In response to
Prophet4's questions...
P4: What do you feel you get out of the auditing process?
DN: Immensely increased mental clarity; freedom from the influences of past trauma; increased enjoyment of life; decreased reaction time; ambiversion.
P4: Do you really believe in Xenu and the body thetans?
DN: Don't know, don't care. I am more interested in the tech than in the religion, and this brings up an important point. There are really two parts of Scientology, "tech" - which is the basic applied stuff, like Dianetics and similar therapies - and then there is the religious aspect, which involves Xenu and body thetans and all that other stuff. You can be an all-tech Scientologist.
P4: How confident are you that LRH's "science" was the result of his out-of-body exporations and not drug-induced hazes?
DN: Does it matter? Van Gogh burned off his ear and mailed it to his girlfriend. Does that make Starry Night any less beautiful? Many FreeZoners believe Hubbard was an inspired synthesizer, that he took information that already existed and synthesized something new and wonderful with it.
Have you been pressured to sell all your posessions to fund the movement?
DN: No, but they do aggressively sell their goods and services. But you already knew that.
What's your take on the "fair game" document? (http://www.xenu.net/fairgame-e.html)
DN: This policy was rescinded. However, it is said that 'Fair Game' is still referred to in some up-to-date literature used by the Church. This kind of behavior - that is, the actual carrying-out of Fair Game - is contrary to everything Dianetics stands for, not to mention the officially posted Scientology Code of Ethics.
Why is the practice of psychiatry & psychology so hated?
DN: We believe they do far more harm than good. Any Dianeticist who has truly read and understood the book, and undergone actual auditing, knows that those groups do not have any business pretending that they know how to cure mental ills. For starters, they like to say things like, "We will never fully understand the workings of the human mind." This is a defeatist assertation. Psychiatrists in particular are irksome to us. They used to drill holes in people's heads and claim that they were curing them. Today, they are restricted to such things as ECT and Ritalin. One of the fundamentals of Dianetics is that the human mind has native capabilities which can be tapped to relieve any mental ailment. Sending voltage through the brain, or drilling holes in it, or modifying its chemical structure with drugs, introduces an unstable element into the equation. There is a long-standing bylaw that those who have been under the care of psychiatrists may not be audited because of said unstable element.
If there is anything further I may answer, feel free to ask.
kozmund asks, re: scientology:
k: How far along in scientology are you, and how much have you paid thus far. (the second question may seem hostile, but i am actually curious)
DN: I have received approximately fifty hours of auditing.
Auditing goes for about $18 an hour, so you do the math. I have also done Self Analysis, one of Scientology's few solo processes, which is $7.00 for the book and the auditing is free and you can do as much of it as you want. (I don't count that in the ~50 hours.) Self Analysis is hugely popular with churchgoers and FreeZoners alike.
I have been offered various extension courses but haven't done any yet.
Rockytastic wanted to know why I became interested in the first place. I have always been fascinated with the operation of the human mind, and I always wondered why people did crazy things. This may seem a little wierd, but when I watched the Road Runner cartoons at a younger age, I always rooted for Wile E. Coyote. Now, we're SUPPOSED to root for the Road Runner and be happy when the Coyote falls 800 feet down a canyon and gets hit in the head with an anvil, but I never did. The Coyote was just trying to eat to stay alive, you know? I always wondered about that, but I never quite articulated it into anything. When I discovered Dianetics, it was a revelation: Crazy people act crazy for the same reason that Wile E. Coyote chases the Road Runner. They do it because in their minds, it's the best possible way to attain maximum survival. One of the main theses of Dianetics is that organisms are constantly striving for maximum survival, and that "craziness" - the kind that's detrimental to survival - is indeed caused by weaknesses in the mechanism of the mind. Better still, the mind has native mechanisms that can be used to fix what's wrong - so in addition to identifying the problem, Dianetics presents a method of actually doing something about it. I hope that's not too ephemeral.
Any more questions? Just /msg me in the Chatterbox.