Memory, Present Time and Universes of Mystery (7ACC 540628)
Series: 7th Advanced Clinical Course (7ACC)
Date: 28 June 1954
Speaker: L. Ron Hubbard
All right. Let's talk about processes now to get this show on the road—giving you this matter of communication.
All right, willingness to communicate with. If a person were willing to communicate with his past he'd remember all of it, wouldn't he? But if he's unwilling to remember parts of it, then he's going to resort to some sort of a mechanism which will cut off some parts and let other parts come in and do interesting things.
One of the first things that happens to an individual is a dependency upon memory mechanisms. A dependency upon memory mechanisms is quite destructive in that it validates the dangerousness of remembering on a shotgun basis where you just remember everything simultaneously. I don't know how else anybody would remember anything, by the way,
So we get a thetan's "supermachine complex." He is unwilling to go into various communications. And as a result, has tailored up some sort of a mechanism to keep from going into communication with the past.
And of course, the body is, to a large degree, composed of past impacts. And as a result it is a past mechanism. The body that was in present time, I haven't encountered yet—expect to some day. Of course, I probably will be looking at empty air.
But anyhow, by suppression of various communication lines, a thetan, of course, gets into a situation where he himself is dwelling in the past. He is in the past. This is quite curious since the only time there is, is by postulate. And if a thetan can be in the past, he must be behind his own postulate. That's curious, you see. I mean, he must have made a postulate "There's time," and then said he was—got lost in it, which is very amusing because it's almost impossible to do and yet every thetan has managed it. He said, "There is time. Now there is a past. Now I'm in the past." That's very nice. It's a shutdown of knowingness.
Now, when we think in terms of communication, we are of course thinking of the consideration which adds up to communication in the first place. And therefore, considerations, change of, is the highest-echelon subject in Scientology—change of consideration, change of mind. You're trying to change the state of somebody, change his beingness, something of the sort.
Wherever you get a tough case, you have somebody who won't change his mind. When you have somebody who will not exteriorize, you, of course, have somebody who won't change his mind.
Now, he is persisting. It may not be good survival, but he's at least surviving. And he has fallen away from creation and destruction. And he, of course, is involved with protecting the body madly. He won't go away from the body. He feels that he himself would have insufficient power to protect the body.
It's a great temptation with you, at this moment, to go into the anatomy of mystery. I'll just give it a quick brush. It's quite a discovery, by the way, the anatomy of mystery. You say, "For heaven's sakes, there couldn't possibly be an anatomy to mystery because, by definition, that's what it is." Well, the funny part of it is, funny part of it is, is mystery has an anatomy. And the second you know the anatomy of mystery, then mystery itself, unfortunately, ceases to be a mystery.
The anatomy of mystery runs like this: We have an individual who has two or more particles in motion and he says he can't predict them. And having said that he couldn't predict them, therefore, he conceives them to be a confusion. And having conceived them to be a confusion, he then draws a curtain across them and says, "That's a mystery. That's unknowable now."
Unpredictability enters into and flows down the course of mystery. Get how this is. We have an individual incapable of predicting somebody. Let's say that somebody is named Joe, and the individual we're talking about, Mr. A, cannot predict Joe. And Joe says the most non sequitur things at the most disrelated moments. And therefore, he's at work or he isn't at work and he makes statements and he doesn't make them and he's just not predictable at all. Mr. A will begin to conceive, after a short space of time, that there's something confusing about Joe, that Joe is in a state of confusion, there is a confusion going on there. And so he will then draw a curtain over Joe, as far as he is concerned, and say Joe is a mystery to him.
This is the commonest cliché in the society. It isn't true because it's a cliché, but it seems like everybody runs on this one. That is the anatomy of mystery. All we have to do is make one or more particles behave in an unpredictable fashion so as to create the appearance of a confusion and we will then get a mystery. That is the anatomy of mystery.
