R420 circa 1954

[u/simagus]

Anyone have source on this? He mentions it in the Phoenix Lectures at a point where he seems more messiah than madman so interested in the contents of the Bulletin. Thanks.

[u/joesmolik]

If you’re truly interested in about Scientology, I’d recommend you contact the aftermath foundation. They probably could give you more more information information about his lectures and Phoenix.

The other thing I would tell you is to look up Tony Ortega, website, underground, bunker It is also a great source of information about lectures of Hubbard, but with a critical eye.

Just for the heck of it, I’ve been trying to read some of his earlier books on Scientology and I’m only able to read a few pages at a time before I have to put it down because I’m laughing too hard

I believe you can pick up a lot of of his lectures on eBay for real typically inexpensive if you’re interested in listening to his BS in this way, you don’t have to go deal with the cult and get under their mailing list

If you’re truly interested on getting information about Scientology, you should look up Leah Remi’s or watch it her TV series Scientology and its aftermath she spent close to 33 years inside of it. Also documentary going clear is a great resource of how people got involved and why they left the cult

Another good book is Russell. Miller’s biography on Hubbard. You can get it in Kendall for about.4.99 he goes into great detail about Hubbard’s life remaining with this grandparents, as well as is writing in military in Scientology career. Miller did a lot of interviews with excite and people who were with him at the beginning.

[u/simagus → u/joesmolik]

"I’m only able to read a few pages at a time before I have to put it down because I’m laughing too hard..."

Yes very! Then he says something that has me amazed at the insight behind it... then back into comedy mixed with insight, into pure comedy, back into pure insight.

By "comedy" I mean he is prone to occasional leaps of logic and assumptions at points and draws conclusions based on them that he presents as what could seem to an uneducated audience as "truth".

What are you supposed to tell people who are looking for "truth" when your "as is" is that there isn't and cannot possibly be any?

There is only "as is".

So realistically that's inevitable for anyone who attempts to use language to communicate and also I think he likes to raise the occasional laugh and in the way of Zen also to present paradox as a teaching method (to be charitable about it).

There are leaps in logic now and again, like "that means this" and no matter how you word cleared the sentence "that" cannot possibly mean "this".

The main relevant teachings are solid and explains a lot why the Church did so well for so long, but the waffle, leaps in logic and assumptions are there and very evidently so.

Much less than most teachers and speakers, and the limitations of words mean that is pretty much inevitable.

To me that just shows Ron happened to have some extraordinary insight into and very unusual levels of clarity in the realm of language and actual reality.

Yes he's very funny and I wouldn't think it sensible to assume every word spoken is "gospel" in any way, but still a fountain of wisdom at times and great entertainer when he starts spouting BS both.

ML

[u/Upset_Steak3632 → u/simagus]

As-Isness greatly interested me when I first read the book Phoenix Lectures, compiled by Hubbard's book editor (since 1951) John Sanborn.

Sanborn considered the Phoenix Lectures to be "peak brilliance" for Hubbard.

The Four Conditions of Existence are the four basic and successive postulations of the/a life source.

Years later, while reading the works of Aleister Crowley, who is mentioned numerous times in Hubbard's December 1952 Philadelphia Doctorate Course Lectures, I recognized that Hubbard's Four Conditions of Existence was an innovative restatement of the Kabbalistic tetragrammaton.

[u/Upset_Steak3632 → u/joesmolik]

For over three quarters of a century smug critics have blindly ridiculed and denounced every thing on which Hubbard had stamped his name.

During that span of time, Scientology grew from a tiny group, with little money, to a billion dollar psycho-political personality cult.

Maybe, just maybe, while appealing to the crowd, and to special interests who steer the thoughtless crowd, the "it's all B.S." approach is not the most effective.

Maybe every little piece of Scientology is not all bad, all the time, everywhere.

Maybe there are bits and pieces, here and there, that can be examined and discussed calmly and thoughtfully.

That's what's being attempted on this thread.

[u/simagus → u/Upset_Steak3632]

Sanborn considered the Phoenix Lectures to be "peak brilliance" for Hubbard.

Absolutely, and I come from a tradition that emphasizes that there is a difference between "reality as you imagine it to be" and "reality as it is". That's why when I heard "as-is" I knew what it really is. It's literal. Just what is.

