View source for Time - Cause and Effect (2ACC 531203)

'''Series:''' 2nd Advanced Clinical Course (2ACC)

'''Date:''' 3 December 1953

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

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This is December the 3rd, afternoon lecture. I want to talk a little bit more about cause and effect and time.

To cause an action, one is in advance of the action. Never make a mistake about this. Now, what do we mean by advance? Do we mean a direction? No, we mean a duration. A duration is different from a direction.

I'm going to ask you to look at this cigarette package here and then close your eyes.

Now, open your eyes and look at it again.

Now close your eyes.

Now open your eyes and look at it again. Okay.

Now close your eyes while it's there.

Now look at the spot where it was.

Now, one confuses that motion of new positions with direction, simply because one has ceased to put into place and make disappear the thing, for each passing second.

So now I'm going to ask you to do this:

Take a look at this cigarette package.

Now close your eyes.

Now look at it again.

Now close your eyes.

Now look at it again.

Now close your eyes.

Now look at it again.

Now, what is the difference between that instant—the last instant when you didn't find it there, when it was motionless and you didn't find it there, and the first instant when it was missing? That is entirely your knowingness and nothing else. There isn't anything there that will tell you the difference between, except your knowingness. Or your automatic machine that goes running like this: "Later-later-later-later-later-later-later—later than you think—later-later-later-later-later—much later than you think—later-later-later-later-later, later, later—well, later … Later? Later? Time? Time? What's time? Time? Time? Time to the right, time to the left, time up, time down, time backwards—Tuesday is around the corner." And that's just about what that machine does, and that's really the cycle of its life.

So people who have "directional times" have departed from even questioning time. Time is direction. You see, when I ask you to open and close your eyes as I move this cigarette package from your left to your right would, because of the successive pictures, connect spatial position and the instant you viewed it. Now, when that gets really set, why, one has a picnic with himself. Because spatial position has nothing to do with time.

The pyramids, when they were one minute old are—so far as their relationship to the other pyramids—are in the same place as they are in now, as they are in the future. But knowingness can be added to language. So we say, "The pyramids were where they are now, and they will be there in the future."

Now, this universe loves to confuse you by changing spatial positions at the same time it changes time, but remember two different operations are occurring. Spatial position is changing and time is changing. So let's just move up one little link—just stretch your understanding above this morning's lecture on time—just one little link up, to this. You know spatial position because you know. And you know time because you know. And there isn't any reason in the sun why spatial position has anything to do with time. And when it does, the days go by so rapidly, as not to move at all.

The beginning of a life running on an automatic machine on time goes pocketa, pocketa, pocketa, pocketa. And in midlife the machine is going pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. And in late life, the machine is going aarrrrhhh! No distinguishment at all.

Now, knowingness is totally responsible for what you observe as time passage.

Now, I want you to sit still for a moment and know that you have been sitting there, and hold your breath. And know you've been sitting there holding your breath for a year. Just know that.

Now breathe again, and know that's the first breath you've taken in eight years.

Now take another breath and let it out, and know that you've breathed all you need to breathe for the next year.

Now breathe normally.

You see, breathing is an automaticity which is a pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. And it's only pocketa-pocketa-pocketa because the heart is going lup-dup, lup-dup, lup-dup, lup-dup, lup-dup. So your breathing regulates against the heart: pocketa-pocketa, lup-dup, pocketa-pocketa-pocketa—you see? One against the other da-dunt. So you know whether you're breathing fast or slow. Nobody ever knew, by comparison, whether he was breathing quickly or slowly. He knew he was breathing faster than his heart was beating, or slower than his heart was beating, or that his heart was beating faster. Or that he—one person was walking faster than another person.

Now, this widespread thing called agreement lets one in for a lot of "accidentals," not just accidents. This widespread thing, it's agreement. And there we have—there we have this: this fellow says, "Mm-hm, mm-hm" and "I understand that." And then after a while he says, "Yes." And then after a while he says, "Yes, sir." And then after a while he doesn't listen, he just waits to agree. See that? He waits to agree.

If you want to get a case entrance button on some people, you just get that one, "waiting to agree." You've known some people like this. Maybe we got a case or two present that simply wait to agree. Without record. See? No particular record of anything—they just wait to agree. Well, there—you could say the same thing of waiting to know what time it is. See, because there is this proper moment when they should agree; and that moment is on a cessation of communication. So when any communication ceases, they automatically agree.

