View source for Scientology and Effective Knowledge (18ACC 570715)

'''Series:''' 18th Advanced Clinical Course (18ACC)

'''Date:''' 15 July 1957

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

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Thank you.

Good evening.

Audience: Good evening.

We have… already begun this ACC in terms of class, but tonight begins this lecture [[SERIES|series]] of this ACC, at first I was going to cover all the facts of [[SCIENTOLOGY|Scientology]], as facts, but that is all happening in the [[STUDENT|student]] [[MANUAL|manual]], so everything I can give you is the [[THEORY|theory]] surrounding those facts in this lecture.

Now, I [[HOPE|hope]] you understand that Scientology has something that is different than any other Earth [[ORGANIZATION|organization]] of [[INFORMATION|information]] or [[KNOWLEDGE|knowledge]] to date. There is a difference. The word [[SCIENCE|science]], as you know, is a simple word meaning merely "[[TRUTH|truth]]." Scientology means "knowing" – scio. But scio means something quite interesting. It doesn't just mean "knowing," it means "knowing in the fullest sense of the word." Now, Scientology is an aim at a total know.

People have a great deal of difficulty describing Scientology to other people for the excellent [[REASON|reason]] that they try to fit it into a frame of [[REFERENCE|reference]] with other knows. And Scientology is different than that because it's an aim at a total know. And there aren't any other total knows. Hence, you have difficulty describing it sometimes and giving it [[DATA|data]] of [[COMPARABLE_MAGNITUDE|comparable magnitude]], and therefore in trying to talk about it people say, "Oh, you mean just like [[PSYCHOLOGY|psychology]]." Don't kill them! They meant well. They don't understand what psychology was or is – that it's not even a science but an operation. They say, "Well then, it's like ..." something or other. Nah.

Well, there have not been any other total knows. As far as the [[BASIC|basic]] attempt is concerned, there has only been one organization of knowledge on Earth which has been… had a [[SIMILAR|similar]] [[GOAL|goal]] – which is the goal of freedom, [[EXTERIORIZATION|exteriorization]], [[BEING|being]] able to get out of the [[TRAP|trap]] and [[CONFUSION|confusion]], being able to back up and take a look at it all – and that was Buddhism, which was developed in a very formal [[STATE|state]], but existed long before, by Gautama Siddhartha, who was known as "The [[BUDDHA|Buddha]]," and most of the Western world refer to him as "Buddha," quite incorrectly. A buddha is somebody who has attained a [[TOTAL_KNOWINGNESS|total knowingness]] or [[TOTAL_FREEDOM|total freedom]].

Well now, that was 625 B.C. when that occurred. Buddhism squirreled when it went up into Tibet and became Lamaism, and many other branches and sects [[SPREAD|spread]] from that particular information. But it's interesting that the information itself was not a [[CULT|cult]] or a [[SECT|sect]]; it simply had to do with a great many people who wanted to know more about where they were and what they were doing. It had the idea of freedom; it attempted to answer the question of the hereafter; it did a great many things and attempted to do them.

Now, we actually don't know at this [[TIME|time]] what Gautama Siddhartha said. His work was very, very poorly preserved. It's quite interesting, however, that we know something about it.

It's quite interesting that we know the same age and period as developing an enormous number of very vital things, at the same time as Buddhism – almost the same period… It's like that ancient age in Greece that gave us so many things – the Golden Age of Greece all happened in the lifetime of one man. Well, it's practically the same thing back there around 625. Within seventy-five years either way of Buddhism, we have Taoism – that's the work of Lao-tse – and at the same time we have the work of Confucius. It's all there in a pile. Bang!

Well now, there hasn't actually been any declared [[EFFORT|effort]] in the direction of total information and [[INTELLIGENCE|intelligence]] on the subject of man, regarding his whereabouts, which was an [[ANALYTICAL|analytical]], knowing, reasoning approach, having nothing to do with faith or belief, on the basis of take it or leave it – if it's true to you, it's true, and if it isn't true to you, it isn't true – since that time. And that is practically twenty-five hundred years ago.

Now, it's all very well for somebody to come along and say, "Oh, you mean Buddhism." Well, unfortunately that isn't adequate either as a comparable [[DATUM|datum]] to Scientology because the Western world hasn't a clue as to what Buddhism is all about. Buddha was a fat-bellied god that sat upon a throne and, I don't know, for all of them, he ate small [[BABIES|babies]]. See, they think of it as an idol worship. Well, surely enough, in various parts of the Orient, an idol worship did take place – they worship Buddha as an idol and nobody would have laughed harder than Gautama Siddhartha. He would have thought this was hilariously funny. Because it's the one thing he told people not to do.

That, therefore, to the Western world, is not a datum of comparable [[IMPORTANCE|importance]], and maybe… You understand we're not talking about the importance of the development; we're just trying to talk about its goal: has man had a comparable goal to Scientology, and so on. And that therefore would not be articulative.

Well, the best refuge to take in this particular instance would be the refuge into the incomprehensible. And the best comparable datum that you could give somebody would be to say to them, "[[EPISTEMOLOGY|Epistemology]]." And they'd say, "Go-o-osh!" You know, "Scientology's just like epistemology." And they would say, "Is that the study of pins or insects or what?" If they've got to do it that way, they're so stupid that you just better baffle them and let it rest right there, and then say, "Give me your hand. Thank you." Best way to explain it I know.

