View source for Scientology Zero (SHSBC 631210)

'''Series:''' Saint Hill Special Briefing Course (SHSBC)

'''Date:''' 10 December 1963

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

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← [[Lecture_Index_SHSBC|Back to Series]]

I’m glad to see you, too. Well, it works out this way: Having completed the entire span of Scientology research at all of the upper levels and rounded it all out, I never thought I’d be called upon to suddenly undercut the lot, find a brand-new series of processes, and a processing theory and philosophy on which to build the edifice. You don’t think that’s quite a trick?

Of course, actually knowing the upper strata, it might be seen to be very simple to build the lower strata. Well actually, it’s quite the contrary. You see with such enormous clarity exactly what has been going wrong and exactly what you’ve been doing that you wonder how anybody could miss it.

You See? And you say, “Well, it’s a very simple matter, you know. You got into a knuckleheaded frame of mind and started postulating purposes, you see.

And then these accumulate mass, and the basis of the solution of your difficulties in the physical environment and for the last trillions multiple, some vast figure, you see-you been lousing yourself up. That s what it is. You get it now, huh?” And you wonder, “Why don’t you understand this, you knucklehead?

It’s awful clear to me! It’s very clear to me. I postulate these things and get all messed up, and so on, and so on, and then all this energy mass is still around and its automatic solutions to everything, and it knocks hell out of me, see?

I can’t do anything and I have to wear a body and all kinds of wild things occur. Don’t you get it?” I’m afraid you’d find people would look at you blankly. They would look at you blankly.

They are worried just today about the fact that the stock exchange trembled, and that Tel & Tel rose while gold shares sunk. And this shows that there is some interesting implication concerning racialism in Lower Slobovia. And that’s what’s really wrong with them, they know.

It’s the fact that they might go broke if they didn’t go broke or something, you see. If they didn’t have enough money in order to buy a wah, and then the waf-wah, and then the boss is a waf-wah, and then so fo-wah-wa. They know what’s wrong with them; and their wife was cross at them at breakfast.

They know what’s wrong with them. And you say, “Well, actually, you just think that that’s what’s wrong with you, because in actual fact what you’ve been doing is carving yourself down. See, a lot of trillions of years ago you had these goals and postulates and so on, and you run around and make these  SCIENTOLOGY ZERO 2  GPMs and so on.

And they react against you, and so on, and you’re not very able. And your environment and so on ... Don’t you get it?” Well, of course, our communication line is absolutely stopped at that point.

You can know so clearly exactly what is wrong with the being, you can know so brilliantly, with such insight, exactly what’s wrong with you, and see it unraveling at great speed and with considerable accuracy; and so seeing it, you wonder how anybody else could fail to see it. Well, the funny part of it is that if you try to ... You got a fellow there, and he’s facing this boa constrictor.

And this boa constrictor is about to constrict. And you say to this fellow, “We’re going to run a little process on you. In your childhood . . . “ I’m afraid you’re not going to get much attention from this fellow, see?

He sits there looking fixedly at this snake, you know, ho-ho. He knows what’s wrong with him: he’s about to be constricted. Well, some religious activities have had solutions to this.

They say it’s very simple. All you do is say, “There is no substance to reality.” And you see-you look at the boa constrictor and you think good thoughts. And you think, “There ain’t no boa constrictor,” you see.

And if you think these thoughts strongly enough while you’re being constricted, you won’t mind it. They’ve had methods of coping with this in the past. So we’re not completely original, here.

But to jack up Scientology one level and run a whole new philosophy underneath of Scientology, which is immediately graspable, understandable and quickly agreed with, which can be discussed in the highest intellectual planes, over the very, very best breakfast tables, and in the lowest hovels, all with complete and utter reality the whole way, and to provide in that sphere a therapy, based on no different an understanding than this, and a reason why ... And the last few weeks I’ve been walking around in a small circle trying to do just that and finally succeeded. And finally got a Scientology Zero that undercuts Scientology One, and which everybody would, I’m sure, agree with.

Scientology Zero, as you knew before, was descriptions of the environment and what was wrong with it, and so forth. This takes care of the world in which the person lives. Has nothing to do with his mind at all.

Scientology One is the isness of things and takes care of his mind as well, but Scientology Zero simply takes care of the environment in which the person lives. Now, the whole subject is instantly summable in-of its own heading, which is “the dangerous environment.” That’s all. You just say, “the dangerous environment,” you see.

And that sums up what you’re talking about, and the frame of mind of the individual who is listening to you. You have immediate agreement that the environment is dangerous. Now, the funny part of it is, a great many people who are professional dangerous- environment makers-these include the politician, the policeman, the newspaperman, all of these blokes are specialists-the undertaker.

These birds are specialists in the dangerous  SCIENTOLOGY ZERO 3  environment. That’s their mainstay. They sell a dangerous environment.

If they didn’t sell a dangerous environment they feel they would promptly go broke, and so on. So it is to their interest to make the environment far more dangerous than it is. The environment is dangerous enough.

But they make it far more dangerous than it is. They sell a dangerous environment-100 percent. And like judo, the avidity with which these people sell a dangerous environment can be used by the Scientologist.

The whole activity of judo is using the strength of the opponent to overcome the opponent. He aims a whale of a blow at your head and the strength which he used to propel that blow takes him over your shoulder and onto the floor. So understanding Scientology Zero would include an understanding that the very person who is the worst enemy of Scientology-the chaos merchant, the slave master, the fellow who’s trying to hold everybody down, the fellow who’s trying to keep everybody shook up one way or the other and so he can’t ever get up again, and so forth, the fellow who makes his money and his daily bread out of how terrible everything is-that fellow, of course, would forward Scientology Zero for you with great speed.

It’s an interesting comment to make and it’s worth thinking about in passing. Now, let us take-let’s go in now to modern-ha-ha-philosophy of the Toynbee school. Fellow by the name of Toynbee-he spent a lot of time in a library, back end of the library, you see, and he knew life finally.

He finally knew life; he’d read enough library books written by other fellows who had spent most of their time in libraries. And he came to a great understanding of life. His actual information on the subject of Mexico, of course, is the tourist poster and the picture of the Mexican sitting against the wall with his sombrero over his eyes and his serape around his shoulders, sitting in the sun.

There he is. So he says, with great conclusive exclamation points followed by innumerable degrees, “The reason the Mexican does not succeed is he has insufficient challenge in his environment-not enough challenge in his environment. Therefore, he doesn’t amount to anything.

The reason the South American, see, isn’t an up-and-coming breeder of countries and so forth, is its people have an insufficient challenge in the environment. The reason the African black has never made any progress in civilization is because his environment has insufficient challenge.” Then he closes his library books, having written these asininities, and goes back to sleep. He’d never talked to any Mexicans.