This is real loony-bin stuff I'm talking to you about, but it's the deterioration of the time factor, and the causation of this is setting up fast and slow time. Exteriorized, an auditor very occasionally, if not always, expects the preclear to be running on MEST universe time. The preclear exteriorizes perhaps into a higher or less automaticity—either one or the other. Or into no automaticity, which makes everything sort of stop, you know, till he thinks of it running again. And many people exteriorize without perception and good certainty simply because when exteriorized, they don't have all this automaticity connected up and so they are uncertain. But they're not uncertain about being exteriorized, they're uncertain what time it is.

You could see that? So that they have a hospital roof on the auditing room. They have the living room rug in their childhood home on the floor. They just grab onto and indifferently hook up to all of the automatic machinery which in the past has become superautomatic, and it's just too strong to be overcome. Now, they lay in that hospital for a long time. In other words, lots of MEST time went by. They were in that childhood home for a long time, and they had to be very aware of that rug because they didn't dare do things on it when they were very small. And so, those factors which have most impressed them—you see, you've sprung them out into, usually, less time. Timing. And only those factors which are tremendously automatic are with them.

So you ask them to see the room, so they look around at the room which is being furnished them, because they are at that moment causative. And if they're sold on the idea that they have to be an effect, they expect everything to be manufactured for them before they perceive it. You understand this? They think everything's going to manufactured before they perceive it.

Now, really what happens is, is a person, when he exteriorizes, gets into a state where he can mark out what the particle motion is of the universe around him. He can mark this out. You see, he's in enough agreement with the universe that he can mark it out and then replot it, then all of a sudden his visio will come on terrifically. He gets this—he just gets the rate. And as soon as he gets the fact that these particles are changing, then he agrees with their particle change enough to perceive them, and so he establishes his perception balance.

A Step V is not necessarily better timed or worse timed than a Step I. A Step I who has complete and immediate vision the second that he exteriorizes, has either done this operation very fast, or he simply exteriorized with both hands firmly grasping his time machine.

Now, H. G. Wells has written a lot about time machines. And a lot of other people have written a lot about time machines. So they're all based on the basis that there is such a thing as a path, or a formed set of barriers, which never perish. Well, there are. There isn't a single barrier which ever existed which ever perished. And when these all jam together, one's time machine is shot too. Because a time machine in essence is doing just this: It is agreeing on the erection of a barrier and agreeing on its vanishment, and agreeing upon its erection and agreeing on its banishment. So that you have new space being continually formed, and old space being made to disappear.

People will get, in later life, double, triple, quadruple vision. The oculist cannot account for this and so abandons it. Some of the double vision comes about when they're looking with their MEST eyes, and seeing better from outside the inside of their head, and they see two objects which are not quite in concurrence. Now, this is a much less difficult problem than it might seem on first glance. We're trying to reduce it to a simplicity which you can handle as an auditor.

You exteriorize an individual and then immediately ask him to be an effect. The reason he exteriorized is because of his recognition of his causative nature. And yet you ask him to immediately perceive. You see? It just doesn't add up.

The first place, he is in automatic agreement on the universe around him. As long as he is in that automatic agreement, he is going to have a time for himself, because that automaticity will swamp him sooner or later. Somewhere along the track he has to take a step back and say, "Look—whoa, now. I'm cause. Let me put it up myself for a while, knock out the existing machinery, put in some new machinery, get it repaired well, and put into this machinery the fact that it'll remind me in the future sometime to make some more machinery when it gets worn out." You see that? Because there's no future, a fellow then, has to know when to know. And what's "when"? "When" is because he knows there's a when.

Now, I ran an interesting preclear a long time ago, who used to put up double terminals and made them out of lead, and when asked for some lighter material, changed them to cast iron. And then when asked what he was putting up, said he was putting up a postulate. I've always remembered this as a signal example of the value of knowingness in terms of solidity.

Basically, it's very much too easy for an auditor simply to go out all-out on this basis, and then dismiss all other mechanics connected with it and dismiss in particular the way to remedy it. He says, "Now, all there is knowing, is knowing. Well then, all you have to do is just say, 'All right, you preclear—know!' Oh, you don't know, huh? Well, the hell with you!" And he calls this auditing. This is the same thing as saying, "All you have to do is decide to be self-determined." It's—you'd have the same chances.

