From International Viewpoints (IVy) Issue 21 - April 1995
See Home Page at <http://www.ivymag.org/>http://www.ivymag.org/



To Merge or Not to Merge, ..

By Britta Burtles, England

THE QUESTION is: Will we all one day merge in a big sea of theta?
This is not something we ask ourselves every day. It is purely an
8th Dynamic question; one which takes a 'quantum leap' 'from here
to eternity' to quote a famous title or two. I have heard people
say, yes we will merge, and others, no we won't.

Indecision

For a long time I kept switching from one viewpoint to the other
and just could not gain certainty. It seemed possible that we would
eventually merge into a sea of theta. There was my ever growing feeling
of affinity for everything alive, which drew me towards a oneness,
and LRH seemed to confirm it by saying that behind a thetan there
is theta. And yet, I could not make myself believe in the merging
theory. But also, I could not dismiss it. I kept on looking and hoping
that one day I would find the answer. And I did.

LRH's theory of apparancy versus actuality in The Fundamentals
of Thought provided the trigger. It led me to the following picture:

Imagine you are standing between two parallel railway lines. You can
follow them with your eyes into the distance. As you look, the two
parallel rails seem to approach each other until they appear to meet.
Mathematicians say something like, they meet at infinity.

Here was the answer I was looking for: From our present view-point,
parallels appear to merge to become one at infinity. Of course we
know with absolute certainty, that they do no such thing ever: Parallels
will always be parallel. And yet, although we are not hallucinating,
and are very much in PT, we still see that they meet, merge and become
one.

I applied this picture to my question of whether or not we will one
day merge in a sea of theta, and got this:

Apparency and Actuality

From our present physical universe point of view it appears that we
will all merge, but in actuality, I think we can be absolutely
certain that everyone will always be a separate, individual being,
just as we are certain that parallels will always be parallel.

That is my answer to the question. Shortly after I had this cognition,
I happened to pick up LRH's book Scientology 8-8008.
In the chapter 'Affinity, Comm. and Reality', under the subheading
'Identity vs. Individuality', I read this: Thetans are individuals.
They do not as they rise up the scale merge with other individualities.
They have the power of becoming anything they wish while still
retaining their own individuality. They are first and foremost themselves.
It is the feeling that one will merge and lose his own individuality
that restrains the thetan from attempting to remedy his lot ... When
he goes up scale, he becomes more and more an individual capable of
creating and maintaining his own universe.

Mon May 22 11:27:09 EDT 2006