View source for Upper Route To Operating Thetan (AC 571230)

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

'''Date:''' 30 December 1957

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

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Thank you.

Well, what'd you think of that project I talked to you about?

Audience: Hooray!

Well, I'm not going to talk to you more about it unless you want me to. But, how many people here would actually be interested in organizing one of those things?

Good-good, well, I'll give you a clue, I'll give you a clue.

There's an awful lot of US, and there are 200 million people. And I don't think the number of people that raised their hands right now are too many.

In a town like, let's say, San Francisco, I don't see how you could have less than two or three dozen clubs, you know - it would - it's a multiple factor even for an area.

Well, good enough, would you like to hear something about theory and processing?

Audience response: Yeah!

All right, maybe you'd like to hear more about the „Survival Clubs.“ Which would you like?

Audience voices: Theory!

All right, good. What lazy people. Going to make me do all the work.

Well, there have been a few advances in Scientology in the last few months mostly in the basis of summation, or „this is the thing“ or „this is the proper thing“ or „all of these other things are as unimportant compared to this thing.“ You get the idea? It's a reevaluation.

Most people that you run into - they know nothing about evaluation. I'm not talking about now evaluation of the preclear. They just know nothing about evaluation of data; it's one of the more fabulous soft spots in the human anatomy. „Uh - children eat ice cream. The president died yesterday.“ Same value. „Uh - every action has an equal and contrary reaction. Uh - the Russians fed the dog uh-uh-Neetzie-Weetzie biscuits in Mutnick.“ Huh, same value.

„Uh - I am. sick today Uh - I, uh - have lost my job. Uh - I don't want any breakfast. Uh - the - the world is round.“ Same value.

In other words, there's no difference from datum to datum. Now, that is a symptom of „data apathy.“ You get the idea? People go down into „data apathy,“ you might say, they go down into identification so that all data - it isn't that every datum is every other datum; it's „All data are equal.“ There is an - a total equality of importance of data. „All data are drops of water in the ocean, and all drops of water are alike.“ You get the idea? That failure to differentiate in importance of data is simply no more, no less than a failure to differentiate.

Bill walks in the room and they say, „Hello, Joe. Oh, I thought you were Joe for a moment.“ Ah, the hell they do - they probably think he's Joe all the time.

Here you have - here you have this old Dianetic „A=A=A=A.“ I mean, „All data are all data.“

So we get into the field of science. Nobody has ever bothered in the field of physics to evaluate the importance of data. If they were to write a scale, just this, no more - not adding anything to physics, not subtracting anything from it, just write a scale of data, and it went like this: This was evidently the most important datum of physics; this was the next most important; this was the next most important; this was the next most important - they'd probably come out with a brand-new subject. See?

Instead of that they say, „A British Thermal Unit is 776 BTU, and so and so on, foot-pounds per the square inch of the millibars, you know, and it is all the same.“ And that's just as important as whip... „That was on page 62 of my textbook; and the 62 is just as important as British Thermal Units; it's just as important as...“ you know. You'd be amazed.

Very seldom do you see an examination like this: „Give the six most important factors of motion or characteristics.“ You don't often see them like that. They say „Give the characteristics of motion on page 27.“

Now, evaluation of data is an integral part of thinkingness. „Thinkingness“ discovers data or invents data and of the two, invention of data is probably more important than the discovery of it - unless, of course, you are looking for a common denominator of agreement in certain things and want to do some things with and then the discovery of data becomes very important to you. And as we look over thinkingness and evaluation, we find that people who cannot evaluate amongst the importances of data cannot think! They do something that passes for thinking and you have seen this every day of your lives.

The funniest thing I ever heard anybody say is a - bellboy stuck a key in a door, and then suddenly realized that it was the wrong door, and the wrong key for the right door and he said the funniest thing I ever heard anybody say - „I wasn't thinking,“ he said. He wasn't thinking. Well, of course, he hadn't been thinking for a very long time. He wasn't thinking, he just uttered a statement.

People have this idea of thinking all mixed up with „doing what they're told“ and so forth.

But a free mind can take the data of a subject and sort it out. And saying „Well, this is important, and this is important, and this is important, and that's important, but this is the most important and this is next, and this is next, next, next.“

You'll get a problem coming apart the moment somebody asks the thing, „What is the most important part of this problem?“

Now, you as an auditor in handling a preclear can get at a present time problem very easily if you ask the person „if he's having any trouble lately“ or „What is the most important thing in his life at this moment?“ If you say, „What is the most important thing in your life this minute?“ you are probably asking the same question as, „Have you a present time problem?“ It's almost the same thing, you see?

