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Project: Hubbard 1954: The Phoenix Lectures

This paper presents Chapter 20 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 IMPORTANCE OF TWO-WAY COMMUNICATION DURING OPENING PROCEDURE BY DUPLICATION

When we say thetan we’re talking about an emanation point. We’re talking about a person. He writes letters, he greets you in a silly fashion, he does this, he does that. Let’s examine, for a change, the Cause end of this line. All too often one examines only the Effect end of the line, because that’s where interest gets centered. When we examine the Cause end of the line we discover something of tremendous interest about it: Cause, if it desires to get anything like an ARC effect at the Effect point, must take into consideration the fact that the Effect point is often quite incapable of mocking itself up as Cause.

A person appears to be an emanation point. As a thetan he is the resultant of all persisting considerations of a theta system. A person is usually being an effect. Rarely he is being a cause.

Here is CAUSE — DISTANCE — EFFECT. Now, to get perfect duplication it is necessary that Effect mock itself up in some fashion or other in order to get in the duplication of this Cause — in order to receive the communication at all.

In communication, the distance arises due to lack of duplication. In the absence of distance, both cause and effect operate in unison like two meshing gears, but there is vector from cause to effect.

To give you an example of that: you’re an American in France. Now a Frenchman comes up and he says, “Blotheree zomberfiel, ello blfthblorerup.” And you say, “Huh.” You weren’t an effect at all, really, not the kind of effect he intended. He wanted you to put your baggage on the van or something. And you sure get a kind of an only-one feeling when you wander around doing this a lot, and people come up to you who don’t speak English, don’t speak deaf and dumb, don’t speak Boy Scout Semaphore. But they throw a lot of verbalization in your face which is supposed to mean something, and you don’t comprehend it. Furthermore, you are acutely aware of the fact that their customs are probably unfathomably strange. For instance, in France, if you’re an American, your idea of plumbing and the French idea of plumbing are two entirely different things. Two entirely different things. The whole problem of trying to walk into any civilization is actually the problem of being able to mock yourself up. You don’ t willingly mock yourself up as a Frenchman. You don’ t willingly mock yourself up as part and parcel of all these strange and outrageous customs. You could understand this quite easily on the Effect point, but how about the Cause point? The Cause point has, much more so than the Effect point, to mock itself up, because the Effect point mockup is being assisted by Cause, but the Cause point mockup is not being assisted, and it’s this fact — that it’s not being assisted — which causes people to think they need help.

They get used to being on the Effect side, and when they get over on the Cause side they say, “Where’s all the help?” So they invent an analyzer and a computer and a Reactive Bank and all kinds of things in order to be over here at Cause point, because the Cause point has to mock itself up just like the Effect point or subordinate Effect points which are not really capable of any great change, which are not capable of mocking themselves up, and will never be communicated to, unless Cause mocks itself up.

So, in order to deliver an effect, Cause has to be able to mock himself up on a much higher self-determinism than Effect because Effect is assisted in the mockup by Cause.

The ability to be at Cause-point is necessary for good communication. You have to be able to be. In other words, you have to be able to mock yourself up. If you, instantly, addressed by this Frenchman, were to mock yourself up as a French official, were you able to do this, you see, you would find suddenly that it was “all on the house”. Actually something would come out of an interchange of this character — you say suddenly, “What are you doing without your identification papers?” or something of the sort, and he would say, “Oui, Oui, merci, thank you very much, no checkee … uh… adios…” or whatever. You have to mock yourself up as something he recognizes as Cause, but what kind of a second sight would this take? What does this Effect recognize as Cause? You mock yourself up as what this Effect point normally recognizes as Cause, and that puts you on the Cause end of the line. It is therefore the Cause end of the line which you should examine, because that’s where, as an auditor, you’re trying to put the preclear. You’re not really trying to put the preclear at the Effect end of the line. Now if you understand that thoroughly — you’re getting what is meant by the increase of self-determinism. We mean we’re increasing this preclear’s ability to be at the Cause end of the line.

You don’t become effect of what you don’t understand. Becoming effect is easy as it is being assisted by cause. Being cause is more difficult. It makes people think that they need help, and that is why mind is called upon.

To be Cause requires much higher self-determinism. That is how cause is recognized by the effect point. In auditing, we are increasing the self-determinism of the person to be at cause-point. It is necessary for good communication.

If the preclear came into the auditing room, and all he said was “Hehehehehe”, why, you would recognize that he is not quite at the Cause end of the line. In fact, he’s probably not at the Effect end either, he’s probably halfway between the two points, being a communication particle.

An individual can drift away from Cause point, get on the line itself, and become a particle on the line. If you walked up to him on the street and wrote an address on his chest and put a stamp on his forehead and put him into a mail box he’d be perfectly happy about it. Such cases have become communication particles. They are a message. They don’t even have a message, they are one. The exhausted messenger throwing himself off his horse and dying at the king’s feet as he announces the defeat is being his message. There isn’t any reason why anybody should kill horses or messengers just to tell some king that he lost a couple of chunks of real estate, but they used to do it all the time. In other words, these people could very easily be communication particles. Not cause or effect at all.

The decline is simply from able Cause to fixed Cause — and then they start riding out on the line. From an Effect which can receive, to an Effect which has to receive, to an Effect which won’t receive. Desire, enforce, inhibit. Eventually somebody would be found avoiding all causes, avoiding being Cause, avoiding anything else which was Cause. Whatever they’d do they’d finally get on the line as a particle or symbol. They go from Cause into the state of Symbol, they go from Effect into the state of No Symbol, but they get on the line, they slide around, and they get mass, meaning, mobility. Now there’s nothing totally bad about this. But let’s restore this preclear’s ability.

When you encounter a person, who is incapable of addressing you physically or verbally in any acceptable way that makes an easy communication it is because he cannot change. He is fixed. If you, or the warden of a prison, or the soda jerk down at the corner drugstore, or the President of the United States walked in, he would be found in the same fixed state of address.

Well, if he can’t change, he is expecting continually that he’s going to be the Effect. So, we have a preclear sitting there and it’s: “Well, you go on and audit. I’ll be effect.” They sit there in “can’t change”, unwilling to be Cause. So, it’s up to you to get the preclear to the point where he is at least conscious that he is moving something, that he is not being moved. That’s why you get him to go around touching walls and objects.

Fixation results in a person neither being cause nor effect, but just being a message. He is expecting continually that he’s going to be the Effect. To get him to the point where he is at least conscious that he is moving something, and not being moved you get him to go around touching walls and objects.

But the essence of this is contained in duplication. This person cannot duplicate blitherarerup, therefore he can’t talk with you, but that’s true of him and all life. He recognizes his inability to duplicate life and he recognizes that he can’t get on a two-way communication basis with it in such a way that it then is assisted in its receipt. Life will receive your messages, if it recognizes that you are a communication source. How does it do that? Well you have to be like it. You have to assist its duplication.

This does not mean that an auditor has to get down on the floor and grovel and duplicate all possible weird and bizarre things that a case could do, because actually all you’re duplicating there is the circuit (Circuit: a part of an individual’s bank that behaves as though it were someone or something separate from him and either dictates or takes over his actions. Circuits are the result of engramic commands.) but certainly an auditor could be called upon to duplicate any average motion. The person folds his hands, the auditor folds his hands. He sees then a physical gesture being duplicated.

The common denominator of this inability is the duplication factor. In all this communication difficulty, there is basically this inability to duplicate — so much so that reality could be called and rephrased and redefined as: the degree of duplication. Affinity is actually the distance and the particle size. Communication of course is Cause-Distance-Effect. And the degree of duplication is what makes reality. You are as real to those around you as they can receive you.