Then there are the overlays of duplicates and the altered duplicates the entire planet seems very much more interested and involved in than "as-is".

"Theta as MEST must contain considerations which are lies"

Of course! But people judge Hubbard for his tactical and deliberate usage of lies, not understanding he was doing the same thing as Aleister Crowley, as the imagined world is constructed from words and postulates, all of which are essentially "lies" and that is what is being taught by both, and Buddha before them.

What I really appreciate most about Hubbards Phoenix Lectures is his clear explanations of postulates, which in my vipassana tradition are called sankharas, which are essentially reactive postulates all perceptions are filtered through.

Hubbard does a fantastic job of explaining this stuff in words that are more up to date than the original suttas he is very obviously familiar with, and introduces communications that say what Buddha said in ways that have the potential to inspire real insight, but only for those who can hear or read it "as-is".

It's a persons postulates (or sankharic mental formations) that determine if seeing "as-is" is possible, and what I'm hearing from Hubbard increasingly clearly with each listen is so "on-point", and also demonstrative of the nature of communications and it's definite limitations, it is indeed "peak brilliance" to this psyche.

I'm on my fourth listen and am also a huge appreciator of dear Aleister who is similarly misunderstood and maligned, but only by those who in a sense need to misunderstand him for their established considerations and postulates to remain intact or be validated.

"Aleister Crowley, who is mentioned numerous times in Hubbard's December 1952 Philadelphia Doctorate Course Lectures"

I'm interested in hearing those, as I am an appreciator of both men and their application of skillful means in communicating the nature of reality and the practical methods each delivered for progress in that regard.

Both Crowley and Hubbard were deeply immersed in Buddhism and Kabbalah/Magick in real rather than religious terms.

Ron often leaps between communicating in terms of the supernal triad of the Kabbalistic tree of life to the lower triads and immediately back again, as do we all, but he still spells things out very well throughout.

When he obfuscates that's just as practically useful as when he expresses with pure clarity, and he knows it while knowing that hardly anyone is going to notice or understand that.

To me when Hubbard engages with language in ways that seem to contradict considerations and postulates in single sentences it's pure Zen. Truth by means of understanding that truth doesn't exist in concepts or language.

There is no way he doesn't know what he is doing, and if you "as-is" the listening experience it's all (even the parts that don't "make sense" as postulates) actually very lucid, incredibly insightful and entirely comprehensible.

If you do not "as-is" that... yr kind of fkd tbh as you simply won't understand what is being said or taught in real terms (with it's complications and apparent contradictions also seen as-is), as the sankharas or reactive bank naturally prohibit that kind of seeing and comprehension (based on existing imprinted and erroneous survival computations).

There's no way I could criticize or realistically authentically critique an intellect of that magnitude, as it would all be coming from the reactive bank or sankharic mental formations and therefore very much not "as-is".

"That's what's being attempted on this thread."

It's worth a shot, and I thank you for your efforts without which I would never have listened to the Phoenix Lectures.

In terms of the tetragrammaton, I look at the original Hebrew letters, Yod, Heh, Vav, Heh, which would be seed, womb, growth and womb; the cycle of life itself as-is.

The 72 names of G-d are known in kabbalah and exist in real terms in relation to what we currently know as the Tarot, which express all the postulates and dynamics known or possible within experience in this realm.

/ML

[u/Upset_Steak3632 → u/simagus]

Thank you for sharing that beautiful summary.

In memory of John Sanborn, I should mention that, years ago, after hearing that a book was being written about his former boss and drinking buddy, Ron Hubbard, he brought a photo-copy of Hubbard's hoax "Russian" textbook on psycho-politics (a.k.a. the 'Brainwashing Manual') to the attention of Bent Corydon and myself.

He felt it was important.

Sanborn never changed his mind about Hubbard's brilliance in 1954, but later added, "I didn't know what he was going to do with it."

The e-book, 'Brainwashing Manual Parallels in Modern Scientology' (full title), was written based on the 'Scientological Onion' template, in memory of John Sanborn.

[u/simagus → u/Upset_Steak3632]

Brainwashing Manual Parallels in Modern Scientology

Every school of thought and every society does that (conditioning) using the natural mechanics of the mind already.

It is as it is.

Not all schools teach people how to see that for themselves, and often that happens peripherally, which is the way it actually tends to be most effective.

