Dianetics 55! 1955 Chapter 3
Chapter 3: The Awareness of Awareness Unit
In examining the individuality and identity of the individual one discovers that the individual if himself, and not his by-products. The individual is not his analytical mind, he is not his reactive mind, he is not his body any more than he is his house or car. He might consider himself to be associated with his analytical mind, his reactive mind, his house, his body, his car, but he is not these things. He is himself. The individual, the personality, is the awareness of awareness unit, and the awareness of awareness unit is the person. As this awareness of awareness unit confuses itself further and further with the pictures it has made of its surroundings it conceives itself more and more to be an object, until at last when it has gone entirely down the tone scale* it has arrived at the point where its fondest belief is that it is an object.
Just as you would not say that John Jones was his car, so must you also say – when you perceive this clearly – that John Jones is not his analytical mind or his reactive mind, his body, or his clothes. John Jones is an awareness of awareness unit, and all there is of him that is capable of knowing and of being aware is John Jones, an awareness of awareness unit.
When we have arrived at a state where John Jones himself knows that he is an awareness of awareness unit and not his analytical mind, his reactive mind, his body, his clothes, his house, his car, his wife or his grandparents, we have what is called in Dianetics, a „Clear.“ A Clear is simply an awareness of awareness unit which knows it is an awareness of awareness unit, can create energy at will, and can handle and control, erase or re-create an analytical mind or reactive mind.
The difference of approach is this: instead of erasing all the things with which the awareness of awareness unit is in conflict, we make the awareness of awareness unit capable of besting and controlling all those things with which he thought he had to be in conflict. In other words, we raise the determinism of an individual up to a point where he is capable of controlling his mental pictures and the various by- products of life. When he is capable, so far as his ability is concerned, of controlling and determining the action of these things, he is no longer aberrated. He can recall anything he wants to recall without the aid and assistance of energy masses. He can be what he wants to be. He has had restored to himself a considerable freedom.
About the only difficulty we have in accomplishing this state of Clear, with all the power and ability appended thereto, is the fact that individuals come to believe that they have to have certain things in order to go on surviving. Actually, an awareness of awareness unit cannot do anything else but survive. He is unkillable, yet his by- products are destroyable, and confusing himself with his by-products he begins to believe that he has to have or do certain things in order to survive. His anxiety becomes so great on this that he will even believe that he has to have problems in order to survive. An awareness of awareness unit is very unhappy unless it has some mass or space of some kind and if it does not have various problems to solve.
For a very long time in Dianetics we looked far for the „One-Shot Clear.“ Such a thing has come into existence and is workable on over fifty percent of the current populace of mankind. The One-Shot Clear depends, of course, upon getting the awareness of awareness unit at a distance from and in control of its various by-products so that it no longer confuses itself with its by-products. The astonishing speed with which fifty per cent of the human race can be cleared is believable only when you put it into action. The magic words are: „Be three feet back of your head.“ This is the One-Shot Clear. If the existence of a One- Shot Clear, or a process is indigestible to people it is because they have so long contemplated objects and have their attention so thoroughly fixed upon objects that they can no longer view space. And the idea of viewing space, the idea of being without objects is so antipathetic to them that they feel they must condemn any effort which might take from them the proximity of some of their fondest possessions.
It is so strongly antipathetic to Man to look at space that one of the basic processes of Dianetics – causing him to look at spots in space – will cause a rather low-toned individual to become quite violently ill at his stomach. The nausea resulting simply from contemplating empty space is discoverable only in those who have a great deal of trouble with possessions and who are unable to have things. From having to have things they have gotten to a point where they do not believe they can have anything any more. Thus, being asked to contemplate an emptiness of any kind is enough to cause a violent physical reaction. Hence, this whole subject of „Clear“ and exteriorization, as it is technically termed, is very antipathetic to the remaining fifty percent of the human race who cannot be hit instantly with this one-shot button.
