Even in 2018, Scientology is still selling L. Ron Hubbard like he had the universe figured out

 
It’s true that church leader David Miscavige has made a lot of changes to Scientology over the 30-plus years that he’s been in charge. But some things never change. We were struck by that thought when one of our helpers sent over the latest copy of Source magazine, which is intended to get Scientologists excited about spending a boatload of money to come to Clearwater, Florida for expensive courses there.

We want to highlight a few things in the magazine — Meghan Fialkoff gets her star turn! — but in particular, we were fascinated by something we usually gloss over that is in every magazine Scientology puts out of whatever type: The obligatory L. Ron Hubbard excerpt.

In the back of every church publication, you’re going to find a slice of Hubbard wisdom taken from some lecture he gave 50 or 60 years ago, and this issue of Source is no different. But this one really struck us, for some reason. Scientology has been under siege like never before, what with Leah Remini having so much success at the A&E network, for example. But you have to credit Scientology with sticking to its guns on this one — even as Scientology is hurting, they’re still promoting Hubbard’s ludicrous notions about space and planets and the universe, and that you, as a thetan, are entirely responsible for the physical universe around you and that Scientology’s “technology” will ultimately allow you to create whole universes on your own.

In 2018, is this still the best way to sell Scientology? We’d like to hear your thoughts on that.

 
From the cover — they are still selling running around a pole as a “powerful rundown.”

New York City school infiltrator Meghan Fialkoff gets the spotlight for her rocking good times solo auditing the OT levels…

 
South African magician Larry Soffer ran around a pole!

“When finishing the Cause Resurgence Rundown [literally just running around a pole for hours], I went back to my room and told my wife how amazing I felt. Then, the radio just switched on. My wife asked me how that happened. I told her it was my energy — and I knew it was exactly that — and we danced to the song that was playing. That was just one of the many amazing experiences on the rundown.”

 
And there’s plenty more fun stuff in the magazine itself, which you can see below. But let’s get to the wisdom of L. Ron Hubbard. The lecture that was excerpted for this issue of Source was a talk Hubbard gave on December 8, 1952 titled “ARC, Force, Be/Do/Have.”

We really can’t get enough of these lectures where Hubbard lets his crackpot flag fly. Sure, we believe those people who tell us they got into Scientology for all the right reasons — they wanted to improve themselves and help mankind. But they also followed an anti-science huckster who claimed that the law of gravity and everything else about the physical universe only existed by the agreement of the thetans who had dreamed it up — which includes you, if you could only regain your godlike powers, and then you can mock up new universes and escape this one and its theta traps.

Maybe the number one question we get on social media about Scientology is one that irritates former church members no end: “How did anyone fall for this stuff?” Well, as annoying as that question may be, when we look at lectures like this by Hubbard, we can’t help wondering that ourselves.

When we talk about this universe we’re talking about energy. The only way an individual can be held in to this universe is by a conviction that he cannot handle energy. Because this is a universe full of energy, and is composed only of energy, which operates in a thing called MEST universe space. If you cannot handle energy in its fullest extent don’t think you can be free of this universe or any other one.

Force begets force, and he who lives by the sword will die by one. But you have to be able to have enough force to use an unlimited quantity of force, before you can pass over into a higher band of ethics. One cannot retreat from and cower back from force, under any pretext whatsoever, and still have a beingness above the level of this universe.

When you stop and think right now, perhaps, of being hit in the face, in the MEST body, with a hundred thousand KW lightning bolt, it possibly is not a comfortable thought. But I assure you that that is a small amount of juice, compared to what you as a thetan can take. You ought to be able to pick your teeth with a million KW lightning bolt, theta wise.

If you have ever seen the mercy of the very strong, compared to the sympathy and fear of the very weak, you will see the mockery of bottom scale trying to echo the top of the scale. A person has to be very, very strong before he can be ethical and completely merciful of his own free will. At the bottom of the scale a person has been forced to be, and everything affects him. He is an effect of this and an effect of that and so on.

He’s still carrying along with him some of his capability; there’s still theta there at the bottom of the scale, but not much. He has crossed over, you might say, crossed over the span of force on the band, successfully. But bluntly, nobody ever crawled out of this universe through the bottom of the hole. That’s a grave. The only way out is through.

You have to be able to conquer the full use and control of any factor of the first dynamic, and having conquered that, the full use, control, of the factor of the second dynamic, and the third and so forth. You have to be willing and capable, and in full control of those dynamics, before you are free of them. Because always lingering in the back of your mind, no matter how esoteric you may think your ambitions may be, always lingering in the back of the mind is something you can’t do. That is always a disability.

The capability of a thetan is not simply force. You take every saint on the calendar as represented as having a big, bright aura. What do you think that aura represents? Something very interesting — raw energy.

Whether or not these boys could wield energy or not, I don’t know. But they certainly represented them that way, and have continued to do so ever since. That tells you something interesting about force. If you want to be able to heal somebody at a distance, you have to have the capability of charring them into charcoal at a distance. Don’t mistake that one, because the ability to produce force is the ability to make a strong postulate. And the ability to make a strong postulate alone is capable of controlling the health and beingness of others.

So all force is, is the shabbiest shadow of what can be done. But unless you can make a postulate strong enough to handle force, it is highly unlikely that you can make a postulate strong enough to pervade all through the beingnesses which you would like to help. Tells you a lot about force.

This is a force universe. And don’t EVER make a mistake about that. And if it was the only universe there was, God help all of us! It’s built on trickery, and it’s built on force.

