Reference: The Scientology Axioms

This paper presents Scientology Axioms 11 – 20 and the corresponding versions per POSTULATE MECHANICS (PM).

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SCN AXIOM 11: The considerations resulting in conditions of existence are fourfold.

(a) AS-IS-NESS is the condition of immediate creation without persistence, and is the condition of existence which exists at the moment of creation and the moment of destruction, and is different from other considerations in that it does not contain survival.

(b) ALTER-IS-NESS is the consideration which introduces change and therefore time and persistence, into an AS-IS-NESS to obtain persistency.

(c) IS-NESS is an apparency of existence brought about by the continuous alteration of an AS-IS-NESS. This is called, when agreed upon, Reality.

(d) NOT-IS-NESS is the effort to handle IS-NESS by reducing its condition through the use of force. It is an apparency and cannot entirely vanquish an IS-NESS.

In Hubbard’s Theta-MEST system there is no optimum baseline for IS-NESS because he denies the condition of oneness. Each thetan has an arbitrary baseline based on his postulates. This introduces arbitrary in his description of the conditions of existence.

PM AXIOM 11: The considerations resulting in conditions of existence are fourfold.

(a) IS-NESS is the reality resulting from oneness of all postulates and considerations. This is the optimum reality.

(b) ALTER-IS-NESS is the consideration of change in IS-NESS that produces non-optimum reality.

(c) NOT-IS-NESS is the consideration of flat denial of IS-NESS that produces unreality.

(d) AS-IS-NESS is recognizing of ALTER-IS-NESS and NOT-IS-NESS to recover the underlying IS-NESS.

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SCN AXIOM 12: The primary condition of any universe is that two spaces, energies, or objects must not occupy the same space. When this condition is violated (perfect duplicate) the apparency of any universe or any part there-of is nulled.

A perfect duplicate refers to two separate objects that are exact copy of each other. The consideration of “two” separates the objects. To eliminate the separation is to eliminate the consideration of “two,” and that eliminates the consideration of duplicate. The whole consideration goes away along with its modifications.

PM AXIOM 12: AS-IS-NESS of a consideration eliminates that consideration along with all its effects.

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SCN AXIOM 13: The cycle of action of the physical universe is: create, survive (persist), destroy.

We look at the universe of matter, energy and thought and not just at the “physical” universe. A creation starts with a postulate (thought). The creation persists just as it is postulated, or as it is modified by subsequent considerations. The creation ends with the as-is-ness of the considerations and replacement of original postulate.

PM AXIOM 13: The cycle of action of the universe is: create, survive (persist), destroy.

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SCN AXIOM 14: Survival is accomplished by ALTER-IS-NESS and NOT-IS-NESS, by which is gained the persistency known as time.

Survival is accomplished by all postulates and considerations being in harmony, consistency and continuity of oneness. That survival does not depend on any ALTER-ISNESS and NOT-IS-NESS.

PM AXIOM 14: Survival is accomplished by all postulates and considerations being in harmony, consistency and continuity of oneness.

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SCN AXIOM 15: Creation is accomplished by the postulation of an AS-IS-NESS.

PM AXIOM 15: Creation is accomplished by the postulation of an IS-NESS that is harmonious, consistent and continuous with existing postulates

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SCN AXIOM 16: Complete destruction is accomplished by the postulation of the AS-IS-NESS of any existence and the parts thereof.

PM AXIOM 16: AS-IS-NESS is basically a reversal of ALTER-IS-NESS and NOT-IS-NESS. In the end the postulated IS-NESS remains. To remove that IS-NESS, one simply need to postulate something else.

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SCN AXIOM 17: The static, having postulated AS-IS-NESS, then practices ALTER-IS-NESS, and so achieves the apparency of IS-NESS and so obtains reality.

PM AXIOM 17: An IS-NESS is created directly by a postulate that is harmonious, consistent and continuous with existing postulates. The practice of ALTER-IS-NESS only introduces non-optimum reality, which then requires AS-IS-NESS to be resolved.

