International Viewpoints (IVy), Issue 33 - August 1997

Pre-emptive Defensiveness -- Pt. 2
<This is an earlier version of the article currently available at the ASC Internet website, address http://www.asc.org The later version does not refer to SP's (a Scientology term) so we have printed this version. Pt.1 of this article appeared in IVy 32 page 6. This part 2 starts with a response Allen got when he published part one on the Internet. Ed.>
By Allen Hacker, USA

On Wed, 8 Mar 1995, a friend wrote privately:

Really and truly.... there is such a thing as a gradient scale of free beingness. LRH wrote up his version, the tone scale. People actually do operate at these various levels and also tend to stick in them.

The lower regions, and LRH's predicted behaviour, test out as one looks the scale over in the typical live human being range..... the lower levels exist as well.... I do not feel that those of us on this board relate to levels much higher or lower than our own..... these ranges are just out of our reality band.... we do not, cannot, comprehend the thinking of an indivudual out of our reality band.

From what I have seen the tone levels of many of these individuals would make -90 look like Mr wonderful..... there is a coldness down at the bottom where there is no being present anymore....

Living beings do not relate to these motives at all... we cannot even concieve them... and so we think we might be halucinating our suspicions.

I have no advice to offer. I do not know what to think. I suggest one study history, particularly the blackest aspects... and look for the personality types, the ploys, the intentions, the tactics, the look into the eyes of these people.... get to know evil.

There is a distinct set of recognisable characteristics.

Become its blood brother.... dance in its path, hold its eyes, permeate its space, know the flows.... feel the blackness. Antagonize it, draw your sword and stand your ground, force the issues, see what surfaces.... one only sees evil in combat, it's hidden the rest of the time.

And then you will recognise it..... and your blood will run cold, and you will never, ever, be the same again. But you will know the truth, and that might set you free.

And I decided to respond publically, because this topic is too important to keep private:
 

Evil

I believe that this thing you have named "evil" is actually a complex manifestation of only two characteristics.

You speak of free beingness in the sense that the more one has, the more alive one is. Of course, the implication from that is, as you so nearly stated, the less free beingness one has, the less alive one is, unto approaching zombie-ism -- being an unalive being -- the walking dead that cannot create anything but the destruction of its own opposite.

It was by way of an experiential process very similar to your powerful exhortation above, to "Become its blood brother...." etc., that I accomplished exactly what you predict.

And what I found there were two underlying characteristics, nothing more.

Actually, there is only one characteristic, as the first is integral to the second in that the second does not come to be, and cannot manifest in behavior, without the first.

The second is Pre-emptive Defensiveness, much as I have described it.
 

Alienation

But there is a section to be added to that description which explains the fact of the pre-emptively defensive person's ability to be so "cold": Alienation.

It is the process of cumulatively defining oneself as separated and different from "others" that gives rise to the perception that those others are mere objects, unreal as anything akin to self.

Alienation is the first characteristic, the one with which we must concern ourselves if we are truly to improve the lot of humanity.

Alienation finds its genesis in the being's initial individuation. That is, the seeds of alienation are sown at the very moment one becomes an individual consciousness, separated from the whole (however that happens, I'll leave that as a supporting topic).

There is even a gradient scale of initial alientation at the moment of individuation.
 

All that is

Some feel incredibly alive, excited about the infinite experiential possibilities spread forever before them. They know themselves to be localized expressions of AllThatIs (the AEther, in Acceptance), and they are continually energized in the knowledge that they share the panorama of life with countless other faces. Thus it could be said that they live in a very warm place, one of brotherhood (sorry, sexist, need a better word!). They live in Communion and walk forever the comforting edge of being the manifestational expressions of god itself.

At the other end are those who feel cut off, excluded, pushed out and rejected. Theirs is a cold place, absent of any sense of oneness with anything. Its name is Isolation.

Somewhere, well between these two extremes, you will find all of us.

Some would say, closer to the bottom.

There was a little poem that Ron really liked:

There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it hardly behooves any of us to say anything about the rest of us! (or something like that)

If the game of clearing is actually the quest to recover communion, it must begin at some definable point.

I say that point is identifiable, and that the failure to identify it, and offer a handling for it, is the one thing that will get you killed as a practitioner.

That point is alienation.

Religion: re (again) + ligare (a tie, or binding) = to bind back together

And thus the mission so many of us share.

We want Communion for ourselves, and by extension, for all of us.

We may be generally unable to say what it looks like, but we want it, and some are willing do anything to get it.

There must be a way....

The only real argument among us is "How?"