But for our own [[UNDERSTANDING|understanding]], we should understand that we are embarked upon something which has not been embarked upon for twenty-five hundred years. And that gives it a rather interesting [[SIGNIFICANCE|significance]]. It isn't that what we are doing is as important as Buddhism. It isn't that Buddhism is as important as Scientology. But both of them attempted to select out the important things – a [[SELECTION|selection]] of the importances of [[LIFE|life]] – and to fill man's void of knowing with accurate [[OBSERVATION|observation]].

It might well be said that Buddha was the first scientist. He did organize his things rather well, if tradition is right.

But we in this modern age of science have not developed out of the field of the humanities anything comparable to scientific observation of the [[MIND|mind]]. The humanities can be said, at this time and place, to have failed. And what do I mean by the humanities? I mean that [[GROUP|group]] of information which is apparently covered, or is supposed to be covered, by the university.

Now, what are those things? They're psychology, sociology, the various branching studies of the social sciences in general. Do you understand that? There's a whole group of things called the humanities. Now, why didn't these develop anything? Why haven't these lived? They haven't lived; they're a [[MATTER|matter]] of changing fad every few minutes – beyond psychology, which was the work of a [[SINGLE|single]] man named Wundt in Leipzig, Germany in 1879, who believed that all men were animals and has convinced everybody since. But he hasn't convinced us. This was hardly a human study, since it specialized from the beginning in animal studies. But it's included in the modern humanities.

Now, why haven't these humanities developed something? Why haven't these humanities made something out of all of the opportunity, the [[FUNDS|funds]] and so on that were available to them? – since enormous funds have been available to these people over the last century. Why haven't they made something out of this? Because they were all used as [[CONTROL|control]] mechanisms. Each one of them was given a pitch in some sort of effort to push man further into the mire. And their goal was [[SOUTH|south]], not north. Their pitch was down, not up. They study man to learn how to control him by duress. They study man to find out how to take advantage of him. Psychology at this moment, defined by the United States [[GOVERNMENT|government]], is "a deceitful procedure to trick one's [[ENEMIES|enemies]]." Let me assure you that in this atomic age we can't afford to have enemies and therefore cannot have something which deceitfully attempts to trick one's enemies.

Here, here is the single [[POINT|point]] of difference between the humanities and what we are doing. We have found this to be the [[CASE|case]], and if any [[AUDITOR|auditor]] or [[SCIENTOLOGIST|Scientologist]] does not at some time achieve an understanding of this, then he has never understood the subject as a whole. And that is to say that the only way you can better man is to better him; you cannot better man by worsening him. The only way you can get an IQ gain on a person is to improve his [[ABILITY|ability]] to communicate, to live. The only way that you can make his [[PERSONALITY|personality]] [[CHANGE|change]] is for the better. So this is just a little worse than change.

The reason the psychologist believes, at this very instant of my talking to you, that man cannot be changed, we have also discovered here in Scientology: We cannot push him down. That is very hard to do. It is rather easy to pick him up, because you have his assistance. But you don't have his assistance when you try to push him down. So therefore, if you tried to [[REDUCE|reduce]] somebody's IQ, you would have a hard time of it. I don't say that it's impossible, because in Scientology every now and then we can take the [[AUDITOR'S_CODE|Auditor's Code]], read it backwards, have the auditor [[AUDIT|audit]] by [[STANDING|standing]] on his head and have bricks dropped on the [[PRECLEAR|preclear]] every couple of seconds, and after the right [[PROCESS|process]] has been used and misused to this degree, we'll find he's lost his enthusiasm for answering an IQ test.

Now, when it comes to personality changes, it is very difficult to worsen these things. Now, life itself, with all of its mechanisms, its duresses of all kinds, is able over a period of half a lifetime to [[SUPPRESS|suppress]] personality changes, characteristics, talents and abilities. About half a lifetime, something like that, it manages it.

It takes some fellow who was an enthusiastic artist when he was twenty – well, he gets to be about forty, and he isn't quite as enthusiastic as an artist and doesn't respond, and his willingness to be an artist is not as great. You understand that. But it took twenty years to suppress this. In other words, the [[MEST_UNIVERSE|mest universe]] can accomplish this on a sort of a [[GRADIENT_SCALE|gradient scale]]. So only by allying oneself with the particles in that wall, only by allying oneself with the mechanical laws of life – mest-wise – only by turning and facing down anything alive and saying "kill it" can we at length suppress the ability of man. It is hard to do.

Well, this is the awfullest condemnation that was ever handed out against any activity or era – that it is terribly easy to improve him. It doesn't require anything at all to change him upward. You have his assistance. It takes some good [[COMMUNICATION|communication]], it takes some good [[REALITY|reality]], and it takes some [[AFFINITY|affinity]], and the fellow improves!