Every single item that you see in a store is condensed energy, existing in space. Every single brick that you see out on the street is a condensation of energy. Any action you see on the part of a MEST object is some manifestation of force at work in this universe. And don’t think for a moment that a low scale action in this universe will be greeted by anything but force.

You can protest, reason, agree, grovel, beg, it does not matter. Force is there, heavily and solidly, to greet the BEST of intentions to help. This universe does not care anything for brightness, for aesthetics. You could go out and make the prettiest planet that ever existed in this whole universe, solely by your hard work, and application and genius. And the force that is this universe could simply roll it up and blow it away. Without the least tremor.

The strong man who uses force, fort main, as his sole criteria of existence is nothing but a brute. Nevertheless, the strong man who is able to make something in this universe must be able to protect it. Because this universe doesn’t care.

That’s what breaks the heart of Man — it doesn’t care. No matter what he does for anybody, no matter how much he tries to help, in this universe with MEST force on the loose, and relatively uncontrolled, it makes no difference whatsoever. It is that remorselessness, that crushing capability without discernment as to a finer quality, that breaks him at last.

He thinks in this universe there ought to be such things as love, and goodness, and he thinks these things ought to repay. And you find somebody working himself to the bone, trying to be a good guy, trying to be a straight guy. What will you find around him? Pitfalls waiting for his tiniest error. He will go crashing down.

And who will push him? The people he helped the most. It’s a great universe. It is so debased and degraded, really, that the better capabilities of theta, the better capabilities of beingness, almost can’t exist in this universe. They are here in the flimsiest possible form.

Let’s take an aesthetic. What does this universe care for an aesthetic? You’re look at the beautiful sunset. Are you expecting a sensation of aesthetic from this universe? Do you have any idea what composes that beautiful sunset? It is dust hanging in the air from some old volcanic explosion, where the earth convulsed and vomited and shot rock and ash into the air. It’s a sun of such a violent temperature that it is shooting sheets of fire out two hundred and forty thousand miles. If you even vaguely approached it and got a tiniest burn you would thereafter rot. Beauty in this universe.

You go out and look at the butterfly, and you watch him flying around through the grass, and you say: “Isn’t that pretty?” Did you ever follow the fate of a butterfly?

It’s an interesting game. But it really doesn’t have any room in it for the beingness called Man.

You have an unlimited universe, of force and debased force and the solidified results of force. Man and thetans in their small way try to add into it the ingredient of love, beauty, appreciation, fair play. Nothing happens, really — just more force.

So don’t go moaning and moping around and saying, “There is no goal for this universe,” and don’t go saying “Nobody appreciates what I’m doing.” The truth is, this universe is too strong and too forceful and too powerful from the standpoint of MEST force, to permit it to happen.

The only thing which you see out here in this universe that is worth seeing, is what you and people like you have put into it to perceive back. If you have ever counted the number of beautiful cities which have gone by the boards here on this Earth, the hopes with which they were built, the ardures and depths of their fall, and the plight and agony of their final days, you would no longer sit around and worry about “Let’s make this a good universe.”

That’s how you got trapped into it in the first place — trying to make this a good universe. You’ve got lots of universes, and you can make one of your own.

 
Hey, and here’s a bonus. Listen to Hubbard himself deliver this segment of his 1952 lecture. Are you tempted to believe what he’s saying, that he’ll be helping you learn how to transcend the physical universe itself and defy its physical laws? (Please note: Small discrepancies between the article in ‘Source’ and what Hubbard actually says is the responsibility of the magazine. Our own transcript of the lecture is exact.)

 
And here’s the magazine. Let us know what jumps out at you…

Source 249, Part 1 by Tony Ortega on Scribd

Source 249 Part 2 by Tony Ortega on Scribd

 
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Chris Shelton talks to Sunny Pereira!

Says Chris: “As a follow up to the video I did about the ARC triangle recently, here is a new video where Sunny Pereira and I discuss the nature of reality in Scientology and how we both understood what Hubbard was talking about when he said ‘reality is agreement.’ Our conversation ended up going into details about some major contradictions in Scientology’s belief system, further showing that Hubbard’s ideas were ill conceived and poorly thought out and, in the end, crazy making for anyone trying to live by them.”

 
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Posted by Tony Ortega on January 4, 2018 at 07:00

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Learn about Scientology with our numerous series with experts…

BLOGGING DIANETICS: We read Scientology’s founding text cover to cover with the help of L.A. attorney and former church member Vance Woodward
UP THE BRIDGE: Claire Headley and Bruce Hines train us as Scientologists
GETTING OUR ETHICS IN: Jefferson Hawkins explains Scientology’s system of justice
SCIENTOLOGY MYTHBUSTING: Historian Jon Atack discusses key Scientology concepts

Other links: Shelly Miscavige, ten years gone | The Lisa McPherson story told in real time | The Cathriona White stories | The Leah Remini ‘Knowledge Reports’ | Hear audio of a Scientology excommunication | Scientology’s little day care of horrors | Whatever happened to Steve Fishman? | Felony charges for Scientology’s drug rehab scam | Why Scientology digs bomb-proof vaults in the desert | PZ Myers reads L. Ron Hubbard’s “A History of Man” | Scientology’s Master Spies | The mystery of the richest Scientologist and his wayward sons | Scientology’s shocking mistreatment of the mentally ill | The Underground Bunker’s Official Theme Song | The Underground Bunker FAQ