Now this is an enforced importance, the individual has had this importance forced upon him, you see? He doesn't like it either (something of the sort). Well, in this wise he then confuses data with problems, so it's trouble with data, trouble with problems and trouble all become the same, and they say, „Well, we'll just skip the whole thing, and we will no longer evaluate it.“

This would be a very interesting experiment to take Black's Physics, elementary physics; I'm talking about real elementary physics, you know, and just sorting out all of the data in the book in a gradient scale; all of the laws and rules, and then writing a book which gave them in this order, and which gave them in stresses of importance and so forth to the degree that each one evaluated the other data, and where they were all discovered and found.

Actually, the kingpin of this probably is „Conservation of energy.“ That probably is a king factor, and yet it's not really given that degree of it, but it winds through every physics experiment. It's obviously a datum which rides along with the pack, wherever you find the pack you'll find that idea too.

Well, in separating data out in the mind and telling which is the most important and so on, has this liability: The mind is capable of two things which make it difficult to sort it out. One, it's capable of inventing data, that's a high level of capability, you see. So you never know quite when you're going to run on to an invented datum, so that gives a hazard to the game; and the other one - the other part of this as far as data - pure data is concerned, is that, one mind is more concentrated on any given data than any other mind, you see. So that we get an uneven concentration on data, we get an uneven agreement. Now, you have to go through that hedgerow in order to get up to the point to find out what datum is common to all minds? What idea is common to all minds? Well, the funny part of it is - it's different than you think, I think. This datum is that - that's common to all minds isn't any longer a datum, it's an isness, it's a thetan, it's a being.

Now, the definition of that was really the triumph of Scientology.

Now, what this being is doing we already ran across and isolated out in Dianetics, and his most important datum is of course survival.

Now that's just why it is. The - I don't know why he should be so - he can't do anything else; therefore how he concentrates upon surviving is rather interesting. You see a fellow concentrated on the one thing he can do. Sort of - sort of interesting.

And as a matter of fact, he doesn't have to do anything to survive, which is very interesting. He doesn't have to take any real action. We see this in nearly every religious text. „The lilies of the field and so forth, they do not spin...“ only I'm not so sure about that, I've seen them spinning, „... and neither do they weep.“ Or some other such - some other quotation.

But an individual does not have to work to survive; that's a new idea, he has to work to have a game. That's entirely different. But the datum which has penetrated at least this society is that „You have to work to survive.“ Well, that's a basic alter-isness or a basic lie that continues all sorts of ideas in continuance.

The truth of the matter is all that is wrong with a thetan is that he is surviving. That sounds like one of these miserable statements that proves itself by itself. The truth is that a thetan - difficulty is that he is a thetan. And there is unfortunately no escaping the fact that he is what he is.

So number one data in any science of the mind comes about here on this one basis of „A thetan is a thetan.“ See, he is. The isness of a life-being, you see. That is the most important common denominator. It isn't walls, that's not common denominator to all worlds and lives, you see. It isn't - but the next thing about it is, is survival.

Now brainwashing becomes very easy to understand if you understand the principle of survival. And the way to get this thetan in trouble is to make him do, and think he has to make an effort to do, the thing he is doing, and therefore he engages continuously in an effort, but he can't do anything else than what he is doing, but to tell him that he has to make an effort to do it is the biggest trick that can be played upon a living being. You got that? If you know that well, you really - you really got your wits wrapped around something. Now, that's more important than ice cream sodas and a lot of other things.

But the funny part of it is that the evolutionist, the biologist, and all these other „gists“ never isolated survival as the most important datum; they said, it was - „Survival was important.“ Even Darwin said, „Survival of the fittest.“

I think at some other congress I have told the story of the „Survival of the fittest“ already. Cat had nine kittens and one of them had fits and the eight didn't have fits, and the eight that didn't have fits died and that was „Survival of the fittest.“ Anyway. That's almost as important a datum as Darwin finally added up in his - in his evolution. „Survival of the fittest.“ That inferred at once that there was some kind of a thing that didn't survive.

Well, a chair doesn't survive maybe - it gets broken up, a lot of things don't survive. Various forms don't survive.

I am sorry I told you that bad joke - I've put a lot of you in misery and despondency. But it is still the best illustration I know of „The survival of the fittest.“ Makes the most sense. His difficulty, this thetan, is, here he is, and here's - he's doing something to do something that he can't do anything else than do. Do you get this as a supercomplication? He is making himself the effect of an action.

