Further comments on Personal Integrity

I wish the guy who is making these comments would change his screen name. His comments are okay, but his screen name isn't. I have rules about responding to comments and I don't like to violate them. I'm making an exception here because I think some of the comments are good and I want to respond.

So dude, please do me a favor and change your screen name to something more acceptable.

Anyway, the comment was to this article, Scientology is Wisdom: Personal Integrity. The comment began: Thanks for answering, Grahame. My trouble with your example is that you're suggesting people learn by their own anecdotal experience, but anecdotal evidence isn't very good when it comes to medical treatments.

My article has absolutely nothing to do with medical treatment. When one has a physical problem then one gets physical (medical) treatment. My example involved something that addressed spiritual trauma. By concentrating on an example you are missing the whole point of personal integrity. I suggest you read Personal Integrity again.

Your comments on people learning is again missing the point. Personal Integrity is about a person observing for themselves and then having the integrity to stick by what they have observed.

Rosa Parks, the mother of the civil rights movement, had personal integrity. She observed something that was wrong and she had the courage to know and say what she had observed. Because of her and others like her the rights of all Americans were strengthened. If she had simply listened to the authorities of the time who "knew" that black people should be segregated from the "superior" whites, then she would have moved to her "correct" place on the bus and we would have heard no more of her and perhaps no more of the civil rights movement. But she had the guts to stand up to "authority" and say "No! I observe that this is wrong and I'm going to do something about it." That's what personal integrity is all about.

Your comments seem to want to invalidate "observation" by calling it "anecdotal experience". Read the story of the discovery of Penicillin and you will see how much the word "observe" is used. Observation is the essence of discovery and therefore the essence of learning.

On a much lesser scale than Rosa Parks, I have observed that everything I've done in Scientology so far has worked and made my life a thousand times better than it was before. I have observed that and I will stick by it because it is true for me.

The rest of your comment was about a subject I don't discuss (see my rules about comments). I don't discuss what it is or what it isn't, however I will say this: All levels in Scientology consist of a series of actions that one does. There are no "stories". One studies some theory, one studies some techniques, one practices the techniques and then one does it. At that point you can see if the theory bears out because you are doing it and seeing the results.

Scientology is not something you discuss. It is something you study and then do. And at that point Personal Integrity enters in again because when you "do," you should observe so that you will know if you got the predicted result or not.

When I have done the techniques of the Scientology Levels that I have completed I have observed that I have gotten the results without a doubt. I got those results to such a degree that my certainty of the truth of the theory behind those results is unshakable.

Thanks for your comments.

Scientology and Aliens

Crystal just posted an excellent article about Aliens and Scientology. I think she tells the truth about this subject very well.

Have a read and tell me what you think: Aliens!

You can read my take on this subject here: Why Aliens?

Scientology is Wisdom: Secrets of the Universe

People have talked about the "secrets of the universe" for millennia. The implication is that there is some deep and esoteric knowledge about the universe that was somehow known in the past and is now either lost or hidden.

I don't know if that is true or not, but I will say that the basic truths about this universe are presented in Scientology. In their raw form they are a bit tough to understand, but when presented in the correct sequence with additional explanation they are not difficult at all.

So, Let's start with the Scientology Logics, which are described as

The Logics form a gradient scale of association of facts necessary to
understand and resolve any problem. They are used to predict behavior and
clarify the entire field of thought. The Logics are a method of thinking and
could be called “how to think.” The basic common denominators of all education
may be found in the Logics.

When I started this blog way back in 2003, I did a whole set of posts based on the Logics. At that time, Blogger didn't have tags so these articles are now hard to find. So, just for you, I am going back over them and adding tags, fixing some formatting and correcting some old dead links. It will take me a few days so, in the meantime, I'll give you some links to help you find them:

- November 2003 (contains the first half of the articles on the Scientology Logics)
- December 2003 (contains the second half of the articles on the Scientology Logics)
If these two are slow to open then another way to get there is to open up "2003" and then "November" or "December" in my "Blog Archive" section.

