Blasphemy Blasphemyou (L. Ron Hubbard In Your Head)

"Taking a set of tragic shocking circumstances, and maintaining that it was orchestrated for a more sinister purpose, is difficult for some to comprehend."

-- Christopher Thresher-Andrews

Knowing that, I guess you can say, when it comes to me "helping," Elvis has not only left the building but already returned from meeting Nixon - high as a fucking kite - and, with his new presidential drug enforcement badges, can surely be counted on to "crack the case" any day now.

Come along, Watson:

"We had the Pagans. 

They were into sex, death, and religion in a night-time telly type of way."

-- Eddie Izzard, Dressed To Kill, 1998

Americans know nothing about the Pagans.

Scientology's in the news right now - not only because it's being investigated (and in the specific manner I've been calling for because I've always known I couldn't do it alone) but because Scientology's been around for so long. Before many of us were born.

It follows that Scientology is now being investigated - and the revelations are startling - precisely because few ever understood what Scientology actually is or was to begin with. Queer, isn't it? How there could be this group you're all familiar with, yet know little about, until now?

If anybody's still asking "What's The Harm?" Baby done a bad, bad ting.

But at least we now know what they're working with:

"Scientology is partly a new-age self-help mantra and get-rich-quick scheme,…."

We know nothing about the Pagans but everybody understands get-rich-quick schemes, right? 

Good - forget about 'em for a moment - let's expand our horizons:

When did Self-Help - Ben Franklin's reliable admonitions - get dragged into this Pagan cesspool?

"It was in the seventies that we began to shed that baggage, starting with the outer layer of self-help: common sense. Children of the postwar middle class were weaned on the mass paperbacks of Dr. Spock, and their parents learned how to win friends and think positively from Dale Carnegie and Norman Vincent Peale. But in the late sixties, that gray-flannel-suit howtoism gave way to the reemergence of an older, more mystical strain, part bootstrapping and part magical thinking. The New Age,…."

Whoa, Nellie, so let's back-up a minute. There was nothing in that previous description of Scientology indicating it had any actual science in it, either. It had some Self-Help, but not "an older, more mystical strain, part bootstrapping and part magical thinking." There's a lot of Self-Help today, not all by Scientologists, but it still sounds like they're currently working from the same playbook:

"I blame Deepak Chopra. Although I highly doubt he was the first promoter of alternative medicine and various New Age thought to use and abuse the term 'quantum' as a seemingly scientific justification of what in reality is nothing more than ancient mystical thinking gussied up with a quantum overcoat to hide its lack of science, Chopra has arguably done the most to popularize the term among the science-challenged set. In Chopra’s world, the word 'quantum' functions like a magical talisman that explains ™everything because in the quantum world anything can happen. Actually, I should clarify. While it’s true that many bizarre and wondrous things can be explained through quantum theory (such as quantum entanglement), it is not, as Chopra and his many imitators would have you believe, a 'get out of jail free' card for any magical thinking you can imagine, and quantum effects do not work the way people like Chopra (say, Lionel Milgrom, who seems to think that homeopathy works through quantum entanglement between practitioner, remedy, and patient) would like you to think."

See? It's all right there. And Deepak ain't no Scientologist - he peddles woo - so we've got to be talking about more than mere Self-Help. Something that can embrace U.F.O.s, crop circles.

Hey - I've got an idea:

Maybe Self-Help is now a subset of NewAge.

Everybody keeps putting NewAge before mentioning other stuff. 

They're all "new-age self-help mantra" and "New Age thought". 

Could be important. 

I'm leaving out the "spiritual" aspect for now, and I want to reference the three quotes I used above.

Each is by a writer who individually used the term "New Age" as he or she saw fit. That's all I chose them for. (Notice that NewAge is never defined, always assumed. A cult on-a-roll can really make that work to their advantage,…). Based just on the listed interests these fine folks associated with the term, NewAge would appear to encompass self-help, mantras, (some forms of) get-rich-quick schemes, a lack of common sense yet positive thinking, mysticism, magical thinking, quackery, "quantum", alternative medicine, a lack of science, and homeopathy.

So, based on what we know of them all, I'd say there's absolutely nothing to stop the "teachings" of Scientology or Deepak being included on that list, would you?

If you think about it, in this "open-minded" society of ours, all that sure is covering a lot of territory! 

Why, some part of NewAge could be practically everywhere you look!

Actually - when you really do think about it - it's not all that much. But all of them, literally, are frauds. Many of them, in essence and/or execution, are crimes. People do die from them. And yes, many of them are children. All "tragic shocking circumstances", yet hardly anybody mentions The NewAge Movement as a possible source of society's problems or even a serious adversary.

Why not?

“I was ashamed of my own stupidity.”

-- Academy Award-winning Director Paul Haggis

Looking back on it - this also sounds stupid - but I thought it was just my wife. I was married to that woman for 20 years and never considered she was in a cult, much less several. Flash-Forward, to one of the last days I spoke with her, and I found she was speaking in plural:

"We're in the hospitals - we're getting legit - you'd better 'get it' before it's too late!"

Whoa. Wondering what, if not legit, "we're" supposed to be "in the hospitals" - while apocalyptically threatening outsiders the whole time - is how I discovered the beliefs of The NewAge Movement.

Known today mostly as the "spiritual but not religious" (having abandoned the NewAge brand after the embarrassment of 1988's spiritually disastrous "Harmonic Convergence") it is my contention, whether we're talking about Scientology or the wider cult(ure), as these individually stated parameters of NewAge are expanding, what we're really looking at are their works, aided by an even greater level of ignorance than what's been shielding Scientology "in an interesting night-time telly type of way."

This is Paganism 2013:

"Federal regulators on Wednesday released their final ruling against POM Wonderful LLC, makers of a popular pomegranate juice, saying ads for the juice such as one headlined 'Cheat death' made misleading claims about the drink's health benefits."

It's (almost) all right there - self-help, mantras, (some forms of) get-rich-quick schemes, a lack of common sense yet positive thinking, mysticism, magical thinking, quackery, alternative medicine, and all with a lack of science - as the saying goes, "Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff." Making sure to spend part of your day at Whole Foods:

"You have to be a good citizen of the planet. You have to give back."

-- Lynda Resnick, owner of POM "Cheat death" Wonderful LLC

Which doesn't sound so bad until you get there. 

And then, once you understand what's going on, it's always too late:

"Lynda had read about the fruit's reputation as a mystical cure-all and began to explore its market potential,…"

Honestly, if she had been looking at Mitt Romney for the last Republican presidential exploratory committee, wouldn't that sentence read the exact same way?

She was screwing the public the same way he was.

They're both NewAge, remember - you can't forget:

Put NewAge in front of whatever cosmic occurrence is being described.

Whatever cosmic occurrence is occurring:

It makes everything bigger than anyone's ever had a right to believe,...