SOP 8-D - Its Application (7ACC 540715)
Series: 7th Advanced Clinical Course (7ACC)
Date: 15 July 1954
Speaker: L. Ron Hubbard
Today we are going to talk about 8-D and its specific applications. 8-D has deteriorated as a process from a broadly used, widely applicable process, to a specialized process. Many processes, and practically any subjective process to date, has moved out of the category of generalized application into specialized application and quite often out of existence. But those are the graduating steps of processes, see. Generalized application to specialized application.
Now, our specialized application of 8-D gives us, however, something that is very, very interesting to use. It resolves a considerable number of problems, but the whole background of 8-D, actually, is full of long, long, long, long auditing hours.
And the only trouble with 8-D, as I have had said consistently, is that it is a very, very long technique. It is not a short one. An auditor who sits down and knocks all the comm lag out of that technique is in for a long pull on one subject. Twenty-five hours on Mama – thirty-five hours, something on that order, to knock out Mama thoroughly.
But that's for use on interiorized cases. On an exteriorized case, 8-D works fairly rapidly. Somebody who is working fairly well, exteriorized with some certainty, we can separate him out of a mother's universe, for instance, in about twenty-five minutes or something on that order; half an hour.
And so, it becomes much more aptly applicable to an exteriorized case rather than an interiorized case. But it's the interiorized case that needs it more than the exteriorized case. And yet it takes just forever to run it.
All right. Let's take a look at the anatomy of 8-D as such, and we find out that it starts in with its Opening Procedure of Spotting Spots in Space and Remedying Havingness. And that means spots in space of the room. That's where we spot those spots, And we have the preclear put his finger on them and spot them repetitively several times and make sure that there is a spot there in space, and find out if there's any energy in it, and if it has any mass or color. And we get him all over the idea that this spot in space should have mass and so on. It is merely a location, it isn't supposed to have mass and so forth.
Well, at the same time, we have to remedy his havingness and in order to remedy his havingness, sometimes you have to, in auditing him, find out what could occupy his same space. We have to do anything and everything necessary to remedy somebody's havingness, But we have these two things as its Opening Procedure.
It's a tremendously interesting Opening Procedure because it may be the first time that your preclear has ever contacted space. Now, we use that in Intensive Procedure – that step has been preserved in Intensive Procedure. It was originally an 8-D process.
And as we look over our scheduling, we find out that nearly all of 8-D, except its fourth step, occurs in Intensive Procedure. But its fourth step, being a variable step, does not occur.
Of course, the first step after Opening Procedure of 8-D is, "Be three feet back of your head," and the next step is duplicate – duplicate a great deal and then duplicate nothings. Its next step is to hold the two back corners of the room and let go and then find places where one is not. And those are its first three steps. Those are the first three steps of 8-D. And you will find those as the first steps of Route 1. So 8-D is not lost entirely by a long ways.
And we find, however, the fourth step omitted from Intensive Procedure.
But this doesn't mean it should be omitted from your kit as an auditor. It has the blunt and specific purpose of deleting out of the preclear's frame of reference, those universes into which he has perforce been interiorized. In view of the fact that the definition of space is viewpoint of dimension – something you must never let go of, viewpoint of dimension – we see, then, that if the preclear is occupying somebody else's space, he would have somebody else's viewpoint. Similarly, if he has somebody else's viewpoint, he'll be occupying, to some degree, somebody else's space. Well, it's not necessary that this happen, but it does happen and your preclear finds himself, perhaps, being in Mother's universe.
Well, the postulates that count, then, on the preclear are Mother's. He's in Mother's space, so therefore Mother's viewpoint must be the one that holds.
And a viewpoint can be a consideration or a lookingness. Technically, it's a point from which to view. But it is liberally interpreted as a consideration also.
So Mother's considerations stick with anybody in Mother's universe.
It's not necessarily true that a person, just by accepting the viewpoint of another person on some subject, such as a consideration, is immediately then in that other person's universe. This is not true. Here we have a condition in extremis whereby we have Mother operating so closely and arduously and unpredictably with the preclear that, at length, the preclear conceives himself to exist mainly in Mother's space.
Now, the reason we are talking about Mother so much is that Mother is the producer of the mock-up. You know, the mock-up came from Mother, And this mock-up having come from Mother and so forth – the thetan is apt to then view Mother as the orientation-point of the space in which he is operating.
The orientation-point – definition of that is: orientation-point is that point which is motionless in relation to which all other points are in motion. An orientation-point is a motionless point in relationship to which all other points are in motion.
