View source for Experience - Randomity And Change Of Pace (AC 571229)

'''Series:''' Ability Congress (AC)

'''Date:''' 29 December 1957

'''Speaker:''' L. Ron Hubbard

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Hi ya! Welcome to the congress.

Now, we usually start these congresses off with a bang. But we've seldom attempted a production as great, as earthshaking, as reaching into history, as today.

Now, you think you're at the congress, don't you? No, you isn't. You is at Cape Carnivorous und ve foreign scientists vat help der American government is going to launch der first unsuccessful saterilite. Now, I vill have to have a bit of assistance. I am ashamed to say I have to have an American to help me, but there's somebody - somebody has got to do something here. Now, ve - our able assistant here, who is de entire - der entire technical staff of Cape Carnivorous and 'ere she goes!

[Noises, laughter - see introduction]

Vell, now there ain't nothink goink around the air. Ve - ve foreign scientists vat help America get der heads cut off, ve - ve very disappointed, but ve can put up sputnik anyvay. Now, dis is the first unsuccessful launching of an American satellite, and punks like Eisenhower and these other Americans, you don't vant nothing to do with them, because look vat ve can do!

Vell, der ve is - der ve is. And now ve know. Ve got it down, too. That's better than de Russians. Now, all kidnik aside, this was a great invention. Dat it vent wrong had nuttin' to do with American scientists.

The funny part of all of this rocket parade that you see - the very amusing thing about rockets and American science in general - is that people tell you it's losing. And I'll tell you something very funny: It isn't losing; it's way ahead, but it hasn't yet had a chance with the government. I mean that seriously. It hasn't had a chance with the government yet.

I don't know why, but the government seems to be a little bit overwhelmed from abroad. And maybe one of these days they'll turn around and notice they have some scientists here in America that can do a few things. But if that day doesn't come, we have still launched a sputnik.

Well, I'm very glad to see you here at this congress. We are actually bigger than our last year's mid-year congress. Thank you all for coming. We have so much material to cover at this congress that I am very - I get a funny thing when I start to cover material. I mean, I get the idea that there's so much of it that I better kind of drag it all out, you know?

The truth of the matter is, there are three programs here in three days. You've seen a fourth program that wasn't scheduled until almost before the congress began. But there are three programs here that we have to take up, and the first of those today is simply Scientology and Project Clear; there's quite a bit of data on this. And tomorrow there's another project which is of considerable interest. And the next day, there is another project which you will find probably of even greater interest and which is represented by the big question mark which you see up on the signs. So, we actually had better get on with it.

We are, organizationally in Scientology; we are only really about four years old. Dianetics and its organizations were as uncontrolled as any preclear you ever had your hands on. That was quite an interesting sputnik in itself; it was an interesting rocket. But the truth of the matter is that it did not represent solid growth; it represented spontaneous enthusiasm.

I want to give you a little idea of how far we've come.

The first organization that I controlled was called the Office of L. Ron Hubbard. It was in Phoenix, Arizona and it was opened up in the early part of 1952, and it carried on mainly trying to reorient the situation. It had mainly Dianetic business and at that time a fellow had decided to wipe the organizations out one way or the other, and he was busily doing so.

We started to swing into Scientology in the late fall of that year, and Scientology started getting underway. We still had some Dianetic business. And then we get up to the next year: I was abroad for a whole year; there was very little done. We get up to 1954. There you see the decline of Dianetic business and the starting of Scientology business. They are different, believe me.

In other words, from the moment that we really began to work with Scientology, we were a success, and we have continued onward and the curve has been steep. And at this moment, across the world, there are more students in training in Scientology, there are more auditors in practice in Scientology, and there are more offices and actual businesses engaged upon in Scientology than there ever were in Dianetics by about a factor of five.

But it's quiet growth, very orderly growth, very stable, very steady. And this curve which we see here has nothing to do with whether or not we're making money. We're not making money. Every penny we get is expended at once into research and projects of one kind or another, or into the running expenses of the organization. This is quite interesting. The organization is not busy making a profit. Every time it can get ahead a penny, it immediately starts something new.

But what do we see here? Not a sudden spontaneous explosion, which then tapered off - and which took about three or four years to damp out entirely - but we see beginning with 1955, this steady growth. You get the picture? And all organizational activities are going on that curve. It's a steep curve and every bit of that growth is honest and sturdy and has no real liability. Now, that's what I mean by building an organization; what I mean by building a subject.

