magick that teach meditation, and that require a "calm mind" before entering upon the imaginative (ritual) work of the inner space ("mind"). But THAT is far different than the "conceptual machinery" that is loaded with significance and meaning.

Another antecedent is the use of hypnotism. Magic, visualization, and affirmations use self-hypnosis. They might not call it by that, but they do. Hubbard took it a few degrees "higher" by creating a system that takes the USE of these tools OUT of the hands of the practitioner, and locks members into a strict framework of restrictive meaning and significance. Instead of using techniques to hypnotize self, in accordance with ones own goals and purposes, Scientology does it TO YOU - the system hypnotizes YOU (without your awareness).

Hubbard was an asshole. :yes:

I really liked this post.

I said a similar thing in a different thread last week.

"'buddhist enlightenment' as I understand it, does not rely on resolution of mental conflicts as such''... Rather it is more a 'seeing beyond' or taking a different transcendent view of the conflict and allowing it to melt away. Thereby allowing the 'monkey mind' to become silent.


(whereas) Scientology traps the raw meat into a merry walk around the palm tree trying to resolve the conflicts, and leading into awareness of further conflict."
 

uniquemand

Unbeliever
I really liked this post.

I said a similar thing in a different thread last week.

"'buddhist enlightenment' as I understand it, does not rely on resolution of mental conflicts as such''... Rather it is more a 'seeing beyond' or taking a different transcendent view of the conflict and allowing it to melt away. Thereby allowing the 'monkey mind' to become silent.


(whereas) Scientology traps the raw meat into a merry walk around the palm tree trying to resolve the conflicts, and leading into awareness of further conflict."

Silencing the mind is a good exercise and skill, but failure to resolve complexes and trauma can open the person to further triggering down the line. I know there will be argument about the reality of reducing or removing triggers, but the evidence is in on it, and about 72% of the time, this is possible. Studies have shown that these are the numbers with people who do prolonged exposure therapies combined with abreaction under Traumatic Incident Reduction: 72% of people with PTSD that were studied no longer qualified for that diagnosis afterwards. I think that number, actually is LOW, but it's significantly higher than controls, including most other forms of "therapy".

That being said, spending lots of time "mocking up" new stuff to run is a waste, other than the skills it develops, and I agree with mindfulness approaches that reduce the noise to complement or expand the gains from PE and resolution.
 
I don't see it as 'either/or'. Decent auditing helps to eliminate some barriers quickly & directly which meditative practices don't. Meditation on the other hand raises awareness of the complexity of what is taken as "one's self" and how pointless much of that complexity can be. The two approaches together can promote fundamental shifts in thinking. The greatest difficulties arise where one approach is taken as being the 'only one'.


Mark A. Baker

various meditation techniques have been a growth industry over the past fifty years and a part of their success has been as an alternative to scientology. seriously do you think we would have a national chain of bikram yoga centers were it not for CoS's shake 'n' bake RD? i'm happy for anything that gives anyone case gain. i'm not the sort of christian who thinks damnation your fate should you fail to better letter perfect in some denomination's theology nor the sort of auditor who consigns you to "death after death after death" should you refuse a sec check

but...

the christian imperative is an imperative and it is a grace to be stricken by it...

and i very pleased with much of ron's work and one of the things i like is that it is an exceptionally dynamic concept of spiritual development. perhaps it is so designed to make money and certainly within CoS the dynamism of the ideas is predominantly so arrayed but disconnect from the venal plane and it is still a fiercely dynamic practice
 
I really liked this post.

I said a similar thing in a different thread last week.

"'buddhist enlightenment' as I understand it, does not rely on resolution of mental conflicts as such''... Rather it is more a 'seeing beyond' or taking a different transcendent view of the conflict and allowing it to melt away. Thereby allowing the 'monkey mind' to become silent.


(whereas) Scientology traps the raw meat into a merry walk around the palm tree trying to resolve the conflicts, and leading into awareness of further conflict."

The 'seeing beyond' comes as a result of observing the conflicts. The two aren't actually separable.


Mark A. Baker
 

GreyLensman

Silver Meritorious Patron
I suppose a response is required from me.

Firstly I have read a good deal about Gurdjieff and what he aspired to - all of it is certainly to be supported. What I have not found in any substantial bite-into-able quantity is anything about the methods which Gurdjieff recommended for attaining these goals. In fact the supreme bit of "tech" I have leared there - and this was from one of his disciples in the UK - was tghaqt you get the guy to do mest-work which is repetitive and boring and thereby get him to key-in his bank (forgive the Scientologisms) and then you keep him working until he rises above the key-in and keys out again. This technique gets applied rigourously by a Gurdjieffian group here in Christchurch where I live.

Secondly, the idea that the founders of psychology (in the broad sense) can somehow be regarded as valid antecedents of Scientology - in a word, no. The all sought academic acceptance over and above workable results, they rejected thoroughly the notion of man as a spiritual being - excluding here some later ones who are breaking away from the previously laid down pattern, for which dianetics may validly be considered as an antecedent.

