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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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Man does not live by bread alone, or, Let 'em eat cake
by Phil Spickler
12 Oct 98
Dear Fellow Listers,
I think it is always well to remember that the pen is mightier than
the sword, especially when you want to write a letter. I once tried
to write a letter with a sword, and you should have seen what a mess
it made of the paper, not to speak of hacking up my hands pretty
badly. Some of these swords may hold blood pretty well, but they do
a terrible job with ink.
Well, enough of that. I think tonight's ramble should take us
through several alfalfa fields, and down in the valley where the
sheep are quietly nesting. On second thought I'm not sure if sheep
actually nest -- but you might think so, if you get a chance to see a
lot of the baby sheep, or lambs as they're called, cuddling up.
Anyway, just across from the Dismal Swamp, which is where I generally
hang out, I ran into the Ghost of Scientology Past, and in the sort
of voice that speaks from the tomb or the sepulcher, someone said, in
a very long-drawn-out wail, "Don't forget the Axioms." After
recovering from a pretty bad case of the shivers, I noticed, using my
pocket mirror, (the one I use to check if I'm still breathing,) that
all or most of my hair had turned white. But I came away from this
ghastly meeting with the title for tonight's catastrophe: The
Untruth, the Whole Untruth, and Nothing But the Untruth.
Well, I could tell as these words were being put down that a bunch of
you Axiom "mavens" have, through your long-range telepathy and
capacity for infinite understanding, completely anticipated and gone
past anywhere that I might possibly get to in what follows.
Nevertheless, driven by a heavy sector in the composite called "me,"
I 'spects as how I shall proceed anyway.
Whenever speaking about the Scientology Axioms, we are reminded that
one of the definitions of an axiom is a self-evident truth. Well,
someone is here to say that ever since they took geometry, the idea
that axioms are self- evident has hardly ever seemed to be the case.
Nevertheless, if you plug into one and spend all kinds of time
objectifying the darned thing and maybe constructing it in clay and
getting a couple of special rundowns, some of the darned things do
seem to become self-evident -- but not necessarily at first. Take the
one, for example, that says that Ultimate Truth is Static. Well,
does that leap right across the page at you with its self-evidence?
Well, probably, if you've got about 20 years of training and auditing
and hours of philosophizing behind you, it probably does. However,
for some folks, it might just be an interesting collection of words.
Anyway, as you can see from Axiom 1, there really isn't very much to
get your teeth into when it comes to Static or Ultimate Truth. You
could say, in terms of the manifest universe, that Ultimate Truth is
nothing, which is to say, it has no mass, no motion, no wavelength,
and no location in space or in time, which sounds pretty close to
nothing if you ask me!
Now as you trip fleetingly among the various Axioms, at some point
you probably run into one that says something like "Time is the basic
source of untruth." And right then and there, you have said a
mouthful. Since Time is roughly defined as postulated particles
moving in space, then it's Time that brings about existence, or that
is to say, Something rather than Nothing. So that's pretty neat,
because now we know what it takes to get away from that darned
nothingness known as Static to get ourselves plenty of Something.
And we don't want you to forget at this moment, that without the Big
Lie, the great modifier, the basic source of untruth, namely Time,
and I'm talking about that stuff that I keep hearing people say
doesn't exist, well, without good ol' Time, there would be Nothing
(axiomatically speaking, that is). You show me a universe without
Time and I'll show you a big bunch of nothing. In fact, that's a
quick shortcut to conceiving a Static. And yes, Time is the biggest
lie of all, and it takes that big a lie to give such a sense of
permanence and persistence to that chronic problem called Life -- so
thank all the gods and goddesses that ever have been or will be that
we have this granddaddy of all lies, which all other lies are too
picayune to even bother messing with by comparison.
This of course makes it possible to see why Truth is so gosh-darned
unpopular, and every time it rears its ugly head, there goes another
lock on the incident called, "Gee whiz, the universe just vanished!"
So I guess you could say that people are made up of a balance between
truth and lie also, and some folks can tolerate more truth, or
nothingness, than other folks, and some folks need lots of lie to
feel real and solid and there, and that's certainly OK. In fact, if
you excuse the expression, it probably takes a lot more lie than it
does truth, not only for the universe to keep persisting, but for
folks like us to feel comfortable and looking forward to tomorrow.
This information could be very handy for anyone out there that thinks
that the road to truth is a fun idea. It is, as long as you don't
arrive.
On that note, I'm going to head back to the Dismal Swamp as fast as
my rheumatic old legs will carry me, pausing en route to smell the
sweet smell of newly-mown alfalfa and gambol a bit with the lambs
before I settle down into my rancid pool. In order to take care of
that second postulate, let me say that I'm sure looking forward to
getting a load of heavy "static" from you folks out there in
list-land -- someone expects to be somewhat bloodied for daring this
communication, and not remembering that the sword is mightier than
the pen, except for writing.
With highest tokens of affinity to all,
Phil