He says to himself „I am making myself survive.“ When as a matter of fact, all he has got to do is relax - and he'd survive.

Well, therefore, survival isn't the most important thing in his framework; see, that's not the most important thing. We said it was very important and the common denominator of life in Dianetics, but it is not the most important thing in his framework. It must be that creating a difficulty is, so that he'll have some randomity or some activity; a game. And one of the best ways to phrase it is well, he wants a game; he wants problems and he wants games and he wants things to do.

So therefore, he does this incredible thing of making himself the effect of his own effort to survive and we call that a game.

Do you understand all there is to know about brainwashing is all you have to do is make somebody think he has to work hard and brace up in order to survive. That's the single-denominator trick that is used in all brainwashing and not even the Russki understands it. He works like mad to do all kinds of wild, weird things and hocus-pocus and soul-searching in order to get somebody brainwashed, and then he fails.

Well, the only time he ever reached any goal or attained any success was when he simply made somebody survive harder. We get people suffering just from this.

A guy walks into a camp where he is going to be brainwashed, they say „Hocus-pocus, fiddle-dee-dee, and we are going to upset all of you“ and so forth, and the guy just says, „Well, I'll live through it!“ Made him brace up to it. Brace up to what?

If you can make a thetan, brace up to it, Rahhhh! Why you've really done something. See? That's really doing something. But he does it because he wants a game. Because at once he wants randomity and activity, that he is doing a thing that he can do and he can't do anything else but do, and he couldn't anything else but do if he tried; he therefore tries, and this folds back on itself sufficiently to make a complication that not even he could possibly understand. He has said for many centuries, and then we stuck our toe out and tripped him. But that's what he's doing.

Well, sorting out data then, what is the most important of this data? And it's not new at all - it's something that's quite old, but he has to take an action, and the first action he takes, even above games, is to not-know everything.

Now, if we look this over we don't particularly care about the numbers involved but we have this being, who cannot help but survive, and there is something else he cannot help but do, there's one thing he can't help but do and that's know! How a man has to work to keep from knowing something, is represented by the number of people who wanted their memories erased in Dianetics. They wanted their memories erased! Well, that's pretty wild.

So he has to take an action to get all this going.

Now, we have a thetan knowing everything, then let's assume these numbers are in the lines of the action taken; we'll just assume this being who knows or potentially knows everything, now what action does he have to take? And he has to take this action, now we've known this for a long time, but we know some new things about it he has to not-know; that's the first thing he has to done - do in order to get a game on the road, he has to not-know.

You get the - what'd they call that outfit down there the Department of the Defense of the Pentagon? The place that's defending the Pentagon down there. There's an outfit down there, I don't know what its name is, but they have a project running on how to mind read the Russians. They've had it going for about a year, and they're investing large sums of money and all kinds of things on how to read the minds of the Russian general staff. They've made an unreasonable assumption, they have assumed the Russian general staff had minds. When I can tell you definitely that they were chosen because they did not, just like any other general.

Now, I know that's nasty words, but I resigned a long time ago, and those of you who are still connected with the service listening to me can shut your ears at that point, you don't have to listen to it, but I do not respect these guys who ride forward without ever thinking or doing anything. That I can't see.

This next thing he has to do is find something to know. Now, that's quite weird. You look at this beast called a thetan and he's saying, „Well - it's all blank.“ Incidentally it's the easiest thing he does. Boy he can do that just like that! On death, an individual goes out the back of his head and he says at once - not at once, he sometimes drifts around for months and bothers people. But he says eventually at the moment of the next assumption when he picks up another baby, he says, „That's it, not-know!“ Boy is he stupid! until some auditor gets his hands on him and says, „What is the matter with your leg?“ And he answers unthinkingly, if at great length of time into processing, „Well, it got shot off at the Battle of Gettysburg.“ He didn't not-know all of his experience thoroughly - he just made a postulate that he not-knew so that he wouldn't think about it, but it's still effective on him, which is all part of a game.

Now, he doesn't even not-know what he knows, you know? But he knows he doesn't even know what he's not-known. Boy, is he in a confusion.