Well, all that you could say was really wrong with an individual, if anything was wrong with an individual, is he has turned his postulates into MEST so thoroughly and so long and so often, that he's got all kinds of automaticity which turns his postulates into MEST. And then he's lost track of the automaticity and it goes on functioning, and he's had such a hard time—you can say this about him, in any lifetime—he's had such a hard time convincing people of things, that he would rather hit somebody over the head or run him down, than give him an argument. Because he's found arguments aren't too workable unless they're backed up with force. Or he's had practiced on him, force, in lieu of an argument, see. So the symbol has become the thing.

Back of anything there is a postulate and back of a postulate, unphrased, is simply knowingness which is in itself certainty.

So, let's get a grip on this a little bit in our auditing, and see that if we want the highest definition of this universe, is that it is a game which requires barriers to be played. A game which requires barriers to be played. One needs restrictions to play this game. All right.

Let's look, then, at a preclear and know that we are processing somebody who is above the level of the game. A man who plays baseball, who can only play baseball, isn't a very good baseball player. Any preclear who can play the game called MEST universe can, very actively, play much broader games. He shouldn't, however, be playing them with you as an auditor. But he will.

Now, what your difficulty is with any preclear, is the fact that his postulates are automatically becoming objects or energies or spaces or nothingnesses. An automaticity which takes the postulate is already wiping him out somehow or another.

Well now, what kind of an automaticity is reaching his ability to make postulates? An automaticity called language—symbols.

So we give him, with a symbol, a message; which he then retranslates into other symbols, above which he knows. And from that knowingness, translates the knowingness into symbols, which symbols become translated into objects or distances or nothingnesses. Well, just watch that process. You as an auditor are handling a preclear via a symbol communication line.

That's not very important. But it is important that your preclear, if he cannot exteriorize, if he is not causative and so forth, is translating his knowingness immediately and directly into objects, spaces and nothingnesses without any more recourse to himself. See? Do you see that? I mean he's just doing this. He says iron and he gets iron. See, he doesn't get knowingness about iron.

Now, an example of this just came up while I was walking up here. An auditor said, "You—we were having—putting up mock-ups real slow, and then deciding they were there," words to that effect. And he was talking about a little process he was doing. All right.

This was very strange to me—it was very peculiar to me. And I looked this over real careful to find out what was so funny about this? Obviously it wasn't funny. He didn't think it was funny. Nobody he worked it on thought it was funny. Well, it looked awful funny. You're putting up the mock-up, you build it up and then it's there and then they decide it's there. And this, of course, is backwards, naturally, or something of the sort.

Well, it hit me for the first time, forcefully, that people decided they had a mock-up there after they put the mock-up there. They obviously do. Obviously. I work a little bit different than that. I never look at the mock-up I put up unless I happen to look at it. I know it's there. If I look, it's there. It can be inspected. It can be combined, and it behaves and so forth. But this step of having to reassure oneself isn't present. I don't think it should be. But it opens up the door to a lot of understanding of what somebody's doing. He's doing something—instead of on a basis of knowing he's doing it, he does it on a basis of reassuring himself that he's doing it. Do you see that? He doesn't know he's doing it, he reassures himself that he's doing it.

Like the fellow, you know, he runs a race and waits for the—a grandstand to say, "Hurrah!" No hurrahs. He says to himself, "Well, I think you ran a good race anyway."

This is like: "All right. Now get a mock-up of a dog."

"Yeah, I got a dog. Yeah, this is real interesting."

See what he's doing? You see exactly what he's doing there? He is a questioning cause arriving at a surprised effect. In other words, he's being an uncertain cause and a certain effect. Which tells you exactly where he is on this billionth-of-a-second, we're talking about, time span. That billionth-of-a-second is the difference between knowing and being reassured.

Many a preclear comes to you simply to be reassured. Actually, if you patted him on the back and said, "You're not nuts. I see a lot of people much crazier than you are," shook them by the hand, told them to stop by the desk on their way out, they'd gladly put a lot of money there. See? They're looking for reassurance.

Now, as you as an auditor run a gradient scale, you gradiently build a preclear up into greater and greater assurance, and he needs less and less reassurance, until his certainty is something he does not need validated by agreement. And what are we working him out of? We're working him out of being reassured by something which agrees with him only when he agrees with it. See that? So we get somebody waiting around, waiting around, waiting around to be told they're right. They're right all the time—there's only one person that's right, that's themselves. But they have gotten on to this basis of reassurance, which means effect.

Now, what on earth would it be that caused a person to pass over from happy cause to miserable effect? Hm? What would it be?

Well, this morning we were examining this inverting line. Let's go over that a little more—a little more carefully.

