Subject: Interesting e-mail
Got this today.
Valerie
Subject: Comments on Scn & religion in general
A MEDIAN VIEW OF SCIENTOLOGY
As a young man, I was (and still remain) curious about the nature of
human existence.
I had already visited the Christian churches in my area and studied them
and their credos before I approached Scientology.
What I really sought was an answer to a number of key questions that
bothered me from the beginning of my awareness. I have still no quick
and tidy answers to several quesions relating to this but I am not
looking for “converts”, I claim no soecial knowledge, and I now
appreciate that there aren’t many that can be answered.
Live with it.
Advertisers the world around make money from scaring you with how
insecure your existence is, how ( apparently ) horrible mythic people
are hiding in dark alleys waiting to steal or destroy everything you
worked so hard to pay off : but most of it is lies, nothing more than
veiled threats designed to maximise profit for already well-financed
Corporations. Entire industries have been built on our own fears of an
uncertain future, despite the fact that nothing they could ever do will
really make any difference to that uncertainty.
I had hoped to find other humans who would at least have a similar
interest in examining these issues honestly and openly.
What I found instead was a system of bureacracy that makes the British
civil service look soft in comparison. The further you got into it, the
more it demanded of you, including disowning your own family if they
didn’t buy into it. If it were truly a good beleif system , why does it
demand so much money? I can pick up a Gideon’s Bible for nix, I can get
a dose of Hare Krushna food for a song.
But Scientology dictates I must pay big time for enlightenment. How much
does twelve-and-a-half hours of auditing cost these days? Even the Bible
states flatly that “heaven” cannot be purchased.
I call myself a humanist. As such, there are some basic human rights
that any organisation should implement regardless of their stated
objectives because they are fundamental to human happiness for
everyone. The central element here is the right to ask questions, and
get honest answers.
An admission that “we just don’t know” , under these circumstances, is
to be applauded.
In a truly human group, this would be followed by the offer “Would you
like to help us try and find out?” but sadly, it seems that even our
best social groups have lost this key element. ( nothing new, really . .
? .)
I have not got anything against any religious order in itself, but it
seems that each time there is a subdivision of a group there is bound to
be conflict resulting. Any “enemy” of humanity as a whole will first try
to divide us against ourselves : why waste energy on harming beings who
can be easily coerced into getting rid of each other ? “Efficiency“
suggests that the pen or the well placed word is mightier than the
sword.
Fundamentally, any group that sets itself apart from the greater
humanity as somehow “better” is primed for destructive behaviour. As
soon as you have an exclusive “us” you are creating a “them”.
And that is not ever good. Ever. Some of the ugliest folks I ever met
had more horse sense than to try and claim that they were “the chosen
few”. I don’t care what book you claim to be THE WORD, nature and
reality does not write with ink on paper. Diversity is a part of
survival, not a means of self-aggrandisement. Some of the finest folks I
have ever met were Islam, Bhuddist or Jewish. What made them good in my
eyes was not which temple they went to, nor what language they were
fluent in, it was their attitude. Any book can be interpreted to support
eletist leanings, but attitudes are harder to mask. You can only treat
people as individuals if you want to meet them at all.
I am sure that I will not make some people happy by saying this: those
people would like nice, tidy answers that donot demand the ultimate
personnel admission that WE DONT KNOW, but that is precisely my point.
I wanted tidy answers too, and it’s especially tempting when those
“answers” are grand and fabulous. The trouble is that however grandiose
and galactic they are, they ultimately fail because YOU know they are
too tidy, too much like a nice fairy tale or the Santa Claus story :
ultimately, they just don’t hold up. Typically, they sort of work as
long as you stick within the group of true beleivers, but any reference
to outsiders will collapse the delusions. Fortunately, the reality
always wins out despite our strongest attempts to ditance ourselves
from it.
There are two basic reactions to this challenge:
First, the admission that some things cannot really be known. But this
is too rare. Too often we hate to admit that WE DONT KNOW. Especially
when there are others who expect you to spout some authoritative answer,
or we are looking for some comfortable answer.
Second, some will attempt to banish all questioning of the idea. The
methods are many, but essentially they remain true to the principle that
the more devious, extreme and fanatical the behaviour, the less credible
the scenario they are trying to support. Those that cannot be questioned
are the dangerous ones.
When I joined The Church of Scientology at the age of eighteen, I hoped
that I would find answers to those awkward questions that my Physics
Teachers and Preachers could not answer.
You know the stuff.: Am I truly alone in my unique mind, can anyone
predict the future with any honesty, Who is really running things on
Earth (or is anyone really in charge at all? ) etc.
