Trom (The Resolution of Mind)

For the uninitiated, a "stable datum" is something someone adopts to be true in order to hold back or resolve a confusion.  It's mentioned in the book "Problems of Work" by L Ron Hubbard if you want to do a further study of it.

For the longest time, the actions of the Church of Scientology confused me.  On one hand, the auditing and the training seems very helpful.  On the other, staff and Sea Org seem to be virtual slaves, and for the public the activity is a money pit.

I know the tech works.  I have seen it work on every flow- on myself, working it on others, and others working it on others.

Still, though, my involvement in Scientology has been a series of wacky events.  I mean, there are things that I have seen happen in Scientology that are wackier than I have seen inside of mental institutions.

For the longest time I mistakenly believed that well, none of this matters because the tech works.  But then one thinks, well, if the tech works, why the wackiness?

The wackiness does not come from any real or imagined unworkability of the tech.  Whether or not the tech works has nothing to do with it. 

It comes from this one stable datum that holds the entire operation together:

"Scientology is the only hope mankind has of going free."

IF you believe that, then everything makes sense.  The org staff who sometimes go without pay.  The Sea Org member who is practically a slave.  The parishioner who is tens of thousands of dollars in debt.  All of it.  Because if Scientology is the only hope mankind has of going free, then just about any action toward furthering Scientology is justifiable.

And, as long as you believe that, you will never, ever explore anything else.  Because if that datum is ever disproven, boy, you are going to have to do some serious reckoning with your conscience  over whatever sins you committed or were committed on you in the name of Scientology.

It's only going to be when you say quietly to yourself, "there must be another way" that you will be able to open your eyes to any other possibility.  In other words, if you believe the above stable datum, it won't matter if another way is shoved in your face.  You simply will not be able to perceive it, much less believe it.

I wonder...
How would that read as a double-bind?

If salvation, then Scientology.  If Scientology, then salvation.

It doesn't come from my case, so I guess there might be different ways to interpret as a double bind?