The problem with this person is that he cannot duplicate. He recognizes his inability to duplicate life and to get life to duplicate him. When auditor mimics him he feels a relief that he is being duplicated. The degree of duplication determines reality. It reduces the sense of distance (increases affinity) and enhances the common activity (communication).

Did you ever get some kind of an inkling around your family that they weren’t receiving what you were talking about? Well, that’s because they fixed in their minds a long time ago the fact that they were duplicating you little. You were different in size. This all by itself would be sufficient to make the family incapable of receiving information from you. Grandpop’s a fairly successful manufacturer, and he’s seen this grandson who’s been running around while grandpop was in his middle years, and the kid goes off and studies sales promotion, with all the verve of youth and a good background and a good inheritance on this whole line and boy he could give Grandpop cards and spades on the subject of promotion. He moves into Grandpop’s sphere of activity and he’s on the job. He puts a suggestion memo on Grandpop’s desk. Do you think it ever gets read? Ha ha, that’s just from Jimmy. And Jimmy goes out and starts to work for another company, and it starts selling the whole field and wipes out Grandpop. “He didn’t know what he was talking about.” Grandpop has already conceived the idea, you see, that the smallness of Jimmy is not a duplication. And that being his primary idea connected with this individual, he then knows that all he can receive really from this individual is “Ga-ga-ga-ga”, “Gimme a lolly pop” and “Gimme a nickel”. Something on this order would be within his basic communication line with this child, so afterwards he could not then take the child’s communication line seriously. But the child changes, grows up.

The main impatience that you ever had with parents or anybody like that around you is their fixed idea that you are small. Then you come around later and your parents are getting on in years and they’re ailing and you say, “Why don’t you” — and give them some sensible suggestion — you’re going to help them. And you find out that almost anything you suggest is unacceptable, because they know they can’t duplicate someone your size. They know, if they know anything, that you’re about a foot tall, or two feet tall — wherever they’re stuck on the track as far as you’re concerned. Mama very often gets stuck on the track at birth with the child, the first view of the child, and after that the child just doesn’t ever have a sensible solution to anything. But the child is actually better adapted to the modern environment than Mama is.

Thus, an odd thing could happen, if an auditor were not fully aware of this duplication factor in the beingness of the preclear. He could be under the delusion that the preclear is improving — when the preclear is actually simply getting more like the auditor. Well, that is what the entire field of psycho-analysis is built upon: if we could just get the patient to be just like the analyst, why then we’d be all set. They apparently go through some magic rites, as I was taught — in order to accomplish what? — the patient’s shifting into the valence of the analyst. Well, the assumption by the preclear of a beingness other than his own — a valence — is not the goal of an auditor. The goal of an auditor is to return to the preclear more and more self-determinism. It is to make him capable of being at Cause point and at Effect point by his own self-determined choice.

It is hard for parents to duplicate their children even after they have grown up because for in their eyes, children always remain small. A parent may think the child has grown up when he becomes more like him. The goal of the auditor is not to make the preclear more like him, but to make him capable of being at Cause point and at Effect point by his own self-determined choice.

How many dozen ways could you run Duplication? You could run it the basic way. Highly stylized, very pure technique and simply run it like that. That is the most effective of all processes we know on duplication.

If an auditor failed with this process it would be because he didn’t maintain two-way communication. He lets the preclear go on to an automatic endurance run without actually finding out what the preclear really feels, really experiences, what it’s all about, what the sensations are. This doesn’t mean that the auditor even vaguely varies his auditing commands. The auditing commands are always the same. They’re given in the exact order in which they’re given in R2-17: Opening Procedure by Duplication. But let the preclear talk to you! That is the difference. If you don’t get him at the Cause point of the communication line, you’ve failed. So we make the preclear talk.

How do we do this? We give the exact command. This is one thing an auditor must learn — to keep continually in two-way communication while you’re running any process without actually varying the process or coming an inch off the process, while you throw in on the communication line what is known as “dunnage”, the stuff you put around the cargo to keep it straight in a ship.

The preclear goes over woozily and picks up the book. You say, “Look at it.” You ask him to describe it.

He says, “Book?” Something’s wrong with this bloke’s communication! No, there’s nothing wrong at all. You see you’ve got to get those commands in there just exactly in the order in which they are given. You’ve got to get him to the book, to the bottle, to the book, to the bottle, to the book, to the bottle. Just exactly. And then if you failed to demand to be answered, by failing to insist that the action be knowingly accomplished, and by failing to listen when the preclear says something — you would lose. He’s picked up the book for the 565th time and all of a sudden the whole room goes purple, and he says, “My God!”

And you say “What is its weight?” Well, cut your throat — you’ve just cut the preclear’s! Then, when he says “Ooohhhh,” and you say “What happened?” it’s not going to do any good. You’ve missed it.

When you see something happen to him, find out what it is. If you see that he’s really going through it like an automaton, for heaven’s sake pick him out of it. He’s told you for the 55th time, “It’s cool.” I’m not above putting some two-way communication in there, getting him to say something. For fifty-five times, automatically, he was saying “Cool”, “Cool”, “Cool”. He wasn’t feeling it any more. He was still running the command you gave fifty-five times ago. Now if you don’t make him communicate, if you don’t make him describe, and if you don’t listen to him, it all goes on an automaticity. It just goes on, and on, and on… and I swear if he ran it on a total automaticity, you could run it for 250 hours with no change in the preclear except that he’d get tired legs.

Now the key to this thing is that each moment must be a new moment. Each action must be a new action. And gradually he peels apart these actions so they are different actions so that each moment is new, and that is the primary manifestation of Opening Procedure by Duplication. The newness of each moment.

Therefore, in the Opening Procedure by Duplication you do not let the preclear go on to an automatic endurance run without actually finding out what the preclear really feels, really experiences, what it’s all about, what the sensations are. So, you let the preclear talk to you, while you run the process without varying it. When you see something happen to him, find out what it is. If you see that he’s really going through it like an automaton, pick him out of it.

So, when he just gets repetitive, repetitive, you get suspicious. You say, “What color is that book?” I’ve even gone so far as to say to a preclear who has been describing the object as “a book”, “a book”, etc., — “Will you please describe it as an object.” New frame of reference. “Well… it’s a… it’s… it’s a… rectangular… it’s a rectangular object… made out of paper… cloth… cloth on the outside. How about that! You know, books, they’re cloth on the outside.” He’s back into an interest in the process. I’ve seen this process run, by the way, with two typewriters!

That’s incorrect. They have to be two dissimilar objects. The preclear did get a lot stronger.

You could even get that on automatic. But the second these responses become monotonous you’ll know that your preclear has simply settled down to being an Effect. You’re trying to get your preclear to be Cause. So let’s make him originate communications to you concerning the object. That doesn’t mean that each new communication has got to be new and original, but it does have to tell you that he is experiencing that instant and not some other instant.

Opening Procedure by Duplication pulls apart all the moments of a time track. It pulls them apart because of the duplication. Unless each moment is a new moment you don’t have that occurring. Book, bottle, book, bottle, book bottle, boooo — it’s a book! It’s not a word! Very difficult realizations come through to a preclear.

Opening Procedure by Duplication pulls apart all the moments of a time track because of the duplication. Unless each moment is a new moment you don’t have that occurring. The second the preclear’s responses become monotonous you’ll know that he has simply settled down to being an Effect. So, have him tell you what he is experiencing that instant and not some other instant.

You’ve got to know that your preclear can talk, and he must talk, and he must describe what is happening to him. When something happens he’s expected to call it to your attention, you’re expected then to pay some attention to it.

That doesn’t mean you go off the process. But let him tell you about it.

A preclear will exteriorize on Opening Procedure by Duplication. And when he’s just about ready to exteriorize and wants to tell the auditor about the fact that he’s just about to do this — that is not the time to give the next auditing command or not be interested. The moment the auditor’s not interested there is no auditing going on. I’ve seen preclears who’ve just gone “dead in their heads” through not being permitted to communicate.