Once I have reviewed all the articles, you will be able to see them here: Scientology Logics.

Enjoy.

The Secrets of Scientology

I really get bored with "know-best" comments from people who are not Scientologists, have never studied it, have only read twisted and inaccurate descriptions of it or the supposed "secrets" of Scientology and yet think they know more about it than me.

After all, I've only been a Scientologist for over thirty years, studied millions of words on the subject and listened to hours and hours of lectures. I've only had thousands of hours of auditing. I've only done most of the available auditing in Scientology, so of course I would know almost nothing about it.

What really bores me the most is people who don't understand the words used in the subject telling me that I'm lying about what Scientologists believe. Yet when they explain what I'm "lying" about they expose their lack of understanding and the fact that they haven't bothered to find out the facts before spouting off.

What brought me to this tirade? It was a comment from Gigazz in response to my article "Why Aliens?". He (or she) said "Therefore, 'thetans' ARE alien ghosts. And, as we all know by now, dealing with these thetans are the key to happiness. That is the spirituality of Scientology". Thanks so much Gigazz for telling me what the spirituality of my religion is.

One slight flaw in your reasoning is that the term "thetan" means "the person himself-not his body or his name, the physical universe, his mind, or anything else; that which is aware of being aware; the identity which is the individual."

Due to this basic misunderstanding of the word "thetan", Gigazz also said, "You've got somebody else in your body, mucking up your head, and you've got to fix that in order to become 'clear'. That's the whole point of Scientology. Fix yourself. Get better - Get rid of your thetans."

If you put the correct definition of "thetan" into what Gigazz said you'll see that what he is proposing is ridiculous. How can you get rid of yourself? He has some weird idea that you "have a thetan" whereas the correct definition of the word shows that you "are a thetan."

He also has the term "Clear" totally screwed up. Clear means: "the name of a state achieved through auditing or an individual who has achieved this state. A Clear is a being who no longer has his own reactive mind. " Simply put, a Clear has gotten rid of past traumas that were causing him to act irrationally.

I was going to just delete Gigazz' comment and forget about it, but I realized there are probably others out there with the same misunderstandings.

I want to stress that I welcome genuine questions. If you've read something weird about Scientology and you want to clear it up then go ahead and ask. I have some rules for comments, so please follow them.

But if you want to tell me I'm lying about my beliefs because you read some nonsense on a web site written by someone who didn't understand basic Scientology terms, then forget about it. You will either get no reply or you'll suffer a tirade about your lazy stupidity like Gigazz just got.

Why Aliens?

This is the second article on this subject. The first is here: Aliens and Counting Planets

Here are some questions and answers regarding Scientology and aliens:

1. Do Scientologists worship aliens? No.
2. Do Scientologists believe that someone in the religion is in contact with aliens? No.
3. Do Scientologist believe we are descended from aliens? No.
4. Do books on Scientology mention aliens? No.
5. Are aliens contained in the beliefs of Scientology? No.
6. When religious scholars have examined Scientology have they found that Scientology contains a belief in aliens? No.

So why do you find descriptions of Scientology on the Internet that insist that we do believe such things?

The two simplest explanations I have come up with are Religious Bigotry and the thing the media seems to worship called "Controversy."

Bigotry

People who, for whatever reason, hate Scientology and Scientologists are the ones who started this whole "they believe in aliens" thing. It's an old technique: you make the target of your hatred look weird, strange or dangerous so that people won't object when you attack them.

One of the most famous uses of this technique was in the creation of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", a fabricated document that was claimed to be the Jewish plan for world domination. Despite being proven over and over and over and over again to be a complete fake, it is still being used to this day, a hundred years after its first publication, by anti-Semitic groups to attack Jews.

So I guess Scientologists have to expect that the same old lies about us will still be circulating in a hundred years. It seems to be part of human nature to hold onto false data to justify hatred or bad acts.