Now, we get down here, and this is - this is old hat to a lot of you but we've got some new angles on it. The human conversation concerning this action is to forget. Forgettingness. He knew everything, and then he not-knew, he said, „I don't know anything - I'm stupid - I'm gonna run for Congress.“ Not-know everything. Now he has to find something to know, so he goes around and picks up something that he mocked up anyhow probably, and he says, „What's this? What's this? Got a black line going down, see here, what's this?“ Waits for his mother to come along and say, „Junior, that's a pencil.“ And then he looks up with stupid innocence and he says, „A pencil. A pencil.“ He says, „What do you do with it Mama?“

So as we come down from the top of total knowingness, we get the first postulate of not-know, then we get this postulate of know, then we get this postulate of forget. Well now you have to forget something that you knew in this special category. This is getting kind of complicated, but you stay with me here. In other words, you don't forget your total knowingness, that's different see? You only can forget something you knew specially like, „What is a pencil?“ That's forgettingness. And you can only remember - this is what becomes very funny - you can only remember what you have forgotten.

Now these actions - actually have to be undertaken in this order to find out what to remember. You see this guy saying, „Let me see, what was his name? I know I can remember it.“ It's very funny because he's had to forget it, he's had to know it as something special, and that had to be out of the total bin of not-know in order to accomplish the action at all.

So therefore, the psychologist of olden days said, „People forgot and remembered.“ And they simply said that, „He remembered and he forgot.“ And they even said, „That memory had to do with remembering and forgetting“ and so forth and this didn't have anything to do with it. „Memory“ was an artificiality with which he assisted himself to know what he had not-known, so that he wouldn't know everything, so he'd have a game.

Now, a being that knows everything can't have a game. You get out here opposing a football team and you know everything they're going to do and every signal they are going to call and everywhere they're going, boy, you - they just won't play with you anymore, that's all, you're not gonna have a game. You got to figure it all out. And you have to get in there and pitch one way or the other and you have to put up this terrific facade of not-knowing anything about it.

And science, as one of our very good friends said the other day, „You have to mock it up so that you can find out about it.“ “Science is the process of mocking it up so that you can study it,“ you know? And you get into certain rules and barriers and if you put up enough barriers why you're all set, because you don't dare peek around the corners of these barriers, because you'll see what's on the other side. It's a very complicated game.

It's like putting a whole bunch of data into an ENIAC or a UNIVAC, you see, putting in their data cards in the banks nicely associated, and then asking it questions. Boy, that's weird, that is a weird one. Now, that's the weirdest of weirds. How would you possibly ever get anything out of it but the data you had put into it?

Mathematics is kind of that way, it's kind of a fraud. But then a thetan is doing these fraudulent things all the time, so it consider - he considers that just another game. A fellow says, „I think I'll go study mathematics.“ And he studies for forty years or however long they stay in school now and since the last appropriation - and he finally comes up with a truism which he knew when he was three anyhow. Of course, it's in a complicated communicable form and that makes something to talk about and he has a game and he draws his pay and other people take conclusions off it.

The mathematics they do in aerodynamics is one of the wildest things you ever want to - they take the formulas of the airfoils, and the formulas of the propellers, you see? And they mark up the calculus formulas and so forth after they have built the foil and the propeller, you see? And then the mathematics individual over here in one bureau, sends the formulas over, and then the fellow in the other bureau or where they're supposed to take the formulas apart and build the propeller and the airfoil. Fortunately down in the shipping room they have a couple of guys that wear overalls that drag the airfoils and propellers over to be copied! That's, by the way, true.

It's almost impossible to take the complete cross section of an airfoil. They have the mathematics for it but it'll fill pages sometimes. So the mechanics do all the work and the mathematicians are sitting up there having a ball, but the mechanics fortunately don't pay any attention to the mathematicians. It's quite interesting.

There are fields in which mathematics do work; there's fields of finance; you can fool anybody. The Secretary of the Treasury can say, „Well, the debit balance of this month added to the unk-balance of the other month and cross-sectioned into supply and demand curve which has just come through from the 'I Will Arise Society' tells us conclusively that we are in for a - what did you say you wanted to have happen this month, Joe?“ Joe says, „I want an inflation.“ The guy says, „It will finally wind up in an inflation.“

Somewhere along the line a thetan has to shove the datum in himself, and he writes these complicated formulas and then shoves the datum in suddenly hoping that nobody noticed. And that's what he is doing here.

He simultaneously has to do these three things so he can remember anything. Therefore, if you ask somebody, „Tell me something you wouldn't mind forgetting?“ You are asking him a senior process to remembering. The funny part of it is if you'd ask somebody to „Look around and find something he could know?“ we've got a second postulate situation here, it still works a little bit better than remember, you know? „Something you could know about that thing?“ but it still doesn't wipe out this.

And we get this fantastic state of affairs, we get the anatomy of amnesia. Now, you've all heard all of this but you haven't heard about amnesia.