The auditor is not there to suppress communication on the part of the preclear.

Remember that an obsessive overflow is not a communication. You have to know that. But actual communication on the part of the preclear must not be suppressed by the auditor. So there’s the trick, and it shows up in Opening Procedure by Duplication because you do have to keep to the exact process commands. He does have to go repetitively through these exact motions. But you have to make sure that he’s experiencing these things. You do that by communicating and you’ll find Opening Procedure by Duplication working for you much more speedily than it ever has before. You are not looking out the window when a preclear has an enormous piece of news to impart. You don’t sit there looking out of the window, auditing on a sort of prank basis — “Go over to the book, now touch that wall,” or something of this sort, and without letting the preclear communicate, because the preclear gets a very sudden tone drop as a result of this. It’ll actually stick him in his head. It has turned off perception. It will do all kinds of things.

Remember that an obsessive overflow is not a communication. But actual communication on the part of the preclear must not be suppressed by the auditor.

Letting the preclear talk, demanding the thing really be described, keeping it out of the automatic machine category, making each moment new and fresh in Opening Procedure by Duplication, and never varying its auditing commands — that’s how you win on this process. You can say other things than the auditing commands, but that doesn’t give you any license to vary the process.

You just make sure that a communication is going on.

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In the Opening Procedure by Duplication you do not let the preclear go on to an automatic endurance run without actually finding out what the preclear really feels, really experiences, what it’s all about, what the sensations are. So, you let the preclear talk to you, while you run the process without varying it. When you see something happen to him, find out what it is.

Opening Procedure by Duplication pulls apart all the moments of a time track because of the duplication. Unless each moment is a new moment you don’t have that occurring. The second the preclear’s responses become monotonous you have him tell you what he is experiencing that instant and not some other instant.

Know that an obsessive outflow is not a communication. But actual communication on the part of the preclear must not be suppressed by the auditor.

Letting the preclear talk, demanding the thing really be described, keeping it out of the automatic machine category, making each moment new and fresh in Opening Procedure by Duplication, and never varying its auditing commands — that’s how you win on this process. You can say other things than the auditing commands, but that doesn’t give you any license to vary the process.

You just make sure that a communication is going on.

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Project: Hubbard 1954: The Phoenix Lectures

This paper presents Chapter 18 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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OPENING PROCEDURE OF 8-C

It is utterly fascinating what you can do with a process which is apparently as permissive as the Opening Procedure of SOP 8-C. The exact details of the process are given in Issue 24G of the Journal of Scientology.

The number of case factors which are handled in 8-C is fascinating, because here you are processing straight toward simplicity.

We know that what is wrong with a person is his subjective universe. That has gotten into trouble. Now, in view of the fact that he could mock up a tremendous amount of space if he had to, he could mock up lots of energy, he could mock up objects, and he could do this any number of times, then why he’s lugging around something called “his universe” is a little bit difficult for a reasonable man to understand, and yet that is what people are doing. You get a sort of idea of somebody walking around with a great many clanking chains, old tin cans, old cigar butts, and so forth and calling these possessions. “His universe” looks like a kid’s toy box. If you’ve ever looked into a three-year old’s choicest possessions, that’s about the order of havingness the thetan pulls along with him.

He gives these things up with the greatest of reluctance, yet his total health, you might say, is dependent upon his ability to make, to have, new fresh things, and to do almost anything he wants to with them.

What is wrong with a person is his subjective universe. He is attached to certain considerations and lugging them around even when he can mock them up any time.

But, remember, it was always very, very difficult for him to get an object into such a circumstance that it was actually somebody else’s object. To procure an object which was somebody else’s is what he has to do in order to have that object. If we look at the four conditions of existence, the “Ises”, we discover just exactly why these things are so very valuable to him. They are so valuable because they mean to him a period when he was actually in communication with thetans as such, and he could blame them, and if he could blame them then he could have something. And if he couldn’t blame them then he couldn’t have anything — unless he duplicated himself, and so had another thetan to blame. This way he would get a persistence, he would get survival in terms of motion. Otherwise it would all seem completely motionless to him.

Now again all of these things are simply considerations, and in view of the fact that they are all considerations, we can get enormously baffled as to how considerations could be so important.

Remember they are only important because of the considerations which one held in common with others.

It would be one thing simply to change one’s own considerations all over the place, and it would be quite another thing to do this when one has a series of considerations which have been thoroughly agreed upon with others.

So the thetan, with his old cigar butts, torn playing cards, and clanking chains — you see he’s been in communication one time or another and the system of communication was all established and therefore he could have an other-determinism so true and so convincing that even he, would not be able to question its convincingness. Nobody could possibly question the validity of these objects he was carrying around.

It’s simply, then: he will have some way of blaming somebody else for having put that mass of energy there, and then that energy mass will persist. If he can’t blame anybody else, why it can too easily be As-ised and so disappear. Other-determinism becomes vital.

Now, when we look over this problem, we discover that an individual can go just so far down this line, and then he becomes himself disabled. He begins to count on other-determinism more and more and more heavily to produce his own survival. We can see this in terms of attention — an individual in this society without any attention from anybody else would not have much chance of surviving. An individual, just on the basis of food alone, would have great difficulty, but he’s gotten down to where those objects really have to be solid, and so we get this physical universe, and the particles of this physical universe are so beautifully lost, so completely confused, so misplaced away from point of origin that they can be subjected to a law in physics known as the conservation of energy: that energy cannot be destroyed, can only be converted. Anything that’s lost, misplaced, confused, can only be converted, unless you discover the point where it was actually manufactured.

This universe thus becomes valuable. It becomes valuable because we’ve gone to so much trouble to lose enough things that we then have a continuance of objects.

A thetan who has become upset about the various agreements in existence believes that he no longer can communicate with something. He is a nothingness; therefore, he has to communicate with a nothingness, he thinks. The communication formula places him at fault.

Here we have an individual who is living by the communication formula and yet cannot recover his own ability easily to follow the basic of communication, which is all things are on the same point. When you consider a consideration, you find out it doesn’t have any dimension whatsoever. And a thetan has no dimension. So, he’s gone to a lot of work, to make a universe that’s as heavy as this one. And he’s blamed it all on God, and he’s blamed it all in various directions, and he has made what amounts to a considerable investment. He has a big investment. And now he has gone so far that having made this investment he can no longer look at it, because he has to follow the communication formula. He cannot occupy the same space as an object. Two objects cannot occupy the same space. Therefore, he is not a thetan- plus-body. He is a body.

And once in a while we run into some materialist, in processing, and just the barest thought that he is something other than a body is completely, completely contradictory to him. It’s utterly assaulting. You’d think that you’d held a gun on the man and asked him for his money. He’ll become very excited. “I am a body. I know I am a body. That is all I am. I am one,” exclamation point, exclamation point. He gets real worried about it.

This person at the same time is likely to be the one who is most concerned with God. This is curious isn’t it? Well, he has to have an other-determinism. He has to avoid responsibility. His field of awareness will be relatively black, by the way.

That’s not a criticism of the individual. That is just the state he is in. Why is he in it? He knows two things can’t occupy the same space. Obviously if he is there, and the body is there, then he must be the body. That’s the most elementary thing we could possibly put together. This individual has himself mocked up as something and is being something so thoroughly that he cannot disassociate himself from it. So, you tell him to be three feet back of his head — and he can’t be three feet back of his head.

Hubbard thinks that the person is doing so because he wants these things to persist continually all the time in thorough agreement with others. The person accomplishes that by blaming others for it. This is how this universe has become solid for which he blames God. But this deteriorates his ability to communicate because as a nothingness he cannot communicate with somethingness. So, he comes to see himself as a body.

