The Logics are as follows: The Logics are a method of thinking. They apply to any universe or any thinking process. They do not have to apply. You can get the doggonedest combinations simply by disobeying a Logic.

Thank you.

Some data which you should have in advance of the actual Logic, and one is the definitions of logic.

The Axioms were basically written on a summary of information which began in November of 1938. And the basic Axioms of Dianetics were written at that time. It's interesting that the material at that time was called Scientology. It appeared in an unpublished manuscript called "Excalibur."

So let's take three levels here. Let's take differentiation and let's take similarities.

I had a great many calls, and have had a great many calls, to be permitted to read "Excalibur." So just as a joke one time I said, why, sure, I would give anybody a copy of "Excalibur" for fifteen hundred dollars. That's a little trick you use: When you're tired of saying no and no hasn't made any impression on anybody, then you just make it scarce. And that's the same as no, but they're so used to this society making everything scarce that it falls inevitably, then, that there would be no bids for it. So fifteen hundred dollars for a copy of "Excalibur" unfortunately netted two replies – demands for "Excalibur" – and this was quite interesting.

Now, in the general course of human events, these data have many times been covered in various ways. You will find a terrific rundown on this in Count Alfred Korzybski's work Science and Sanity, in a field that is called general semantics. The late Count Korzybski did a very splendid piece of work on this. And he analyzes identities of space and identities of time and identities of this and that. And his basic analysis of all this material is unparalleled. I give that to you without reservation; I have never read his work.

I had also qualified. I said a person had to be of extreme stability, and so forth, in order to read this book. So I had to knock those two out on insufficient stability.

That's not said to be clever. The work was described to me in about 1945, I think. His basic tenets must have some degree of truth, because one day I was working out what general semantics should consist of and someone says, "Well, now, I see you've been taking notes out of Science and Sanity." I didn't have a copy of it, I've never had a copy of it. And here you have one of the tests of data: Can two people take the same basic data and by working with it, extrapolating, so to speak...

The truth of the matter is that the raw, naked material of "Excalibur" has the effect upon Homo sapiens of uninhibiting him. And he suddenly realizes that all those things which have held him in a cage are shadows. And they're shadows of such flimsy character that about four cases out of fifteen, in reviewing the material, find themselves suddenly – they think – capable of doing anything they wish to do, and they promptly proceed to do it.

That word simply means getting some more and some more and some more and some more application out of the same datum; you say extrapolating, that's just theoretical adding up of data, if you want to use that word. It's a good word. I don't happen to know of one that means, really, more precisely what we're doing, in the English language. But you get two people and they're extrapolating from more or less the same data and they get the same answers, you have a little better guarantee of the validity of the data. And if you get several people who do the same thing and arrive at the same point, it's starting to look pretty good. It's starting to look pretty good. Or if you get just one fellow who is extrapolating from data and he's just putting data together and he's going on and on and on putting data together and just keeps working, keeps working, keeps working, you know he's on a right track. But then go over this and take a look and see how you can apply it and whether or not you agree that it's on the right track. And if you see that it is on the right track, why, then you go ahead and use it. Or if you just use some of the processes that have come out of this, and you find they work, then you accept the body of data as a whole. I used to do quite a bit of this.

Well, that is not the case. One is not free in this MEST universe and in this society to do everything he pleases to do. There are some small regulations.

Now, just working out, how do you think? Differentiation. The ultimate in sanity is differentiation; this is rivaled in insanity by disassociation. But disassociation is actually complete identification, and that's quite different from differentiation. A person can tell the difference between a cigarette and a cigarette. He can tell the difference between a cigarette and a cigarette. There are two cigarettes, and the person who tells you that they're the same is being sloppy.

There is an organization known as the police, an organization which is addicted to making you do everything you don't want to do and preventing you from doing everything you want to do. And that is their motto. Their motto is "stop motion." A society – Homo sapiens – in this age could not exist without a very, very adequate police force – tremendously adequate. As a matter of fact, there have been much better police forces. The present police forces of Earth are a little bit in apathy.

Now, Alfred Korzybski, in working with this data, gave you some extras that you really don't need, and that is a process. Because his process is based on trying to train people to differentiate instead of identify, and the reason they identify instead of differentiating is electronic. And the person who is thus trained becomes slower in thinking, not faster. His IQ drops; it does not rise. That is on test. So it's a mechanical proposition. It's very mechanical. Differentiation.

The Mexican police force is the only one I know of that isn't in apathy, and it is so completely unregulated and untrammeled that it doesn't have to be. They have what they call a ley de fuego, which solves all of their police problems. That is to say, someone must obey the police, it says in the law-books. They must obey the police. And the other thing it says in there: if anyone runs, you shoot 'em. So it's a simple method, then, of handling anyone suspected, oh, of striking a match, anyone suspected of murder – same order of magnitude in Mexico. All you do is when you pick up the suspect you tell him to run: If he doesn't run, you shoot him, and if he runs, you shoot him. And so it's very effective and very simple.