„Amnesia“ is that game which a thetan plays when he plays that game. Definition. Here's this fellow, he's a black thetan, he's saying - his highest piece of knowledge he says is, „Huh?“ The biggest knowledge he has, see? Not even - what wall or anything, see, he's in a total not-know. Get that, he was in a state that he knew everything, potentially could know anything, and then he had to drop into this state of not-knowing everything. Well, this „not-knowing everything“ is a total amnesia. Don't you see? That's just a wipeout.

Now how could it fly out of his control? We have to look up what we knew as dichotomies several years ago, and we get this gorgeous state of affairs of the doubtful person; we get the anatomy of uncertainty, and the „anatomy of uncertainty“ is a very easy thing. Uncertainty is the certainty of not-know counterposed against, down here, the certainty of know.

These two things interlock with a relatively equal certainty, you have a maybe. All maybes are developed from two positives.

Now, we thought in the old days that something and nothing - something and nothing made the biggest maybe. Well, that really doesn't make the biggest maybe, it makes a trapped thetan; it's still a big thing but it makes a trapped thetan. See? He's something but he's nothing, and he might be something but he'd better not be something, and the something is something, and the nothing is nothing, and he finally winds up with „Who am I anyhow?“ And most of you people asked yourself that when you were kids, you said, „Who am I?“ Your mother called you one day or something like that and you had this fantastic feeling like you might know who you were, but you weren't the person that was just called, you were somebody else.

Well, that isn't caused, by the way, by any lapse of memory or any other thing that's very special. It's simply caused by the something-nothingness of identity. He is really nothing, with an adopted something, and he gets locked up between the two certainties. Now, he has to be certain he is nothing and certain he is something before he can „maybe“ on it. You got the idea?

This, then, is the anatomy of amnesia and also the anatomy of doubt. Now we get a fellow who is stuck on this total not-know, we get an amnesia. When we get him here into a total know, he knows data, but, he isn't. See? He's got all this data he could know but he isn't. You see that? He would have to not-know all of his data and then not-know, and then wipe out the not-know in order to get back up here into a native state.

Now, the way this follows here is, this individual who gets cross between a not-know and a know is in maybe, and you think maybe I am just straining at it, but the truth of the matter is that's the state that most scientists are in today.

It has become conventional to be doubtful. That is actually just a mocked-up convention. A fellow is a scientist, he mustn't be sure, he must hang between these two things.

And you've seen a tremendous number of cases that you couldn't develop any certainty in. These fellows, they just couldn't develop certainty in them.

„Are you any better?“ you'd say. „Well...“ „Well, do you feel any different?“ „Hmm, well, it's hard to tell this early,“ he would say, from the first examination the doctor gave his mother in prenatal bank. And you say „Well, is there any change? Are you more certain of things than you were before?“ „Well, that's hard to tell. I - I - that's hard to tell...“ And so on. „Well, do you feel any better? Are you glad you were processed?“ „Well, I don't know - uh - it could be. There's undoubt- I am not saying that there isn't some benefit connected with it but...“

You, you chump! have always thought that this stemmed perhaps from your inadequacy or that you hadn't done anything for the case. Well, supposing this fellow knew he was a bedpost. Ah, you hadn't looked at knowingness as maybe being screwy! He knows he's a bedpost, and you processed him for a while and he wasn't so sure he was a bedpost!

Now, at once you can see that a fellow moved up into maybe, in this class, would be better. Wouldn't he? He'd be better. Then why do you think he is worse if he can't tell you at once that he feels better or is better because of Scientology or what you did for him? You haven't really investigated what he really knew he was; he might have known he was a dog, a heel. You know? And you've moved him up maybe into „maybe he was a dog - maybe he was a heel - maybe he could repress a bark now.“ See, you've actually moved him upstairs to some slight degree.

All right, if that's the case, then, what do you have to do to get people off these total knowingnesses? You know, I knew a fellow had a fatal malady, utterly fatal, he was absolutely, unquestionably sure that his name was Bill Jones! And a small amount of work on the E-Meter demonstrated conclusively that he had had several thousand names in the last few years, but he was sure in this life that his name was Bill Jones, absolutely sure that his name was Bill Jones, which is very silly because he was the effect of his name; he was because he had a name; his identity was his name, and he had no other livingness.

Now, that is sort of reducing it down to a reductio ad absurdum, isn't it. A fellow who knows that his name is conclusively Bill Jones, is stringing an interesting story. He's overlooking the name that - the fact that the last life his name was Pete Simons, and in the life before, why, his name was Bessie Alcove. He sometimes tried to escape this by telling you he is Judas Iscariot or something of the sort. I don't buy this; there isn't anybody going to be a martyr to that extent around our organization. We ought to be having people come up here in the next generation that will be trying to tell us they're Will Menninger, just to get some attention, just to have a game.

