Handling of Theta Bodies (7ACC 540726)
Series: 7th Advanced Clinical Course (7ACC)
Date: 26 July 1954
Speaker: L. Ron Hubbard
Okay. What might we clarify on this? This whole talk this morning could have been on 10 the basis of why 8-C works. I intended to talk to you about something else this morning in addition to this and didn't get a chance to cover it and that is the handling of these things called theta bodies and so forth.
Every once in a while you exteriorize a preclear and you find him in a theta body or something of the sort. Actually, you try to do very much with this body and you get terribly confused about what you are doing. Well, the truth of the matter is the body isn't in this universe, it's in another universe, but it is in this universe. That's one of those horrible maybes.
And all you do with it is simply run Exteriorization by Distance. You can run 8-C, you see, and then start running Exteriorization by Distance. What distance could he tolerate – this is a fast way to run it: "What distance could he tolerate to this body?" "What distance could the body tolerate to him?"
These bodies are sometimes rigged up to be very agglutinous, very sticky. Once in a while you run into a preclear, he puts his (quote) "hand," you know, as a thetan – he's got a black theta body or a demon body or something of the sort, and he'll have exteriorized
some time or another, and he'll put his hand against a physical universe wall, and his hand will stick. Scares him! Boy, that really scares a preclear. He goes back inside and you have a hell of a time fishing him out.
Well, the joke in that case is the hands of such a body are tailored to do that. It isn't that that wall will stick to a thetan, but it'll stick to a body which is tailor-made to stick to a wall, won't it? And they get these when they get anxious about handling and controlling bodies. They'll mock-up or get or steal or do something with – get ahold of a body and control this body with this other body They can't slide out of this body, then, as long as they've got another superimposed body on it.
And that's a black body. Very, very curious. Sometimes has cat feet, sometimes has small ears, sometimes has a long tail. Sometimes it's damn near visible. Sometimes they have eyes on the side of the body, out to the side, just to frighten people more than anything else. Sometimes they have cat faces. Sometimes the faces are horrible dead things, you know, completely deadpan, and so on. They're really weird – weird business. But they're just made out of a set of postulates, just like this body you're sitting in right this minute.
Well, now, if exteriorization is so awfully important, why aren't we doing more of it right this minute – or are we?
Female voice: You've got to collect the preclear first.
Hm?
Female voice: You've got to collect your preclear.
That's right.
Now, this Unit has had a considerable amount of experience – has had considerable experience on the subject of the processes in Intensive Procedure. For instance, I've thrown most of these processes at you whether cases should have had them or not. All of these processes have a certain workability.
The main mistake which you will make in running processes, in running preclears, is trying to shortcut it through – trying to get in an awful hurry, see – and run some process which produces an immediate and fabulous result upon the preclear merely by throwing him into a minor convulsion or something of the sort, rather than run something that does something effective and lasting on the preclear.
And I threw quite a few processes at you for your experience in using processes because every preclear has his workability. And you follow Intensive Procedure down the line, you'll be amazed at how many people simply will take Route 1 and stick on it. You'd just be amazed how many will. They'll just run right on down Route 1 and be outside and be in nice condition, and that's that, pat them on the head.
If they hit Route 2 or if they've got comm lags on the subject of ARC and hit Route 2, why, you really have a job of collection on your hands. Let's get enough of his attention in the immediate environment so that he isn't being continually distracted by occurrences, motions, and so forth, in other universes, in the bank and elsewhere, and then he will exteriorize fairly well.
Now, a person who has to be collected like that is actually best exteriorized by Exteriorization by Distance. That's a very fine process for exteriorizing him, just run as it's given in the Handbook. Sometimes you run Exteriorization by Distance on somebody that you've already got out and he'll discover he really is out. There's another method.
Now, another thing is, is you can run 8-C on a preclear who is exteriorized. You can run it on a thetan. Now, it's the thetan that's stuck all over universes, it isn't the body, but the body might delusively believe that it is or something like that. We don't care anything about that. We don't care about that two cents' worth. The body is itself a sort of a universe. It has eyes to look with, and it's occupying – making a certain amount of space.
And in the process of processing, you'll find out that the main mistake you make in processing is not running 8-C Opening Procedure long enough upon your preclear. And then, having done that, you should, of course, run some Opening Procedure by Duplication if your preclear is rough after you've run some 8-C. But remember, run enough 8-C before you run Opening Procedure by Duplication. Collect them.
Now, the other day I ran somebody who was exteriorizable – exteriorized rather easily – simply bapped them out of their head and ran them very nicely and so forth. They were coal black. They couldn't see well. They didn't know quite where they were, and so forth, but they were running very well; but they had a headache and they continued to have a headache.