Why do you suppose anybody can come into a PE Course, sit down and communicate with one's fellows and wind up improved in IQ? Look, he's only been there for ten hours at the absolute outside, and his IQ has improved? Well, let me show you that these students of the mind that are studying out of the animalistic [[PHILOSOPHY|philosophy]] developed in Leipzig tell you that man cannot be changed – his IQ cannot be changed; his personality cannot be altered. Which tells you what at once? That they've only tried to worsen him. Now, do I make my point?

[Male voice: Yup.]

The road was wide open for any pair of eyes. All one had to do was desire to better his fellow man. That's all one had to do. What is as rare as a June day in January.

Terribly easy to [[ALLY|ally]] yourself with MEST – terribly easy. Fellow comes up to you, what's the proper thing to do? Hit him! If anything comes around and sits down, why, what's the right thing to do? Well, fix it up so it'll [[DECAY|decay]]. Well, doesn't that stuff do it? It's not that that stuff is bad. But that stuff is there to be used; it's [[NOT_THERE|not there]] to become.

So it tells us that the humanities were far less interested. But they had withdrawn so far or were part of the universe that they never conceived any [[FUTURE|future]] for themselves in exact observation or in other [[ACTUAL|actual]] scientific principles.

One had to separate himself from MEST in order to look at it, to some degree. He had to look at his fellow men and find out what they were and what they were doing. He had to observe. And the second he started looking, a great many simplicities fell into his lap; he couldn't help it. So you will pardon me if I [[DOUBT|doubt]] the sincerity of the forebears of this subject. I believe that there has been a total gap between 1625 b.c. and 1957 a.d. I believe that because it's too easy.

Now, that's the first thing we must know about Scientology is that by the attainment of a simplicity we accomplish a [[BENEFIT|benefit]]. By the attainment of a simplicity we accomplish a benefit.

By the invitation of or involvement in a [[COMPLEXITY|complexity]], we accomplish the unfathomable and [[CREATE|create]] a [[MYSTERY|mystery]] – we sink man into a priesthood; we sink him into a cult. Instead of, as they said in the Middle Ages, "What monastery do you come from, Father?" (as they stood on the crossroads telling their beads one at another), why, they say, "Now, what university are you teaching at, Brother?" in 1950 and 57, you see? Same breed of cat. It's a sort of a priesthood: all knowledge is sacrosanct and it must all be uttered in a certain apathetic [[TONE|tone]] or it isn't.

Well, tone and [[EMOTION|emotion]] have nothing to do with knowledge. [[AUTHORITY|Authority]] has nothing to do with knowledge. Those things I tell you are true are not true because I tell you they are true. And if anything I tell you, or have ever told you, is discovered to differ from the [[INDIVIDUAL|individual]] observation (be it a good observation), then it isn't true! It doesn't matter whether I said it was true or not. Do you understand?

And you, in [[HANDLING|handling]] people, can tell them to look at certain things, and if they can see them and if they're true for them, they're true. But only if they can see them. So just carry this same observation another stage. To some fellow who is terribly debased, some fellow who has actually just... aw, just gone all out – he's just been in nothing but hog wallows all of his life, you know? Drunk all the time, dragged out of bars, graduated from the University of Chicago, you know… This fellow who has gone the limit can't see. And what is true for him? [[BLINDNESS|Blindness]]. That is true for him.

Now, I can tell you how to show that fellow a truth which would shake him. Put your hand across his eyes and say, "You cannot see, can you?" He would agree with you like he'd never agreed before, because he can't see, whether your hands are across his eyes or not.

Now, that is the first thing that he would have to find out in terms of his own observational [[POWER|power]]. He'd have to find out that there was a [[CONDITION|condition]] where he couldn't see before he would begin to look. And for this individual – all swelled up on significances of one kind or another, all taught eighteenth hand – a very remarkable thing is observable. He'll never learn until he finds out that he hasn't.

And the curse of these intervening twenty-five hundred years has been a [[PRETENSE|pretense]] of knowledge – inventednesses which never were, which are passed along and people are flunked upon just as though they existed. And we've had a worship of the fable. We have had prayers being sent up to a myth. And man hasn't been looking at all.

It's a terrible thing for somebody who has struggled through a tremendous amount of [[UPSET|upset]] – let's say he has been ... this person has been married to somebody and just tried for years to make somebody see their [[POINT_OF_VIEW|point of view]] one way or the other – or for some child who has struggled up into manhood or womanhood with all of his efforts devoted to getting his parents to see something, to take his point of view one way or the other. It's an horrible shock to this person to find out someday that the reason he could never get a reasonability in his family, late in life or early in life, was totally based on blindness which in itself was so obfuscated, overlarded that nobody even noticed the blindness. And he himself never noticed the blindness of his parents, never noticed the blindness of his wife. Fantastic isn't it?

One does a terrific amount of living and apparent looking and an awful lot of [[THINKING|thinking]], and then finds out somebody was stone-blind. Isn't that fantastic? Well, that is the entrance point of any case. In other words, there are conditions worse than being unable to see, and that is imagining one sees.

The humanities imagined too many things to see; they never cared to look. And so they failed.

But we must not ourselves fail in this same [[TRACK|track]]. It would be easy for us to do this. We have a complicated [[NOMENCLATURE|nomenclature]] in Scientology. There are about 475 or 80 words, all of which have special meaning. Fortunately, over 50 percent of these are merely clarifications of their actual English equivalents. But we have a vocabulary of specialized meaning. It's just as good as it explains things. That's all the good it is.

