I laughed so hard I had a coughing attack. Thank you for the humor so early in the morning!

Of course it doesn’t.

In 50 years has any “OT” been tested on any alleged ability? Of course not

It is amazing what you can convince people of when they are in a state of partial hypnosis as this person must be. LOL

Thanks, John.

I’ve always tried to remember that the truth about Scientology is BOTH the good and the bad.

Alanzo

Thank you for the compliment, Alanzo. I’ve appreciated your logic and writing as well, over the years. It really seems to me that you are attempting to be as intellectually honest as you can be, while dissecting this subject.

😉

On the Geezer Replacement R/D, I bet the first thing to “as-is” is the wallet with money and credit cards in it… the church helps you with that first step of the R/D to lighten your load as you go round and round the mulberry bush or tree.

I’d better not go to Flag then. 🙂

I would not say that the Buddha’s Tooth story was about the placebo effect. For me, it is about the other side of deception and abuse in Scientology, or any other spiritual activity.

There are devotees who are so earnest and sincere, that no deception or abuse can keep them from getting genuine “wins” from their own spiritual path.

If I delete the lies that were told to me, and the abuse I experienced on staff and as a public in Scientology, then all that is left are the wins I had.

They’re all still there, too.

I just would have rather not have had to deal with the lies and the abuse for years afterwards. The lies and the abuse are so unnecessary – for myself and for others.

Major Dev-T.

Your defense of the running program is excellent.

Your clear writing, and the reasoning you display, commands a reader to consider what you have to say about it.

At least it commands me to consider what you have to say about it.

Thank you.

Alanzo

So Alanzo, I guess you’re saying that houndstooth was an important part of the fabric of her life?

Well, joking aside…

I think what you’re saying is that someone might imbue any type of activity or object with the belief that whatever it is, it will make them better or happier and so it does. The placebo effect.

This certainly may be a factor in the gains somebody might experience doing the running pgm. Maybe it is everything. But I can’t quite make that fit as an explanation for my experience.

Back then, I read all the LRH “advices” on the running program pilot, for both the runners and for the running I/Cs. They were mostly excerpts of what seemed to be conversations LRH was having with a messenger or someone. They were scant on the details. Perhaps there was a great deal more material I never saw.

I was on the program for MONTHS. I had quite a bit of (hidden) resistance to doing it. At the end of the day, we’d write Daily Reports and I would embellish them and try to articulate what the EP might be. Then I quit that and sort of affected a bored tone, “pretty much the same thing- nothing much happened,” thinking that would convince the C/S I’d been overrun (haha, everybody was over-run on the running pgm!). That didn’t seem to work.

Then I just sort of quit caring. Enjoyed being outside and just did what the running I/C said. And that was the period I discovered I was flowing in life. Just happily participating. It was a quiet, personal, reflective realization. And like it had been there all the time, but I just noticed it. I was not trying for this, in fact, I didn’t believe that state could exist, except for perhaps doing TRs or some vague idea I’d get there when I went all the way up the bridge. I don’t think I was all that effusive about it, unlike the over-the-top successes such as in the original post.

So I was deemed complete sometime after that.

Maybe it is like Alan Watts said, you do what you need to do to get a guy to “come off it.” Maybe for me, I had to engage in a strenuous physical activity that was extremely challenging for me to force myself to do mentally as well as physically, until I could “come off it.”

Whatever the mechanics were, my experience was that I came alive during the time I was on the running pgm. And I stayed more alive, to this day. More watts. More HP. I don’t care how it happened but I recognize that it did happen. Can this happen to people that just start training for marathons? I am sure that it can and does happen. Would I ever have done it that way? Not a chance.

So this is why I feel I want to defend it somewhat against those that only had bad experiences or no experiences with it. To everyone, their own.