In physics, the center of mass is the weighted average location of all the mass in a body or group of bodies. Various important calculations in mechanics become simplified when quantities are referenced to the center of mass, or when the entire mass of a body is treated as if it is concentrated at the center of mass.
We may regard the Self and the Soul in a similar manner.
A SELF is a weighted average location of all physical and mental energies and forces related to a person, much like the “center of mass.”
So, underlying this concept of self there is an actual structure of energies and forces. This may be what Buddha was describing as summarized in The Structure of “I”.
If we look at a soul as something left after the body dies then we may describe it in a similar manner as follows:
A SOUL is a weighted average location of the mental energies and forces, remaining after the death of the physical body, much like the “center of mass.”
By definition, spirit is the essence of something. It also refers to the mental energies and forces remaining after death. Therefore these mental energies and forces remaining after death constitute the spirit of a person. Spirit is not different from the mind.
As it is obvious from the above interpretation, a soul is what remains of the self after the removal of physical energies and forces. The soul does not have the same characteristics as the self. Soul does not behave the same way as the self did.
A soul is pretty much frozen until it creates a new self by becoming part of a new born baby. The last thought of the old self is the first thought of the new self. There are no “in-between life” after death and before birth. Ideas about “in-between lives” seems to be the projections of live self.
The new self of the baby has only certain elements of the old self. This may explain the inexplicable talents and memories from some other life. But there is no “self” that continues from one body to the next.
We are not talking about reincarnation here. There seem to be no heaven or hell where souls may be stored indefinitely after death. There is recycling in nature.
Here we are looking beyond hopes and expectations. We are looking at physics on the plane of metaphysics.
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Why do you declare the essence of a person to be other than the very delicate balance of electro-chemistry of his body?
You seem to be leaving the trail and falling back on fixed ideas rather than looking — Or tell me how this isn’t so.
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In my view the essence of a living person is SELF, The essence of a dead person is SOUL The disintegrating dead body may be considered part of the essence of the dead person, but it very soon becomes part of the general physical system.
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“It is unnecessary to discuss metaphysical questions, which are purely speculative and which create imaginary problems.”
“Discuss those things that are useful, fundamentally connected with the spiritual holy life, and conducive to aversion, detachment, cessation, tranquility, deep penetration, full realization, and Nirvāna.”
Attitudes inspired by Buddhism
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This statement is inconsistent from first word to last.
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When everything is of the same importance, equally urgent etc., for example, as regards one’s personal problems, or problems in a company, then the really important problem is being hidden.
Improvement will not come about unless and until that hidden problem is brought to light and addressed. But there will be a lot of resistance to looking at that problem.
In such a situation, I would recommend KHTK Exercise #1 in case of personal problems.
In the case of a company, I would recommend a change in management.
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The toughest job could be to look at oneself, or at SELF, without any filters… to look at it for what it is.
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One needs to look at SELF for what it is without any filters. One is not from some location, though one may consder a location for oneself.
There is observation and that is all there is. There is no WHO that is looking. WHO is a consideration too.
It is interesting to look at your mother and father without using the filters of a son or a daughter.
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People are stuck with the condition they are in because they are assigning to it a wrong reason, or putting blame on wrong things.
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From “no prime mover — unmoved” we can falsify this immediately. Right?
There are only conditions and giving “reasons” for them being in that condition is ego.
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Or, additive…
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ah, there is additive which is not ego?
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In my view ego itself is an additive.
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These few anonymous posts are from me.
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I knew that. 🙂
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Hubbard says:
“There is a gradient scale of exteriorization which could be described as follows: first, the thetan without contact with a universe then a thetan in full contact with a universe then a thetan in contact with part of a universe, who considers the remainder of the universe barred to him then a thetan in a universe without any contact with any part of the universe then a thetan unknowingly in contact with a large part of a universe. The first condition would be a true Static, the last condition is called colloquially in Scientology, ‘buttered all over the universe’.”
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This is essentially a scale of attention:
With no attention on anything
With attention on everything
With attention restricted to certain things
Unable to have attention on anything
Attention unknowingly scattered all over the place
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Hubbard says:
“As it is with a universe such as the physical universe, so it is with physical bodies. The thetan who has already gone through the cycle on the universe itself may be in contact with a physical body in the same order. At first he would be without association with a physical body then with occasional contact with bodies then with a fixed contact on one body, but exteriorized then interiorized into a body, but easy to exteriorize then in contact with and interiorized into a body, but withdrawn from the various parts of the body and then obsessively ‘buttered all through the body’ then obsessively and unknowingly drawn down to some small portion of the body, and so forth. This is the gradient scale which includes inversion and then inversion of the inversion.”