Of course, it's not true that there is such a thing as a motionless point, but there can be a motionless point in relationship to other points. We could take three balls rolling around in a cup and say that one of them was motionless and that the other two were rotating in relationship to that one, you see. And just overlook the fact that that one is moving.
In such a wise, we see the solar system, more or less rotating, dependent upon a stationary sun. Well, that sun is nor very stationary. It is flying through space at a very giddy rate of speed. And yet apparently because it is the shining point – which is the MEST universe equivalent of a thetan viewpoint, by the way. The MEST universe, you know, puts up explosions and shining suns and even a brightly reflective surface such as – well, let's take the corner of a chromium-plated stove or something of the sort. It'd be a bright point.
Any bright point in the physical universe can be conceived to be the point from which space is radiating, not just light. It could be, then, the thing which had the best consideration of the thing, because it is the point where the space is radiating, therefore, it has the best consideration.
First and foremost mistake a thetan makes in this universe – just bluntly and blankly makes – is that just because a thing is radiating some light, it therefore is making space and therefore has a consideration.
And so we find the Egyptians saying, "Oh, Ra, in thy mightiness, we bow down before thee. Don't get eclipsed." And they conceive that the Sun has a personality. The Sun does not have a personality, but a thetan would have to do a bit of a double take on it to really convince himself it didn't have, because there it is shining all the time.
Well, of course, this got very confusing to the ancients and they conceived that – well, they didn't quite know where they were. They were lost. Earth was turning around so it looked like the Sun was moving all the time across the sky, so therefore the orientation-point they would use would be their own village.
And they do this to a marked extent even today. If we go over and ask somebody who has never been out of the state – oh, Kansas or some such state – ask them where Germany is. And their idea of the distance to Germany is just beyond the city limits of Pumpkin Center, which is where they live.
You find a child – you ask a child who has not been well informed on this subject and he will inevitably point to some very, very short distance as the place where the Atlantic Ocean begins, if he's heard of it at all. The Atlantic Ocean – he's heard of, maybe, rivers going into the ocean, so the Atlantic Ocean is just about two or three hundred yards further than he has ever walked down Willow Creek. And so, they use these areas as orientation-points and all other points are in motion with relationship to these points.
When we get somebody out of his childhood home and he's running all over the world, he still thinks of space being made by his hometown. He is a symbol.
Well, tracing this back, we find out then that we are up against the problem of the winning valence and the symbol and other interesting things. The winning valence is where an individual has concluded that something was an orientation-point and so has taken its station.
It had a senior survival. And that is the one thing you could say about an orientation-point, that it has a survival senior to the survival of all else. For instance, the village has a survival value which is greater than the Sun because obviously the village is still there on cloudy days. And very obviously the other considerations that add into this: The village is there all night and the Sun is not. So therefore, the village, of course, is much more valuable to the individual as an orientation-point than the Sun.
Well, an individual will get the idea that the village has survival where he does not. And he will speak of himself as a Podunker or something of the sort. He comes from that village. In other words, he is a symbol which runs around at the command of Podunk. That, by the way, is a small town in Kansas. The Marines picked it up and have used it slangly ever since, but actually – it's actually a town. There is really a town called Podunk – used to be named Wichita. Anyway … [laughter]
Wherever an individual has orientation-points, he conceives himself and his motion and the motion of the rest of the world to be in relationship to that orientation-point. The orientation-point is motionless and everything else is in motion.
When an individual gets really confused is when he's had a sequence of orientation-points. And he's accepted one after the other as being the motionless point. He's had a childhood where he was dragged around from one town to another town to another town to another school to another school to another school. And after a while he says, "To hell with it! Everything's in motion!"
Well, that is the definition of confusion. Everything is in motion in relationship to nothing – no orientation-point. If you ever want to find yourself in the woods, this is the way you go about it. You don't look for moss on the underside of your shoes. You don't immediately put up sticks to find out where north is because the chances are, you didn't know where north was when you left the point you left to get to where you were lost.
The way you find yourself in the woods is first, find your sanity. That's the first thing you find. And you could go right on finding your sanity and then walk out of the woods.
By doing what? Grabbing hold of a tree and saying, "This is here. This tree is not lost. This tree is not moving in relationship to all other trees. All other trees are probably moving. There are creeks that are moving and mountains that will undoubtedly displace themselves and go elsewhere. But this tree – we are absolutely certain because we have our arms wrapped around it very solidly and we are hugging it to our bosom, turpentine and all – this tree is not moving." One could also say this about a rock.
