Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
Info-ParaNet Newsletters Volume 1 Number 053
Info-ParaNet Newsletters, Number 53
Tuesday, October 3rd 1989
Today's Topics:
Re: Bill Moore As 'savior' Of The Ufological Community
LRH
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: paranet!f20.n30163.z1.FIDONET.ORG!Jim.Speiser
Subject: Re: Bill Moore As 'savior' Of The Ufological Community
Date: 2 Oct 89 07:56:00 GMT
My working hypothesis is simple. They're trying to confuse the issue.
And succeeding hugely.
--Jim
--
Jim Speiser - via FidoNet node 1:104/422
UUCP: !scicom!paranet!User_Name
INTERNET: Jim.Speiser@f20.n30163.z1.FIDONET.ORG
--------------------------------------------------------------------
From: MacLeod <ames!amdahl!drivax!macleod>
Subject: LRH
Date: 3 Oct 89 18:06:21 GMT
The note which appeared recently seems to be a response to an
older posting of mine. I'll try to answer the questions.
:I have just recently discovered this echo and read your comments on LRH
:and Scn. I am interested in more info on this subject. Some questions.
:1. What is OTO?
The OTO is the Ordo Templar Orientalis, a group organized in the 19th
century Europe to carry out various kinds of what is called "ceremonial
magic". This is a kind of left-brain magic-by-the-numbers approach which
dates back to Pythagoreas and the presocratics. The OTO and similar groups
generally boasted of secret wisdom handed down through the ages; as the
name suggests, the OTO originally claimed secrets imported into the West
through the Knights Templars. Often these were confused, half-understood
Tantric techniques or muddled Sufi mysticism. Because sex was so
suppressed in Victorian England sex magic played a great part. In this
century the OTO was run by the notorious Aleister Crowley, and he
chartered a group in Los Angeles run by Jack Parsons.
(A good intro to the OTO and Crowley is Colin Wilson's book _The Occult_.)
:2. >LRH is known to have been involved with the OTO in Los Angeles.
: Known by who? What is your reference on this.
Therer are two recent LRH biographies which deal with his involvement.
The better of the two is _Bare-Faced Messiah_, written by an Englishman.
In it his mistress and later wife is interviewed and others on the scene
at the time contributed their comments. There are also letters from
Parsons describing how he and LRH attempted various curious experiments,
and stories about how Ron bullshitted his way into and out of trouble (as
he does for virtually the entire book).
:3. >Interestingly, when you confront the Church of Scientology with such
:stories,
:Who in the church was confronted or WHICH church of Scn. was
:contacted? Was this the "official" church response to such inquiries?
August Murphy, the ED (Executive Director) of the Church of Scientology of
San Francisco, wrote a long rebuttal to a bunch of questions about LRH's
involvement with the OTO published in _Critique_ magazine last year (by
the way, I highly recommend _Critique_). Friends of mine have put C of S
spokesmen on the spot on radio call-in shows with similar requests for
more data. The C of S doesn't deny that LRH was there; they just insist
that he was acting as some sort of police spy or government agent, which
is bad enough, but apparently something they don't feel called to account
for.
:4. What is "Nevada Aerial Research"?
The name of a person or group issuing a newsletter with some interesting
UFO and fringe science stories. I can dig up the address if you're
interested. I have no idea where he-she-they get their data from.
:5. Why should we give more weight to what NAV says about LRH's theories
: than to what the man on the street says about LRH's theories?
The NAR made no comment one way or the other about what they printed; it
looked like they simply included some kind of typed pages within the
camera-ready copy of their own letter. I thought the material exceptional
because it was more detailed than anything I had yet seen, and I have been
exposed to a variety of Scientology materials within and without the
church.
:6. (comment) I have read several of LRH's books and the only one I recall
:having anything to do with e.t.'s is "Scientology: A History of Man".
:Since I read it a new printing has come out with 2 added previously
:unreleased chapters. It is not an ordinary book.
HOM is very weird and often nearly unreadable unless you completely
disconnect your critical faculties. There are other tidbits of what
Hubbard calls "space opera" sprinkled here and there in his books and
tapes. Scientologists eat these little bits up and yearn for the day they
make it to the "upper levels" and can be trusted with the confidential
materials which go into the convoluted story LRH weaves in greater detail.
The similarities between Hubbard's story and some of the
Lear-Cooper-Bennewitz stuff is disturbing, in one sense, which was the
point of my earlier posting.
:8. >"wake up" humans before a series of destabilizing actions and events
:occurred which would throw human civilization into a tailspin.
:This alligns with what I have read, however in my experience the
:"actions and events" were always clearly indicated to be man's
:self distruction through nuclear war and nothing else. (LRH was
:a nuclear physicist among other things.)
LRH was ten pounds of bs in a five pound sack, among other things. His
various claims of attending "one of the first classes taught about nuclear
physics" was so much fiction, as was his claims of a Princeton education
and degrees from George Washington University. See _Bare Faced Messiah_
for details.
He does mention nuclear war in several places, mostly as an imitation of a
bunch of unsavory incidents which supposedly happened 76 million years ago
in the era central to the "Wall of Fire", or New OT III processing.
Briefly, after a interstellar civil war, the bad guy made a kind of last
stand on Earth and detonated huge atomic weapons in many volcanoes all
over the Earth's surface, precipitating some kind of huge atmospheric
catastrophe (presumably a nuclear winter-type scenario. In another,
obscure, reference, he claims that Mammoths with frozen vegetables still
in their mouths (indicating freezing in several seconds or less) were
caused by beings temporarily whisking the atmosphere off the planet and
then replacing it.)
Now, having raked LRH over the coals, let me reiterate that some of the
Dianetic and Scientological techniques and exercises are the most potent
ways of healing the spirit that I've ever seen. I credit these techniques
with saving my life, in fact. Unfortunately, LRH was a jerk as well as an
innovator, and he built an organization which reflected his own paranoia
and stubborness. I had the good fortune to encounter the C of S when
a mature adult and with a reasonably tough and mature personality. If I
had found them at 20 instead of 30 I would have been drawn much more
deeply into the cultish (and repellant) aspects of the organization.
As you might guess the C of S has lost many, many people from its ranks
over the years, including virtually all of the old time members who worked
with LRH and who have made careers out of Dianetic and Scientological
auditing. There are independent movements which are trying to separate out
the useful aspects of the LRH materials from the speculative, the
elliptical, and the simple lies. If you have any interest in Scn
techniques I strongly suggest seeing an independent rather than getting
enmeshed in the Church itself.
Michael Sloan MacLeod (amdahl!drivax!macleod)
177 Webster St. no. 382
Monterey, CA 93940
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To have your thoughts in the next issue, please send electronic
mail to 'infopara' at the following address:
UUCP {ncar,isis,nbires,boulder}!scicom!infopara
DOMAIN infopara@scicom.alphacdc.com
ADMIN Address infopara-request@scicom.alphacdc.com
{ncar,isis,nbires,boulder}!scicom!infopara-request
********************************************************************************
End of Info-ParaNet Newsletter
********************************************************************************