Now, you've heard some people talk non sequitur. They say, "The submarines have the chrysanthemums because of the beer, no Empire State Building, after all," and look at you expectantly.

But most countries are more in apathy than this, and they stop motion in many circuitous and devious and covert methods. Police merely symbolize the desire of a society, each one, to protect himself from all. Just why this is conceived to be necessary is inherent in the structure of the MEST universe.

And you say, "What are you talking about?"

The MEST universe is an extremely degraded universe. It is a universe which runs on force. If it were the only universe, this would be a pity and I would be in apathy. Because to discover what the MEST universe is, of what it is composed and that its basic law is nothing but force, that it has no truck with an ethic, that it cares nothing about sanity, that the crude force of a crashing cliff is about as high as it thinks – to discover that this would be the basic, that this is all we have to work with – would be heartbreaking. There would be nothing beyond that. And we could all go into apathy and just quit right there, because there's no future in it.

And you say, "Oh, again. Never didn't, did it?"

There's no future in simply collecting more and more facsimiles and erasing more and more facsimiles. There's no future in arduous and continuous work, work, work. There would be no future in one lifetime; one lifetime would be a very pointless thing. One would get born, he would become educated, he would have some children and then he would pass away by violence, by bugs or by just general decay and deterioration. That would be a wonderful thing, wouldn't it?

And they say...

People have tried to patch that up in the past with guesses and hopes rather than facts. And they've said, "Well, you have a soul. And if you're real good in life, why, we give your soul a little ticket, and it presents it at a gate and then you get to sit still." Well, that was an answer. I mean, it was a little bit of hope.

Now, if you do that to a little kid and the little kid is a very bright little kid, he will look at you very brightly and he'll say, "Well, there's no spokes on the wheels!" Or he'll throw in something like "Well, Rolls Royce... Umhm." And you can go back and forth that way. And you have somebody come along the street with you, listening to this conversation going on, and you keep going on and you say, "Well, the ruddy rods are all on the left-hand side and that makes it far back of there."

They said, "If you're not good, we give you another ticket and we put you on a chute, and there's a fellow down there who has you dance on co... There are seven hells – seven of them – and one is hot and one is cold and one is this way and one is that way. And you stay there forever, too."

And he says, "But it's below that point."

Well, they were saved and this was accepted mostly because man is incapable of conceiving of forever. But it was also, as well as a hope, a police method. Of course! You couldn't possibly have a wonderful method like that without turning it into a police method. So they said, "Boy, you better be good, because we can not only hang you here, we can hang you for an eternity. And boy, are you under control!"

And you say, "Well, it's not really. It's liquid." And you go on and... If you find some adult who is listening to this...

Now, you all of a sudden tell people this isn't true. You tell them so convincingly, they get uninhibited suddenly. In many cases they get completely uninhibited, and they simply go – as we have called it and still call it – "up the pole." Now, perhaps you will see a member of this class go "up the pole." And if you do – if you do – be very sympathetic to him. That will pull him down quicker than anything else I know of!

He has to have his material in this form, otherwise he can't credit it.

Or let him have something, make him a present of something. Give him some MEST, or anything, or just let him go up the pole. It is inevitable that in three to six months he will come down that pole with a splash and a crash which would be the amazement even of a fireworks distributor.

People have what's known as a bullpen. Years and years and years after somebody has heard a joke, he may suddenly figure it out. He's got data waiting. He's trying to make the data add up to the data. And if he can't make the data add up to the data, he gets unhappier and unhappier and unhappier. Well, actually, there's no reason why he should get unhappy just because somebody walked up to him – schoolteacher walked up to him one day and said so-and-so and so-and-so, and he didn't add it up, he didn't add it up, he didn't add it up. And he goes along years later and all of a sudden gets this point – ptock! He's got that out of the bullpen.

That is going up the pole: It is the achievement of ecstasy without knowledge.

But in an awful lot of people, particularly a person with no sense of humor, you have a larger, larger, larger bullpen, until the bullpen exceeds the size of the standard memory bank.

Now, in the field of mysticism, we occasionally have beheld this phenomenon. Someone suddenly says, "Why, it's only shadows." Boom! He's on his way, he goes up the pole and there he is. Maybe he stayed there for quite a while but he seldom stayed there longer than six months, because the lack of information could not help but result in his being booby-trapped by the MEST universe. As long as he stayed in a body, as long as he was still susceptible to the laws of economics in any way, as long as cliffs could fall on him, as long as he associated and went into ARC with other human beings, he was done!

And then this person does this trick on you: "Are you sure you really know that word? Now, does that word really mean that? Or would you say it..." Here you're getting a line of ideas – zzzzzzz – like this. And all of a sudden they'll stop you, and they want to, not get the definition that you have of a word, but they want to go over this word very carefully. You've stuck something in their bullpen when they do this. Now, that is upsetting.

So what is the answer to a mystic? The mystic's answer to this is "Let's see if we can possibly, by some strain of the brain, get up a pole. And if we can get up this pole, let's make awfully sure after that that we just deny the MEST universe, we deny eating, sleeping, we deny motion, we just stay off and we hold the whole thing off and live on a mountaintop or something, because otherwise we're going to come down the pole." And so they do all these things and come down the pole. There's really nothing more heartbreaking than coming down the pole once one has gone up.