Now, here we have an inverting effect on, let us say, pleasurable sensation—which begins at the top somewhere with serenity and goes on down the line through elation, and goes on down the line through sexual sensation, and goes on down the line through sadism, and sort of dwindles out the bottom.

Well now, if a person wants to be an effect more than he wants to be a cause, you could almost be sure, in view of the fact that he is basically just a knowing unit, that he's going to know where he is—he's going to be an effect, which tells you that he's going to be a time lag. Make sense to you now? It tells you that if he—if he knows he has to be an effect. So again, we have this business of the second dynamic.

Now, let's look at Mr. Sigmund Freud—nobody else has, we might as well. He picked on the second dynamic. And he did the most involved job with it. He talked about prenatal experience, he talked about birth trauma, he talked about this and that, and he talked about more bric-a-brac that he evidently knew about, but had never found any phenomena about, than any man I ever perused. And sitting in the middle of all this, was this terrific sleeper called the Assumption, see? That was a booby trap. He never divided the second dynamic into its most reasonable components: sex and babies. I don't know how you can separate sex and babies. And I don't know how you can separate sex and duplication. So we get sexual sensation as the pleasurable act of duplication by a system.

Now, it isn't that sex and duplication are so alike that makes duplication effective in turning on perceptions. This is not why it's effective in turning on perceptions. It's effective because it unmocks, by simply ignoring and taking its work away from it, the automaticity which is busy building and doing everything. You're just making the preclear do it, right there, boom—the preclear does it. And the machine falls out of use and goes to pot. All right.

What factor, then, are we dealing with, with somebody who is way over on the effect side of the ledger? If he's over on the effect side of the ledger, he's not going to exteriorize. Because he expects to exteriorize and be hit by perception. He expects perception to present itself and demonstrate it to him that it exists. He sits there calmly and waits for everything to demonstrate that it exists. He waits to be convinced.

His most basic function is knowingness, and one doesn't know well unless one knows with conviction. And he's substituted effect for conviction. Because he thinks he has to have this from somebody else—you see, he thinks you have to have pleasurable sensation from others—why, he supposes then that he has to agree with them. Because he's on the same wavelength. See what happens? Same wavelength, therefore he agrees, therefore he gets reality, therefore he modifies all of his machinery to agree with all of their machinery.

He runs around trying to find out what other people are wearing before he puts on his coat, what other girls are feeling before he bothers to feel anything. And when you back him out of his head, he sits there and waits to be convinced. There isn't anything there going to convince him. There isn't anything around anyplace that's going to walk up to him as a thetan and shake him by a beam and say to him, "Now, there, there. Now you're really outside and that's all fine, and I'm so glad you're outside and here you are. And now here—here we're presenting you with a view of the room." There's nothing going to happen like that. He exteriorizes as certainly as he is a causative element.

Now, this is no dodge. Somebody'll come along later and listen to this tape or listen to this argument and they'll say, "Now, you see, knew he'd worm out of it somehow. People really don't exteriorize. He says the second dynamic's got something to do with it. Well, I know it hasn't because I hate sex and I can't exteriorize." See how logical all that would be? Wonderfully logical, but it doesn't work. All right.

Let's take a look at this second dynamic. Very interesting—it combines so many things. It is a debased serenity and beingness. Very debased. But it's nowhere near as debased as eating. A being that has to eat to reassure himself that he's gotten some attention is quite a character. Boy, he doesn't know from nothing—not from August nor from the Confederate Army. And that's the GE. In order for the GE to know he's being looked at, he has to have a full belly. Now, being looked at and a full stomach are the same thing. Having eaten is having condensed attention.

Now, here's this little animalcule of some sort, and it rushes around every place and gathers up some MEST and generates some energy and it bats it back and forth one way or the other, and it manages to get enough attention, it thinks, and generate enough attention, this way and that, so it finally has a body. And chomp! Some other entity rushes around this way and that, and this way and that, and back and forth and around and round, and it manages to condense some attention and it has a body. Chomp! And another one—and little fish have bigger fish and so forth. And so we get attention coming all the way up the line.

The lowest attention: the lichen and the moss, which in juxtaposition can get attention satisfactorily from the MEST universe, are actually the bottom, not the top of the scale. They are the start of an attention evolution in the form of eating. But when a person can't eat anymore and survive, boy, does he have to have attention in other departments. So we go right on up the dynamics—two.

