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About Laurie Hamilton
Expertise
I am able to answer questions regarding Scientology practices and procedures, belief system, donations, religious rites, management, administrative and staff matters.

Experience
I am a second generation Scientologist whose parents began in Dianetics in 1950 and studied directly with L. Ron Hubbard. I have been personally active in the church for 40 years, have eleven years former staff experience in both technical and administrative areas, and extensive technical and administative training and counseling. I am "clear" and "OT." I come from an extended family of many religions, but my spouse and children are Scientologists, as are my siblings and their spouses, several cousins, nieces, nephews, an aunt, and an uncle. Between us we have had every good and bad experience one might go through in the church at every level.

You are here: Experts > Religion/Spirituality > Scientology > Scientology > Randomness.

Scientology - Randomness.

Expert: Laurie Hamilton - 10/29/2009

Question
QUESTION: Just a couple of quick questions. I've been interested in the idea of radical honesty later. My impression is that Scientology has a code of conduct, either for staff or all members (I might be wrong). Are Scientologists allowed to lie under that code? If so, in what situations?

Do you yourself ever lie? If so, under what circumstances?

Are SP's people who life has broken?

Does the Celebrity Center exist to separate the wheat from the chaff?

I want to learn more about what Scientology is, and play around with the tech, but don't have any money. I remember you saying something about the centers having organizations devoted to providing services to those who have no cash. Is that true? If so, how can I get in? If not, do they have a work exchange program available?

Over and out,
Mike

ANSWER: While none of the codes Scientologists adhere to explicitly prohibit lying, it is known and expressly acknowledged within our approach to spiritual awareness that lying is harmful and that literally truth "sets us free." All of the elements which keep us trapped are founded in our own and others' lies. As seen in Scientology Axiom 38,

"Axiom 38
"1. Stupidity is the unknownness of consideration.

"2. Mechanical definition: Stupidity is the unknownness of time, place, form and event.

"1. Truth is the exact consideration.

"2. Truth is the exact time, place, form and event.

"Thus we see that failure to discover truth brings about stupidity.

"Thus we see that the discovery of truth would bring about an as-isness by actual experiment.

"Thus we see that an ultimate truth would have no time, place, form or event.

"Thus, then, we perceive that we can achieve a persistence only when we mask a truth.

"Lying is an alteration of time, place, event or form.

"Lying becomes alter-isness, becomes stupidity.

"(The blackness of cases is an accumulation of the case’s own or another’s lies.)

"Anything which persists must avoid as-isness. Thus, anything, to persist, must contain a lie."

(as-isness as described above is the true state of a thing as it is created, at the moment of its creation. If a being can duplicate this perfectly for any thing, then the instant the being ceases to create the thing, it ceases to exist - hence, as-isness brings about vanishment)

Further, our code of honor discourages dishonesty in two of its points, given that it would be impossible to truly follow these points while being deceptive or self-deceptive.

"6 Never compromise with your own reality." and
"10 Your integrity to yourself is more important than your body."

Regarding this code, Ron said,

“No one expects the Code of Honor to be closely and tightly followed.

“An ethical code cannot be enforced. Any effort to enforce the Code of Honor would bring it into the level of a moral code. It cannot be enforced simply because it is a way of life which can exist as a way of life only as long as it is not enforced. Any other use but self-determined use of the Code of Honor would, as any Scientologist could quickly see, produce a considerable deterioration in a person."

So if a person wants to live in dishonesty and deceit, it's on him that he can never discover truth, and never be free.

I try to live with the truth at all times. When/if I don't deal in the truth, it seems to me it would usually be by omission - not relaying info that would, in my estimation, cause harm. Omission is often justified as just "not speaking." However, it is factually a form of lying. I'm sure I lie, but I can't give you an example offhand. My presence in this universe presupposes lying.

I can't think of an SP I ever met who was "broken" in/by this present life. The circumstances to which they are reacting don't seem to exist or have existed in the current life.

Celebrity Centre exists to serve persons who, due to their celebrity status and the unusual demands on their privacy, resources and time, would be difficult or impossible to serve routinely and on a "standard schecule" in a traditional Class V org, or church. Having such a place to go to also lets them move in the company of the sorts of persons they normally interact with on a daily basis (and who, therefore, treat them in an ordinary and routine manner, not all agog or fawning), and outside the immediate reach of hangers-on, autograph hounds, paparazzi and other distractions which come hand-in-hand with some degree of fame.

Ron required that every church have a "free Scientology Centre."   It's mainly students working with charity cases. Are you a charity case?