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SCN AXIOM 18: The static, in practicing NOT-IS-NESS, brings about the persistence of unwanted existences, and so brings about unreality, which includes forgetfulness, unconsciousness and other undesirable states.

PM AXIOM 18: The practice of NOT-IS-NESS brings about the persistence of unwanted existences, and so brings about unreality, which includes forgetfulness, unconsciousness, and other undesirable states.

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SCN AXIOM 19: Bringing the static to view as-is any condition devaluates that condition.

PM AXIOM 19: AS-IS-NESS of any condition devaluates that condition.

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SCN AXIOM 20: Bringing the static to create a perfect duplicate causes the vanishment of any existence or part thereof.

Definition: A perfect duplicate is an additional creation of the object, its energy and space, in its own space, in its own time using its own energy. this violates the condition that two objects must not occupy the same space, and causes the vanishment of the object.

Making a perfect duplicate seems to be a mental exercise that is left to the person to figure out. There is no clear explanation given here on how to make a perfect duplicate. When duplicating a vase, you can make a mental picture of it, but how do you create its energy and space again? How do you create them in its own space and time? How do you use its own energy?

To do that you will have to repeat the exact sequence of actions that it took to make that vase, at the location where that vase was made using the same raw materials employed to make it. If you are just doing it mentally then you must at least know the techniques used in making that vase, the raw materials used, how those raw materials were obtained, etc. It comes down to fully understanding what one is looking at. With deeper understanding one’s viewpoint changes.

Hubbard is talking about a theoretical principle, the ultimate of which is having a viewpoint that can see in depth what is there. There is complete understanding. No anomalies exist in the reality of things. Any anomalies that come up are resolved quickly. There is knowingness as the viewpoint can grasp the oneness of continuity, harmony and consistency in everything.

PM AXIOM 20: Bringing a person to create a perfect duplicate causes the vanishment of any and all anomalies from his understanding.

Definition: An anomaly is a violation of oneness. Its presence in an area is indicated by disharmony, inconsistency or discontinuity. The anomaly appears as arbitrary, contradictory, or missing data.

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Reference: Book III: What is the Mind Really?

The Main Ideas

1. Postulates and conclusions are encoded as terminology.
2. The more basic is a term, the closer its definition is to a postulate.
3. Postulates and its conclusions form a logical sequence.
4. Therefore, a terminology can be arranged in a logical sequence.
5. The beginning of a sequential terminology shall approach a postulate.
6. Gaps in sequential terminology will point to missing logic.
7. The missing logic may lead to new discoveries.
8. This is the area of intuition.

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Intuition is often treated as a mysterious feeling that appears without explanation. But it can be examined more carefully as the ability to sense missing connections in an underlying logical structure.

The mind works with terms. A term is not merely a word; it carries a meaning, a definition, and often a conclusion about reality. When terms are used precisely, they can reveal the postulates—the basic assumptions—from which a whole system of thought develops.

Terms Contain Conclusions

Every well-defined term condenses a chain of reasoning. Its definition represents conclusions that have already been reached, even when those conclusions are no longer consciously visible.

For example, the term triangle carries several conclusions: it refers to a figure, bounded by three straight sides, with three angles. These characteristics are built into the term. One does not need to re-derive them each time the word is used.

Likewise, the term responsibility may contain the conclusion that a person can recognize consequences, make choices, and answer for actions. If those implied ideas are unclear, then the term itself is being used vaguely.

A terminology is therefore a compressed map of thought. The definitions of its terms preserve both the starting assumptions and the conclusions developed from them.

Basic Terms Approach Postulates

Some terms are more basic than others. The more basic a term is, the nearer its definition approaches a postulate.

A postulate is a starting point: an assumption accepted provisionally so that reasoning can proceed. It is not derived from earlier statements within that particular system. Instead, later conclusions depend on it.

Consider geometry. The concept of a point is more basic than the concept of a triangle. A triangle can be defined in terms of points and lines, but a point cannot be fully replaced by the definition of a triangle. Thus, the term point stands closer to the foundational assumptions of geometry.