How do you undo this thing? Well, it's undone on the dichotomy principle which you will read about in Scientology 8-8008 which you already know about, it is „dichotomy.“ It's a split in between.

An individual who has an absolute certainty, is only all right, if he himself contributed to the certainty, being certain. There has to be some self-determinism in this certainty; in other words, he had to determine its certainty; it can't be an other-determined certainty, totally. Don't you see?

That's very easy to understand. We have a little boy and we tell him, „You're a bad boy.“ And as any normal child will do, he objects to being called bad. You call my kids bad and they just start fighting right now - they won't fight about anything except being called bad - and they won't take it, and they won't stand for it; and they stamp their feet and look at you and sneer and cry and raise the devil about it. They've had to get various maids in line and so forth. These maids would say, „Well, you are a bad girl, you broke that,“ or „You are a bad boy, you broke that.“ And these kids, just sweet and everything is fine, they never take off on any other subject; on this one they just say rgghh-rgghh - they're ready to go - they won't take it.

All right, we take some kid and this kid's saying, „No, I am not a bad boy.“ And we say, „You are a bad boy, you know it.“ See? And he says „No! I am not!“ And you say bing! Bam! You are just changing him on an inversion - you're taking his determinism and substituting for it your determinism. Do you get the idea? Substitute one person's determinism for another person's determinism, and then he isn't himself anymore and then he has a total knowingness on the subject of being a bad boy and eventually gets arrested and goes to jail, which is, I guess, what lots of American mothers want.

You convince somebody he is bad, and that he never did anything good in his life, why you've got it made - there you have introduced a total knowingness.

Now, you could see that there are certain knowingnesses then that - ... which deserve to be erased, shall we say, that there might be some benefit to the society to erase some of these totally positive certainties.

Now, we could go whole-hog and say all certainties are bad. That'd be a good way to do, wouldn't it? It's always bad to be certain! Well, we will leave this to the modern physicist, the modern biologist, we'll let them indulge in this.

The way to write a scientific paper: „Well, I don't mean to be didactic, but it seems to me after a considerable amount of thought, of course this might be refuted many times and Professor Whump says otherwise, but I have a feeling that, due to the fact that I made 8,264 experiments which are all the same, that it seems to me - of course, I am perfectly prepared to change my mind about this at any time - that A equals Z in this particular experiment.“ And that's a qualified statement.

If you don't write scientific papers in that tone, you are disqualified - they scratch you off the track sheet or something of the sort or whatever they do in science. And you have to be uncertain. You have to be here. Well now that's quite an operation, here, that's a - that's an awful place to be, and yet its composite is a know and a not-know.

Well, let me - let me give you this. What is perception? What is perception? Good, I am glad you all know! Because I don't!

I don't see how those light waves hitting an eyeball can do anything.

Now, a psychologist wrote in his textbooks way back there that „light waves entered the eye and went on down the optic nerve and hit a screen back here somewhere.“ Well, I've said that's good, that's fine, what looks at the screen? „Oh,“ he says, „There's another screen right in front of it that catches the image.“ „Now, wait a minute. All right there's this other screen but what gets that screen?“ Well, if he was forced, he would say, „Well, the light comes in and reflects on this screen. That screen stops it. Then this screen looks at that screen and so you have vision.” “No, no! This screen looks at that screen, but you'd have to have this screen look at that screen and then you'd have to have this screen look at that screen, and this screen look at that screen. Hey! Who is looking at anything around here?“

And as far as we chase down the line, we cannot find the final screen for a thetan to look at because we doubt that he looks at any. Where is the final screen that stops the light? Now, there is an interesting scientific question, because the thetan isn't, in terms of a screen. He is basically, so far as matter, energy, space and time is concerned, a nothingness, but only as far as they are concerned. Does he have a screen in himself that he himself looks at? Oh, but that's very easy, you say he just stands out here and he looks at the wall, and there it is, you know, he looks at the wall, there it is. That's all!

I don't know that it's all. I've looked over perception, wavelength, mass, inertia, speed of light, bugger factors and every other thing connected with it, and I still can't figure out how anybody could see anything, or anything could ever transfer over to anything else so as to be observed.

And I think that if you follow this out and you do some small percentage of work on it that I have done, I think you would agree with me, that nothing could ever see anything. It's quite weird.

