Demons, LRH and an Interesting Quote Revisited

I never saw Forrest Gump. Sad but true, I was never touched by the magic of Gump. Though I never made it to the theater I somehow managed to see nearly every damn movie-clip from the Gump Archives. I imagine I missed the scene in which Mama Gump takes her boy Forrest aside and says in her down-home folksy drawl, "Forrest, don't spill the beans." Perhaps if Mother Hubbard had given her boy Ron the same advice I wouldn't be posting today.

The following is taken from Dianetics by LRH published by Bridge Publications p.123

"Out in the Pacific islands-Borneo, the Philippines- I had seen quite a bit of demonology at work. Demonology is fascinating stuff." I imagine this is LRH's tip o' the hat to Aleister Crowley and Jack "sexmagicmojo" Parsons. Who knows why he didn't mention his California experiences with demonology.

"A demon gets into a person and makes him sick. Or it gets in and talks in lieu of him. Or he goes crazy because he has a demon in him and runs around with the demon shouting. This is demonology in a narrow sense."

Replace the word "demon" with the word "engram". While this is undoubtedly an unfair and wholly persecutory comparison, I ask what is the difference between a demon (as LRH defines them) and an engram?

"The shaman, the medicine man, these people deal pretty heavily in demonology (it pays well)."

DON'T SPILL THE BEANS, RON! I believe he meant to say, "It pays well in the spiritual way that something could pay well. Y'know, the medicine man is rewarded, payed, just by helping others. He feels good about himself. That's the reward. Not money, I wasn't talking about money. Of course not money. How could you think such a thing?"

"But, while not skeptical particulary, it had always seemed to me that demons could be explained a little more easily than in terms of ectoplasm or some such unsensible material."

It seems like he just gave "demons" a different name, threw in a fistful of techno-babble, slapped a Science label on the package and hustled his product door-to-door. Could Dianetics be seen in this light? Why or why not? Is this way off the mark?

Stephen Jones