Now, it so happens that psychology did serve a useful purpose. I don't care what you people say, anything of the sort. There is one thing they did, that did serve a useful purpose: They found out that they could experiment with rats, and not have to look at the subject of psychology—a human mind.

So we go into the field of psychology and find out that somebody who didn't study any, made an experiment on rats in the field of medicine—which nobody reported in the field of psychology—that rats which are given a very poor diet, reproduce better. Terrifically! The less the food supply the greater the production of young. And so it is, in the countries of Earth—India and so forth. They at last got that. I mean, psychology called somebody's attention to this, who, in the field of biochemistry or metallurgy or something of the sort, made this other experiment. So, a psychology—has contributed.

Now, get that. Not enough attention, so we have to have attention on the second dynamic, which is to say sensation on the second dynamic. Not enough second, we've got to have it as a group, at least as a member of a group. Not enough as a group—here we go right on up, see? Till we get to six—the only place we can get it is from MEST itself. Well, there are people around who can actually get satisfactory attention from MEST. It satisfies them somewhat. They're in horrible condition. And we go on to seven: people who invent spirits to give them attention. And we go on to eight: people who invent some god to give them some personalized attention. And we've gone all the way on out, then.

Now, if we take each one of those in its pure state—and not a preclear with each one of them cut away a little bit, each one of them living on one of them—we get in each bracket a psychotic. But most people, what we get is one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight—he's a little bit gone on each one, see? He just lost just a little bit of one—he can't eat too well, oysters disagree with him. See, that's one thing gone on eating. Two, he doesn't like young girls—you know, a woman has to understand him. You see? And boy babies are all right at two. Girl babies, no. Younger babies, no. See, so there's a little bit gone on that one. There's two gone. Groups of people are all right in church, see, but otherwise—nah, no groups.

We get this supermodification of each one of the dynamics, and we get a composite that the fellow, following—evidently having read Dickens and considering that a character is utterly dependent upon one's eccentricities (Dickensonian characterization), he thinks he has a character now and has a personality. And if you want to make somebody have a different personality, just talk him out of each one of the eight dynamics, you see—a little bit of each one. Only choose something new and radical about it, you see—don't have him like groups of firemen. See, just cut that off the third dynamic. Men are all right, but monkeys are also men. On the fifth dynamic, just cut it down so that he only likes snakes. On the sixth dynamic, why, have big spaces be antipathetic toward him, and blue MEST the best, and red MEST nauseating, see? On the seventh dynamic, it's all right for the church to have a spirit and talk about spirits, but spirits don't exist. I don't know how anybody ever gets over that one—that's a gorgeous one. And as far as the eighth dynamic, well, God's all right for a lot of people because he does a lot of good but personally he doesn't believe in him. You know, get that and tailor him up a new and unusual personality. You could selectively then strip out each one of these, and you'd get this set of eccentricities. All right.

What about this second dynamic? Where would you start cutting into this case on that? Well, the fellow who has a tremendous thirst for attention in the form of food, of course, has got sensation the most condensed that it can get. It can't get more condensed than that. So you would mock up tastes in the walls and in mock-ups. Tastes. You'll find a lot of guys can get tastes that can't get sexual sensation or something, you see? You go from tastes to various types—lighter ones and then heavier ones and more serious ones—sexual sensation: putting that around into walls and spaces and so forth. And we go from there into the next echelon. And we put the admiration that one would get from audiences or spectacular feats or circus performers or something of the sort, we'd get that into the walls—that kind of sensation. And we would go right on out along the line until we got God and serenity.

Now, some people get hung up on the sixth dynamic. It has its own sensations, and you might find this very peculiar, but it does. There is a type of sensation of attention from the sixth dynamic. It's known as pain.

And if you don't get this whole scale handled on some preclears, they just don't exteriorize. Why? You'd say, "This is very funny that—if they can't get all this, well they're so on and so on." Well, you could answer it in lots of ways. You say, "They're so dependent upon a body that they cannot possibly envision getting along without a body."

There is such a preclear over in Great Britain who'd simply put the complete stopper on any further processing. Oh! Husband was a Step I. She got him stuck back in his head, but good. She went around beating her chops and raising the devil in all directions. She's quite a pretty woman. And then she did Scientology all right as an auditor, very covertly, calling it Freudian psychoanalysis.

The general characteristics and the path of ruin which follows that character is fascinating to behold. And I'm afraid it lumps under the heading of "she can't get enough sensation."

