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The following first appeared in the private email list IVy-subscribers,
which was available to all those who subscribed to the
printed magazine, International Viewpoints.
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Ashes and phoenixes revisited
by Phil Spickler
7 Nov 00

Hello, anyone --
        It seems to me that not too long ago I was making some sounds of
approval regarding the public lectures that L. Ron Hubbard gave in Phoenix,
Arizona back around the mid-1950's (perhaps a little earlier than that), a
series of lectures that were truly intended for the general public.

      Anyhow and howsomever, in one of those talks, Ron used an example of
police to point out the necessity of going to the source of something if you
wished to turn it off, stop it, or cause it to cease to exist.

       Quite a few people hearing those lectures had rather nifty cognitions
about this notion of "source," and whilst I was a Power auditor at ASHO back
around 1968-'69, a number of them from that Phoenix lecture period showed up
only needing their cognition regarding Source to be rehabbed rather than
needing the first Power process of Grade 5 actually run.  A few missed
getting that big cognition rehabbed and got into quite a mess before Qual
discovered that they'd already had it about 13 or 14 years earlier, listening
to a lecture.  After that, it became fairly routine, if the person getting
Power processing was found to have attended certain LRH lectures or spent
much time in Vedanta or in a number of metaphysical groups or teachings, to
check for the cognition on the subject of Source and rehab it instead of
running the first of the Power processes.

         But coming back to the topic at hand: Ron pointed out that numerous
folks or groups, usually on the other side of the law, mistakenly felt that
you could stop the police simply by killing or incapacitating a few, or
diverting them in some other way, but that they just kept showing up, and the
more you tried to turn them off, the more they kept showing up.  However, if
you went to the Commissioner of Police and could convince said worthy not to
send any more police (something one of the charitable groups in the United
States known as the Mafia succeeded in doing, usually with bribery), no more
would appear, because you had gotten, in the form of the Police Commissioner,
to the source of the police.  It's sort of like if your house is being
flooded by a burst pipe, you can try stuffing all kinds of things into the
pipe, but if you really want to get it turned off, it's best to do so with
the main water valve that controls the flow of water into your home.

        Anyway, the Old Man went on to give many examples of what's possible
if you can find the correct source of anything, and the degree to which you
control said "anything" once you find its source.

      But enough of that.  In that same or another lecture, he spoke at some
length of how the cure, the solution, can often lead to a new, bigger, and/or
worser problem, even though the cure or solution promised so much.  There are
so many examples of this phenomenon that I shan't bore you with it, but Ron
suggested that in his own auditing of others, he had discovered, working with
one or more alcoholics, that alcohol, somewhere on the time track, had once
been a true and real cure for something, and that these alcoholics were madly
consuming it, albeit unknowingly, in the hopes of benefitting from its
curative (or should I say no-longer-curative) powers.

       Now if you've done much auditing, you know that's just the sort of
apparently wacky thing that somebody could come up with, that at least for
them, upon having the cognition, results in the end of said compulsion,
obsession, or difficulty.  One of the interesting and perhaps even amazing
things about auditing is that the item that can produce so much relief,
change, and improvement for a given being can work just as well imagined as
real.

       It's also not uncommon to find someone committing an overt or harmful
act to solve or cure a problem, and then finding themselves with a much worse
problem.  For example, you're having money problems.  The cure is to get more
money.  The solution: rob a bank.  The new problem: 15 years in the
penitentiary.  Or, a very common one in the area of marriage when one is
having difficulties in said institution is to find another person who is
sympathetic to your dilemma, and then to take up with that person without in
some way, shape, or form completing the cycle of your marriage relationship.
This often results in a temporary solution but more and bigger problems than
you ever dreamed of in the first place.

      I and others have also speculated for some time what might be the
result of removing so many of mankind's predators -- in other words, what
happens to a species when its former natural predators cease to exist?  This
is a very interesting subject, and I wish Charles Darwin were here to add his
two cents, or perhaps three, adjusted for inflation.  This of course all
comes under the heading of the cure becoming the new problem.

       But to wrap this up: in an earlier post I intended (and still do) to
advance a theory (and I do mean *theory*) about what might happen to a being,
or even a collection of beings, when there arises a great determination to
rid oneself or selves of all the things that might stand in the way of being
clear, or the magic notion of OT (Operating Thetan).  It became, as many of
you know, a very popular marketing tool to claim that states such as these
were not only attainable as defined, but somehow, regardless of the ravages
of time, which even erodes great mountains, that these states would remain
yours to have and to hold permanently.

       Well, those of us that have been privileged or otherwise to have been
around this scene for 4 or 5 decades can easily, and I think truthfully, say,
"It just ain't so."  However, there's another aspect of all this that might
be considered ominous.  Let me digress for just a moment.

       Over the past 4 or 5 decades there have been numerous explanations
offered that mostly came from L. Ron Hubbard, as well as his descendants in
the post-Scientology era, researchers if you will in the Free Zone, in an
attempt to explain just what happened or happens to folks who attain what
might be called states of higher consciousness, spiritual freedom,
magnificent perception, and other amazing gifts, only to apparently lose them
and come down with such a heavy thud as to appear to be worse off than they
were before they attained or reached one or more of these ascension states.

        Much of what Scientology came to be, and a lot of what has been
practiced or done in the field of the Free Zone for such folks, has been
aimed at fixing up what happened to them after their ascension states, with
corresponding theory or theories to explain their downfall.  What follows is
my theory concerning these matters, which is very much based on the notion
that the cure or the solution often can and does lead to bigger and worser
problems that then need solving.

       However, I am informed by my transcribing genie, and in truth, that
this post has gone on far too long.  And so, in Installment 3 of this
horrifying tale I shall give you the short form of the theory, although I bet
a bunch of folks have not only figured out what I am going to say, but could
say it better.  Nonetheless, I shall see you soon --
        Phil  (AKA the Grim Reaper)