Chris Shelton
Patron with Honors
Mike Rinder posted an article today about a promo piece from AOSH UK which was flaunting their awesome success at "handling the theta/entheta ratio" and I started thinking about this whole concept. When I was working for the Church, I used this idea of the theta/entheta ratio a lot in recruitment and regging people and whatnot. I realized some things about it which prompted me to write this comment:
When I was actively working for the Church, I used to think I understood what this whole “theta/etheta ratio” was all about, as long as I didn’t think about it too much. Like so many things in Scientology, it doesn’t hold up well under inspection.
But even taken at face value, any Scientologists surely can see that they are way off target right now on “flipping the ratio” planet-wide. Any idea that they are actually creating a positive effect planet-wide can only be called delusion. Do any survey you want of media or civic leaders or opinion leaders in any country in the world. Ask them anything about Scientology’s positive influence in their society. Once they either stop staring blankly at you or outright laughing, I think you’ll find that Scientology is having absolutely no real effect on anything anywhere. Except perhaps on its members’ bank accounts.
Yet rather than confront this simple fact and actually take effective measures to do something about it (which is what Hubbard actually said to do), instead they have done an Orwellian morph of what “theta/entheta ratio” really means and turned it into a false sense of causation and security. In fact, it has actually become a justification to do nothing effective at all.
What I mean by this is simply that when any significantly “good news” occurs anywhere on the planet, Scientologists use the “theta/entheta ratio” to tell themselves that they are somehow the ones who actually brought about this good news, regardless of who actually caused it. I first noticed this when the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union was no longer imprisoning its own people. Scientologists world-wide hailed the release of OT VIII as the “cause” of this. The Berlin Wall’s falling was the result of societal and economic evolution which was literally years in the making. It had everything to do with the spread of Western ideas into the Soviet bloc countries and economic necessity for Russia to feed its people. It had absolutely nothing to do with OT VIIs sitting in a room talking to themselves with an E-meter.
Those who are actually on the Advanced Levels know what they are handling and what they aren’t. They contribute to this widespread lie within the Scientology world through their silence and they should be ashamed of themselves for this. People at the lower levels have no clue what the OT levels are actually all about (unless they look at the Internet, of course) so they are allowed to dream up literally anything they want to about them. And because their misconceptions serve the interest of the Church in justifying its very existence, those lies are allowed to spread.
I’m glad MIke posted on this subject, because it really highlights a source of many enormous logical fallacies within the Church on so many levels.
And by the way, Merry Christmas everybody! May your holidays be bright and full of good cheer. I wish you all honesty and true freedom in this new year, especially to any still-in Scientologists who are reading this. Think about what you read here and know that there is more truth here than in any number of Miscavige briefings you have been subjected to. I wish you the best!
I am interested in what anyone else here on the board has to add from their experience or thoughts on this subject. I think this is possibly fodder for a great deal of insight on how Scientology operates and why.
When I was actively working for the Church, I used to think I understood what this whole “theta/etheta ratio” was all about, as long as I didn’t think about it too much. Like so many things in Scientology, it doesn’t hold up well under inspection.
But even taken at face value, any Scientologists surely can see that they are way off target right now on “flipping the ratio” planet-wide. Any idea that they are actually creating a positive effect planet-wide can only be called delusion. Do any survey you want of media or civic leaders or opinion leaders in any country in the world. Ask them anything about Scientology’s positive influence in their society. Once they either stop staring blankly at you or outright laughing, I think you’ll find that Scientology is having absolutely no real effect on anything anywhere. Except perhaps on its members’ bank accounts.
Yet rather than confront this simple fact and actually take effective measures to do something about it (which is what Hubbard actually said to do), instead they have done an Orwellian morph of what “theta/entheta ratio” really means and turned it into a false sense of causation and security. In fact, it has actually become a justification to do nothing effective at all.
What I mean by this is simply that when any significantly “good news” occurs anywhere on the planet, Scientologists use the “theta/entheta ratio” to tell themselves that they are somehow the ones who actually brought about this good news, regardless of who actually caused it. I first noticed this when the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union was no longer imprisoning its own people. Scientologists world-wide hailed the release of OT VIII as the “cause” of this. The Berlin Wall’s falling was the result of societal and economic evolution which was literally years in the making. It had everything to do with the spread of Western ideas into the Soviet bloc countries and economic necessity for Russia to feed its people. It had absolutely nothing to do with OT VIIs sitting in a room talking to themselves with an E-meter.
Those who are actually on the Advanced Levels know what they are handling and what they aren’t. They contribute to this widespread lie within the Scientology world through their silence and they should be ashamed of themselves for this. People at the lower levels have no clue what the OT levels are actually all about (unless they look at the Internet, of course) so they are allowed to dream up literally anything they want to about them. And because their misconceptions serve the interest of the Church in justifying its very existence, those lies are allowed to spread.
I’m glad MIke posted on this subject, because it really highlights a source of many enormous logical fallacies within the Church on so many levels.
And by the way, Merry Christmas everybody! May your holidays be bright and full of good cheer. I wish you all honesty and true freedom in this new year, especially to any still-in Scientologists who are reading this. Think about what you read here and know that there is more truth here than in any number of Miscavige briefings you have been subjected to. I wish you the best!
I am interested in what anyone else here on the board has to add from their experience or thoughts on this subject. I think this is possibly fodder for a great deal of insight on how Scientology operates and why.
