How to Conduct This Course (7ACC 540625)
Series: 7th Advanced Clinical Course (7ACC)
Date: 25 June 1954
Speaker: L. Ron Hubbard
Let's go into the design of this course once more. The object and goal of this course is to get you as Clear as possible, as knowing as possible, as good an auditor as possible in the length of time allotted to it.
We're working right straight at it on the process of one—first, getting you to run the Opening Procedure so as to get your cases on the road real good and then, when you have accomplished that immediate objective, throwing in the data necessary so that you can complete those cases and complete the cases of others.
Unfortunately, to do this you have to be in possession of practically everything that has to be known. You have to be in possession of practically everything there is to be known about the subject of life and humanity in this universe. Fortunately, you're studying it on a high enough level of observation so that you can know it in a very short space of time. If this science were perfect, it could probably be stated in a few words.
But in that you is connected with a fellow known as Homo sapiens and in that you are being communicated at—I hope communicated to before long—but in that you're being communicated at in English, it probably takes longer than a few words to utterly and completely describe life as its source impulse, its ability to consider, its common denominators of consideration and the application of that knowledge to the alteration, and usually betterment, of cases.
Why do I say, "usually betterment"? Don't blind yourself to the fact that this knowledge can be utilized to destroy as well as create. If this knowledge were not being taught today, if it were not being disseminated, it could get into a very few hands who then could capitalize on it politically and bring about a very fine state of complete slavery.
We are not playing pat-a-cake with this material. I have never talked too much about Black Dianetics. I did, however, write three articles on the subject which were the beginning of a book which was not completed merely because we didn't need it, but three articles on it will be found in very early Journal issues: Black Dianetics.
I don't see why I should apply my rather extensive knowledge of how to help Man (and I say that advisedly—rather extensive knowledge) to how to destroy him, because it very well may be that those who would have such a base impulse could not themselves possess sufficient intelligence or imagination to convert this information into its most destructive forms.
It would be a very, very simple thing, however, for a person who knew his Scientology and knew it well to employ these means to destructive ends. He might even consider that these ends were very constructive. He might apologize and justify in all ways as to how and why he must enslave a large number of persons. It has been done before. The electronic societies on the track are complete with this as a modus operandi, but they themselves did not know all there was to know, by a long ways.
Knowledge is something which is developed rather than something which simply lies there waiting to be found. Knowledge is something which is imagined and brought into a real state. When we say "knowingness," we do not mean data. We mean potentiality and capability. And when we say "knowingness," we mean a state of beingness which pervasively can know anything it cares to know.
When you speak of data, however, you are speaking of the intertwined considerations which themselves summate into a new beingness. And of course, there can be as many new beingnesses as there can be imaginings and that's an awful lot of them. There can be as many new beingnesses as there can be postulates. That's quite a few, since there's no finite number.
Therefore the subject of knowledge itself could be compartmented into two categories: one, a knowable, knowledgeable state and the other would be simply knowing a lot of data.
Education as exemplified, epitomized and degraded by lower levels of instruction (such as atomics physics courses and psychology courses and university courses in general) goes on the basis that a student is a sort of a sack. And you sort of open him up one way or the other and you take a large shovel and you start stuffing in facts and he is then as bright as he can regurgitate them. It's a little game—a little game they play.
Data, to these organizations, is quantitative and qualitative. A fact has mass to them. They think of facts as mass. They even explain phenomena of somebody who has studied too much as the phenomena of having had too much mass stuffed into him. You know, "He was overloaded with data."
This is not an optimum way to go about instruction, mostly because there are as many data as there can be considerations. And that's a lot of data. And just because Professor Umphgulla of Swabuck University has gotten up in the morning, felt bad-tempered and decided that all women are "heterglobins" is no reason you have to know it. In fact, you don't even have to know Professor Umphgulla. In fact, you'd be better off if you didn't.
