Intensive Procedure - Nothing-Something (7ACC 540712)
Series: 7th Advanced Clinical Course (7ACC)
Date: 12 July 1954
Speaker: L. Ron Hubbard
Okay, I want to talk to you now about two processes which are both of great order of severity. One of these is R2-28 and it's called Nothing-Something. And the other one is 8-D, an old familiar friend.
Nothing-Something is a process which could be run with many variations and probably should be called Nothing-Something Velocity. It's that part of the Communication Formula – that part of the formula which takes care of impulse or particle. Now, in the Communication Formula it says "impulse or particle" proceeding from source-point to receipt-point. All right.
If that is the case, then, there must be part of the Communication Formula that has to do with impulse or particle. Well, impulse is nothingness as far as form is concerned and particle has to do with any variation of mass – which is to say energy itself or objects.
Now, the thetan can be something or nothing but can become overbalanced in either direction. He can become so concentrated on nothingnesses, because he has found somethingnesses antipathetic to him, that he will insist upon being himself a nothingness attacking somethingnesses in an effort to make nothingnesses.
In other words, he wants to get a perfect communication. He insists he is a nothing at the source-point dispatching an impulse containing no mass to the receipt-point and he insists that the receipt-point then duplicate him as a nothingness.
So he looks at a mountain and the mountain, of course, must vanish. He sent a message to the mountain. A fellow by the name of Mohammed dramatized this once. Now, you get that idea of a duplication at source-point to receipt-point.
All right, that's sound enough. Now, let's get a no-form. If this thetan says, "I am simply a" (which is the higher truth of the matter) "a space-energy production unit or entity. And I myself am not form and I insist on remaining in this pure, undefiled and unclassified and unidentified state." Then he will insist on a nothingness arriving at the receipt-point. And if there is a nothingness at the receipt-point, he will find himself very impatient indeed if a somethingness continues to remain there.
In other words, he wants to communicate with that mountain. He's going to communicate with that mountain and the moment he communicates with that mountain that mountain must cease to exist, of course. And then we have a perfect communication.
Here is, merely, the thetan's rather irrational insistence upon a perfect communication taking place. He insists upon it with everything he has in his power.
Now, if he were to classify himself, comfortably, as a somethingness and say, "I am this mountain communicating with that mountain," he is very well within his own abilities and his rights to do so.
But a thetan doesn't do this ordinarily. He gets up there on that basis of great purity of "I am a nothingness and, therefore, when I communicate, by God, there's going to be a nothingness at the other end or else!"
And he'll get frantic that way if he has communicated nicely, pleasantly, sweetly and exactly as he should to somethingnesses, and they backed up on him. In other words, he got a return fire that he did not like.
And when he got into that condition, he did not enjoy it. So he says, "I insist on pure communication. That is the first amendment of the thetan's constitution and I insist on it and I have the right to a perfect communication – that means a perfect duplication – so we must get a nothingness at the other end."
Now, actually, a thetan is totally competent of tolerating a somethingness, he's competent at tolerating a nothingness at will. He is something which monitors somethingnesses and nothingnesses rather than himself being a nothingness.
When a thetan is totally a nothingness and wishes to remain totally a nothingness he, therefore, must have some antipathy for a great many somethingnesses. So it's necessary to clear this up with a case.
Many of your people who are not exteriorizing are remaining interiorized because they are using the body and whatever tools the body may be able to employ, to make enough nothingnesses to satiate themselves.
This is the Genghis Khan complex. The pyramid of skulls is a fair answer to all those bodies. See, it's not a perfect answer but we'll settle for a pyramid of skulls. We can't quite completely make nothingness of that town, so we will settle for some smoking embers.
See, there's still going to be a site there and there's still going to be some walls that are unrazed but, nevertheless, we'll settle for that. And he's gone through this period and then realized all the damage he's done, and "he came to realize" like it says in the True Confession stories. And he gets to a point there, you see, where he realizes that he'd better put back all these somethingnesses that he has taken away, and therefore he will start on a save complex.