Probably the back wall of a motion picture theater, if it had a reflective mirror in it could see the picture that was going on in the screen. I know we explain it by random optics, do we explain it by this, and it all takes a screen that something sooner or later has got to look at. And there's no sense if we can't look straight at that screen up there, then why have another screen for it to reflect on?

I found out something about my eyeballs the other day; it was very interesting. I was trying to look through my head, and I said, „You know, I could see through my head all right if those stoppers weren't in the two holes in the skull!“ And I didn't realize that I had said anything peculiar, you know, when you are being processed, you get kind of anaten and stupid. And I was trying to figure out some way where I could get these stoppers aside so I could see through my head.

Well, seeing through something is an interesting thing, since I don't think that has much to do with it either. I don't know how a fellow sees a mock-up if he depends on wavelengths. And having been wooed into this field with wavelengths, I do not now know, that there are any such things. Science is all falling all over itself wondering, where these - you know, „What's the mass of the wall? And what's its velocity? And what's its this? And what's its that? And what are its basic rules?“ and so on. And they get down and they say, „What is the mass of the electron? And how many skins does it have around it?“ And, oh wow! They are getting down to where they are subdividing the subdivisible and the indivisible becomes supersubdivisible and here we go. And they are looking into things to find out little things that go wiggle-wiggle. And we have a wonderful time, it's quite a game, except I don't know that there's any perception possible. See? I don't know that any of the laws of the physical universe account for you sitting there, seeing me standing here. I don't know that they could account for it.

And so therefore, I've had to go overboard and conclude that all perception is knowingness. Come on, catch up!

Now, that alone would require no perceptions. That is to say, it wouldn't require lights and this and that. You'd have to know that a light was on and know that you couldn't see unless a light was on. Do you get the idea? Hum? You'd have to know that a wall was there, and know that other people knew that a wall was there. You got it?

And we go round and round and round on this and we finally only then turn up with this idea of perception, but it must be alone an idea. Now, what's the proof of this pudding? It's not hash, that's physics; it's pudding. What's the proof of this pudding. Simple.

Can you permanently improve somebody's eyesight by handling optics alone? No. But I'll tell you, you can certainly change the living daylights out of his eyesight if you can change his knowingness. Only that do I know of as an ability to change eyesight.

Now look! This opens up the doors, so wide, to speculation, that we almost look at a brand-new subject in Scientology. See? We just drop all this junk called physics, it was a good pretense, but a game while it lasted, and we enter on a much more adventurous game. How does a thetan become MEST-like? By becoming known of course.

So how would we reduce weight? By convincing him he could be less well known! He didn't need that much identity! You got it? Oh, this gets wild, see? You can get spooky about this too, but this accounts for space.

Now, you always think of an idea going across space, but I don't know that space exists beyond a viewpoint of dimension. But is there something else above viewpoint of dimension? And I can give this congress a new definition for „space.“ It's knowing it is there. That's silly, but look how well you have to be able to receive in order to quote „perceive.“ Man, do you have to be willing to be an effect in order to perceive. Hum. Fascinating.

That tells us the fellow who „cannot at any time be an effect because being an effect is too horrible so he always has to be at cause,“ that computation you know. A fellow says, „I have got to shoot everybody because it's too horrible to be shot. You know, and they'll all think it's horrible, and so they won't try to get around me, and therefore I can be cause!“ Everybody leaves him alone after a while. He's not cause or effect either. But he's got to be this obsessive, terrific - make a terrific impression! Beat everybody's head in! Kill everybody! Bomb everybody with atom bombs! You know, a federal government. Got to make this big effect!

We know, objectively and definitely, that his own idea of perception is terrible! And we have a gradient scale here of the idea of perception, graded against the idea of satisfactory effect.

Now, if an individual has - can create his idea of a satisfactory effect is touching somebody's shoulder lightly, see, „Hi, Joe.“ Joe will say, „I am okay.“ This is a satisfactory effect, the fellow says, „Well, I have done all right today, I have made an effect on Joe.“ You get the idea? Well, this fellow can see! He can look!

But when his idea of a satisfactory effect is - Bikini, he says, „What wall? What wall? What atom? What - what textbook? How are you, General Smedley? I mean, Corporal Smith.“ He is a „What wall case!“ See? „Got to - got to blow everything up, you know.“ He can't see.

Well, now you could say that is all explained in cause and effect and perception. But we can't explain perception, so we would have to say it's knowingness.

