SCN 8-8008: Cycle of Action

Reference: The Book of Scientology

Cycle of Action

Please see the original section at the link above.

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Summary

A cycle is a series of events that are regularly repeated in the same order. For a person, this is a cycle of havingness, when it has to do with a series of conclusions, understandings or accomplishments. But havingness does not necessarily imply fixation as it happens with identification. As long as a person does not identify himself with his conclusion, understanding or accomplishment then he is not controlled by the cycle associated with the MEST universe.

Therefore, having possessions does not necessarily subject a person to time; though the possessions themselves, being MEST objects, are subject to time. The cycle of MEST object may be stated as: creation, growth, conservation, decay and death or destruction. A cycle may be defined in terms of the motion of an object as: start, change, stop; or in terms of experience as: creation, alteration and destruction.

Past, present and future are connected to a person through his identification with body, self, family, society, postulates, goals, etc. The body goes through the stages of creation, growth, conservation, decay and death. This determines a life cycle. He may be connected with a past life cycle through his identification with the facsimiles that are carried forward from one life cycle to the next.

Hubbard talks about a person having lived through “spirals.” These spirals also go through the stages of creation, growth, conservation, decay and death. Hubbard claims that the present spirals are about 40,000 years long. Such “spirals” may be due to the person identifying himself with a postulate or a goal. 

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Comments


The conclusions, understanding, accomplishments, possessions, objects etc., go through cycles. Therefore, they are subject to time. When a person becomes attached to these MEST objects, he conceives himself also to be subject to time. From this identification springs a person’s fixation on self.

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May 17, 2019 – 12:43 PM Categories: Scientology | Post a comment

SCN 8-8008: Assist Processing

Reference: The Book of Scientology

Assist Processing

Please see the original section at the link above.

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Summary

When a person is injured in an accident, a facsimile of that incident is impressed on the person’s mind. The facsimile is held in suspension because the sensations from the injury are not easy to assimilate. Hubbard’s solution is to put attention of the person on the incident  and have him go through it repeatedly as if it was happening to him just that moment. This will assimilate the sensations to some extent and the pain will subside. The person is then asked to visualize that incident occurring at different places and times under different circumstances and even reversing its sequence. The whole effort is to lessen the person’s fixation on the incident.

Assist consists of applying the above procedure to a recent injury. The experience is fresh in a person’s mind, and so it is easier to process. It speeds up a person’s recovery from his injury.

When the person visualizes or mocks-up the incident or an injured part, he should put it next to another mock-up when there was no such injury. It brings the injury into focus and discharges the trauma. The mock-up should be controllable by the person. If the person cannot control his mock-up, then he should simply discard it and put up a new mock-up that he can control.

Hubbard says, “Using effort to control one’s mockups is of little avail; one simply creates them. Where mock-ups are absent, one will appear if the individual will simply keep putting the thought forward that it will appear. If he puts forward the thought often enough and long enough, he will get such a mock-up.”

The person may become ill or in pain while following this procedure. The remedy for this is simply to continue with the procedure until the illness or feeling has abated. This procedure makes a person look at an injury, or a worry, or a doubt, for what it is. It is continued only for as long as it is necessary.

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Comments

The facsimile is made of sensations that did not get broken up and assimilated within the matrix of existing experience. The entire handling of a facsimile is to break it up and loosen its content so they can be assimilated and perceived.

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May 16, 2019 – 9:07 AM Categories: Scientology | Post a comment

SCN 8-8008: Facsimiles

Reference: The Book of Scientology

Facsimiles

Please see the original section at the link above.

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Summary

Hubbard says, “The best description of facsimiles is to be found in Electro psychometric Auditing. A facsimile is an energy picture which can be reviewed again.”

More accurately, a facsimile is a thought phenomenon that can be triggered again. I have modified Hubbard’s definition because a differentiation must be made between thought and energy. Thought is not the same type of substance as energy. A loose identification between thought and energy can create confusion. Besides, a person is not aware of the facsimile, while he is under its influence. Auditing reduces the facsimile into a memory, and only then the person becomes aware of it.

A facsimile is a mental impression of some experience. It affects a person’s thinking, and makes him react emotionally. The reaction may express itself physically with adverse consequences. The person is not aware that he is reacting. He thinks that he is acting on his own volition, but he is puzzled by it.

A heavy facsimile may be created by a traumatic experience like a car accident. A light facsimile may simply consist of an innocent misunderstanding. A facsimile can be anywhere on the spectrum from heavy to light, depending on the experience.

When a person puts his attention on the facsimile consciously, there is still a reaction but it is subdued. When the person re-experiences the facsimile several times with full awareness, the facsimile rapidly reduces in its intensity. With conscious attention, the facsimile may ultimately disappear. The person then fully realizes what the underlying experience was. When that facsimile is cleared up, the person is no longer triggered by its subject, and he can deal with that area thoughtfully.

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Comments

In auditing one asks questions to locate a facsimile related to a specific condition. When the facsimile comes up it generates the known reaction. One then traces the details of that facsimile using the same reaction, until the person becomes fully aware of it, at which point the reaction disappears. One follows the same procedure with an E-meter using the reaction of the needle. The accuracy lies in tracing the same needle reaction.

A needle reaction on an E-meter is easy to trace when it is large and unique. Difficulty arises when the needle reaction is small and not very distinguishable from the background noise of other reactions. It is then easy to jumps from one reaction to a similar reaction related to a different facsimile. The auditing then gets bogged down. 

In Scientology, a person is usually audited by an auditor, who uses an E-meter to trace the reaction. This works well on the beginning Dianetic auditing where the facsimiles are heavy and the meter reads are large. But when the person has improved and is now running Scientology processes, the facsimiles are much lighter and the meter reads are small. The chances of auditing getting bogged down increase greatly. 