And so I just skipped the exteriorization and just started to run 8-C Opening Procedure on them and they lost their headache immediately. This preclear, although he could exteriorize, was in no possible condition – they'd exteriorized into another universe, a black universe. They couldn't see. I mean, it's just as easy as that. It was a black universe, I mean, so they couldn't see the room. How elementary can we get?
Now, interiorization into universes and interiorization into heads – your preclear, you see, might be interiorized into a universe, interiorized into a bank and then incidentally connected up and looking with a head. See, you might have several classes and you don't have to worry about this, though, because you've got Opening Procedure of 8-C.
And some other thing I was going to mention to you there… oh, yeah. Yeah. It's an old saw that Scientologists are the hardest ones to process. This is true. This is true – with one exception – mystics.
Female voice: No.
Your mystic – he's kind of a rough boy.
Well, although 8-D is not the finest process in the world, it's a fairly useful process and definitely belongs in there. It is not mentioned in Intensive Procedure because it really doesn't belong in Intensive Procedure as such.
But if you were to strike a mystic and he kept on "figure-figure, figure-figure, figure-figure, figure-figure, figure, figure-figure, figure-figure, figure-figure."
And you said to him, "All right. Now, let's see if you can spot a spot in this room."
And he "figure-figure, figure-figure, figure-figure-figure." And you've run him an hour or so on Opening Procedure of 8-C and he goes home. And he comes back the next session and he's all spun in with "figure-figure, figure-figure, figure-figure-figure."
I've broken the back of some of these cases by running 8-D on mystery. "Where would mysteries be safe?" "Where would mysteries find them safe?" Just at a little point here: "Where would mysteries be safe?" And boy, they're safe everywhere. What mysticism is just strewn with is the total security of some of the secrets and mysteries and wisdoms. "Oh, you talk… Where is this library where all this material is?"
"Well, it's everywhere, and it's indestructible, and nobody could ever do anything to it, and it tells all there is to know. But of course you couldn't go anyplace or do anything unless you did something about it, but you can't do anything," you know.
Now, they've tried to change themselves by practices which didn't work and therefore mysteries have really gotten safe. See?
So although you see, in a book which I'm right now compiling, called The Great Teachers of Mankind – although you see an awful lot of material in there from various ages and times, it's not recommended material or practices because it's booby-trapped, every single five feet of it, with mystery. Oh, the tremendous mystery that obfuscates the mystery that obfuscates the mystery. The mystery within the mystery within the mystery that is inside the greatest mystery of all.
So don't take that material seriously. It's historically useful. It's interesting. It's bric-a-brac. Just tells what Man knew. It's astonishing that he knew so much and could still be so stupid. That is! That's what's astonishing. But you have to know what he should know before you could know what he did know.
So don't worry too much about that. And if you get some preclear gets hold of this book and he wants to dive in and yoga-fy himself, why, you tell him, "Go ahead, little boy. It's all right." Pat him on the head and let him go, and so forth. And after he's been trying to stiffen his limbs with the ibis or something of the sort for a long enough period of time, why, you can just run "where mysteries would be safe" on him and you'll have him out of it. It's a little panacea which is a good thing for an auditor to know.
Now, why is a Scientologist harder to process than anybody else and what could you run on a Scientologist? [laughter]
Well, I tell you a curious thing. A Scientologist has been trying to change minds, right? And some of the preclears he's been trying to – you see, he could do this forever if he just kept winning, but he didn't win all the time.
All right. He's tried to change minds and he's failed. Unless you are very relaxed about whether somebody changes his mind or not, why, you can get hooked with this because you are changing somebody's mind, right? But you know the poison in the fang and you know the antidote for it: just get the As-isness of the preclear.
And this brings up a total process, which I promised I'd tell you about, called Description Processing, not "descriptive processing" (that would be like descriptive genre), but Description Processing. And all this and several other types of processes on the same line – but this is a very effective one – all this does is to try to get the preclear to get the As-isness of things. And this works madly on a Scientologist. You just get him started describing all the preclears he's processed. Now, not necessarily what their mental states were, but what they looked like, you know? Where they sat and what happened in the sessions. Get the As-isness of it. It's a terrifically permissive process.
It's fascinating that Papa Freud should be so adroit. He certainly was not born with any gangplank in his mouth because he was always missing the boat, [laughter]
Female voice: Ooh.
This boy – somebody said, "Ooh." This boy had had the most interesting history of boat missing. He missed boats to Alaska, to China, to Asia, to the Middle East, and so forth. It's a good thing that he got interested in the subject because nobody else was. But beyond that, we find it fabulous that he would miss as many boats.
Do you realize that all of the hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours spent in psychoanalysis are simply devoted to letting somebody associate? Well, that's what's wrong with the patient. He's associating everything with everything until he gets a total identification. He can't differentiate.
Well, all right. Now, let's look at this Description Processing. If he put in all these hours simply asking him to describe everybody he'd known, he would have had well people.
