naturally Thelemic
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93,
I think there is absolutely no reason that one needs to read Liber Al in order to find and do one's true Will. Although I haven't ever investigated the rationale for all of the Gnostic Saints, certainly almost all of them had never heard of Thelema.
Not to pull in detritus from another thread, but it reminds me of certain Taoist writings wherein the people who best understand tao are said to be those who have never even heard of it.
It does seem strange to me to refer to someone as a Thelemite who has never accepted The Book of the Law; I mean certainly people can act Thelemic, and do their True Will without knowing what Thelema is, but can they really then be called a Thelemite? That's a definitional issue, I guess.
At any rate I sometimes think it would be best if we all took the comment's advice and burned the thing after the first read. It's very easy to get too wrapped in that one little book.
I dislike L. Ron Hubbard.
Love=Law
- C
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@ThatNarrowFellow said
"At any rate I sometimes think it would be best if we all took the comment's advice and burned the thing after the first read. It's very easy to get too wrapped in that one little book."
Here, here.
@ThatNarrowFellow said
"I dislike L. Ron Hubbard."
I've seen a lot of websites devoted to bashing his organization, but I really don't have any dependable knowledge of it. I'm curious what has motivated you to your opinion of it. I mean to say have you had the chance to speak to a scientologist? I've never had the opportunity, but I would like to.
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93,
Hubbard seems to have had a forceful and captivating personality even in his earlier years. He was clearly highly intelligent, and able to grasp complex metaphysical and hermetic ideas quickly. His ruthlessness was fascinating to a lot of people, who found it a sign of an ability cut through conventional human limitations.
I think Parsons was responding to these traits in the man when he described him as the most purely Thelemic person he had encountered. His view changed as he realized LRH was not interested in transcending the ego, but in fact reinforcing it to a point of impregnability. And, of course, taking a portion of Parsons' cash.
If you read Jon Atack's A Piece of Blue Sky, you'll find some good material on all this. Russell Miller's biography Bare-Faced Messiah is by an outsider who did good research but didn't wholly grasp what Scientology aims to do, or where its practices lead a scientologist: which is to a something like a Golden Dawn-level Dominus Liminis state, but with bulwarks in place to ensure the HGA never truly ovewhelms the personality.
If you can find Robert Kaufman's 1970s book Inside Scientology, you probably have the best book on what scientology really does. But the Church went after Kaufman and got it banned, and a lot of copies seem to have disappeared from public libraries.
93 93/93,
EM
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@Almighty Creator said
"
@ThatNarrowFellow said
"At any rate I sometimes think it would be best if we all took the comment's advice and burned the thing after the first read. It's very easy to get too wrapped in that one little book."Here, here.
@ThatNarrowFellow said
"I dislike L. Ron Hubbard."
I've seen a lot of websites devoted to bashing his organization, but I really don't have any dependable knowledge of it. I'm curious what has motivated you to your opinion of it. I mean to say have you had the chance to speak to a scientologist? I've never had the opportunity, but I would like to."
Judging Hubbard by Scientologists is like judging Crowley by Thelemites. You will just find people.
Hubbard himself was extremely manipulative, took Parson's wife & a lot of money, infiltrated the government with his organization (the IRS specifically), isolated members, etc. The Church of Scientology has a history of defaming those who speak out against it and torturing and even killing dissenters. Look up 'Lisa McPherson.'
As for burning the book: that is only necessary for people who get too caught up in things.
IAO131
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@Edward Mason said
"93,
Hubbard seems to have had a forceful and captivating personality even in his earlier years. He was clearly highly intelligent, and able to grasp complex metaphysical and hermetic ideas quickly.
EM"what???
are u kidding?
what are your sources for those points?
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93,
Gerry456 wrote:
"what???
are u kidding?
what are your sources for those points?
"No, I'm not kidding at all. I'm surprised anyone would think I was.
Have you read Hubbard? I don't mean with an outlook of "What is this gibberish?" but rather, trying to grasp where he's coming from? Have you looked for Kaufman's or Atack's books?
Hubbard developed a workable applied psychology in Dianetics. Many thousands of people found this to be so. Scientology, in my view, takes this approach into realms of paranoia by trying to elevate the purely psychological (the Yetziratic realm, in Qabalistic terms) into the spiritual realms (Briah and Atziluth). A lot of cults have faltered through attempting that.