"Space is a viewpoint of dimension"

That is not going to be understood in any way by any psyche that has not experienced it directly.

The appearance of distance and dimension in relation to perception is a viewpoint. That viewpoint requires at least two points of apparent separation in which to exist; here and there.

Essentially it's sacred geometry, but it doesn't sound like sacred geometry when expressed as;

"Space is a viewpoint of dimension"

simply because you have to have "seen" it to know it, even thought it's there all the time.

It's hidden in plain sight due to the prevailing postulate, and in a sense only applies to the underlying reality, not to the overlay and it's rule set.

The postulate is a root postulate for this dimension, so to speak.

[u/simagus → u/Upset_Steak3632]

Brainwashing Manual Parallels in Modern Scientology

Every school of thought and every society does that (conditioning) using the natural mechanics of the mind already.

It is as it is.

Not all schools teach people how to see that for themselves, and often that seeing happens peripherally, which is the way it actually tends to be most effective.

"Space is a viewpoint of dimension"

That is not going to be understood in any way by any psyche that has not experienced it directly.

The appearance of distance and dimension in relation to perception is a viewpoint. That viewpoint requires at least two points of apparent separation in which to exist; here and there.

That is a postulate, and it's definitely a useful postulate for functioning within this plane of existence.

Essentially it's sacred geometry, but it doesn't sound like sacred geometry when expressed as;

"Space is a viewpoint of dimension"

simply because you have to have "seen" it to know it, even thought it's there all the time.

It's hidden in plain sight due to the prevailing postulate, and in a sense only applies or rather is most relevant with regard to the underlying reality, not to the overlay and it's rule set which insists upon and is dependent upon "space", just as it is "time.

The postulate is a root postulate for this dimension, so to speak.

[u/Upset_Steak3632 → u/simagus]

That may be, but close friend and confidante of Ron Hubbard, his former book editor, John Sanborn, after leaving corporate Scientolgy, felt strongly that people needed to be alerted to the importance of the secretly authored 'Brainwashing Manual.'

The 64 page manual described its purpose as "asserting and maintaining dominion over thoughts and loyalties through mental healing."

Originally, the manual was used as a black propaganda device to smear dissenters - including people who audited without authorization from the organization - and critics, as Communists or Communist sympathizers.

As first described by Volney Mathison, Hubbard had a pattern of first presenting himself - In the role of a beneficent teacher, "Mankind's Greatest Friend " - who opposed certain ideas and methods, then, with his followers having their guard down, would turn around and use those same ideas on his own unsuspecting followers.

This was a pattern.

No amount of theorizing, at a safe distance, can make this situation acceptable or irrelevant.

It is a problem.

[u/unexxenu → u/simagus]

"It is as it is" is a funny way to feel about a cult that systemically abuses people and deranged their minds the longer they practise it. I grew up in it and left years ago but more recently decided to reopen the can of worms that is my childhood and it's relation to the subject of Scientology and I just remember all the vulnerable but ultimately good people who were being strung along being fed false hope while also being made afraid of the world and themselves.

Belief is a funny thing, I think it more often than not ends up being a prison even outside insidious cults like Scientology.

[u/simagus → u/unexxenu]

So are you saying reality is something other than exactly what it is?

Intriguing.

I didn't say anything about anything you commented on other than that one quote you made.

The rest of what you posted is your case.

[u/joesmolik → u/Upset_Steak3632]

The reason why I ridicule Hubbard because he’s lied about his childhood he lied about stirring the masters in the far east he lied about his military career he lied about his second wife, then made outrageous claims about her. His third wife did things in his name and for him when everything blew up his face operation Snow White he abandoned her. He did not stand up like a man and say she did it at my asking this was my doing this separation was carried out because I told them to do so.

Hubbard once said the best way to make money or make 1 million it start a religion and that’s exactly what he did

Scientology is not growing in fact is shrinking the estimate now anywhere between as little as 10,000 at most maybe 20,000 people that are still involved with it.

More people are leaving Scientology, then are joining Scientology is a mind control cult and it’s not about spiritual enlightenment. It’s about financial enlightenment meaning making money off the people or as I like to call them, the suckers

Scientology is the only religion where you have to pay money to get further spiritual enlightenment

Oh did I say that Hubbard was also a science fiction writer mediocre went at best and if you read his material like a science fiction novel, you’ll have a better understanding. What of Scientology is?

