How wonderful to read such a thoughtful reply.  

Keep it up, and I'll soon be eating out of your hand, babe.  :)

What your "handlers" may be saying is that given the information you
have and the opinions you've already formed, perhaps the only thing that
would allow you to understand Scientology's merits, at this point, is to
experience some of these yourself.  

Well, perhaps this is the case.  I don't think so myself.  And even if I
did, I wouldn't consider it an explanation for why you or anyone else
could not otherwise develop a quite adequate estimation of Scientology's
merits.  After all, I did.  

I checked out Scientology to my own satisfaction before I took any
services, before I read Scientology material of any kind.  Then I
decided to become a Scientologist.  Full commitment, no reservations.
And only on the next day did I begin a course.  

Several hours of intense conversation with several Scientologists,
wearing each of them out in turn; several hours observing the goings-on
in the then Toronto Org (1972); several hours evaluating best-case and
worse-case scenarios of various types -- this is what it took for me to
get far better than an adequate grasp of what Scientology is in fact
about.  

I don't believe Scientology claims to have a monopoly with regard to
each and every result it may offer.  It does claim, correctly, that the
entire package has no equivalent.  

I agree with you.  As I wrote in my last, the effort to preserve
Scientology intact and unaltered has a rationale, but I added that such
a rationale has its own weaknesses and faults.  You've mentioned some of
them here.  There are at least a few others that come immediately to
mind, but I needn't get into them now.  

I'd just as soon have seen LRH do something similar to what IBM did
years ago, when it allowed its whatever -- I forget the term -- to be
used by anyone, and which led to IBM clones and compatibles of all
kinds.  

I'm a libertarian and a Georgist*, and I regard monopolies as bad
news.      * The late Henry George, writer and economist.

So, I'd have preferred to have seen discarded any monopolistic aspect of
Scientology already extant in the mid-sixties, when, instead, LRH wrote
"Keeping Scientology Working" and some other policies which went in the
exact opposite direction.  

There could have been as simple a policy statement as, "In the C of S
it's done this way and no other way.  Out of the C of S, do what you
like."  

But it would be not only ungenerous to leave discussion of this issue
here.  It would also be superficial and foolish.  

One of the things about Scientology which critics, virtually all of
them, seem to have not a clue about is what it might take to create and
develop a philosophy, a technology, and an organisation such as
Scientology and the C of S.  

Attempting to relegate this enterprise to a scam, a money machine, a
mind-control cult, or similar -- such attempts could be considered
acceptable in a bar, after a couple or more beers, and if bereft of
anything better to ramble on about.  Attempts to maintain such views
when one is sober, however -- these speak worlds for the would-be
credibility of those who engage, and then persist, in them.  

In any event, you might like to give some thought, or some more thought,
to this issue here.  What has it taken to establish Scientology as a
permanent fixture in today's landscape?  

We're looking at an activity which makes some ordinary, but also some
extraordinary, claims.  

And we're looking at this activity being resident in societies which
have long established philosophies and religions, some of the latter of
which have been attempting to create their own monopolies for centuries
or millennia, and who largely succeeded, until recently, in maintaining
a sort of religious cartel throughout much of the world.  

These societies also include mental health and pharmaceutical cartels
with both monopolistic and protectionist tendencies.  

In other words, we're encroaching on the hard-fought-over,
hard-carved-out territory of some major vested interests.  

Then there's the calibre of people on this planet, which can be
over-estimated or under-estimated, but which I imagine we would agree is
hardly excellent overall.  

There's the fact that Scientology philosophy, technology, and
administration remained under constant development for nearly forty
years, which meant changes and corrections as an on-going constant.  

And then there's anything and everything else which might assail even
the best efforts of the most enlightened individual or group.  

We are not looking, in other words, at a cakewalk.  

Now, what does all of this have to do with the sixties and with the
non-alteration of Scientology doctrine?  

These were days of intensive research and development in Scientology.
They were days of considerable growth.  They were also days of such as
the FDA raid on the D.C. Church and the infamous (read, "mad-dog")
Anderson Report, I think it's known as, in Australia.  I remember
reading somewhere that in one Australian state Scientology literature
and even the word ~Scientology~ were banned.  

Perhaps one of the considerations, then, was that there was enough going
on in and out of Scientology at this time without also having to worry
about possible, major, negative repercussions to the C of S as a
consequence of Scientologists or ex-Scientologists "doing their own
thing."  