What have we had to do to get ahead with this? It's quite interesting that a new thing in the world, it would be a marvelous miracle if a new thing could be launched in the world without any enturbulance at all. You know, you just launched it and everybody said, „That's fine,“ took it and it grew, and that's all there was to it. Ooh, no! No, no. That isn't the way it goes. It goes Boom! Crash! Thud - apathy, enthusiasm! serenity! apathy, apathy -1.5 - 1.1. Fascinating. It's just a rolly coaster. Well, that rolly coaster was in progress for the first three years of the seven we have been in existence, and that rolly coaster was a rough one. Any old-timers here know that. That's been rough; and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for staying with it.

What do we have to show now? What do we have to show for all this time? We have a lot of things to show that you wouldn't really suspect were assets. And I know you didn't come here to listen to some dull lectures on the subject of economics. You want to find out about you, and so forth. Well, the best thing I can tell you about you is that you're a success, and I'm trying to right here now: You are a success. Because if the organization prospers; if you prosper the organization prospers, and if the organization prospers you prosper. It is merely an indication of whether or not we're disseminating. It's merely an indication of whether or not we're getting out.

Now, you sit in one little place and you talk to this one and he says, „Well, that stuff, my mind. I know nothin's wrong with my mind. I generally keep it home on the piano.“ We talk to this fellow, we talk to that fellow, we talk to another fellow; one right after the other, and they all say, „Nyah-nyah.“ Our parents say to you, is „Are you crazy, fooling around with something like that? What's the matter with you? Why don't you leave all this betterment stuff alone? Be happy like us.“ We lose all our friends; we make a lot of enemies, and fortunately, we make a lot of new friends that were worthwhile this time.

I'm reminded, by the way, of several conversations I've had with guys in the organization, gals - very amusing - their accounts of going „out there,“ away from the organization, away from their group and away from their Scientology friends. It's always a sad story. Only Edgar Allan Poe could have done it justice. Very amusing.

I did it myself once. First time I ever went away from the Foundation or the organization - totally outside, you see, and totally out of contact - was for a period of only a few days in California. And I just left and I was rubbing elbows with the - what Roosevelt called „the forgotten man.“ Only he didn't, and he didn't forget him enough. And I was busy doing that and I drove back toward the Foundation at the end of this period - this visit - and all of a sudden, all of a sudden I began to cheer up. Until that time, I hadn't realized that I was miserable. It wasn't - it wasn't that people were just talking the same vocabulary I was, but they were alive; they would answer when spoken to. When they said something, it was generally worth listening to. There was communication; there were people; the place was alive. I felt like somebody that'd walked out of a cemetery.

So I know, I know what a person does when he goes out from an HCA class or something like that, and he goes out and sits down in the middle of Milwaukee or someplace. He's had all this tremendous communication, all these new friends, and he walked off and he left all of them, and there he is in the middle of Milwaukee or someplace.

It's a great tribute to Scientology that he doesn't commit suicide in the first week. Some people succumb. Some people succumb; others organize a group and they're still with us.

But it makes a new world; and that's the first thing we should really realize. It doesn't just „make somebody better and cure his sciatica and...” and do something like that. What it does is make a new world! And we see a world that way. We, we see the group that we associate with in our own area, we see these people, we talk with them, we group process them, we work with them; and the next thing you know, why, they're all talking and you're very glad to talk to them and everything's going along well. If you're unlucky, why, you don't start a group and it doesn't hold together.

But you have actually created, to some degree, a new world; a world that people are alive in, a world where people answer when spoken to, a world that is very very definitely a good world to be in. Now, maybe some of the people in that have faults; maybe we're catty and say, „Well, you know, confidentially, confidentially, she always talks to the preclear when she has him on the backtrack,“ you know? And we say, „Well, he's all right, but I sure can't stand the way he runs 8-C.“ A healthy, critical world, you could say.

But pity the poor fellow who joins a group and goes down and works in the insurance company and comes to the group once a week, and goes down and works at the insurance company and comes back to the group once a week. I wonder if it doesn't drive him slightly mad; just the contrast, one way or the other.