Now, we’re processing something which has four parts: (1) the thetan, (2) his machinery, (3) the body, and (4) the reactive bank. The reactive bank is a stimulus-response machine of some magnitude.

The body actually is something capable of collecting an enormous number of molecules and electrons and converting energy and doing all sorts of interesting things.

An auditor occasionally makes a gross error in that he processes any one of these things other than the thetan.

So, there are that many engrams? — well, does this so assault our sensibilities, that these things exist, that we must vanquish and make every one of them, one by one, disappear? Actually, what we want to do is improve the thetan’s ability to handle reactive banks.

Or an auditor comes along and he starts processing “the body”. The body, the body, the body. What kind of auditor would this be?

It would be an auditor who had to have something. This auditor can’t possibly have nothing, yet if he’s auditing he’s actually auditing a nothing. He’s trying to free a nothingness. And if he can’t conceive of a nothingness and has to go in the direction of a somethingness he will not actually audit the preclear.

Every once in a while, some preclear has such an observable surplus of thetan machinery that an auditor just can’t stand leaving that machinery alone. He just can’t stand it. He’s got to get in there and get all these mechanisms out of the road, get ‘em all mopped up and wiped out, and the next thing you know the thetan is very, very sad indeed. Look at all the years he’s spent blaming this machinery on somebody else. But when you’ve gotten through processing all this machinery, what’ve you done anyway? You’ve just processed some machinery. And it wasn’t sick!

So, we have these four major parts, but we are processing the thetan. He doesn’t have any mass, he can make space, he can make energy, and he can locate objects in space. He has very definite capabilities. Very positive, definite capabilities. And by the improvement of these capabilities we improve his ability to communicate, and so, improving his ability to communicate, we make him able to handle not just the reactive bank he’s mixed up with at the moment, not just the body he happens to be inhabiting or hanging around at the moment, and certainly not his bank of machinery. We make it possible for him to handle large quantities of things — other people’s machinery and anything. It’s very interesting what he can do. But he cannot possibly be hung up on the basis of “two things can’t occupy the same space”. He couldn’t be hung up on that one. Another thing he couldn’t be hung up on, if you’re going to separate him easily, is that it’s all other-determined. You see, if it’s all other-determined, then he would depend on other things to place him in space, and if he’s depending on other things to place him in space, he will sit there and “wait for the auditor to exteriorize him”. So our point of approach here is the thetan. Now, the easiest way to approach this is simply to make and break communication with the immediate environment.

Essentially a person’s thinking has become more mechanical. Auditing does not address mechanical thinking. Instead it addresses the person’s ability to handle mechanical thinking. The person is usually sitting there and waiting for the auditor to do something for him. The easiest way to approach this is simply to make and break communication with the immediate environment.

Environment is the physical universe, security, it’s right there, it’s solid. This is the space of the room, the floor, the ceiling, the walls, the objects there, and if we happen to be looking through these things, then it’s the walls in the next room, and up through the roof, the air about the house and down through, it’s the earth underneath the house. And environment means how far can this individual perceive with great certainty in the physical universe. And that’s what we’re interested in when we say environment. We don’t have the preclear in Chicago, for instance, and then because he is an inhabitant of Iowa, process him in the environment of Iowa. Now this sounds, this sounds too utterly stupid, that anybody could do this, but believe me, it has happened. And what would they be processing? They’d be processing a set of facsimiles.

There is an immense ratio between the amount of facsimiles or energy masses a person has, and his ability to communicate. The more energy masses and more facsimiles which a person has, whether white, or green, or purple, or whether they’re black curtains or actual apparent solid objects — we don’t care what these are — the more energy mass the individual has, the less he is capable of communication. A fellow runs a concept — and gets a flow past his face. He feels something moving past his face. Ah, we’ve got a case of energy masses. How did they get there? They got there by the thetan directing his attention in various directions, manufacturing energy the while — and you’re going to process this case as a preclear, this thetan in such a way that he sprays out new energy masses around his body? That would be a curious thing wouldn’t it? And you know there are processes that you could run — not any listed in Intensive Procedure — which would lead an individual to immediately mock up more, and more, and more and more energy masses in the vicinity of his body. You could actually artificialize his condition.

He’s as well off as he doesn’t have to have energy masses.

A preclear has to have energy masses to the degree that he believes he cannot create space and energy. That’s a direct index. So, we find somebody who has large floating ridges and that sort of thing and this individual is having just that much difficulty. No question about it and no exceptions. It doesn’t matter what manifestation he’s exhibiting at this particular moment; a person is as bad off as he has these energy masses which are not placed but are floating. You could say they are “floating” energy masses because — everywhere he walks he’s got them. Now he’s as well off as he can simply take or leave the walls and other items of the physical universe wherever he finds himself. He can take them or leave them, see them or not see them at will. He’s well off when he can do that.

A person has to have energy masses to the degree that he believes he cannot create space and energy. The more energy mass the individual has, the less he is capable of communication. The immediate environment provides stable data. He’s as well off as he can simply take or leave the walls and other items of the physical universe wherever he finds himself. This helps him align his considerations.  

What process would you tailor up in order to accomplish this? Well, you could simply have a preclear sitting in a chair and looking around the room spotting spots in one location after another. It’s a fantastic technique. It’ll do quite a bit for a preclear, just to have him do this. And actually, you are applying this further when you have him get up and walk around and PICK OUT the spots, and TOUCH them, and then at will, BREAK COMMUNICATION with them. And SOP 8-C is actually a gradient scale, and 8-C’s Opening Procedure is a gradient scale of getting this done.

There is an additional process that could go along with this. You could have him close his eyes and start checking off spots in the environment.

The case that has had his perception turn on very fully, and then promptly turn off and it has never been on since, has simply practically scared himself out of his wits. His perception turned on and that was too much Is-ness. It was too steep a gradient, he could see everything too clearly, and this made him nervous, it upset him, it has disturbed his thetan digestion, and made him very unhappy — and what is this? This is just simply a case of too much, and instantly he said “It isn’t”. He said “Not-is”. He took a look at all this environment and said, “Dull down. Get real dull. It better be unreal around here, it’s just too bright, it’s too loud,” and so on.

Well, what happens if we have this person sitting there in the chair with his eyes shut and we just have him look around and spot spots in the room, and a facsimile shows up? We just have him go on spotting spots in whatever he can see. We don’t suddenly stop and say, “Oh, you’ve got a lot of blackness. Let’s spot some spots in the blackness”. No, you just keep hounding him for some sort of perception of the room. That’s what you want. And he keeps spotting spots in the room and spotting them and spotting them and spotting them and spotting them. Just that and no more. Spotting them behind him, above him, below him. If you don’t watch him a little bit he’ll spot them all in front of him. You’ve got to direct his attention behind. A thetan has a 360 Deg periphery of vision. There is no “behind” or get thee behind me thetan.

Now, here we have in a thetan, then, a possibility that the moment he really saw the room he’d turn it off again. He’d flinch. And then you keep right on processing in the direction of the room. You see what this would be. They’d flinch, their perception would go off, and you just take it from there and have him spot spots in the room. So, he says his perception is all turned off — well, you just have him find something he can perceive. He says, “I think it’s a facsimile. I don’t know what it is, really. It doesn’t seem to me to be terribly real…” You just say, “Close your eyes. Now spot some spots in the room.” The preclear says, “I… what d’you mean close my eyes and spot…”

“Well, can you see anything when you’ve got your eyes shut there?” “No… of course not.”

“Well, why don’t you look around. Get an impression of anything?”

“Mmmm. Well, what do you know. It’s all black.” He never noticed this before.

You say, “Well, all right. How about this now — you say it’s all black — well, is there any place where the black is thinner?” Behind you for instance, or above you or below you? Do you make out anything at all about this room?”

“No.”