You take anything which you now consider a mystery. All you have to do is look it over, find the time when you considered it was a confusion then find the time when you considered it was unpredictable and you've got your mystery lying all over the floor in little pieces. I mean, it solves as a mystery. It's no longer a mystery.
There isn't a big datum in a mystery. There really isn't anything to be learned in a mystery, beyond this: what the particle originally was or was not going to do. That was what one learned originally. He learned that he couldn't predict this and so he decided it was a confusion, then he decided it was a mystery.
I imagine that the entire field of Christianity evolved in this fashion. A number of particles running around in various directions, they couldn't be predicted exactly and as a result, they were conceived to be a confusion and so immediately became a mystery to everybody. And as a mystery, then, took on greater and greater magnitude because a mystery itself is something you don't look at.
A mystery is, in its element, is simply this: you put up a screen against something and then you never know whether it's there or not.
The fellow who has dropped a big iron curtain in the face of a lion, of course, not permitting himself any view through that curtain, might go on for two centuries past the moment when the lion left. And it's this way with any mystery.
A mystery is knowable, then, the moment that you look at it. It becomes knowable the instant you look at it—which is to say, the moment you go into communication with it. You go into complete communication with a mystery and it ceases to be a mystery with great speed.
Now, that follows a course of existence, the body. The body went into confusing motions or failed to go into motion, one time or another. In other words, it was suddenly unpredictable. One didn't predict exactly what the body was going to do or predict what bodies were going to do. And so, when the body was thus made unpredictable, it was considered to be a confusion. And then the confusion, of course, was considered to be intolerable and so one dropped a curtain on the body and said, "It is no longer comprehensible and therefore and thereby and therein, 'here-fore and to-after,' we do hereby consider said body to be a very mysterious thing, to say the least."
What happened to it? The original course is simply that it was unpredictable in some motion or action. Then there were several motions or action in which it was unpredictable, since one let go control, and then he stood back and looked at it to find out what it was going to do next. And having done this, of course, he saw that it was very confusing. And it was just too confusing, so he just dropped a curtain across it. He actually did drop a black curtain across it. I'm using that very advisedly, this curtain of blackness. This is what the thetan does. This is the blackness which you find the thetan packing around. It's just something he has drawn across an area of confusion and now he doesn't know whether the lion has left or not, you see. He doesn't know whether or not he dare go into communication with this.
This is a curious, curious thing. It is an anatomy as simple as a child's blocks. It is idiotically simple. One went out of communication with it because he conceived it to be unpredictable. And having gone out of communication with it, of course, it became more random, see, more confusing. And having observed its greater confusion, of course, one then didn't want to have anything to do with that confusion and didn't want to have to look at it and so, of course, one dropped a black curtain across it.
Now, a manifestation of this character is not uncommon. There are people around who see people through a thin or thick black screen.
One of the most alarming of these cases came to me in a—wasn't a very cold sweat—I think it was more of the boiling-water variety. And he had gotten up that morning and he had taken a look at his business partner and he had seen his business partner in a black frame. The frame was framing around the edges and he was seeing this with his physical vision. He was seeing a black frame beginning to come across his business partner. What's the anatomy of this? I mean how come? Well, this is occlusion, and forming. Only that's an occlusion which is taking place at the last possible stage, which is the physical universe, physical vision. It's very easy for a thetan to have this happen to him, you see, because it's happened so often.
Well, his business partner had simply seemed to be so confusing to him, having been considered by him unpredictable, that he, of course, had no choice left but to actually and actively draw a black screen across the physical being of that person and so make a mystery out of him. That's a mystery. Mystery is a black curtain.
It was not for nothing that the Egyptians considered it that. It was not for nothing that the early people in the field of magic, about 800 A.D. and so forth used to have a symbol that was "Protect the mystery." It was a black cloak and they would bring it up just above the level of their nose and say, "Protect the mystery." And they would meet each other and that would be their greeting.