I heard somebody say recently, „If I could just find out what their level of communication is, if I could just find out what they would talk about, if I could just get down to their level somehow or another, I wouldn't mind being with 'em!“

It would surprise that person to know there is no level. There is a slightness of effect. You could always say, in a whisper: „I think the weather's going to be all right tomorrow.“ The person would probably look at you and say, „Is somebody talking to me? This has never happened before!“

Now, very often, people get an odd idea of all this. They say, „Well, I was perfectly happy. There I was, back there in the 40s, I was perfectly happy. Nobody ever bothered me; I never bothered anybody. I just went along in my own way; I wasn't at all worried about the mind or anything about it. I was happy. And look at me now! Ruined! I used to be able to live with my family. Now, I wish I could kill 'em! I'm ruined; I've been in Scientology too long.“

But, fortunately, he stays right on in Scientology, when he finds out that earlier he was too apathetic to care what was going on around him. Like a log or a piece of wood drifting in the stream, he was living a life without feeling, without communication. Well, if you're going to live a life without sensation, feeling, communication, ARC, understanding and a few other minor quantities, why live?! Why live? Why not just be a - just take the cog out of the machinery that one is and just go out and lie down in a field someplace and expire, because there's no point in it; because the things I've named are the pay you get for living; and there's no other pay.

The pay is communication, sensation, ARC, understanding, cooperative endeavor, enthusiasm over goals, activity; the feeling one is going someplace and doing something. These are the only payments that can be made to anyone for living. There are some things that try to substitute for them: mink coats, Cadillacs, and big bank accounts. Person says, „Well, if I could just make a couple of million, then I would've been paid for it.“ Well, you and I know the answer to that. We see some of these fellows that slaved through it for 20-25-30 years, let everything go by the boards but that first couple of million, or something like that, and there they sit in the preclear's chair with ulcers. They were paid, apparently; they were apparently paid; paid in cash - but they weren't paid in communication, sensation, understanding, feeling of a job well done, ARC. These payments they didn't get, and it made them sick! So the - is something real about living, and that something real is life. Not MEST, although MEST is a good substitute for reality.

Now, the funny part of it is, that if you can get paid in the commodities which I have just mentioned, you usually get paid in cash, too; and there's certainly nothing wrong in having a few hogsheads full of cash.

A bunch of my friends in India when I was a kid used to tell me of the horrors of material possession. I would sit there stuffing ice cream in my face in a restaurant, you know, listening to them tell about the horrors of material possession and how bad it all was, see? And I used to say, „Slurp, slurp. This guy's nuts!“

But wherever we look in life; wherever we look, we see people who have kind of ceased to be people. They're a cogwheel or a thing. Most people are small islands of grief surrounded totally by subapathy. These men who lead lives of quiet desperation. It's said, you know, that most men - married men, lead lives of quiet desperation. Don't wake up because it would be too painful. Well, if they don't wake up let me ask you this question, „How are they going to get paid?“ See, how they going to get in communication and how're they going to get any sensation and how're they going to get any understanding or cooperation or some goals up the line or a feeling of working together. How are they going to get any of these things if they cannot experience them? And if life makes you drop down to a point where you cannot experience so that you can bear it, then you have experienced the worst trick that life can play upon you. The worst trick life can play upon you is not getting shot, otherwise people wouldn't sit and watch these TV plays. I think the total plot is: Fellow walks on scene, somebody gets shot. Fellow walks on scene, somebody gets shot. It's an interesting plot.

But nobody would turn on TV if getting shot was so horrible that nobody could stand it. You get the idea?

Now, here we have - here we have then a situation where an individual shrinks back from experience; he shrinks from experience of any kind, and after that he can't be paid anything. There's no way to draw his pay, no way at all. If you can't experience, you can't be paid. And if you can't be paid, you can't live. And that's about the way it is.

How does an individual get into a state where he can't be paid? By not getting paid. Isn't that weird? I mean, I - you think I'm just making a joke here and saying, „Well, that's a cute epigram or something of the sort, the way not getting paid is not to get paid,“ but the funny part of it is, that's all there is to it. That is all there is to it.

If you're not paid long enough, you can't draw your pay. That's the rule. It's funny, but that's the only rule there is. If you go for a long enough period of time without experiencing anything, the next time you experience something, you will find you can't experience it. It's a havingness on the subject of experience and that's all it is. Havingness and experience.