Out in the Philippines, why, a brassy, energetic white man jumps up and he says to the Igorots, “Now, if you will just cut a pathway from the village down to the river and take a bullock cart in the morning and go down to the river and fill up a water tank and bring it up here, why, your women will not have to be making that walk to the river. And you should engage in this public works project at once.” And he’s absolutely outraged because these  SCIENTOLOGY ZERO 4  people do not engage in it at once. And he goes away, and he says, “Ha-ha!

Those people have insufficient challenge in their environment. Nothing for them to measure up to. No ambition.

Not like us in the West. We’ve got challenge in our environment.” This guy had challenge in his environment, huh? His mama opened up his mouth and spooned Wheaties into it and papa wrote all the checks as he went through college.

And the way was paved in all directions with machinery and vehicles and the environment had been licked. So of course, he can stand up there and be brassy. What’s the real environment of this Igorot sitting there around the fire listening to this fellow telling him how he has to cut this path down to the river?

What’s the real environment? He’s got a little boy and he thinks this little boy is a very nice little boy. And he knows this little boy hasn’t got a chance in hades of living until he’s seven.

He knows that-disease, bad food and so forth. So he just sort of quits along that line; gives it a lick and a promise. He knows that when the rains come they won’t just be rains; they’ll just flood every seed out of the ground and pound the fields to pieces and if he can salvage anything out of that, why, maybe-maybe-why, he might live a few months.

And he knows very well that all he’s got to do is walk under the wrong tree and get hit by a snake and that’ll be that. In other words, he already knows he can’t live. That’s what he knows: He can’t live.

So why try? In other words, the challenge of the environment is absolutely overwhelming to this fellow. I’ve studied twenty-one primitive races, including the white race.

I know these boys pretty well. I’ve eaten lizard’s tails around the campfires with them. And it’s absolutely staggering-staggering-the threat of the environment of such peoples.

Mexico-the political situation, the crop failures, the avarice of taxation, religious taxation, two or three different kinds of courts that you could be hauled up to, everything going to hell in a balloon. And if you haven’t got that, you’ve got bandits, dysentery, so forth. Strictly a case of “why try?” So why not put your back up against a wall and pull your sombrero over your eyes and just go to sleep?

It’s just too much. And that’s your black in Africa-same story. Too much challenge in the environment.

The environment is too dangerous. And that environment is too dangerous for a fellow to have ambition. Now, they like to tell a favorite type of thing-that you must have challenge in your environment.

They like to tell a story about, well, how about this young painter and here he is out there in Terre Haute, Indiana, and there’s no challenge in his environment at all; he doesn’t have any friends. And he eventually, of course, moves to the big city. They make a big deal out of this thing, you see.

The environment, you see, offers no challenge or something of this sort, you know. Heck! The reason he became a painter in the first place is he didn’t want to work down there at the feed store with Butch Gregerty, throwing bales of hay around.

This guy beat him up during kindergarten, beat him up during grammar school and beat him up  SCIENTOLOGY ZERO 5  during high school; now he’s supposed to work for him in the feed store. That’s a little bit too much challenge. Nobody around there buying any paintings, too.

And he’s prompted by the fact that nobody says “sir”; the environment is hostile to that degree. Nobody believes in what he’s doing; it’s hostile to that degree. He doesn’t have any future, as far as he’s concerned, in any line that he can do.

In other words, he faces continual starvation. He faces social ostracism. He’s unable to communicate or contribute to his community, and so forth.

That’s a very hostile environment. So he goes to a friendlier one: Greenwich Village. See?

He’d rather-he’d rather starve to death quietly down in Greenwich Village, don’t you see, than be threatened to death out in Terre Haute, Indiana - challenge of the environment. And we come to the conclusion that the individual-whether he be white, black, red or yellow-if he is a man and if he is on this planet and if he has not been able to achieve his own destiny; we must conclude that he is in an environment he finds overwhelming, and that his methods of taking care of that environment are inadequate to his survival, and that his existence is as apathetic or as unhappy as his environment seems to him to be overwhelming. Now, if we get those principles down we have Scientology Zero.

Of course, the chaos merchant, who wants an environment to look very, very disturbing ... Somebody says there’s such a thing as a good news story. Have you read a paper lately?

There’s no good news stories. “Train wrecked, child raped, murder”-what’s good about these stories? There is no such thing as good press. These are fellows who are shoving the environment in your face and saying, “Look-dangerous.

Look-overwhelming. Look-threatening. Look.

Look.” Well, they not only report the most threatening bits of news that they could possibly-couldn’t have any possible effect upon their readers’ lives, but also sensationalize it, and make it worse than it is. What more do you want, as a proof of their intention? Well, of course, this is the chaos merchant.

He’s paid to the degree that he can make the environment threatening. Now, it isn’t just and only the politician, the soldier, the militarist, the fellow making the big rockets and the newspaper reporter and so forth, that’s making the environment threatening. There’s a lot of people spend their whole lives as professional chaos merchants- just worry everybody around them to death.

In fact, the percentage is pretty good. The percentage is probably one out of four. Pretty good. “If I can just keep Henry worried enough, why, he does what I tell him”-this sort of philosophy.

Just spread the confusion, spread the upset, you see. And along with this goes, “I wonder why Henry doesn’t get ahead?” Of course, they’re making Henry sick. So the chaos merchant has lots of troops-a lot of people with vested interests.

What’s a blackmailer but somebody who’s trying to extort money by telling somebody that he can make the environment far more dangerous. “If I just tell people that you and Mamie Glutz were seen in the tourist cabin ... A few quick pounds will keep this environment a little less  SCIENTOLOGY ZERO 6  dangerous, see? Because I won’t tell.” You get the whole theory of the thing’.?

Well, it isn’t as crude, you see, as extortion. The newspaper prints “Thousands dead in. ..” and the thing lies there on the newsstands, and people think, “God! Thousands dead in ... !” You see, they’re hit with the news, they can’t let go of it, and actually they respond to an extortion-they throw pennies down.

And you turn the inside page to see the rest of the headline and it says, “. . . history.” “Thousands dead in history. Past strewn with death.” “Have you been plagued lately* The great plague took twelve million citizens in the year 1204.” “Will you be a cancer victim? Support your local doctor.” The medico, you know, he doesn’t get paid for the number of people he makes well, he gets paid for the number of people in the society who are sick.

Don’t think it’s any accident that the cops will take a dangerous criminal, throw him into prison, make him more antisocial and more dangerous and then release him upon the society. Don’t think this prison system which is being used is an accident. It’s a marvelous method of getting police appropriations.