"Grrr! Rrrr! Go ahead, uuuh!" Honest to Pete! It's just about that bad. Oh, brother! So anyway, as sad and sordid as this subject may be, it isn't that she's dependent upon the body for sensation, it's that she can't manufacture it. You see that?

So, what creativeness do we have to trigger on the preclear who's having a hard time of it? Now, very early in this Second Unit, I gave you a list of things to put in the walls. And I'll bet you on the tougher preclears, you haven't built it up very far. But let's evaluate its importance on a rough case, hm?

Now, I'll take what I was talking about this morning: cause and effect. That which a fellow desires eventually becomes inhibited. See, he wants it and then it becomes too scarce. Everybody wants it, nobody creates it, so it becomes scarce.

The next step up, then, on such a thing, is he very often has to waste something. Now, it's all right for me to say, "Waste something in brackets." That's a wonderful way to code it, that's a nice way to do it, you should do it in a balanced, even form. But do you know that you can sit down and by the use of your good common sense, make a preclear waste something that he can't get—this way and that way and another way until he's wasted enough of it, so that he can have a little bit of it, and then he can have a little bit more of it and turn it on full blast.

I processed a preclear once for about twenty-five minutes who had a milk allergy; turned into a flaming rash every time she drank some milk. Processed her for twenty-five minutes worth to finally get her to get, in mock-up, a glass of milk that she could drink. Boy, we wasted milk, and we wasted it in the most peculiar and horrible fashions. Did we worry about an actual reason why? No, this reason why is the furthest we want to go away from that. No, we just had to waste milk. And it turned from people who couldn't get any milk, and the baby starving to death for lack of milk, and there's one drop of milk left in the Western Hemisphere and with what happy speed she would pour that down the sink. See, here you had a set-up situation, and gradually just getting it to unbelievable scarcities.

Now, you can process the second dynamic in that same fashion, and that's usually the tripper and the blocker on a case. The person who is real hard to exteriorize has normally—I hope I don't step on any toes—has normally passed over the barrier of being able to have it. See? And they go down from there into actual all-out aversion to it. Down to the point where they'll join societies which guarantee to cover up girls' ankles or something of the sort. See, anything there that'll just hide it so they don't dare have it and so on.

Well, there isn't anybody doing anything to this person. It's just this cycle of—they made lots of it once, made lots of this sensation, condensed it; and then everybody was making it and so it—nobody made it because there was lots of it, you see; and then nobody made it, so they grabbed hold of what had been made and then they used that, and that of course evaporated because after all, it wasn't being made directly; and the automatic machinery went by the boards, and all of a sudden wasn't being made, so several people started making it surreptitiously, one way or the other; and then it got very scarce from that, and these people were inhibited from making it. How did they get inhibited from making it? Simply by other automaticities. Because one person couldn't make it, another person shouldn't make it too, because that gave monopolies on it. Oh boy. And we go down the line further and further and further.

Well, all of which starts out by having a person at cause, which is creating a sensation or an energy, and bringing them down to the bottom rung of being an effect. Because not only can they not create it, but it never has been created, it shouldn't be created, and shouldn't be touched if it were created, and if it were created it would be illegal and somebody ought to be shot… You see, this is way down. And that is just the span between cause and effect.

Now, there are several other spans between cause and effect. This thing about time, directly, is a direct span between cause and effect. Now, this is a way to bring somebody else on up the line of cause and effect. But remember, they only have that sensation there because they know it's there. But it's a good track to take a Homo sapiens on. See, they can feel that sensation back, they know it's there finally. This is a good track to carry Homo sapiens along, because Homo sapiens, in each and every case, has a fondness for this type of sensation. He eats. Sex, kids, and so forth, up the line. And is the state, in most of your preclears, where they can't eat very much. And as far as sex is concerned, well it's kind of expected of them but they hope not. And third dynamic, they'd rather play the only one, you see, and never talk to a group. And the fourth dynamic, "Mankind?" That's about as far as they go on that. And it's "What room?" Yet, withal, as far as sensation is concerned, they manage to be (quote) "happy" (unquote). As happy as Homo sapiens ever could be.

You have a thetan who is total effect, you have no thetan. See that? You got as much thetan—you are as much as you are cause. And you can actually, unfortunately for you, experience as much as you can cause, see? So a person who is no—you might say, down there almost to no thetan—isn't experiencing anything. See, people want to be an effect. If they want to be an effect, they drift too far away from cause and there they go.

