The 8th Deadly Sin

Exalted Cognizance or Unholy Decoction?

In late 1981, shortly before he suffered a near paralytic stroke as a result of a brain aneurysm, Hubbard was in the custom of verbally dictating his personal views on a number of topics, both philosophical and technical, in the midst of a flurry of orders and advices on any possible topic imaginable to Management, the FSO and Scientology Organizations. These would range from complex plans and programs to raise income to the materials an executive should have on his desk. Since the late 1970s he would hardly compose a technical issue without using a recording device. In this way were the bulk of the original NOTs materials and nearly every bulletin issued subsequently prepared. Among the dozen or so “philosophical bulletins” issued under Hubbard’s name throughout 1982, each and every one was extracted from those recordings and sometimes even “adapted”. Their issuance was evenly distributed throughout the year, no doubt to appease increasing rumors about Hubbard’s being “off-lines” or possibly even being incapacitated.

Possibly the most illustrious (or rather for some, infamous) of the bulletins so produced in 1982 is the one entitled “Pain and Sex”

Originally recorded some time in 1981, and largely because they were extracted out of any surrounding context, a number of Hubbard statements were “adapted” and hastily joined for their publication by RTC on the 26th of August 1982 as part of a plan the to preserve the illusion that Hubbard was still “fully in control of the Church”, by regularly issuing “new bulletins” under his name. .

Therefore, evenly throughout 1982, one sees Bulletin after bulletin being issued by RTC without any logical progression or sequence as long as they contained “New Stuff”, so as to allay suspicions that they could actually be older unpublished materials.

The Bulletin “Pain and Sex” starts by labeling anyone from Freud to the run of the mill psychologists as being all on an equal footing as criminals

It then goes on to state that Sex is an entirely artificial concept, not native to a being and is therefore the result of an Evil and elaborate plan by malicious creatures to control the entire Universe and subjugate populations. It ends by directly implying that the slighest indulgence in normal sexual activities will inevitably result in the fall from grace of any Being.

One can ask himself what is actually native to a Being. According to the Scientology Axioms, the only native attributes of a being beside his own postulated existence, are his own viewpoint and his ability to form decisions, new viewpoints and postulates.

Anything else is an add-on. To anyone who accepts Man as a spiritual being, sex is a clearly a physical attribute and an obvious add-on. This is true of all major religions on this planet. Further, with Scientology belief in past lives, it becomes amply evident by the laws of probability alone, that any individual would have many times, been a member of the opposite sex that his body is currently being, a fact corroborated by the numerous statements made by people telling about their past lives experiences in Scientology. Hence gender related sexual characteristics and sexual urges of someone would be mainly the product of both cultural and biological factors, rather than spiritual ones. So Sex is clearly not native to the being by simple deduction from the Scientology Axioms published three decades prior to the bulletin, yet only now is Hubbard actually labeling Sex as if it were a Deadly Sin.

The claim that because Sex is merely an “artificial wavelength’, it is inevitably a tool of degradation is given in the bulletin “Pain and Sex” without any substantiation or even explanatory facts. Hubbard himself has always claimed sex was one of the main Dynamics of Existence until at least 1979. Doing such a serious correction to one of the Pillars of Scientology without explanation is unconscionable. It can only pave the way to confusion and subsequent slanted interpretations. By failing to explicitly cancel the second Dynamic or to replace it, Hubbard or more appropriately, those publishing under his name, only succeed in self-righteousness and a very transparent statement that at least one of the core fundamentals of Scientology is actually deeply flawed, without openly admitting it. More alarming, there is not a trace of justifying evidence or most facts given to corroborate this brand new idea, safe for the ever present “psychs”, Scientology’s answer to the Judeo Christian concept of Satan and of the Devil.

This bulletin is what is truly behind the Church broadly issued revision in 1991 of the definition of the Second Dynamic, where the second dynamic was revised in their “Scriptures” to remove Sex and replace it with “Creativity”. Speculation abounds, among Church defectors, to explain the drastic revision. A number of Conspiracy theories, (some of them going as far as involving Intergalactic Markabian Invaders) have even been concocted in some circles to explain the change.

However, the explanation is likely far less involved and much more down to earth. Anyone who fully comprehend the bulletin “Pain and Sex” signed by Hubbard, clearly see that failing to revise the definition of the Second Dynamic would plainly invalidate it. In fact, the revision of the definition of the second Dynamic is nothing but the mandatory corollary to that bulletin, lest one was to declare a late work attributed to Hubbard as invalid.

