Project: Hubbard 1954: The Phoenix Lectures
This paper presents Chapter 11 from the book THE PHOENIX LECTURES by L. RON HUBBARD. The contents are from the original publication of this book by The Church of Scientology (1954).
The paragraphs of the original material (in black) are accompanied by brief comments (in color) based on the understanding from Buddhism. Feedback on these comments is always appreciated.
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THE FOUR CONDITIONS OF EXISTENCE (Part 5)
With the data we have on these conditions we can talk a little bit here about how your preclear might possibly recover from the state which he conceives himself to be in.
We consider now that the pattern of existence through which he has been is a very definite track. It is a track which starts with As-is-ness, and this of course includes space. You might possibly completely miss in auditing a preclear if you didn’t realize that As-is-ness has to start with space. One could get so concentrated on and frantic about objects and energy, this factor of space might be completely missed. A thetan can communicate with space with great ease. The body has gone too far on this track to do this easily. The body finds it quite sickening to communicate with space, but a thetan can communicate with space rather easily, and the As-is-ness begins with space, and then it gets into, of course simultaneously, energy, and mass.
The track starts with static transforming into kinetic. The potential of Static appears as the energy of Kinetic. The energy of lowest vibration appears as “space”. Energy of very high vibrations appears as mass. Therefore, space-energy-mass describes the spectrum of energy of increasing vibrations. According to Hubbard, thetan finds it easier to communicate with space (low vibrations) than with body (high vibrations).
NOTE: Space defines the extents of energy. The energy of lowest vibration appears as “empty space”.
Now space, energy, mass, consideration of, are all simultaneous. There is no consideration here related to time.
We have to move the anchor points of the space, in order to get a continuance of the space, and move the energy itself in the space, and change them in one fashion or another in order to get a continuance of that energy, and when this has not been introduced we have not postulated time. A thetan doing this would theoretically pass from As-is-ness into Alter-is-ness just immediately. He’d have to, or he would have no continuation of any kind.
In other words, it wouldn’t exist unless he intended to change it. He would have to make the intention of change simultaneous with the action of creation. And if he did not, he would get a disappearance immediately of that mass.
He passes then into Alter-is-ness, which is a simultaneous action with As-is-ness at first, and then of course immediately becomes an action of continuation, and we get Is-ness, which is this reality that we talk about — space, energy, objects.
After the transformation of static to kinetic, space-energy-mass not only appear but they continue to exist. This means they have duration or Time. This is simply the potential manifesting itself, but Hubbard sees this as “As-is-ness followed immediately by Alter-is-ness.”
Just exactly why we consider this combination to be a reality, that reality is Is-ness, is a little bit dull, because the fact of the matter is that reality itself to continue as a reality would not be an Is-ness at all but a continuous Alter-is-ness.
So, we get Is-ness actually as a hypothetical state.
Space-energy-mass are vibrating. This may be called “continuous Alter-is-ness”. But, conventionally, this forms our reality or Is-ness. Thetan may actually represent the vibrational aspect of energy.
Now the fact that the thetan is a Static — that’s not hypothetical or theoretical. The fact that he is a Static that can consider, and can produce space and energy and objects, is not hypothetical. That’s true.
Hubbard says. “The fact that he [thetan] is a Static that can consider, and can produce space and energy and objects, is not hypothetical.” That means when the static potential of thetan is expressed, we have enduring space-energy-mass. In other words, thetan transforms into enduring space-energy-mass. This may be viewed as space-energy-mass having consciousness.
We have facts, facts, all the way along here, until we get to this thing called reality and we suddenly discover that Is-ness is hypothetical.
In the whole field of As-is-ness, the creation of space, energy, objects, of Alter-is- ness, Is-ness, Not-is-ness and more Alter-is-ness, there is only one hypothetical state. And that’s Is-ness. It never exists. It can’t ever exist. It has to be Alter-is-ness or As-is-ness, and of course As-is-ness can exist. As-is-ness can exist. It really would have to be able to exist, if you can repeat it. It must be in existence if you can repeat it and cause a vanishment of mockups or objects or spaces, so it obviously exists.
But this is not true of Is-ness.
Is-ness is the outcome of As-is-ness and Alter-is-ness. As-is-ness moves Is-ness upwards on the Know-to Mystery scale; whereas, Alter-is-ness moves it downwards.