If so, one solution -- complete with its obvious weaknesses, flaws, and
the new problems it would inevitably create -- would have been policy
such as "Keeping Scientology Working."  

Sometimes I enjoy complicating things: makes life more interesting.  But
here I don't need to make the effort, as the history of Scientology
includes a number of things complicated, and the issue we're examining
is one of them.  Understand, though, that all I'm attempting here is to
give you something to think about and perhaps something to think with.  

The unalterability of Scientology doctrine has its rationale.  So does
the attempt to restrict its use as much as possible to those who will
apply it as it was developed, and not in some other manner or in some
other form.  What I've described here may only have been one aspect of
the rationale LRH had in mind.  

I'd have more fun arguing against these policies than for them.  What I
wouldn't do, however, and despite my views on such as individual
initiative or monopolies, is to simply presume that LRH made a mistake
when he published this policy.  

As I've mentioned, Scientology's development has not been a cakewalk,
but over three decades after those policies were written, Scientology is
not only still here and still working; it has also made it quite evident
that it is here for the long haul.  And to what extent these policies
may have contributed to, or worked against, this achievement -- this is
something I would want to evaluate quite carefully.  

Okay, that's a look at the past and present.  How about the future?  

Not to further presume on your interest in this issue, here I'll be
brief.  

Me, I'd like to see some things cancelled, some things changed, and, of
course, I'd like to see everything improved.  Whee!  

What's more, I've considered all of this inevitable since the day I
became a Scientologist.  

When and how any of these changes and improvements may happen, however
-- this is another story.  But I'm optimistic.  And I do believe it'll
all come out just dandy in the end.  

Agreed.

Yes, I'm quite sure that I don't practice the same double standard.  

At the risk of sounding quite presumptuous, I would also suggest that
I'm a far better and far more exhaustive critic of Scientology than
anyone I read here.  

I simply don't consider a.r.s. a forum for much more than my excellent
and exhaustive -- and at times, I should think, exhausting -- criticism
of some of Scientology's critics.  :)

Agreed.

Soon you'll have me eating out of both your hands.  

There are flaws all over the place, not just in the organisation.  Not a
great many of them, but it's not as though they're confined to the
organisation.  But as I've written here before, Scientology doesn't
claim that any part of it is flawless.  Its claim is to workability.  It
works.  It gets results.  

Perhaps it's a Ford in comparison to a Ferrari.  Or a tractor in
comparison to a mule cart.  But we're living on a planet which, as
concerns philosophy and technology of the spirit and of the mind, is
still, for the most part, trying to figure out why square wheels give
such a bumpy ride, and how much Prozac might be needed to dampen the
resultant stress.  

I think I covered at least some of this above.  

I don't think your statement makes much sense, actually, but it did made
me laugh, so I think I may have gotten the joke just the same.  

It sells an opportunity to gain a great deal of understanding of, and to
regain one's power of choice over, life.  

Of course one need apply oneself.  It doesn't just happen.  You pays
your money and you takes your chance.  And, yes, you may end up paying a
good deal of money.  

Not only: as workable as Scientology is, one's chance is still only as
good as one makes it.  

A tragi-comic aspect of life is that it makes no difference whatsoever
how much chance one is offered or how well it is packaged, if one isn't
also quite determined to make that chance one's own.  

In other words, Scientology is in no way a free ride.  And it is not
infrequently hard and difficult work.  

Sooner or later it'll cost considerably less money.  Sooner or later
it'll involve considerably less work.  Sooner or later it will have far
fewer weaknesses or flaws.  Those who aren't confident they can cut the
mustard now, and those who don't even recognise there's any mustard to
cut -- these are cordially invited to exercise some patience while the
rest of us make it easier for you, too.  :)

Snide?  I'm ready to invite you to Italy.  :)

The comm courses don't assume a person has no abilities.  A person may
already have a terrific presence, wonderful communication skills, etc..
Another person may be a bit of a wreck on all these fronts.  That's why
what we're looking at here is drills, exercises.  

The instructions are simple.  Very simple.  People will complicate the
hell out of them on occasion, and there's nothing either of us can do
about it.  People will just complicate things sometimes -- and often
it's not just to make life more interesting.  But the drills,
themselves, are still very simple.  

So, you do the drills.  And doing the drills, you improve whatever
presence, abilities, etc. you may already have.  

When you come visit, I'll be happy to do some TR 0 with you.  (Don't
mind me getting ahead of both of us.  I do this sometimes, too.  :)  

<snip something covered above>

Not at all.  