This is your psycho save complex – the real spinners that they've got down here in the institution that are going to save things. They're going to save the world and all that sort of thing. They make a great liability because – for anybody who tries to do anything for a society at all – for the good reason that there are many levels of this. A thetan who is in fairly good condition has a perfect right to salvage anything he wants to and he has, he feels, the perfect right to make nothing out of anything he wants to.
And listen, he really doesn't with a pure heart have any slightest desire to make somethingnesses when he is making somethingnesses most of the time in this society at this time.
He is at a level where he would – if he only had a chance – would much rather make a bunch of nothingnesses out there. But he's apparently making somethingnesses out there. He's beaten down.
Now, let's go up on an upper level of this and just get some thetan operating. He's operating perfectly well; he's perfectly relaxed about making a somethingness or making a nothingness. He's relaxed about it. It doesn't matter to him.
So he made a somethingness. Well, so what? He can mock himself up as a duplicate somethingness and communicate with it. This is easy.
He can also unmock himself as such and communicate as a nothingness. All he has to do is get the idea of himself – that he wants to communicate with that city – he just gets the idea of himself being the city and he'll communicate with it.
For instance, a writer who is very successful, such as writers which you see in the magazines who are widely known – they have, with perfect aplomb, the ability to think of themselves as the whole US public. And they can think of themselves as the whole public. When they are no longer able to think of themselves as the whole public, they are no longer able to have an audience. Curious, isn't it?
Now, here we have our most basic problem in communication in the field of the message and in the field of the terminals – these two terminals – the source-point and receipt-point. You recognize those as terminals. That's what a terminal is: source-point or receipt-point. These two terminals have going between them, a somethingness or a nothingness. If there are nothingnesses going between these two terminals, you will find that the terminals themselves will have a tendency to erode. And so you have the mechanism of death in communication.
You have an electric motor, you've got a couple of electrodes and flying between these electrodes are much lighter charges than electrodes. And as a result, the electrodes get smaller. And they erode.
We have the wind going from one mountain peak to another mountain peak and so we get the mountain peaks eroding. Actually, they wouldn't erode at all if you had bigger mountain peaks moving in on them. And, as a matter of fact, they'd increase in mass.
But it's so foreign to this universe to communicate between two light terminals with heavy masses. You get how that would be if you could stretch your mind around on it.
We've got practically nothing at source-point, practically nothing at receipt-point, and what's passing between them are enormously heavy masses. And we're used to think of that as a very disastrous state of affairs.
Let's take 16-inch naval shells – these large masses going between two terminals at high velocity. And something is bound to occur to these two terminals.
And we must get the idea in this universe, at least, that we're running on the consideration that when we get anything different than the mass itself passing from source-point to receipt-point, then we get a diminishment of the terminals. That's a special consideration. It's not necessarily true. In this universe, terminals diminish. They look on it as very bad when terminals really start to increase too much.
Well now, you can get the source-point terminal diminishing by sending particles which it is holding. Instead of creating particles, it just sends particles which it is holding over to the other one. We get that in electroplating. A battery will do that.
We get the other one where the masses are very large that are going from source-point to receipt-point and we get a complete breakdown of the receipt point – big velocities, high masses at high velocities, such as bombs and so forth, going between the two.
Well, we needn't labor this any direction at all because all we're trying to get out of it is essentially a great simplicity. Our thetan has become overbalanced. We're processing him there and we find out that he's overbalanced one way or the other. He's so set on having nothingnesses, and he is so confronted with somethingnesses, that something someplace or another is going to break.
And if he can help it, it won't be him. So therefore, he will continue to process very slowly.
Now, we can have somebody there who is so set on having somethingnesses (different consideration) that to erase anything he would consider an utter impossibility. Well, he's sometimes this case: the case that can't get a mock-up to vanish. Guy makes a mock-up, it won't go away.
Well, this person is insisting on a somethingness because of his inability to create a nothingness. And any jammed bank that you ever ran into can be described with that phrase. He's trying to insist on nothingnesses but, by golly, he still gets somethingnesses.
And he will just jam tighter and tighter and tighter on the bank. Why? Because the world insists on remaining there no matter what he communicates to it.
