From International Viewpoints (IVy) Issue 11 - November 1993
See Home Page at http://www.ivymag.org
Regular column
New Realities
By Mark Jones, USA
Evolvement - My View(1)
One of my major objectives in life, shared I suspect by many IVy
readers, was to bring about as much case advance and enlightenment
in myself as I could, and to assist others in doing so - and the
Scientology tech was a useful vehicle.
Training and experience
To that end, I trained up through the grades and the SHSBC(2),
did the earliest Class VII coursewhile LRH was still C/Sing(3) it,
and graduated with honors.
From there, I went to HASI London(4) as D of P (5),
C/S and Tech Sec and, later,OES(6), then to WW(7)
as Tech Sec and, later, OES.
Returning to the States, my wife, Ellen, and I took over a bankrupt
mission in Santa Clara, and got it up to over 50 students on the
Dianetics
course in six months - before turning it over to a group of five
of the first Class VIIIs so we could do the HSST(8)
Course Supervisor's Course.
We C/Sd at the AOLA(9) for awhile, created the first C/S index,
which LRH later issued as an ED, and Ellen put the first Qual Division
into Celebrity Center.
I took over Narconon, which had a program in one location, and
expanded
it to 20 locations, many of which I personally started. Later, we
established a mission in Tokyo, one in West Virginia and a very
successful one across the street from the Vice President's residence
in Washington, D.C. next to the Papal Embassy. While there, I got
donations for a basic Scientology library for each United States
Senator,
for many United States Representatives, and got articles on
Scientology
published in the widely-read Marine Corps Gazette.
I was selected by a consensus of the U.S. mission holders to be the
first Mission Officer in the U.S., but Diana Hubbard, under whose
jurisdiction it was, never approved the remuneration they offered,
so I did not take the post. I give this data to convey that, as a
Solo NOTs Completion and very active disseminator, I recognized the
workability of Scientology tech.
Achieving higher states
I also recognized that neither I, nor anyone I knew, had reached what
I considered to be a truly OT or fully evolved state. Some had
accomplished
remarkable feats, such as remote viewing and forms of space travel,
others had achieved new states and abilities. I was initially
attracted
to Scientology because it appeared to provide a predictable means
to attain Nirvanic(11) states
which I'd studied and been attracted to from boyhood. Like some of
the higher states of consciousness we achieved from the use of
Scientology
tech, these cannot be adequately described in words. Within these
limitations, they might be described as states of complete harmony,
love and oneness with self and all of existence. In a sense, total
knowingness by being that which is known.
Self trust
I recognised that I had not fully attained these states and having
overrun most processes in Scientology, I considered that it was
desirable
to continue to explore. I realized that I'd have to trust myself to
define my path and determine the value of various approaches towards
evolvement. I could no longer rely on a guru to do this. I recognised
that I had lots more to discover to evolve to the states to which
I aspired. About the same time quite a number of OTs began their own
explorations. To some friends whom I mentioned this, it apparently
seemed 'Theedie-weedie' (a slang term for unrealistic 'sweetnes
and light'). Yet from my experience in boyhood of working on a
farm, six years of science training in college, fighting three wars
as a pilot, and commanding the top fighter squadron in the Marine
Corps, I considered I was pretty well grounded. My goal wasn't to
become more practical, but to develop my creative imagination outside
of the limited range of my physical senses.
Receiving vs. control
I also recognised that LRH had explored a wide range of approaches,
and at one point in the Philadelphia Doctorate Course lectures in
1952 had made the remark 'You may think this is all coming from
me, but it's not'. Obviously, he extracted from different sources.
One of these was Aleister Crowley, whose main error, according to
one metaphysical source, was that he tried to control receiving.
As I dug into this, to understand the concept better, it became clear
to me that LRH had made the same error, leading ultimately to the
destruction of Scientology as the benign organisation we had known
it to be earlier
Receiving
The metaphysical concept of receiving wasn't one that I had really
explored. It seemed like something that one did when one was at
effect.
I vaguely recalled from earlier Bible study a term of 'mana', a
substance
that came from heaven to feed the starving people. The Webster
dictionary
defines mana as 'an impersonal natural force to which certain
primitive people attributed good fortune, magical powers, etc.'
From what I have learned in metaphyscial studies, receiving is being
open to and trusting that when one's purposes are aligned with the
energies of the universe (which could be called spiritual and outside
of the range of our physical senses), one's postulates manifest with
a minimum of effort or struggle. It is also sometimes called magic.