But I was to be disappointed. For a while I hoped that these answers
would come by staying with the “bridge” program, I deluded myself that
the higher officials truly were wiser than me, but try as I might, they
could not provide those answers I needed because THERE ARE NO ANSWERS.
Ultimately, I understand that there are NO nice tidy answers to most of
these questions, certainly none that can be easily regurgitated.
For a while I thought it was just me: I could not become a “true being”
(Clear, O.T., etc.) of some sort because I could not remember who I was
in a “past life”, I didn’t see the justice in extracting money from
elderly people who were after the same sort of answers I was after just
because they were selling their homes and super funds to get those
answers if they existed. . . . If it is truly “spiritual”, no money can
buy it. If there is any sort of “heaven”, it’s nor for sale. Ever.
One phenomenon I had already noted with religions in general is what I
have called “The Package Deal”. Essentially, this is the idea that once
you join them, you automatically accept all the tenets and commandments
of that group, no questions.
It’s interesting to compare this with Package Deal tours that holiday
companies sell: On the Package Deal Tour, you only see views of a
foreign land that are prearranged and carefully designed to give you an
idealised view of things. No tour buses go through the slums of Calcutta
or the Lower East Side of L.A. Yet that is a real part (and only a PART
) of the real Calcuuta or Los Angeles. Reality has been pre-edited for
you on these tours. If you really want to see what it’s like for the
real folks who live in that place, DON’T get a package deal holiday., do
as I did in my world travels: make your own way, stay at least six
months of you can, find out what it’s like for “ordinary” folk to live
there. It’s a real eye opener.
It bears great similarity to the bond of marriage. If you are only
expecting to have the fun times and split as soon as it’s not “fun” any
more and your partner is getting crows feet round the eyes etc. you are
deluding yourself. Yet we are all human. We cannot pretend we are not
more excited by the “good - looking” than we are by the “mundane”
partner we already have. The difference is that reality is not all
pretty. You know that the partner you have at home is almost certainly
more reliable than the person who looks on the surface to be having more
fun in one night than you have had all year. Get real. Humans are not
pretty. Pretty is what flowers are, and they are brown, withered and
ugly the next day when they have done their duty to the plant which grew
them.
At least when flowers wither it’s because they are doing their job,
growing fruit and seeds to spreading the plant’s life around. Now some
humans have this weird idea that they can “flower” endlessly and never
fruit. No wonder some folks susupect it’s all a plot to get rid if the
western culture.
And reality is no different. I’m not just talking Scientology here.
Scientific Bureacracy is just as guilty as religion and politics of this
editing of views. Check out the (sadly) Late Prof. Eric Laithwaite,
Stefan Marinov and others too numerous to list here. They tried to tell
the world that things are not quite as the “Scientific” Bureacracy would
have us beleive. But not by creating another bureacracy that dictates
behaviour, “morality” etc. that ultimately is based on principles that
cannot be argued, questioned or even carried out without causing the
division of humans into an “us” and “them”.
At least they were only trying to open minds to the fact that reality is
not a limited resource that “runs out” as a “consumed” commidity. (once
again, the insecurity monster raises it’s head)
Perhaps I’ve got off the point a little.
I toyed with the idea of starting my own anti-religion, which was going
to be called “The Church Of Nothing” (C.O.N. for short), very
tougue-in-cheek, so that all those “crazies” out there like me, who
were “human” enough to admit that we just don’t have answers would have
somewhere to get together and talk about it. But it seems doomed to
suffer from similar weaknesses that afflict all the human bureaucracies
currently operating: how do you prevent some self-made power tripper
from getting a rope around the free thinking that would initally be
fostered and ultimately making it another isolationist cult of
dogmatism? The ultimate irony of this is that even though the essential
principles of the CON are half-joke ( The Con? ) and might be
deliberately designed to prevent such an event, language itself changes
with time so that ultimately in a decade or two, it would become no
better than the Church of Scientology or numerous other dogmatic groups,
despite all the care possible being taken at it’s origination.
( Reference “Animal Farm” by George Orwell ) : and this is what I
suspect has happenned numerous times before in human history.
The real hope now is that with the advent of widespread communication ,
we might escape from this trap of fools and by mutual admission of our
great ignorance, we might just be able to find our humanity once more,
without having to create more “us’s” and “them’s”
I hope so.
===========================
You can put this on the net if it helps, but don't put my name on it .
Those Scientology folks can be real nasty.
Further facts
about this criminal empire may be found at
Operation Clambake and FACTNet.
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From: Valerie Emanuel
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 20:16:07 GMT
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1999 04:37:41 +1000
From:
To: jemanuel@bellsouth.net
Click here for some additional truth about the Scientology crime syndicate:
XENU.NET
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