If this were a forum packed with Scientologists who have what I would
consider a rather conformist and/or blinkered view of at least some
aspects of Scientology, and if there were only a spattering of critics
here, I'd choose to concentrate my communication on the side of
criticism.  I prefer to question prevailing opinion rather than ride
with it.  

But this is a.r.s..  I am the spattering here, the minority.  And almost
anything I've written, whether in support of Scientology or even in
qualified support of critics has been received with one or another form
of dissent or with silence.  

I'm pleased you, Deana, Diane, Sister Clara and some others cointinue to
speak in no uncertain terms about some aspects of Bob & Co.'s treatment
of the Laura Terepin affair.  Inevitably you have all received some flak
for this.  But there was more than a handful of you, and you received
vocal or silent support from many others.  

I'm an even smaller minority here than might be immediately apparent.

mind this in the slightest.  I knew what I was getting myself into at
the start, and if I'd not actually looked forward to it with some
relish, I'd not have begun posting.  

But I certainly didn't begin writing to add my criticism to what I
consider an already overwhelmingly biased, and all too often quite
lunatic, discussion of a subject for which I have a great deal of
regard.  

So, no, what's missing here isn't further criticism of Scientology from
me, but a more informed, less biased, more objective and balanced
approach to the mass of criticism already here.  That would do for
starters.  Then we could take it from there.  

If and when the discussion ever does become more balanced, I'll be
pleased to give lessons in criticising Scientology, too.  In the
meantime I may consider myself obliged to carry on more or less as I've
been doing.  

Yes.

I think that is darned

I think it's indispensible.  

Yes, this is what I mean.  

What I don't do with Scientologists who just don't know or who just
don't want to know, is to give them a hard time merely because of this.
Nor would I attempt to enforce on them anything I know myself.  And here
you and I are agreed once more about the actions of some critics of
Scientology: neither of these approaches is particularly bright.  

I also tend to think with the stable datum [a datum around which one may
align other data] that anyone is free to know or not know whatever he
pleases.  I think people get into a lot of trouble they'd just as soon
avoid by not knowing one thing or another, but I figure they're free to
do this, too.  

Life is a game.  It may certainly not look that way now and then, but
one is always free -- at any time and regardless of the circumstances --
to look again and to rediscover this elementary truth.  

Let's separate out and also clarify a few things, as we're looking at a
number of factors here.  There's Scientology doctrine; the C of S as an
organisation, including its staffs; public (non-staffmember)
Scientologists; and perhaps other things I'm not looking at right now,
such as C of S social programmes.  

The most important of these factors is Scientology doctrine, and I've no
problem supporting of it.  There are some things I consider are in
drastic and increasing need of critical examination, re-evaluation, and
subsequent revision or cancellation.  But I've thought this for
twenty-seven years or thereabouts, and I rather doubt that the sky will
fall if they're not adequately addressed for another twenty-seven
years.  

If enough people in or out of Scientology were *really* determined about
handling whatever might be wrong with it, we'd see considerably more
intelligent and effective criticism than we do see.

So, far be it for me to put any more of my own demand for change into
such a sluggish scene than I already do.  

No problem, then, with the doctrine.  The doctrine -- complete with its
faults and the problems these create -- isn't the problem.  

And now let's lump the doctrine back in with all of the other factors
and try for some brevity.  

I could give you any number of what I would consider catastrophic
scenarios, such that I'd no longer be able to consider Scientology
doctrine to be Scientology doctrine or the C of S to be the C of S,
etc..  If any of these scenarios materialised, that would be the end of
my support for those involved in them and the beginning of my support
for whomever I considered capable of taking up the fallen banner.  

But such scenarios aren't going to happen.  Sure, anything can happen,
but their unlikelihood precludes all but idle speculation at this
point.  

So, I currently don't see my support going anywhere other than where it
is.  

(God's truth, will this article never end?!)  

Because I consider the determination to promote such a half-witted
evaluation of Scientology cannot but also be the consequence of a
determined and persistent ignorance.  And I regard determined and
persistent ignorance as sinister.  

And it strikes me that, when it comes to scientology, the value

I don't think I'd like to argue this until the end of time, but if you'd
like to argue it on and off for a couple or a few weeks, you're welcome
to come visit.  There's a spare bedroom upstairs, and the rest of the
house and its surrounds are an excellent arguing environment.  

E
--
Note:  Correct e-mail address is e...@ermes.it.