Now, what's the gradient scale of sensation? Well, it's from taste, or physical discomfort because of taste, on up through the milder forms of sexual sensation, on up through the feeling of friendship, on up through the feeling of a benevolent beingness, on up through just an emotion which would sort of be life. And, by the way, unless somebody's pretty well exteriorized here, I would think right this moment it would be very hard for me to describe this.

In the first place, man has never described it. He's talked about a "lively feeling" and a "feeling of life," and it's drifted along in his language, so that it tells you that he felt it once, but I'm almost sure he hardly ever feels it anymore, so as to describe it. Because that is about as high-powered exhilaration as anybody wants to contact. It's like—actually, in its own form, it's like walking into a ten-thousand-volt generator and grabbing hold of both of its electrodes, but very pleasant to do so. Jolt! See? Life!

And we go on up to MEST. MEST is very exhilarating in its actual working state. Because he likes barriers. And that's sort of a basis of "Whee! Playground! Whee! Barriers! Gee, look at that nice thick building! Gosh! What? You mean it's that many light-years to the next galaxy? Gee!" See? "Gosh! Look at all that distance!" You know, zing!

And we go on up to seven, it's no joke that the word spirit means two things. Much, much earlier than when man had a definition for feeling lively, and knew what it meant when he said it, he had another one called spirit. That's elan. Honest, I don't know, you run across it in the bank once in a while, but manufactured in this society? Nuh-uh. Elan: spirit. It's a word which still carries its dictionary definition. It's less and less used in the society at large. You say, "She was a very spirited woman." Sounds awfully old-fashioned, doesn't it? It doesn't mean "lively," it means something else. It's another set of emotions.

And now we run head-on into God, or what man calls God, and we find some new material there. Because the serenity of total pervasion of an area is without equal. And once in a while a thetan will pick this up in his bank and he'll say, "What the heck is this? Oh, gee-whiz, yes. That's the time when I had this whole woods I was looking after." You know he had a whole wood, like Frazer's Golden Bough, you know. Only this time, not corned up like it is in Frazer's Golden Bough. I mean he actually was the guardian of a wood, as a spirit. He was the spirit of the wood. He pervaded the whole area, and what benignity and serenity and occasional interest and so forth there was in all this—ah dear, dear, what was this? Well, that's a sensation.

And oddly enough, each one of these are stronger sensations than the last. So we think of this thing called eating. Well, that's a fairly strong sensation. Well, sex ought to be a stronger sensation. Friendship ought to be a much stronger sensation than that, and here we go on up to the serenity. Now, just compare that to the most currently poetic description of sex, you see, and look where we would have to go for adjectives. The language just doesn't stand up to it, because the language breaks its back, and gets forbidden right now, if it describes an orgasm. And there's—there it goes. But man—man deals with this at just about his highest level: the taste of beer and an orgasm (audience laughter) is just about the highest goal of many people. You wonder why somebody pulls a blank when you try to tell them about thinking or Scientology. Just compare it with their sensation range.

Now, you ask somebody to be causative right off the bat, being sort of quick-like, and you run into responsibility.

Well, what's responsibility got to do with this? You're going to have to make him feel the effect of what he's caused. That's what he thinks. Responsibility is having to feel the effect of what one causes. Full responsibility is just causing everything and to hell with the effect. See? That's everything. But if this person believes, knows, that he can cause only bad effects—he doesn't want to feel any bad effects.

So, as you work him up the line, remember to work the sensation band for both bad and good effects, because he does have this evaluation. When you start to get tastes, remember that—bad tastes as well as good tastes. Because you're going to work him up the field of responsibility, and he doesn't want these bad effects. Therefore, he won't be responsible. Therefore, he won't cause. So without telling him anything about any underlying theory or anything that goes back of it, you just keep him plowing away at getting what emotions he can get into things, and what tastes he can get into it, and what smells he can get into things, bad and good, and what sensations—sexual sensations and frigidity and other things—and forbiddingness, bad and good.

Now, many of these cases you'll pick up will have to be run a long time on "effort of worry." Worry. That is a sort of a sensation that is very close to effort itself. It is a sensation. It's very debased, but it's better than no sensation at all, and it's sort of downgraded from sex. You'll get people that they—their emotions get undifferentiated; they—emotions get all balled up at the lower end of the scale.

Now, when you show a thetan that he can cause, and if you get him really to cause these various emotions, with what persuasion you can (it's part of Step I)—if you can get him to cause these and feel them, and then just cause them and know he's caused them, you'll have him up pretty well, finally, to the rather forbidding level of being able to cause them without caring he caused them—and other people feeling them.