But don't let your specialized use of words throw you out of communication with your fellow man. Know these words well enough so that you can use their [[ALTERNATE|alternate]] phrases – because it usually takes a [[PHRASE|phrase]] or a sentence to describe one of these words in English. Be able to do that well enough to go out of nomenclature and into nomenclature again, depending on who you're talking to, and you will not be encouraging blindness. Because a label is just a label. The thing in the jam jar is jam, regardless of whether it says "pickles" on the front of it.

Now, we have certain, definite, positive procedures. As valuable as these things are, if they incline us in the direction of looking at them, not the thing they help us look at, if they incline us (these procedures and activities) to believe that they are a thing, not a means toward doing another thing, then we ourselves will be in the same condition. And we will [[CONSIDER|consider]] ourselves to be the wisest people on Earth and have to discover all over again that we have to achieve blindness on the way up.

Many a philosopher has been blinded to the truth by the brilliance of his own syllablization. Now, wherever we develop an [[AREA|area]] of special knowledge, such as the [[TRAINING|training]] [[DRILLS|drills]] and processes (as valuable as they are) which constitute this course, we must also at the same time understand that these things are a means to an end and are not in themselves the end.

A very funny thing can happen. A person can take up what we call Training 0, Training 1, Training 2, Training 3 – all of these drills – and get [[CLEAR|clear]] up to 6 without ever having integrated them into a single process. And yet, theoretically, he could perform them beautifully, each one independently, and yet never be able to do them in an [[AUDITING_SESSION|auditing session]]. Theoretically that could happen.

Well, this would be a person who had totally forgotten what they were for, and that is to create the proper communication atmosphere to a session so that an auditing session or a human [[CONVERSATION|conversation]] (that being one of the lower sorts) could occur without jolts and jars. In other words, the end view of all those early training drills are communication, and when one loses the sight of the fact that they make somebody [[CONFRONT|confront]] and look at – Training 0 – he's lost the benefit of the whole sweeping mass. Do you understand that?

Now, the funny part of it is these things can be lots of fun in themselves. I would be the last person to admit that they weren't positive jewels of [[GENIUS|genius]]. But I would be the first one to throw them away if they got in the road of anybody's communication! Remember that, and use them accordingly.

They take a gradient scale from "not look" to "look." And they're a pretty good gradient scale. And they've been in use for a long time now. But we're just now learning that they were too fancy. We found out the best coaching remarks that can be made in teaching somebody to do these things is "Do it!" "Confront it!" Not "how," just "do it." Actually, the whole thing boils down to confrontingness and nothing else.

An individual can't give an acknowledgment because every time he gives an acknowledgment some mysterious [[FORCE|force]] hits him in the teeth. Well, that's simply…that mysterious force is just something that he is unwilling to confront, in the present or the backtrack. It's just something he's unwilling to confront. You need the rest of the drills, apparently, because just plain confrontingness doesn't ever stir these things up. Just sitting there ... the fellow has already learned that if he just sits there and minds his own business nothing will happen except that he will vegetate and starve to [[DEATH|death]]. So we have to occasion a further reach.

We have to have a further reach. And that further reach is communication – verbal communication. And it finally winds up with total [[SYMBOL|symbol]] amputation, and we do it by hand, like wigwags from battleship to battleship. Quite interesting. But it's a gradient scale of communication, and thus it must be understood.

Now, we move up into the upper reaches of that battery of indoctrination steps, and we get into what's called [[UPPER_INDOCTRINATION|Upper Indoctrination]]; we have these things in practice. And it is always a lovely thing to [[WATCH|watch]] the first day when anybody who has been through a [[COMM_COURSE|Comm Course]] butts into plain 8-C – simple-command process where you tell people to go over and [[TOUCH|touch]] a wall. You never heard so much trouble. They never had this much trouble before. Why didn't they ever have this much trouble before? Because this process integrates all the lower training drills and say, "Well, that's all right, sonny. Just do them all at once. That's all. That's all you have to do." Of course, you aren't doing them all at once, and he finds out eventually that you do each one at a time. Fortunately, you don't have to do them all at the same instant.

But what does this wind up to become then? What does this wind up to be? A gradient scale of observation whereby one reaches out and receives in intelligence concerning life, forms, mass, [[ENERGY|energy]], [[SPACE|space]] and time.

I woke up eventually to discover that these training drills all by themselves, practiced with sufficient rigor and coached well enough and instructed well enough, were steps on the road to Clear all by themselves without any further [[PROCESSING|processing]]. Why? Because they directly raise the communication [[LEVEL|level]] as an individual. But they take another course. Instead of processing this fellow, you say, "Do it!" And he says, "Ya-ya-ya-ya!" And you say, "Do it!" And he says, "But my head – my feet – I can't – vulumn." And you say, "Do it!" And then he says ... all of a sudden he says, "Eooohhh-eooohhh-uh-oo" – [[BOOM|boom]]! And just about the time he's [[LYING|lying]] there in the exact position where his mother always sympathized with him, he finds the [[COACH|coach]] and the [[INSTRUCTOR|Instructor]] putting him back in the chair saying, "Do it!" And the circuits blow up and after a while he says, "You know, I can communicate."