One of the cute tricks to play upon a thetan who is saying, „Oh, isn't it dreadful because everything is so painful! Everything that happens to me is painful. I go out in an automobile, accident, goes over a cliff: I get hurt. I - every time I turn around, I look up in the - have to pass by the hospital, and I realize all those people are in there suffering and experiencing this terrible pain.“ And he talks about pain, „And my mother, the pain she suffered when I was born. I know; she told me every day.“

It's very amusing to get this fellow and put him in a preclear chair and have him do old Expanded GITA on pain, SOP-8 1953. Very, very amusing. You have him waste pain. Just - it's a little trick you could pull on one of these guys that's protesting about hurt. You just ask him to invent a way to waste pain, or „Tell me a way to waste pain“ - it doesn't much matter how you run it. You don't even have to audit this well.

The individual says, „Well, waste pain. Give it to me; I don't want it. Yeah.“

„Another way to waste pain.“

„Well, you'd inflict it on all the dead bodies in the graveyard.“ That's quite a standard response. He'd go on and on telling you ways to waste pain, ways to waste pain. All of a sudden, a little thought's liable to occur to him. How do you waste pain? By not experiencing it! Dreadful thought.

You have him waste pain a little bit further and you finally come up with a real 35-cent cognition, and he'll say, „You know, there's nothing very wrong about pain.“ And after a while, why, he comes through and he says, „Well, frankly, I know now why I have a bad kneecap. It's the only way I can hurt myself satisfactorily.“ And after a while he says, „Pain, pain slurp, slurp pain; oh, wonderful, wonderful; pain's wonderful; pain is just great; pain is the best. There sure isn't much of it in this society, is there?“

Mother tells you not to get hurt; the schoolteacher tells you not to get hurt; the cop tells you not to get hurt; the Careful Driving Association tells you not to get hurt; not to get hurt, not to get hurt; nobody's getting hurt. Gee, the good old days when nobody ever warned you, that you could just fall down steps, and everybody didn't think anything wrong with it at all. He said, „Well, he fell down steps.“ Nobody was critical about a thetan furnishing himself with a nice, quiet little pain spree.

Now, what I tell you here is true, and actually you - you should run it on somebody if you have any doubts about it, because it's one of the more fabulous mechanisms.

People don't experience pain for so long that pain becomes painful. They can't have it; they don't want it; they tell you it is very bad. The funny part of it is, if you let them waste pain for a long time, why, they come around to the point where they can have some pain. It's very fascinating. In other words, there's nothing wrong with pain; except not having any.

In other words, if the person doesn't have pain for a long enough period of time, then pain is something they can't have. If pain is there in abundance, they can have it.

Well, what's the score of this fellow who tells you that life is too ugly to be lived? What's the score? What about this fellow who says, „I cannot live because life is too painful.“ What's he telling you? He's telling you that he hasn't lived.

Now, I don't say that you ought to go and smash yourself up three times a week and twice on Sundays, but if you do, at least be aware enough to experience it nicely. Don't just waste it.

Of course, you can get so skillful that you don't hurt yourself anymore. I got into that horrible state one time. I was riding motorcycles cross-country out in Arizona; a little light, quiet sport I used to indulge in to shake the engrams - other people's engrams out of my head. And one day I said, „I think I'll run start, stop and change; start, change and stop, SCS, as a process on this motorcycle.”

It's lots of fun out there, you know; wide-open country and there's nothing in it to hurt you but the cactus and gullies and sharp rocks and snakes and scorpions and things. And anyhow, you would just start out across country and don't know if you ever heard of this sport or not, but it's - I'm sure you have. You open up the throttle - you used to play a game called straight line, and you start from here and go to top of that hill, way over there, in a straight line with no deviation. Of course you can't see what's in between (or you pretend you can't) and you just go straight to the other point with a minimum deviation. Makes an interesting game.

So I said, „Well, I could win this game every time if I would take this motorbike out here in this flat space and run SCS with this motorbike.“ So I did. I just ran the motorbike around. I had an auditor, and he was giving me the commands. All of a sudden, a terrible disappointment came over me; awful disappointed feeling. I realized that I had the motorbike under such excellent control that it was not only improbable but impossible to have an accident with it! No slightest chance of experiencing pain. It's very funny. I didn't ride for two or three weeks.