Reality does not exist. Because it says there is a stop. And there just isn’t any stop. It is continuous Alter-is-ness and when people stop altering the positions of things and stop altering anchor points, and stop pushing things around one way or the other whether they say they’re doing it or they say it’s being done on another determinism, or however, the moment they just relax on this whole thing, they get the condition which your preclear quite commonly is found in, of no longer postulating time. You see, the mechanism of saying “It will continue because I’m saying someone else is responsible” is of limited use. It’s of very limited use.
One may say that Is-ness is always changing on a continuous, harmonious and consistent basis as you scan it in space and time. Any fixation on other determinism is aberration because the person simply gets out of sync.
Let’s go into that a little more clearly — you set up this machine — or something to go on and shift and change the anchor points of the space, manufacture the energy involved and take care of the objects. You set up this machine and you say: I’m no longer responsible for this. I have no further responsibility for this now, and therefore it’s other space and it will go on happening, and therefore I can continue to have this space because somebody else is making it. You see we could get into that rather shifty by-pass, and so we could then have — not over too long a time — but we could have a consistent Alter-is-ness, and this alteration would continue to take place as long as he at least kept one tiny little fingernail on the machine over here. We weren’t looking to see that we had, but as long as we had that fingernail just touching that machine, we were all right. We said just that much of it is ours.
The moment that an individual entirely relaxes and he says I have everything all set up, it’s beautifully set up, and it will all run automatically, and I don’t have to worry about it anymore, after all a fellow created this universe, other people are the ones who caused time to take place, they tell me when to get up, when to go to bed and I’ve just got everything all set and it’s totally other-determined now — it becomes just that totally other-determined, but it also, for the individual, passes by the board.
A person generally has filters set up to look through. The filter takes care of the perception. The person does not have to compute from fresh input. The moment a person puts everything on other determinism, he is finished.
He’s no longer postulating a persistence, he’s no longer changing any objects in space, and so he will simply sit still. Everything gets very dim; everything gets very thin. Well, the funny part of it is that in that state he couldn’t even keep an aberration going. But his Alter-is-ness has been practiced so long after the fact of Not-is-ness that even though he sits still he’ll keep on changing something, and that condition is known as figuring, thinking, thinking. He tries to change something, and he feels, Well, I will just sit here and think, and that will keep the universe moving, it will keep time going. The only one trouble with this is, he is dealing basically with the root stuff of what makes universes but now that he is sunk into that category where he is doing nothing but consider again, not creating or moving anything, he is going to have a very difficult time of it. In fact, everything is going to get dimmer and dimmer and less real and less real. What will persist there is that which he is still changing, which is his worry about aberrations.
It is true that the mechanical aspects of this universe are nicely set up by physical principles, and we don’t bother with them, but then we don’t sit still. We use those principles to create all kind of things. We may even look at those principles more closely to discover finer principles and create more sophisticated things. There is no other determinism postulated as long as there are no fixations.
But when a person just sits still, thinking others will keep everything going, he is no longer part of the reality. He cannot go back to being Static without taking responsibility for reality. He simply gets lost in unreality.
This is not esoteric or difficult. The only thing which goes on persisting is that which a person is actively working to change. You can only have those things which you handle. You can only have those things which you move around.
What are most relevant are the cycles of action that one is engaged in.
But an individual gets into a tremendous protest against mass. He has decided that the continuous survival of things is very bad. In other words, he starts to fight survival itself with Not-is-ness. Now, as you know, Not-is-ness is a highly specialized activity. It is the activity actually of causing something to vanish or dull down or become less, simply because It IS too much. There’s too much Is-ness, the fellow considers. He’s got too much persistency, too much survival — Joe Jinks that got him across the barrel in a bank and took all his money away from him, and, well, there was just too much Is-ness, and the best thing to do about that is to cause a Not-is-ness, and let’s just fight everything.
When a person is unable to face the Is-ness he uses Not-is-ness.
For an example, let’s take a war. A war is just simply each side saying the other side must cease to exist, and they are doing it with shot, shell, lead, dynamite, spears, arrows, deadfalls, and they’re using energy to make other things cease to exist. Well, it was perfectly all right as long as you were building your camp, you see, but if you suddenly started to fight a war with somebody on the other side of the mountain, whereby you were saying he must cease to exist, you were fighting persistence by causing persistence. If you want to know why a war which shouldn’t take more than a couple of days, goes on and on, and on, and on, and on — they got so bad a few centuries ago that they had a hundred years of nothing but war — everybody was saying everybody else mustn’t exist, and they kept moving objects around to cause existence to cease. Now you see how these postulates could become completely tangled.