You get that? Instead of telling how horrible everybody was to him and looking for the deep significance and changing it all into sex – which perpetuates sex like mad, by the way. It just hangs a preclear on bad sex all the way along the line – Alter-isness on the subject of bad sex. We get bad sex and then alter it. And what's that going to make? Rrrrrr.
There's some lines in an old book, descriptive of the Veda, which tells the horrible state that Brahmans are going to get into and it goes on for several pages of invective, but these are mild compared to the state this would get somebody in practicing Alter-isness on sex – on bad sex. Rrrr!
Well, why didn't he get human? Why didn't he breathe and everything? All he would have had to have done, we know now, is just have him sit there, you see, have the patient sit there and describe Mama and describe Papa and describe them accurately. Not describe anything but the accuracy of the person: where the person lived, what the person ordinarily wore, how the person looked, the sort of expressions the person used. And he would never have had to do this for two years on somebody at four hours a week. No. The person would have gotten well, that's all.
Now, today the problem of the ally still could be a baffling thing if it were not for this Description Processing and so Description Processing becomes very valuable to know. This person is having an awfully bad time with an ally – let's say an aunt or something of the sort, you know. They're very occluded and they apparently are in the aunt's universe. You see, you can get into other people's universes and universes that are real universes and – boy, you can get every place. And we still have somebody who is very occluded and who's having that.
Well, we could actually validate the area – it's not as good a process, you see; it's a secondary process – validate the area where they're stuck just to the degree of getting them to describe it. And this, in terms of allies, can be quite acute because it's an experience shared by the body and the thetan in common. And the way we'll get rid of an ally today is just sit down and have the preclear start describing the ally. We want the physical description of the ally, physical description of the ally's surroundings. And we just want more and more description. We're not even interested in whether this person is getting it by picture or anything else. We just want the description. And if we just keep the preclear describing, we will eventually find the ally back where the ally belongs and wiped out.
Why? You're running As-isness. This is As-isness with regard to this ally. And it's a very permissive, gentle way to slide into this sort of case. But don't think it isn't a deadly process. This one will turn on somatics of a royal and classic nature, just gorgeous. Well, I've seen them get somatics all over their body.
Now, the reason why this is interesting to you is because it introduces another manifestation which has to date rather defied a good solid sweep that would crack it up and that is recall on past lives. This seems to be blocked in most people quite markedly by between-lives areas and limitation of attention and other things.
And you just get a person to sit down and ask them to start describing their last body and they will go on at some length. Only you ask them to be more accurate about this description and you hound them. And it gets less and less real to them, and less and less real, and less and less real, and less and less real, and less and less real, and less and less real, and more and more real, and more and more real, and more and more real, and more and more – less and less real, and less and less – and more real and more real, and more – and less real… [laughs]… and less real and less real. And you just keep them describing it. And they'll dig up their past life, just by description.
You see why it works and what your goal is as an auditor. You've got to get the As-isness of that life to knock out some of its unpleasant features so that the person is willing to recall that much unpleasantness.
Now, I had a case one time that had a number of wives. This case had had a great many wives. It's quite common in this society to have thirteen or fourteen marriages, but not the number this fellow had. And he had his wives all mixed up. And they were all mixed up with his present wife and his present wife was getting very unhappy because she was being called by a variety of names and getting bawled out for a variety of manifestations which she was not manifesting.
So the way I handled this case was simply asked this fellow to sit down and start describing wives. And I cut him short on the basis of, "Well, now, let's see. Was that Agnes? No, that wasn't Agnes. Let's see, uh, Josephine? No, that wasn't Josephine. No, that was the blizzard of '80 – no, that…" We see, we – just cut out this fog. I mean, just make him start describing. We don't care whether – you see, your preclear will be mixed up initially. You want him to remember in detail everything about this and he wants more and more detail. That isn't what you want at all. You just want him to get the As-isnesses of that person. You know, just as the person is to him.
And if he is foggy on the person's name or time or date or something like that, why, that's the easiest thing in the world. Of course, you've got to get the As-isness of the fogginess. So you say, "Well, if you're foggy about it, stop fishing and simply say, well, you're foggy about it, see? And then just describe it some more. Describe it the way it seems to you."
The first description he'll give you: "It isn't."
And, "Well, it isn't, but I guess I could make up something." It'd be totally imaginary, and so on." And they give you this sort of thing, and they're just running out the As-isnesses as nice as you please.
Now, if you let this fellow practice Alter-isness, you'll perpetuate the incident. So it's a cute process. I mean, it's a process an auditor guides with a very, very delicate thumb and forefinger. You want the As-isnesses. You just want him to describe what he now has with relationship to the incident, not to mock-up a bunch of stuff to give you a good description, you see. And you just want him to describe the way that seems to him now. "Now, describe how it seems to you now. Describe how that person seems to you now. Describe it some more," so on.