Actually, he's using MEST particles to destroy MEST particles. And the MEST universe is a. great brotherhood. And you see in a certain society that human beings mustn't kill each other. This is even agreed to, to a lesser degree, amongst the animal kingdoms. One of a kind must not kill another of the same kind – lesser degree in the animal kingdoms.
There are certain of the animal kingdoms which have no agreement with that, whatsoever. Wolves, for instance. They'll kill each other – bang-bang. But we finally get down to a particle, an atom, and this atom is running on a basic consideration that it mustn't harm its brothers – just simply must hold them all off. And so we get mass organized as mass is. Of course, it isn't running on a consideration, a consideration has been put into it. It must stay individual and it mustn't occupy the space of another atom and it doesn't know anything else but that.
All right. Here we have the basic struggle in communication on the part of a preclear. He's a nothingness and everything he communicates with remains a nothingness. There's your boy exteriorized, he can't see a thing. He's getting a perfect communication and he doesn't like it. Everywhere he looks, there's nothingness.
He knows there's a universe around here someplace, but his total conversance with it has to do with simply the body. And he's so used to letting the body look for him that he himself will not look. He is unwilling to mock himself up as a mountain in order to see a mountain. He won't get the idea, "lama mountain," and so then he would see a mountain.
There's, actually, the mechanics of what's wrong with him and why he's seeing nothing or why he's looking at a facsimile instead of seeing a real object. He's not willing to be the real object, although he's exteriorized. He thinks there's something very bad about being massy. Now, there's that fellow.
Now, there's the fellow just below that who is insisting on a nothingness occurring. You see this amongst one-year-old children. They have reasserted their right to make nothingness of whatever they look at. They will make nothingness of everything in sight if you don't watch them.
They, in other words, conceive that a nothingness should appear wherever they look. And they will pick up all of the MEST items that they can lay their hands on and cart them off someplace and hide them or jam them up in little piles. And they'll make sure that anything they look at gets moved. This is about as close as they can come to making a nothingness out of it.
Now, let's get the case a little bit further down who has gotten into the idea that he's in desperate straits. He's in desperate straits because every time and everywhere he looks there is a somethingness. There's a somethingness everywhere he looks and he can't make nothing out of it. He's not being permitted to make nothing out of anything. And all these somethingnesses are, therefore, a continued affront to his deity.
If you want an emotion out of a thetan, run the emotion "offended deity" sometime just as an experiment – not therapeutic but quite amusing – offended deity. Because almost anybody walking down the road in a tramp suit can manage to get some offended deity up on one subject or another. A thetan is very good at this.
All right. This individual then decides, "Well now, look. If all of these somethingnesses stay there, then I must be something too." So he, then, enforcedly becomes a somethingness communicating with somethingnesses.
Now, let's go downgrade just a little bit further and let's find out that it's much worse than this. He realizes that he cannot tolerate himself being a somethingness looking at all these nothingnesses, and he realizes that the only answer for it is to somehow or another, by whatever communication system, to make a nothingness out of everything that he views. Oh, he's got to make a nothingness.
He's got to termite it or do something with it. And about this time, you get your military commander. He's in about that state of anxiety. If you turn a body of troops loose in an area, a civilized area, they act – I don't care what nation they belong to or what uniform they wear – they will act more or less on this basis because that's generally the mood of the commanding general. He knows he'd better make a nothingness. He's gone past the point of really being a somethingness and he's just got to destroy. And they make good generals.
Now, they have to knock it to pieces – got to make a somethingness into a nothingness no matter how covertly. So they will start settling for partial nothingnesses. You get your Genghis Khan complex. They'll settle for partial nothingnesses.
What are these partial nothingnesses? Well, a cutting remark which reduced somebody's ego – that made nothing out of him. That's fairly satisfactory. An execution, you know, of some – Private Slovik goes and walks off from his post so they kill him.