If YOU didn’t have that much crime, why, nobody would permit police salaries and equipment to be extorted out of them. Of course, the police chief, he’s as important as he has policemen under him. He’s got fifty policemen or he’s got a thousand policemen.

He’s important and draws pay in ratio to the number of policemen. Well, the number of policemen give you the number of-amount of crime there must be in the society. If there’s no crime in the society, naturally you don’t have very many policemen.

If there’s lots of crime in a society, naturally you have lots of policemen. See? So, the more crime, why, the more cops.

And the more sickness, the more doctors, see? Newspaper reporters, for instance, sit around and think solely on this basis: “If I could just run into a big story. . .” I can see this fellow sitting there now. There’s a schoolhouse, you know; a big beautiful school has just been finished, you see.

School children are playing out in the yard, playing happily ring-around-the-rosey. And this newspaper reporter is sitting there looking at the schoolyard, “Supposing that should all catch on fire, just as they all go inside? What a story!” You know, “What a story.

I’ve-sitting right here with my cameraman, why, I’d become famous overnight,” you see. “Time magazine, Life magazine-probably give me coverage all over the place, you know? Charred bodies of little children,” you know? Well, that’s what he eats.

That’s what he eats. That makes his life forward. And of course, that’s an exaggerated case, but this does run and is to be found in the society to a very, very marked degree.

It isn’t just the newspaper reporter, the politician; it’s also the individual who-here and there that you see-that engages upon this sort of thing. So the environment is not as dangerous, ever, as it is made to appear. Here you have tremendous numbers of people-vast amounts of money.

In fact, I think three quarters of the national income of the United States right now is dedicated to atomic war. Well, that’s interesting. There hasn’t been one.

If they hadn’t developed it, there wouldn’t be one. SCIENTOLOGY ZERO 7  Elementary. So the money that financed the horror is now busy supporting the horror, don’t you see?

And you know, I don’t think there have been two cents spent on the actual reduction of the threat of atomic war. They talk about shelters-people could crawl into shelters and that sort of thing. The truth of the matter is that if you had a few billions to throw around you could probably dream up a defense for atom bombs that would detonate them in the air.

You could probably render them null and void without too much trouble-if anybody-if any politician was ever interested in peace. They aren’t. They get all their appropriations and public interest and so forth from the amount of disturbance.

Why, he could probably dream up some solution of some kind or another that would handle this international tension situation. And certainly if they spent as much money on it as they did on rockets, they could certainly come up to some kind of a solution. Oh, I don’t know, in Scientology we could undoubtedly solve the thing without too much trouble.

And talk about money and expense and so forth, it wouldn’t take anywhere near the money and expense. But look at the money we would do people out of Boy, look at the incomes we would cut! Oh, man!

So, anything moving forward that tends to pacify or bring a calmed environment is met and makes a ridge with-is met by and makes a ridge with the backflow of vested interest in making a disturbed environment. So you get this ridge. Now, if Scientology moved on forward, the environment would become calmer and calmer.

Not less adventurous, but calmer and calmer. In other words, its potential, hostile, unreachable, untouchable threat, and that sort of thing-the amount of threat contained in it- would reduce. That’s for certain.

Because, you see, somebody who knows a few more things about life and knows something about himself and knows something about others and gets a grip on the situation-why, he actually has less trouble-less trouble in his environment. Even though it’s only reduced slightly, it is reduced, don’t you see? So, that’s a reduction.

We’d say, well, somebody hasn’t heard of hardly any Scientology, and yet he’s-one of the things you can say about him: “Well, he has less turmoil in his environment.” Now, that of course is a movement in the right direction. And that would bring about all sorts of things. That would bring about the individual resurgence.

So that an individual, less threatened just from the standpoint of the environment, tends to resurge. He gets less apathetic. He thinks he can maybe do more about life, you see.

He can reach a little further; therefore he can exert a calming influence upon his immediate environment, and so on. Now, as that progressed forward, why, you would produce individuals, more and more and more, who could bring more and more and more calm to the environment or handle things better and better, you see. And it’s only things which aren’t handled which are chaotic.

So we’d get a situation where the threat of the environment would be dying out. This  SCIENTOLOGY ZERO 8  overwhelming, overpowering environment would be tamer and tamer as far as this is concerned; people would be less and less afraid. You’d have more and more opportunity of handling the actual problems that exist instead of people dreaming up problems in order to make a couple of quick bucks or pounds off of them, you see?

Be a different-different looking picture. So in actual fact, the chaos merchant does not like calming influences. He tends to fight these things.

This wife-she’s made her coffee and cakes for a long time scaring her husband to death, and she keeps him good and scared to death. Scares him at breakfast table, scares him at dinner, and so forth and so on. If nothing else works she brings in the pile of bills after supper, don’t you see.

Stress. She keeps putting stress on it, and somehow or another consoling him during this thing about-you know, consoles him, about this, even though he is completely overwhelmed, there’s nothing they can do about it, and so on. Got him completely under her thumb, see?

All right. This bird walks down to a PE Course. He hears about communication-talk to somebody or something like this.

He starts talking to his wife, just as an experiment-saying hello to her or something like this, see. He looks a little calmer. This is not to be borne.

And incidentally, at that time, you can expect a considerable explosion. She’s going to go on a tirade about the subject that he must not have anything more to do with Scientology. And every once in a while you’ll run into this in PE Courses and that sort of thing; you’ll run into this in practices, and so on.

Bill or Pete or Oscar or something-he mustn’t have anything more to do with Scientology. Well, what have you run into at that point? You’ve run into a Chaos merchant, see?

And they’re buying and selling this commodity called “disturbance,” and he’s less disturbed. And so therefore, he obviously then is less under control and can be extorted from less, and so therefore, he is being lost as an edible breakfast. You’re taking the food off the plate of the chaos merchant, see?

Well, you’ll see that ridge develop just on an individual basis, and you’ll certainly see it develop on a third dynamic basis. The newspaper-oh, my gosh! Let’s take the story of Scientology.

The simple story of Scientology is quite remarkable in its simplicity. And in all the fog of press, one loses sight of it. And I thought of this the other day when I was walking through a door into the lounge, and so forth.

Almost knocked myself out. I suddenly thought of this and I began to laugh and I couldn’t stop laughing. Because I’d been “pressed” to death here in the last few weeks, you see.

I’ve had more silly questions asked me by silly reporters than you could count ... They’re marvelous. They’re marvelous.

And I’ve developed a new technology for handling that’s very disconcerting: I laugh at them. New York Times on the phone the other day-I went into howls of laughter at the fellow-a couple of the questions he was asking, and so on. SCIENTOLOGY ZERO 9  Standard patterned questions, always been asked before, you know.