Without recognizing it as such, I'd had it work for me.
Quite different from this is the concept that one has to direct by
force or excercise hands-on guidance of every step in a process or
action to insure a desired outcome. Receiving and control can become
opposite ends of the spectrum. Receiving embraces the concept that
when one postulates with intention and trust in self and the universe,
one does not have to unduly focus on controlling the means.
In my opinion, this was the make break point of Scientology as
an organization. In the 50s and early 60s, LRH and his supporting
staff operated for the most part on the basis of getting agreement
on basic purposes and goals, and inspiring people to willingly
contribute
to the attainment of them. An auditor or executive could be counted
on to do his best, and even better with more training. In the mid
sixties, the first scientology clear, John McMaster, introduced the
word 'love' in the Scientology vernacular(12)
for the first time, and often spoke of effortless
competence', which relates to 'receiving.'
Control
Sometime before or soon after his undesirable experience of being
ousted
from Rhodesia, LRH appeared to go on a 'must control' trip.
As a result, the first Class VIIIs who came back from their forced,
total control experience on the flag ship were at the time virtually
robots. Most of them had been traumatized by being thrown overboard
for alleged tech errors(14).At the time in mid
1965 when I was assigned to the post of Org Exec Sec WW (World Wide),
the Executive Council WW had been sending increasingly threatening
telexes on Wednesday to the executives of orgs whose stats
(statistics)
had not risen for the week, threatening them that they would be put
in doubt, enemy or treason(16) if they did not have the stats up by
Thursday
at 2:00 P.M. One could ask, how, if in any way, this related to or
was in some way a product of the technology, or was it a total
disregard
of it.
Free Enterprise
Even with this trend going on in the Orgs, the Mission holders,
who were rapidly expanding their
delivery, operated much more on the free enterprise model. LRH
appeared to mistrust this, for he could not exercise the same tight
control over them as he did the orgs. The missions were inovative
in providing needed services to their publics and handled them for
the most part with very light ethics and high ARC. For example, in
Washington, D.C. our mission offered an Org Exec Course which
attracted
some of the top executives of the Washington Post/Newsweek TV network,
one of the largest and most prestigious in the U.S. But this sort
of innovative activity was discouraged by the management hierarchy.
The climax - control vs. receiving
These two differing philosophies of iron clad control vs trust
and receiving came to a head in 1982 and 1983 in the Famous Mission
Holder's meetings at Flag. I was there at the time starting Solo
NOTs and actively participated. The ARC and enthusiasm for achieving
the purpose of 'clearing the planet' were at the highest peak
I'd ever witnessed. At the beginning of the meetings it appeared
that under Bill Franks, then Executive Director International,
missions
would be trusted and encouraged to be innovative in their
dissemination,
and in offering a variety of courses to meet the needs of their
publics.
A form of group engram running took place, and a number of key members
of the Guardian's Office and Sea Org confessed their crimes of
suppressing
expansion. Most of the Sea Org staff of the Flag Land Base
spontaneously
joined in this tremendous display of enthusiasm, which many described
as one of the most moving experiences of their lives. It was indeed
a rare and unforgettable moment when the concept of receiving,
'a willingness to postulate an end result of clearing the planet
and of trusting and allowing the energies of the willing people and
their supporting energies to bring this about' was very apparent.
Concept of control takes over
Unfortunately it was soon squelched. In the soon to follow second
meeting, Bill Franks, with tears in his eyes, confessed that he had
no real power, and that his willingness to receive was about to be
squelched(18).Soon thereafter it was. The various Missions'
resources(19)
were confiscated and the mission
holders degraded. It was an experience similar in many ways to the
ones that had taken place in the political arena in Germany and Russia
years before. The Mission holders were locked in a room and some of
the most succesful were sec checked before the group all night.
Similar
in many ways to a Nazi trial.
Logic and reason vs. spirituality
The tech of scientology dealt with certain aspects of life that are
generally identified as in the province of logic and reason. As
someone
trained in science, this was my primary orientation in dealing with
life. These are certainly important elements, but are only half
of the picture. The other half, embracing imagination and
visualization,
which deal with creativity, love, compassion, humility, being able
to attune to the universe and to 'receive' its abundance and
energies without struggle or assertion, along with other aspects of
existence that could be called spiritual or metaphysical, received
far less focus of attention.
