Reference: Scientology Fundamentals
Please see The Definition of THETAN
My position is that the center of awareness is the viewpoint associated with the current body-mind system. It is not going from one lifetime to another. Instead unassimilated impressions are forwarded through the mechanism of DNA from one life to the next. Many Scientologists, however, believe that the thetan, which acts as the center of awareness, goes from one life to another because we recognize ourselves in a past life memory. According to them, this is much more than a belief. It is “knowingness.”
The following is from Chapter 24 of “My Introduction to America“:
“Then all of a sudden something happened. My neck went out of my control. My head jerked backwards and seemed to get stuck there for a moment. Then it jerked forward. That took me completely by surprise. There were no pictures of any kind of recall.
“The auditor sent me back through the incident again. By now I had learnt not to force my mind to look or imagine. I waited patiently to see what developed. I felt I was outside my head calmly looking at the developments. The auditor asked me to locate this incident on the time track. I had learned not to second guess whatever the mind gave me even when it seemed outrageous. I patiently related the impressions that came to me.
“The incident appeared to be in some arid region… it was all brown as far as I could see… felt like sand blowing all around me… yes, it was a desert… couldn’t place it on the time track very well yet… I appeared to be chained… there were other people… we all were connected to each other by chain… captives? A chain gang?… we were made to march… I was stumbling forward…this can’t be an incident from this life time… where am I getting these impressions from? They are so real…How far back does it seem? A few centuries ago? A bit more recent…FLASH!!! My whole body jerked… a searing bolt of electricity seemed to pass through my spine… It seemed like an explosion in the center of my body… a heavy, tingling sensation ran outward through my hands and feet… I had a distinct impression that if I touched something metallic there would be sparks coming out of my fingers and toes.
“When it was all over, a sudden calm descended over me. I opened my eyes. I savored the present time. All the sensations were crisp and clear. I had never been so much in the present time before. I just sat there. I was back.”
Now, more than 50 years later I am asking myself, “Did I actually exist centuries ago, or was it an impression from centuries ago that I experienced in my auditing? Who or what am I?”
I certainly am the center of awareness examining an unassmilated impression from centuries ago. But I am not sure if I existed centuries ago when I had that experience the first time?
It is true that there was a body-mind system centuries ago that went through that experience. There was a center of awareness associated with that body-mind system. But the current body-mind system is not the same as the one that existed centuries ago. But is the center of awareness the same?
But any identity or individuality belong to the body-mind system. The center of awareness has neither any identity nor individuality to distinguish it from other centers of awareness. Whether it is Jane’s center of awareness, or John’s, or mine—there is no distinction.
Can you identify a distinct center of awareness apart from the distinctness of the body-mind system? Well, you can try it.
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Comments
You wrote: “Can you identify a distinct center of awareness apart from the distinctness of the body-mind system? Well, you can try it.
My Comment:
Yes, the emotional center of awareness is quite distinguishable from the physical tissues of the body and the mental faculty is also distinguishable from the tissues of the body (and brain), and this approach of knowledge is a pioneering area for science without highly organized authorities to begin with, but this statement does respond to the question.
Do you describe past memories exclusively attached to DNA? I consider DNA as bodily and biological. I’m content that the unconscious is larger than scientific recordings, and contains both sub and super conscious states of awareness, which typically humans have little accessed through institutions, and most of the discoverable reports are little organized into a well accepted arena, besides the pop-cultural mishmash.
Many published descriptions of other states of being, are little corroborated and barely accepted at all in academia, yet I avoided academia possibly with unconscious leanings, and got into scientology, (at age 18), with sort of a remote but deep ended relationship, lasting intermittently for less than a decade. Scientology’s space-opera stuff, in my final analysis is likely excursions into the emotional world, which is not a logical realm at all, yet it is fully captivating for consenting centers of awareness, for lost souls, for charlatans, and thankfully other kinds of observers of that realm have better assessed it’s parameters, to inform posterity.
Yet in well centered humans, the good of emotionality is a vital world of human development and also an energetic motivation to do things, instead of receding to lower emotions. Hubbard’s tone scale was among the earliest published scales listing a hypothesized order of ascent and descent of human states, but to exploit hypotheses is just wrong headed, and it is not the first or the foremost emotional methodology, of all human time.
Bo Atkinson Feb 2022
Let me clarify the question, “Can a center of awareness exist in the absence of a body-mind system?”
As a hypothesis, yes, and why not, in view of the applicable claims already surrounding the subject generally, and the freedom to seek out the most tenable system, from our point of view.
You may hypothesize whatever you want, but a hypothesis is useless if it is outright inconsistent with reality. Have you ever experienced awareness without a body-mind system?
Yes.
But you have a body-mind. Don’t you? You are not dead yet.
Yes, both can be experiential separately, and not simply hypothetically.