Wars are Not-is-ness. They arise from an inability to As-is the situation. Thus, they always end in destruction.
And the thetan does this because he so loves the problem, and that is the most problem there is. The thetan loves a problem, and that is the basic of problems. You move masses around, which basically causes persistence, in order to cause persistence to cease. One hundred per cent paradox. Cannot exist, can’t ever happen, never has happened, and yet he will do this. But he is never happy doing it. There is no serenity involved in this. It becomes nothing but a complete chaos. Probably the only joy any soldier ever gets out of a war (and don’t spread this around, because the society doesn’t believe you should tell this) the only joy anybody ever gets out of a war is by kidding himself that he has made absolutely nothing out of something. Whether it’s enemy troops or tanks, or ships, or anything, there’s a big WHEE in there some place, a big thrill. Combat troops know about this. It’s only when they cease to make nothing at will, apparently, that they become very downhearted.
Hubbard says, “You move masses around, which basically causes persistence, in order to cause persistence to cease.” Masses can be moved around with intelligence to solve the problem. They don’t just have to be moved around with force to destroy a seeming opponent. It is simply As-is-ness versus Not-is-ness.
Hardly anybody would be able to comprehend what is known as a military rout, whereby a body of troops, suddenly, and instantly and immediately disheartened, just completely, completely quits. It’s a strange phenomenon. It has been rather incomprehensible how fast they keep shooting at a castle on a hill. And they just keep shooting at this castle, and shooting at this castle, the castle keeps shooting back, and they keep firing at the castle, and the castle keeps shooting back. Well, they start to go to pieces in morale. They can’t make nothing out of something. Observably — the castle continues to live. They bog down on that rather badly, they get to be rather 1.5, and actually that is the manifestation of 1.5 on the Tone Scale. People using force to make nothing of something which continues to exist in spite of it. And they’ll suddenly drop. It isn’t a slow curve. They enter it rather slowly, and then they will just suddenly go to pieces, because the only compensation they have for war is the fact that as thetans, you see, they can observe that they are at least going through the motions of and have the manifestation of making nothing of form. And the sadness underlying it to them is the fact that they don’t make nothing of it really.
A person goes to pieces when he is overwhelmed by the feeling of failure. This may happen to an army too.
Beyond this point still, all kinds of suffering take place, and sadness, and it goes on and on, but you start moving that many particles with that much velocity, such as a German 88, and you’ll get persistence. That shell bursts, and we don’t find that the fellow in whose vicinity it hit is still there, but there’s persistence. Somebody’s got to go through his effects, and then somebody’s got to write a letter home and say he died a hero, and somebody else has got to carry the news through, and then there are people at home, and he’s left a hole in the society one way or the other, and this goes on and on and on, and then years later they dig up what’s left of him and ship him back over and put him into a cemetery. There’s persistence occasioning here. And what’s persisting? Well, there was that particle — it certainly was moving fast, and when we get a particle moving with this much velocity, we get some persistence, and in a war all they can think of is terms of more and more and more particles, moving with more and more velocity to cause less and less persistence on the part of the enemy.
Random Force leads to Alter-is-ness and not to As-is-ness. What persists is the result of Alter-is-ness. It will keep on persisting and will result ultimately in Not-is-ness.
If you wanted to know why the German nation keeps fighting and keeps overrunning its borders, well it can’t do anything else by this time. From Legion times forward people have been going in there saying, “You mustn’t persist, and these fast-moving particles which we’re making you handle will make it so.” Oh really? This can’t be, you see.
When we find anything about which Man is extremely puzzled, we lead directly into the one little formula which is the mechanism of making things persist: we’re going to use particles to make things not persist.
Alter-is-ness is unnecessary random force that makes things persist.
And any time you find anybody in difficulty or in the middle of a problem, just look at the basic anatomy of a problem which is that anatomy. It’s, “We’re going to cause a non- persistence by the use of the mechanisms which cause persistence.”
And you’re going to get a game — there’s undoubtedly going to be a game occur here. There are going to be lots of problems.
Hubbard describes the basic anatomy of a problem as, “We’re going to cause a non- persistence by the use of the mechanisms which cause persistence.” The mechanism of persistence is Alter-is-ness and not As-is-ness.
If you want to know how to take apart a problem, just look where the person is using particles which you know by changing them will cause persistence, in order to make a non-persistence.
To help a person, just look where he is using random force, which is making his problem persist.