There isn't any reason why you should know very much in terms of data. Our only excuse for any instruction at all—our only excuse for it is the fact that what we instruct in brings back the ability to make considerations into reality. Our instruction level is not to burden you with facts but to make it possible for you, again, to create facts out of your own considerations. That is the essence of instruction.
The only thing that makes it necessary for us to instruct at all is the tremendous amount of instruction you have already had: the instruction, for instance, from your parents that you mustn't touch anything in the house; the very, very fine instructions you received in your arithmetic class, where they told you very glibly that one plus one equals two.
And having dumped these three symbols on your head in this form, they get very displeased with you if you point out the fact of the matter—the truth of the matter—to them that one abstract plus one abstract didn't even ever make two abstracts. It might make sixty. It might make apples. It might make George Ill. But one plus one doesn't make two, unless you agree that arithmetic has a level of agreement with your fellows and unless you agree that it is the usable method of summating your money or possessions or your structures.
Now, if you've agreed that that is, you thereafter are pinned, penned and dammed with the idea that you have to go around saying one plus one equals two, although you know it isn't the truth.
One what plus one what equals two what? Well, one apple plus one apple equals two apples. Oh, no! It never did, not since the beginning of time. How did it get that way? Well, one apple is an apple. It's not necessarily even similar to any other apple in the universe unless you say so. Plus one apple—what apple? Well, there's another apple somebody threw at us here—people get mighty careless with these apples—equals two apples? Two what apples? Where are they? You mean past apples or future apples? Well, you mean present apples. Well, he couldn't mean present apples because they're not here. And so the whole woof and warp of logic is violated by arithmetic.
In order to be precise with any abstract form, you would have to say which one and where it was and when. And you go dealing in these airy nothings, you wind up with all kinds of monstrosities. You wind up with atom bombs and things. It's very curious.
You see, but—by the way, by the way, an atom bomb doesn't obey arithmetic. That's the killer. I mean, if I were just talking here in foolish abstracts, it would be one thing, but I happen to be dealing with fact. The atom bomb does not obey arithmetic. Arithmetic is not used in its construction. They use something called quantum mechanics, which could be summed up of "I'll put it down, but my God what have we got now?"
Now, throughout Man's history he has gotten as hidden and as indefinite as possible in an effort to escape a further necessity to escape. I think that's about the only thing he ever could have started escaping, would be a further necessity to escape. Certainly, there's nothing else to escape, because a thetan can't be hurt. He can't be hit. He can't be touched even. Try it sometime.
If you can get him to put up a mass of energy and if you can get him to hold it up on the wavelength that you're going to zap it, you can hit him. But he can hit you—same time—so that such agreements were basically very dangerous.
Well, what of it after you've hit him? What of it after you've hit him? Hm? You hurt him any? Nope. Well, he can emote because he says he can emote.
Now, our track here is the discovery of how he made a series of agreements which wound him up in the complete belief that he can be trapped, be unhappy and can't escape under any circumstances. Well, that's an interesting study, since he's forgotten the answer and there aren't any around who kept a tally book. You know, they said, "A consideration
two was so-and-so. Consideration three was so-and-so. Consideration four was so-and-so." Nobody kept that book.
The thetan who is entirely free and who isn't caught up in such a maelstrom, of course, could know but doesn't know what the series of considerations were which wound other thetans up with a trapped unknowingness. See? He's never experienced it. He's never looked it over.
He could sit down and lay out theoretically—he could say, "Let's see. How could I get into trouble? Oh well, let's see now. I—way I'd get into trouble is I'll put something up there and then I will hide it and forget about it and I'll put something up there and hide it and forget about it and I'll put something up there and hide it and forget about it and I'm in trouble. Okay. Good. I'm in trouble." Zoop. And he throws the rest of them away. See? He says, "Well, they must be something else. They can't possibly be thetans, because I can't get myself in that much trouble. They must be in an awful lot of trouble.