Controversy

The media seems to think that controversy is essential to a news story. Forget such unimportant things as facts or truth. Controversy, Conflict, Big Names, Harm, Sex, Money - these are the things the media believes attracts eyeballs or sells newspapers. So if some bigot says "they believe in aliens" then that is far more attractive to the news hounds than "they believe man is a spiritual being."

Truth

From the article "Doctrine of the Scientology Religion"

Scientology religious doctrine includes certain fundamental truths. Prime among them are that man is a spiritual being whose existence spans more than one life and who is endowed with abilities well beyond those which he normally considers he possesses. He is not only able to solve his own problems, accomplish his goals and gain lasting happiness, but also to achieve new states of spiritual awareness he may never have dreamed possible.

Because we believe we have lived before (something we share with most Eastern religions), because we believe we've been around for a very, very long time, because we believe that we (as spiritual beings) existed before this planet did and because we can recall existences prior to this planet, the bigots twist this to mean we believe in aliens and try to position us with the "UFO Religions" who believe they are currently in contact with aliens. I hope my post yesterday and this one show how false that is.

Bigots don't care about truth. They will twist it to suit their own ends (Just look at how "Jeff" twisted the beliefs of Christianity to make it look like a UFO Religion). The order of magnitude of the attacks on Scientology is nothing compared to what the Jews have had to deal with for thousands of years or the Mormons for 150 years, but the same methodology of misinformation, twisted facts and outright lies is being used.

So the moral of the story is "don't believe everything you read: think for yourself".

Aliens and Counting Planets

In the last couple of months I've been challenged in anonymous comments (from their style I think they're all from the same guy) regarding Scientology and "Aliens".

I've already said a couple of times that Scientologists don't believe in "Aliens" but this doesn't seem to satisfy Mr. (or Ms.) Anonymous.  So let me try for a definitive answer.

Let's start by examining the scientific view of aliens.  In our galaxy there are an estimated 100 billion stars and 30 billion Earth-like planets.  There are an estimated 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe.  So that means there are about 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Earth-like planets in just the observable universe.  (That is 6 sextillion, if my arithmetic is right and I didn't mistype any zeros.) 

Even if the odds of life forming on such a planet are one in a billion that still leaves a lot of Earth-like planets with life on them out there.  So I think the chances of there being life on other planets are pretty good. Someone else did a similar calculation here: Is there any other life in the Universe?, and, using the Drake Equation, Frank Drake came up with an estimate of 10,000 technological civilizations in our galaxy alone.

So, do I believe in that sort of alien?  Sure and I'm in good company: The SETI Institute.

Now let's move on to the "space alien" theories that you can find around the Internet.  I'm not very familiar with them, but I did read a book a couple of years ago that was supposed to be historical but by the end it was telling me all about the "Twelfth Planet".  It was very entertaining and would make a great sci-fi story but there are such obvious gaping holes in the theory that I am amazed that so many people take it seriously.

So, do I believe in that sort of alien? No.

Now what about the "UFO Religions" which cover such movements as Raelism, Zetatalk and the Aetherius Society.  Such movements have belief in the existence of extraterrestrials and/or UFOs as a central component of their belief system.  In order to write this article I took a quick look at those three so that I could answer the question:

So, do I believe in that sort of alien?  No.

So, if I, a typical Scientologist, say I don't believe in aliens (except in the first example above) and I insist that other Scientologists don't either, then why are there claims around the Internet that we do?

Stay tuned and I'll tell you tomorrow.

Scientology Secrets

I have answered a lot of questions about Scientology. I'm willing to answer lots more, so don't stop asking.

But there is a better way than getting second-hand information and that is ... get it first-hand.

Many of the questions I've received about aliens and other weird beliefs that Scientologists are supposed to have are answered by reading a book on the subject. The books of Scientology and Dianetics are the source of the subject. They tell you what it is all about.

So, I recommend curling up on the couch with a nice warm book and reading to your heart's content.

In my next few posts I'll be talking about the books and what is in them. But if you don't want to wait you can check them out for yourself: Basic Books of Dianetics and Scientology.

Have fun!