It's a ghastly [[ROUTE|route]] to take. It could only be attempted on people of considerable [[STABILITY|stability]], of considerable back-processing and a great deal of willingness and understanding, and I'm afraid wouldn't work on the [[ROUTINE|routine]] preclear, unless in the process of doing them you made a willingness to be a Scientologist.

A group similar to this one, given as much duress as this had in one week, would be all plastered all over the walls by now. So understanding must accompany any drill, mustn't it? And you [[SURVIVE|survive]] these because you understand that there's an end goal to them. You understand where they are going and what they are doing, and so your understanding raises your [[TOLERANCE|tolerance]] to a point where you will actually attempt to do this impossible and incredible thing. So understanding has something to do with it, doesn't it? The funny part of it is the understanding is demanded of you, and you look in vain for the Instructor to understand a damn thing! Well, that's all to your benefit. It keys in [[PAST|past]] understanding on you as you try to give it to him and fail.

But when we look this over on a broad view we find ourselves articulate on the subject of where man is going, what man is doing, what the [[END_PRODUCT|end product]] could be; and we for certain have sorted out factors that none of the humanities ever sorted out or ever dreamed of sorting out, and didn't even know they would ever have to be sorted out – that's more important.

In order for a man to see when he can't, he would first have to understand that he was blind.

Therefore I pity you when someday you find in your midst – thrown to you in a government [[PROJECT|project]] or something of the sort – the fact that the old base psychiatrist or psychologist or something or other is going to be put into your particular project, and you're going to be called upon to train this man. Now, there are certain portions of a horse's anatomy which are never mentioned – particularly amongst ladies – but this fellow, this fellow would be best described.

Now, what's [[WRONG|wrong]] with him? And why is he untrainable? Because he's on this terrific pretense. He is staring at fancied information which has never benefited him or any other human being – yet it sounds so wise. It's so impressive to have 18,000 names, not 472. He'll think you're a dog because you don't know these 18,000 names, and he will tell the people around him that you are a charlatan and a cheat because you don't know these 18,000 names. But you know something he doesn't know. You know he's blind. There is a condition worse than blindness, and that is thinking you see something that isn't there.

Now, when we are asked to train such a man, we can do so only if we ourselves know that we, too, have risen from the unseeingness.

It's a very funny thing for a fellow sometime in processing: he sits down, he's being audited, and he says, "You know... you know, I think I've got things wrong." Boy, you said it. He's not just had them wrong, he's had them upside down. But this sneaking suspicion comes through to him. He sat down there so that you would audit him and thereby prove that he was always right and he was simply put upon by the rest of the world. And he finds out in the course of it, somewhere along the [[LINE|line]], that he was dead wrong and, to modify English, couldn't have been wronger.

He sits there and he says, "You know, maybe I wasn't right. Maybe ya-uuh , . . Maybe some of this [[RESPONSIBILITY|responsibility]] was mine. Maybe... maybe life... uh-huh-huh-huh-huh ... I wonder. Say, you don't suppose I've never taken a straight look at that girl, do you? Or I wonder if I have ever really been part of my job at all." Or as I did to one fortunate individual – he's fortunate because he found this out – he said, "I wonder if I have any right at all to wear these five stripes on my sleeve."

Now, we weren't asking him to dive into humility; we were trying to build him up. But humility was north! He was on a swollen, pathetic egotism which wouldn't admit his admission of truth that he didn't think he was up to his job. And this he had hidden even from himself. And he had to discover this all over again before he got out of the morass.

Do you know that no blind man thinks he is blind? He may tell you so, but he doesn't think so. I [[PROCESSED|processed]] a blind man one time and found out why it's almost impossible to process blind people. Because they see all sorts of things. They have all kinds of perceptions. And they're getting audited so they won't have to admit they're blind.

And I audited this fellow up the line and all of a sudden he clapped his hands over his eyes and he says, "My God," he said, "I can't see!" That's fascinating. He'd only been blind for about a quarter of a century. Big [[COGNITION|cognition]]. I couldn't understand why he went around ... I just... it just stopped the session in its tracks. On a cognition of that magnitude you would – just let the session go to hell. There was no getting this fellow back into session; he kept walking around the room saying, "I'm blind!" It was a great relief to him.

I never audited him anymore. I closed off that particular session because it was a short one anyhow – I think its total duration was supposed to be fifteen minutes. But he's been a fast friend of mine ever since. I was the only fellow, he tells his friends, who ever showed him an inkling of truth. Only he's got it all embroidered up now to all kinds of truths, but the truth of the matter is, I was the only fellow that ever came along and invited him to find out that he was blind and to [[STOP|stop]] kidding himself. After that he was perfectly willing to be blind. It was very interesting, but it modified his [[EXISTENCE|existence]] considerably, and he's a very fast friend of mine.

Now, I don't say that we couldn't go on above this point, don't you see, we couldn't go on north from this and have restored his sight and perhaps done all sorts of things, but I merely bring him forward as an example of a big cognition. And me as an auditor sat there, and I thought the last thing in the world we had to discover about this case was that the fellow was blind!