In any event, Scientology and dabbling don't really go together. You can only get out of it what you are willing to personally invest. Especially if you are more curious than serious, the thing to do is get the Basics series of books, one at a time, if necessary, and read.

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: "Thus we see that the discovery of truth would bring about an as-isness by actual experiment.
"Thus we see that an ultimate truth would have no time, place, form or event.
"Thus, then, we perceive that we can achieve a persistence only when we mask a truth.

Losing you on those three quotes.
  Why would truth bring as-isness? What exactly is as-isness (glossary says creation+destruction w/out a persistence period, but can you break down the isness concepts into a paradigm I can grasp?)
  Reality = persistance, brought about by alter-isness, which somehow means that reality is based on lies? Why does something need to be constantly altered to persist?
Persistence=Lies=Stupidity
Persistence may be boring, but you're saying there's something fundamentally wrong with it? I think Im missing something here.

What exactly is the difference between creation and persistence? I'm pretty sure I have destruction down but you can tell me if you don't think I do... I've read about this stuff too, in the books, but it's still fuzzy to me!

"I can't think of an SP I ever met who was "broken" in/by this present life. The circumstances to which they are reacting don't seem to exist or have existed in the current life."

Wow. People are born SP's? But I don't think I've ever met an uncool baby!

On the Celebrity Centre - If a person starts in the regular church, and then gets famous, are they transferred? What is the benchmark for admitting a person off the street into the Centre? Do you check those fame indexes or something? What if they're just a low-key artist or performer? Also, do the creme de la crop auditors get sent to the Celebrity Centres?

"Ron required that every church have a "free Scientology Centre."   It's mainly students working with charity cases. Are you a charity case?"

I am not. I'm just a broke 20 year old, mostly by choice, as I don't like to spend time on activities I'm not moved by. Does this exclude me from the Free Scientology Centre?

"In any event, Scientology and dabbling don't really go together. You can only get out of it what you are willing to personally invest. Especially if you are more curious than serious, the thing to do is get the Basics series of books, one at a time, if necessary, and read."

If I see that Scientology will give me potential to help others and myself lead better lives, I will dive right in and swim. If this thing is as beautiful as Hubbard claims it is, I'm all over it. I just haven't experienced any of the magic for myself.
I've read a bunch of the books, and paused in the middle of science of survival last Spring because all it would talk about was auditing by that point, and I don't need to be learning specific processes without having experienced any.

PS Why is there an office reserved for Ron at every Centre?

Answer
Those are not multiple quotes, but multiple paragraphs of the same quote (hence the quotation marks at the beginning, but not the end, of the lines.)

In order to REALLY get this, one has to come from the viewpoint that theta causes all MEST. What the thetan creates exists. What the thetan doesn't create, doesn't exist. A cardinal characteristic of time is change. If there is no change (even on an atomic or molecular level) then there is no time. Things which seem "changeless" are in fact changing continually - if only at the level of subatomic particle motion - which never stops. On a macro scale, however, motion is change, and nothing stays in the same place in the universe. The entire thing is in continual motion. So time = change = persistence.

In order for a thing to persist, that is continue in time, it must continually change. But the exact truth of a thing is only true for an instant - after that, it has changed, or it would not persist. It would vanish. So - if theta is complete and unqualified cause, then it is causing MEST. If theta perfectly "duplicates," or understands a thing, a part of that understanding must be the creation, or "createdness" of it. To perfectly duplicate the createdness or creation of it, theta must take ownership and creation of it. The moment theta ceases to create it after that, it vanishes. Where we can do this most easily is with our own mental creations - which are also MEST. "Reality" is that upon which we agree with others - and as the agreement of others is necessary in the "real" universe, it is not that simple for a single thetan to change the perceptions and agreements of others.

Yes, I have known folks who were, for sure, born SPs.

A celebrity can go to whatever church they want. If they "become" a celebrity, it's likely they will eventually, if not sooner, hang out and hob-nob with other celebs - at a Celebrity Center. If they want special treatment with regard to their class schedules and such, they'll HAVE to go there - because regular churches follow more "vanilla" scheduling rules for maximum efficiency with their resources.

Celebrity Centres can pay their auditors more, and so attract some of the cream of the crop. Though these days, there seem to be only really good auditors, and really, really good auditors.

Stop in to your local church and ask about the Free Scientology Centre. Volunteer to be a guinea pig for a student. See what happens. In the meantime, read. Take some kind of dirt-cheap beginner course and get your toes wet. The way to see what Scientology can do for you is to USE it, not to have it "done to you."

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