Therefore, on Grade auditing and above, the subject clearing approach works much better and faster. It does not require an E-meter.

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May 15, 2019 – 9:37 PM Categories: Scientology | Post a comment

SCN 8-8008: Thought, Emotion and Effort

Reference: The Book of Scientology

Thought, Emotion and Effort

Please see the original section at the link above.

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Summary

Thought is the least condensed substance that there is. It starts to become condensed down the tone scale. At the top of the tone scale the thought is free and the awareness is clear. Down the tone scale the thought acquires stimulus-response characteristics due to increasing identification, and the awareness becomes cloudy.

Hubbard believed that the clear thought is established by will, and that the stimulus-response characteristics come from counter-efforts of the surrounding MEST universe. But, will is the faculty of conscious and deliberate action associated with the concept of self, and self comes from a lasting identification of awareness with the postulates. Self is a subjective feeling that it is the source of postulates, but it is not aware of its own nature.

Ideally, awareness is completely free and fully aware of the postulates it is surrounded by. It is aware of postulates, just like it is aware of energy and matter. But as awareness is identified with postulates, there comes about the thought of a self as the source of postulates. As that identification deepens, the thought of self condenses, and MEST characteristics of stimulus-response start to manifest.

We see a law of thought emerging here. Stimulus-response behavior is proportional to the degree of identification of awareness with thought, resulting in increasing fixation of attention on self.

Thought is intimately associated with the idea of self. Self is then defined as the source of thought, while it itself is a thought. Thus we have a circular definition, which is the hallmark of identification. 

Thought is the lightest substance, which starts unbounded and free at the top of the tone scale. As it descends down the tone scale it gets condensed with increasing identification with the concept of self. It thus acquires stimulus-response characteristics. This has nothing to do with “thetan inside the head,” but it has to do with fixation on the body.

Postulates provide the framework in which reasoning takes place. As thought condenses, reasoning also becomes increasingly illogical taking on stimulus-response characteristics.

Emotions are the expression of the tone characteristic of the thought. These emotions become quite observable at the lower part of the tone scale. The emotions link the thought to the effort exerted through the body.

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Comments

Hubbard starts out with a mathematical equation for life as the Theta-MEST theory. This is the dichotomy of two extreme conditions of life. Theta is total freedom and MEST is total slavery.

Hubbard associates the mathematical symbol ‘theta’ with the subjective feelings of self and will; and the mathematical symbol of MEST with the surrounding universe. He then identifies the surrounding universe with what is being postulated by self.

To Hubbard, this theory encompasses all that one can know, and nothing falls outside of it. Hubbard does not entertain the concept of unknowable. But all that we know is through postulates. What then is this self that postulates?

If we look closely, the Theta-MEST dichotomy ultimately reduces to the dichotomy of Unknowable-Knowable.

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May 14, 2019 – 8:17 PM Categories: Scientology | Post a comment

Einstein 1920 (XVI) Experience and Relativity

Reference: Einstein’s 1920 Book

Section XVI (Part 1)
Experience and the Special Theory of Relativity

Please see Section XVI at the link above.

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Summary

The theory of relativity explains the phenomenon known as “aberration”—the yearly movement of the apparent position of the fixed stars resulting from the motion of the earth round the sun. It also explains the slight displacement of the spectral lines of the light transmitted to us from a fixed star due to radial motion (Doppler principle). The various experimental arguments in favor of the Maxwell-Lorentz theory, also favor the theory of relativity.

The electrons are a substance of very small inertia and large velocity. The electrodynamic theory is unable to give an account of their nature, but it hypothesizes that the electron experience a contraction in the direction of motion in consequence of that motion. This hypothesis is not justifiable by any electrodynamical facts, but it is easily justified by the theory of relativity.

The reference body K refers to aether in electrodynamics, which is equivalent to infinite inertia and zero motion. The reference body K’ refers to “æther-drift” and electrodynamics assigns complicated laws to it. Electrodynamics then looked for “æther-drift” with respect to earth’s surface (K’), which was not to be found. It requires overcoming the inherited prejudices about time and space to resolve this dilemma.

The theory of relativity overcomes the inherited prejudices about time and space, and discards the ideas of “æther” and “æther-drift.” Here the contraction of moving bodies follows from the motion with respect to the body of reference chosen in the particular case in point. Thus for a co-ordinate system moving with the earth the mirror system of Michelson and Morley is not shortened, but it is shortened for a co-ordinate system which is at rest relatively to the sun.

Comments

Maxwell-Lorentz theory of electromagnetic phenomena deals with lines of force, or force fields. An analysis of these force fields leads to the velocity of light of 3 × 108 m/s. This may be interpreted to mean that the force field is the substance which fills the space in the absence of matter. This substance is of the same nature as light.

The velocity of light is a measure of the flexibility of this force field, just like the velocity of material bodies is a measure of their flexibility (the opposite of inertia). Einstein extrapolates the flexibility, as related to motion, from matter to light by assuming the velocity of light to be a universal constant. This, makes it possible to relate the velocity of matter to imperceptible changes in its flexibility, or inertia. 

Electrons are not the same as charged particles (ions), so, in cathode ray, they cannot be distinguished from each other as “separate particles;” and, therefore, there is no repulsion to scatter the cathode ray. A cathode ray simply consists of “electronic substance” of certain inertia as dealt with in the theory of relativity.

The idea of “contraction” simply reflects the change in the consistency (inertia) of the substance filling the space, instead of change in some abstract idea of coordinate systems. Space denotes the extents of the substance; and time denotes the duration of the substance. Therefore, any notion of spacetime coordinates is just a reflection of the consistency of the substance filling the space.

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May 14, 2019 – 4:26 PM Categories: Einstein | Post a comment