After that, why, I'd got so that I could let the air half out of one tire, you know, and slip one of the chain sprockets there a little bit, you know, so it might chip off and took to riding a motorcycle again. I had audited a motorbike up to minus randomity, as we used to say.

Well, now you could audit your body up to minus randomity too. But the only reason you'd be upset about minus randomity would be if you were running down your ability to experience. And if you depend on a body utterly to give you experience, why, then of course you will always have randomity with the body. You will never bring a body up to skillful management and if you totally depend on one to give you all of your sensation and experience ...

The „only one“ is in a terrible situation. He has only his body. Get the idea? He's below experience, then, isn't he, because his own body is under control, very thoroughly under control perhaps. Other people's bodies however, are not under control. So a person who is in communication and who is living is surrounded with randomity. There's all kinds of bodies around him that are not under control. If he can experience them in any way, if he can communicate with them in any way, then there's lots of experience. And if he continues to have lots of experience - experience doesn't have to be of a smash variety. That's only when a thetan, you know, becomes so anxious about experience the only experience he thinks of is being able to shoot a cop or dump a car over a cliff. He thinks that is terrific experience. If he - you know, he's on his last legs.

But the individual - the individual who is in communication with others of course has tremendous quantities of experience, and gradually his tolerance of experience rises and rises and rises; and eventually he can tolerate almost any kind of an experience.

What is the first sign you see of a breakup of an individual? He ceases to be able to experience bad luck without breaking up.

I saw a fellow one time; he wasn't too old and some banker or other had grabbed this fellow's bank as part of a chain bank. And it was robbery; there was no doubt about it, the fellow had been robbed. Everything he had in the world had been grabbed. He went into a nervous breakdown shortly afterwards. He was a young man; he had a stroke; and he hung along in that state for about 20 years and then kicked the bucket - died, I think the people in this society call it. He banged out of his head and went elsewhere.

Well, this one experience of losing a possession had occurred in a zone of minus experience, you see. He didn't have enough experience, and all of a sudden he got this tremendous experience of loss and he went all to pieces. Just cracked up complete. I consider that very interesting. And at the time I was talking to him and first heard about this, I couldn't understand what he was protesting about! He was very skilled in handling people as a banker. It wasn't he who had failed; the bank had actually passed out of his control at the time it failed, and it was just his stock that suddenly became worthless. Broke him, but he could handle people. His friends and his personal life were all intact; he had lots of skill, he had lots of ability. I would've thought it would've been a wonderful time to go join the French Foreign Legion, or something. What a beautiful excuse to go have some experience.

Instead of that, he had had so little experience in his life that he just sat there and went to pieces. That was about a quarter of a century ago, and I couldn't understand it when it happened. I just couldn't - I couldn't sit where I was sitting and understand thoroughly what had happened to this other fellow. Why did it affect him so much as to tear him to pieces?

Take some admiral. You know what an admiral is, don't you? They still have them. They've gotten rid of all their ships, but they still had the admirals. And they have to have somebody to consume gold lace. And anyway, you take an admiral that's been sitting on shore base. See, shore base, shore base, shore base - years and years and years and years and years - and you all of a sudden send him to sea. He'll look at the little bit of randomity of a boat bobbing around and he'll start to get queasy at his stomach.

One admiral I suddenly took to sea one day - I think he'd been on the beach for the last 20 years or something like that - he was an admiral from the Spanish-American war, I think. Anyway, this old boy, this old boy kept sending me notes in the navigation shack, trying to find out whether or not the storm was getting worse. Well listen, he was on a corvette and a corvette feels like a storm if it's going through a millpond. The boys used to paint hinges on the deck and little signs „Don't stand here or your ankles'll get broken.“ The engineer - the engineer had been known to say, „There is no reason why we should punch holes in the hull to take cooling water into the engines. Why not just continue to dip it up with the funnel?“

The last years of service of this old admiral had been spent in a great big battleship. I'd swear, one battleship could hit another battleship and neither battleship would ever find out about it. Only time I ever saw a battleship really taking water over the bows was down off Cape Horn once. And then I only saw a picture of it, but she was taking water over the bows. This old boy, in other words, had had no experience of motion, so the little bit of motion we were making going through the Southern Sea was nothing, and he was worried about it; he thought it was a storm. It upset him. Didn't have experience, couldn't stand it.