"Now that I have found my orientation-point of the entire physical universe – this tree – I now conceive that it creates all the space there is and all the direction there is and everything there is. And if it weren't for this tree, the inhabitants of New York City would not know which direction they were going or whether they were going up or down. Now, now that I have found myself, let's see how lost these other places are and see if we can get them to locate themselves."
And so orienting oneself in that fashion, one gets one's sanity back. I speak of this quite advisedly because the first thing one loses when he gets lost is his peace of mind. If you've ever been lost, you would appreciate that – in the woods, some such thing.
It's a very interesting panic that comes over one. I remember one day when I was a kid, I was walking on a broad trail that was quite plainly marked and I looked down into a little valley just off of this trail. Of course, it was a very, very deep wilderness I happened to be in there – just half-a-dozen of us Scouts that pushed back behind the maps a little bit, up in the Pacific Northwest. And one of these boys who supposedly had gone on ahead a bit, had evidently stepped off the trail.
Here he was, within about a hundred feet of that trail and walking around in very short circles screaming in panic. And I was standing on a very well-marked trail. It was a game trail and it went down off of a hogback and down into a valley. It was very easy to follow. And the grass, however, from the direction he was looking, was sufficiently high to cover up any slightest sign of any trail.
He had no orientation-point. At the point where he got lost he couldn't even see the peak of the mountain we had just climbed, nor could he see the valley. And he had lost the trail. In other words, all was confusion.
Let's take a look at a preclear. He was born in Hollowville and he went to Pinville and when he was in the first grade, the family moved down to Bunkville, and then he was transferred when he was in the fifth or sixth or seventh grade – sometime in there – and so forth, to Bopville. And you ask him, "Where were you born?"
He will tell you very mechanically. It's not an orientation-point and yet that's the one point he assumed when he joined up for this particular cruise with this body. He hasn't got it located.
Well, that's very peculiar, isn't it? He's had orientation-point after orientation-point. To him, all points are in motion to all points. He will become confused, and to that degree that he is confused, his coordination will be poor and his knowingness will have deteriorated.
His ability to make considerations and so forth depend upon this.
Now, what is the definition of a symbol? A symbol is something with mass, meaning and mobility. That sure makes an awful lot of things symbols, doesn't it? A symbol has mass, meaning and mobility. What is the definition of a symbol? That's a technical definition, just like space is a viewpoint of dimension.
An orientation-point is a point which is a motionless point in relation to which all other points are in motion. Now there, in a symbol, we have the other points that are in motion.
Anything, then, that is not an orientation-point is, perforce, if it has mass, a symbol. If it doesn't have mass, it isn't a symbol. A symbol has to have those three things in order to exist. Mass, meaning and mobility – the three M's.
Well, when Mr. Doakes goes to New York City to make his fortune and he leaves Podunk, the world still has its space made by Podunk. And when he thinks of what people think of him – what will the people think of him who are in Podunk? That's the important consideration.
Podunk has upwards to two, three hundred – well, got two or three hundred. And here he is in New York City and New York City thinks he's a whiz and a gee-whizzer and that he's going great guns and so on. And somebody shows up from Podunk and Podunk doesn't think he's doing well and immediately he doesn't think he's doing well.
See? His name is all over the place in lights and everything else and yet he doesn't think he's doing well because Podunk doesn't think he's doing well.
This is the control factor of an orientation-point. Now, that individual who has as his orientation-point his childhood home is still depending upon the opinion of the people who were the center pins of the childhood home.
Now, an orientation-point can at once be the physical universe, but could never, of course, be totally physical universe because it would have to have a consideration. And so the real orientation-point to which a person will pay some attention is one that has both a centralized location, you might say just a locational point, however much mass is there. There doesn't have to be any mass at all, by the way, in an orientation-point. But there always is – not part of its definition.
And we have this individual, then, in this orientation-point – pardon me, this orientation-point has a consideration attached to it, such as an individual. Who is the individual in the orientation-point? Well, it'll be somebody who lived there. Maybe this somebody is long since dead.
But this is the opinion that counts in this universe. And therefore, we get an individual adding up and solidifying his own realities. They are based upon the opinion of that person who forms the consideration part of the orientation-point.
Now, that person could be Grandpa or Grandma or Papa or Mama or a guardian. It could be almost anybody, but this person will represent the opinions of this orientation-point. Therefore, this is a very, very interesting person in the preclear's case, isn't it? Extremely interesting.