"Now, what kind of trouble is this? Well, let's see. I'll try this again. How can I get myself in trouble? [humming] I'll go down and sit in the middle of that thing I see down there and I'll sit down in the middle and pretend I can't see out of it." He does that for a while.
"Well," he says, "I can't see out of it."
And then he forgets a moment to concentrate on this fact and he's sitting out on the edge of it someplace contemplating the corner of it. He'll say, "That's an interesting thing. I wonder what that is?" And he's off playing another game and he's out of the trap. He's no longer in the trap.
And he thinks about this again and he says, "Hey, you know, I didn't get into trouble. For heaven's sakes! Well, they just must be another breed, that's all. They must be an entirely different type of being because I can't get myself, all by myself, in this much trouble."
So he would just give up the problem from that echelon because he would know that he could know it, you see? He'd know that he could know it. And then he would start to make it come true, but he actually would not be capable of that much idiocy.
It's a very complex idiocy. You have to suddenly drop unreasonable assumptions and utterly non sequitur facts along the line so often that nobody could possibly play hare and hounds with that trail without getting himself into a lot of trouble, simply because it's not sequitur. It doesn't all just take off here and there. It's not reasonable. Because after a person has gotten into this much trouble and that much trouble, he all of a sudden starts using his basic capabilities again and gets himself into much more trouble.
You know, he hasn't lost the ability to make new realities and considerations simply because he's sitting in the middle of a head. And he'll make new realities and new considerations, you see, although he's sitting in the middle of a head—just as easy.
He'll stick himself with his own postulates. He'll do this and he'll do that. He'll go right on working, right on doing this, right on doing that. He hasn't lost his capabilities. They're still there. He might be saying they belong to somebody else, but they're still working. And so it becomes a very complex picture.
Now, you take somebody who has run the gamut—the whole thing is sown with not-knowingness. His motto all the way down the line bears the datum "I don't know anything about it." There's another datum, "I don't know anything about it." There's a situation, "I can't do anything about it." And there's a situation and "I can't do anything about that."
That, by the way, is the entrance point of no responsibility. An individual is caused and made to say, "I can't do anything about that." And he, of course, at that moment loses power.
And an individual way down at the bottom of the line sits there and said, "Well, I couldn't possibly have done this to me. What on earth has happened to me? How could I possibly be here? There is no road out because there was never any road in. And here I am and it's hopeless and that's that."
Now, these two extreme viewpoints have often been exhibited by Man. Somebody like Buddha comes along. He says, "These poor people. How can they be in this much trouble?"
He was quite startled. He was evidently a thetan very well off and—very well off—and his coachman told him that people were starving and were mean to each other out there and so on. He was a prince.
And he said, "They are?"
And the coachman said, "Yeah, they sure are. They get murdered and they—this and that happens."
"They do? Aw, it doesn't seem possible."
And the coachman said, "Well, all right. You come out with me and I will show you." So his coachman took him out in the world and showed him people starving and people having a hard time in general. And Buddha said, "Well, what do you know. We better do something about this."
And he tried to do something about it and tried to do something about it and he finally came to a conclusion that it was all a sort of an endlessly down-spiraling wheel that consecutively caused one to get caught repeatedly, around and around. Once you finished with the universe, you were right back in it again: it was never-ending chains of incidents. That was the way it went.
Well, he was a pretty smart fellow. He was a darned able thetan and this is what he saw and what he finally laid down as doctrine: that you get caught in it and then you just keep getting caught in it.
He himself was able, evidently, to pick up bodies at will, to reincarnate, to do all sorts of interesting things—to operate as a thetan—but he could never make a good solid connection with what was happening to these people his coachman had shown him. He never could make the bridge. It was too incredible to him. He couldn't get himself in that much trouble. How could they get in that much trouble? Therefore, they must be another breed of cat.