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I see this scale of ‘exteriorization/interiorization’ as follows:
With no awareness of and no attention on the physical body
With some awareness of and no attention on the physical body
With full awareness of but no attention on the physical body
With full awareness of and attention on the physical body
With attention fixed on the physical body at times
With attention fixated on the physical body completely
With attention fixated on the certain parts of the physical body
Unable to have attention on the physical body
Attention unknowingly scattered all over the body
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Hubbard says:
“The auditor will discover preclears are very variable in the matter of exteriorization. Some preclears, even when they have a dark field, exteriorize rather easily. Others, after a great deal of work, are still found to be difficult to exteriorize. The matter of exteriorization is the matter of which level of inversion the preclear is in. One of the more difficult levels to work is so inverted that he thinks that a thetan is running him. In other words, here is a thetan functioning in a body and actually running it through various covert communication lines, who yet believes he is a body to such an extent that he considers himself, or any life around him to be some other being. When discussing the matter of a thetan, this preclear is likely to tell the auditor, ‘I’m over there’. This is about the only signal the auditor gets from such a case which tells him that the preclear is being a body, and considers that he is being run by another thetan. Very often an auditor will ‘exteriorize’ such a person, he thinks, only to have the preclear say, ‘I’m over there’. A thetan who knows he is a thetan is always ‘here’ and never ‘there’.”
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(1) A being is basically a system of energies and forces.
(2) A body is a system of physical energies and forces.
(3) A body is part of the being.
(4) Attention can get so fixated on a system that it starts to take the viewpoint of that system relative to other systems.
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Hubbard says:
“The diagnostic manifestation, however, which the auditor first encounters in any case where he is having difficulty with exteriorization is contained in Beingness. Those on lower levels of inversion are having a great deal of difficulty being anything. Such people are below the level of being a body, therefore it would be far up- scale for this person to be able to be a body with certainty. A person who cannot exteriorize easily must be brought up to the level where he can be a body before he can then be exteriorized from the body. In other words, an auditor exteriorizing anyone has to follow such a scale as Beingness Processing.”
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(1) Interiorization is fixation of attention on a system or deeper into sub-systems.
(2) Exteriorization is the release of attention from that fixation a degree at a time.
(3) Attention may have to be released from problems to do with body parts, then from body parts, then from the body, and then from the being.
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Hubbard says:
“Oddly enough, Beingness Processing is an excellent exteriorization tool, and I say ‘Oddly enough’ because, in one sense, Beingness Processing is an Alter-is-ness process. When a case is extremely inverted it is necessary to get the case up to a level where it can identify itself with something. Beingness is essentially an identification of self with an object.”
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Beingness may be identification of self with an object. But then the result of this identification becomes the new self. Besides the old self was itself a result of some earlier identification. Self is like a multi-layered onion at the core of which is NOTHING.
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Of course, I’ve been calling that “nothing” since I first started writing here — Nothing in its purest form represents a specialized something which has no observable correlation to anything within the system of universe.
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It is NOTHING or UNKNOWABLE…
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. . . and ’round comes the tail . . . to eat, again.
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Tell it like it is… why pretend!
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LOL!
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again these anonymous posts are from me.
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Thetan does not have an identity. It is just awareness and attention. Attention gets set into motion simply by looking at a manifestation. This motion or fixation then becomes a sort of beingness.
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Melting the butter. We are all over the place with the thetan. It’s lots of things and its nothing.
Eventually, and I have gone all around the block on this, I see theta possibly being a better word and less anthrapomorphic and corresponding with your description above. Possibly theta may eventually correspond to things like the Higgs Field, which is omnipresent but seemingly without measurable mass or wavelength or very fine.
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I am presuming Higgs Field to constitute the fabric of space. I am also presuming the electromagnetic wave to be a ripple in that fabric of space. I wonder how mathematics sees the relationship between the Higgs Field and the electromagnetic phenomenon.
Theta could be what I am calling the ‘field of awareness’, which I see somewhat like space in the “spiritual dimension.” Disturbances in that field may appear as thoughts waves, or considerations, much like the electromagnetic waves.