Goof questions, and so on. You’d be surprised. This guy almost went into tears.

He almost went into grief. He wasn’t bothering me. He wasn’t upsetting me.

He wasn’t annoying me, don’t you see? And, of course, even though he’s only trying to annoy the public and disturb the public, when he’s interviewing somebody, you ought to be worried. And if you’re not suitably worried as his public should be suitably worried-taking this thing seriously and taking the potential threat that he has there seriously-of course, you’ve taken away from him practically everything he’s got to offer.

He can’t hit you with anything, don’t you see? This particular bloke wound up very, very friendly, and made sure that he-do come by and see him, up in London, and so forth, if I got to town. Very happy to buy me a dinner and a drink.

He was very, very cheerful about the whole thing. He wasn’t trying to get more information. By this time, he was overwhelmed.

He was-he was propitiative. It was him that was going to give up the dinner and the drink, see. Up to that time it was me that was going to give up the news.

Only his impingement didn’t work, mine did. I didn’t take him seriously. I’ve noticed lately that’s very disconcerting.

Or direct them to a sure, open-and-shut source. Just don’t answer the question, just direct them to a source, and the source ... Smile at them and go, “Oh, you’re asking that,” you know. “Well, see so-and-so and so-and-so and so- and-so.

Let’s talk about something that’s more important.” But let’s look at the true story of Scientology. Let’s put it into its most banal form, but nevertheless, a very true form. A Doctor of Philosophy develops a philosophy.

Step one: Doctor of Philosophy develops a philosophy. Step two: People find it interesting. Step three: People find it works.

Step four: People pass it along to others. And step five: It grows. That’s the story of Scientology.

If you think it over for a moment, that is the story of Scientology. It really has no further ramifications than that. It’s just blunt, straightforward.

That’s exactly what happens, you see. Doctor of Philosophy develops a philosophy, people find it interesting, people find it works, people pass it along to others, and it grows. Next time you read the news story, think of this story.

I went into stitches over this, when I thought, “Look at the story that they’re trying to make a story out of. There’s no story there!”-except it’s just an interesting story, the way you’d sometimes read in the old Spanish newspapers: “The roses of Valencia are beautiful at this season of the year.” A modern story has got to have disturbance and chaos in it. It’s got to have conflict, it’s got to have upset, it’s got to be chewing everybody up.

Must be conflict. How do you get conflict into this story.? Well, this is-obviously they’re dealing with something potent because it is growing, because it is spreading, because people are doing things with it, because it-organizations are appearing with regard to it.

Obviously there’s something going on here! But still, what is going  SCIENTOLOGY ZERO 10  on-that a Doctor of Philosophy developed a philosophy and people found it interesting and people found that it worked and people passed it along to others and it grew. Now, you begin to look over this situation, you actually can’t make any more story out of it than that.

You can tell some bits here that amplify the thing; you can get some statistics. Well, all right, “Doctor of Philosophy develops a philosophy, Doctor of Philos-. All right.

Well, it’s-is he? and so on. Do you know anything about it?” “Oh, yes. He’s better-better educated in terms of semester hours, and so forth, than practically anybody that’s teaching in philosophy in universities today, and didn’t spend all his time in the back room of a library, but went out and studied various races of man and saw how their ethnical patterns fit together and saw how man was getting along, and found there was a common denominator to existence; and applying this to known philosophy and developing new materials on the thing, developed a philosophy.” And it’s all very adventurous.

There’s a lot of amusing anecdotes that go with it. But that’s all the story you can make out of it. Well, this reporter, he-he’s to-ho-ho!

He-he’s got to have some disturbance here. He’s got to get this thing-ho-ho. How do you make a conflict out of it?

How do you get the wuhh and the rrr, and how do these things go together with a shwirr. Well, we take point number one. He’s got to say, “Well, this fellow actually isn’t educated.

He doesn’t have any degrees. He’s never been anyplace,” and so on. He actually never gets as far as saying it isn’t a philosophy because that’s a bit above his educational level, see?

But he can try to find something wrong with the fellow who is doing this thing. He can never really find anything wrong, but he tries hard, you see. And he punches in all directions and he comes up with some interesting adjectives and so on, but he really can’t make the grade on the thing because his facts aren’t supported.

Now, as a matter of fact, people finding it interesting-he tries to say that people are hypnotized or they become unwilling victims, or they’re dragged off into lairs, you see or ... He’s got to do something here to make this disturbing and sensational, don’t you see? Well, that’s-of course, can’t quite make the grade there, but he tries.

He tries, you see. He leaves “it works” strictly alone. He drops that like the cat dropped the hot chestnut.

Because he knows it works. There’s not really any doubt in these people’s minds about any of these points, you see, they’re just desperately trying to make a story out of this thing. As far as people passing it along to others is concerned, why, the medico, he thinks, “Gee, you know, if they passed this stuff along here to others, why, this would be pretty grim because people would become happy and then what would happen to my income, you see?

And that must be stopped. So everybody’s got to be hammered and pounded, and so forth.” Actually the biggest job of work which we do is trying to smooth it out so actually there are no economic hardships or otherwise. I’m working hard on that these days where  SCIENTOLOGY ZERO 11  abuses might exist.

But they immediately have to dream up a word like “cult.” See? That bars everybody out because it makes it look like a closed group, see? A cult.

The “cult of Earth”- that makes just as much sense, see. He’s an earthman, so therefore he belongs to the Earth cult, see? I mean, it makes just as much sense, you see?

But he works and sweats over this thing and he really can’t get anyplace with this thing, you know. I noticed them sweating over this in the Washington raid stories, and so on. They found the box-”A message put into this box goes right to Ron,” you know-they found this box, and my God, they took more portraits of that thing, I think.

I don’t know what they did. Seemed very, very terrible and unusual to them that a communication line did exist there. And it was very upsetting to them.

How they worked at it, see! Well, yet they couldn’t do anything much about it. And it grows, and that’s what alarms them.

Saturday Evening Post’s whole theme is how startled they were to find out that it had grown. They thought it had all died away and they were all being very complacent about it and it’s ... The writer told me this, you see.

And everybody was quite relaxed about the whole thing and then all of a sudden they found out that it had grown to enormous proportions and had kept on growing all through those years. And it hadn’t disappeared and it hadn’t been just a twenty-four hour fad, and this was terrible, and so forth. And he became quite frothy about it.

He tries to find things. Now, as far as Scientology developing, here or there, some ridges and some upsets and so forth: look at the planet it’s being released into. You mean to say we’re responsible for the conduct of the planet?