“Well, as you’re sitting there with your eyes closed, do you know the location of anything in this room?”

“Yea, well, I know where my body is.”

In course a case like this will probably assert to you violently, if he wasn’t prepared otherwise, that he was a body, had always been a body, would always be a body, had never been anything else but a body, and that you live but once. And he would also tell you that during his study of Korzybski’s Science and Sanity he agreed with him entirely that two things could not occupy the same space. He’ll tell you all these things. It would be a very informative conversation if you let him proceed. You only let him proceed on such a conversation, by the way, long enough to keep two-way communication going, then you get him doing something.

“All right,” you’d say, “Well, do you know of the location of any object in this room?” And the fellow says, “Well, there’s a table right over there, I know that.”

“All right. Look at that table.”

Probably his eyes will pop open and he will stare at it — but you have him keep his eyes closed. You’d get an exchange something like this: He knows there’s a table over there, and you say “Spot some spots in it.”

He says, “I can’t possibly spot any spots in the table if I can’t see it.” “Do you know it’s there?”

“Yes, I know it’s there. I saw it when I came in.”

“Well, all right. Spot some spots on it.”

“But I’ll have to open my eyes.”

“Go ahead and spot some spots on that table.”

He finally does. And the blackness starts to get a tattle-tale grey around him, and then it flickers on and flickers off, and perception comes on and all of a sudden he’s aware of the fact that it’s all real, and then he convulsively shuts off all of his perception, and then he lets it turn on again, and then he shuts it off again, and then he flinches this way and flinches that way. Why? He knows it’s dangerous to look at things. He knows that. He knows, again, that it is dangerous to communicate. And he shuts it off before something else shuts it off. He’s there ahead of ‘em. But after it goes on and off and on and off a few times, it’s likely to be more and more upsetting to him for the time, because it’s likely to be getting more and more real. The room is likely to be getting more and more real, more and more solid.

Now you don’t let him completely fly out through the doors and the walls on this process and let him spot at unreal distances — spotting at a thousand yards, when a thousand millimeters would be much too great, and three millimeters is about what he can tolerate. So we keep him in the immediate environment, and we mean the physical universe when we say environment, and we mean objects that he’s fairly sure are there, and we just work him on that basis, and then, the first thing you know, the walls will start to disappear on him and then they’ll flicker on again and then they’ll flicker off, and it gets more and more real, and he gets upset about it and then he becomes calm about it and he goes through a lot of variations — and doing what? Just sitting right where he’s sitting and you don’t care where that is, spotting spots in the room whether the room is black, green, purple, or whether he’s got facsimiles that he’s really spotting or not. We don’t care what this preclear’s doing as long as he continues to spot spots. If he’s got a facsimile sitting there, and he shifts his attention on the facsimile he’ll go of it. He gets rid of some of this mass.

If he’s really just spotting into blackness, really changing his perception direction, you see, then Boooom, he’ll start looking through the blackness. If you have him look at the blackness and spot spots in the blackness you are validating these masses of energy which a thetan is as bad off as he has. What he’s witnessing with all these possessions and masses of energy is his own inability to really mock up something and have it belong to somebody else. That’s what he’s witnessing.

To accomplish this, you get the person to carefully observe his immediate environment and then have him close his eyes and visualize that environment as best as he can. He may sit in a chair and just look around observing one location after another. He may even get up and walk around and pick out the locations and touch various things there and feel them. The basic idea is to really become aware of his environment first using his physical perceptions. And then returning to the chair, closing his eyes, and visualizing mentally the whole environment in 360 degrees periphery of vision. The whole idea is to attain better coordination among physical and mental perceptions.

During this process long forgotten memories and startling facsimiles may show up. The person may acknowledge them but then he must continue with the process of improving perception of the immediate environment in as much detail as possible. He should not to get distracted by those memories and facsimiles and get involved with them.

In the beginning the mental visualization may just be spotty, turning on and then turning off. But with practice it would continue to improve and stay turned on. Finally, the mental visualization may become as good as the physical perceptions. The visualization may then start to increase to larger distances from him. But he must let it happen gradually and naturally.

Essentially, he is becoming aware of one spot, letting go of it and then becoming aware of another spot continually. He then learns to do the same thing with his facsimiles—spotting them and then letting them go continually. The physical environment acts as stable data to help him do that.

So there is that process. And out of this basic you get Opening Procedure of 8-C. But you can also do Opening Procedure of 8-C with the thetan, without moving the body. You could have the thetan touch things in the room. But actually, you don’t have him touch things and let go, you have him look at and look away. And you can carry through all the steps by more or less drilling the thetan in the room — preclear sitting there with eyes closed, and this becomes a tremendously workable procedure.

Actually, its most simple form is to just tell him to close his eyes, and if he knows of any object in the room at all while he has his eyes closed, spot spots in it.

Now the classic Group Processing example of this is a very simple one and that is “Three spots in the body, three spots in the room”. Have them spot three spots in the body, three spots in the room three spots in the body, three spots in the room, back and forth and at the end of this time, at the end of an hour’s group processing on perfectly green people, you’ll have four or five out of the twenty of them exteriorized — the usual run of people you run into.

8-C done with the body, however, and with no further tricks, its most elementary auditing commands as given in Intensive Procedure, is the only process—please mark this one down, please remember this—it’s the only process to use on the very, very low or difficult case. Let’s put that down, and recognize that when a very low level preclear comes in he has already determined exactly the processing he’s going to get. It’s down below Two on the Tone Scale, and what it takes to handle this case is Opening Procedure of 8-C, because in essence it is a purity of communication and is a very simple process to use, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have to be an artist to use it.

A person’s attention is usually fixed on his body, and his considerations are usually fixed on himself. This is introversion and interiorization. The whole purpose of this process is to get his attention extroverted towards his environment, and his considerations exteriorized from himself towards the universe. This is the most elementary auditing process that you can do. This works with everybody.

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What is wrong with a person is his subjective universe. His attention is introverted on his body and his considerations are fixated on himself. His thinking has become more mechanical. The procedure to remedy this condition is as follows:

The person carefully observes his immediate environment. He sits in a chair and just looks around observing one location after another. He may even get up and walk around and pick out the locations and touch various things and feel them. He then returns to the chair, closes his eyes, and visualizes mentally the whole environment in 360 degrees periphery of vision. The idea is to attain better alignment among physical and mental perceptions and become more aware of the environment.

During this process all kind of mental pictures and thoughts may turn up. The person may acknowledge such facsimiles, but he must not get distracted. He must continue with the process of becoming aware of the immediate environment in as much detail as possible. In the beginning the mental visualization may be spotty, turning on and then turning off. But with practice the visualization may continue to improve and stay turned on. Finally, it may become as good as the physical perceptions. The visualization may then start to expand to larger distances from him.

The purpose of this process is to get the person’s attention extroverted from the body towards the environment, and his considerations exteriorized from himself towards the universe. This is the most elementary auditing process you can do. This works with everybody.

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Project: Hubbard 1954: The Phoenix Lectures

This paper presents Chapter 16 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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AXIOMS (Part 4)

Having these Axioms, we are now particularly interested in this whole subject of truth and its actual use in auditing. We see immediately that any problem of any character or scope is the basic business of a Scientologist. If you have someone who wants to know about solutions, you had certainly better give him not a solution to a problem but the solution to problems, and that of course would be a basic and ultimate truth. Well, if you can describe a basic and ultimate truth, and describe it exactly, you have no problem at all in solving problems.

We see that failure to discover truth brings about stupidity. A person begins to believe he’s stupid if he can’t As-is.

We see that the discovery of truth would bring about an As-is-ness, by actual experiment, and thus we see that an ultimate truth would have no time, place or form. Whatever we had there would simply disappear if we discovered an ultimate truth. The ultimate truth is a perfect duplicate and therefore a Static. And, operationally, to achieve a Static would be to make a perfect duplicate.