Boy, you better protect the mystery. If you ever drop the black cloak in front of one, why, it's gone. You people go into communication with it, it's no longer a mystery.
By the way, there's a story, a very wonderful story, "The Night the Monastery Fell," by Lord Dunsany, which—the mystery of the monastery was exposed. Wonderful story. If you ever happen to see a copy of Dunsany's works around, look it up and read it.
Here is the occlusion of the thetan. Here is his inability to perceive. He conceives the physical universe around him to be so very, very confusing that he, at no time, of course, would dare look at it. He'd have to, at best, use some secondary means, such as a body, to look at it. That's safe enough, you see. We'll use the body as a secondary means to take a look at it and then we're not responsible for what we see. "So it saw that. Okay. It saw that, that's fine. It satisfied it, that satisfies me. As far as the rest of it's concerned, though, it's all a mystery," see. It's all a mystery. In other words, random particles and confusion.
Now, let's look at this, by the way, and just see it a little bit more broadly here: the atom bomb. The atom bomb started out as being a piece of bric-a-brac picked out of the various equations of nuclear physicist—pardon me, atomic-molecular phenomena boys way back on the track. I mean, this is an old subject. Atomic-molecular phenomena is a very, very broad subject. Nuclear physics is a narrower look at more or less the same subject. That's a very specialized branch of atomic-molecular phenomena. And atomic physics is a microscopic part of nuclear physics. I mean, they're really getting down into specialization there.
As a matter of fact, I walked in to a nuclear physicist the other day and found out he'd been educated in latter times out at Caltech and, boy, what he knew was really set. Man, I mean, that was just about the finest package of data you ever saw. The poor fellow was in this kind of a situation: he had been trained exactly, you see. If any shift of theory were to occur now (and at any moment, theory can shift in that field), if any shift of theory were to occur, it would leave this man looking at the field of nuclear physics as a mystery because it's so full of particles.
Now, let's take a little broader look at this and discover that if this line of events took place, then this type of consideration would occur. If you had a bunch of particles which weren't well understood and which got easily into a confusion and then if that confusion were magnified to a dangerous level, you would expect a mystery to occur, by this anatomy of mystery, you see. We would expect it to occur.
Once we had taken some particles which were not very predictable to begin with and we had blown them up into a large confusion, we would then expect a mystery to occur—people to go out of communication with this. And that is the atomic bomb and its effect upon a society. You see, it's a large number of particles moving at random—random motion. And when a bomb goes off, of course, there's so many of them, this magnifies this unpredictability enormously. And of course people will say, "That confusion, well, ha-ha—mystery, mystery. Let's cut all the communication lines and make it secret"—the one
thing you mustn't do, the one thing you must not do to a bunch of particles which are going at random. Thetans do it because they want more randomity.
I imagine that if there are any nuclear physicists left in the US Government, which is very, very doubtful—most of them have pulled out and are teaching in universities or are around doing something beneficial. The government rides them very, very hard and is very tough on them and so forth and any one of the boys—if there is a nuclear physicist still working for the US Government—I imagine any note that he sends out for a ham sandwich is labeled "top-secret." You see, it would have to be. It's all a mystery.
And so we get the point where the president—total contact, I think, today, with atomic fission—is walking to an air-raid shelter during a drill. I saw a picture of him—newsreel the other day—where he was conducting the civil defense of the country and he conducted it by getting up from his desk and walking into an air-raid shelter. I thought this was a high level of responsibility and it was very exemplary and just what you would expect of a former general. Anyway
Wherever you get a large number of particles moving at random, which are unpredictable, you will get a mystery. A mystery is inevitable on that occurrence. Anything as violent as an atom bomb, naturally, will become a mystery.
Factually, you as a thetan could walk right straight through an atomic blast. And if you were in total communication with the universe you could take a physical body through one. Got that now? I mean you could take a physical body through one. You could put a physical body right in the middle of an atomic blast and let it blow. And it might quiver for a moment. You say, "Th-e-e-r-r-e's a body there."
