Introduction - nbr. 0

Communicating for truth;
Communicating for competence;
Communicating for life.

Today a magazine is born dedicated to all the European Scientologists and to all those who are really interested in understanding.

The magazine takes the name of “I QUADERNI DI FREEDOM” (Collected Essays for Freedom) and it is a supplement for “DIRITTI DELL’UOMO” (Human Rights), published by the National Church of Scientology of Italy.

The publication of this magazine though long planned has been delayed not only because of various difficulties but also because of the many Italian vicissitudes of the Church of Scientology. As far as the judiciary cases it had to face in the second half of the 80s, we can happily say that they are long ago concluded, yet the reasons underlying the publication of this magazine remain the same.

In spite of the fact that the Church has been recognized in many countries¹, including in Europe, the Scientology doctrine seems to be, per the majority of “public opinion”, especially European, to be a confused doctrine, difficult, foreign to the continental culture, reserved for a few, inaccessible.

To many it appears to be an expression of a system of values far from the “common opinion” and Scientologists are often perceived as a separate community, far from civil society or even in opposition to it.

A “different”, “dissimilar”, perhaps even “dissonant” community.

This picture is actually based only on the lack of knowledge of the subject, generated by the bad intentions of some antireligious groups and by those of a few individuals, some of whom in turn have been mislead. As for the rest, Europeans – and not only them – have often been victim as much bad teaching as also of lack of knowledge of the facts.

In reality, the “common opinion” seems to be more often formed in the offices of a few newspapers and television stations which, without a true debate², are more interested in rumours and scandals rather than informing the public.

This is the unscrupulous use of stereotypes of which Walter Lippmann³  spoke, and the few, proud journalists, heirs of Lippmann, who would write or would like to write to really inform the public about the subject of Scientology are stopped by editorial lines or by the breadth of the subject. In the mass media there is still the sorrowful alarm of Popper⁴, “It is necessary to induce the media to recognize and tell the truth, to see the dangers that they, themselves, hide, to develop, like any sane institution, a self-criticism and finally to correct themselves.

It is a new task for them. The damage they currently cause is big”.

Therefore, the task this publication has assigned itself is to make things known and to inform. Recently, the publisher of L. Ron Hubbard’s works has published, translated into Italian (and in other languages of the European Union) the 18 basic books of Dianetics and Scientology and has made many other materials, writings and lectures of L. Ron Hubbard available, some of which were not available before, not even in English. It is a huge body of works that have allowed a greater and more complete understanding of the doctrine of Scientology and Dianetics and of the work of the Founder. It has been a year now since the books are available in many public libraries.

And thus now this publication is born.

When on May 9, 1950, the book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health was published, there was a desire to give a new beginning to a history that came out bloodied from WW II, a history born out of the impossibility to think, in which – as Simone Weil had prophetically written not many years before, “never an individual” [had] “been so completely abandoned to a blind collective group, and never men” [had] “been more unable not only to subject their actions to their thoughts, but even to think”⁵. In reality, the “new beginning” can be traced back to before WW II, to 1938, when research on the mind began, but they become “public” with the publication of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.

Those were years, with the effort to rethink the history of mankind, which created a great ferment of intentions and enterprises. Before the pathos of the war that had just passed, intended as the result of the history of mankind, all of mankind searches for a new beginning. Dianetics belongs to that desire for a new beginning because the discovery of “another mind” and of the workings of that mind, and of human thought and so of life, were intended to represent the passage point to the return to a universe in which values, experiences and results would acknowledge the spirit as their basis. According to these intentions, it is as if suddenly many misunderstandings, many distances, many absences disappeared and it is as if a “new” life was offered to mankind, a “new” possibility to be and to each man, full freedom of thought was restored. These were and are the intentions and this was and is the will that unites Dianetics to every other human experience aiming to save man from evil.

This is also what appears to a an-prejudiced view, a point of view that looks at things without considerations or violence, the only point of view to which, in the end, reality is willing to reveal itself.

The effort is to change the world aligning every thought, every experience, every doctrine with the same goal and together unite the efforts of all men of good will to create a new civilization together. 