Now, just as we look over this problem, we find out that individuals are around who seem to be in far more trouble than we could possibly envision could happen. So did Buddha discover this from his level—his level was terrific. And of course, he was looking at Asia and its level of being in trouble is fabulous—terrific gulf there. It was too much for one look.
Well, whatever happened and whatever he did about it, we are faced with very much the same picture, except for this: We have carefully, painstakingly traced out not just the series of considerations (we did that very early), but we've traced out something else. We've traced out the mechanics of consideration and the mechanism, the basic mechanism, by which reality occurs out of consideration and its association with affinity and the role played in that of communication.
And having searched these mechanics out, actually, the chain of considerations becomes unimportant, and so we no longer study what to audit. We no longer look over whole track with an avid appetite to discover just what engram to get who out of. We no longer have to look over whether or not Mama loved Papa or Papa loved his secretary. We no longer have to look over a multitude of things, such as the Oedipus complex. We don't any longer have to study druidism, as Jung said we should— or was it Addlepate?—these tremendous things. Now, we would not have to know The Eighty and Eight Ways Sex Can Become Involved by Sigmund Freud. That's just data.
Why? We know the basic mechanics that got these things into that condition. And knowing that and knowing at one fell swoop, finally, that the interval of time and numerousness of incident do not influence the picture, we can do a relatively rapid job of changing somebody from a water coolie scattering water outside of Buddha's palace to somebody who can operate very much like Buddha. We can jump that gap.
It isn't a long road. It isn't a short road, either. It isn't even necessarily a series of considerations. It's a study of those considerations which became time, which consideration added into everything, made it all entirely, unsolvably complex. The number of incidents merely means the consecutive interval of time and incident. If you're disregarding time to a very marked degree in processing, why, you get there just fine.
It doesn't take somebody "just so long" to get Clear. It doesn't. It takes him "just so long" to change his mind about it being "just so long." And he will agree along the line of time for a while until a couple of considerations are triggered and then, the next thing you know, he has triggered a great many of these considerations. And the next thing you know, he has arrived at some level of knowingness. And having arrived at such a level of knowingness, of course, it starts ripping up in all directions. But he has to be gotten up to that point.
He believes implicitly that his survival depends upon protecting himself from vast spaces and savage energies. Therefore he has to be disabused of this fact: that vast spaces are any menace to him and that savage energies can hurt him.
Well, he has to learn this rather subjectively. He has to be able to experience this so that he can undo the various things which he has been doing up so nicely over such a long period of time.
Our goal, then, is not to accumulate a great deal of data. Our goal is to find out how data is made. Our goal is not to remember a great many things, but to see how memory is made. Our goal is not to go out and love and embrace the entire world, but to see how love is made. Not necessarily to communicate with everything on Earth and in this universe, but to discover how communication is made.
And having discovered how all these things are made, not to have the faint heart of the philosopher who is content to write about life, but is never quite courageous enough to live it. Having learned how to make all these things, then make them. And that is what we are trying to do here and why the data connected with this course can be given to you very swiftly.
But this is less a course than a progress into changed states. And if it takes an educational form, blame yourself; you're the ones that agree that education is the thing. I don't. But you're in agreement with me and I'm in agreement with you that there's something worthwhile that can be done here.
Well, we call this "school," we say "student," we say a lot of things, but this is because we're using the English language and this is because a meeting of this kind is best conducted along the best agreed-upon lines of this society. And in view of the fact that they forced you to go to school—if you went all the way through a university, it probably amounted to a great many more years, twenty-eight or twenty-nine years—whatever a university education calls for these days. It's a length of time you go, you know: kindergarten, grade school, high school, junior high, junior college, all the rest of that. You put in a lot of years agreeing on the fact that you ought to sit still listening to somebody talk. Well, you're stuck with that agreement right now. But it's the way you're indoctrinated into how you will get all the way through this and so we're using it for no other reason.
Okay.
CERTIFICATES OF DIANETICS AND SCIENTOLOGY
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