While I don't accept Hubbard's private theosophy, especially in the ways it veers off into corny space opera in its later elaborations, I do see a very creative mind operating in the bulk of his practical concepts. The e-meter detects genuine emotional reactions, for example; I don't subscribe to the notion that it's all about simple random fluctuations in skin resistivity, which is just plain silly if you've ever been on one of the things, or something like it.
Just because the man was a warped genius doesn't mean he wasn't a genius.
93 93/93,
EM
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@Edward Mason said
"93,
Gerry456 wrote:
"what???
are u kidding?
what are your sources for those points?
"No, I'm not kidding at all. I'm surprised anyone would think I was.
Have you read Hubbard? I don't mean with an outlook of "What is this gibberish?" but rather, trying to grasp where he's coming from? Have you looked for Kaufman's or Atack's books?
Hubbard developed a workable applied psychology in Dianetics. EM"
i hear that whislt claiming to sell cures for various ailments he suffered bad health his entire life and the the e-meter is a mere police lie detector machine buffed up to be something it isn't
also just because "1000s of people" find solace in someone's belief system that to me does not give it credence re Mussolini Hitler GWBush Ollie North, nu-metal concerts, Mormons
please....., can we not abuse the term "genius"?
i hear enough of that crap every day from morons in the media
it's bad enough when people say Hitler was a "genius" let alone Hubbard
he was creative yeh sure i'll give him that much
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93,
Lie detectors can be quiet effective. The e-meter (and a nearly identical device I've tried myself) simply helps us find out about our own lies.
I am not saying I like or approve of what Hubbard did or said or taught. He had bad breath from his bad teeth, and as he declined he neglected his health atrociously. A friend of mine met a Scientologist who was part of group that had been evicted from the Sea Org, who said he ate five meals a day. The last reports we have of him indicate he had dementia.
But as a syncretist, I think he was brilliant. When he first combined everything in Dianetics, it caught on because, as he himself never tired of saying, people found it worked in relieving psychological stress. And Hubbard's skill in re-conceptualizing Hermetic and alchemical ideas has always impressed me. If it's a scam, it's a darned plausible one when you actually work the basic practices, or one of the variant forms of them that are out there. No, Scientology it doesn't allow people to move physical objects without touching them, or to attain permanent serenity, but the psychotherapeutic effects of the initial processes are valid.
Genius doesn't equal goodness, not does the term even necessarily imply* intellectual* brilliance, though that is how we usually employ it today. Hubbard, like Hitler, had great cunning and ability to obfuscate, as well as a high IQ.
93 93/93,
EM
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@gerry456 said
"JW Parsons was pleased whne he met L Ron Hubbard
he wrote that h ehad at last met someone who was "naturally Thelemic"
can someone be naturally Thelemic?"
This is a huge issue that I think everyone in the Thelemic community is grappling with right now. What makes a person a Thelemite? There appears to be as many opinions on the matter as there are practicioners.
Some people feel very strongly that Crowley's the lead authority on every question of life, and insist that if your views don't conform well enough to his, you can't be considered a Thelemite. Others think being a Thelemite is as simple as doing your will.
In The Law is for All, Crowley writes, “…unless you know what your true Will is, you may be devoting the most laudable energies to destroying yourself." This passage makes me think twice before tossing the term "Thelemite" around. We may regard some people as strong willed, but if they've never read any Crowley books, how likely is it they're doing their true Will? Furthermore, I've met a lot of strong willed people who struck me as being deeply confused.
This is enough to convince me that the "anyone who does their will is a Thelemite" view is kind of an oversimplification. But maybe it made more sense to Parsons.
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@Edward Mason said
"93,
Lie detectors can be quiet effective. The e-meter (and a nearly identical device I've tried myself) simply helps us find out about our own lies.
I am not saying I like or approve of what Hubbard did or said or taught. He had bad breath from his bad teeth, and as he declined he neglected his health atrociously. A friend of mine met a Scientologist who was part of group that had been evicted from the Sea Org, who said he ate five meals a day. The last reports we have of him indicate he had dementia.