It is this effort, this intention and this union that is the true “revolution” which, flows like a an underground river through the disasters that followed WW II and that continues to do so. It is necessary to learn to see it and to see that it imposes a new way of thinking and of being.

Times have changed, times must change: “Those that in the world of the scientist before the revolution were ducks, later appear like rabbits”⁶ or where Aristotle saw falling stones, Galileo saw the swinging of the pendulum.

The question, and the deep motivation of the magazine, is that, against those who continue seeing ducks, it is necessary to be able to look again, to be able to think again, to be able to attribute new names to things, to be again.

The supplement, the magazine, is published both as an online and paper magazine, three times a year. It consists of three principle areas of intervention which, without being rigidly divided, will deal with the doctrine and history of Scientology, according to three main themes. The first theme is that of philosophical-scientific research; the second one is theological and the third is the theme of social doctrine.

Each issue, there will be a part devoted to texts, a part to contributions, in which there will be submissions of Scientologists together with those of scholars, another devoted to documents and, finally, the last will deal with reviews, inspections and schedule of events. It is foreseen that all articles will be translated into English from the original language. There are also special monographic investigative studies planned. Presently, two special issues are foreseen; the fifth and the sixth. The fifth, will deal with the proceedings and the judiciary matters that the Church of Scientology had to face and all that rotated around it, and the sixth, will deal with antireligious groups, apostates, and, again, all that which come with them. 

Still another observation is necessary. The editorial staff, in agreement with the owners, has deemed it right to allow the authors and collaborators great freedom on the reflection concerning the doctrine of Scientology and has put no limit or control not even on the method, moreover, without controlling or appropriating any reflection or conclusion.

We hope that we will be able to realize all the goals of the magazine.

We begin with that intention, that energy and that smiling affection for man that can only be traced beyond the quotidian burdens, to the reflection of the divine.

NOTES

1 Most of the countries of the European Union do not have a registration system for religions in their legal structures (or even a form of official religious recognition). Among the countries that have a form of registration procedure (included those that are not part of the EU), the following have recognized Scientology as a religion: Sweden, Portugal, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Albania and Spain. The majority of states in the European Union have other forms of recognition. In many of them, Scientology has been recognized as a religion in administrative and judicial decisions, included decisions of the Supreme Court. The countries are: Italy, Denmark, Austria, Germany, United Kingdom, Norway. (back to text)

2 Debate in the mass media does not depend on the presence or lack thereof of the debaters but on the control of the journalist of the publication or of the tV program and its’ relative fairness is left exclusively up to the sportmanship and good faith of the journalist. (back to text)

3 Walter Lippman, L’Opinione Pubblica (The Public Opinion), Donzelli, Roma 2004. The criticism of the democratic system proceeds through the criticism of the creation by the media of a public opinion based on non existant images. The reference to Plato’s myth of the cavern as an introduction to the work is highly significant. And also Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, Opinione Pubblica - La spirale del silenzio (Public Opinion – The Spiral of Silence), Meltemi, Roma, 2002, takes up, from the viewpoint of mid-European sociology, the analysis of Lippmann and the conditioning influence of the mass media on public opinion. The individual aligns with public opinion, even when he or she does not agree with it, simply to feel part of the group and not be discriminated against.  (back to text)

4 Karl Popper, La lezione di questo secolo (The Lesson of This Century), Marsilio, Venezia, 1992, p. 80, also, Simone Weill, L’enrancinément Prelude à une declaration des devoirs envers l’etre humain, Gallimard, Paris, 1949. It. trans l., La prima radice - The First Root), Se, Milano, 1990, p. 44.(back to text)

5 Simone Weil, Riflessioni sulle cause della libertà e dell’oppressione sociale (Reflections on the causes of freedom and social oppression), Adelphi, Milano, 1983, p. 108. (back to text)

6 Thomas S. Kuhn, La struttura delle rivoluzioni scientifiche (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions), Einaudi, torino, Paperback n. 4, p. 139 (back to text)