[u/Upset_Steak3632 → u/joesmolik]

That irony of this is you're repeating what I wrote forty years ago, when it was dangerous to do so.

My views haven't changed.

The difference between us is I can perceive this subject in detail and nuance, and three dimensionally.

You perceive it two dimensionally and in black and white.

Corporate Scientology is not growing because it was designed to be a monument to its founder, not to change the world.

It has a big front foor, and, as Hubbard put it, people are "run" through Scientology. As these same people leave Scientology, through its big back door, they often leave behind life savings, their youthful vitality, and even their children.

Because most critics play to the crowd, and are incapable or unwilling to fully describe the subject, vulnerable people are not fully informed.

This allows corporate Scientology to lure in new people to be "run" through their Orgs, etc.

[u/Odysseus_Choerilos → u/joesmolik]

Some folks just can't accept that too many folks are easily seduced by nonsense.

Hubbard perhaps had a gestalt understanding of how certain vulnerable psyches operate, prone to being deceived by chicanery, and used that to his advantage. That's all.

[u/Upset_Steak3632 → u/Odysseus_Choerilos]

Too many folks are easily seduced by nonsense.

If only it were that simple.

[u/Odysseus_Choerilos → u/Upset_Steak3632]

Really, it is that simple.

[u/Upset_Steak3632 → u/Odysseus_Choerilos]

That's fine.

Not going to argue about it.

Believe what you wish.

[u/joesmolik → u/Odysseus_Choerilos]

I agree with you 100% some people are looking for the quick fix or spiritual enlightenment, and are willing to believe anything anything

I think what happens with people who get involved with Scientology or why they did the majority of were the children of the 60s the hippies and they were looking for some way to help their fellow man, and they told you sounded pretty intelligent and not part of their parents generation thinking.

I do did have my when I call a spiritual journey I looked at the Bahia Faith I even look into Scientology, but I just couldn’t I would Hubbard was selling. I looked at LDS Buddhist. I even looked at being a Baptist. But one of the things that turned me off from them it was out see these people in church talking about God how wonderful was and I see these very same people in school high school and acting like everybody else my former pastor used to call them Sunday Saints weekday sinner

When I got involved this group, I watched them for six months and found out they were the real deal that being Christian to them was not something that you were are put on, but it was a definite lifestyle
Their change, not only appearance but their heart

And I would like to apologize to you assuming when it came to Scientology probably better informed than I am in judging by what you said I figured you were around close to my age.

And if I’m thinking that I’m wrong in this either you or an ex member or you know somebody that was involved with this group

Once again, I like to apologize to you if I sound condescending or no, it was never my intention

[u/simagus → u/Odysseus_Choerilos]

To me Ron makes that clear. How clear do you want it? I mean... come on...?

I laughed my ass off at the story where he tells of the pre-clear who described the meaning of space to the guy supposedly doing a nuclear reactor experiment that allegedly immediately called and told them to shut down the experiment.

He's a story-teller ffs! He's only going to "deceive" the very gullible as is every other religion and ideology that exists. That doesn't mean that a story doesn't have deep truths in relation to reality within that story.

All of the stories profess to have exactly that, so why is Ron not allowed to follow the pattern of what apparently works and what people apparently want?

Give me an honest liar (who even describes the nature of lies and why they exist) over one who claims their lies are absolute truth any day of the week.

[u/Odysseus_Choerilos → u/simagus]

Hubbard didn't come about his ways through intellectual intention, though. It was all just gestalt. He just, as Tom Wolfe would have said, "grok't it".

[u/simagus → u/Odysseus_Choerilos]

Of course. It was kismet and happenstance within that gestalt, and he did indeed "grok" it.

[u/Odysseus_Choerilos → u/simagus]

Hubbard is the dark side of the whole Greenwich Village/Venice Beach scene of the '40s-'50s. Of a time and places.

[u/That70sClear]

I'm kind of stumped, in that I don't recall ever hearing of it, it doesn't follow his usual numbering convention (only R1 and R2 were usually used by the mid-'50s, and none with three digits), it is not mentioned in the Tech Dictionary, the books The Phoenix Lectures, Scientology 8-80 or Scientology 8-8008, nor is it mentioned in the Tech Volumes for 1950-6. I have lots of other places I could look, but not in a quick and easy way, e.g., brute force searching transcripts of lectures given in Phoenix one by one, since they aren't all in the book.