He’ll be using Alter-is-ness to create a Not-is-ness, and of course will be getting consistently and continually an Is-ness. Which is a continuous state. It’s a hypothetical state, because you can never stop it, you can never arrest it, you can never take a look at it. You know that any time you really recognize an Is-ness — not in a state of change — why, it will disappear, it will vanish or it will dim down, something will happen with relationship to it, so you always have to look at the change.
Change can lead to As-is-ness as well as to Alter-is-ness.
This is the fellow living up the time track, this is the fellow living in the past. He’s looking at the changes and he isn’t looking at the reality. Actually, that’s a very healthy state of mind.
The fellow’s looking at the changes, he’s looking at what will be, he’s very cheerful about how many particles he can move around and cause to come into existence or persist. Or he knows the proper modus operandi for mocking things up that he wants to destroy, just As-is-ness. And that would destroy it perfectly adequately, and he could start in again.
The whole effort is to resolve a problem.
To look at the basic mechanics of any problem which is causing any trouble, just find the matter of the particles, the particle motion, the Alter-is-ness in other words, which is aimed with the goal of Not-is-ness and is an impossibility. You’ll find that’s your preclear who’s hanging fire in processing. He’s doing this. He’s using particles to knock down ridges (Ridges: Solid accumulation of old, inactive mental energy suspended in space and time), something on this order.
The person who is not improving is simply using unnecessary force to resolve problems without understanding.
Actually, he’d feel a lot better if he’d simply go out and trim the hedge. Let him move something around not quite as damaging but with the same goal, because if he’s all messed up with his engram bank, and he’s all messed up with tremendous ridges and black ridges and that sort of thing, and he sits there as a thetan creating particles and bombarding these ridges, what is he going to get? He’s going to get a persistence of ridges. That’s why we never use flows in processing. You can process objects you want to, you can process space if you want to, but we’ll just stay away as a general principle from flows.
A person cannot resolve his case (engrams) by being fixated on it and using force. Going out and doing simple manual work will do a lot of good, because it extroverts his attention.
Now your thetan has a great objection, because of the communication formula as used in this universe, a great objection to somethingnesses. He looks across a distance and he sees a somethingness and this begins to tell him after a while that he has to be a something too, and he doesn’t like this. He doesn’t enjoy this really, because it’s an other-determined something that he has to be. It’s looking at a wall, he has to be a wall, you see. And that’s what this universe is dictating to him. Well, actually, because it’s all a consideration in the first place, he doesn’t have to fall into that little grave. He doesn’t have to do that kind of a shift, at all. He could simply say I’m looking at the wall, you see. But after a while he gets into the mechanics of perception, the mechanics of communication. He’s using energy in order to communicate with energy. There’s nothing wrong with that, except to the degree that he loses his fluidity on it. As long as he could maintain the idea that he was simply communicating by postulate, that he was communicating, he’s doing all right, but when he drops below that level — and you get him forced to communication, when he’s made to stand still and be talked to, when he’s made to stand to and hold that ridge, when he’s made to sit there and absorb that textbook, any of these things, he gets under this bombardment, and he starts fighting the communication formula. Of course, we get a persistence then of this universe’s communication formula.
A thetan is part of the Static potential that transformed into this universe. The manifested universe is the eighth dynamic that has theta as its spiritual aspect and MEST as its physical aspect. The thetan individuates from it because of its misconceptions, confusions and fixations. It acquires a certain vibration.
When a thetan is communicating, it is not looking across some distance. It is simply looking at a difference in vibrations. As it duplicates the vibration of the thing it is communicating with, the misconceptions vanish, and it becomes that much part of the theta of the universe. When the thetan starts to look at the universe as other determinism it starts to go downhill. That is what happened to Hubbard.
Remember that this universe has a communication formula, and that that formula is based on the fact that two things can’t occupy the same space, so immediately we fall away from cause, effect and no distance. Cause-and-effect with no distance is not the same thing as the bottom-scale manifestation, where complete identification never actually occurs. There’s still a slight distance no matter how downscale you go; it’s only way upscale that you can get a perfect identification between cause point and effect point. These two points can be coincident way upscale. Well, if they can be coincident way upscale, the individual could put a distance on them or whatever he liked, but to the degree that he began to agree with this universe, we would get the manifestation of “have to have a distance across which to look” because he can’t occupy the same space as the object at which he’s looking.
Each object has its own vibration. Their extents form their space. They are separate because of different vibrations. They must adjust to the same vibration to merge into each other. Thus, the difference between cause and effect is only in terms of vibrations and not some “distance”. Up the scale the vibrations of cause and effect become the same and they become coincident. Down the scale there is no perfect matching of vibrations because of misconceptions and fixations; and mimicry is employed.