And I've had fellows on crutches tell me all of a sudden, "You know, I'm lame." "You are? What have you been doing for fifteen years with that crutch if you weren't lame?" The fellow didn't realize he was lame. This is a fantastic thing.

Now, we're not trying to pound the truth into somebody's head. We're not trying to beat them down so that they will get any lower. No, we do our best to make them communicate, to look, to cheer up. We're friendly, we're kind and everything's fine. And the guy improves and improves and improves and finds himself on the bottom. And only then can he go up.

Had a preclear one time who used to dope off all the time. And he told me one day, "You know, I dope off all the time." Well, he'd always said this. He'd always said, "You know, I get doped off. I just get dopey. I get dopey. I get dopey." And one day he looked at me very intelligently and he said, "You know, I dope off all the time." And I said "Yes," and I was about to pass it up because the most obvious thing about the case would have been the fact that he was doping off. And what do you know, it made a big difference to him. It isn't that he didn't dope off anymore, because he did – every now and then – but he had found out about it. And he would go tok and knock himself back into awakeness again. These are the fabulous things about Scientology.

Now, it tells you quite adequately that there is an enormous zone, an enormous wonderland, below blindness. It tells you that there is an enormous Valhalla mixed up with Pluto's realm, mixed up with fairy tales, mixed up with Menninger's works, lying all over below the level of truth. And the truth is a simple thing that anybody could see. And why don't they see it? Because they live in this gorgeous wonderland, which isn't and never will be.

You perhaps don't know the joke of why we use Alice in Wonderland in our training drills. It's just a joke, completely aside from the fact that that particular gentleman, besides being a fine mathematician, could also write.

But here is this circumstance – all this imagined knowledge. Somebody commits to [[MEMORY|memory]] a sixty-thousand-word treatise on childcare – just commits it to memory from one end to the other. Doesn't understand any part of it. Sees a child coughing and whooping and coughing and just having a terrible time, and turns around very learnedly to the mother and says, "Bronchitis – [[ACUTE|acute]]," and walks away. Bronchitis. Now, wait a minute. We don't care how many broncos are around there. A child is coughing!

It actually would require the observation that the child was coughing in order to do anything about it. Now, the wrong thing to do about it is give it a new name! That just takes you one step away from looking at it. And you realize that if you were in good shape, the child was coughing and his throat was raw and you looked at his throat and so on, his throat would get well.

Now, let's go into wonderland – the wonderland of syllables; the wonderland beneath the earth of never-never. What is all this? We know it as a [[DISPERSAL|dispersal]]. An individual looks at something and it flashes back and he can no longer look in that direction. It kicks him in the teeth. He thinks it will continue to kick him in the teeth. So he mustn't look that way. He must look somewhere else. And he eventually learns very well never to observe anything, but if he catches sight of something, to go on a via at once and look the other direction. Do you see that? And that is the exact mechanic of how a wonderland of pretended information which became the social sciences was created. Individual couldn't confront man so he turned around and developed a theory about man. He said man was something that was made by the devil in the [[IMAGE|image]] of God or something – some such myth. All savage races, all savage races, even the American, has had myths concerning man's [[ORIGIN|origin]] – the Aleut, Tlingits. You see, he's had all sorts of things.

Now, he certainly couldn't have been looking very well if he'd never noticed exteriorization as such. He must have been blind for centuries never to have included this in his literature. Isn't this fascinating? If any man knew anything about it, he didn't dare say anything about it because nobody else knew anything about it, you see? He stood there as a little island of information that quickly died. He invented all sorts of things about heaven and hell and hereafters.

Then he invented the "functions of the [[BRAIN|brain]]," which is the wildest thing I ever heard of; I don't know that the brain has a single function. I know I stopped depending on mine years ago. Someday I will will my brain – I just thought of this – I'll will my brain to science and they can put it in a pickle jar, and it will have served its first useful [[PURPOSE|purpose]]. I don't even enjoy it as head padding because every once in a while you put a helmet.. . have to put a helmet around it to ride motorcycles, and it's already too heavy. You know? It doesn't work well.

Now, what is this [[ADDITIVE|additive]], make-it-more-complex thing? Well, we try to look at something, and then because we don't want to look at it anymore, we turn around and look another way and tell somebody all about not looking at it. We tell somebody how dangerous it is to look in that direction. Or maybe we're just feeling puckish one day, and we invent a direction not to look in. We say, "Everybody who looks northeast by north, up through that pass up there, is apt to see the jub-jub monster," and nobody could tolerate that, and so nobody ever looks in that direction. And when you've got all points of the compass sorted out, somebody is totally blind. After that he really does have theories.

There are no theories quite as towering as the theories of one who has spent his life in an ivory tower. These theories are gorgeous. They have the beautiful charm of having no possible bearing on reality – which is of course the ne plus ultra.

Now, a [[THETAN|thetan]] on the other hand, all out of thin air, has as his greatest accomplishment the ability to create, form, maintain, a universe. So when he has this ability of creating a universe, this dims out so that he's not doing it very intelligently. And he sees a bunch of things in the universe that he doesn't want to look at – he gets a dispersal there – he combines these two talents. So the universe he builds is below the level of the current universe he's in. And you have to bring him north to find out he's in a trap.