In studying the mind, terms such as experience, attention, perception, and thinking may be more basic than terms such as personality, memory, or decision. The latter terms may depend on the former for their meaning.

The task is to ask:

• What must already be accepted for this term to make sense?
• Which terms are logically prior to it?
• Does its definition depend on unexamined assumptions?

By tracing a term back toward its simplest conditions, one approaches the postulates embedded in the terminology.

Thought Has a Sequence

Postulates and their conclusions form a logical sequence. A basic assumption makes a first conclusion possible; that conclusion then becomes the basis for further conclusions.

For example:

1. Something is experienced.
2. What is experienced can be noticed.
3. What is noticed can be distinguished from other things.
4. What is distinguished can be named.
5. What is named can be compared, remembered, communicated, and evaluated.

This is not merely a sequence of words. Each step depends on the earlier ones. Naming requires distinction; distinction requires noticing; noticing requires that something be present to awareness in some manner.

If someone speaks of “evaluating an object” while the object has not yet been identified or distinguished, the analysis is incomplete. The later term is being used without the earlier conditions that make it meaningful.

A coherent vocabulary can therefore be organized as a sequence from basic postulates to increasingly complex conclusions.

Sequential Terminology

A terminology arranged in logical sequence becomes a tool for examination. Instead of treating definitions as isolated entries in a dictionary, one can ask where each term belongs in the development of an idea.

For instance, an elementary sequence concerning knowledge might be:

Stage	Term	What it implies
Beginning	Presence	Something is there to be encountered
First awareness	Attention	That presence is noticed
Differentiation	Distinction	One aspect is separated from another
Identification	Recognition	The distinction is made familiar or stable
Expression	Naming	A symbol is assigned to what is recognized
Understanding	Concept	Relations and characteristics are grasped
Application	Judgment	The concept is used to reach a conclusion

Such an arrangement helps prevent confusion. A person may believe that they understand something because they can name it. But naming is not necessarily understanding. A name may be only a label attached to an insufficiently examined experience.

For example, someone may call an inner state “anxiety.” That label can be useful, but it does not automatically explain the state. Careful examination may distinguish bodily tension, anticipation of danger, memories, assumptions about the future, and avoidance impulses. The single term is then unpacked into a more accurate sequence of observations and conclusions.

The Beginning Approaches a Postulate

The beginning of a well-ordered terminology should approach a postulate. It should not begin with a complicated conclusion whose foundations have been left unexamined.

Take the term mind. If it is defined at the outset as “the thing that thinks,” several questions remain hidden:

• What is meant by “thing”?
• What is meant by “thinking”?
• Is thinking an activity, an experience, a process, or an entity?
• Does the definition assume a separate inner object called the mind?

A more careful approach starts closer to what can be directly inspected: experiences arise; some are noticed; some are differentiated; patterns are retained, associated, interpreted, and acted upon. The term mind may then be used as a convenient name for a complex organization of such processes, rather than as an unexplained object presumed from the start.

This does not settle every philosophical question about mind. It does, however, make the terminology more accountable to its own logical foundations.

Gaps Reveal Missing Logic

When a sequence of terms contains a gap, that gap indicates missing logic. Something has been assumed without being clearly stated, observed, or derived.

Suppose one argues:

1. A person receives sensory information.
2. Therefore, the person knows what reality is.

The gap lies between receiving information and knowing reality. Sensory input must be organized, interpreted, checked, compared with other observations, and distinguished from assumption or error. The conclusion is being claimed without accounting for the intervening processes.

Another example is the claim: “I had a thought, therefore I chose it.” The gap is between the appearance of a thought and the act of choosing. A thought may arise spontaneously from memory, association, habit, or present circumstances. Choice may occur later, in whether the thought is examined, accepted, expressed, acted upon, or set aside.

Finding such gaps is not merely criticism. It is an invitation to investigate.

