Reference: Subject: Scientology Fundamentals
Scientology provides the following definitions associated with EXTERIORIZATION.
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Scientology Technical Dictionary
“IDENTIFICATION, 1. the inability to evaluate differences in time, location, form, composition, or importance.”
“IDENTIFICATION, 2. identification is a monotone assignment of importance.”
“IDENTIFICATION, 3. the lowest level of reasoning is complete inability to differentiate, which is to say, identification.”
“IDENTIFICATION, 4. Duplicating in one space continually, is in itself identification.”
Scientology identifies Static with theta and theta with thetan. It lacks a clear differentiation among these three concepts. Subject Clearing differentiates these three concepts as Unknowable, Self (ability to postulate), and Being (the postulate of individuality), respectively.
“INTERIORIZATION, 1. interiorization means going into it too fixedly, and becoming part of it too fixedly. It doesn’t mean just going into your head.”
“INTERIORIZATION, 2. if the havingness of the preclear is low, he is apt to close in tight to the body because this gives him more havingness and if the preclear fears that the body is going to go out of control he will also move in closer to the body. Thus we get interiorization as no more complicated than fear of loss of control and drops in havingness.”
Interiorization means that the attention of the person has become narrowly fixated on the body because the body provides him with an obvious sense of individuality that gets attention from others.
“EXTERIOR, the fellow would just move out, away from the body and be aware of himself as independent of a body but still able to control and handle the body.”
A person feels exterior to the body when he is able to visualize it in totality. Similarly, when he can observe his thoughts he feels exterior to them. But to the degree he cannot observe himself as a being he feels interiorized.
“EXTERIORIZATION, 1. the state of the thetan, the individual himself, being outside his body. When this is done, the person achieves a certainty that he is himself and not his body.”
“EXTERIORIZATION, 2. the phenomenon of being in a position in space dependent on only one’s consideration, able to view from that space, bodies and the room, as it is.”
“EXTERIORIZATION, 3 . the act of moving out of the body with or without full perception.”
Exteriorization is a state where a person is feeling exterior to his body. He may or may not be able to visualize his body, but his attention is no longer fixated on his body as if the body alone determines his beingness. He realizes that he is much more than the body and that his individuality is also determined by his viewpoint.
There are dreamlike “out of body” experiences, which accompany the shocking realization that one is more than one’s body. But that does not mean that one can literally be separate from one’s body. Scientology makes the error of interpreting such a feeling in a literal sense.
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Subject Clearing
A person feels exterior to anything when he is able to visualize it in totality. This may happen when a person has a vivid “out of body” experience. The person suddenly realizes that he is more than just a body. Until then he had been identifying himself with his body because his body has gotten the most attention from others, and his sense of individuality has built up on this attention.
The vividness of “out of body” experience springs from complete assimilation of related sensations in the mental matrix. This applies to sensation from the sense organs that assimilate routinely in mental matrix to create present time perceptions. It also applies to a facsimile coming forward on the genetic line and assimilating in the mental matrix for the first time appearing as a vivid “past life” memory. You can also create a vivid visualization of being out in space if all the related sensations happens to assimilate completely in the mental matrix.
A person can thus visualize being completely separate from the body. But this does not mean that he is literally without a body. He may even visualize being completely separate from this universe, but that doesn’t mean he is no longer connected with the universe. The ultimate exteriorization occurs when the person realizes that his sense of individuality is just his postulate. But that doesn’t take away his individuality.
Scientology looks at the “out of body” experiences and makes the error of interpreting it literally to mean that the “thetan” can separate himself from the body and survive body death.
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Comments
It is a good subject to discuss. There are a lot of assumptions which should be acknowledged. For example: The assumption that ” . . . interiorization must precede exteriorization.”
The idea of, and the discussion of interiorization should include an understanding of, and an explanation of consciousness. If the conscious mind cannot be thoroughly understood and explained, then it seems to me that the location of that consciousness could be difficult to discern.
I could liken locating the point of inception of consciousness to taking my finger and pointing to the inception of the Big Bang. And possibly, the answer to both of those locations are the same.
The reason I wrote, “Any exteriorization must be preceded by interiorization,” is because if a person has been exterior he is used to it and doesn’t even notice it. The out-of-body experience is always a sudden change in the state of attention.
