As I recall, the short piece
From Clear to Eternity used the word "eternity" nine times, emphasizing that Scientologists were IN eternity.
An excerpt:
As I continue to research, I never cease to be amazed at the amount of gain potentially available to an individual...
So what is one really looking at? The higher the level, the longer the time - because one is handling a higher band of potential gain.
And what is one rising to, after all?
One is rising to eternity
And that is your future - ETERNITY.
It will be good for you or bad...
Not only was Hubbard shamelessly trying to frighten people with an old gimmick, he was letting Scientologists know that audited NOTs was going to be a long level that took a long time. It couldn't have helped morale that becoming "OT" officially took forever to accomplish.
But where did this come from?
Had Hubbard's upper level OT research led him to discover, contrary to his earlier teachings, that time was not an illusion created by a being?
Or was this just another "enemy tactic" that Hubbard was using on the unsuspecting Scientologists?
This particular "enemy tactic" was mentioned thirty years earlier in a lecture of 1952, during the (amphetamine enhanced) loose-lipped days, when Hubbard talkatively exposed many of the "enemy tactics" he would later use (and, in some instances, was then already using) on Scientologists.
Hubbard dismissively mentioned the repeated use of the word "eternity" while criticizing the Roman Catholic Church's use of the word to frighten and control people. (Note that Hubbard, fifteen years later, talked of how the Catholic Church had used "R6 bank" images and symbols to "implant its way to power," and then, himself, used, and ordered used, "R6 bank" images and symbols to forward Scientology.) Anyone with a box of old cassette recordings of the Philadelphia Doctorate Course lectures and an old cassette player can take lecture #40, side 2, around 312 - provided there's a counter on the cassette player - and find the complete statement.
At that same time (1952) Hubbard was scaring people by telling them they, without Scientology, would become "MEST," etc., and he would later use "endless agonized trillions" to scare people, but he didn't get around to scaring them with ominous repetitions of "eternity!" until 1982.
This is an excerpt from 1952 PDC tape #40, sans the additional explanation (noted above), which would be interesting to hear if someone would dig it up
:
Yap, yap, yap, yap, eternity, eternity, eternity. Hell, there isn't any such thing as time, how the hell can there be an eternity? This is very weird. Eternal, eternal, boy, every time you turn around in this universe, you see eternity, forever, infinity of time. They don't exist.
Hubbard's confidential instructions to Scientologists are that they are to use "aberrative" and "enemy tactics" on Scientology's enemies. However, Hubbard also, secretly, used "aberrative" and "enemy tactics" on Scientologists.
Hubbard would often publicly mention "enemy tactics" and, inevitably, present himself as the opponent of those tactics. This assured Scientologists that Hubbard would never use such tactics on them.
This is an old confidence man trick, most memorable in Scientology with Hubbard's references to "freedom," etc., and his depicting himself as "anti-authoritarian," etc. And, of course, let's not forget his assurances that Scientology does not use hypnosis and, in deed, that Scientology "de-hypnotizes" people.
One of the earliest to recognize this pattern, used by Hubbard, was Volney Mathison, who, in 1954, wrote:
"First he [Hubbard] denounces and exposes... then he uses the very power he has denounced."