A person who is completely unworried about existence won't worry about you being sequitur or not. He won't care if you identify, actually. You can do anything you want to do.

The reason we call this the pole, by the way, is the mathematician's analogy of the two-dimensional worm. He sees man as a two-dimensional worm. And this two-dimensional worm lives in a two-dimensional plane. And one day he's crawling along this two-dimensional plane and what do you know, he runs into a pole. He runs into something, and of course there can be nothing there because it's two-dimensional. And he's run into a third dimension, and that can't be there. That's obvious. So he sort of backs off and shakes his head a little bit and goes off and ponders it and maybe he tells another worm about it and maybe he doesn't.

And unless something he's trying to work out impinges on what you're saying, he goes ahead and he won't pay any attention to it. He just lets it ride – let it slide, dickens with it. He can figure it out because he can evaluate suddenly whether or not the situation is getting important. And if it gets important he will ask you for an identification of code. What symbols are you using? He'll want to know precisely what symbols they are, what they mean to you, exactly how this adds up, what the square root of all this is, and he puts it into this other problem – bing! – and he says, "Then that's what you mean?"

But one day there's some other worm crawling along there and he goes boom! And he says, "There can't be anything here. But by golly, maybe there is." And he speculates on this, and he tells some other worm about it and some other worm comes over and runs into this pole – wham! He says, "Gee, there is something here."

And you say, "Yes." And then you look at it for a second and you say, "Sss! Gee, that's what I've been meaning on that for years."

And maybe this third worm, by this time, has seen enough of it – there's enough agreement that there's a third dimension there, a pole there – that he goes up the thing like this. Very quietly, you see, he gets up a little higher and a little higher, a little higher, a little higher, a little higher – and then he holds on like mad and he looks down and he sees the plane down below him. And he says, "My God! My God! What am I doing up here?" Well, it was all right when he was going a little higher, a little higher, a little higher. Yeah, he was fairly happy then. But when he found out he was up there and there wasn't any other worm there – zzzz! Was this bad!

Now, he has made you do something that Voltaire often wrote that he demanded people do in arguing with him: "If you argue with me, you must first define your terms."

But he'll crawl down the pole and he'll go out and tell other people, "Look, there's a pole there; I've been up it."

Now, in school they very often teach you that there is no such thing as a definition of terms, that every word means everything else to everybody else, and therefore there's no meeting ground of any communication, and so on. They teach general semantics in universities in the States, sometimes, and this is the general moral, is that "nobody can understand anybody and you're all out of communication anyhow, you little boob, and boy, are we fixing you up!" No other intention, really.

And they'll say, "It's a what?"

The funny part of it is that the terms are terribly precise, and the oddity is, is that when we have lived through a certain similar strata of existence, our terminology becomes very exactly other people's terminology. You have no real trouble understanding it. But people in the teaching profession often wish to excuse their own lack of communication by saying nobody can understand anybody and they mean different things by all these different terms. No, they don't.

Well, he'll say, "Well, I know it's a pole. There's a third dimension."

The English language is the English language. If you met up with Shakespeare, you'd have to say, "Hm-hm."

They say, "Well, what's a third dimension?"

And he'd say, "And I mean that by that."

"Well, it's something you go up."

And you'd say, "Oh, is that what you're talking about?"

"Go where?"

Well, just straighten out the code book. Because all you're doing is flying signals. Look at a naval code. Naval code says "This flag, which is yellow and blue, means turn. If it flies below the numeral, it means turn left; if it flies above the numeral, it means turn right." You see that naval signal – you know whether it says turn right or turn left. Bing-bing, there isn't any question about it. Because words are symbols of action in the MEST universe. And it's only when we get sloppy, sloppy signals .

"Up."

Supposing we had a signal: the TURN pennant over NINE meant "turn right ninety degrees." But the TURN pennant over NINE also meant "eat chow." But the TURN pennant over NINE also meant "retreat." Gee, it would start to get important all of a sudden, wouldn't it?

"We know there's no up. What are you talking about?" And it finishes him. He's out of communication.

So the enemy is over there and you have to TURN NINE to get over there – or NINE TURN to get over there – and somebody flies NINE TURN and half the ships retreat. It's just that it isn't a good code book, it isn't a good signal book. And so does language fall down in this classification. And language will very often interfere.

Maybe it takes generations and generations of worms before somebody goes up the pole and comes down again and makes a remark on it solidly enough that somebody else will believe there's a pole there. And then maybe somebody will go and sniff at it. And then maybe another one will see it and maybe another one will climb it. And if enough people go up this pole and fall down this pole, somebody sooner or later is going to get a communication line about this pole.

Homonyms: "through." There's "he threw" and "through." It can become very foggy, by the way – language can – only where it has homonyms. And a nation is found to be as aberrated as it is homonym silly.