Fifty percent of the people you walk up to, if you do not pre-select your preclears – a person on the road to being Clear – will immediately exteriorize, be a distance from their body, and behold themselves as capable of handling a great many things they before considered impossible to control the moment you say „Be three feet back of your head.“ The remaining fifty percent will look at you with varying puzzlement. These know they are a body. These know they are an object, and these know (most of them) that they would get sick at their stomachs if they contemplated being all by themselves in space. They would believe it would be impossible to control a body while being three feet behind it. Thus one gets into an immediate argument with such people, and they wish to go into the various deeper significances. If these people were lost to us with current Dianetic processes, we would still have gained many percentile over any past effort to do something for the race or about the mind.
In the past, even when we locked as short a time ago as 1949, we discovered that Man in general did not possess the ability to get a recovery percentage in patients higher than twenty-two percent. Oddly enough, whether it was a witch doctor at work, a psychoanalyst, psychologist, a medical doctor, or any other practitioner, simple assurance and a pat on the back yet brought about twenty-two percent cured. This fact, not looked at very carefully by practitioners, caused people to believe that the only thing that was wrong with the mind was that people thought something was wrong with the mind and all people needed was a cheering word and it would be all right. Twenty-two percent of a population will recover if anything is done for them. The remaining 78 percent are not quite so lucky. When we can raise the percentages even to 30 percent we are doing more than has ever been done before. When any practice gets less than 22 percent recovery, then that practice is actually definitely harming people, for if all the practitioner did was be at home in his office and give cheery reassurance to his patients he would get this 22 percent. He would have to be very active and depressive in order to decrease this amount of recoveries. Now, when we suddenly vault to the figure of 50 percent we know that we are closing with the answer. Thus, we could relax at this very point, confident that we have done more in this field than has ever before been done.
However, it is not good enough within our framework. In the first place, if we wish to help people involved with the government, people involved with ruling, people involved with the material sciences – such as physicists and chemists – we are dealing with almost entirely the remaining „resistive“ 50 percent. This does not mean that a person, simply by exteriorizing, is weaker. It means that a person with continuous contact with the physical universe and continuous harassment and concern over the state of objects or energy is apt to get what we call „interiorized.“
A recent series of cases undertaken to demonstrate how far we had to go and what we had to do in order to bring results in this remaining 50 percent has now concluded successfully. With modern techniques, very, very closely followed, auditors trained by the central organization have been successfully clearing cases which were resistive and did not improve on all earlier processes as of 1951, ‘52, ‘53 and the bulk of ‘54. The certainty of clearing the first 50 percent simply with the magic words has been followed now with a certainty of handling the remaining 50 percent. This presents a rather different scene and attitude than in 1950 when an auditor had to be „intuitive“ and had to work endlessly, it seemed, to produce gains on cases, much less clearing. My own percentages in clearing people do not count, and I learned early (with some puzzlement) that what I did with a preclear and the results I obtained with a preclear were not the results which would be obtained by another auditor. It was this fact alone which caused research and investigation to be continued at such lengths, and processes to be codified so closely. For first we had to know processes, and then we had to know how to train auditors, and finally we are obtaining these clearing results.
Any Clear earlier obtained was known to be Clear simply by the fact that he could recall at will by pictures, or could perform certain other feats. Actually, a person was only able to stay Clear when he was not immediately involved with either his analytical or his reactive mind. And those Clears which remained stable had been put unwittingly into a much more advanced stage than had been supposed, even by the auditor. It was an investigation of these Clears which led forward into the techniques we have now. It was found that many of them were simply wide-open cases which had become rather able to read their own facsimiles. Several had simply increased their ability to a point so senior to other people’s ability that everyone agreed they should be called „Clear.“ And then there was the actual Clear. The actual Clear, on close questioning, even though he himself had not always noticed it, conceived himself now to be some distance from the body. Those Clears which remained stable and continued to perform and function despite the convulsions of life were these who had been stably exteriorized. This may be a datum which is very hard for some Dianeticists to assimilate, but again the difficulty would stem only from the fact that these would be unwilling to look at space or would be afraid of being disenfranchised. Such people are very frightened of losing their bodies. But this is a fact with which we cannot argue, that so far as psychosomatic illness is concerned it is best resolved by exteriorization. One has the individual step back from his body, look at it, and patch it up, and that is about all there is to psychosomatic illness. There is, of course, an electronic structure of the body which one can direct a person’s attention to, but I have seen the shape of a face change in a moment, I have seen psychosomatic illnesses disappear in seconds, and as long as there was any physical structure left to work with at all I have seen the problem of psychosomatic illness pushed so far into the background, as a problem, that we no longer think in these terms, and we do not consider Dianetics well used when it is only addressed to psychosomatic illness and aberrations.
