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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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Rock-a-bye baby, or, Operating Thetans All
By Phil Spickler
30 Mar 1999

Once upon a midnight dreary, as I pondered weak and weary, Over many 
a quaint volume of forgotten lore . . . . , I came upon this 
statement, quote L. Ron Hubbard evermore: "The overt/motivator 
sequence is senior to the Time Track." That seems to me to be a 
statement that just about anyone could get quite a bit of mileage out 
of, and since this corner of the IVy -list is dedicated to 
philosophy, let us continue.

Over the years, I've come across, in different places, statements 
regarding Truth (with a capital T), sometimes on the order of "Those 
who accidently come upon the whole truth whilst unprepared for such 
vision will be (a) blinded by it; (b) become certifiably and 
completely bonkers, nuts or insane; (c) will die horribly; or perhaps 
all three, sequentially."  Here and there, there have been a few 
statements on the order of "Know the truth and the truth shall set 
you free," but I don't think in that case that they were talking 
about Truth with a capital T, or "Truth is on the move, and nothing 
can stop it." a quote from Emile Zola, who understood the power of a 
withhold/missed withhold exposed, as when the truth came out in the 
Dreyfus case.  But as you can see, dear reader, things like that are 
just dibs and dabs of the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so 
help you Who?  In American courts of law, witnesses are generally 
required to state under oath that they will tell the whole truth and 
nothing but the truth.  But here again, as you can easily see, we're 
not talking about absolute Truth.  Most all of us, in order to exist, 
need highly diluted forms of the Truth, and as my dear one pointed 
out to me, as she transcribed these feeble words, Truth is like 
oxygen -- you must have it to live, but if you try to take it in its 
pure form for any length of time it's quite corrosive and will 
eventually kill you. And so the very air we breathe is mostly 
nitrogen, with just a dab of oxygen, and the lives we live are mostly 
filled with lies, thus allowing for persistence, with just enough 
Truth to keep the quality of existence endurable.

I would even venture to say that any group or organization that 
fancies itself capable of becoming a repository or a vessel for the 
Truth will suffer a horrible and degrading fate -- this is easy to 
see in the history of most churches, and recently and notably the sad 
story of the Church of Scientology.  It is also my humble opinion 
that Ron himself aspired to the Truth, and got such a great look at 
it at one point or another in his life that we are not surprised at 
the strange and sad fate that befell him.

Yes, anywhere and everywhere that the whole Truth is, it is for those 
who exist an unpopular and unpalatable dose, possibly the worst 
poison in the universe in its pure form.  But enough of these 
maunderings.

One of Ron Hubbard's famous scenarios to explain the apparent 
degraded dwindled and powerless state that we now, in the opinion of 
some, find ourselves to be, goes something like this: Once upon a 
time, us beings (thetans, if you will) were extremely big and 
extremely powerful and were unencumbered by frail bodies and 
mesmerized minds, and of course us big giant beings in those days 
played big giant games with very high stakes, and the sport was 
wonderful, 'cause everyone was fully conscious of their immortality 
and indestructibility, and so on and so forth.  But somewhere along 
the line, someone or someones decided to get a big win and do 
something to other beings that would reduce their power.  And this 
was done, dear friends, by claiming that another or other beings had 
done something that had actually and truly caused injury -- boo hoo, 
hoo, hoo.  Now apparently these big giant beings were gentle, 
fun-loving giants who were very naive and actually rather easy- 
going, as some seem to think immortals would be (hee, hee, hee), and 
hearing that they had caused injury, formed the consideration that 
went something like this: Gee whiz, I guess I don't know my own 
strength -- I didn't really MEAN to injure that other guy -- I must 
be using too much force!  So I guess I'd better cut it back.  Now at 
that point, the evil genius that had thought up using injury as a 
means for getting another to reduce his power turned his face aside 
and got a very evil grin upon it as he realized that he had won the 
game.  And since then, all the way down to us little earthbound frail 
little folks, this mechanism of claiming injury in order to get 
others to reduce their power has been the order of the day, and is 
practically the slogan for Planet Earth.