The way to get a body thoroughly destroyed is to say, "0/9/9, I want nothing to do with this radioactivity. It's very dangerous."
Now, I'm well aware of one of our technicians in the labs at GW—GW, by the way, George
Washington University, is very guilty on the subject of the atom bomb. Old Dr. Brown was about A number 1 in the country. And he trained a young fellow by the name of Gomez. And it was Gomez, more or less, who got to the White House during the days of FDR. He was the boy who really laid it down and so forth. GW's labs, in other words, as small as that engineering school was, carries a very large role in this. But right in that lab, during the time when old Dr. Brown was in there, there was a technician who used to set up this and that and so forth and he was just scared purple of anything resembling an electronic arc.
If you go over and—you know, remember these old-time static machines? Physics labs always have them around, either as historical pieces or something, and you'd give that thing a whir, see, and it would go spap, .rpap, spa]). And this fellow would look kind of pale. Well, when it came to handling anything like radium particles, when it came to handling anything which was hot, you know, real hot, this guy—it was about all he could do to come close to this stuff.
And that guy got shocked and he got burned and he got splinters in his fingers and equipment broke down all around him—the most remarkable state of chaos. And his hands were just one large mass of sear because it was all a mystery to him of which he was very frightened.
Well, just magnify this and you will see, then, that somebody who was very, very set on the subject of getting hurt could be said to be very set on the subject of disconnecting, who must have been set on the subject of mystery.
Now, most of the boys that had to do with this originally were not in bad shape. They were in good shape. You had to be, to fool around with this stuff.
But when it comes to applying it solely to slaughter, you have to make the postulate that it's capable of killing somebody. Therefore you don't get a nuclear physicist who has anything on the ball working for the government. I mean, he's got to make the
postulate that atomic fission is deadly before it comes very, very deadly. Well, let's go into communication with it and discover it'll become much less deadly.
If we were to go into overt communication with fission, in all of its departments and areas throughout the world today, it might even completely lose force as a weapon. Might even be valueless as a weapon. Wouldn't that be tough?
Now, there are a great many things you could say about this, but I don't want to keep up belaboring this because I'm not talking to you about theory today. I'm actually trying to push you far enough along the road here so you can exteriorize somebody.
Well, what is this guy with this black field? Hm? He sure doesn't understand it, does he? No. It must be, therefore, very confusing to him. To have a black field, it must be very confusing to him. Therefore he must have been close to a universe of confusion—must have been close to one. Whoever that person was, that person must have been awfully unpredictable.
We won't even go into orientation-points versus symbols here this morning. We won't even go that far along on theory. Let's just look at this. This fellow is occluded. Well, he's always been more or less in control of his own body. His own body seldom jumped around or did anything strange or peculiar. But other people have. Well, who did? There's his occlusion. There is his occlusion. And right on the other side of that occlusion is the lion he doesn't know has gone away.
And you might tell him eight times, "Look, your fifth wife did leave you. She is gone." He'd still say, "Well, I know that... I guess." You see, he doesn't know that the lion has walked away from the other side of that steel shield. That lion still may be there.
Therefore, we are going to use the most elementary and effective process known to Man—all contained in this little bottle—on this particular thing. [laughter] And on all those who have not yet exteriorized, this is what we are going to do.
So, auditor—whoever is this, or if you get somebody who isn't exteriorized—start checking now on exteriorization with your preclear. It's time you did. Get this one: Let's find the most unpredictable people they ever knew. And then let's apply next-to-the-last list on those people: ARC Straightwire on those people, "Remember something real about Aunt Agnes. A time when Aunt Agnes was in good communication with you. A time when you were in good communication with Aunt Agnes," and so forth. And let's find out if that lion is still sitting there, so that our boy can throw away all of this mystery and stop being so fixated on the mystery of an unpredictable body.
