Fascinating post. I think the one who truly believed it was John Campbell, but then he believed you could draw an electronic circuit and have it work. (Nowadays that’s not so farfetched, but in those days it was just crazy. Anyway, he meant a pen and ink drawing. And I think he believed in telephathy and telekinesis.)
Thee is not the slightest reason to think that Hubbard believed in any of it.
There may well have been a meeting of science fiction writers in which Hubbard (or somebody else there) may have said something like “If you want to make a million dollars, you need to start a new religion.” It’s not clear that Ellison was there though. This story is told by a number of science fiction writers. If they were all there, the room was rather crowded. Ellison is not the most trustworthy of sources. It’s possible that Ellison heard the story and changed it to make him one of the people there.
Since there is not much of a factual question in the OP, and this is inevitably involves discussion of religion, this is better suited for GD than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Joe Smith and the Mormons are close to our time. We know what a shyster he was. L. Ron also has tracks you can see today. It takes a bit of insanity to start a religion but if you pull it off ,you will be rich and powerful.
Disillusioned Mormon: Start Your Own Cult! Here is how to get started.
The other religions are old enough so the flaws of the originators have been able to be smoothed over.
My impression of the process of becoming ‘clear’ which is something I read from William S. Burroughs who flirted with Scientology was that it was a strict regimen of making you confront your fears. Presenting one with such evocative dualities is actually an useful tool. Essentially if there is anything the psychedelic era, of which L. Ron was a significant part should have taught us is that these techniques can be used for both good and ill. Certainly all the bits about aliens are questionable at best, but there is an argument to be made that people build up a mythology around the things that they cannot know. Oftentimes these people are far more congnizant of the mytho-poetic nature of their allegories.
I’m not trying to justify Scientology in any way, but I think people are too ready to dismiss Hubbard’s views in their own ignorance. ‘Haha lets laugh at the psycho.’, but basically mental health is all about how you measure up to the baseline of the rest of the populace, and outliers are considered to be some kind of deviant, it’s all viewed through a negative lens. Outside of the norm and something is wrong with you, regardless of the benefits your particular ‘pathology’ brings to you and those around you.
Basically I think people judge scientology out of a place of ignorance, they have no fucking clue what they are looking at, but like to pretend they are so that they can engage in the gestalt of PALATR.
That’s a function of obsession, not a function of Buddhism. Buddhism is about freeing one from obsession.
If you see the Buddha on the path, kill him.
God, how I love Harlan Ellison! Thank you for posting that, Diogenes, I I hadn’t seen that interview before.
Dualities?
No it isn’t.
Ignorance of what? Mythopoesis?
Gestalt?
First, I’m not a scientologist nor do I condone their more cult-like practices, but IME this looks like straight up cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). It eerily reminds me of a Cognitive Behavior affirmation worksheet that could be handed out in any clinical group setting… So, without judgement to its origins it is a variation of a common and sometimes effective technique within the science of psychology and may hearken to Dianetic’s psychotherapy roots.
This fun Cracked article may come in handy: L. Ron Hubbard’s 5 Most Impressive Lies (Besides Scientology)
This example of a “psychological disorder/ nonsense rambling” that you posted is ironically a treatment for many DSM IV diagnoses, so unless the “crazies are running the loonie bin”, which, unironically, I have found is often the case, then your assumptions are misinformed, and in fact biased.
Well hell, I watched the program about the 7 wonders of the ancient world on A&E last night and it gave me a twinkle of inspiration to start an earnest search and maritime expedition in the Mediterranean to find the the sunken lost treasure of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, pillaged by seafaring Barbarians and sunk upon their home voyage by a storm. Or was it the pillaged treasure of the mauseloeum of Halicarnassus?
Is there any way to recreate or simulate ancient weather patterns in the mediterraneaen and find a possible location for the most likely storm that would sink a fleet during any given season?
Sorry, it was the History channel, same difference, I guess.
Cybernetic dowsing, really, when one thinks about it.
The first true and unqualified prediction and time travel into the past based upon physical, meteorological, oceanographic, geological, and historical evidence as synthesized in cybernetic space. Hypothesis to confirmation.
Be able to further the science of meteorology and Computer Science correlating to the human story. Radiologic Microwave science could probably map it too, Low Freak. Sonic-graph. HARP
Apparently, the University of Wiscosin-Madison is the place to look for this kind of past predictive weather software. Dowse just to the North of you Chidopes. They have the right academic and research program and technology… got some serious MIT leadership there, starting this year. I’m sure they are probably working secretly with HAARP, as well. How do I access that without having a degree?
Every once in awhile I read something on the Dope that changes my mind or causes me to reflect in a profound way, when ever I do I feel like a better person.
Thank you, njtt.
That reincarnation was bad was already part of the Hindu tradition before Buddhism. It has never been a good thing. The idea of an escape from the wheel of samsara (continuous rebirth) was likewise, already an established concept. Buddha actually downplayed questions about reincarnation or life after death as unimportant and irrelevant. What he contributed (or at least, what Buddhism contributed) was the explanation for unhappiness in life (“all suffering is caused by desire”), and the methodology for attaining enlightenment – escaping from suffering – in THIS life (the eightfold path).
He really added nothing new doctrinally or theologically. For the most part he ignored metaphysical/theological type questions completely.
I already mentioned Heinlein (and others’) fake religions upthread.
It’s not the Church of All Worlds that I wonnder about in that book – i have a suspicion that he based the Fosterite Church in Stranger in a Strange Land at least in part on Hubbard’s foray into revelation. But not too much – Heinlein didn’t want to court disaster, I’m sure.