Now, he'll think of this on his way up, and you'll say, "Say, do you suppose …" Anytime he says, "Say, do you suppose that somebody else might feel this? I just put this terrific sensation of hatred in that woman there behind the cigar counter"—he's exteriorized by this time or something, you see—"and I just put that big hatred down there. Now, you suppose that really upset the customers?" or something of the sort. I'll let you in on something. If he's worried about it, he can't cause it. See that? If he's worried about it, he can't cause it.

Now, that poses a rather horrible moral problem, doesn't it? But the funny part of it is, is only when he worries about it would he try to cause it capriciously and maliciously. So, if he's worried about the horrible effect he's having, he's running up against another one—he's afraid of what he'll think because if he thinks where he is, then they'll find him too. If he thinks such a thought might happen, it'll happen. He's fighting shy because he believes that he'll be bad effect. So remember when he picks up something on that order, if he just voices this to you, and say, "Ha! I'm kind of scared that, gee, I'm—mmm—I don't like this." Be sure and you get some bad effects—the bad effects.

Now, all the way running along this, there are a lot of side effects. Interesting ones. There is the feeling of unconsciousness in about eight different guises, at least.

There's the unconsciousness which comes over a person during drowning—that's horrible, right at its beginning. There is the unconsciousness of a person going into an hypnotic trance—another sensation. There is the unconsciousness of a person going under ether. There's another one, of the unconsciousness of going under nitrous oxide, which happens to be an entirely different one. You'll every once in a while pick up a preclear who has a horror of this—I mean, just a screaming horror of it. You just say, "Now, put the smell of nitrous oxide in the wall," and he just—"Where is the door?" See, he just—"I don't want anything more to do with you!" And there is the unconsciousness of restfulness and sleep—another unconsciousness. And there's the unconsciousness caused by a concussion or a blow—another one entirely. These are different unconsciousnesses—each one is different.

Now, generally, as he starts up scale, you—he'll pick out unconsciousness, and unconsciousness is unconsciousness and that's the kind of unconsciousness he's stuck in. And he'll just keep throwing it out into the wall.

Now, remember that any of these sensations can be scarce, and remember that any time he can't get it, it's because it's too scarce—not because he has an inability to create it. Any time you start saying that people have an inability to create, you're cutting your own throat as an auditor. It's a wrong phraseology for you as an auditor, even though I use it occasionally because it's such a pat phrase in English. If you wanted to get the practice definition of what's happening is, is on sexual sensation he has to waste it first. He doesn't have an inability to create it. See, the modus operandi is he'd have to waste it first. He can get it. There is no sensation which he cannot duplicate, no matter how bad off he is. There is no missing piece of machinery in the thetan. Thetans do not have different native abilities which permit some to create this, and permit others to create something else.

Now, pending to all of this—which I hope you understand more about Step I because of this—let me give you something that you may not at once recognize as the highest level of all of this. You go back there in old 8-80 and we talk about aesthetics, and we talk about beauty and ugliness. The feeling called "beauty," when condensed and debased and degraded utterly, becomes sex. That's not because sex is bad, but just because the sensation contained in beauty and the power of beauty itself is so much greater.

Now, things are beautiful because people agree that this sensation is generated by beautiful things. But it's that sensation more than anything else. It's a terrific sensation. And you will find your preclear went by the boards when he didn't believe he could have beauty anymore—whether beauty through poetry, whether beauty through a beautiful man or a beautiful woman. Part of a girl—they think men are beautiful (to you male preclears, they occasionally do) which, by the way, a male preclear completely overlooks. And I've found some female preclears that—they're just blank on this subject. "Men thought women were beautiful? How weird." Yeah, because they didn't. Now, that's just an agreed-upon "what is beautiful?"

We'll find beauty way up there in those upper strata. You'll find somebody who lost the concept of beauty about writing poetry, and break his case. Funny, isn't it? So that's what you're racking around for. Because if a person cannot create the beautiful, he won't create! And that's what kicks him off, right there in the beginning.

So remember to look for that one and to have him create the sensation of beauty, and create things which he considers beautiful. And you don't have to validate the fact that these experiences have happened to him. But that experience that really broke his back had to do with beauty. He lost something beautiful, or he lost some ability, he thought, which was a beautiful ability, and he went by the boards. Bing! Now he's not going to cause anything. He's not going to exteriorize.

Okay.

TIME: CAUSE AND EFFECT, PART II PAGE 2 2ACC-15B - 03.12.53

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