Subject: Interesting e-mail
From: Valerie Emanuel
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 20:16:07 GMT

Got this today.

Valerie

Subject: Comments on Scn & religion in general
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1999 04:37:41 +1000
From:
To: jemanuel@bellsouth.net

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.

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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.

Click here for some additional truth about the Scientology crime syndicate: XENU.NET

Further facts about this criminal empire may be found at Operation Clambake and FACTNet.