We see that a lie as we understand it is an alteration of time, place, event or form, and that only lies persist.

We have to have a basic postulate, and then another postulate, before we get time. Two postulates. We can’t have time with one postulate unless it is the postulate that there will be time. That could be one postulate. But normally in operation we find that two postulates are necessary to achieve time.

Now which one of these postulates is going to persist if the two postulates deny each other: the second one is going to persist, because it is the time postulate.

Lying becomes an Alter-is-ness and becomes stupidity. In other words, we don’t discover where the thing is, we don’t discover exactly how it is, so we can’t unmock it, and there we are. The only thing that we can do with it possibly is to Not-is it or Alter-is it some more or do what a Black V does — just stir it around and hope it will disappear. He doesn’t As-is it. It doesn’t disappear.

Oddly enough, lying will develop into a stupidity. It also develops into a mystery — into this blackness which individuals are so upset about. It’s just an alteration of time, place, event or form after the fact of its having been created.

There would be two kinds of lie here. A mechanical lie does not lead to blackness. Mechanical lie: we mockup some space, and we put an object in that space and then we move it. The moment we’ve moved it we’ve lied about it. We’ve said it’s over there when as a matter of fact it was created in the first location. Now in view of the fact that there is only consideration this of course would bring about mechanically a lie. It doesn’t disappear, it doesn’t do anything peculiar simply by moving it around. The mere handling of energy does not bring about a stupidity. It takes another consideration than simply moving something to bring about an occlusion.

We are looking at the subject of truth and its use in auditing of the mind and subject clearing. If you are interested in truth, you must attain a viewpoint from which you can see things as they are. The ultimate truth is seeing things as they are without filters, because a lie is the filter made up of our considerations that we interpose.

Hubbard is assuming that if we get rid of all our filters (considerations), there would be nothing left to see. Everything will reduce to a Static. In other words, anything that could be considered (including the observer) will simply reduce to a potential state.

But that is just theoretical speculation. There is a universe out there. We postulate and devise hypothesis to explain that universe. Our understanding of the universe is as good as our postulates and theories duplicate the universe. Religions have always proposed different hypotheses and theories to explain the universe.

According to the best theory, the basic substance of this universe is energy that operates on its own impulse. It has a large spectrum from thought to matter. Time is the duration of that energy. This duration increases as energy condenses from thought to matter. A postulate is a thought energy that hardly has a duration. It does not persist if it duplicates the universe, but if it does not duplicate, it persists as an idea to be worked upon.

If two postulates deny each other, we may not know which postulate is the first and which is the second, but both are persisting as part of an anomaly in our understanding, which does not duplicate the universe. There is a lie underlying that anomaly. We have taken that lie for granted. It is an ALTER-IS-NESS or NOT-IS-NESS of some aspect of this universe. We discover it by following the anomalies in data. And when we discover it, the misunderstanding vanishes, and we duplicate the universe better.

When a person cannot even see the anomalies then it becomes difficult for him to discover the lie. He cannot AS-IS the situation. He is stuck with the lie. This develops into stupidity and mystery. That lie is an alteration and denial of time, place, form and event. ALTER-IS-NESS is a form of a lie, but it does not bring about stupidity, but NOT-IS-NESS does. A person NOT-ISES to justify some fixation, and that fixation is the cause of stupidity. Miracles are a form of mystery and stupidity because something about the universe is not understood, but it is explained away.

Now, anything to persist must avoid As-is-ness, and thus anything to persist, really to persist, must contain a lie. And we get the next Axiom:

IS-NESS that is persisting is being filtered through one’s considerations. It will be perceived more clearly if those filters are removed. These filters avoid AS-IS-NESS in order to persist. So, they are like lies.

AXIOM THIRTY-NINE: LIFE POSES PROBLEMS FOR ITS OWN SOLUTION.

Now what do we find here, in a problem? We find something which is persisting, the As-is-ness of which cannot readily be obtained and would be the definition of a problem. Now to solve that problem it would be necessary to get its As-is-ness. Well, how do we prevent something from being As-ised, in other words vanished? We introduce a lie into it.

There are problems in life. Some problems get solved. Others persist. The problems that persist are difficult to AS-IS. In other words, in these cases, it is difficult to see what is really there. Something is preventing AS-IS-NESS. That something is a lie and underlying that is a fixation.

KHTK AXIOM 39: Life poses problems for its own solution.

AXIOM FORTY: ANY PROBLEM, TO BE A PROBLEM, MUST CONTAIN A LIE. IF IT WERE TRUTH, IT WOULD UNMOCK.

When the preclear is being a problem, we know very well that there’s a lie somewhere on the track that he’s trying to obtain the As-is-ness of. It’s not necessarily his lie, but it certainly is a lie. And under Axiom Forty we get:

An “unsolvable problem” would have the greatest persistence.

It would also contain the greatest number of altered facts. To make a problem, one must introduce Alter-is-ness.

In other words, this problem must have been moved and shifted and shoved around considerably to be unsolvable.

We come across problems that appear unsolvable. We have to start with some postulate to solve such a problem. If a postulate is letting us nowhere close to a solution, then that postulate is not the truth. We need to come up with a different postulate. Such trial and error may finally lead to overcoming some fixation and finding the lie. The truth would be the solution.

KHTK AXIOM 40: Any problem, to be a problem, must contain a lie. If it were truth, it would unmock.

AXIOM FORTY-ONE: THAT INTO WHICH ALTER-IS-NESS IS INTRODUCED BECOMES A PROBLEM.

Any time you Alter-is something you’ve got a problem on your hands.

This whole universe, then, is a problem. Therefore, this whole universe must contain a lie to go on persisting the way it does. It certainly does contain Alter-is. It certainly does contain a lie. It contains a variety of lies about its creation, and there are all sorts of things about this universe which cause its persistence, and all of those things boil down to the one fact that it must be based upon a lie and it must be very definitely altered.

Axiom Forty-one tells us that it was alteration which brought the preclear into a problem, thus we find any child who has moved extensively, who has had his home changed, who has been shoved around to various parts of the world, eventually becomes a problem, first to the environment and then to himself.

Any time you ALTER-IS something you add another wrinkle to IS-NESS. This may generate or worsen a problem. The universe is not a problem, but its altered view is. We postulate that it was created. We don’t know if that postulate is correct.

When we say that the universe is persisting, it is actually our view of the universe that is persisting. It comes down to examining our considerations about the universe for ALTER-IS. It is the ALTER-IS we are not aware of, which causes a problem.

KHTK AXIOM 41: That into which alter-is-ness is introduced becomes a problem.

AXIOM FORTY-TWO: MEST (MATTER, ENERGY, SPACE, TIME) PERSISTS BECAUSE IT IS A PROBLEM.

It is a problem because it contains Alter-is-ness.

Your physicist is busily at work trying to unmock it but he is unmocking it by Not-is-ness. He’s using force to alter force, and because he keeps altering it, it all naturally just gets worse and worse. He will solve nothing with an atom bomb. He will simply make things go worse, more complicated, more confused, more dispersed. The atom bomb is a dead-end track and is folly, it is great folly.

If an atom bomb were introduced into a war the number of particles and the amount of MEST which would be altered, we would discover immediately, would have introduced a great number of lies into the situation, it would have deteriorated the society and everything else. If we were foolish enough, for instance, to atom bomb Russia, or if Russia were foolish enough to atom bomb the United States, enough confusion would have been introduced into the cultures of earth so that probably there would be no other choice but to sink into a barbarism, in the absence of an understanding of life itself.

MEST is a problem because it is an altered view of the universe. Scientology postulates that MEST (physical) universe produced by the Theta universe. This could be an ALTER-IS. KHTK, therefore, postulates that Theta-MEST is a single universe.