Well, horribly and ineptly enough, that's practically what I did. But the point is that if you suddenly were to present this pole and everything there was about this pole to somebody, and they all of a sudden jumped to the conclusion you were right but they didn't know why you were right – kaboom! They're up the pole, too.

There is no more madder nation than Japan. And you walk down the street in Japan and you say to some Japanese, "Blah-d-blah, blither-blither," something of the sort. And he says, "I withhold my foul breath from your face," and "Yes," and so on. And he goes on down the street. And you told him that you were on your way home and you wanted him to go on to the office. And he took it that you were on your way to the office and you wanted to go home.

You've got to have two maps for a pole. You've got to have a map which says "This is the way to get up a pole," and you've got to have another map and it says "This is the way to get down a pole." And if you don't have both of those maps, the subject's no good.

It's supposed to be a terribly hard language. It's not a hard language. It's as simple as baby talk, really. It's an awfully easy language in terms of languages. Some of the Malay languages are a little bit rough.

Now, the mathematician uses this analogy to explain fourth dimension. You know, I can tell you with a considerable sigh of relief that there is no fourth dimension. It's a wonderful mathematical symbol. You can run four simultaneous equations together and you can find that there's a w, x, y, z, but fortunately they're only theoretical. There is no w. It's not a fourth dimension. It's an infinity of universes. There is no fourth dimension, but there's your dimensions. And people go around straining to understand the fourth dimension. That's wonderful – there is none. If they had strained as hard to find out what is a universe, they would have known what the fourth dimension is.

But in katakana you have this great big character, which is a Chinese character, and then you have the little katakana stuff up at the corner of it (if I'm using the proper terms on this; it's been years since I ran into this stuff).

So you'll hear of such things as space warps, you'll hear of such things as "Well, fourth dimension is really time. Yeah, that's what it is! Fourth dimension is time. And you flick from a time fourth dimension through and then you find yourself in the MEST universe; and then you change your mind somehow and you go out of the MEST universe – and that is a fourth dimension – and you keep riding in this other..." Oh boy, we can really get screwy on this one. We can go mad on this one with no trouble at all.

Anyway, they've got the character and then they say how it's pronounced in Japanese. But do you know that two Japanese can stand together and converse with each other for a little while and then all of a sudden find out they're talking about two entirely different things, and with a great surprise find this out, and they promptly break out their pencils and pieces of paper, and they draw the Chinese character for the proper words they're using. "Oh. Oh, I understand; that's very good. Yeah, very good, yeah. I so solly. Yeah." Whee! That's a rough one.

And preclears have. They've sat around and they've figured and they've figured and they've figured. And they start asking the E- Meter this and that and they start testing themselves this way and that and they figure some more and they figure. And what do you know? They wind up in a state that approximates that poor worm with no map down. And they say, "There's something here! I know there's something here! But I can't get off of it myself and I can't tell anybody about it!"

They identify. And you will find that they're perfectly happy to do that. It makes bad communication. And they're perfectly happy to have bad communication. They don't want anything better than that. If you went in there and tried to straighten their language out and give them new words to support these, why, they'd be upset with you as all could be.

Well, gee, what do you know? We have a study of universes. And if I told you all these universes were the same? Nah. That's one of the primary points: Two universes are never the same universe. We're talking about universes. We're talking about the MEST universe as a specialized case, a degenerate universe. It's a sort of a trap universe to end all traps. It could be called the inevitable average, probably. The inevitable average of illusions would wind up as a MEST universe. You could always create a MEST universe. But the laws of creating universes, whether they apply to the MEST or another universe, are remarkably the same. But the universes could be remarkably different.

Now, you take katakana is, I think, if I remember rightly, some forty-seven characters – just sort of fishing this out of the hat. It's been ages since I ran into this. Anyway, some forty-seven characters, something like that. And when they write them all down they don't space anything – when they're just a stream of characters. There's no spaces that separate any of the words they represent. And boy, that sentence can read any way. It can read "The boy milked the cow" or it can read "Dogs are forbidden here" or it can read "The steamer will sail at nine." They don't care. Well, you just sort of infer from the surroundings what it's all about.

Now, how do you get away with all this? How do you square this around? If you were just studying the MEST universe, you might as well give up, because it's not worth studying and it will reward your study by kicking you flat. It's not worth studying – that's the truth – unless you had a better idea or a better goal in mind.

And that nation has the highest rate of suicide, has the highest rate of thick-lens glasses and did the most suicidal trick a few years ago. It's the doggonedest country.

Every man there is, is a universe. You talk about God: The most you will know about God for probably a long time to come is you. If you want to know what God is all about, or if you want to know what you're all about, you want to know what the fourth dynamic is all about, you consult the essential elements of "you-ness." Not buried, unconscious, submotivated, libido-icated, bypassed symbolizations of the left hind ruddy rod, which we therefore graph and say, "It's all mysterious and you can't understand you, so therefore we can own you." We're not running that operation.

