Reference: The Book of Scientology
Terminals
Please see the original section at the link above.
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Summary
According to Hubbard, “A terminal is, in essence, any point of no form or any form or dimension from which energy can flow or by which energy can be received.” So, a battery has positive and negative terminals. Similarly, an electric motor has terminals. The motor runs when a current of electricity flows through the terminals. A stimulus-response behavior is like the running of the motor. It occurs when there is a flow of energy. The MEST universe is like that.
Hubbard, therefore, says, “… a viewpoint can be affected by the MEST universe only when the viewpoint has identified itself with some MEST universe article, such as a body.” This identification manifests itself as fixation of attention. So, a viewpoint should have the ability to unidentify itself, or release itself from fixation, rapidly.
A terminal, therefore, is related to the phenomenon of identification with the MEST universe. This makes the viewpoint subject to MEST laws, which make it stimulus-response. When one mocks up a terminal similar to the MEST universe terminal and puts the two terminals side by side, there is a discharge. This discharge is in terms of the person getting an insight into the MEST universe terminal. This approach is different from the Dianetic process that uses recall. Like Dianetics, this is also a limited process.
Hubbard believes that if a person owns two of the same item, then the chances of misconstruing that item are less. A viewpoint is more apt to identify itself with an item if its duplicate is missing. According to Hubbard, “This fixes him in the belief that he cannot alter his relationship to the MEST universe.” The more aberrated a person is the more easily he gets fixated on terminals.
Hubbard says, “It could be said that the MEST universe is the average of agreement amongst viewpoints and that the laws of the MEST universe, no matter how physical, are the result of this agreement.” This assumption of Hubbard is in conflict with the work of scientists like Galileo and Einstein who exposed a new reality that went against the general agreement.
Not every person’s reality is the same because their ability to perceive the universe is different. A hypnotized person’s reality can even be controlled by the hypnotist. The struggle is to define reality, and Hubbard settles on reality being the average of agreement among viewpoints. But the actual definition of reality remains elusive in Hubbard’s Scientology.
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Comments
Hubbard does not see self as a MEST universe article. Therefore, he does not even consider the possibility that attention can be fixated on self. This is because self is in the domain of thought and, to Hubbard, thought is not part of the MEST universe.
However, thought can be sensed like energy and matter, and Hubbard also found that thought upon condensation becomes increasingly stimulus-response like energy and matter. We may, therefore, consider thought also to be part of the MEST universe. In that case, not only the body, but also the self can be a terminal. From this point of view, fixation on self becomes possible and it can be seen as an aberration.
The substance (thought, energy and matter) is the basis of the knowable universe, and of our sense of reality. The substance has the property of continuity, consistency and harmony. We may refer to this as the principle of oneness. The oneness of the universe provides the ideal scene of reality. Such reality is free of anomalies, fixations, and aberrations.
The reality of a person departs from the ideal as the oneness is violated in his perception. The anomalies appear as missing data, contradictory data and arbitrary data. They are manifested in the fixation of his attention, which is the basis of all human aberrations.
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