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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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Unpopular thoughts
by Phil Spickler
22 Jul 1998

Being of unsound mind and body, and spiritually quite decrepit, I yet
once again take up electrons with my palsied hand and enter into the
unmined field of free expression known as the IVy-subscribers list,
which, due to Antony Phillips' unflagging devotion to the ideals of
freedom of speech and the great heuristic possibilities that
sometimes come forth when birds of a feather flock together, allows
me to share with the silent minority and majority some poor
remembrances.

Back in the late 1930's, a chap by the name of Alfred Korzybski put
together and published a subject that he called General Semantics.  I
only mention this in passing, since his is one of the names that Ron
Hubbard put in the front of the original editions of his book
_Science of Survival_.  This list consisted of people that Ron (the
Ron of 1951) felt had been great contributors to thought and
understanding that had helped him in constructing Dianetics.
Korzybski's book was called _Science of Sanity_, and it's a fairly
lengthy book, but one that's pretty easy to read once you get into
it, and it contains a fair number of things that certainly can be
found in early Dianetics -- one of the big ones, of course, was the
notion that "A = A" is an example of the kind of mindless
identification that occurred between one thing and another in that
bastion of aberration known as the Reactive Mind. Korzybski also set
a great store in the kind of conscious and analytical differentiation
that we can all engage in concerning time, location, and other points
of differentiation that make possible a heightened degree of
perception in the present moment.  He also decried the use of
generalities, which have led to some pretty horrifying conflicts, not
to speak of extremes of bigotry and prejudice.  Anyway, there's a lot
more, and before a later Ron (circa the late 1960's) came out with
the idea that he'd never gotten anything from anybody and that nobody
had ever really contributed anything to helping his creation of
Dianetics and Scientology, you will find various places throughout
his books and tapes, if they haven't all been edited out, where he
points out the valued contributions of those that went before.

And now for a short dose of the most unpopular subject that I've ever
had the pain and pleasure to run into.  You may well ask, before
proceeding, what are we going to talk about?  Well, in a word, Truth.
But, you say, isn't that what everyone is seeking and desiring and
working toward and cultivating, that single thing that we're all
entirely devoted to and would certainly never object to if it came
walking in the front door?  And I say again, Yes, the Truth, the very
unpopular possibility, and as you know from personal experience as
well as observation in other areas, a force that makes the hydrogen
bomb look like a dim flicker of a small candle at a distance of many
miles.  If you will allow me, I shall remind you that it is somewhat
axiomatic that it is necessary to lie about, or alter, the truth of
anything in order for it to gain persistence in time.  In fact, this
very thing that we call Life, this game between Static and itself,
requires that this remain unknown in order for Life, the very tissue
of reality, to persist. Just as in magic, most games fall to pieces
and become kind of silly once the truth of what's really going on is
known.  In our ordinary human affairs, in order to keep things from
getting too filmy or gauzy or disappearing altogether, the necessary
ratio of truth to untruth must remain extremely high on the side of
untruth, in our ongoing and frantic efforts, as they say on the
western side of the dateline, in the Orient, in order to avoid the
Void.  We've seen notable examples of fellow human beings who have
been processed (not like a piece of cheese, though) to the point
where they became the Truth, and in most cases after which their
lives, such as what was left of them, completely fell apart: one of
the liabilities that goes with getting on a highly accelerated road
to truth and suddenly, with great horror, finding out that you're
there. Gee whiz, I just reached nothingness -- hmmm!  It's sort of on
the order of taking the old Havingness process known as Trio, which
had a lot to do with increasing one's ability to have, to let remain,
and to dispense with.  Now if you really wanted to screw somebody up
tremendously, just leave off the Have and the Let Remain and run them
on Dispense With until there's absolutely nothing there, at which
point have your straitjackets and tranquilizers ready for quick
action.

So, how much Truth are we, as I like to think of myself and IVy
subscribers -- how much truth is Homo sapiens really comfortable
with, about Life or any dynamic?  There's no set figure or percentage
points that really answers that question, but suffice it to say, it's
that amount which allows us to feel that life is a real and
substantial and ongoing thing, and that we are much the same.  Toward
that end, wise auditors generally worked with people in the direction
of improving their willingness and ability to play the game called
Life, and some of the lesser games that are found within it.  And in
order to do that, it really doesn't take very much in the way of
auditing or philosophizing, education and/or training to reach such a
result.  If you simply get the guy, the person, or someone, as close
as possible to the notion of not trying to get rid of their case
(case in this case being defined as life), but simply get him to be
willing to have his case, or life, you've really done the best of
helping someone else that I can possibly conceive of, unless you're
running the Divine School of Super-secret Mysteries that yields
nothing but a few folks at the Serenity of Beingness contemplating
their or other people's navels, with occasional flights of drifting
along on that famous cloud number 9 just before the lightning and
thunder.

So, in conclusion, Truth, or too much of it, coming in the front door
cannot be, and is not, popular and is one of the primary known
spoilers of the game, and if not spoilers of it, de-intensifiers of
it to the degree where it loses its great flavors for pleasure and
pain, joy and sorrow, beauty and ugliness, and all the other great
pairs of opposites that arise together to make this thing that we
seem to be all creating or mocking up together really interesting and
exciting.  Thank you for listening to all this drivel -- I look
forward to a large number of caustic comments that don't start out
"Dear Phil."  Meantime, I've fortified my cave with several guard
sheep who can say "Baaa" in a decibel range that should discourage
any attacking rabbits.

Bon voyage,
Phil