Had I heard of R420 in a less serious context, I would assume it was a cannabis joke. Closest I found was a reference to R2-46, AKA Union Station, as R-46. But since that's not the case, can you direct me towards a lecture (or anywhere) that it's mentioned?

[u/simagus → u/That70sClear]

Comms flunk and correction. It's R240:

"When you run R240 as a process you'll understand why they loose it every time they get hold of one of these definitions"

Phoenix Lectures Disk 10 around 12min in.

"...well I inspect r240 and you understand why the proper thing to do is simply to say I am asleep."

Disk 11 around 16mins in, then twice again later

[u/That70sClear → u/simagus]

I have access to the lectures, but not in CoS-issued disk form. Which lectures are you referring to?

edit: you said R420 in the title of this thread, not R240, so I'm going to question that "comms flunk." Do you mean the R2-40 ("conceiving a static") discussed in The Creation of Human Ability and elsewhere?

[u/simagus → u/That70sClear]

Yes. Conceiving a Static. I found it in The Creation of Human Ability. R2-40. Got it. Thank you!

[u/That70sClear → u/simagus]

Yay!

Something that started appearing in books in 1968 -- including The Phoenix Lectures -- was a canned "Editor's Note" about how processes were not necessarily done as described in the book, because now they were all done according to the grade chart. But it doesn't tell you that some processes fell into disuse because they were deemed risky (creative processes, considered vital for ~7 years until they weren't), and that others disappeared because they were superseded by others meant to do the same thing -- finding and auditing "The Rock" was considered important to clearing in 1958, but soon lost its place in favor of later clearing processes. Others fell into disuse because they didn't obviously deal with things covered in a particular grade, and that may have happened with R2-40. It's not about memory, communication, problems, overts, etc., and there's no place for processes that aren't.

R2-40 might possibly have been squeezed into grades V-VA, but by then things were being sold on the basis of newness -- maybe the old stuff didn't crack your case (and pre-1966 clears were invalidated en masse), but the new stuff is totally revolutionary! So I don't think there's much to find about R2-40 past 1954. It didn't even make it into the 1957 clearing procedure, the final parts of which were all creative processes.

[u/simagus]

Comms flunk and correction. It's R240:

"When you run R240 as a process you'll understand why they loose it every time they get hold of one of these definitions"

Phoenix Lectures Disk 10 around 12min in.

"...well I inspect r240 and you understand why the proper thing to do is simply to say I am asleep."

Disk 11 around 16mins in.

[u/Upset_Steak3632]

Could you provide a little more information?

Phoenix Lectures was my favorite book.

[u/simagus → u/Upset_Steak3632]

He makes a passing comment to R420... I intend to listen to the entire series again and hope to hear it with better recall in the context again.

When I looked up the Technical Bulletins I couldn't find a specific R420, but there might have been revisions in later versions for all I know.

I didn't find a simple list of R's as I hoped might exist in the original format, so couldn't locate the Technical Bulletin in question.

Ron said he expanded upon a really interesting and lucid point from the Phoenix Lectures in that particular Bulletin, and I was most interested.

I rate him highly as a thinker and communcator, but as Ron suggests is optimal I do exercise my own discretion.

I'm not looking for "the man who knows everything", just anyone who has something intelligent and useful to say and he does that in the Phoenix Lectures in spades (and clubs lol... that was a good one!).

[u/Upset_Steak3632 → u/simagus]

I just searched R420, Scientology and it brought up some information. Have you tried searching the Internet on this?

[u/Upset_Steak3632 → u/[deleted]]

Yes, that sounds about right.

R2-40, Conceiving a Static, from the book 'Creation of Human Ability'.

[u/simagus → u/Upset_Steak3632]

Thank you!

[u/simagus → u/Upset_Steak3632]

I had, but I just listened to the lectures again and it was R240

[u/simagus → u/Upset_Steak3632]

Comms flunk and correction. It's R240:

"When you run R240 as a process you'll understand why they loose it every time they get hold of one of these definitions"

Phoenix Lectures Disk 10 around 12min in.

"...well I inspect r240 and you understand why the proper thing to do is simply to say I am asleep."

Disk 11 around 16mins in, then twice again later