I wonder if that isn't what's wrong today with the bulk of America. I wonder if they haven't got it all ironed out so. I won't say that the FBI is sitting so well on crime because I think the amount of crime is on the increase. But if you have to stoop to crime just to have experience, boy are you a poverty-stricken experiencer.

But I think they've got it all ironed out so that the per capita experience is very poor. Vicarious experience by television; about the best they ever get. Therefore, a little bit of something happens and it seems to be a mountain. This little bit of confusion occurs over here and it apparently is overwhelming. Somebody sneezes; major incident of the day. You get the idea? They're low on doingness because they haven't been doing.

Now, you could expect a change of pace in any society to bring trouble, and it has been a change of pace. There has been a change of pace in America. Gee, for a while there we had Injuns and grizzly b'ar and we didn't even have rifles to shoot them with; that was the fun, you know. We used to have - you know, a grizzly bear has a reputation of being able to stop fifteen or sixteen bullets, two or three or seven straight through the heart or brainpan and still keep on charging. Nobody told you what kind of bullets. But a grizzly bear was nice and formidable. You didn't have a good sound roof over your head; even though you had a professional roof, you spent most of the time carrying pans up and down to the attic.

I mean, there's - things were going on. You had Injuns and floods and epidemics and above all that, you didn't have enough communication so the government could keep any law and order. The government was helpless. Government sends a letter out to the Dakota Territory saying „Wild Bill Hickock will cease and desist,“ you know. They just didn't do it; they were just in apathy about it. They couldn't experience all the experiences in the country, so they didn't try to govern them.

And everywhere it was a near thing. Life was a near thing. You heard me say that the human body is geared up to barely miss death three times a day, and it is. It's over a long period of time. But life in America in the early days was a near thing, and now it isn't even a thing. What experience - what experience do you think that somebody has - oh, I don't know, doing something in an office? One week to the next, week after week after week, there're very few experiences, very little change of pace. What's the final result of this? A change of pace throws him.

Now, it isn't really that we have to have tremendous quantities of experience, but we do have to have a bit of change of pace. Here was America living high and dangerously, then they got Roosevelt. You can't even starve to death in the country today! See, here was everybody on his own, free enterprise, get in there, do or die, millionaire today and a bum tomorrow, bum today and a millionaire tomorrow; office boy to president, president to office boy. Randomity.

Here we went. Game, lots of it, and all of a sudden and then, now it's in this nice low plane: sit and look at TV. That can be a deadly thing.

But what if the reverse happens? We're going along here, looking at TV and all of a sudden something happens! It's too much change of pace - too much change of pace. And as a result, it is debilitating as plus to minus, minus to plus. Here over a long period of time, nothing happened. Then all of a sudden, something happens. Guy doesn't go up here, back onto that new emergency plane; he goes lower. Sort of dangerous not to let your population have any excitement. 'Tis. Sort of dangerous to prevent everything everywhere from happening.

In the old days, a Dianetic Auditor actually wiped out experience in the preclear. All right. It was very efficacious. But as far as the general morale of the preclear was concerned, he was looking for experience in his mind because he didn't have it in his environment. Therefore, the auditor was performing a service which was distinctly different from therapy. He was letting the guy dig up some old experience just so he'd have something like his idea of how much experience he ought to have. Do you get the idea?

And there's many a person got audited just to have some experience. See that? Many a person got audited for that reason alone. Somebody came in London one day and - „I'm perfectly all right. I've had about 125 hours of auditing and I'm in very good shape and I don't have my illnesses anymore, but I keep hearing about this thing called an engram.“ She'd been audited by Scientology and she was in good shape, but she had never run an engram. And actually, made a big sales talk with the Director of Processing over there, just to be permitted to lie down on a couch and have an engram run. And she did for about nine or ten hours have this engram run, and she was happy as could be and went out and she was very cheerful about the whole thing. She didn't need it for her health; she just wanted this little additional experience, don't you see?

Well, we look over our national life, we could see what would happen in the face of a sudden cataclysm, a sudden emergency descending upon the country at large. Those people who had been sitting around doing nothing (minus experience) to a point where they wanted no experience at all, would not be able to handle themselves or the cataclysm. They would go down, they would go under; and we would be left with some shattered, nervous wrecks. But other people, who had a different idea - and after all, everything is basically ideas - another person who had an idea that a few cataclysms he could use, he probably wouldn't go under; he'd probably start living. You get the idea? So some of the populace would go down and some of the populace would come up.