I see thetan as something formed out of this field of awareness as a result of “condensation.”
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That is also my conjecture. However, having written that, I want to remember that order of magnitude is so very far removed from anything that I, as man, can perceive or experience directly, I must remain open and welcoming to the future understandings which will surely falsify (probably) anything that we think we conceptualize about quanta in this time frame. I get glimmers of “pure consciousness” that defy the usual definitions and concepts of self and soul, and let me know that “human” understandings of these ethereal manifestations will not produce any duplication of the true natures of Nature.
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Excellent!
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Anonymous from me again.
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“R2-31: BEINGNESS PROCESSING”
The purpose of this process seems to be for a person to look, first in the physical universe and then in the mental universe, at the various beingness that he objects to. He does that until the factors underlying those objections are fully noticed.
This is how I feel that beingness comes about:
At first there seem to be simply a field of awareness that is aware of itself. It gets set into motion on its own accord. From that motion precipitates more specific beingness and self-awareness. This may be called a manifestation. Some sort of a sense of beingness seems to be the property of any manifestation.
This motion may be called attention. It seems to be triggered with the presence of a manifestation. It then precipitates further into more complex manifestation. A manifestation leads to another manifestation. There seems to be some kind of a self-precipitating fractal going on.
Beingness may be called identification of self with an object. But then the result of this identification becomes the new self. Besides the old self was itself a result of some earlier identification. Self is like a multi-layered onion at the core of which is NOTHING or UNKNOWABLE.
When a person is able to assume some identity (beingness), the skills will come as a package with that identity.
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Comments on ”R2- 32: ASSIGNMENT OF ATTRIBUTES”
The basic idea here is to look at the attributes provided by others for what they are. And then look at the attributes one is assigning to oneself, which seems to justify the assignments from others.
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Hubbard: ”The forerunner of this process was Significance Processing. Significance Processing was done as follows: one had the preclear take some picture or object and assign innumerable significances to it.”
The basic action is to see something for what it is. Significances dreamed up by a person are additives to what is there.
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Hubbard: ”This is an excellent process, even now, for those who are always looking for deeper significances in everything. It will be discovered that the preclear with whom one is having difficulty cannot duplicate. He cannot duplicate because he has to make everything more complicated. Everything which is given to him has to be given a deeper significance. However, Significance Processing is quite limited in its effects upon the preclear, and it is not to be compared with SOP 8-C Opening Procedure. Where one has a case who is introducing deep significances into everything, who is pondering and philosophizing during processing, one will discover that Significance Processing is far too heavy for the case.”
Those who are always looking for deeper significances in everything have their attention stuck on some inconsistency, which they are trying to resolve. That inconsistency is being added by them to everything they are looking at. It would, therefore, be relatively easy to discover what that inconsistency is, and look at it directly.
Significance Processing does not make the person look at what is there. If he looks at what is there he would discover the inconsistency that he has been adding to everything.
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Hubbard: ”The Assignment of Attributes is a process which uses the principle: WHATEVER THE THETAN IS DOING OBSESSIVELY OR COMPULSIVELY, HAVE HIM DO IT ON A SELF- DETERMINED BASIS.”
If a person does deliberately what he has been doing compulsively then it may give him an opportunity to look at the inconsistency he has been adding unknowingly.
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Hubbard: ”Here we have the entire environment assigning meanings and attributes to the preclear. It seldom occurs to the preclear to assign attributes to himself. Throughout life he has been insulted, made nothing of, or complimented, and he has begun to depend upon other-determined assignment of attributes.”
The person is using additives provided by others to look at himself. He probably feels that those additives are justified. This indicates that he may be carrying a sense of inadequacy about himself. It might help to look at the sense of inadequacy for what it is, until one discovers the factors underlying it.
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For me, my entire existence as myself is totally an additive to what is. All my evaluations and judgements about my perceptions seem additive. Both a sense of inadequacy and a sense of adequacy are additive.
As we evolve and learn – possibly in a thousand or a hundred thousand more generations what is iterated will be as surprising and fresh and different as our current discovers are to us now, as our discoveries have always been to us since man first became aware of looking out.
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Uh! Huh!!
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If I can open my mind and “willingness” to see, possibly I can get a glimpse of what is “just right there.”