I can talk that way about Japan because actually I'm very, very fond of the Japanese. It almost broke my heart in the last war to be fighting the Japanese, because I consider them a very interesting and a very, very nice people, as a people. And all of a sudden I was – kaboom.

What you know and what you are, you know, and you are where you are at this moment. Step outside of yourself, you're suddenly uninfluenced by a tremendous number of ridges which match your wavelength. You all of a sudden are freer to think, you're freer to be and your beingness picks up – markedly picks up. But you're still you. You're nobody else but you. The horrible part of it is, you never will be.

That's a silly thing about war: You find yourself shooting up your friends and trying to explain to people that... They say, "Well, why should you feel bad about some of these bucktooth Nips?" and "They did this and they did that."

Now, what are the essential elements of you, then? Now, when we say "What are the essential elements of you?" and "What are the essential elements of a universe?" we're talking about the same thing.

And you say, "Didn't we? Didn't we too?"

Now, we can take a preclear, we can tell him to step two feet outside of his head and get him squared around a bit, get his alertness and awareness way up. He all of a sudden looks around the body and he says, "Boom! I'm not a body, think of that. Gee. Hm! How peculiar. Never occurred to me before that I wasn't a body. Well, all right, so I'm not a body." But you haven't educated him even vaguely.

But they're crazy, those people.

You just told him to do that. You just went out here in the street and you just got a guy and you said, "All right, step two feet back of your head."

It's fascinating; it should tell you a great deal. It should tell you that the sanity of an individual is dependent upon his ability to differentiate clearly and cleanly, particularly in the field of communication.

And he says, "Do what?"

And what do you know? It has nothing to do with logic. In order to differentiate, you don't have to be logical. And what does this mean? It means that an individual who can differentiate to a tremendous degree can also create to a tremendous degree, and really is living in such instantaneous time (which will be covered later) that he doesn't have any real need to be logical.

You say, "Well, be two feet back of your head."

Why does he ever have to figure anything out? He can create so much action that action always solves action: boom-boom-bing! Action, action. Or he finds out the whole universe is run wrong – boom! another universe. It does not make any difference to him. But here we have logic.

And the fellow says, "...All right. What do you want? Well, wait a minute, wait a minute. I am two feet behind my head! What are you doing to me?"

Communication in essence depends upon logic.

Don't think for a moment that your preclear has to have any technology. You sometimes have to be kind of subtle about it. You kind of say, "You know, it's true that human beings have an immortal soul. And sometimes, in rare cases, men are their own souls. This has been known to happen. And sometimes if you merely ask someone to stand out from his body, he does it – if he's very intelligent he can do this. The lower classes can't" – something on that order.

What's logic? It's a shade of similarities. It is never a shade of identities. Identities are theoretical things which exist in mathematics only and do not exist in the real universe. And mathematics is not directly applicable to the real universe but is only an abstract of the real universe, which makes it easier and handier to get some sort of approximation of what's going on in the real universe. Anybody can cast up any kind of theoretical mathematics he wants to cast up and he can get wonderful results, and he can also figure out all kinds of things that aren't there.

You say, "Be two feet back of your head."

It doesn't mean anything's wrong with mathematics; it means that mathematics has a greater virtuosity than even a mathematician suspected. It's wonderful. But if you start identification with a mathematical formula, you can follow almost anything out.

And the fellow goes bong! "Oh, I am? Isn't that peculiar? Isn't that... Oh, that – that's awful."

If you start identifying with zero, for instance – whoo! You get the Einstein time formula. Oh, I've forgotten what it is, but there's t0 in there. And then people come around and they say, "Einstein's time formula. You know, it's the Lorentz-Fitzgerald equation as used and modified by Einstein, and that demonstrates that nothing can go faster than the speed of light."

Or he'll say, "Whee, here I go! Goodbye!" Bong! The body's there.

And you say, "Well, wait a minute, it's got the square root of zero in it."

And you say, "Hey! Where the hell is that preclear? Here I sit with a body on my hands!"

And they say, "Well, that's t0 and that's different. That means 'no time'."

I can just see the police now. It's a funny thing about police, they're awfully sticky. They insist that bodies have their hearts beating and everything else, if you can imagine such a silly law. Just as though they could do it. They insist that bodies be alive and so on. So anyway, sometimes your preclear does a bunk and he's halfway past Arcturus when you finally get the right word: "Well, think, then, of your poor auditor."

And you say, "Yeah," you say, "that's a zero."

All of a sudden, bong! All right, he's back.

"Well, no, that's just zero time; that's the nonexistence of time. That's..."

"What did you do it for? I was on my way. Hm, been waiting to do this for ages."

And you say, "There's a zero in the formula!"

Well, he's outside of himself in universe time and space: partially his own universe time and space – for the first time contactable by him – and partially MEST universe time and space. There he is. And there, standing immediately in front of you, is the matter of a multiplicity of universes.

"Well," they say, "oh, I guess you could call it a zero. But this is mathematics and that's different."