Our emphasis today is upon ability. We have found that the more we increase the ability of a person the better the by-products around him become. Simply by increasing an individual’s ability to walk or to talk we can change his physical beingness and his mental outlook.
By this theory it would be enough to have somebody learn how to make pottery, or drive a car, or speak in public, to increase his mental and physical health. And indeed, on investigation we discover that these things are therapeutic, but we discover that they are limited in their therapy because the talents which an individual learns in this fashion are talents involved entirely with the handling and orientation of the body, and he is not being entirely influenced merely by his body. He is being influenced as well by the computing machinery which he calls his analytical mind and by the more insidious and less obvious machinery called his reactive mind. Furthermore, by these increases in ability he is not brought up to a point where he can control or handle his entire environment. Such an ability can be developed only by and in the awareness of awareness unit itself. When it is learning to do something via the body it is not learning to do something directly, it is learning to do something with help – the help of arms and legs, face, voice, and thus hobby therapy is limited even though it is quite positive.
Looking a little further along this line one discovers that the awareness of awareness unit has peculiar abilities. First and foremost of its abilities is to be where it likes to be, and look. It does not need eyes. It does not need a vehicle in which to travel. All it needs to do is to postulate its existence in a certain location and then look from that point of existence. In order to do this it has to be willing to be cause. It has to be willing to be an effect. But if it can do this it can go much further – it can create and change space. Furthermore, it can erase at a glance facsimiles and engrams.
Now when we get into such capabilities people are liable to believe that we have entered the field of mysticism and spiritualism. But an inspection of these fields demonstrates the people in them not to be very able. Mysticism and other such practices are reverse practices. Rather than controlling the reactive bank, the analytical mind, the body, the environment, they seek very markedly to withdraw from the necessity to control. This is downward ability, and while I might be accused of maligning these fields, I can only look at the people I have known in these fields and add the fact that I, myself have studied in these fields in the East and know their limitations. People are apt to confuse exteriorization with astral walking. As you sit there reading this book you are definitely and positively aware of sitting there, and of this book. There is no question about whether or not you are looking at a book. You don’t believe yourself to be projected, and you don’t have to guess where you are, and you don’t think you have to create some sort of an image in order to look at anything. You are simply sitting there reading a book. This is exteriorization. If you were cleared, and, with your body at home you were in a library, you could read in the library just as well, with the limitation that you might not have as good a grasp on pages. You would certainly know you were in the library. There would be no question about this. There would be no question about the text on the periodicals on the table. There would be no question about the quality and personality of the librarian and other people sitting there. Being Clear does not enter into guesswork. You would not be concerned with telepathy, with the reading of people’s minds, and other such bric-a-brac. You would simply know what you wanted to know. Further, you wouldn’t have to use a system for finding out what you know. You would simply know it.
If Man cannot face what he is, then Man cannot be free. For an awareness of awareness unit surrounded entirely by energy masses, and believing that it itself is completely these masses, is in a difficult and desperate state. It believes, for instance, that in order to go from one address to another it has to take the energy mass along with it. This is not true. One might carry a body around in order to speed up one’s conversation, in order to have a problem, in order to get some attention and interest from people, but one would not carry a body around because one had to have a body.
