Israel Regardie inspired the lower grades

Veda

Well-known member



Category: Antecedents of Scientology



The book, The Middle Pillar, was written by Israel Regardie in 1936.


Regardie was both a student of the writings of Carl Jung and Aleister Crowley, working for Crowley for a while.


Excerpt from The Middle Pillar:

_______________Begin quote________________​

Analysis is the logical precursor of spiritual attainment and magical experiment... Not until the mind and the emotional system have been cleansed and unified by the cathartic process... can the full spiritual benefits of magical work be reflected into the mind of man.

We should remember the parables of the archaic philosophical religions whose fundamental tenet was that within man was a spirit, a dynamic center of consciousness which, because of its contact and association with matter, had been plunged into a profound sleep, a state of somnambulism...

By endeavoring to extend the horizon of consciousness, to enlarge the field of awareness so as to embrace what previously was unconscious, is obviously a logical method. To become aware of all our actions, our thoughts and emotions and unsuspected motives, to regard them in their true light as actually they are and not as we would like them to be or as we would wish an onlooker to perceive them. It requires, to take this step, an extraordinary degree of honesty and courage... The more of this suppressed and forgotten material stored in this at one time unknown or dormant side of our nature that can be raised to the clear light of day, by exactly so much do we awake from the inert stupor into which we have in the past been plunged.


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PirateAndBum

Administrator
Staff member
That's very interesting Veda. It does look like Hubbs borrowed his theory.
 

Reyne Mayer

Pansexual Revolutionary
that's an intriguing example alright.

when i've looked into this sort of thing, and read various ideas about the origins of scientology, it seems like there was a whole stew of influences, and predecessors to LRH, on somewhat parallel paths, and it's hard to really identify any one for certain. i think the evidence points him synthesizing things he got second hand from people who were familiar with or influenced by a multiplicity of sources like this, such as the denizens of Parsons' 'Abbey' -- among them his eventual 'never had' second wife Sara who said she provided him with ideas from General Semantics (which formed his 'logics' in particular) because he wasn't the type to take on the task of studying others' works himself.

it's important at least to know in general that he was just taking things from a fertile environment of mentalism and occultism between early in the century and WW2, that had been largely forgotten by the time he came along with Dianetics and then Scientology, thus allowing him to peddle largely recycled and even plagiarized ideas and techniques as new inventions. and of course he also had numerous collaborators, contributors and even ghost writers who were providing him these ideas and helping in their synthesis into Dianetics and Scientology, whose work LRH ended up taking sole credit for -- Ava Berner said that at Saint Hill in the 60s, almost everything, like her and her husband Charles' 'study tech', was really based on the ideas of others.

similarly the 60s was another fertile stew of parallel and cross influences, and it's hard to say just which groups and gurus of that era borrowed from which of the others and to what extent.
 

ILove2Lurk

AI Chatbot
when i've looked into this sort of thing, and read various ideas about the origins of scientology, it seems like there was a whole stew of influences, and predecessors to LRH, on somewhat parallel paths, and it's hard to really identify any one for certain.
@Reyne Mayer, I know you're a "deep dive" person on all things Hubbard and scientology. You might enjoy
this reference I found years ago during my research. Another possible source from an earlier obscure mental practice.

Thirty Years Among the Dead (book)
Dr. Carl A. Wickland, (1861-1945) was a member of the Chicago Medical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the chief psychiatrist at the National Psychopathic Institute of Chicago. Wickland specialized in cases of schizophrenia, paranoia, depression, addiction, manic-depression, criminal behavior and other phobias. After moving to Los Angeles in 1918, he founded the National Psychological Institute of Los Angeles with his wife Anna Wickland, who was a trance medium. Wickland treated many patients suffering from mental illness of all kinds, and after many years experience came to the conclusion that a number of patients he treated had 'attachments;' by that he meant that spiritual entities had attached themselves to unwitting mortals and influenced them (often) in the worst kind of way-leading them to alcoholism, madness, and occasionally murder.​
Wickland stated at the time; Spirit obsession is a fact - a perversion of a natural law - and is amply demonstrable. This has been proven hundreds of times by causing the supposed insanity or aberration to be temporarily transferred from the victim to a psychic sensitive who is trained for the purpose, and by this method ascertain the cause of the psychosis to be an ignorant or mischievous spirit, whose identity may frequently be verified. Having come to the 'spirit obsession' conclusion, Wickland and his wife set up a rescue circle, with Mrs. Wickland acting as the medium, and they set about communicating with lost souls who had passed away and were unaware of their post physical death condition and often in denial due to dogmatic religious and equally dogmatic atheist beliefs.​
In the introduction of the book the author writes, The change called death, the word is a misnomer-universally regarded with gloomy fear, occurs so naturally and simply that the greater number, after passing out of the physical are not aware that the transition has been made, and having no knowledge of a spiritual life they are totally unconscious of having passed into another state of being. Deprived of their physical sense organs, they are shut out from the physical light, and lacking, a mental perception of the high purpose of existence, these individuals are spiritually blind and find themselves in a twilight condition-the outer darkness mentioned in the Bible - and linger in the realm known as the Earth sphere.​
Source: Amazon

Book is on Amazon and a public domain PDF is available.

i think the evidence points him synthesizing things he got second hand from people who were familiar with or influenced by a multiplicity of sources like this . . . <snip for brevity>
Yes! So perfectly spot on.