If this material could just do that and produce this phenomenon, it would be awfully interesting and it would be worth doing. It really would be. If you just knew that somebody could step outside the back of his head, take a look at his body and adjust whatever was wrong with his body, and step back in again and be well, this would be quite remarkable. We would have done a great deal and it would be perfectly justified. But unfortunately, this isn't all there is to know about it – or very fortunately.

No sir. No sir, it's not different. Algebra – all you've got to do is throw a zero into the equation and what do you get in algebra? You can get 1=2, 2=12; you get any answer you want out of an algebraic formula if you just throw a zero in it – if you throw a slippy zero in it – that says 1-1=2.. And what do you know? It can be worked out so it will: 1-1=2, because 1-1 is zero. And any time you throw a zero in...

You'd have to know the laws of universes. A Theta Clear is merely a thetan who is stable outside of his body. That's all he is. You can kick the body in the shins, you can punch the body in the nose, you can shake the body around, you could probably throw the body under a truck – he'd still stay outside. He'd still be himself He wouldn't snap into the body and go unconscious. That is a Theta Clear and that's all a Theta Clear is. It isn't an educated thetan nor a cleared thetan nor a thetan with his own universe nor anything. It's just somebody who can be outside of his body, know he is completely outside of his body, know that he is the life unit, know that he is still him and that he doesn't have to snap back into the body automatically every time the body gets hurt. That's a Theta Clear. Well, where do you go from there? That's not too difficult to achieve. On some preclears, of course, we'll probably bury them, thetans and all. They've probably been in the MEST universe so long that they probably will not be able ever to get out of it now. Probably when you put them in the coffin, pour in the formaldehyde, it'll probably leave the thetan there too – probably in a vague state of awareness; a very vague state of awareness. And then it'll probably come up into full awareness but be unable to move any part of the body, you see, and have to stay there in the coffin – I mean, probably... And formaldehyde smells so bad! I can't understand why such a preclear doesn't co-operate more. It's really his fault for not co-operating. I wouldn't be talking about anyone I see here.

So, an identification is usable in the theoretical abstract. But if applied to the world of reality or universes, it's insanity. And what's the matter with the insane patient? Why is he in that sanatorium? Well, I'll tell you why he's there. He's there because he doesn't know the bed from the bureau from the chair from the attendant from present time from 1760. That's why he's there. He really doesn't.

Anyway, the point is, you've been in that state many times and you didn't know enough to go on in that state. You didn't think it was possible to. You thought you had to have a body. You thought you had to have this. In other words, this whole thing was booby-trapped. You died – boom! You said, "Where's a body? Where's a body? Where's a body? Oh, I got to report back to base. I've got to do something or other." And then you say, "Ah, finally got a body. Gee! Gee, now I'm in the know again." In other words, "Now I'm all set to be more aberrated than ever."

Now, some of the time he will know and he'll apparently differentiate beautifully. He'll know that you eat the food on the plate, not the plate. And he'll get along that way and he'll get along on some automatic responses alright. And he'll go into a dramatization. And this thing will run off like a phonograph record – it has no application to present surroundings. And what has he done? He's said that "this dramatization, this phonograph record which I am running off this way, that runs just this way, is applicable in this surrounding and solves the present problems." That's identification.

Vicious cycle – one that had a tendency to run down after a few thousand years, because, you see, you're in the last ditch. This is the last leg. The last leg is MEST body, Earth, 1952 A.D. That's sort of where you throw... Well, you say, "Poor old Bill. I know he was a teammate and everything, but he's gotten worse and worse and worse. And every time we put him in a doll, he sticks. So we'll just send Bill down to Earth and maybe he'll get to be a congressman or something."

You could say a sane person has thoughts like this that he can connect or relate if he wishes. A logical person has thoughts, each one of which bears a resemblance to the last one, and that's kind of aberrated because it's stimulus-response thinking.

Be it as it may, here you have, then, an entirely different thing. You have an educated thetan – educated thetan – who could not only perceive this universe but construct his own; who could not only monitor a body, but move in and out of one at will and do anything he wanted to it and still move out of it again. Or he could stand off five thousand yards and run a body through all of its paces and have it play the Moonlight Sonata. Um-hm.

Have you ever had anybody tell you that you really couldn't think of an original thought because it depended upon the last thought? Well, that is an operation – that is an insidious, black operation. They're trying to convince you that you have no ability to think an original thought, and if you can't think an original thought, you can't have an original universe, and that every thought you thought depended on some thought you had just thought before. Ooh. They're showing you, you have no illusion, that you have nothing of your own, really – it's just sort of all running off in an uncontrolled, horrible stream that just goes on and on, that you think all the time, that all your thoughts are connected to all your thoughts and there's some shadow of this... Nuh-uh, that's not true. Fortunately for our sanities that is not true. But gee, it sure is good.

Here you have an educated thetan, a thetan who knows enough to handle the problems of the MEST universe, knows enough about universes to handle his own, and knows enough to protect and handle his own universe when he has one. And knows enough of the track and what happens in the MEST universe so that it can't happen to him again.

A ridge behaves this way. A ridge with facsimiles on it behaves this way, but not a thinking being. He can cut his thought line anyplace he wants to and start thinking about something else at will. It does not depend on earlier thoughts.