Well, we’re not yet entirely responsible, but we’ll make it. See, you start releasing things to people and races and that sort of thing, and here and there-there’s going to be a little switch around and an upset or something like that, but believe me, we have less of them than anybody else ever had. And we straighten them out.

Eventually we take care of these things. Well, that’s quite remarkable. So there really isn’t any real trouble for them to look at.

To make a story out of this you’d have to sock at each one of these points one way or the other, you see. And yet because there is no story there, of course, they can’t write the story because it doesn’t fit into the modern press specifications. There must be disturbance, there must be upset, people must be worried, and people must have, by reason of this story, a more disturbed environment than they had before.

Nevertheless, all things to the contrary, the true story of Scientology is simply: A Doctor of Philosophy developed a philosophy, people found it interesting, people found it worked, people passed it along to others, and it grew. Well, you could dream it up, you could even make a story out of it if it was a sane press, see. You could say, “Look.

Nobody ever found these answers before. There has never been one on this planet.” You could say a lot of things of this particular character, all of them equally true and very startling and well worth announcement, but there’s no conflict in it. So  SCIENTOLOGY ZERO 12  therefore, the story of Scientology goes true as an arrow and nobody really can do very much about it or do very much to it, because they can’t rough up its edges.

If you ever want to be completely crashed, get in the road of truth. Now, all disturbance and chaos folds up in the teeth of truth. The Duke of Alba is dashing about, losing battles left and right, and talking about how horrible the enemy is; and the-his troops and his government are getting very, very upset; he’s a-and his king is getting more and more discouraged and so forth.

And then one day the fatal shaft of truth cuts through this whole chaos. He’s been in the enemy pay all the time. Immediately everything sets back to rights again and the troop morale comes back and they go and they defeat the enemy and the king ...

It works out at the end. Well, that’s a dramatic incident with regard to truth. But all truth, whether dramatic or simple, has the same effect.

Don’t ever try to stop truth. That’s the only thing that can go through sixteen-inch armor plate. This fellow is screaming and howling and raving around and he’s cutting you up one side and down the other, and if you know the mind you say, “The reason you’re mad at me is because you had a withhold from me concerning my paycheck two months ago.” Watch him fold up if that’s the truth.

Don’t watch him fold up if it isn’t, because he won’t if it’s not the truth. Fellow named Jones lives over here on the edge of Saint Hill. He has been snapping and snarling and screaming and howling about what horrible things we’re liable to do to him at any minute.

And I wrote him a letter not too long ago and I said, “If you’ll just carefully review the things which you have done to us that you think we don’t know about, you’ll feel much happier about us.” I haven’t had a word since. It’s just been a tomb-like silence. Interesting.

It’s interesting. The clean blade of truth, and-it can’t be stopped. Now, in a universe which is kept going and made very disturbed continuously by lies, all the basic and fundamental facts of the universe had been completely covered up and particularly those related to life and death; these things were completely masked.

And nothing but disturbance and chaos had been dug up around them for so long that that data was gone. It wasn’t just hard to find; it was just gone. In fact, many data-many contrary data existed.

It was pretty hard to sift this stuff out and get a toehold on to this sort of thing. What is the truth about man? What is he?

What kind of a being is he? Who is he? What’s he doing?

What’s he here for? What am I here for? What am I doing.?

What am I trying to do? What am I trying to get done? How long have I lived?

What’ll happen to me when I die? What kind of a being am I, anyhow? These are the basic and fundamental questions.

Those questions and answers thereto-on the time-honored basis-belonged in the realm of philosophy. The answers to those things always have. Well, philosophy had come to such a decadence that I think in the West it mainly was somebody sitting around a cracker barrel uttering witticisms.

And I think the last time  SCIENTOLOGY ZERO 13  anybody really came up with any really civilized philosophy of any kind or another, they gave him a nice slug of hemlock. It’s not been a very popular subject, but it was only unpopular to this degree: that it disturbed the merchants of chaos. And these fellows that had trouble with this were only luckless to this degree: that they didn’t reach the truth.

They had limited truth. And the road to truth is something that you must follow all the way down. There is not such a thing as a limited truth.

You’ve got to go all the way when you start talking about the truth of life. You mustn’t hold up and not find out what it is. But people set you the consistent and continual example when they say, “Look, philosophy is very dangerous stuff.” Well, yes, it is very dangerous stuff to a fellow who’s supporting himself by lies.

Who’s it dangerous to? It’s only dangerous to people who are dangerous. It’s only dangerous to people who are dangerous to others.

Well, this gives us a very interesting view, when we start looking over the situation, not that the story of Scientology isn’t a rather remarkable one. It’s actually unparalleled. But it’s very simple.

It’s extremely simple. And the goals and targets of philosophy are inevitable, whether I said they were this or said they weren’t. By the mere fact of people looking at this truth, finding these things were true, applying these things and achieving a higher state of existence, you would inevitably get-whether anybody said you would or not-a calmer life, a calmer environment, a calmer civilization.

And there would be less disturbance and there would be less pay for disturbance to be bilked out of that civilization. People would go uptone just on that basis alone. Therefore, the first target-the first target when one starts to introduce Scientology to anybody would of course be that person’s own environment.

His own environment. Not his mind, but his environment. And here is a whole worked-out philosophy, now, on the subject of the environment, under the heading of, “the dangerous environment.” Now, if you scatter your own wits around in this thing, you could at once extrapolate - knowing, as you know, upper levels-you could at once extrapolate the ramifications of, well, diagnosis and treatment.

You could dream up processes. On just this basis: This individual believes that the environment is more dangerous than he is-than it is. He certainly believes-this individual certainly believes-that the environment is too dangerous for him.

That, we’re completely convinced of See, it’s too dangerous for him. There are zones and areas in that environment which he believes are completely overwhelming and that he will not be able to personally cope with. This we can say with absolute certainty, whether or not we’re talking to Joe, Bill or Pete, or even a politician or a newspaper reporter or a cop.

This individual-this individual would be able to agree with you on that basis, unless, of course, he were completely insane. He’d be walking around in a toga saying, “I am emperor of Earth,” you see, “and all Earth is subject to my orders,” you see. And he’d be in a booby hatch someplace, see?

He’d be crazy-  SCIENTOLOGY ZERO 14  He has, of course, got the final solution. You just make up your mind you’re dangerous enough and you won’t worry anymore. But falling short of that, any relatively sane person that you can talk to will agree with you that the environment, and certain spheres of the environment, are a bit too much for them.

I’m not, by the way, reviling the merchant of chaos. He’s completely crazy in that he thinks the environment has to be made chaotic. I don’t know why he thinks it needs his assistance!