Ron's greatest skill, some have said, was gathering and compiling ideas and techniques from a myriad
of people and sources and remolding and rebranding them as his own. Part of the rebranding bit was
the copyrighting and monetization of said ideas. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 

Pepin

Well-known member
@Reyne Mayer, I know you're a "deep dive" person on all things Hubbard and scientology. You might enjoy
this reference I found years ago during my research. Another possible source from an earlier obscure mental practice.

Thirty Years Among the Dead (book)
Dr. Carl A. Wickland, (1861-1945) was a member of the Chicago Medical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the chief psychiatrist at the National Psychopathic Institute of Chicago. Wickland specialized in cases of schizophrenia, paranoia, depression, addiction, manic-depression, criminal behavior and other phobias. After moving to Los Angeles in 1918, he founded the National Psychological Institute of Los Angeles with his wife Anna Wickland, who was a trance medium. Wickland treated many patients suffering from mental illness of all kinds, and after many years experience came to the conclusion that a number of patients he treated had 'attachments;' by that he meant that spiritual entities had attached themselves to unwitting mortals and influenced them (often) in the worst kind of way-leading them to alcoholism, madness, and occasionally murder.​
Wickland stated at the time; Spirit obsession is a fact - a perversion of a natural law - and is amply demonstrable. This has been proven hundreds of times by causing the supposed insanity or aberration to be temporarily transferred from the victim to a psychic sensitive who is trained for the purpose, and by this method ascertain the cause of the psychosis to be an ignorant or mischievous spirit, whose identity may frequently be verified. Having come to the 'spirit obsession' conclusion, Wickland and his wife set up a rescue circle, with Mrs. Wickland acting as the medium, and they set about communicating with lost souls who had passed away and were unaware of their post physical death condition and often in denial due to dogmatic religious and equally dogmatic atheist beliefs.​
In the introduction of the book the author writes, The change called death, the word is a misnomer-universally regarded with gloomy fear, occurs so naturally and simply that the greater number, after passing out of the physical are not aware that the transition has been made, and having no knowledge of a spiritual life they are totally unconscious of having passed into another state of being. Deprived of their physical sense organs, they are shut out from the physical light, and lacking, a mental perception of the high purpose of existence, these individuals are spiritually blind and find themselves in a twilight condition-the outer darkness mentioned in the Bible - and linger in the realm known as the Earth sphere.​
Source: Amazon

Book is on Amazon and a public domain PDF is available.



Yes! So perfectly spot on.

Ron's greatest skill, some have said, was gathering and compiling ideas and techniques from a myriad
of people and sources and remolding and rebranding them as his own. Part of the rebranding bit was
the copyrighting and monetization of said ideas. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"The transition has been made" oh my, that is perhaps one of the biggest BS stories that humans have bought into.
I had the rude awakening that there is no transition. I already exist as spirit in a spiritual realm. The identity I bought into with a body is essentially a waste of time, and I was very spiritually aware at the time moving exterior at will. Even then being exterior is far from being spiritually awake.
 

Reyne Mayer

Pansexual Revolutionary
@Reyne Mayer, I know you're a "deep dive" person on all things Hubbard and scientology. You might enjoy
this reference I found years ago during my research. Another possible source from an earlier obscure mental practice.

Thirty Years Among the Dead (book)
thanks for that!

believe it or not, in my 'picking' days of going to estate sales when i worked at a second hand shop, i ran across a copy and couldn't resist having that title on my bookshelf! i wouldn't call it as much a possible source, as representative of that mostly forgotten early 20th century stew of ideas -- and of the use of hypnotic/trance regression/channeling tricks similar to auditing, from the era of Ouija boards.

speaking of which, one of the things that i would sometimes run across in really old estates were these sets of multi-volume personal development series, out of some guy's (it always is ♂) little institute and probably sold by subscription, that were a sort of mix of era pop psychology, motivation techniques and professional development tools, sort of like a more systematized version of what Elbert Hubbard's Roycroft put out starting in the 1890s. the same idea we see in $cn of selling one-stop psychology/spirituality and sales/administration techniques.