Maybe this entire “desire to know and to explore” is the essence and aspect of “that which knows” having “fun.” As you wrote a couple days ago, that the unknowable was simply a promise of wondrous things to explore forever. I really liked that.
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I like that too! 🙂
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R2-33: PERFECT DUPLICATION
‘Perfect duplication’ as Hubbard suggests is a misnomer. To me, perfect duplication would be to look at things as they are, as Buddha recommends.
Perfect duplicate of a past experience would mean looking at the pictures and other information related to that experience so thoroughly that nothing is suppressed or hidden from view. When one does that then all questions and confusion related to that experience disappear.
The above explanation is rooted in reality and it can be understood easily. But Hubbard demands, “Do you see this ash tray? Now make a perfect duplicate of it: a duplicate in the same time, in the same place, with the same energy as the ash tray.” He then suggests that when this command is done properly the ash tray should disappear.
The most one can do in response to the above command is to look at the ash tray with total clarity about what it is – its shape, material, color, temperature, etc., One may also clarify its purpose, usage, etc., until no more questions and confusion about that ash tray remain.
One cannot know the configuration of all the atoms and molecules in that ash tray. At the most, one may duplicate one’s own ideas about that. ACTUALLY, IT IS HYPNOTICALLY SUGGESTIVE OF THIS EXERCISE THAT WHEN PERFECTLY DUPLICATED THE OBJECT WOULD VANISH FOR THAT PERSON. The person may actually believe that the object vanished for him. Actually, this would simply be hypnotism.
So far I have seen confusion and additives (judgment, reaction, hope, expectation, desire, etc.) vanish. I have never seen some actual object vanish. A perfect duplication may only lead to a clear understanding of what is there. It is looking with patience until proper unwinding of the mind takes place on its own accord. There is clear understanding. There is no magic.
The terminology used in Scientology is quite complex and confusing. It doesn’t seem to make sense to me that ‘perfect duplication violates the universal law that two things cannot occupy the same space at the same time, and that is why it makes objects disappear.’ This is merely a conjecture, as this has never been observed in the physical universe. ‘Confusion and unknowns disappearing in the mind’ is something else entirely. That doesn’t require this strange vocabulary that Scientology uses.
To sum it up, perfect duplication would be to look at things as they are, as Buddha recommends.
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R2- 34: DESCRIPTION PROCESSING
Now this seems to be an excellent process.
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R2- 34: DESCRIPTION PROCESSING
Hubbard: “Before engaging in Description Processing it will be necessary for the auditor to perform, with the preclear, R2- 33. It is not that the preclear is going to make perfect duplicates with this Description Processing, but that the preclear has some understanding of what he is confronting. Description Processing is the single most Powerful Process in Scientology. It uses As- is- ness in present time to remedy the restimulations beheld by the thetan. The total command content of Description Processing is the phrase: ‘How does … seem to you now?’ This is used over, and over, and over by the auditor. In the blank he puts any difficulty the preclear is having.”
This is another version of seeing things as they are.
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Hubbard: “For an old- time auditor, for instance, who has become rather laggardly about auditing, the single question ‘How does auditing seem to you now?’ asked over and over for about three hours would most probably bring about a complete rehabilitation of the auditor as such.”
Actually, at the moment I am running the process, ‘How does Scientology seem to me now?’
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Hubbard: “Here all we are asking the preclear to do is to view the situation. We do not care whether he makes a perfect duplicate of it or not. We merely want him to observe the situation. His observance of the situation determines its As- is- ness, and his health depends upon his ability to accept things as they are.”
The key is observation of the situation. A person’s health depends upon his ability to accept things as they are.
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Hubbard: “As we run this process we will find that a considerable amount of change takes place in a case. Energy masses move, alter, shift, and the environment takes on different aspects. This is not particularly a good manifestation, it is the manifestation of time, or persistence. We are running an As-is-ness of Alter-is-ness. Thus, the occasional interjection of ‘Does it seem to be persisting?’ on the part of the auditor, calls the attention of the preclear to the persistence of the manifestations and clears up hang- ups.”
If some manifestation is persisting then the person should look at the persistence of that manifestation for what it is.