Well, the only difficulty that you'll get into with regard to this is this simple, single difficulty, is you're not giving him the time factor always, you see? So you must interject in your description, "When does that seem to you?" Which seems to be an odd piece of English, but "Now, when does it seem to you?" You want to get him the idea of time. "Well, it seems… uh… uh… it's an incredibly long time ago. Yeah, an incredibly long time ago." Or "It seems just like it was yesterday." Whatever he wants to say about it, that's the As-isness of the memory with regard to that subject. And boy, it's not a fast process, but it has stable results because you're using thought all the way down the line; you're using thought, and that gives you a very stable result.
By the time I had. this fellow describing each one of these women, and so on, he'd get hemming and hawing and sitting back and trying to figure-figure-figure exactly whether it was this one or that one or how he did this or that. We are not interested in it. "How does it seem to you now?"
"Well," he says, "confused."
"And how does it seem to you now?"
"Well, it's still… well, it's not as con… No, it's… as a matter of fact, her name was Agnes." See, he just plows right on through the mess.
"Well, when does it seem to you, you had anything?"
"Oh, golly, eight or nine lifetimes ago. I… just seems forever," and so forth.
Keep him describing. Keep him describing. Keep him describe, describe – when it seems; but describe the way it seems to him, rather than an embroidery on the situation.
Next thing he knows, there he is lying out there in the bois with three feet of rapier sticking through his gullet, you know. "And how does that seem to you?"
"It was too early in the morning to get killed."
They shoot their postulates out and everything like that. It's a terrifically permissive method of processing and about the only method which I would really think of using on a specific thing that I was trying to shoot up with a preclear on a short session – half an hour or something like this you have, to straighten out somebody's mind on some subject or another. Just get him to describe how it seems to him and trip him every time he starts to embroider.
Oh, the thetan will just take this opportunity, you know, to get the bit in his teeth and run like mad. This is a wonderful opportunity. Just think of the mock-ups he could get,
the romance he could interject and how he could suddenly be Mary, Queen of Scots and what an enormous, wide-open door there is here. Well, you just slam the door in his face: "And now how does it seem to you?" [laughter]
That I would call an office technique, you know, just one that you're patching somebody up with. It's also an interesting party technique.
I took a husband one time and got him to describe his wife. And my golly, she was wearing an entirely different dress than she was wearing. And he didn't know the color of her eyes, which is rather common. He was just in a complete fog. She was sitting in the next room and he had been looking at her for a long time. He couldn't describe her even vaguely and he just bogged on it.
"Well, then, now how does it seem to you?"
"She seems awfully vague."
And believe me, that was his condition of marriage: Darn vague. He didn't know whether he was married or not. And – of course.
And, by the way, in running Acceptance-Rejection Processing, such as you've been running recently, the first thing he threw away was his wife. That one he could get rid of. But the funny part of it is, he didn't even know who he was getting rid of. This is what turned up. [laughter] Okay.
Well, you've run a lot of processes. You know how to run a lot of processes, so on. Remember, each one of these has its place. And don't forget the efficiency and efficacy of Exteriorization by Distance for polishing up somebody's perceptions and so forth.
But don't forget that Opening Procedure of 8-C on collecting somebody is sometimes vitally necessary and you might have more preclear to collect than you know. He must be quite a preclear if he can be buttered over this many states, counties, universes and people and patterns and still be present at all, see? He must be quite a guy. Well, getting him collected is sometimes quite a stunt.
Part of the collection technique is Opening Procedure by Duplication. That is a collection technique. And that collects them in with a shotgun because it at once breaks their horror of duplicating, so it gets them into better communication as such. But 8-C's Opening Procedure and Opening Procedure by Duplication are both of them tremendously valuable in collecting people in.
Okay. Any questions? Yes?
Male voice: How would Description work on present time environment?
Oh, it'll work just fine, only you can look at it.
Male voice: What?
You can look at it. Description is mainly useful on environments which the person can't look at, at the moment.
Male voice: Okay.
That's where its value is. It'd work on the present time environment, but you'd find it's slower than Opening Procedure by 8-C. I'm fairly sure you would.
Female voice: This would pierce a confusing universe more quickly than ARC Straightwire.
He'll describe the physical universe. I asked a fellow to do that one time, just as a little test.
"Describe the physical universe," I said.
Boy, we got a comm lag. He kept telling me, "No that isn't in this universe." He had devils mocked-up in the universe, you know, and "No, that isn't in this universe. Well, let's see…" And he was trying to find something that was. And he finally found that to him the town was a little tiny island. It was sitting in the middle of a very dark space and that was this universe and had very peculiar fairy-tale type houses. And that was the universe he was living in.
Okay.
HANDLING OF THETA BODIES PAGE 2 7ACC-31C - 26.07.54