But as a syncretist, I think he was brilliant. When he first combined everything in Dianetics, it caught on because, as he himself never tired of saying, people found it worked in relieving psychological stress. And Hubbard's skill in re-conceptualizing Hermetic and alchemical ideas has always impressed me. If it's a scam, it's a darned plausible one when you actually work the basic practices, or one of the variant forms of them that are out there. No, Scientology it doesn't allow people to move physical objects without touching them, or to attain permanent serenity, but the psychotherapeutic effects of the initial processes are valid.
Genius doesn't equal goodness, not does the term even necessarily imply* intellectual* brilliance, though that is how we usually employ it today. Hubbard, like Hitler, had great cunning and ability to obfuscate, as well as a high IQ.
93 93/93,
EM"
i hear he was a compulsive lying fantasist spinning yarns e.g. if you read the official story about hi sbackground in the $cientology website he said h ewas initiated by blackfoot indinas as a child but that tribe never ever existed in that area of the USA. Also his military CV i s very suspect apparently
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@Frater H. said
"In The Law is for All, Crowley writes, “…unless you know what your true Will is, you may be devoting the most laudable energies to destroying yourself." This passage makes me think twice before tossing the term "Thelemite" around. We may regard some people as strong willed, but if they've never read any Crowley books, how likely is it they're doing their true Will? Furthermore, I've met a lot of strong willed people who struck me as being deeply confused."
93,
Well one thing I think we need to ask ourselves is whether or not this concept of "the Will" is exclusive to Thelema. I submit that the terminology may be new, but the concepts we've seen before. The idea of going inside yourself to discover your true nature is no newer than the idea that a higher aspect of yourself, or, "Holy Guardian Angel," will help you on your way.
You cannot have Hadit without Nuit, or Nuit without Hadit; they're a pair. The true Will, in my view, is an individually-expressed aggregate of a greater whole. A unity and a disunity in a way that we cannot understand so long as we're hanging around Malkuth. The Hindus call it "VishishtAdvaita." Thus while each of us may have unique Wills, it does not necessarily follow that there are no commonalities between them. Maslow can write that self-actualized people show a general tendency towards certain values, and Plotinus can argue for a world of forms by observing that all of mankind recognizes certain dimly-understood virtues that cannot be effectively expressed so long as our consciousness is roiling around in the ego (although he doesn't use the term "ego," as you can expect.)
The commonalities between these concepts is what indicates to me that it is not just Crowley or Liber Al that has the key. Many books have the key, but every book is not suitable to each and every person, or each and every individually-expressed aggregate, if you prefer.
I see no problem with calling an enlightened Hindu Swami, Taoist monk, or even Quaker a person doing their true Will, provided the seat of consciousness has shifted enough to satisfy me that they understand what that means.
Love=Law
- C
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Gerry 93,
Yes, he made up most of his own history, and most of Scientology's cosmogony. His 'war record' is a hoot, especially, IMO, the bit where he attacked a floating log then claimed he'd gone after a Japanese submarine.
The paradox is, he also came up with a methodology that, provided it isn't used to attain some impossible state of near-perfection, (I'm thinking of the OT grades levels), does achieve results.
93 93/93,
EM
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@ThatNarrowFellow said
"I see no problem with calling an enlightened Hindu Swami, Taoist monk, or even Quaker a person doing their true Will, provided the seat of consciousness has shifted enough to satisfy me that they understand what that means."
Crowley's system of magick, in my opinion, is the fast track of development - not that it's "fast" per se, just in comparison to older methods which, because of their centuries worth of accompanying tradition, are sometimes prone to confusing and sidetracking the student. I think Crowley went to great lengths to eliminate the useless stuff and teach what really works, giving his students the advantage over those of other traditions.
When we look at someone like Hubbard who didn't seem to be following any kind of spiritual methodology whatsoever, we're left with the question of whether or not he just stumbled onto his true Will. If I'm in Crowley's camp because he's offering a more advantageous method of attainment, as I described above, naturally I'm going to find it less likely for a Taoist or a Quaker to have as deep an understanding of their Wills as a Thelemite. How much less so a man like Hubbard who - correct me if I'm wrong - didn't adhere to any tradition at all, at the time of Parsons' statement? I don't think being willful or forceful in one's actions amounts to an understanding of one's true Will, if that's what Parsons was trying to express.