Missing Logic Opens Discovery

A missing link can lead to a new discovery. The discovery may be a previously unnoticed process, a more basic term, a distinction between two ideas that were merged together, or a revised postulate.

For centuries, people could observe that objects fall. Newton’s insight did not consist simply in noticing the fall. It involved searching for a logical connection between falling bodies on Earth and the motion of celestial bodies. The apparent gap between earthly motion and planetary motion became an opening for a more comprehensive principle.

On a smaller and more personal scale, consider this sequence:

1. A criticism is heard.
2. Anger arises.
3. One reacts defensively.

At first, the sequence may seem complete. Yet closer observation may reveal a missing stage:

1. A criticism is heard.
2. The criticism is interpreted as a threat to one’s worth or status.
3. Anger arises.
4. One reacts defensively.

The newly observed interpretation explains what previously appeared to be an automatic jump from criticism to anger. That discovery creates greater freedom: the interpretation can now be examined rather than blindly enacted.

Intuition as Sensitivity to Gaps

This is the area of intuition. Intuition is not necessarily irrational, mystical, or opposed to logic. It may be the immediate sensitivity that something is incomplete in a chain of thought, even before the missing link has been explicitly formulated.

A scientist may feel that a theory does not account for an observation. A philosopher may sense that a definition contains circularity. A writer may recognize that an argument reaches its conclusion too quickly. A person may feel that an explanation of their own behavior does not quite fit.

At this stage, intuition does not yet provide a finished answer. It points toward a question.

For example, an observer may notice that people can sincerely report conflicting memories of the same event. Intuition may register that “memory is a recording” is inadequate. Investigation can then lead to a more refined understanding: memory involves reconstruction, selection, emotional meaning, later information, and present interpretation.

The intuitive recognition of a gap becomes valuable only when it is followed by inspection, clarification, and logical testing.

Using Intuition Carefully

Intuition is most reliable when treated as a guide for inquiry rather than as final proof.

• Notice the felt sense that an explanation is incomplete.
• State the sequence of terms or conclusions explicitly.
• Identify where the apparent jump occurs.
• Ask what condition, process, or distinction could fill the gap.
• Test the proposed connection against observation and consistency.
• Revise the terminology when the new understanding requires it.

This approach preserves both openness and discipline. One does not dismiss intuition merely because it is not yet verbalized, nor does one mistake it for certainty.

Intuition becomes the living edge of understanding: the point at which existing terminology no longer fully accounts for what is observed. By arranging terms in sequence, tracing them toward their postulates, and attending to the gaps between them, one turns vague insight into the possibility of discovery.

A challenge to intuition is resolving the anomalies in the functioning of the mind itself. This requires a fundamental criterion for determining the ideal. This is the subject of the next chapter.

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Reference: Book III: What is the Mind Really?

The Main Ideas

1. A person, when overwhelmed with anxiety, may descend into depression.
2. Depression involves a sustained low, empty, or irritable mood and/or a loss of interest or pleasure.
3. In depression a person’s attention is overwhelmed by too many anomalies (doubts and confusions).
4. The safest way out of depression is to reorganize attention, so it can properly address anomalies.
5. Attention is the allocation of processing resources of the mind to selectively concentrate on the environment.
6. Attention is reorganized by withdrawing it and then redirecting it consciously to sense the environment.  
7. The environment enters our mind as sensations that assimilate into perceptions. 
8. A person can consciously train his attention to assimilate sensations into perceptions.
9. As he does so he starts to spot simple anomalies, which further improve his control of attention.
10. Very soon, the person starts to spot and address more complex anomalies that overwhelmed him earlier.
11. This chapter provides exercises from Extroversion & Orientation for this purposes.
12. These exercises get a person to start consciously controlling his attention.

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A person who becomes overwhelmed by persistent anxiety may gradually descend into depression. Depression is marked by a sustained low, empty, or irritable mood, and/or by a loss of interest and pleasure in ordinary life. When these symptoms are severe, prolonged, or accompanied by thoughts of self-harm, professional mental-health support is important.