The above is a darned interesting chain, and anybody that takes the 
trouble to fool around with it, as well as other forms of Grade 2 
technology, will probably see quite a return of various powers and 
avoid, when possible, claiming "Foul" in order to get others to be 
weaker.

Another interesting piece of information that has tumbled out of that 
poor excuse for a research line that Hubbard came up with (just 
kidding) is that perception is poor in an area where someone has 
committed a lot of overt or harmful acts.  In fact, it is by 
diminishing one's perceptions and feelings of something that one 
becomes capable of harming it without having to feel the pain of that 
which is being harmed.  Of course, that all changes dramatically when 
auditing or something unlessens the overt act, and the harm and its 
consequences can be felt and experienced as a touch of 
pan-determinism enters the scene.  This is another piece of tech that 
can be put to the test, if you're feeling really gutsy (an 
Americanism for courageous), and you will be rewarded, after going 
through the pain of experiencing your own causation, with much better 
perception in a given area, and possibly in general.

This brings us to the notion of Operating Thetan and one of its more 
popular definitions, namely, "stably exterior with full perception." 
Lots of folks have gotten hooked on that idea and sought with all 
their might and main to attain or achieve it and possess it 
thereafter like a favorite pair of their old bedroom slippers, sort 
of just lying around and extremely comfortable any time you want to 
use them.  For the folks that are holding out for that definition of 
OT, I have often yearned to set up a classroom and get these chaps 
busy doing clay demos of that definition of OT in an effort to take 
them beyond words and at least into something they could crumble 
betwixt and between their fingers, as a greater freedom and 
understanding becomes theirs.  But alas, it's the sort of thing that 
not only can provide a hell of a lot of motivators, but also give one 
the motivation for some degree of endless becoming.  It might even be 
fair to say, although it really screws up time, that the only thing 
you ever could be is stably exterior with full perception -- but 
please don't quote me on that, it's terribly bad for business!

Well, all right, back to a little more philosophy here.  If the main 
reason for poor perception is the consideration of having caused harm 
in one or more dynamics, this would give us quite a clue to the 
condition of folks who actually imagine that they are earthbound on a 
small planet in the poor suburbs of a fairly ordinary galaxy, and 
would also suggest a methodology for freeing them from the imagined 
trap that their terribly poor perceptions cause them to think is 
reality.

If these thoughts be even moderately true (certainly not totally), 
one might conjecture as to the nature of what might be perceived if 
much fuller degrees of perception became possible to anyone.  This, 
of course, if carried too far, would land them at No Universe and be 
No One.  Somewhere between where they are now and that horrible fate 
-- they most certainly would not be trying to escape from Planet 
Earth, conceiving themselves to be trapped here for one reason or 
another, because having moved up the perceptual scale quite a 
distance, they would be perceiving something else and other beings as 
something else without having moved a hair -- just changed a whole 
bunch of wavelengths, and whoops!, watch out.

In conclusion, to get to be a big powerful force on our favorite 
illusion called Earth is no big deal, since lurking very closely but 
just a little bit offstage is that all-too-human urge to survive, 
which means you're half-nuts or more anyway.  Happily, though, if one 
stops fighting and craving to become, and simply gets on the track of 
truly and fully acknowledging what one and others already are, not 
only are happy times here and now, but the view of future 
possibilities is endless.  That last route, which our forebears the 
Buddhists put there, is the one in which you grab your own bootstraps 
and take full responsibility for doing the job, and by your example 
hearten all us fellow travelers to do the same.

Having used up my electron allotment for some time to come, I hope 
anyone who reads this transmission will follow its secret coded 
instructions to the place where I'm being held captive of my own 
senses and there break bread with me and have a glass of wine and 
laugh life away.

All the best,
Phil