But this fellow has his points and he thinks the environment’s too much for him, and he certainly knows he’s making the environment too much for others. He certainly knows this. So in talking to an individual, we know that the environment is being made more dangerous for him or her than it is.

Lord knows, it’s dangerous enough. And Lord knows, there are real areas of danger in this environment. But also, we know that there are areas of that environment being made more dangerous than they are.

See, we know that point. And that is one of the key points of Scientology Zero. See, one point is that the-that the environment seems dangerous to the individual- you’ll get an agreement on this-and that he is undertaking certain methods to hold the environment down and keep it from biting him.

We certainly know that. And we also know, due to the presence of people who have a vested interest in this, that the environment is being made more dangerous in certain areas than it actually is. We know those things exist.

So therefore, we can then say that the individual could be marched forward into some sectors or quarters of this environment with his own inspection, in some way, and perceive that the environment was being made more dangerous than it was. Now, we can also see that, and another operating principle of Scientology Zero is that the individual’s health level, sanity level, activity level and ambition level are monitored by his concept of the dangerousness of the environment. These various levels are monitored by his concept of the dangerousness of the environment.

Now, what have we got here? We have factors out of which we could work-well, we have factors out of which we could draw up an improvement program for any human being rather quickly. We could draw up an improvement program for any given human being.

One, he considers his health and well-being and that sort of thing, to an enormously greater degree ... This is the discovery. The rest of this is just built up on this one discovery.

The discovery is that his health and well-being, his sanity, his ambition are monitored by how dangerous and overwhelming he believes his environment is; that he’s actually not operating to the challenge of the environment; he is withdrawing from the threat of the environment to this degree. Now, knowing that, we could therefore improve these things in the individual without regard to his mind. SCIENTOLOGY ZERO 15  Ah, you see, now, we’re dealing with a very interesting sphere here, aren’t we?

We’ve mentioned this before under “destimulation.” This previously has occupied just one little level in the auditor handling the pc. He finds out where the pc’s living is too restimulative for him; tells him he won’t process him again till he moves; tells him he mustn’t go home during the whole period of this next intensive but must stay downtown in a hotel where he’s less restimulated. We’ve seen this around, don’t you see.

But now, let’s make-let’s make a whole-a whole banquet out of this tidbit, see? Now, we’re not explaining to this fellow anything about his mind; we’re explaining to him about his environment. We know we’re going to get-it does- it’s a minor amount, but it’ll nevertheless be a demonstrable amount-we’re going to get a resurgence and a betterment in the area of his health.

We’re going to get a betterment in his physical and mental alertness. And we’re going to get a betterment here on his ambition, his amount of activity and that sort of thing. And if we’re working in this particular field-with Scientology Zero-then we’re actually not going to work with his mind.

Do you see that? We’re not going to work with his mind, we’re going to take this as another entirely different sphere and activity. Well, naturally thee and me know that the reason he flinches every time he enters a red room, and so forth, has to do with a whole bunch of facsimiles he’s developed on the subject of red rooms which are being firmly held in place by a bunch of RIs that have to do with this and that and the other thing.

We know this mental combination and in the absence of that-in that mental Combination isn’t eventually subtracted or knocked out and so on, we know that his gain is limited. But now let’s talk within the real reality of the individual we’re talking to. Now, what is his expectancy?

What is his expectancy at this level? It may be this low: that he just won’t be so frightened when the doorbell rings. You get a-we’re talking now about a very tiny improvement.

But nevertheless, this improvement would be quite real to him-be enormously real. And in the story of Scientology, what we’re butting up against here now is this one particular level, three-people find it works. If people don’t find it works, that is the end of Scientology’s progress in that particular direction.

Well, this is an area of high-level workability. You see, all the fellow has to do is study his environment a little bit. He doesn’t even have to study his mind.

Well, this is a very, very good thing. This is a very easy one. So we’re just going to get it that when he wakes up in the morning he doesn’t have an agonizing feeling like something horrible is going to happen if he gets up.

You see? This is going to, not disappear, perhaps, but diminish-that he will be a little more active in life. Now, the funny part of it is-I just tell you-you can settle for those gains.

But the gains you will actually get will, in most cases, if you’re settling for those, greatly exceed your  SCIENTOLOGY ZERO 16  expectations and greatly exceed his expectations. These gains are adequate here to startle a guy’s ears into a thrumming quiver. All right, how do we go about this?

How would we use this material, using these various principles? Well, remember now, that most-the threat he is worried about is probably imaginary. See?

It’s really not anything to be worried about. Let’s embark upon a simple therapy. This is a therapy at Scientology Zero.

Don’t read the newspapers for two weeks and see if you don’t feel better. Of course, he doesn’t read the newspapers for two weeks, of course, he’ll feel better. He’ll say, fine.

Now read it for a week, and you’ll feel-find you’ll feel- at the end of that week, why, you’ll find you feel worse. And after that time make up your mind whether or not you ought to pay any attention to the newspapers. You could just lay this out as a simple experiment, you see?

Well, he can easily do that because it’s a negative action. It’s not expensive, as a matter of fact it’s slightly, microscopically, cheaper not to buy newspapers, you see, than to buy them. So it isn’t a costly experiment at all.

That’s in the direction of destimulation, don’t you see? Now, that’s all very well from his personal viewpoint. You could actually tell him ...

And here, by the way, you have the little junior cousin or the little gene that grows into all of the Havingness Processes later when properly placed in this position, see. Just tell him to look around the environment and find something that isn’t a threat to him. If he ever gets too upset or confused, why, just start looking around his environment and find something that isn’t being a threat to him.

That’s a magic process, by the way, and that is very smoothly worded. That is far, far more sophisticated in upper-level Scientology than it looks. You could actually find what sort of a threat he was experiencing at Level Two, and run that as a Havingness Process on a negative.

See, he’s very worried that things are going to fall on him. So you could dream it up on the basis of “Well, look around here and find something that isn’t going to fall on you,” you see. And he would eventually, gradually, with great comm lag, find one thing someplace.

And you must make him find the one thing, you see, that isn’t going to fall on him. He feels much better. And he even has a lesser gain than that.

He realizes, if he-if he just ran it to cognition, that he has thought that everything was going to fall on him. That’s the cognition. He’s already told you this, see.

But he now knows it by inspecting the environment. This-under the heading of this, in processing, is old “Take a walk.” You feel bad, go take a walk, and look at things as you walk. Well, of course, this is a forward progress into the environment.

And the reason that works, I can tell you now, is the person finds out that the environment is not threatening. This is a whole positive education on the negative threat. You understand what I mean?

Positive education. Because he goes around and looks and see if something is doing this to him. And of course if he finds out, it’s a negative threat.

