Critical Q&A

This week, I discuss remembering Xenu in Scientology auditing, give a rundown on why History of Man is important, what Dianetics 55! signifies and lot more. Enjoy!

(1) When people are being audited, do any remember back to the Xenu days?  I would think as the Xenu story is (more or less) public knowledge, someone would claim to have known him in a past life.

(2) Do you have any idea why the book Scientology: A History of Man is part of The Basics of Scientology? It seems like an odd one out. 

(3) I can’t for the life of me get a normal, non-Scientology answer to this; I keep seeing this book in association with Scientology: Fundamentals of Thought and DMSMH. What the hell really is “Dianetics 55!”?

(4) I recently heard your podcast with Steve Cannane and was very fond of it. However, from a European and German perspective I would like to argue a bit against the universal freedom of speech chant you both so happily agreed upon (after discarding the Australian bans on Co$). Freedom of speech surely is a powerful and necessary concept and it has its merits. But it is not as simple as it seems.

Nobody has total freedom of speech as there always are restrictions. Public libel and slander are illegal everywhere and cannot be justified by arguing freedom of speech. Stakes may be high to prove it, but Anglo-Saxon and especially US justice make it easy to claim threatening financial compensations. This risk alone may lead to a kind of pre-emptive censorship, which in effect is contradicting freedom of speech (reminding me of a German journalist proverb that would translate as “a pair of scissors in your head”).

In contrast most Central European justice systems have broader legal limitations and may be more willing to dispute statements in speech or writing. But penalties for breaking those laws begin very low (a few hundred Euro fine) and compensations are only rarely awarded on an also low basis (taking only proven damages into account). Severe sentences are very rare, but possible if a person or an organization stubbornly doesn’t refrain from repeating such acts again and again.

On this basis Central European countries have laws against “defamatory hate speech directed upon minorities (religious, ethnical, gender etc.)”, which I deem prudent. For me and probably most Europeans such arguments are a kind of libel or slander against a group of people instead of a single person or a business or entity. Isn’t it a bit curious, that in the Anglo-Saxon justice a business or a so-called church has more rights to defend itself than a minority of humans?

In Germany, Austria and (for weird reasons I don’t know) Switzerland and Spain those or similar laws also specifically prohibit national-socialist propaganda and holocaust denial (with some countries also regulating display of a few national-socialist emblems like swastikas). I understand this is out of history, but I’m no big fan of this legislation as it naturally bears the hallmarks of cementing truth by statute. Nevertheless I do support the idea to limit freedom of speech if it is used to defame individuals, entities or clearly defined groups of people. And in my critical thinking I don’t see plausible arguments to feel our overall freedom limited by that. I would be interested in your thoughts.

(5) I have a background in philosophy and psychology, and I got interested in studying how the subconscious mind works after learning how subliminal advertising takes advantage of it at every opportunity (especially in television and magazine ads).  I am also Jewish, and am often called paranoid by my friends, but I get suspicious when I observe things that I think might be anti-Semitic references. Here I am referring to the two main Scientology symbols: the “eight-pointed cross” and the “S” with the two triangles.

Subliminally, and perhaps not so subliminally, I look at the “eight-pointed cross” and see a Christian crucifix with an “X” over the top of it.  Do you think that LRH’s “eight dynamics” (which this cross is meant to symbolize) was an invented narrative that came after his symbol was created (or copied from Alistair Crowley) as a very private joke for himself?  In other words, could this be a way for him to symbolize a negation of Christianity?  I have heard LRH make comments that show that he did not like Jesus or Christianity, but do you think this was an outward, but purposely unexplained, expression of that hatred?  Could this symbol be a subliminal way for him to nullify a Scientologist’s belief in Christianity?

Perhaps this next question shows where my Jewish paranoia really kicks in.  When I look at the other common symbol that Scientology uses — the “S” with the two triangles, I see a Star of David that has been taken apart, with a snake crawling through it.  I have always thought that the font that is used for the word “Scientology” had a very sinister element to it, but I wonder if it was chosen so that the initial “S” looked like a creepy snake — subliminally, if not consciously.  

The reason why this could be important is that many anti-Semitic writers and commentators have referred to Jews collectively as a snake, with the head being the allegedly evil Rabbis and Zionists who desire to take over the world, and the body of the snake being the rest of the Jewish population.  The dismantling of the Star of David into two plain triangles could be LRH’s secret desire for Scientology to wrest this fictitious control from the Jewish people and their supposedly evil conspiracy.  

So I am wondering:  Did you ever hear or read any anti-Semitic comments from LRH?  Have any been recorded, as the anti-Christian comments have been?  Narratives always seem to come after the fact as necessary, but could the A-R-C and K-R-C explanations for the two triangles have been invented after this symbol’s creation, solely as a means to legitimize it and get it out there in the public’s eye (and subconscious)?

(6) In a lecture to auditors (1955) LRH talks a lot about “mis-ownership”. In the last part of the lecture he says that one can get “solidity by mis-ownership”, and he talks about running the “ownership process”. Besides gobbledigook, what does that mean?