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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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The sound of two hands clapping
By Phil Spickler
9 Nov 98

Dear Friends,

Having just emerged from a period of deep darkness, punctuated by 
moments of healthy despair, I was most gratified to find a wonderful 
communication from Magister Barkley.  I do not use the term 
"Magister" lightly.  I should like to once again send large 
quantities of appreciation and admiration for the quality of the 
aforementioned communication, which brought further light to 
questions concerning Grades 5 and 6 and their history, as well as 
more information about the incredible John McMaster, and excellent 
illumination regarding the generally-misunderstood area of human 
existence called homosexuality.  Once again, let me say "Thank you 
very much" to Barkley for his excellent offering.

Being at best a poor historian, I yet seem to remember in my few 
readings that there have been past societies on this planet in which 
male homosexuality, at least, was looked upon with great favor.  It 
is fairly well-documented in history that Alexander the Great 
practiced both heterosexuality and homosexuality, as did many of the 
men of his armies.  Such practices are also spoken about in the 
history of Greece, and included relations between older men and 
younger men, even boys, as a part of that which comes under the great 
heading of "being normal."  Let us not forget, in the great saga of 
the Trojan War, the pain and grief that the epic hero Achilles 
suffered at the death of his male companion and lover.

Thanks to Barkley, and to L. Ron Hubbard, and the axiom about 
goodness and badness, beautifulness and ugliness (just to get you 
started), we can see that notions of what is normal very much fall 
under the heading of the opinions of different places at different 
times rather than being engraved in the marble of fixed ideas that so 
beset the many who have not taken advantage of higher understandings.

It is perhaps worthy of note that the much-edited document known as 
the Old Testament and the additional hallucinations and attitudes of 
the New Testament set the stage for the Western world's later 
abominations and highly undeserved attacks upon fellow human beings 
whose major and perhaps only "crime" in the eyes of the unenlightened 
was that of being different, in this case homosexual rather than 
heterosexual.  We find that in the history of Christianity, when the 
Roman emperor Constantine converted to this faith, in order to endear 
himself to the church fathers he set in motion a number of edicts and 
orders against the Hebrews that became such an essential part of 
Christian practice and so implanted in the hearts and souls of 
Catholics and Protestants that it is not all that surprising after 
centuries of inquisitions and pogroms and massacres against those of 
the Hebrew persuasion that finally the Holocaust should take place, 
and that even in present time, as almost a genetic transmission, 
there are still millions of educated people and otherwise in the 
world who feel that Jews are a race, a biological race, rather than 
Judaism is a religion.

Barkley's comments regarding Hubbard and the notion of races of 
thetans not only makes interesting reading but suggests that there 
may be a purely spiritual second dynamic that we should all get busy 
taking a look at and seeing to the possibility of experiencing same, 
or possibly remembering that we already have or even earlier checking 
out which race we may have descended from.  Bodywise, on the planet 
Earth, there is the consideration that there are only three or 
perhaps four true physical races (depending on which biologist or 
zoologist you're talking to), and color, in this case, seems to be 
one of the important distinctions, since along with the blood of 
gorillas it is possible to transfer from one race to another that 
vital fluid, thus suggesting that there is something called the human 
race, to which gorillas, at least at the level of blood, seem to be 
closely aligned.  (I may be wrong about the gorilla blood, but it 
seems to me that I've heard this to be true on good authority, and 
also looking at some of the members of my own family feel that it 
can't be far from the truth.:))

It is my continuing hope that many more of the erudite subscribers to 
IVy will put their 3 cents into such matters (adjusted for 
inflation), and let more light shine on what is the full nature of 
that strange, stunted, and twisted and deformed creature, master of 
all others on this planet, Homo sap, with the possibility still ahead 
of changing sap to sapiens.

Others are returning me now to the locked chamber from which I am 
permitted to come forth occasionally, where I might continue this 
dream -- Best to all, Phil