SCIENTOLOGY ZERO 17  This fellow is all in a sweat on the subject of the Chinese situation. Well, of course, you could ARC break somebody and chop him up with this thing too, by just negating and not-ising the whole situation. You could say to him, “Well, what threat have the Chinese ever been to you anyhow, that you’re so worried about?” Now, he has to protest and justify his own thinking.

He has to get himself all tangled up trying to prove he’s right and you’re wrong. So of course, that has no workability at all. But this is true.

But this you could do. Now, in an upper-level process you’d run a repetitive process-something like “Well, what event have you heard about that hasn’t affected you much?” You could run that as a repetitive process and you’d get big gain. But your effort at Scientology Zero is somehow or other to get the individual to inspect the environment and find out that there is some slight greater security in it.

That’s all. That doesn’t sound like much, but then I’m just dumping it on your head-a complete wagonload of work on the subject of Scientology Zero. I can give you the principles which I have just given you, and those principles are very short and sweet.

And out of those principles you have to work with any individual as he walks up, because he’s got a different environment than every other individual that walks up. So you-can’t tell you too many processes to run with this individual. You see what I mean?

I mean, he’s going to come up and he’s going to tell you he’s worried about different things. I can only give you the principles by which you could get him to not worry about them quite so much. But it has nothing to do with talking to him, it isn’t up to itsa at all.

It all runs on the single auditing command, “Look. Don’t worry.” “Look and find out if the environment is as threatening as it appears to be.” This is your single auditing approach to the thing. Individual is very worried.

He’s sitting at his desk and so on. Papers are piling in. Everything seems to be going up in a high uproar, and he just feels completely overwhelmed.

Well, he himself ought to be able to look at the papers on his desk. They’re the source of the threat, aren’t they’.? And find something about them that isn’t a threat.

The threat, of course, will balance out in the discovery. That would be an action. That’s a sort of “Take a walk while sitting at the desk,” see?

Person feels like everybody is hostile in the environment to them. Just say, “Well, now, you find-find something people say or do around here that isn’t hostile to you.” All on the gradient, you see. “Find-is there one person in the organization who isn’t actively hostile to you? Is there anything said today that wasn’t directly and immediately hostile to you?” This could also be played in the direction of exaggeration.

But you get into mental things and so forth. You get into mental responses when you go in this direction and move up in levels. So you know what I mean by that; you can get the exaggeration of it: Get the idea of a Chinese in every corner shooting at you with tong hatchets, you know?

You can do all kinds of wild  SCIENTOLOGY ZERO 18  things and an auditor extrapolating and auditing somebody and so forth, would undoubtedly go hog wild with it. Perfectly all right. Let him go do so.

I was running a process the other day-just on this basis; just on readying up this material for Scientology Zero-and it was on the basis of “Look around here and find something that isn’t trying to exteriorize you.” Pc didn’t find anything. But had the cognition that she thought things were. And was very happy about that.

Did find two answers, both the same answer. “Me. I’m not trying to exteriorize me.” You see this? Almost any inspection that you give it is a valuable inspection-almost any inspection.

For instance, one of you, right now, sitting still or minding your own business or all by yourself, could just think over, carefully ... It’s a very bad thing to get into “What things in the environment do threaten me?” Now, I’m not-ha-ha!-I don’t advise you to go off in that particular line, you see? But sit down and figure out if there’s anything that isn’t a threat to you.

A fellow who has a PTP or something like that usually can’t get his mind disentangled from it very far. But “Is there anything around that isn’t pushing this PTP at me?”-that’s an interesting question. Sometimes takes you a few minutes to get the thing answered.

The guy who has just lost his girl-he just lost his girl, and he feels the horrible sadness and loss, and so forth, it imparts to everything. Actually, everything in the environment will talk to him about this girl. You possibly have had similar experience here.

Somebody just-you think of somebody’s name and so on, you can remember a time when there was a moment or a few moments or a period of time in which it was impossible for you to look around and not be reminded of this person. Just uhhnn! That was a personless environment.

When one’s concentration has been very, very heavy on an individual or a person, it is sometimes almost heroically difficult to not associate everything with that person. Well, the trick is to find something, of course, that isn’t reminding you of that person. You might have to search a long way.

This is how to recover from a love affair. This is a little bonus. Could have used it myself a few times in the last few trillennia.

But the situation is in actual fact a simple one. The individual has identified everything in the environment with his unrest. Everything in the environment has become identified with the threatening things in the environment.

And the individual can’t pull his attention off of these things. But by indicating things in the environment, even quite simply, and by directing anybody’s attention to things which are not so connected, making the individual find things which are not actively reminding one, you get a differentiation going where an identification existed before. And where differentiation exists, intelligence and judgment can return.

Intelligence and judgment cannot exist in the face of an identification, but can exist in the face of a differentiation. So this opens the door pretty wide. Now, the funny part of this is that an individual, oddly enough, usually finds data more workable, that he can work on others, than data which is being worked on him, unless he  SCIENTOLOGY ZERO 19  also has the opportunity to work it upon others.

You’ll find this as a truth when teaching PE Courses or even small groups of people or even an individual; that if you give him something he can use to help others ... It’s an interesting commentary on the actual character of man. Man is basically good: If you can give him things which will help him help others, he’ll be far more interested than if you’re simply giving him things which help him.

And therefore, in PEs and that sort of thing, and in teaching the individual or in any booklets laying out this material and so forth, your supplementary advice in the matter should always go on the basis of “Who are you trying to help?” “Who are you trying to help find that their environment is not as dangerous as they think it is?” This is so true that many of the questions you get in a PE are from an individual-are the hypothetical question which is in reverse to the doctor’s question. The doctor’s patients are always asking them for a friend. “A friend has this trouble and what would be your advice that I could give my friend?” when it’s the person himself that has this trouble, you see. The medico’s always running into this that way.

Well, a Scientologist always runs into it-not being in the same profession and a more honest one, which is quite different, quite different. And in actual fact the individual will ask for himself because he wants it to help somebody else. One of the things that plagues an Instructor is that-his questions he is being asked are very frequently simply being asked by a student so that this student then will make sure that some other student knows.

Now, the question is being asked for the benefit of another student or other students. Quite interesting. Now, that’s true of all such wisdoms.

So this Scientology Zero has to be pretty darn well understood by you in order to pass it along to Joe so he can help Pete. Because he will actually go help Pete with it, find out that it works to some degree and use it to help himself. And quite often that is the cycle it goes into; not, he uses it to help himself, don’t you see, and then goes helps Pete.

It’s got a flip-flop type of cycle. That is to say, he helps Pete with it and then finds out that it helps Pete a little bit, so he takes some of the advice himself It’s quite remarkable. But that factor enters in particularly at this level of Scientology Zero.