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Hubbard: “Now, here in this process, we view the entire philosophy of life. We see quite adequately here that an individual still retains anything which he has never accepted As- is. In other words, if a man has fought evil for years, he has never viewed evil As- is. Thus evil will remain with him. If he has fought ugliness for years, ugliness will remain with him. Terribly enough, because he has accepted As- is the goodness of life, and the beauty of life, these things are continually being un- mocked. We eat good food — we leave bad food alone. When something smells bad we turn our face away from it. Here we have the entire anatomy of the dwindling spiral. We see that individuals continually take the upper cream off life and leave the skimmed milk, and then take skimmed milk and leave the drowned flies, until they are trying to go all the way to the bottom to close with the basic As- is- ness of existence, and this basic As- is- ness is mystery and stupidity.”
Look at what is persisting in one’s consciousness. Here we view the entire philosophy of life. Things that are persisting are those that have not been accepted for what they are.
This would include consciousness as experienced through the filters of lust, hate, evil, ugliness, delusion, rigid narrowness, loftiness, pride, superiority, concentrated focus, freedom, etc., or their opposite. Then contemplate on consciousness itself. NOTE: This is the exercise from Buddha.
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Hubbard: “This works in other ways. An individual walking through life and seeing, for instance, beautiful people, comes at length into a condition where he does not believe beautiful people exist, for he has taken their As-is-ness so long that the only thing which can make any effect upon him are less beautiful people. These he has not un-mocked. Thus we get the entire engram bank backing up those things which were never observed directly. One can understand, then, that ten thousand years ago in the civilizations of earth there might have been incredible beauty, and one can easily see that these would have no background in the bank of the preclear. However, the ugly spots of ten thousand years ago would still be there, and so would bring up the humdrum routine present time existing without valor, gallantry, or beauty.”
One doesn’t see what one is taking for granted. If one takes beauty for granted then one doesn’t see beauty. One simply reacts to ugliness. It would be interesting to examine how consciousness would appear through the filter of ugliness or through the filter of beauty.
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Hubbard: “This is the anatomy of what Krishna might have meant when he inferred that the bad must be taken with the good. Here we see, then, the explanation of why some men can tolerate only disease and dirt, why some can tolerate only poverty, and we behold, in short, the entire mechanism behind Acceptance Level. Acceptance Level Processing, as contained in the PAB’s was one method of reaching a betterment of conditions. Description Processing is a far better method of reaching that condition.”
One should be looking at things for what they are without any filters. Things that are taken for granted become filters. Is good being taken for granted as the ideal scene? Or, is it evil being taken as something inevitable?
People who are aware of low standards only are probably looking through the filter of high standards. It is not a matter of Acceptance Level. It is a matter of filters. It is the matter of raising the consciousness of a whole culture about filters.
What is there is simply there. of course, one can bring changes to what is there. But, first, one should be able to look without filters. When Hubbard talks about Acceptance Levels, he is himself looking through filters.
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Hubbard: “Now let us take, more or less in their order of importance, the various things with which we fill in ‘How does… seem to you now? ’ The auditor be cautioned that he must never start in on one of these subjects without flattening the communication lag resulting. Any one of these items which is mentioned here might very well take ten hours of questioning before it could be run entirely flat, for these are very powerful items. An auditor might as well poison his preclear as to run this list one item after another without a repetition of the question. The keynote of this entire process is that the auditor asks this question ‘How does … seem to you now?’ over, and over, and over, and over, interjecting only ‘Does it seem to be persisting?’ The auditor can add dunnage (irrelevant remarks aimed solely to stay in communication with the preclear) only so long as he does not distract the preclear from this process.
The items used follow: TIME, CHANGE, MOTIONLESSNESS, CREATION, SURVIVAL, PERSISTENCE, DESTRUCTION, DISTANCE, AGREEMENT, DISAGREEMENT, STUPIDITY, COPYING, BEAUTY, UGLINESS, PEOPLE, YOU, SERIOUSNESS, RESISTANCE, RESTRAINT, OBJECTION, NOTHINGNESS, any one of the DYNAMICS, and any part of the FUNDAMENTALS OF SCIENTOLOGY.”
‘How does TIME seem to you now?’
‘How does CHANGE seem to you now?’
‘How does MOTIONLESSNESS seem to you now?’
‘How does CREATION seem to you now?’
‘How does SURVIVAL seem to you now?’
‘How does PERSISTENCE seem to you now?’
And so on…
I would not use repetitive questioning. I would rather discuss these concepts. I shall give an item to a person and have him look at it carefully. I shall caution him not to get into any figure-figure; instead look at what is sitting there in front of the mind’s eye. If nothing is there to describe then that is OK.
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