The general attitude of a person who is cleared is the most interesting thing to observe. Only a cleared person has a very definite tolerance for the behavior of others. People before they are cleared are in varying degrees of distrust of other people. They are hiding, or protecting, or owning things to such a degree that they do not dare separate themselves from them.
There is a certain fear of an exteriorized person. There is a belief that he might do them wrong. Actually one is done wrong by the weaklings of this world, not the strong men. One does not have to enslave and control by force those whose conduct he does not fear. When you find an individual who is bent entirely upon a course of the arduously controlled emotions of others you are looking at an individual who is afraid. By their fear you shall know them.
Another slight difficulty in the state of exteriorization is that one has a tendency to let things be more or less as they are. Up to a certain point one is content to let the game run and take part in it and have fun with it. The point, of course, is the destruction of the playing field. Life, to a Clear, is no more and no less than a game, and the only thing which he would consider somewhat unpardonable in behavior would be the wiping out of the playing field. But if he were even higher in such a state he should, theoretically, make his own playing field. However, if he did this he would find difficulty getting into communication with other live beings, unless, of course, he made them, which is rather an unsatisfactory state of affairs since one never quite forgets that, he did so.
Moral conduct is conduct by a code of arbitrary laws. Ethical conduct is conduct out of one’s own sense of justice and honesty. When you enforce a moral code upon people you depart considerably from anything like ethics. People obey a moral code because they are afraid. People are ethical only when they are strong. One could say that the criminals of earth are those upon whom moral codes have been too forcefully enforced. (As an example of this take the cliche object, the minister’s son.) Ethical conduct does not mean promiscuous abandon or lawless conduct. It means conduct undertaken and followed because one has a sense of ethics, a sense of justice, and a sense of power. This is self-determined morality. A Clear has this to a very marked degree. By actual check of many such cases their moral behavior is intensely superior to that of people who pride themselves on „being good.“ The point arises because law and order depends for its existence upon its necessity in the field of morals, and it looks with a sort of horror on somebody who would be good without recourse to or threat from the forces of law and order. Such a person would be rather hard to have around. He would cut down the number on the police force quite markedly.
The state of Clear, then, is attainable and is desirable, and now that we can accomplish it with greater positiveness than in 1950 is found to be superior to that described in the second chapter of „Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.“
The way one goes about being Clear, or creating a Clear, is simple, but requires a certain code of conduct called The Auditor’s Code, and requires, we have discovered, a considerable amount of training. Clearing another person is a highly specialized ability. This ability must be raised in individuals before they can easily and successfully undertake such a project. Witnessing this is the fact that while many of the processes involved in clearing have been available for a very, very long time, very few people have successfully used them. The discovery of why this was was quite as important as the state of Clear itself. The remedy of this disability lies in training and processing. The activity of creating a Clear is known as „processing“ and is undertaken by one individual on behalf of another individual. „Self-clearing“ has not been found possible where the individual was badly mired in his own case.
Enormously subordinate to the goal of Clear, but enormously senior to Man’s various healing activities in the mind, spirit, and body, the very processes which lead up to Clear resolve, whether one wants them to or not, a great many of the physical and mental aberrations of the individual. One can take one of these processes and run it all by itself, and accomplish more with Dianetics than Man has previously accomplished in any of the fields that deal with human aberration. When one has the answer, of course applying these answers to minor psychosomatic difficulties, or aberrations, or spiritual unrest is elementary. But again we have discovered that there is no real substitute for training either at the hands of an already trained and skilled auditor, or best, from a central organization.
The awareness of awareness unit was not readily discoverable in the field of physics because physics is entirely concerned with mechanics. Physics starts with the assumption of the conservation of energy and the existence of space and goes on into further complexities from there. The awareness of awareness unit is one step earlier than all this, and its existence was unsuspected by a misdefinition in the field of physics. That was the definition of a static. A static, in physics, is called something which is „an equilibrium of forces.“ This object at rest in an equilibrium of forces is an interesting semantic puzzle. If we put a glass upon a table and then say that it is a static, we are telling a very bad lie. It is not in an equilibrium of forces. That glass happens to be traveling at 1,000 miles an hour just by reason of the fact that the earth is turning. It has seven other directions and speeds by reason of being part of the planet earth, the solar system, and this galaxy. It cannot, then, be considered at rest. Thus no object can be considered at rest unless one considers something relatively at rest. The glass is at rest in relationship to the table, but this is not the physical definition.