Now, “Take a walk and look at things” is just the mildest, mildest, mildest advice that you could possibly give anybody that is almost certain to produce a result if the person will do it. It’s quite a-it’s quite an interesting process. There is nothing very dangerous about it.

Of course, an old-timer like myself, I mean, I gave myself this advice one time up at 250 Old Brompton Road. Several sections of the sky had fallen in that day, and there were considerable amounts of tumult and turmoil going on and so on, and I decided that it was just all too much. So I decided I would take my own advice and go out and take a walk.

So I proceeded to do so and because I told people to look at things, so on, I went around Old Brompton Road District up  SCIENTOLOGY ZERO 20  there in London, and I was busy looking at things, and of course I looked at them real good. And this intrigued me very much. And I found out by the process of looking at things and then putting tension on the beam with which I was looking at them, well, I could pull myself forward.

And I didn’t have to walk. And this became very intriguing to me. And, skidding my heels along the pavement and so on, and I became quite cheerful about the whole thing, till I noticed a cop on the corner regarding me with some ...

Shook me confidence, it did, a little bit. Almost pulled meself out of the body that way. Anyway ...

Did me a lot of good. Cheered me up enormously. But there’s-there’s a level of action, don’t you see?

There’s a level of activity, a level of something or other. Now, that was about 1956, or something like that. The only earlier one I had that could produce the same result was go out and clip hedges.

And you know, you can only trim a hedge so often. You run out of hedges. It’s quite effective.

It’s quite effective. Now, the master question is “What part of the environment isn’t threatening?” You’re basing this on the identification-the individual’s identification of everything. That is your master question. “Isn’t”-it’s negative.

Because he has everything identified with that part of the environment which is threatening. Well, you get him to differentiate and find out there are some parts of the environment that aren’t threatening, and he’ll make some considerable forward progress. Then the individual can also arrange his life somewhat.

And it’s a funny thing that by making an individual plan a life by which he could live calmly and unthreatened, that the life he is living becomes less threatening. Well, this even applies to some guy who’s on the-poor fellow who’s on the complete treadmill; he has to keep this job; it doesn’t pay very much money; he’s got to stay there; there’s no chance of his getting off of it and so forth. And he finds that environment very hostile.

Well, he’s sort of in a trap, isn’t he? He’s in a sort of a box, all of his own making. You get him to plan-we don’t care how wildly he plans it or how he dreams it, but just get him to plan a life which would not be so threatening.

And he will go on working at the job he is working at much more happily and much calmer. Now, when you move this up, then, in Scientology One, and you start introducing communication factors and show him how to communicate to people, and so on, they find they can produce an effect upon people and people cease to be as threatening. And these things all tend to multiply on up the line.

And if you keep havingness alive as you go on up the levels of Scientology-I mean you keep havingness in mind and don’t drop it out of view completely and forever, you really never cease to lose, totally, the benefit that is started there at Scientology Zero. The environment isn’t as threatening. People are looking for a less threatening environment or, knowing mostly that they can’t escape to that, looking for a way to be more enduring in the environment they’re in.

That’s what people are looking for. It’s a two-way look. They’d love to be able to get out, or  SCIENTOLOGY ZERO 21  they’d love to be able to master.

But they don’t think they can, to a large degree. They know they can’t get out very far, and it wouldn’t do any good. And nobody has ever been given-able to give them anything by which they could exert much more influence on their environment than before.

And those are the basic goals and targets of the individual. There are no more complicated goals and targets than that that are completely general to every individual there is. Any thetan has these things.

In other words, not to have to stand up to the type of threatening environment he’s in, or be more enduring or dominant of the environment he finds himself in so that it is less threatening-these are your basic PTPs of a thetan that have been with that thetan ever since he’s been coming on up the universe. And of course, being a fairly nice bloke, he has actually been looking for something he could help other people be less intimidated or less fixed in their environment so they could get out of it, or so that they could endure or dominate their environment better. He’s also been looking for something to help his friends.

He’s never really completely forgotten those. Even the drunk on skid row never forgets that. Even the bum in j ail never forgets that.

These fellows, then, are actually trying to help others, and what you need is a level of help which requires practically no education at all. Or the education which it is receiving, of course, is a destimulation of the environment anyway. Just a discussion of the situation.

Now, that’s what’s required. There’s no auditing skill required there. There’s nothing required there and yet there’s a potential betterment.

This will become real to the individual no matter how crudely it is put to him. Just the concept all by itself that he considers the environment dangerous and overwhelming and that he doesn’t quite know where that danger or overwhelm is coming from, that concept alone is an enormous piece of wisdom, see, that is just a square mile of wisdom dumped right on his head. It’s never occurred to him before.

He says, “It’s true.” He never thought of it. He never thought of it for himself or anything else. He’s just felt it and was it, all the time.

And what you’ve actually defined is what he was. This is his isness. Quailing back from a very threatening environment that may overwhelm him at any moment, unable to progress forward into greater endurance or power that can handle that threatening environment - this is his life.

You have told him the story of his life in just those few words, don’t you see? Well, if you take it out from there and you actually provide a therapy, well, you say, “Knock off some of those things in your life that make you upset.” Why, that’s good, solid advice, see. “Who upsets you? Well, don’t talk to them for a while.” I mean, this is crude, see. “What activities leave you feeling worse?” and so forth. “Well, just don’t do them for a while.” “What things in the environment aren’t really a threat to you?

All right, you got some of those. All right. Fine.

Associate with those. Pay more attention to them.” You know, you’re liable to shoot that person’s IQ up fifteen, twenty  SCIENTOLOGY ZERO 22  points. You’re liable to snap him around and get him out of the wheelchair, and so forth, just with no more wisdom than this little package that you’ve had in this last hour and a half.

So, what we needed was something that was very, very pervasive, something very simple and something that would go forward that had no auditor connected with it at all, it only had a teacher connected with it. And given that, and the developments which you can develop out of that, and which I will undoubtedly write and develop out of that, why, we have pushed a whole new philosophy under the tremendous structure of Scientology. It took a lot of doing.

Looks very simple now that it’s done, isn’t it? But I had to think of: How do I think up a whole field of philosophy that has whole bodies of truth in it, that are an introduction to the man in the street, the person who knows nothing-you haven’t any time to teach him anything-that he will immediately see the truth of, that requires no auditing, that requires nothing about the mind in connection with it at all. It was quite a specification.

But there it is and I hope it’s some help to you. Thank you very much.

[[Category:Lectures]]
[[Category:Lectures SHSBC]]
[[Category:Lectures 1963]]