LATE ADVICES REPLACE OLD POLICY 

More than ever, currently Scientology Management looks upon Hubbard writings, even when taken out of context, as pure Gospel.

Contrarily to the assertions of a number of misinformed individuals, what truly distinguish the current Church management from previous ones is not its abandonment of LRH writings but the utter fanaticism and shocking extremism that it goes through in the pursuit of its perceived adherence to Hubbard’s late prose.

Technically the key element explaining the causes behind the true Golden age of Scientology – the 1960s and 1970s – and those at the root of its subsequent faltering in the 1980s onward is the same one that differentiates the structure of the Analytical Mind and that of the Reactive Mind. The Formers (Scientology’s True Golden Age and the Analytical Mind) are based on Reason, Differentiation and a Creative Integration of complex assortments of Data. The others are characterized by preset behavior (either through Stimuli-Response or Indoctrination), Simplistic Association (A=A) and the proscription of anything that does not come from a literal interpretation of Data within one’s immediate reach.

Because in the late 1970s Hubbard, felt that for legal and fiscal reasons he had to resign from any official managerial positions within the Church, and in part due to a fondness to micro-manage a number of pet projects, he issued throughout the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s volumes after volumes of “Advices”, even though these are labeled as advice and the vast majority of them will probably never be broadly published.

Unbeknownst to most active and defected Scientologists, those advices are viewed as supplanting long term published and workable policy by the Church Senior Management. Many of their questionable decisions can be directly traced to their interpretation of what they blindly perceive as ‘The Word of Truth” rather than through intricate Conspiracies or an Intergalactic take over, as some people are known to profess.

By disregarding the fact stated at the beginning of each staff member study course (it is at the beginning of Volume 0, which contains all basic data upon which Scientology organizations are formed), that the lack of knowledge about an organization’s policies by its member will inevitably lead to chaos and turmoil, the current Church leadership has all but destroyed Hubbard work and legacy, effectively achieving the exact opposite of their mandate.

There is very little chance that those numerous advices will ever see the light of publication because many are quite controversial.

A good number were issued in what appears to be either anger or based on an intense distrust of others, in good part by the paranoid picture the “All Clear Unit” (ACU) was drawn to Hubbard at the time.

ACU’S SINISTER BACKGROUND

The “All Clear Unit” (ACU) was a fully autonomous Unit created due to leaks about Hubbard physical location to ensure he would avoiding being served writs, summons and other undesirables

By Mid 1981 the ACU had gained exclusive control of Hubbard unique link to the outside world and was actually monopolizing it, busily slandering the entire “Old guard” which it perceived as it only threat for perennial survival.

Living as a recluse Hubbard had no other source of information about the inner activities of the empire he had taken four decades to build. Coincidently, or perhaps calculatingly, the ACU In-Charge was none other than David Miscavige, until then a minor fixture among Hubbard’s assistants. It therefore can be directly inferred that much of Hubbard late and questionable writings were at least in part attributable to the influence of the Intelligence produced, and in some cases fabricated by ACU. It will probably remain forever impossible to objectively prove the exact nature and extent of the altered Intelligence and what communication from Hubbard became tainted as a result.

OUT OF CONTEXT ADVICES SUPPLANT COMMON SENSE

The author of this article has personally seen hundreds, perhaps a thousand of those unpublished advices and secret issues. Most of them are rather short and in many cases, no clear context or zone of application is being supplied.

This explain the “strange technology” evolved by the Church in more recent years as it tries to build a single jigsaw puzzle out of pieces actually belonging to many different sets. As they continue to force round pegs into square holes, an actual perversion of Scientology basics emerges.

This avalanche of Advices has never been issued broadly and yet is accessible on a daily basis by the Church senior management to conduct their daily affairs. Few people, save senior Management, have access to them. Most Scientologists do not even realize they exist, even though they are legions and form the entire basis and rationale for current Church actions.

In its desperate quest for guidance among a chaotic heap of conflicting and even unspecific advices (the bulk are interpreted literally without any context to refer to) the Church leadership always seek to find the “latest” order on the chain and will consider that anything later, cancels anything issued earlier, no matter how fundamental or basic that earlier datum might be.

Loss on them is the awareness that Scientology is actually a vastly complex body of knowledge that can only be fully understood by integrating its numerous components.

This tendency to seek the “magical quote” that explains everything is a typical attribute of zealots (a zealot being defined as someone who has purposely denied himself from the fruits of observation and reason by reason of an unquestioned adherence to a dogmatic principle) and is all too often found among a number of Scientologists and even ex-Scientologists.