He doesn't exteriorize because his body is unpredictable. He's afraid it'll go away, he'll lose it. He's afraid it'll flop around and so forth. So therefore, he must have known unpredictable bodies. So therefore, let's resolve it, just like that.
It's actually as simple as that. What you're doing there is 8-D by Straightwire—ARC Straightwire on the most unpredictable people he's ever known. You say, "Well, supposing there's six of them?" Well, just take them, one after the other, and go on and on and on and on and on with it. You know what next-to-the-last list is: Issue 30- G, 2nd column—30-G, 2nd column.
That, by the way, is longer than you need to go on. The one we want is: "Remember something real. "
"A time when you were in good communication with
"A time when they were in good communication with you."
"A time when you felt some affinity for
"A time when they felt some affinity for you."
"Remember something real."
You could also add to that, "A time when they duplicated you," if you wanted to —perfectly obvious thing. It's just part of the communication corner of the triangle. All right.
Of course, if you wanted to really get the communication in there, you could also add both of these to it, which is quite curious. Now, you could say, "A time when they duplicated you" or "You duplicated them," and "A time when some distance intervened." If you wanted to really beat this one to pieces, you could add that one. Why don't you add that one, just for the dickens of it. "Time from [when] some distance intervened between you and
Now, we're going to call this Separation from the Universe of Confusion, the Mystery Universe or the Unpredictable Universe. But the Universe of Confusion is the best one, as far as you're concerned. The most unpredictable people, the most confusing people—whichever way you want to ask it—you're asking the same thing because you are talking about the anatomy of mystery. And that has unpredictable, confusion, mystery. Bong, bong, bong. All right.
And by breaking out those universes, you'll find your preclear will start exteriorizing. Okay. There are other ways to do this. I could give you dozens, but we want very positive ones which do produce very positive results.
Now, how do you do this? You find out from your preclear the most unpredictable people he knew. Now, you can vary this, you see, and ask him for the most confusing people he knew and you can vary that and ask him for the most mysterious people he knew. And he's going to get one, two, three—the three categories of the exact universe you're looking for. You're looking for that universe.
Now, he's dragged into one of them, in this lifetime. And now, you're going to take those people—there might be several of them, you see—you're going to take those people and we're going to remember something real about that person. And remember a time when we were in good communication With that person. And remember a time when that person was in good communication with the preclear. And remember a time when the preclear felt some affinity for that person. And when that person felt some affinity for the preclear.
And we'll get these universes to split, in other words, we'll get some distance in there.
Now, you could add, if you wanted to, as I said,
"A time when that person duplicated you."
"A time when you duplicated that person."
"A time when that person put some distance between himself and you."
"And the time when you put some distance between yourself and that person."
I mean you could—you could—that's obviously the ARC Triangle all the way around. All right.
The result of your doing this, of course, would be splitting apart these universes and getting the guy over the idea that it all was unpredictable, unpredictable and therefore he mustn't leave it. Now, that's the first thing you do in order to solve this problem.
There's another one: It has to do with an attention drill in Procedure 30. It's just an attention drill. You have to improve a fellow's attention. And when you do this one, which I will tell you about later, your preclear quite commonly has been known to at least wish he could kill the auditor. You've thought you've been over it with Opening Procedure by Duplication, but you haven't seen anything yet. Okay.
Well, you've got this process now? The Most Unpredictable Person and the next-to-the-last list on that person— on these people who haven't exteriorized.
Now, should you use this on some of the other cases? Yes, anybody who's having any difficulty or whose case is hanging up or isn't getting good perception exteriorized should have that process used on him.
CERTIFICATES OF DIANETICS AND SCIENTOLOGY
MEMORY, PRESENT TIME AND PAGE \* MERGEFORMAT 2 7ACC-05A - 28.06.54
UNIVERSES OF MYSTERY