In other words, this fellow must have an insignificant idea of himself, if he has to do so much over here, to make these people over here know he's here! Have you got it? So we might get something very interesting, we might just start writing letters to congressman and State Department and so forth, saying, „Russia knows you are there. Russia knows you are there.“ „Russia knows you are there.“ And that is the magic clue you see, they're not sure.

Or you could say, „You're doing all right. Nobody's being critical of you. You're okay; we know you are all right. We know you're okay.“ You get the idea? Then they don't have to make these fantastic effects on everybody! See?

You could either build up, we say, „their opinion of themselves,“ no, build up the idea in their minds that we know they're there. That would build up self-confidence in the person and make it unnecessary for him to render these smashing effects that kill everything! See? Or, we could tell him that this thing he is going to smash knows he's there. It would be in the realm of knowingness.

But knowingness, we see very clearly is totally pinned down by not-knowingness. The fellow vigorously not-knew everything in the first place so he could have a game, and then he found some things he could know. So we find the workability of a process which is already covered and that process is the Waterloo Station - old Waterloo Station. And we found out that people's perception and their ARC and all kinds of things came up scale when we asked them to, „Go around and take a look at things and not-know certain things about them.“ You know, „Look at that body and not-know it has a head.“

Well, this raised knowingness. I talked to you before about communication, if a fellow didn't already telepath to you what he was thinking about, then you would never find out by the sound wave. And in view of the fact that this knowingness is not a communication across space, what do we have here? We have this fantastic thing: There is no space to know across, if space itself is a knowingness. Wow! Where are we going here? We are going to telepathy!

And I tell guys around the operation all the time, „My crystal ball says so and so.“ They seldom argue with me. And once upon a time I had a - had a hole in a chart table where the chronometers belonged and I had them elsewhere and I put a goldfish bowl upside down under there so I'd have a crystal ball so I could tell where our location was. An old admiral came in who was traveling with us, and he was trying to be companionable, and he says, „Well, navigator,“ he said, „Where are we?“ And I said, „Well, sir“ jokingly, „I haven't looked at my crystal ball this evening.“ And he reported me to the captain.

You are not supposed to know these things by telepathy. That's the one thing you are supposed to not-know is that it's all done by telepathy.

Well, what's telepathy? It'd just be a transfer of knowingness without other aids and means across nothing. And we get these odd characteristics of thought, that thought can transfer across vast distances, just as easily as it can transfer across short distances, and we get the fact that people predict into the future and have it land in the past, and all kinds of random actions occurring when we start into the field of prediction, mind reading, fortunetelling and that sort of thing.

I have always been pretty good at that field; I had to leave that field though because I was applying it mainly to money and bank accounts, and bankers didn't agree with me a lot of the time. I was spending money I had made in the past life. I had my time factor a little wrong.

Well, so then if we are studying something called telepathy, it must be that darned little is known about telepathy or that telepathy - everything that we know is known by telepathy, so that we know a great deal about telepathy that we are busily not-knowing. So there must be some telepathic knowingness interchange which goes on below the common denominator button of not-know and that is the thing that we all know together is „that we know not.“ So this must be the single most important datum of existence. We know not.

Well, the limitations of the old process Waterloo Station existed, and today it is very easy to run the process. We never tried to run it across short distances. We were always taking somebody and taking him outside and running him across long spaces. Well, you run Waterloo Station today on a very gradient scale. And I don't know, give him one of his wife's hats and an ashtray or something of the sort and have him „Not-know either one alternately“ or something of this sort. Or „What could he not-know about it?“

Now, of course we had Op Pro by Dup in which we were doing this, but it wasn't an integral part of Waterloo Station, it was a different process.

We would graduate a fellow from not-knowing simple things close up - or by postulating that he didn't know them. „Get the idea that you don't know the color of that ashtray.“ You know, control not-know, and we would start moving him out step by step to further and further distances, until he could not-know things on the walls or in the width and breadth of the auditing room, and in close and out, and in and out, and in and out, and then take him outside and have him start not-knowing, and then we would really have things going. If we did this other thing, if we run Trio in between.

Have him not-know things for a while, just as a process, and then have him „Look around and find things he could have for a while”, because it's actually the third leg of old-time Trio, „Look around and find something you wouldn't mind making disappear or dispense with.“ That reduces havingness all the time, and we know more about havingness now, so you just intersperse not-know with things you could have and I think you would find a rather remarkable process. And along with several other processes you would undoubtedly arrive at a state of Clear.

It actually is a process above the level of those processes given in the book Clear Procedure which was issued at this congress; it's above that level. You'd have to do these others first.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

[end of lecture]

[[Category:Lectures AC]]