The one thing which characterizes an orientation-point is senior survival. And anything which wins – which is to say, demonstrates that it has more force, more power, more survival capability than the preclear, may itself then become a sub-point of some kind or another.
It will become an orientation-point. And the preclear will change into that valence. Now, it could simply be – the winning valence could be something which depended on another orientation-point than the preclear. Now, here's where we get a complexity.
When two boys fight, one of them has a habit of spitting. The one who doesn't have a habit of spitting happens to lose in this fight and he loses but good. The next few days we will find the one who lost the fight, perhaps – now he's become friends with this fellow he fought with and who won – we will find this fellow who lost the fight spitting.
Well, the truth of the matter is the person who is being copied in this spitting is not the winning valence in this case. The boy who was spitting had, as his orientation-point, a father who spat.
In other words, we apparently have now the boy who lost the fight having as his orientation-point the other boy's orientation-point. And sure enough, he'll not only go into the winning valence of this symbol, he will take that symbol's orientation-point.
So we have individuals, when they lose, picking up the senior survival of an orientation-point
What's important about this is location. That's what's important about it. The locations of the world will alter for the loser. They will alter to that degree that he assumes the valence of the winner, because he's seeing the world, now, from a new orientation-point – just to that degree.
Well, this is not terribly complex. You don't have to know very much about it beyond this one fact. There is a matter here of senior survival and location.
The consideration is senior survival. The orientation-point always has survival senior to its symbols because the symbols don't have space if the orientation-point does not exist. So the most senior survival present there will have to be the orientation-point.
If it is not the orientation-point, these symbols won't exist. How do we look into this now? I see you look a little puzzled there. This is very elementary.
The only space there is, is created from this orientation-point. And the space these symbols are using is the space created from die orientation-point. So if the orientation-point ceased to exist, the space would collapse. That's all there is to that: the space would collapse.
All you have to do is get somebody to move a mock-up of his childhood home around in various places and he will abandon it as an orientation-point. Just don't reach and withdraw for it – just move it. It will make it a point in motion in relationship to what he is and where he is. And some interesting things would happen to his case.
But the symbols always have a survival junior to that of the orientation-point, because they came after the orientation-point was created, obviously. And they will only exist as long as an orientation-point is there in order to make some space. Isn't this obvious?
So, where you have senior survival and an orientation-point in question, you get this kind of a process. And an interesting process it is. We take the viewpoint of a universe – which is to say, its orientation-point.
Let's just take Grandma. Let's call her an orientation-point. And we would ask this question of the preclear, "Where would Grandma be safe?"
Well, if we've picked a real orientation-point, the answer is, "Where would Grandma be safe?" This is his feeling about it. "What? Why, everywhere, of course!" You know?
"Why, heavens on earth, she's the one that creates all the space there is, so certainly it's her space, so therefore, naturally, she would be safe in it. How stupid can an auditor get!"
This is sometimes the reaction that you get out of a preclear. He doesn't verbalize it, but this is the way it hits him. "Of course, safe – well, that's just a tongue-tying question. How else could anybody be safe except all over – who was the place, who made the place in which they were being safe."
So we do this as a process. We merely want to find out where Grandma would be safe. And we want isolated, specific locations and we want different locations. And we want him to be very, very certain in each location that we have a new, spotted location for Grandma in which Grandma would be absolutely safe.
Now, we got a spotted location. So why do we start 8-D in with Spotting Spots in Space? And Remedying Havingness?
Well, believe me, you damn well better had, because the whole of its Step IV of 8-D is composed of spotting spots. And if your preclear can't already spot spots without significance, believe me, he's never going to be able to spot them with significance.
You see that? The technique is unworkable if the preclear has not been indoctrinated into Spotting Spots in Space.
Now, do you care whether he actually is picking out r-e-e-a-a-l locations which agree with the past or something? No, you don't care where he puts Grandma, as long as he gets her moving. And as long as he gets the idea of Grandma enduring in each one of these places forever. Get her moving, brother.
And after he does this for a while, why, she bangs over into wherever she ought to be and that's that. But he's got new space. It's a very, very, very interesting process. It takes in a great many factors which are of tremendous use to a preclear.
You could ask some preclear, "From where is all the space of the MEST universe being made?"
Well? From where is all the space of the MEST universe being made?
What do you get from that? A blur? A specific direction and position? Interesting question.
I will leave you on that comm lag while we take a break.
SOP 8-D: ITS APPLICATION PAGE 2 7ACC-21A - 15.07.54