Why the clouds ?
Obviously I'm being critical on
Scientology. It came up when I checked out the subjects of sects for
my blog post on forgiveness and on science & technology.
Reading Hubbard's Axioms
of Scientology made me feel like stepping into a science fiction
story. Brainy, stripped of human feeling. Some self acclaimed leader,
telling the world how it is constructed and that his doctrine is The
truth... no room for mystery, for different opinions, no
kaleidoscope. Totalitarianism breathes through it.
The Axioms were appalling,
yet I felt a sneaky interest in finding out if I could 'get into the
psyche' of the author. So I decided to focus on Scientology.
During the first phase of my
study – I can be brainy too :-) - I didn't want to be
biased by reading negative articles about Ron Hubbard, but while
searching the internet I couldn't help catching some lines. Affirming
my spontaneous feelings... Ron Hubbard was author of a range of
science fiction stories
I now have “Dianetics”
and “What is Scientology” in the windowsill, close to my desk. I
have tried reading them from beginning to end, but I just can't do
it.
First because the message
becomes clear very soon, Hubbard just goes on repeating it, using
different words, conjuring up a variety of examples... but the
message stays the same. Now if his literary style were mesmerizing
or at least catchy, but it is not. He seems to think his audience is
not gifted with great intelligence. He's condescending and his
repetition makes him quite 'dictatorial'. I get annoyed when
people talk 'down' on me, especially when they are only repeating
themselves.
The other reason for not
being able to go through the books entirely, is because I felt dirty
every time I had read a few pages. I just had to do something else to
get rid of that feeling.
Years ago, during times of
depression and being put under pressure by others, I've often worked
with wood. It's smell, it's 'feel', gave me a certain steadiness and
quiet strength. It helped me put milling thoughts to rest. I haven't
touched wood for quite some time however. Strangely enough, since I
started reading texts from Hubbard, I have picked up a new hobby:
creating pastel drawings on wood. Coincidence?
I started to wonder what
sense it would make, putting such an effort in a futile scheme.
Scientology is about sixty years old, how could I think to get any
understanding of it in a short time? Impossible, the track record of
Scientology is way too big for a small time writer like me. I have
other things on my mind as well!
Yes, I have been busy, too
busy, the last few months, so profane things like calendars have been
scandalously neglected by me. This Scientology itch didn't make
things better. But for some silly odd reason just when I had enough
of it, I noticed my Tolle Calendar, next to my refrigerator, was
still on February while we were already in the first week of May. I
took it from the wall to change it. Of course not without reading
the February quote first... and it put me back in place:
“When
you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but
also of yourself as the witness of the thought. As you listen, you
feel a conscious presence -your deeper self- behind or underneath the
thought.” [Source:
February of my Tolle Calendar]
I
recognised my own theory. About the difference between what is
'Socially Accepted' as knowledge but which is actually reasoning and
a deeper knowledge, which is just Knowing. It doesn't need reasoning
or calculus because it already knows... Eckhart Tolle's “conscious
presence”.
So
there was my mistake: I had been looking at Hubbard's
reasoning with my own reasoning.... to complete that I would have to
work my way through 1000 pages at least, each of which made me feel
dirty. And the 'answer', the entry for my analysis was already clear:
the feelings that Hubbard's writing gave me. I was right in sensing he
was into writing science fiction. The impression of being dirty was
just another form of that direct Knowledge.
But how to make it a bit
more usable, acceptable, for publication? After all, the
knowledge-by-reasoning is the Socially Accepted Knowledge, while my
so called True Knowledge is often regarded as fallible guessing.
“To judge a book, look at
the table of contents” … in time I remembered the words of my
geography teacher. Apart from an academical degree in biology I
have also been trained as a librarian... so I knew of more
sophisticated ways that might replace the table of contents. A little
web surfing made my boat strand at 'TagCrowd'
where one can upload texts as large as Hubbard's entire Dianetics and
have it analysed in seconds. An intricating site that kept me
playing with texts and analyses for quite a while. But I had what I
was looking for: an an overview of the main terms in Dianetics.
Hubbard's vocabulary, an insight into subjects close to his heart.
This is a word cloud of the
100 most frequently used words in “Dianetics”.
Where is love or any other
word that expresses affection? They aren't there. Ron Hubbard only
dedicates one chapter to love, not enough to be noticed by a Text
Analyser.
Hubbard can write really
stunning about love and forgiveness in a short article on the
Scientology site [“What is Greatness”] But why is it of such
minor importance in one of his most important books? The book that is
considered to be the basics of Scientology.
The book mentions the word
love 60 times, all in all. There is the 5 page chapter entitled Love.
It deals only with the relationship between a man and a woman and
seems to mock it to pieces. No wonder, Hubbard doesn't really
separate the lust part from the love part, [to keep it simple].
What he describes is either
extremely annoying or laughable.
Outside this chapter he
mentions love too. Sometimes as enjoying, but mostly he writes about
the love of an adult for the child (s)he raises. And don't you dare
to show love when a child is sick, sad or at it's wits end... you
condition the child to become a person who enters these negative
states in order to receive love.
For Man, humanity, Hubbard
seems to replace the word love often with pleasure or happiness. But
they cover only part of love. If overvalued they are bound to result
in egotism.
This cloud stuff may
function well as a warning system, but it is not much deeper than
judging a book by it's cover. Scientology being the book, Dianetics
and other scriptures of Ron Hubbard being it's cover.
Cover as in covering up....
a system that, according to many reports, does work as most sects do
[see my Forgiveness post] no matter how hard Scientology claims to be
a religion and publishes judicial decisions on their behalf.
The only one who can have
any real feelings about Scientology is the one who is involved in it,
while having her or his ears open for the own inner voice. A free
thinker.
Is that allowed in
Scientology? It threatens the system, it must be 'entheta' and
therefore forbidden. Be it fact or fiction.
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