It frequently leads to misapplication and in the worse cases to extremism.

Some obvious examples of such extremism in today’s society are among a handful of “Christians” who find their pet quote in the Bible justifying the assassination of abortionists or homosexuals, small pockets of “Muslims” who interpret carefully selected passages from the Holy Koran as if were a blue-print for destroying all non-believers through acts of terrorism, and Church operatives who are utterly convinced that blackmail and extortion are honorable acts when used in accordance to their recent indoctrination about “the greater good”.

If one was to merely follow a logical path in interpreting later unpublished writings, one would draw the unavoidable conclusion that if Hubbard was so frequently mistaken, as to continually revise core policy to satisfy the need of the moment, then his later writings (being as yet unproven by experience as workable, contrarily to an established policy who had been already been proven successful by years of application) would stand at least an equal chance of being flawed, in particular if it produced short term disaster.

Apparently, since they are utter strangers to logic and reason (being reasonable has long been held by the Church as one of the main attributes of a suppressive person – the original meaning of reasonable as someone who agrees with barriers is now mainly understood within the Church as any attempt at using moderation or logic in applying its philosophy of policies) current Church leadership each year sink into higher levels of extremism and increases its demands for blind obedience by their followers.

The actual root of the faulty logic used by current Church Management is actually their fanatic belief in Hubbard’s infallibility not only in Scientology technical matters, in Administrative Policy and local directives but in each and every field of Human affairs he has ever made a pronouncement on ranging from Health and Nutrition to Mathematics and Computer Science. Whenever a satement by Hubbard, in his taped conferences or published works is found to be irreconciliably at odds with facts or subsequent “Advices”, it is quietly edited and republished, much in the same manner as those used by “The Ministry of Truth” in George Orwell book: 1984.

CONCLUSION

Even if one accepts that Sex is merely an artificial wavelength, it still does not satisfy any explanation as to why it would automatically be a perversion or a tool created for the sole purpose of slavery. Many artificial aspects of our Society are provably either creative or destructive and their results are either good or evil based on the manner in which they were applied, not whether they were artificially or naturally created.

Otherwise such reasoning leads to the unavoidable conclusion that both Technology and Modern Civilizations are the products of Evil and that one need to return to Nature and strictly adhere to a set of inflexible rules dictated by self appointed elite, which bring us one step closer to a Taliban-ruled type of Society.

An obsession against sex reeks of Religious fanaticism which was the hallmark of Medieval Christianity. According to Hubbard himself, most of Christianity is the result of “Implants”. A study of Sexual Taboos and beliefs that regards Sex as the product of Evil on this planet, show that one for one each of them find its root deeply anchored in religious beliefs. Buddhism, often stated by Hubbard and his followers as being the traditional philosophy and religion most akin to Scientology is notable in not regarding sex as a perversion, but as something either secondary or a form of sublimated creation.

In fact if one were to slightly adapt the bulletin “Pain and Sex” and replace “Psychs” with the Devil, one would find something entirely in agreement with Christianity doctrines as they were taught throughout the Dark Ages.

It is therefore quite plausible that false memories (which are a simple way to describe the contents of implants) may be behind ideas classifying any and all sexual acts as if there were a deadly sin.

Unless the Church becomes forthcoming in making Hubbard original late teachings available for independent and unbiased study, it will remain forever a speculation if those “false memories” were Hubbard’s or rather an insipid brew conjured by someone who was itching to step into his shoes.

In the final analysis, the wide rejection by ex-Scientologists of the newly revised definition of the Second Dynamic show a fundamental disagreement with the doctrine taught in the 1982 bulletin.

This merely goes to show that alignment with logic and its core fundamentals is the only true guide to understanding Scientology rather than speculative attempts to establish an un-provable authorship or uninformed efforts to date Hubbard’s late writings. A “Safe solution” for many is the creation of a Magical cut-off date, (which tend to be different for various individuals depending upon their preconceived ideas) after which anything and everything published is deemed to be the product of Evil, as if it had been touched by a malefic wand.

The reward for those who have truly mastered a complete and honest understanding of the technology through years of hard work and applied study, (as opposed to those who merely assert an empty claim of having done so), is a great ease in successfully separating the wheat from the chaff.

Here lies the true key to fully understanding the late works of Hubbard and of Dianetics and Scientology.

Copyright © 2006-2007 by Pierre Ethier Class XII.

NO PART OF THE TEXT ABOVE MAY BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT DIRECT PERMISSION FROM THE COPYRIGHT OWNER