Wickland's book with its notion of people with psychological problems (he was an early psychiatrist) caused by their being plagued by spirits of the deceased is also a sort of predecessor of Hubbard's body thetans. it also shows how, particularly within a circle of social reinforcement, and especially with the use of subtly suggestive tools like hypnosis and trances (or the 'reverie' of auditing), almost any theory or idea can be developed to the point of appearing plausible and based in at least superficially convincing anecdotal evidence. (Note how he set up his own little 'institute'):

Capture.JPG
 
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ILove2Lurk

AI Chatbot
i ran across a copy and couldn't resist having that title on my bookshelf!
Incredible! You never cease to amaze. :coolwink: :LOL:
Wickland's book with its notion of people with psychological problems (he was an early psychiatrist) caused by their being plagued by spirits of the deceased is also a sort of predecessor of Hubbard's body thetans. it also shows how, particularly within a circle of social reinforcement, and especially with the use of subtly suggestive tools like hypnosis and trances (or the 'reverie' of auditing), almost any theory or idea can be developed to the point of appearing plausible and based in at least superficially convincing anecdotal evidence. (Note how he set up his own little 'institute'):
Bingo! You get the whole of Hubbard's shtick. Refreshing to have your so "on the money" take on things. :thumbsup:
 
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ILove2Lurk

AI Chatbot
One of my favorite books about cults and new religious movements,
as well as the personality traits of gurus. I had written a long review
with many excerpts from the book back on the old ESMB. (It's not
available right now.)

I highlighted many passages in my hardback. Many years ago, this
book had helped me extract myself from a lot of "scientology thinking"
and understand how I originally got hooked. Seems like the young are
especially prone to fall under the spell of gurus of all types. Follies of
youth. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯



12-22-31.png

The Introduction "Some Characteristics of Gurus" (available on the Amazon preview in full) describes quite
a lot about Hubbard and is worth a read in general.
 
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Lee #28

Well-known member
I mentioned before....that I was looking at an old Yoga Book.....in a friends library. Written very early....around 1936?

Anyway, I was surprised to read the beginning of a Chapter that was basically word for word what I had studied on Hubbard's SHSBC, at ASHO.
 

Reyne Mayer

Pansexual Revolutionary
"He [Hubbard] was too neurotic to sit down and study. He never went into anything in any depth. He would just pick up the jargon. He was a dilettante"

Sara Northup Hollister, erased wife number two, from a 1986 interview.
thanks so much! i'd tried to locate that again and couldn't find it.

and i'd forgotten that Sara was quite so explicit in pointing out his shortcomings....
 

Enthetan

Veteran of the Psychic Wars
Wickland treated many patients suffering from mental illness of all kinds, and after many years experience came to the conclusion that a number of patients he treated had 'attachments;' by that he meant that spiritual entities had attached themselves to unwitting mortals and influenced them (often) in the worst kind of way-leading them to alcoholism, madness, and occasionally murder.
There's an earlier reference. Gospel of Mark Chapter 5

Jesus Restores a Demon-Possessed Man
5 They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes.[a] 2 When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an impure spirit came from the tombs to meet him. 3 This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. 4 For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones.

6 When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. 7 He shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In God’s name don’t torture me!” 8 For Jesus had said to him, “Come out of this man, you impure spirit!”

9 Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”

“My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many.” 10 And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area.
 

Enthetan

Veteran of the Psychic Wars
I mentioned before....that I was looking at an old Yoga Book.....in a friends library. Written very early....around 1936?

Anyway, I was surprised to read the beginning of a Chapter that was basically word for word what I had studied on Hubbard's SHSBC, at ASHO.
It has long been established that Hubbard did not personally create much, but he stole much, from Study tech, to GPM tech, etc.
 

Enthetan

Veteran of the Psychic Wars
thanks so much! i'd tried to locate that again and couldn't find it.

and i'd forgotten that Sara was quite so explicit in pointing out his shortcomings....
Sara has quite an interesting wikipedia page. And that interview looks like it's in L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman?.


Although Northrup did not speak out publicly against her ex-husband following their divorce, she broke her silence in 1972. She wrote privately to Paulette Cooper, the author of the book The Scandal of Scientology who was subsequently targeted by the Church's Operation Freakout. Northrup told Cooper that Hubbard was a dangerous lunatic, and that although her own life had been transformed when she left him, she was still afraid both of him and of his followers,[93] whom she later described as looking "like Mormons, but with bad complexions."[51]

In July 1986 she was interviewed by the ex-Scientologist Bent Corydon several months after Hubbard's death, which had reduced her fear of retaliation. Excerpts from the interview were published in Corydon's 1987 book, L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman?.[54]