That is this universe’s formula, and that by the way is native to a lot of universes — it’s how you keep everything stretched apart. You say two things can’t occupy the same space; therefore, we’ve got to have a lot of spaces and things more or less fixed in these spaces, and we’ve got to keep them all apart and therefore they are separate objects and we go into the communication formula. Cause, Distance, Effect.
Space is the extent of energy. “Empty space” is not really empty but contains energy of lowest vibration. Therefore, there is no empty distance between cause and effect, only a difference in their characteristics. The communication formula should be “cause – difference in vibrations – effect”. Here “distance” is replaced by the difference in vibrations at cause and effect.
As the individual agrees that two things can’t occupy the same space, and as he agrees with this communication formula, he then gets into a situation where he says, “Now look at all these somethings around here. And I am actually basically a nothing, and therefore if I have to duplicate these by becoming a something, I don’t like that. I can’t retain my own native form. I’m in a bad shape here. I can’t fly around and be a spirit. I’ve got to be pinned down here. I’ve got to be an energy mass in order to look at those energy masses,” and he doesn’t like it. He objects to it. And so, we get to the other manifestation on the track.
The viewpoint of the individual has the ability to assume any vibration, and there is no problem in duplicating the things around him. Only misconceptions and fixations prevent him from duplicating.
The only objection a thetan has to anything, if he’s having a big objection, is to something. Just any something. Then this of course will invert and having objected to a something hard enough, you see, he’ll turn around after a while and start objecting to a nothing.
The thetan has objections only because of his misconceptions and fixations, which are handled when he is able to duplicate.
Now how is it then that we get any change at all if Not-is-ness doesn’t work? Well, there is the system known as valences: one ceases to be himself and becomes something else as his sole method of change. You see that? He is causing a persistence by saying things mustn’t persist, and he keeps saying, mustn’t persist, mustn’t persist, and it goes on persisting, and he uses more particles and more particles and more particles — and pretty soon the United States Army is wearing coal-scuttle helmets. Just like that. And the Government says, “Down with Karl Marx, down with Karl Marx, down with Karl Marx — and everybody is now going to be taxed according to his ability to pay.”
When the viewpoint cannot duplicate something by becoming, then the next best thing is to mimic it. This mimicry generates the phenomenon of valences.
So, we get another type of change. Two things can’t occupy the same space; therefore, we are an identity persisting, therefore the best way to get it changed and get an utter change is simply to be somebody else. In other words, completely shift the valence, and because we want to win all the time, why naturally, shift to winning valences compared to oneself. If one thinks one is losing, then anything can start looking like a winning valence. A beggar utterly penniless about to die would look like a winning valence to some people. And we get valence-shifting going right along with “two things can’t occupy the same space”. So, an individual goes out of one spot and over onto another spot and when he is running a lot of Not-is-ness you can expect him to do a lot of valence shifting. He can’t continue to be himself, because he’s in communication with nothing.
“Two things can’t occupy the same space” is false when applied to a thetan, for a thetan can assume any vibration when not prevented by misconceptions and fixations. So, a thetan can duplicate anything easily. When prevented from duplicating one ends up using mimicry instead and the valence phenomenon comes in. The thetan gets stuck in a valence because he cannot duplicate it.
At that time, he will start to believe that he must have nothingness. And he goes from there into having to have somethingnesses and he goes from there into having to have nothingnesses by change of valence, and actually there is no other deep significance to it.
A thetan without misconceptions and fixations has no difficulty duplicating anything.
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FINAL COMMENTS
A thetan is part of the Static potential that transformed into this universe. The manifested universe is the eighth dynamic that has theta as its spiritual aspect, and MEST as its physical aspect. The thetan individuates from Theta because of its misconceptions, confusions and fixations.
The viewpoint of the individual has the ability to assume any vibration, and there is no problem in duplicating the things around him. Only misconceptions and fixations prevent him from duplicating. When the viewpoint cannot duplicate something by becoming, then the next best thing is to mimic it. This mimicry generates the phenomenon of valences.
When a thetan is communicating, it is not looking across some distance. It is simply looking at a difference in vibrations. As it duplicates the vibration of the thing it is communicating with, the misconceptions vanish, and it becomes that much part of the theta of the universe. When the thetan starts to look at the universe as other determinism it starts to go downhill.
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