Is there a similar experience attached with interiorization? Yes, I think so. Suddenly, falling in love would be one. In interiorization the attention gets fixed on something. I think interiorization occurs early in childhood, when the child got badly hurt or got sick for the first time.
Consciousness exists whether one is exteriorized or interiorized. Consciousness simply changes when a transition occurs from one state to another.
Consciousness is a more basic state. One is conscious of the location of things around one. Consciousness itself gets a location when it gets identified with the body. That identification would definitely be a moment of interiorization.
Bing Bang would have no location either until it gets identified with some object or objects. That would be a moment of interiorization too.
“I think interiorization occurs early in childhood, when the child got badly hurt or got sick for the first time.”
I have specific memories of my infancy. I also had recurring dreams as a child which, as you wrote, were triggered by illness.
Big Bang is a large extrapolation taken from the quality of distant vs near galaxy light. Consciousness is a type of reflection of one’s reflecting of one’s environment. Everyone knows what consciousness is and yet no one knows what consciousness is. Many assumptions are in play with this that I haven’t reconciled. Theories are mental constructs called world views. Everyone has one until they don’t and all of them serve until they don’t. It seems that having one is inescapable until one escapes and all of it seems tautological to me.
I think that it is ironic that much of the technology that we build mirrors some aspect of our own consciousness. Examples: computer technology and its subjects such as self driving autos and robots.
I certainly understand what you have written about and what Hubbard taught about interiorization and exteriorization — Except for the parts that I don’t. LOL. Seriously, I understand the words but they don’t describe phenomena which can easily be physically duplicated.
One repeatedly thinks about those things that one is interiorized in.
Well, I guess that is so. Then is interiorization necessary to think about a thing?
The stress is on “repeatedly.” Normally, one observing in present time, and those observations are continually getting assimilated in the mental matrix. So, there is natural thinking activity, which is not interiorization. But when the attention goes back to something repeatedly, then there is something unusual. Something needs to be sorted out. There is an anomaly. Therefore, one is interiorized in an anomaly until it is sorted out.
Thank you. I understand.
Exteriorization is phenomena of the attention being free of any fixed considerations about the body. The viewpoint is, therefore, free to postulate the position of the body, and its environment, at any distance relative to itself.
Location in space together with time are two subjects that I understand only superficially. Somewhat like understanding the orbital shell or electron cloud as a probability rather than as a rigid substance. Somewhat like the electromagnetic that delivers power around the outside of a copper wire, I efficiently and accurately quantify and calculate what is occurring, yet I cannot see with my eyes what is happening.
I toss about terminology like, “present time,” as though I know what that is, yet by the time that I have bothered to have such a thought erupt, that moment has already passed.
I must pace myself so as not to interiorize into these subjects. Like coping with my tinnitus, sometimes I must ignore it or else it begins to wear on me.
Space is made up of an overall extent of energy; time is the overall duration of that energy, Both are infinite because of the law of conservation of energy.
Within that infinite extent there are parts with their relative extents and locations. Compared to the overall infinite duration, these parts have their own durations. Parts may disappear at one location and appear at another location. That generates the appearance of motion.
Rigidity can be explained in terms of location and duration. Macro view is just the sum total of micro views. Vision is just one of the senses. Mind is also a sense organ.
“Present time” depends on your span of attention. It can be a millisecond or a millions of years depending on your viewpoint.
It is just a matter of resolving the terminology for yourself so you can employ it to resolve actual anomalies. Hope you can visualize what is written here. There is no mystery in all this.
“Present time” depends on your span of attention. It can be a millisecond or a millions of years depending on your viewpoint.
. . . means that time is an abstraction? Yes?
Therefore, “live in the moment,” can be abbreviated to “live,” or “live mindfully,” full meaning?
Therefore, “live in the moment,” can be abbreviated to “live,” or “live mindfully,” retaining full meaning?
Time is a manifestation of things existing at a location for a duration, things appearing and disappearing, things changing, cycles within cycles. Present time is how much of time you can span your attention over.
Therefore, thinking of time as something more than motion is abstraction.
This is interesting, as I have revisited this idea more than a few times. For me, this is consistent with the concept that the universe is infinite.