The definition of a static discloses something else of interest. There was a missing definition in the field of mathematics, and that was the definition of zero. The mathematician for ages has been using in all his formulas a wild variable without suspecting it was there. He did not really encounter it until he got into the higher fields of nuclear physics. At this time he encountered it so forcefully and knew it so little that he had to alter most of his mathematical conceptions in order to work with nuclear physics at all.
This wild variable was no less than zero. Zero, put down as a goose egg in many mathematical formulas, would introduce many interesting variables. In the first place an absolute zero has never been obtained in this universe. It has only been approached. That is in terms of chemistry. That is in terms of non-existence. We can say there is zero of apples, but that is still a qualified zero. We call say there were no apples, but that is further qualified as being in the past. It is a past zero. We can say there will be no apples, and again we will have the zero qualified as being in the future. Zero was an absence of a thing, and this immediately violated the definition of zero being no thing. The absoluteness of no thing had to be examined while we were examining the field of the mind and actually led to some very astonishing discoveries with regard to Life itself and immediately pin-pointed the existence of the awareness of awareness unit.
The proper and correct definition of zero would be: „Something which had no mass, which had no wave length, which had no location in space, which had no position or relationship in time.“ This would be a zero. One could state it more shortly, if a little less correctly as: „something without mass, meaning, or mobility.“
It would be almost impossible to detach a dyed-in-the-wool physicist from the concept that everything was a „somethingness“ and that there was actually a „nothingness.“ However, there is a nothingness which has quality. It has potentials, it has ability. It has the ability to perceive, it has the ability to create, the ability to understand, and the ability to appear and disappear to its own satisfaction in various positions in space. Furthermore, this thing could, we have demonstrated conclusively, manufacture or cause to vanish space, energy and masses, and could, quite additionally, reposition time.
These new concepts are actually advances in the field of physics and mathematics, and from the viewpoint of the physicist and the mathematician would only incidentally apply to the mind.
From this data we get the basic definition of a static, which is: „An actuality of no mass, no wave-length, no position in space or relation in time, but with the quality of creating or destroying mass or energy, locating itself or creating space, and of re-relating time.“ And thus we have the definition of an awareness of awareness unit. It is the definition of a static. It does not have quantity, it has quality. It does not have mechanics, it can produce mechanics, and it does have ability.
The foremost ability of the awareness of awareness unit is to have an idea, and to continue that idea, and to perceive the idea in its continuance in the form of mass, energy, objects and time. In the field of Scientology the fact that this awareness of awareness unit can also control and even make physical bodies is almost incidental. That is only a specialized branch of the game. In Dianetics this is a very important function, for one in Dianetics is working with Man.
A static could also be called an orientation point. It would be from that point that it made and directed space, energy and objects. It would be from that point that it assigned meanings, and that we have an essential difference between the awareness of awareness unit and its by-products. These by-products we categorize as symbols. When we say „mechanics“ we actually mean to some degree „symbols.“ A symbol is something that has mass, meaning, and mobility – three M’s. That is the technical definition of a symbol. An orientation point is something that controls symbols. The difference in ability of an awareness of awareness unit is how much it is an orientation point in relationship to how much it believes itself to be a symbol, or to have mass, meaning and mobility. Reduction from the state of awareness is into the condition of the symbol – mass, meaning and mobility. To get a clear idea of this, you see the word „a“ on this page. That has mass, even if very slight mass. It has meaning, since it conveys an idea when glanced at, and it certainly has mobility, since you can move the book around. Now you, looking at this book, have the role of an orientation point to the degree that you do not conceive yourself to have a fixed identity, a fixed position, a fixed mass. If you, looking at the book, have no real mass, if your name is not a tremendously fixed idea with you, and if you know you can move your body around without having to move with it, then you would very clearly and decisively be an orientation point. But if you think you have mass and are mass, and if you think you are your name, and if you think you have to move around only by moving the body around, then of course somebody else, something else, can be your orientation point. It may be your mother. It may be your home town, or, if you are a mystic, it might even be some spirit. You would think of yourself as a symbol. Similarly, a symbol does not remember anything more than it symbolizes, and thus your memory to a large degree might be the memory of past allies – people who took care of you and to whom you were attached affectionately – and if you were in a lecture you would probably take notes rather than remember what is being said. An orientation point has the power of memory without record. A symbol has the power of memory only to the degree that it is a record.