Well, that comes fairly close to making a nothingness, see. Oh, by the way, I wasn't talking about any existing personality. This is the way Man has run since his earliest beginnings. He starts settling for these partial nothingnesses, partial nothingnesses. That's important to you because it explains human behavior, cattiness and various covert, incomplete nothingnesses.
Now, as this goes downscale and he's more and more, more depressed on this subject, he will make nothingness out of a business letter by making a mistake in it. See, the boss said, "Write a business letter," and the boss gets back the business letter and it's all okay except that it was Binksand Company and the letter is now addressed to Jinks and Company.
He gets further downscale than that, and you get somebody all dressed up in a party gown and they're the person who always manages to tip the wine glass over on themselves. They won't even tip it on – a little higher scale, they tipped it on somebody else, you see, but they're downscale to a point of where they'll only tip the wine glass on themselves.
And they're always in difficulty, somehow or another. And here, I'm afraid you're just about, now, looking at Homo sapiens in his general run-of-the-mill activity. He spills wine glasses on himself and says, "What a horrible life I lead." Of course, most of the time he complains because he doesn't have any wine to spill on himself.
Anyway, let's drop down the line a little bit further and let's find out that this person now has to preserve all so me thingnesses. Can't, you see. He's gone to the second cycle of being a somethingness himself and he's just got to make nothing but somethingnesses. And they will make somethingnesses in all directions, but they'll disassociate, too when they get down to that level. That's really getting pretty bad off. And they will go below that level and start making nothingnesses again.
What are we getting here? We're getting a scale of behavior which has two terminals. And we look at these two terminals and we find out that each terminal is going something-nothing, something-nothing, something-nothing right on downscale, each time more and more covertly with more and more complex communication systems.
Each terminal is doing this. Receipt-point is doing this all the way down the line while the source-point is doing this all the way down the line. And where you're getting out of adjustment on these two things – where you're getting out of adjustment gives us our affinity scales. You know, degree of – degree of duplication.
And it's just whether or not the source-point is being something or nothing at the time. Of course, up above the line an individual who can be something at will, he can be nothing at will, he actually is on a fairly clear course. He is capable of being something, of being nothing and he doesn't have any vast compulsion. He isn't operating on a compulsion to make nothing, you see, or a compulsion to make something. See, he's operating on free choice.
So he'd just as soon save something or knock it out; it's of no consequence. It's not this important. It's not necessarily a fixed Communication Formula, either. He can even change his considerations on communication.
But as he goes down the line, if he were to start the dwindling spiral and to get down the line, he'd pass through these other manifestations. And you even get this: manifestations in the bughouse where the fellows are – they've got to save the universe. "This matchstick here is – the universe needs this – unless I rush around and touch everybody with this matchstick, why, the world is going to come to an end."
You'll see this clear on down to the bottom. In other words, we've got a trait in common from top to bottom in something and nothingness on the source-points and receipt-points and we're talking about the impulse or the particle which was itself the message.
Now, something which stands there all the time sending nothingnesses will eventually erode. And something which is a nothingness sending messages all the time, if obeying the Communication Formula implicitly, will get to a point where it will become a somethingness. So you get a variation there just by the character of the message because of the duplication involved.
You'll see this. This is very easy to view. Just draw yourself up a nothingness and get the idea of a nothingness message arriving at a nothingness receipt-point-in other words, a thought – and we see this is perfectly able communication. I mean, there's nothing wrong with this. There was no form.
Now, we see a bullet passing from one point to the other or a shoe or a hairbrush or a car or almost anything you could think of passing between these two terminals, and we get other ideas of these terminals duplicating each other.
For instance, a truck going from Los Angeles to San Francisco is all right. It's a message particle between the two. But you will find out that it will deteriorate the mass, to some slight degree, of Los Angeles, and increase the mass, to some slight degree, of the other city. All right.
How does all this add up in processing? It means that your preclear is unable to tolerate, ordinarily, when you contact him as an auditor – is unable to tolerate somethingnesses or nothingnesses and he's up against another factor.