Hubbard never did this. He wrote and lectured about what he found and the hell with any academic who disagreed. For this alone he deserves a vote of thanks. But beyond that he came up with some ideas which I have never come across or even seen hinted at by previous researchers, and if anyone else has found such I would be most interested in it. For example his use of gradient scales in evaluating datums, ie that things need not be either True or False (and provable as such by one's peers) but merely "more true" or "less false", and that this would indicate an acceptable and perhaps valid avenue of exploration. Also the package of as-is, alter-is, not-is (which is really just a particular type of alter-is) and isness. This is Hubbard's own. And then also the amount of work he put in to build a route by which people can attain what he reckoned they had as inherent potential. These are just three of his original contributions. There are more.

Now sure, I fully and wholeheartedly agree that he plagiarised certain things, that he was very slap-dash in much of his research, that he had an ego of monumental proportions and that he threw curves into Scientology which derailed it completely from the goals and the philosophy that we all saw as being sufficiently worthwhile so that we devoted our lilves to its pursuit. All of that is true and he was a cruel and venal liar as well. No disagreements.

But he also did much that we can benefit from, and these are benefits which have never been available anywhere other than in Scio and its derivatives. And to try and minimise these by claiming that it was all plagiarised or all derived from antecedents in psychology is just plain NUTS. Any attempt to do this indicates to me quuite simply that the person making such a claim does not know his Scientology materials. He is assertions are rooted in his ignorance of what is there in Scientology.

Hubbard never actually researched anything. The closest "research" was torturing a tomato once... What he did was assert ("postulate") a "reality" and declaim it over and over again with enforcement ("agreement"), pointing at the earlier thing that was found not to work ("Dianetics Book One, HSDC, NOTs run on OTs, on and on and on) as the result of misapplying this teaching, which he insists he is now undercutting to bring it to a simpler level so that us morons can finally get it...

God what an asshole.
 

uniquemand

Unbeliever
Hubbard never actually researched anything. The closest "research" was torturing a tomato once... What he did was assert ("postulate") a "reality" and declaim it over and over again with enforcement ("agreement"), pointing at the earlier thing that was found not to work ("Dianetics Book One, HSDC, NOTs run on OTs, on and on and on) as the result of misapplying this teaching, which he insists he is now undercutting to bring it to a simpler level so that us morons can finally get it...

God what an asshole.

There are several types of research. One type of research is "survey of literature". I believe that was the primary type of research Hubbard did. He read other people's books, and then figured out a way to insert their insights into his system while using his own terminology to make it look like he had thought of it.
 
Lots of people contributed work that was incorporated into Scientology by Hubbard. At first, he admitted this, and even used that as a marketing tool to appeal to those who were interested in the work of others, bringing their attention to him.

Of significance, particularly, were the early works of Freud, Jung, Pavlov, Wundt, Wolpe, Korzybski (technically not a psychologist, but a mathematician), Rogers, Rank, and many others. References to explain these sources are often hard to come by, in their own hand. I stumbled upon a site that I can't recommend highly enough. Please make use of it, stop giving Hubbard awe he doesn't deserve, and find the roots he tried to obscure from your vision.

http://psychclassics.yorku.ca

there's someone on esmb giving ron awe he doesn't deserve?

since to see you back on line kevin
 

Idle Morgue

Gold Meritorious Patron
Unless your post is intended as a humorous reference to aberrant psychology I don't follow you, Leon. The point that Kevin makes is a valid one. There are many important psychological antecedents to Hubbard's & others work in the development of scientology & dianetics.

Hubbard intentionally understated the extent to which his work is an extension of the work of others and without appropriate acknowledgement of that fact. Whatever 'new' he may have added, and that itself is disputable, LRH was to a very large extent a plagiarist.


Mark A. Baker

.

A "covert" plagiarist at that! He acks that fact but then rips those he plagiarized!:coolwink: He was a clever fat CON! It is clear that Hubbard then controls Scientolgist's by telling them how BAD those he plagiarized are and that they should not even LOOK at their discoveries! He does not want anyone "in" Scientology to discover just how much he copied and pasted!!
 

Jump

Operating teatime
The 'seeing beyond' comes as a result of observing the conflicts. The two aren't actually separable.


Mark A. Baker


I disagree.

Seeing beyond is more about taking a step back and using a bigger frame or a different paradigm. Many conflicts are based on a long-forgotten premise that can be viewed as insignificant from a different standpoint, in doing that, the conflict can dissolve away.

Similarly, conflict can be based on our reaction to an original disagreement. We can choose to react in a way to make a conflict pointless. De-fusing things with humour is one example.

Sure, it's not always like this, but often is.
 
I disagree.

Seeing beyond is more about taking a step back and using a bigger frame or a different paradigm. Many conflicts are based on a long-forgotten premise that can be viewed as insignificant from a different standpoint, in doing that, the conflict can dissolve away.

Similarly, conflict can be based on our reaction to an original disagreement. We can choose to react in a way to make a conflict pointless. De-fusing things with humour is one example.

Sure, it's not always like this, but often is.

Foreground vs Background: a simple matter of focal length.


Mark A. Baker
 
Top