The physicist has been focusing only the physical aspect of the universe. He has been ignoring the innate impulse that underlies energy. The atom bomb simply releases this impulse in an uncontrolled, destructive manner. The same impulse is better controlled in the computer technology.

KHTK AXIOM 42: MEST (matter, energy, space, time) persists because its Theta aspect is being ignored.

AXIOM FORTY-THREE: TIME IS THE PRIMARY SOURCE OF UNTRUTH.

Time states the untruth of consecutive considerations.

I call your attention to interest, as an interesting thing to observe. There are two classes of interest, and we want to know why we’re thinking about this in terms of time, and this is because time is the basic lie behind all lies. We believe there are consecutive moments. We see consecutive motions and this all very pleasant — we agree to this — and it’s only when we have masked them with some vicious intent that we really get a kick-back from the progress of time.

But we discover here in the matter of interest that we have two facets: one is “interested”, and the other is “interesting”.

A thetan is interested, and an object is interesting. A thetan is not interesting. He is interested. And when a person becomes terribly interesting, he has lots of problems, believe me. That is the chasm that is crossed. That is the chasm, which is crossed by all of your celebrities, anybody who is foolish enough to become famous. He crosses over from being interested in life to being interesting, and people who are interesting are really no longer interested in life. It’s very baffling to some young fellow why he can’t make some beautiful girl interested in him. Well, she is not interested, she is interesting.

Time denotes duration of energy. This duration increases as the energy condenses from thought to matter. As a result, less condensed energy appears to be in motion compared to more condensed energy. We incorrectly focus on the duration associated with matter (condensed energy) only as the characteristic of time.

It seems that as energy gets more condensed it becomes “interesting”. A less condensed energy appears to be “interested”. When a person becomes more “interesting” he has become more condensed in his considerations. Fixations come about as considerations become condensed. The person then becomes more of a problem.

Consecutive moments appear only because of the play of energy of different condensations. A shock in time is a sudden shift in the gradient of energy.

KHTK AXIOM 43: Fixation is the primary source of untruth.

Fixation condenses consecutive considerations thus generating untruth.

AXIOM FORTY-FOUR: THETA (THE STATIC) HAS NO LOCATION IN MATTER, ENERGY, SPACE, OR TIME. IT IS CAPABLE OF CONSIDERATION.

We have put it right in there again just to drive it home well. There’s no time in this Static. Time is a lie.

Time can be postulated by the Static but is only a consideration and thereafter a thetan gets the idea that he is persisting across a span of time, and he is not.

He is not persisting. Objects are going across time, and energies and spaces are changing, but he is not. At no time does he actually change. He has to consider he is out of his head before he can be out of his head.

A Step V, or Black Five, is quite interesting in this regard. He is always thinking the auditor’s going to reach in and pull him out of his head. He’s waiting for something else to do it! Of course, you could probably hypnotize him and tell him that he was, and he’d probably react in various ways, but he has to say, “I am now out of my head,” and then he will be out of his head. But “waiting to see” whether or not he’s out of his head is complete nonsense. The only way that he can get anything done, is to consider that it is done, or consider that that is the condition which exists.

Static is the potential state of the Theta-MEST spectrum. Theta is thought energy part of the spectrum. It has vibration. It is not the same thing as Static. This conflation between Theta and Static is the key error in the hypothesis of Hubbard.

Time is the duration of energy. It is extremely small for thought energy. Considerations do not persist unless they are anomalous with the universe and are waiting to be resolved. A Thetan is the sum total of persisting considerations. This persistence (fixation) becomes a problem when it is not resolved. A persisting condition of the thetan is fixation on the body. The only way not to be “inside the body” is simply not to have any attention on the body.

KHTK AXIOM 44: Theta is the thought energy aspect of the Theta-MEST spectrum that constitutes considerations.

AXIOM FORTY-FIVE: THETA CAN CONSIDER ITSELF TO BE PLACED, AT WHICH MOMENT IT BECOMES PLACED, AND TO THAT DEGREE A PROBLEM.

Any time we fall away from Axiom One, which is repeated as Axiom Forty-four, we discover that we have less of a Static than before. In other words, we just place this Static, and it’s less of a Static. A thetan, then, can have a problem, just by being placed. Quite in addition to that he ceases to be quite as interested.

He himself, placing himself, can get away with it. This isn’t very hard for him to do. And he can perceive from this new place, and so forth, but as long as he is placed, he will be less than the Static. Just remember that. He is to that degree a problem.

When Theta is not Static, it is manifesting itself. In other words, its innate impulses are firing away. A thetan can have a problem only when it gets fixated and cannot resolve that fixation. He is then being more interesting than interested.

But if he can be fixated and un-fixated at will then there is no problem. He may be somewhat of a problem only during the period he is fixated.

KHTK AXIOM 45: Theta can consider itself to be fixated, at which moment it becomes fixated, and to that degree a problem.

AXIOM FORTY-SIX: THETA CAN BECOME A PROBLEM BY ITS CONSIDERATIONS BUT THEN BECOMES MEST.

A problem is to some degree MEST, MEST is a problem.

What is this MEST? We find that an interested thetan is a thetan, but an interesting thetan has become MEST. What is MEST? Well, it’s actually simply a composite of energies and particles and spaces which are agreed upon and which are looked at.

We have the difference between inflow and outflow. A thetan who is being interested is simply outflowing. Interested — outflowing. Interesting — inflowing. He wants the attention of others to flow in to him: interesting. That’s MEST. Attention of others flows to it. That doesn’t tell you that all MEST is is a series of trapped Thetans.

It says that it is a type of life which is being interesting, as opposed to something which is being interested in it.

Now, Number Forty-six: Theta can become a problem by its considerations, but then becomes MEST, is followed by this, that MEST is a problem, and will always be considered a problem, and is nothing else but a problem. MEST is that form of theta which is a problem. That’s all. Therefore, it is that form of theta which has a lie introduced into it. And so, of course, it is a problem.

When Theta is kinetic then, of course, it is energy of very low frequency, and there is corresponding space and time. But there is no matter.

As energy condenses, it starts to acquire properties that make it observable in terms of interactions. That makes it “interesting”. And that which is observing is the uncondensed thought energy. So, that thought energy is being “interested”.

Uncondensed energy can flow around very rapidly but condensed energy cannot flow or move that fast. That means problem is characterized by lack of motion and flexibility.

KHTK AXIOM 46: Theta becomes a problem by losing its motion and flexibility due to condensation.

AXIOM FORTY-SEVEN: THETA CAN RESOLVE PROBLEMS.

Resolution of problem means reversing the process of condensation. It is lessening the rate of vibration. It is calming down. It is becoming less fixated and more flexible. That process is occurring in the field of computers and robotics; but it is very much in its infancy.

KHTK AXIOM 47: Theta can resolve problems.

AXIOM FORTY-EIGHT: LIFE IS A GAME WHEREIN THETA AS THE STATIC SOLVES THE PROBLEMS OF THETA AS MEST.

Now that means that theta is the Static, and theta is the object? Yes, indeed. It can be both ways.

It all depends on which one is being interested and which one is being interesting. And we find that a preclear gets more and more solid the more interesting he becomes, and the more problem he becomes, the more problems he has and the more figuring he does on his problems, the more solid he is going to get.

“Theta as static” is the uncondensed energy. “Theta as MEST” is condensed energy. All energy is connected. The uncondensed energy can decondense the condensed energy. This is what happens when we help each other.

Energy get more condensed by being interesting and focused on itself. This is called interiorization. It decondenses by being interested in its environment and focused on others. This is called exteriorization.

KHTK AXIOM 48: Life is a game wherein Theta as un-condensed energy solves the problems of Theta as condensed energy.