What have you done?

Now, you could also draw logic like this. You could say all these data are more or less related, you see? These are data, each one of these square boxes. And therefore, this thought is vaguely connected to that thought, see? And therefore, we have an association between those two thoughts.

You've read the book Science of Survival. It says theta impinges itself heavily upon MEST and then disenturbulates – withdraws and disenturbulates – saving what it has known and learned about MEST. Well, of course this is the end of the cycle, because it's the beginning of one.

I'll give you a better example of that. We start talking about apples and that leads us into talking about apple boxes. And we say, "Well, let's box up these apples and sell them at the market." It's perfectly logical.

A thetan has come down this track now for an awful long time, and there's been an awful lot of information accumulated and collected. And what is it? It is not a study of the MEST universe. We are not here learning about the secret of the MEST universe. We're learning about the basic laws of universes so that you can make one, so that you could have one, so that you could protect one. Sounds wild, doesn't it? Sounds pretty wide.

Or we get this (this would be completely illogical): Man on a subway train, subway train's making an awful lot of noise, and he turns over to the other fellow and he says, "I'm trying to get off at Wembley. Where is it?"

The science of physics or the science of chemistry are peculiarly applicable to the MEST universe because it's gotten so bad. But you could make a universe where they applied. Or, just for kicks in your universe, you could fix them so they wouldn't apply. Repeal Ohm's law. All right.

The next fellow to him says, "This isn't Wednesday, it's Thursday."

Therefore, you're studying two different subjects. You're studying (1) a process: Standard Operating Procedure, Issue 2 (not Issue 1). You're going to have the joke on the first class; you're learning a different process. You've got to know Issue 1, too. [See Standard Operating Procedure for Theta Clearing in the Appendix of this volume.]

And the next one says above the roar of the train, "Well, I'm thirsty too. Let's all get off and have a beer." Now, you see, that's non sequitur.

Here we have, then, Standard Operating Procedure, Issue 2. That is how you make a Theta Clear. That's all there is to that. That's easy. I could tell you that tonight and explain it to you tonight, and the Instructors could talk to you about it for a couple of days and a couple of periods, and you could go out and do it. And we could turn loose an auditor or two on you and probably have you all cleared.

To make that logical we'd have to tell it this way: The fellow leans over and he says, "I'm trying to go up to Wembley."

For what? And to what end? To make a Theta Clear. Great. Same thing as saying set you up in a shooting gallery – let's make ducks out of all of you on a shooting gallery. Because you'd run around as a Theta Clear, and you might last for a day and you might last for two weeks and you might last for six weeks and you might last for another lifetime and you might last for four or five lifetimes – and then one day, there you'd be on that doggone trap again. Or next week you'd run into a ridge and go kaboom! and go into apathy and say, "What am I gonna do now? Nothing. There is nothing that can be done about it. Move back into a body, I guess." That would be great, wouldn't it?

And the fellow says, "Well, I'm not going there till tomorrow and it'll be Thursday. If you want to go there tomorrow, I will show you the way."

Well, there's nothing easier than this therapy.

And the other fellow says, "That reminds me, I haven't had a drink for hours. Let's all get off the train and have a beer."

You want to patch somebody up – somebody hasn't been able to walk for six years, or something of the sort. Tell them to step a foot back of the head. If they can't step back of the head, then they go to Step II, go to Step III, go to Step IV. And they finally do get a step [out] the back of the head, and then you have them patch it up again. And you say, "Move back in. That's fine. Okay." Pat them on the head and let them go their way. It's a fast process. It even works on the people who are complaining very bitterly now that they are unable to get out. There are two or three of these. But it works very easily. Actually, if they only knew it, the other auditors of the class have plotted against them. And actually, people have fixed it so they're unable to do this, and so on, and it's all plotted that way.

It isn't funny, is it? But it's logical. And that's the funny part of logic: it's not funny. And that's the funny part of humor. Humor is either complete identification or complete differentiation.

Well, actually, it might as well be. See, I could take any one of these characters and spring him in a very short space of time. I sprung the roughest case that ever walked in to a Foundation – that had had so many hours of processing that they'd run it up on a tabulating machine and broke the tabulator. And I started in with this case on Standard Operating Procedure 1950 and did a little bit for the case – did quite a bit for the case – but stepped in with Theta Clearing techniques and in approximately, I don't know, about three hours, had myself a halfway Theta Clear. Two other periods, maybe a half an hour or two hours – somewhere in between a half an hour and two hours more – had myself somebody doing a large part of the rest of the process.

Now, you take the fellow on identification: We say he rode a horse, and he "rowed" a horse – r-o-w-e-d, he rowed a horse. That, by the way, is perfectly all right. I mean, to an insane person that would be logical – rowed a horse up the road.

And this preclear was over to Buckingham Palace the other day, trying to interfere with the British government. And I discouraged this preclear a great deal about this whole thing. I said, "I don't want the British government interfered with and you don't either. It's doing just fine. Doing just fine. And when speeches are given in the House of Lords, they ought to go the way the speech was supposed to be given, not get sensible. And you don't want, suddenly, somebody breaking forth and making declarations about the atomic bomb and so forth."