Exercise of freedom of choice
I think that it could ultimately be of benefit to IVy readers,
as it was to me, to be offered opportunities to examine viewpoints
outside the limited range explored by LRH. Not that he did not cover
a wide range, for he did, but he did not explore some very important
and vital areas. Each of us chooses our own path of evolvement, and
we can be trusted to do so. Most of us expand our breadth of choices
by entertaining new concepts. Obviously, some may prove useful and
some may not. As a result of our choices, the beliefs we form and
our follow-up actions, we each achieve certain states. We evaluate
the practical workability of an approach or technology primarily from
our own experiences, and sometimes partially from the outcomes of
the lives of the various sources on which we may rely. Without doubt
LRH was a genius, but apparently he left this life disillusioned and
bitter. So, perhaps there may be more to learn and apply than what
he learned and applied in his life.
Disillusionment
When I was helping get 'The Free Spirit'started in 1984, Hanna
Eltringham (now Hanna Whitfield) (who had been a flag captain)
assisted
by making a list of several hundred of the highly trained
scientologists
who had volunteered and formed the initial cadre(20) of the
Sea Org. We found that over 75% of them were out of the church, and
many were very disillusioned. Of those with whom we were in contact,
some continued to use the tech, some have explored and are pursuing
other paths, some are combining both and some appear to have rejected
virtually all approaches toward evolvement.
Freedom of choice and selfdeterminism
I believe that every one of us is capable of exploring various
philosophies
and approaches, and deciding on their value for ourselves. We are
each capable of determining relative importances and what is true
for us. The goal of many of us is to evolve and also extend what we
learn to wider and wider areas. No truth invalidates another truth,
but one can add to another. We can trust ourselves to receive and
evaluate.
Beliefs versus postulate
To clarify a question that you raise in your letter, a belief,
as I used the word, is not a postulate. While it might stem from one,
it is the concept or consideration we form of the various aspects
of ourselves and other parts of existence, and from which we generate
our attitudes and feelings. It forms the basis of how we internally
program our perceptions, and the nature of our connection with other
parts of existence. One way to describe this connection is through
our vibrations, and the resonance and response that these create in
other parts of the universe. Some of these fall within the range of
our senses of sight, hearing, etc., and others, such as intuition,
love, empathy, thought and imagination, etc., are outside of this
range. It is through our beliefs that we create our unique experiences
in life.
(1)This article arose from
a letter Mark sent me in response to a question of mine as to why
he appeared to avoid Scientology terminolgy in a scientology
magazine, when it appeared to me that scientology terminology would
fill the bill far better. The specific instance was where he used
the word belief, where I considered postulate or consideration would
have been fine. Ed.
(2)SHSBC: Saint Hill Special Briefing Course.
(3)C/Sing: Case Supervising.
(4)HASI London: Hubbard Association of Scientologists International,
London Org.
(5)D of P: Director of Processing.
(6)OES: Organization Executive Secretary.
(7)WW: Hubbard Communications Office (HCO) World Wide, then at
Saint Hill Manor.
(8)HSST: Hubbard Specialist of Standard Tech, Class VIII Case
Supervisor.
(9)AOLA: Advanced Org Los Angeles.
(10)ED: Executive Directive.
(11)Nirvana is defined in The American Heriatage
Dictionary '1. The state of absolute blessedness, characterized
by release from the cycle of reincarnations. 2. Bliss.'
(12)3. Figurative,the language of a particular profession, trade or
other
group. World Book Dictionary
(13)oust, 1. to force out; drive out. World Book Dictionary
(14)This is referred to on page 4 (bottom) of
the Otto Roos Story, which contains much information of value
for those who are not aware of what went on behind the scenes in this
period of scientology history. See Page 19. Ed.
(15)Telex: The forerunner of Fax (telefax). A very widely used
form of communication among scientology orgs. Every org was supposed
to have a telex machine (which had a typewriter keyboard), and much
traffic (including statistics) went directly and instantaneously
between
higher and lower levels on the scientology org hierarchy by telex.Ed.
(16)All low 'ethics' conditions carrying heavy penalties. Ed.
(17)Earlier known as Franchise holders. Ed.
(18)l. To cause to be silent; crush. World Book Dictionary
(19)The bank accounts and the Mission itself.
(20)Definition 2. A group of trained men in any activity,
especially a group that forms the core of an organization.
World Book Dictionary
Mon Jul 17 19:23:40 EDT 2006