Thus we see that it is desirable that an individual does not identify himself with masses, but that he retain his ability to handle masses and objects and energies, to remember at will, without the need of records such as those in the reactive bank, or facsimile machines such as those in the analytical mind’s bank.
In any good, thorough investigation, one investigates to s e e what he will discover and to find better ways to do things. In any reliable investigation report one tells what he discovered and reports its character and nature. In this science we are doing just that. When we talk of the awareness of awareness unit we are not talking to be pleasing, to win friends or influence professors, we are simply telling you what has been discovered after twenty-five years of research and investigation in the field of the mind that has taken off from the platform of physics and mathematics rather than philosophy. The awareness of awareness unit is a fact. It is a demonstrable fact, and the best way to demonstrate it is to use the processes which accomplish this, and then discover that the individual is more well, has a better memory, is better oriented, more capable, is more ethical, happier, has better command of time, can communicate better, is more willing to have friends, is less anti-social than the average person, and has a greater zest for living and getting things done. All these things can be accomplished by test.
In 1950 we often had occasion to demonstrate the existence of the engram. It seemed to be highly in question amongst those people who were extremely specialized – it said on their diplomas – in the field of the mind. To be accomplished in the field of the mind and yet not know anything about engrams or facsimiles would be an idiotic state indeed, because the mind is composed of facsimiles and engrams, if one wishes to examine it – or energy products. Well, then (as now) w e were only interested in results. What can we do with this technology? If we can demonstrate with this technology that we can better the lives, tolerances, abilities of those around us, then certainly we will have done something. We have no place for philosophical argument concerning this material. It is simply workable material. You do not argue with the directions on how to open a vacuum packed can. If you don’t follow them you don’t get the can open. Or, not following them, and still being insistent upon it, you smash the can and ruin the contents. One would not go into a philosophic dissertation about the directions of opening a can. Obviously they are written by somebody who knows how to open cans, and any hours spent on getting this person to demonstrate that he really could open cans would be wasted time. The thing to do is simply read the directions, follow them very closely, and see whether or not the can is opened. Although this seems to be a very common sort of example to apply to that noble creature, Man, it is nevertheless, the bluntest statement that could be made about the status of Dianetics and Scientology and their uses and purposes.
Dianetics has as its goal the repairing and patching up of this thing called by the uninitiated, this civilization, taking its destiny out of the hands of madmen who think that the entire organism is simply a machine, and putting it in the hands of the same people, only this time with the ingredient of sanity added. There isn’t even any point in trying to categorize Dianetics or say that it compares to psychology or mathematics or engineering, or any other activity, because it is obviously senior to all these activities and doesn’t have to take any of these activities into account to work. All Dianetics needs to work is a trained auditor, a preclear, and a little time in which to accomplish its processes. If these ingredients – the auditor, the preclear, and a little time – were not available, then there would be no purpose in having any Dianetics at all, since there wouldn’t be any human race.
The spirit in which these conclusions are advanced is intensely practical, and now that some nitwits who probably don’t get along with their wives and hate dogs, but who have worked themselves into the position of being able to, can knock a couple of atoms together, either by orders or by actual skill, and so tear up a very nice playing field, the presence of Dianetics in this world is not simply a practicality, but an urgency.