AXIOM FORTY-NINE: TO SOLVE ANY PROBLEM IT IS ONLY NECESSARY TO BECOME THETA, THE SOLVER, RATHER THAN THETA, THE PROBLEM.

That is a very, very important Axiom. That tells you why SOP 8C Opening Procedure works. It works because the main form of theta which we find desirable, which has mobility, which has freedom, which is happy, which is cheerful, which has all those qualities on the top of the Chart of Attitudes is an observer of problems and a solver of problems. So if you get somebody to simply look around the environment, he will cease to be a problem and will become the solver of problems. That’s all. Just looking.

Get him to look around and recognize a few problems and he will feel better. Somebody then who is worrying about himself constantly, well, he’s all mixed up in a problem and his affinity is at a closure with this problem. He’s having an awful time. Well let’s take this and turn it around the other way and let’s have him observe himself as a problem, and we get that part of the process which is “Problems and Solutions”. And naturally, if we asked a thetan to be a solution often enough, he would eventually become a Static. That’s all. If we asked him to observe problems long enough, he would simply become a Static. In other words, he would go out of it both ways.

A Thetan could become a problem, more of a problem, more of a problem, more of a problem, more and more and more and more and more and more — static. You see he could go “out the bottom”.

Or, he could go: less of a problem, less of a problem, less, less — static. He could go either way. So there’s no avoiding it, you’re going to survive anyway, and so are your preclears, but we’re going to have a better world doing it.

The SOP 8C works by getting a person to looking at the environment and getting interested in others rather than have attention on oneself and be interesting.

The key point is extroversion. One may even look at oneself from an extroverted viewpoint. He can do that by viewing oneself as a problem in the context of the present time environment and by not getting sucked into the mind in its past.

KHTK AXIOM 49: To solve any problem it is only necessary to become extroverted in one’s attention rather than introverted.

AXIOM FIFTY: THETA AS MEST MUST CONTAIN CONSIDERATIONS WHICH ARE LIES.

In other words, there isn’t a single piece of MEST in the world which isn’t to some degree lying.

Looking at that, then, we find that the only crime that you could possibly commit in this universe is being there. It doesn’t matter where. This is the only crime that you could commit. And this is all your parents objected to, and this is all the preclear objects to when you’re auditing him, and he growls at you. They add tremendous significances into this, but all they object to is being there. Now if you ran SOP 8C, Opening Procedure, and you ran it very, very definitely with that postulate: to get the fact that the wall is there. Get the fact that the chair is there, that something else is there, etc., you’d be likely to knock your preclear flat at some point. I am not advising you to use this form of Opening Procedure. It’s a violent process. If you get almost any preclear and just have him stand in the middle of the room, and say “get the idea”, to that empty space out in front of you there, “that it’s there”, it’s there, it’s there — his mother will show up and eight or nine of his wives and all sorts of other things will show up all the way down the line. He’ll have all kinds of people standing in front of him. They’re all “there”. But that’s the only crime a thetan can commit. It’s a lie, you see. That theta can be THERE is a lie, and that’s the only bad thing that anybody has ever done is to be there. Now, that’s all, actually, that the body is doing. He’s got a body and he’s visible. He is being there. And we must have introduced a lie. And the basic lie which is introduced is Time.

It is interesting to note that it is the second postulate which persists, because persist means time, and it’s the second postulate which introduces time, and this becomes elementary. Now let’s look at this one: let’s take this fellow who’s awfully sick. He’s terribly sick. Boy, is he a problem. He’s a problem to himself, a problem to his family, and a problem to his auditor. He is a problem. He’s terrific.

You know that he must have had an original postulate that he was well before he could make the second postulate that he was sick. And you know the postulate that he was sick must have denied the postulate that he was well, and so his original sickness was a falsity and he knew it at the time he made it — he actually knew it well. He knew — when he said he was sick that day to keep from going to school—that it was a lie. He knew it was a lie and he got a persistence of the sickness and now here he is eighty-nine years of age and all crippled up and we find out that the basic postulate was the fact that he was well. How could sickness ever get any power except through wellness?

Now we look underneath every lie to find out that it was the truth — the Static itself — which gave it power. The lie has no power itself because it is a perversion. Persistence has no power that is not based on the Static itself. So, we have the basic lineup at all times and in all places, that the lie is empowered by truth. Truth must have existed, and a good condition or quality must have existed prior to a bad condition or quality.

As we study the problem of goodness and badness in the world, we find out that we must be studying the second postulate, because that is all that persists.

Now let’s take a situation where something is persisting — and it’s good. We could say that that looks as if it must have been based upon a prior postulate which was bad. But you can’t make a prime postulate which is a lie. If you’ll just get the idea that there are no postulates, that you’ve made no postulates of any kind, that there are no postulates which have been made — now make a postulate. That would be a prime postulate. That postulate can’t be a lie. Now make a second postulate denying the one you just made. That’s a lie. Now which one of these two is going to persist? Of course, the second one. And it is going to get its power from the first postulate.

It would not matter what the prime postulate was. That is not the point, here. We’re not going on the basis of badness or goodness. A consideration is a consideration.

Now, do we mean reach back on the track, and find these postulates? — reach back and run it out with straight-wire? No, because there is no time, and all address to the past — every address to the past and every address to the future actually is validating a lie. There’s only now. There’s never been anything else but now. There’s a consistent change and a consistent series of postulates going on which give us a continuance of now, but the continuance of now is a lie.

You can move objects around, and that’s quite honest, that’s not bad. But we’re looking at two kinds of lie here, and we discover that when we are trying to make a condition change, we simply have to postulate, as though it exists in present time, the opposite condition. So somebody who hates the human race — he must have loved them desperately by prior postulate. There’s no hatred like that which can exist between two brothers or a nation torn asunder in war. Well, that’s because they loved each other so well, you see. And so they can hate with violence. But what is their hatred depending on but the fact that they loved each other? So if we have somebody hating madly somebody named Bill — we would say, “Now, get the idea of loving Bill.” Grrrrr, he’d go. “Now, get the idea of loving Bill.” Grrrr. “Get the idea of loving Bill.” Grr. “Get the idea of loving Bill.” “Well, he’s not too bad a guy.” We wouldn’t necessarily restore love, but we’d certainly run out the hatred for Bill.

MEST is the energy that is persisting because it is condensed and focused on itself. This is the situation with the body. Theta is activating the body through considerations, but these considerations come and go quickly. None of them persist.

But fixations persist. A person who is interiorized has his attention fixed on his body and on the facsimiles in his mind. SOP 8C is simply pulling the person’s attention away from himself and putting it on the environment. As you pull the attention away, these facsimiles show up.

What is actually being objected to are these fixations that are persisting. You may call them lies because they vanish once recognized. The anomaly is persisting in the present. Whatever lie that brought that anomaly is also persisting in the present. That lie brought about a change from the opposite condition.

By repeatedly postulating the original condition we can run out the lie, and the anomaly that has been persisting.

KHTK AXIOM 50: Theta as MEST must contain fixations which are lies.

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The key error in Hubbard’s Theta-MEST theory is the conflation between Theta and Static. Theta-MEST spectrum is a spectrum of motion as stated by Hubbard. Static is the potential state of the Theta-MEST spectrum. Theta is thought energy part of the spectrum that has very low vibrations. It is not the same thing as Static. MEST is the physical energy part of the spectrum that has very high vibrations.

Time is the duration of energy. It is extremely small for thought energy, and extremely large for physical energy. Considerations do not persist, but objects persist. This is natural. Persistence of considerations is unnatural, which happens when considerations are anomalous with the universe and are waiting to be resolved.

A Thetan is the sum total of persisting considerations. The thetan becomes a problem when its persistence (fixation) is not resolved. A common fixation of the thetan is “fixation on the body”. Keeping attention extroverted is the solution.

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