Sunday, May 5, 2013



Buddhism as an alternative clearing path

I discovered the concept and practice of clearing in Scientology.

But I had so many disagreements that I had to leave, and I was looking for a way to continue clearing outside of the church.

Eventually I discovered that Buddhism is a workable clearing path.

Purposes

Buddhism and Scientology share several purposes:

- Happiness
- Freedom from sufferings
- Freedom from the burden of the past
- Spiritual freedom


Success stories

Buddhism includes teachings and techniques that allow reaching the purposes above. 
That has been demonstrated by 2500 years of success stories

I have been using Buddhist techniques since about 5 years and I noticed the following improvements:
  • Higher tone level
  • No more episodes of unwanted anger
  • Many cognitions: I realized that the main incidents and sufferings of this lifetime were explained by Buddhist teachings.
  • Improved confrontation.
  • When I am going to be overwhelmed by unwanted emotions or a challenging situation, I solve it by opening a meditation session.

The workability of Buddhist techniques has also been demonstrated by several recent developments:

  • Mindfulness meditation techniques are successfully used to heal depressive people.
  • Scientists have demonstrated the following effects of meditation techniques:
    - Improvement of the immune system
    - Blood pressure reduction
    - Increase in gray matter density in the brain, possibly a protection against Alzheimer
    - Telomere protection, leading to improved longevity
    - Meditators miss 76 per cent fewer days of work
Scientology versus Buddhism

Origin of sufferings

Both Buddhism and Scientology consider that our sufferings in this lifetime come from our actions in past lives (karma).  But they differ in the techniques that are used to free the individual from this burden.

The goal of man

According to Buddhism the goal of man is happiness, when according to Scientology the goal of man is survival. That is sometimes aligned, sometimes not. From my observations, I find that the quest of happiness is the real drive.

Compassion

According to Scientology, compassion is a low toned emotion, and the Church of Scientology tends to have contempt for people who have "low conditions" and to not help them.

According to the Dalai Lama, compassion is with love at the top of the Buddhist scale of emotions, and that is impossible to improve on the spiritual level without having love and compassion for others.

That is one of the main changes when switching from Scientology to Buddhism: the emphasis on love and compassion.

Ethics

Both Buddhism and Scientology consider ethics as an important part of the way out. But Buddhism puts more emphasis on things such as right speech or right thoughts.

Scientology is using ethics to control and enslave its members, when in Buddhism ethics is a tool of personal improvement.

About the past

Scientology is exploring the past, looking for past incidents and considerations in order to erase them, when Buddhism is fully present time oriented. That is not necessary to have a good memory to practice Buddhist techniques.

Solo and not solo

Buddhist techniques are practiced in solo, when Scientology processing has to be applied by a trained auditor.

Dependencies

That is possible to use Buddhist techniques in any place and time, when Scientology processing has to be delivered in precise places and times. With Buddhism one is less enslaved by space and time.
Scientology depends also on the use of a technical device: the e-meter, when Buddhism does not depend on physical devices, so that it is possible to use Buddhist techniques in the desert or at the moment of our death.

Price

Scientology is expensive, when Buddhism is free.

Substantive changes in real life

Looking at my experiences in Scientology, I found that most of the changes were only pretense, delusion. There were some improvements, but the quality of my life did not improve very much, I did not solve the main issues that led me to follow the Scientology bridge.

The  Buddhist path already changed my way of life and boosted my tone level to a great extent.

Etc.

In brief

I don’t want to invalidate the Scientology bridge on the technical level, as some people are happy with it. However in my opinion it should be made affordable and free from the enslavement practiced by the Church of Scientology.

But I want to let it known that for people who cannot walk along the bridge of Scientology, Buddhism might be a workable alternative clearing path.


Version 2 - February 13, 2014

Scientology Statistics - OT VI, VII, VIII completion lists from 1982 to 2012


I have been a Scientologist for about 15 years. When I began having doubts about the church in the late nineties, I looked at its statistics in order to evaluate its condition. That is not easy as the statistics are not in the public domain.

But that is possible to count the attestations of upper levels published in the Source and Freewinds magazines. In my opinion, the OT6, OT7 and OT8 levels are the main product of the church, thus the statistics about these levels are a good indicator of the condition of the church.

Graph


Raw data


Year
Source Magazine
Freewinds
OT VI
OT VII
OT VIII
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
238
missing
missing
missing
208
306
207
628
327
261
148
129
101
112
154
49
85
99
43
39
204
196
234
231
196
176
156
301
180
162
125
0
0
0
missing
181
207
329
540
258
124
23
31
81
41
16
0
0
0
0
4
111
118
185
155
180
143
151
216
140
161
175
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
774
272
102
4
13
31
43
23
0
0
0
0
13
79
139
166
123
172
120
153
200
95
134
202
Total
5419
3625
2858


According to the Source magazine issued in August 2012, there are nearly 6000 OT VI.
As there are missing data for 1983, 1984 and 1985, the figure of 5419 is coherent.

There are some missing data. This can be checked with the Solo Nots newsletter volume 1 issue 5 issued in 1997 that is listing 3280 OT6 completions, when the table above gives 2992 OT6 completions from 1982 to 1997. This means that there were probably about 288 OT6 completions in 1983 and 1984.

Analysis

The condition for the last 10 years is Emergency.
As that is a persistent condition, the condition is eventually Danger.

There were no OT7 attestations from 1997 to 2000. That is a consequence of the Golden Age of Tech. People who were on the level had to restart from the beginning by doing the Solo Nots certainty course.

Many an OT7 had to do this level twice, so the number of individual OT7 is less than 3625.

The release of the Golden Age of Tech was followed by a collapse.
The release of the Golden Age of Knowledge did not change the main trends.
In the last 3 years, the OT6 attestations collapsed gradually from 301 to 125.
This should theoretically be followed by a collapse of OT7 attestations in the years to come.

If scientologists were aware of these figures, they would know that something has to be radically changed in the church.