Fantastic thing, but I'm sure that you could go down to penitentiaries and take prisoners – some prisoners that have been there for a very long time – and run 8-C on them and get some terrific cognition all of a sudden, you know? The fellow would go around touching the walls, and all of a sudden he'd say, "Iron bars? Iron bars?" He's hung on to them every day you know for the last twenty-five years. "Iron bars? My God, I believe I'm in jail!"

Well, we should understand this across the whole of knowledge. We should understand invented knowledge. We ourselves are sometimes accused of it. Perhaps there are some things in Scientology which were unwittingly invented. I myself don't know what they are. There were a few things that we discarded. I wouldn't say what percentage because I don't think it would be a statable percentage. It's such a tiny little amount of data that we've picked up and then had to discard as incorrect or wrong or a misconception, that it doesn't amount to very much. Most of our data is on the [[FIRM|firm]] [[FOUNDATION|foundation]] of having looked.

And your ability to know the subject is your ability to look. No more, no less than that. Now, the only thing, actually, that anyone can do for you is to provide you with an example of having looked, and perhaps to furnish you a little road map saying, "If you travel up this way there's some scenery." Got it? "And if you look at this scenery real hard, it won't bite you." Some reassurances can be offered. Some drills can be offered that show an individual that he can observe, look and confront, [[EXCHANGE|exchange]] communication with or communicate to. These things can be done. Observation can occur.

And all the observation in the world being done at this moment – all the observation in the world – actual real observation in the field of the humanities, if put totally together into a thimble, would get lost.

Now, I don't say that maliciously. I'm trying to show you something. I'm merely trying to show you that wherever we have succeeded it has been in the direction of a straight communication. And where training and processing processes are [[SUCCESSFUL|successful]], they [[LEAD|lead]] toward a straighter communication.

And therefore, the road out is marked by simplicity and direct observation. And the road in is more and more and more and more vias, vias, vias, complexity, complexity, complexity.

It's quite amusing, the evolution – there will be gentlemen hearing these [[TAPES|tapes]] who have taught Comm Courses over the past year or so – but the evolution of a Comm Course is terribly interesting. At first I didn't have too much alertness on this subject; I simply invented the drills as a gradient scale and I told them to teach them and [[PAID|paid]] little further [[ATTENTION|attention]] to it. Pioneering work on it was done by others. And it was only when I found out that every time that a Comm Course was established anyplace it soon became much more complex than anybody could ever [[IMAGINE|imagine]], did I realize that the people who were teaching Comm Courses had seldom been through them.

In other words, instead of a straight communication – for the first six or eight months of Comm Course history – instead of straighter communication, we were getting more complicated communication and instead of being able to do the drill better, we were succeeding in doing it more complicatedly. You see this? This is to be expected. It's man's natural bent.

Man – before he gets up and looks to find where he is, before he starts to look in a proper direction, discovers he's blind, and then says, "Hey, wait a minute," takes the veil off of his eyes and does take a look – has a tendency to keep diving into complexities.

So there is [[ONLY_ONE|only one]] continuing stress in Scientology. That stress, until now, has been added to this subject, I am afraid to say, mainly by myself. And that stress is just this: Greater simplicity means greater communication. And I've been bucking my shoulder, in the organizations, up against any tendency to complicate a simple observation. And it has been necessary always to take the drill and simplify it, to take the subject and simplify it, to take the organization, articulate it better and simplify it.

Now listen. That it can be done is obvious. I mean, I have the absolute proof that it can be done. We have simplified the [[CENTRAL_ORGANIZATION|Central Organization]] in Washington, DC, to such an extent that we recognize fully there is none here! That tells you we must have looked at it because it's been as-ised. We know there's no organization in Washington, DC. We do know that there are several people in Washington, DC, who wear certain [[HATS|hats]], who are in communication with certain other people with certain ends and purposes, and this is the first time we've had a running show that didn't [[CAUSE|cause]] anybody headaches twenty-four hours a day.

We dropped the Alice in Wonderland myth called organization. We found out the [[THIRD_DYNAMIC|third dynamic]] was an [[AGREEMENT|agreement]]. All right, we'll agree. But in agreeing, let's not die the death. Let's not [[AS-IS|as-is]] every individual present simply because we've agreed that there's an organization there. Let's not create an all-devouring, Alice in Wonderland monster. You understand this?

We came uphill far enough to recognize that the third dynamic, how desirable and actual it may be in the upper realms of existence, at this level of existence is composed entirely of first [[DYNAMICS|dynamics]] cooperating. Therefore, it isn't possible for the organization to carry a ball [[INDEPENDENT|independent]] of an individual. And if an individual in that organization is carrying the ball well, dhuh, he's liable to run square onto somebody who isn't. And the organization can never help him out. Now, maybe he can take refuge of one kind or another in the [[PUBLIC|public]] belief that there is an organization there. You understand that? But, because he's taking such refuge, he should not be so untruthful and so blind himself as to believe that there is actually a somethingness there where there is truly nothing, nothing at all.

