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The following first appeared in the private email list IVy-subscribers,
which is available to all those who subscribe to the
printed magazine, International Viewpoints.
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Did you get the idea?
by Phil Spickler
12 Sept 99

        Having briefly and accidentally, and never (I hope) again to be
repeated, happened to recall who I was or what I was (or wasn't) before "I"
mocked myself up -- whoops!  it just happened again!  and thus ceased to
exist, which is how come it's taken so long for this second and last
installment on the subject of Thought to get thought of, and then finally and
indelibly rendered or re-introduced into the electronic Akashic records, from
whence come all the amazing communications for those who have paid their
subscription to the Akashic Records (tm) and have the type of equipment
necessary to access the aforementioned Webless site.  But at last I'm amongst
you once again, and firmly claiming, in fact heavily asserting, that I AM
someone or something, with many apologies and excuses to A Pelican,
Antarctica, and the doctrine of no-soul: Anatta.

         But enough!  Let us once again think about thought and ideas; let us
ideate.  I think even the staunchest materialist, if pushed to the wall, so
to speak, would have to agree, especially if extremely agonizing forms of
torture were properly applied, that an idea or thought has no mass, no
motion, no wavelength, and is not necessarily located in any particular time
or space.  (I hope no one disagrees with this, since I have only so many
instruments of torture and I might not be able to get to you in time to help
you to this understanding.)

          So it sounds, if you're following this line of reasoning, that
thought, ideas, are under pretty much the same definition that we would give
to the term "Immortal."  Now I know some of you philosophers out there will
accuse me, and correctly so, of being somewhat under the influence of Plato,
and you'd be right if you think this.  But I've also had the opportunity, in
various schools of wisdom or thought, to put this to the test, and I'm
pleased to report, although and thank goodnesss all cases are not in, this
pretty much seems to be true --  ultimately true, in fact.

       A superficial contact with Dianetics and Scientology might lead one to
think that Poppa Hubbard was guilty of practicing what we philosophers refer
to as "dualism" -- in this case, I'm referring to the idea that some may have
erroneously concluded, namely, that there is/are two separate or discrete
things, the spiritual universe and the material universe, and these folks who
have concluded this or believed this go along talking about MEST and theta as
being quite apart from one another and certainly not a unity.  And therefore
they believe in a dualistic cosmo-something or other.

         But I'm here to tell you, in my newly-manifested whatever-I-am, now
that I've mocked myself up again, that this just plain ain't the case, and
that if you folks out there, and I hope your number is few, will take the
time some evening, when you are temporari]y free of worldly cares, and you
will examine some of the Axioms, fundamentals, basics, self-evident truths of
Scientology, you will find that you have a misapprehension about there being
a difference between theta and MEST and that some day, if you're a real good
thetan, you'll get to leave the MEST universe and get to go to some
quasi-religious heaven called the spiritual universe, where you'll be free
once and for all from this vale of tears -- that's OK if you're a practicing
Christian, but doesn't have anything to do with Scientology or the teachings
of L. Ron Hubbard.

         So here's the big secret revealed: theta and MEST are one and the
same thing.  They are a unity, not two separate things, which would be called
a duality.  Let me say it again: MEST and theta, theta and MEST, are one and
the same thing.  MEST is just theta manifesting itself in a way that makes it
seem that there are two things, thus we have something called existence.  But
the lie, or the problem, in this, is that they are one and the same thing;
and if you do your exercises really well, you will find that MEST converts
very nicely to theta, and theta converts beautifully to MEST.  In fact, it's
what you're doing all the time,whether you are conscious of this or not.  So
please, unless you want to seem ignorant ofthe subject of Scientology and its
fundamentals, please get this straight, both from the horse's mouth (not the
other end), or even take the trouble to acquire a book of Axioms and then the
techniques necessary to make those Axioms be more than just a bunch of words
that you don't understand, and I'm here to promise you that you will see,
through your own understanding, that Hubbard, following a long trail of great
thinkers, great understanders, and great wisdom, has simply restated a very
old but right-now idea, which is timeless and immortal, and that is that what
we're looking at, always, now and forever is a unity that is here and now and
everywhere, etc. etc., and that although it can appear in many forms, shapes
and sizes, is never anything but that unity.

         Now do you get the idea?  If you don't, don't blame me!  I can't help
it if you're a lazy thinker.

        To go from the ridiculous to the sublime, I suppose everyone is
familiar with the notion that on the level of person-made things, like cars
and large canals and legal systems and ball-point pens and the Eiffel Tower,
before any of these things came into existence, somebody or someones had an
idea, a thought, a picture, a vision, and then this idea became, through
effort and toil, a physical fact.  In other words, it was postulated, and now
it can be perceived.  And you could say, as a German philosopher did, that
the thing you perceive, like the great pyramids, actually IS the postulate,
or (in German) the ding-an-sich, the thing in itself.  It's just a short leap
from here right through Plato to envision everything that exists and that is
perceivable as simply the idea or the postulate.  Stick a little agreement on
it, and my goodness -- it may last for centuries; but the idea of it will
last forever.

        In the words of the immortal humorist and comedian Jimmy Durante, we
close tonight's show with these words: "Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever
you are!" -- Phil