We have it in our hands, in Scientology, to determine which part goes down and which part comes up. An interesting responsibility, let me assure you. Since if we don't take responsibility for it, probably get us, too. But let's take a - let's take a look at this, in terms of plus and minus experience in life. You say, „I can't understand why this - why this dear old lady went to pieces. After all, she led a very sheltered life, none of these criminal influences or insane influences ever came near her, and all she did was sit in her kitchen. And then later on, when she got lots of help, she did nothing but sit in her sitting room and knit, and so forth. And nothing happened, and all of a sudden she went crazy!“ Yeah but remember, that nothing happened is somebody else's evaluation; somebody else's evaluation. Maybe according to her, something fantastic happened. Maybe her best china teacup got knocked off by the dog, see? And this appeared enormous to her in contrast with the life she'd been living. Her operating climate was so low and slow that she crashed when she hit a blade of grass, do you see?

Now, somebody else was just doing fine; he was flying low and slow in another fashion. He was flying dangerously indeed. He was skidding around economic corners the like of which nobody ever heard of It was always a question on Monday whether or not there would be any groceries by Saturday. He was operating on the - on the idea that the lower the income the higher the finance, and boy - his was high. He had about three girls on the string, including his wife. That kept him excited, too. There was nothing immoral about it; he just hadn't ever quite made up his mind. He had managed to infuriate his rich uncle, who was delaying for him at every corner and had made pals out of some bums that he didn't like.

And one fine day, we put him in the parlor and tell him to knit, and he goes nuts! Don't you see? Here he is, living a tremendously exciting, rah-rahrah life and all of a sudden, why, we say, „Sit there and knit, brother.“ He goes pshoooo! We say, „But nothing happened to him; we tried to make life easy for him. We tried to take care of him. I'm sure he was better off I'm sure that he was better off not having all those horrible worries that he had before.“ Who called them worries? They might not have been worries to him.

So as we look at life, it is very hard to determine what is a good life and what is a bad life. As far as I could say, a life is mostly determined by enough activity to suit the individual and not too much change of pace from that activity. Well, if the fellow's a trapeze artist in a circus or a test pilot or something like that - why, that's the amount of activity which he really should continue and maintain.

We find in this that we have one tremendously destructive idea in the country today called „retirement.“ How we must hate our older people to want to kill them off; because that is the surest way to do it. This fellow's living a busy life and all of a sudden we say, „You should think about retirement. Someday you ought to retire; someday you ought to retire; someday you ought to retire.“ After this, he says, „Yes, someday I ought to retire; someday I ought to retire.“ He's groggy on the subject and one day he retires, and we get him - very much lower yearly level of average life expectancy of retired men, don't you see? Change of pace killed him.

So, I suppose the one thing that you would try to achieve in life would be enough activity to suit you and to maintain that change of pace; maintain that pace, because it itself is a change of pace.

But the funny part of it is, is we're living in a world today that is changing its pace at every turn. All of a sudden our old enemies of death in old age and starvation and so forth, they're gone and nothing else is particularly replacing that. And then we have inflation, deflation, economics and pretty soon we're all worrying about the government or something like that. But we ourselves are not as active as we were once, on our own economic fronts. We'd sort of fight the government partly at the same time, too.

That pace has changed. The world is facing probably one of the greatest cataclysms she will have known in the last few thousand years in the next - probably immediately upon us - war, which will change the lot of the survivors from a civilized state to barbarism. That probably will be the main effect; you'll probably go back to carrying water in a pail, if you're still there. A change of pace can occur here again. There's been changes of pace from savage America to civilized America. Now, there'll probably be a change to something, for a while at least, that'll have made it very well look like Stone Age America. And the final thing is that we aren't trying ourselves to arrange any pace in life. We're trying to increase the adaptability of individuals so they can meet what comes, and so, of all things, they can live more.

An individual who cannot live can't be paid. An individual who can't experience changes of pace successfully can't live. So our mission is to increase the livability of people, more than anything else. That we have been doing now for several years. In the next couple of lectures I'll be telling you how we are doing that successfully right now with Project Clear.

Thank you.

[end of lecture]

[[Category:Lectures AC]]