Organizations do not bleed, they do not breathe. They do behave, oddly enough, like a single [[ORGANISM|organism]] – oddly enough. But when the individuals in it cease to behave as individuals, cease to have their own thoughts, cease to be capable of their own initiative, cease to be able to take their own [[ACTION|action]], then the whole organization boils down to just one man – and he's the only one that could make a [[DECISION|decision]], the only one who could do anything, the only one who could act. Now, we don't care whether this is a beneficent monarchy or a fascism or anything else. We're merely saying that in the end it boils down to one man.

If we believe implicitly in an organization, we have a situation whereby every [[AGENT|agent]] of fascism in Italy had to phone Mussolini in Rome to make a decision. And when our military governments went into Sicily and Italy, they found out that the only people who were there who could do anything about the government were these former Nazis. They did try to put in other people in government to run the towns and so forth and found out that they'd put in the Mafia. They kicked them out in a hurry, a few thousand deaths later. And what did we discover? What did we discover? They couldn't act or operate because Mussolini was no longer there! In other words, they'd lost their individualism.

So the first thing I must tell you about this subject is that it is a subject, that it depends upon organization only to the degree that communication is assisted, that it is composed of individuals who observe and who look. And if the organization is ever asked on to look, we'd have to recognize something right there or we would be telling ourselves fairy tales; and that is that the organization, not being there at all, must therefore be totally blind. Thus we get the conduct of governments which are totally blind.

All right. The whole subject opens up at its inception with just this: That the simplicity of observation, the simplicity of communication itself, and only itself, is functional and will take man from the bottom to the top.

And the only thing I am trying to teach you is look.

Thank you.

Editor’s [[NOTE|Note]]: The word “exteriorization” is cut out in the Golden Era audio version of the lecture. Other omissions in the text are marked in Arial

squirreled: altered from the original ([[MATERIALS|materials]], procedures, etc.).

Lamaism: a form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet and Mongolia, characterized by elaborate ritual and belief in good and [[EVIL|evil]] gods, demons, ancestral spirits, etc.

Golden Age: a period in which a nation, etc., is at its highest state of [[PROSPERITY|prosperity]], or in which some human art or activity is at its most excellent.

Confucius: (ca. 551-479 B.C.) an ancient Chinese philosopher and teacher whose philosophy of [[ETHICS|ethics]] stressed two virtues: the rules of proper conduct and benevolent [[LOVE|love]]. Confucius taught many other virtues, including loyalty, faithfulness, [[WISDOM|wisdom]], [[RIGHTNESS|rightness]] and [[SELF|self]]-cultivation. These virtues he summed up in his ideal of the true gentleman, or “the princely or superior man.”

Wundt: Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), German psychologist and physiologist (expert in the study of the functions of living things and the ways in which their parts and organs work); the originator of the [[FALSE|false]] doctrine that man is no more than an animal.

Leipzig: a city in Germany; the location of Leipzig University, where Wilhelm Wundt and others developed “modern” psychology.

Editor’s Note: The word “MEST” is made incomprehensible in the Golden Are [[TAPE|tape]].

Editor’s Note: Probably went to be “625 B.C.”

beads, telling their: saying prayers using a rosary (a string of beads for keeping count in saying a series of prayers).

breed of cat: (informal) type; sort; variety. Example: The new airplane is a completely different breed of cat from any that has been designed before.

overlarded: added to too much, as with irrelevant or useless facts and information.

syllabilization: a coined [[TERM|term]] for the action of uttering syllables; speaking.

stripes: any of various strips of cloth or braid worn on the sleeve of a military uniform to indicate [[RANK|rank]], length of time of [[SERVICE|service]], etc.

Editor’s Note: This sentence was altered in the Golden Era Tape to “I processed a man one time, he doped off all the time.”

Valhalla: (Norse mythology) the great hall where the god Odin receives and holds feasts for the souls of heroes fallen bravely in battle. The word literally means hall of the slain. Used figuratively in this lecture.

Pluto's realm: (Greek and Roman mythology) the world of the dead, of which Pluto was the ruling god.

Menninger: Karl Augustus Menninger (1893-1990), American psychiatrist who, with his father, founded the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas in 1920.

teeth, kicks (one) in the: (slang) gives (one) an abrupt, often humiliating setback.

Tlingits: members of any of a number of American Indians of the coastal regions of southern Alaska and northern British Columbia, Canada.

bucking one's shoulder up against: resisting or objecting strongly to (some situation or condition).

Editor’s Note: “third dynamic” was replaced by “organization” in the Golden Era tape.

Mussolini: Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), [[FOUNDER|founder]] and [[LEADER|leader]] of the Fascist Party and premier of Italy (1922-1943). He gained and maintained his power by physical violence against his opposition.

Nazis: members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party which, in 1933, seized political control of Germany under the [[LEADERSHIP|leadership]] of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945). In alliance with Italy and, later, Japan, Nazi-controlled Germany entered into a large-scale war with many other nations of the world, which came to be called World War II. The Nazi party was officially abolished in 1945 at the [[CONCLUSION|conclusion]] of the war. Nazi comes from the German word Nazi(onalsozialist).

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[[Category:Lectures]]
[[Category:Lectures 18ACC]]
[[Category:Lectures 1957]]