When he was unable to make a nothingness out of a somethingness – in other words, if he read something he couldn't make a nothingness out of – if he did this consistently, it has senior survival. When a person has failed to complete an action on somethingness or nothingness, then he has a failure. The reason why this is a failure is it's simply because he has not achieved a perfect duplication. And he will insist upon this up to the point where he will recognize that his loses are a testimony to the senior survival of the item with which he's trying to communicate.
So the mountain, then, has greater survival value than himself. Now, this is senior survival. And here is Survive as the Dynamic Principle of Existence walking in on the Communication Formula. And it walks in right there.
When an individual is not at source-point, is not able to effect his intentions at receipt-point consistently, he will then conceive that receipt-point is a senior survival to himself and is now source-point. And in order to continue to be a source-point, then, he has to be the receipt-point. And we get the shift of valence.
The way you knock this out is 8-D.
Now, let's take a mountain. "Where would a mountain be safe?" No matter what comm lags, you just keep asking that question. "Where would a mountain be safe?" "Where would a mountain be safe?" "Where would a mountain be safe?" "Where would a mountain be safe?" getting an answer each time.
That's 8-D. The rest of 8-D concerns itself with exteriorization, and we have the remainder of 8-D actually here in R2-16, which is Opening Procedure – beg your pardon, there's an 8-D Opening Procedure which is not that one. It's R2-18, isn't it?
Male voice: Yes.
Yes, it's R2-18. And then it goes to R1-4, R1-5, R1-6, R1-7. And the final step of it would simply be, "Where would (blank) be safe?" Now, what's "blank?"
The most elementary form of 8-D is you simply have the individual name off all the people he's been associated with since birth. And the last one he names to you – you don't care how many times he names these through – the last one he told you, the one that was most buried or most difficult, is probably right in present time, usually.
And finally, we take this character, the last one he named – that's the greatest communication lag – must have been the most buried person, and we'd say, "Where would this person be safe?" And we'd just keep on asking that question and asking it and asking it and asking it, and getting the answer and making sure the individual is absolutely certain. And that is 8-D.
Now, R2-28 takes this up in a different way. It says, "What distance would it be all right for you to make nothing of?" That can be used as a forerunner to Exteriorization by Distance if your preclear is having any trouble with distances. "What distance would it be all right for you to make nothing of?"
We want to know in general after that, "What distance would it be all right for him to make something of?" We want to know what somethingness he could tolerate and what nothingness he could tolerate.
Now, the basic questions of R2-28 are – and just for your remembrance on this, it's Nothing-Something – would simply be, "What would it be all right for you to make nothing of?" "What would it be all right for you to make something of?" Or "What nothingness would you be able to tolerate?" "What somethingness would you be able to tolerate?"
You'll find out that your boy that's not able to remedy havingness and so forth can use that with great ability, because he finds out there is no single article anywhere under the sun, moon or stars that he could tolerate the continuous existence of. And there is his unreality. He's trying to unmock everything in his environment. And, of course, it isn't real and it isn't solid.
Now, Opening Procedure – contacting walls, spots in space and so forth – do this in other forms. But this is just merely a direct form.
However you would run that, you want to know what nothingnesses he could tolerate and what somethingnesses he could tolerate. "What it'd be all right for him to make nothing out of?" "What it'd be all right for him to make something out of?"
And your opening gun – it works best, by the way – your opening gun on this in a case that's having a lot of trouble would simply be this: you ran Exteriorization by Distance and he wasn't able to get much reality on it, you would go right to R2-28 and you would simply run that.
You just put it in there, "Now, what distance would it be all right for you to make nothing of?" And you keep that up for a while. You'll find out this person is trying to collapse the whole universe and so make it disappear. He's trying to collapse all available distances. He's doing it on a machine or a compulsion basis and, of course, he can't exteriorize. He's trying to collapse all these distances. If he's going to collapse all these distances, naturally, he can't be three feet back of his head because he's got a machine that would put him back in his head again. Instantly.
He has become the victim of his own action. He has become the receipt-point of his own source-points. He's become the effect of his own causes. And so he has difficulty.
Thank you very much.
INTENSIVE PROCEDURE: PAGE 2 7ACC-19 - 12.07.54 NOTHING-SOMETHING