Scientology A New Slant on Life 1965 Chapter 7

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What Is Knowledge?

Knowledge is certainty; knowledge is not data. Knowingness itself is certainty. Sanity is certainty, providing only that that certainty does not fall beyond the conviction of another when he views it.

To obtain a certainty one must be able to observe. But what is the level of certainty required? And what is the level of observation required for a certainty or a knowledge to exist?

If a man can stand before a tree and by sight, touch or other perception know that he is confronting a tree and be able to perceive its form and be quite sure he is confronting a tree, we have the level of certainty required. If the man will not look at the tree or, although it is observably a tree to others, if he discovers it to be a blade of grass or a sun, then he is below the level of certainty required. Some other person helpfully inclined would have to direct his perception to the tree until the man perceived without duress that it was indeed a tree he confronted. That is the only level of certainty required in order to qualify as knowledge, for knowledge is observation and is given to those who would look.

In order to obtain knowledge and certainty, it is necessary to be able to observe, in fact, three universes in which there could be trees. The first of these is one’s own universe; one should be able to create for his own observation in its total form for total perception, a tree. The second universe would be the material universe, which is the universe of matter, energy, space and time and is the common meeting ground of all of us. The third universe is actually a class of universes, which could be called “the other fellow’s universe”, for he and all the class of “other fellows” have universes of their own.

A doctor, for instance, may seem entirely certain of the cause of some disease, yet it depends upon the doctor’s certainty for the layman to accept that cause of the disease. That penicillin cures certain things is a certainty to the doctor even when penicillin suddenly and inexplicably fails to cure something. Any inexplicable failure introduces an uncertainty, which thereafter removes the subject from the realm of an easily obtained certainty.

We have here, then, a parallel between certainty and sanity.

The less certain the individual on any subject, the less sane he could be said to be upon that subject; the less certain he is of what he views in the material universe, what he views in his own or the other fellow’s universe, the less sane he could be said to be.

The road to sanity is demonstrably the road to increasing certainty. Starting at any level, it is only necessary to obtain a fair degree of certainty on the material universe to improve considerably one’s beingness. Above that, one obtains some certainty of his own universe and some certainty of the other fellow’s universe.

Certainty, then, is clarity of observation. Of course, above this, vitally so, is certainty in creation. Here is the artist, here is the master, here is the very great spirit.

As one advances he discovers that what he first perceived as a certainty can be considerably improved. Thus we have certainty as a gradient scale. It is not an absolute, but it is defined as the certainty that one perceives or the certainty that one creates what one perceives or the certainty that there is perception. Sanity and perception, certainty and perception, knowledge and observation, are then all of a kind, and amongst them we have sanity.

The road into uncertainty is the road toward psychosomatic illness, doubts, anxieties, fears, worries and vanishing awareness. As awareness is decreased, so does certainty decrease.

It is very puzzling to people at higher levels of awareness why people behave toward them as they do; such higher level people have not realized that they are not seen, much less understood. People at low levels of awareness do not observe, but substitute for observation preconceptions, evaluation and suppositions, and even physical pain by which to attain their certainties.

The mistaken use of shock by the ancient Greek upon the insane, the use of whips in old Bedlam, all sought to deliver sufficient certainty to the insane to cause them to be less insane.

Certainty delivered by blow and punishment is a non-self-determined certainty. It is productive of stimulus-response behavior. At a given stimulus a dog who has been beaten, for instance, will react invariably, providing he has been sufficiently beaten, but if he has been beaten too much, the stimulus will result only in confused bewilderment. Thus certainty delivered by blows, by applied force, eventually brings about a certainty as absolute as one could desire—total unawareness. Unconsciousness itself is a certainty which is sought by many individuals who have failed repeatedly to reach any high level of awareness certainty. These people then desire an unawareness certainty. So it seems that the thirst for certainty can lead one into oblivion if one seeks it as an effect.

An uncertainty is the product of two certainties. One of these is a conviction, whether arrived at by observation (causative) or by a blow (effected). The other is a negative certainty. One can be sure that something is and one can be sure that something is not. He can be sure that there is something, no matter what it is, present and that there is nothing present. These two certainties commingling create a condition of uncertainty known as “maybe”. A “maybe” continues to be held in suspense in an individual’s mind simply because he cannot decide whether it is nothing or something. He grasps and holds the certainties each time he has been given evidence or has made the decision that it is a somethingness and each time he has come to suppose that it is a nothingness. Where these two certainties of something and nothing are concerned with and can vitally influence one’s continuance in a state of beingness, or where one merely supposes they can influence such a state of beingness, a condition of anxiety arises. Thus anxiety, indecision, uncertainty, a state of “maybe” can exist only in the presence of poor observation or the inability to observe.

Such a state can be remedied. One merely causes the individual to observe in terms of the three universes.