In the framework developed here, depression may be understood as a condition in which attention is burdened by too many unresolved anomalies—doubts, contradictions, confusions, and disturbances that the mind cannot presently organize or address. Attention then becomes fixed, scattered, or withdrawn from the immediate environment. The person may feel mentally exhausted, disconnected, and unable to act. This chapter offers attention-training exercises as a supportive practice for regaining orientation; it is not a substitute for medical or psychological care.

Attention and Anomalies

Attention may be understood as the allocation of the mind’s processing resources: it selectively concentrates on some aspect of the environment while leaving other aspects in the background. When attention is free and unobstructed, it tends to move toward areas where perception or understanding has slowed down. This can be useful, because such areas may contain an anomaly—a belief, assumption, or interpretation that does not fit its broader context. 

In depression, however, attention may be overwhelmed by many anomalies at once. The safest initial direction is to restore the person’s ability to direct attention deliberately. This begins by temporarily withdrawing attention from overwhelming mental content and consciously redirecting it toward immediate sensory experience. 

The environment enters the mind as sensations—touch, sight, sound, smell, and taste—which can gradually assimilate into clear perceptions. A person can train attention by noticing and distinguishing simple sensory details. For example, one may compare two textures, two colors, or two sounds without demanding that the mind solve a larger emotional problem. This reduces the immediate burden on attention and re-establishes its basic function: observing what is actually present.

As attention becomes steadier, the person begins to notice simple anomalies: a tension in the body, an assumption, an avoided feeling, a conflict between an expectation and reality. Addressing these simpler anomalies improves confidence and control. More complex anomalies that previously felt overwhelming can then be approached one at a time.

Do the following exercises, as much as possible, for 20 minutes, twice a day, for two weeks at least.

EXERCISE # 1: EXTROVERSION

PURPOSE:
To bring attention outward by consciously exploring the five physical senses. The exercise is designed to make attention more stable, present, and responsive to the environment.

Touch

1. Go to a place where you can explore touch without distraction.

2. Touch two nearby surfaces, such as wood and fabric.

3. Notice how they differ in temperature, texture, pressure, hardness, and shape.

4. Continue with other surfaces, observing each one without rushing.

5. Keep aware of mental activity in the background without trying to suppress or analyze it.

6. Continue until touching objects feels natural and free of strong internal resistance.

 Sight

7. Look at two objects nearby.

8. Notice their shapes, colors, outlines, size, distance, and details.

9. Continue looking until you can clearly distinguish the uniqueness of each object.

10. Expand your observation to additional objects in the environment.

11. Let thoughts and feelings arise and pass without interfering with the act of seeing.

12. Continue until attention is comfortably engaged with visible surroundings.

Hearing, Smell & Taste

13. In a pleasant environment, notice two sounds and distinguish them: their volume, rhythm, pitch, direction, or duration.

14. Notice two smells and distinguish their qualities without judging them as good or bad.

15. If appropriate, notice two tastes and distinguish their qualities.

16. Cycle gently through hearing, smell, taste, sight, and touch.

17. Continue until attention feels more outwardly engaged than it did at the beginning.

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EXERCISE # 2: ORIENTATION

PURPOSE: To rebuild a clear sense of location, direction, and distance in the environment.

This exercise follows extroversion. It trains attention to distinguish directions and distances while maintaining awareness of mental activity without interference. If orientation feels difficult or destabilizing, return to the sensory exercise above.

STEPS

1. Choose a quiet place where you can observe objects around you.

2. Select your present location as the reference point.

3. Look at two objects and estimate their distances from you.

4. Notice their directions relative to where you are: left, right, ahead, behind, above, or below.

5. Compare the objects: Which is nearer? Which is farther? Which is more to the left or right?

6. Repeat with other objects until their relative positions become clear.

7. Let thoughts and feelings remain in the background without resisting them.

8. Continue for up to 20 minutes, stopping earlier if tired or distressed.

Once these exercises stabilize you enough to look at anxieties, return to the exercise in Chapter 8: Looking at Anxiety.

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