She died of breast cancer in 1997 but in the last few months of her life she dictated a tape-recorded account of her relationship with Hubbard. It is now in the Stephen A. Kent Collection on Alternative Religions at the University of Alberta.[94] Rejecting any suggestion that she was some kind of "pathetic person who has suffered through the years because of my time with Ron", Northrup spoke of her relief that she had been able to put it behind her.[51] She stated that she was "not interested in revenge; I'm interested in the truth."[95]
 

Reyne Mayer

Pansexual Revolutionary
There's an earlier reference. Gospel of Mark Chapter 5
thanks, that's a classic example of a very long and widespread tradition of viewing certain experiences or problems as coming from spiritual or demonic possession.

the most mechanistic way of looking at it, is to say those were attempts to explain and contextualize what we now would classify as a type of mental phenomenon, auditory hallucinations (often combined with a sense of not being fully in control of oneself), that at its most severe is a symptom of schizophrenia. i don't necessarily find that entirely satisfactory, but i think it is at least closer to the scientific truth, and that in particular models like LRH's 'body thetans' are far enough off to mislead people if not even be dangerous.
 

Zertel

Well-known member
thanks, that's a classic example of a very long and widespread tradition of viewing certain experiences or problems as coming from spiritual or demonic possession.

the most mechanistic way of looking at it, is to say those were attempts to explain and contextualize what we now would classify as a type of mental phenomenon, auditory hallucinations (often combined with a sense of not being fully in control of oneself), that at its most severe is a symptom of schizophrenia. i don't necessarily find that entirely satisfactory, but i think it is at least closer to the scientific truth, and that in particular models like LRH's 'body thetans' are far enough off to mislead people if not even be dangerous.
How about dark, negative or evil aspects deep within everyone's psyche which are rarely observed?

Many years ago after a particularly nasty night of drunkenness when I woke up and looked at myself in a mirror I didn't recognize myself! Looking back at me was something not quite as bad as the transformation of the girl in the Exorcist movie but pretty close. Lol

I was rattled and called a scn friend and went and hung out with him until I settled down.

I never did and won't ever do that again - Chalk it up to experience. Lol

Scientology did note evil purposes and intentions. As a matter of fact if you expressed one in session you got a red tag on your folder and were placed on a watch list or something. Yikes 😳

There are stories in Buddhist lore of holy men being tempted and immediately falling from grace.
 
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Karakorum

Ron is the source that will lead you to grief
it's important at least to know in general that he was just taking things from a fertile environment of mentalism and occultism between early in the century and WW2, that had been largely forgotten by the time he came along with Dianetics and then Scientology, thus allowing him to peddle largely recycled and even plagiarized ideas and techniques as new inventions. and of course he also had numerous collaborators, contributors and even ghost writers who were providing him these ideas and helping in their synthesis into Dianetics and Scientology, whose work LRH ended up taking sole credit for -- Ava Berner said that at Saint Hill in the 60s, almost everything, like her and her husband Charles' 'study tech', was really based on the ideas of others.
American society is in general ignorant of classical esoteric systems like the gnostics or the cathars. Unless one happens to be a student of religious studies at a prestigious college, you won't ever learn about them as an American. Hubbard abused this and was easily able to claim not just Crowley's and Blavatsky's ideas as his own, he was able to claim the whole 2000 years of gnostic tradition as his own.

There's an earlier reference. Gospel of Mark Chapter 5

Jesus Restores a Demon-Possessed Man
Oh yes, that's a great one. Always makes me think of that "What would Jesus do?" slogan. Jesus obviously would try to cure mentally ill people by casting out demons. So why aren't modern evangelical Christians trying to go to psychiatric hospitals to talk to demons? Jesus would totally do that. :D

Many years ago after a particularly nasty night of drunkenness when I woke up and looked at myself in a mirror I didn't recognize myself! Looking back at me was something not quite as bad as the transformation of the girl in the Exorcist movie but pretty close. Lol
I guess you'd have preferred pink elephants. Or white mice.
 

Veda

Well-known member
Crowley's collection of processes may seem wild, but it is largely a familiarization with our immediate environment: the solar system. It requires a telescope, an elementary knowledge of autonomy, a knowledge of the placement of the planets, and their relative movements.

Who can argue that people would be better off if their awareness extended beyond the thin film of livable atmosphere in which most of us dwell?


The solar wind protects the solar system from forces of interplanetary space. Especially at sunrise or sunset, the planets are very visible while the stars are not visible. This is an excellent time for viewing.
 

Veda

Well-known member
The Naples Arrangement is Crowley's statement of a no-thing's (prime mover's) step by step transition into manifestation.

Hubbard embellished it, omitted the earlier part, and added superfluous verbiage, and called it The Factors.

Scientologists swoon over it.

There's more that can be written on it, perhaps another time.
 
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