All right, get those three categories.

Preclear practically went into apathy, by the way, because all this M.P. did was stutter. Got the M.P. going and then he couldn't make his speech, he just kept stuttering. It was very embarrassing. He never stuttered before. Maybe he's still stuttering. I'll have to phone him up and ask.

Now, that's identification.

But boy, that's really low-order stuff to put this thing to use on. I mean, here's a preclear, processed for a few hours, beautiful shape, the next thing you know, we're over in a member of Parliament – over in Parliament. Great.

Now let's take a look at these three compartments in terms of electronics. We could sort of say we have condensers. These cells, electronic cells, could be handled at will and any time; they are nicely insulated. One is insulated from another perfectly, they don't discharge one across the other, and therefore they can be controlled and regulated with great ease. Right?

God help Eisenhower, that's all I've got to say. I've heard more people say, "You know, I'm not doing anything tonight. I think I'll go over to America and..." Well, the dickens with this kind of stuff I mean, you'll find, eventually, that about all you can do for a government is let it evolve, not revolute. Let's evolute them, not revolute them.

On this one you don't have as thorough an insulation, but you do have an ability to link these things together to make a flow possible: the flow will go along here, you'll get some action on the flow. That's all right.

Revolution never produces anything. Throwing something out of gear momentarily, the vast inertia of the people closes in again and patches it all up. Evolution can be fairly fast, but evolution is on a level of the people, not on the level of the government. A people get the government it deserves. You have to change the people to change the government.

But what about this one? That means a complete short circuit. Although this is in no wise connected with structure, it is peculiar to note that the protein molecules of the brain in an insane person are short circuited. A current entering any part of the head will evidently restimulate any part of the thinking apparatus. I mean, he starts thinking on anything, then he thinks of everything. But he thinks it all in the same time and without anything at all. So you get what is known as confusion, and that actually is the MEST universe – all force vectors going in all directions simultaneously: short circuit. Everything equals everything. Great.

So, it takes public education and a lot of other things. You're not going to go out here, though, and teach these people Theta Clearing. They're not going to believe you, in the first place. You're going to have to teach them how to raise better babies and how to keep their husband happy or how to make him unhappy, or you've got to do something with these techniques to make them immediately, instantaneously applicable to the everyday business of living. You can do that. But that's the solution if there's any such solution. It's along in that band.

Now, you've got to have a differentiation, and you've got to pull this identification at least up to similarities to make an insane person well.

Now, we're not handling the governments of the world, or even vaguely interested in the governments of the world, in this course. We're interested in the anatomy of universes. What's a universe? How does it get that way? How does it go off the rails? What are the basic laws behind them? What do you have to do as an individual with a universe? Are you capable of the manufacture of a universe? Can you regulate and modulate a universe? Those are questions which you will have to answer for yourself. The data is all here. When I say all here, I mean all here. I mean, we've got the information. Works!

The only thing you have to do to make an insane person well is to show him or have him recognize the difference between the attendant and the bureau. And I'm not talking just in nonsense; that is actually the best process. Get him to locate the attendant in time and space, get him to locate the bureau in time and space. Now get him to locate the bed in time and space, get him to locate his pyjamas in time and space. Now get him to locate his hand in time and space and his body in time and space. And all of a sudden he says, "I'm here and this is 1952." And that is the best technique I know of with which to treat the insane.

All we've been doing for just ages now in Dianetics and Scientology – all I've been doing is simply shuffling the deck again and dealing it, taking the factors involved and dealing them a different way and taking the factors involved and dealing them a different way. And that way you can get thousands and thousands of techniques.

Now, identification, similarity and difference; then these are the three levels. All right.

But you only get one set of Axioms. It should be quite important to you, because it tells you there's a finite number of data for you to learn and know well.

And by the way, you don't have to keep too close a record of this. You'd better keep notes on some of them, but we will have these in AP&A, which will be issued to all of you as soon as it's manufactured, and that will be in ten days or two weeks.

If you learn this data and know it very well, you will be able to answer yes to all those questions I just asked. You have to prove it to yourself. But at no moment, anywhere in this course, are you going to find me forcing any datum down your throat.

Male voice: It is in AP&A already, isn't it?

I'm teaching you two different things. There's two different lines of data going out here. One is simply fact, data. This is the datum and that's all this is – this is a datum. And then you'll hear that datum evaluated in its proper place: That, I have never under any circumstances perverted in any way. I have never slanted data in any way. I give you data as it is just for the sake of data. And the other is my opinion of the datum. I'll give you my opinion of the datum. That really is relatively worthless to you. Really. Makes life interesting, about all.

We have this edition of it coming out here.

What I tell you about "governments should evolute," yeah, you can learn that the hard way, but it happens to be more or less my opinion. It's none of my business what you do with this information really. It's just data. Just data. And as a result, when I give you this data, I'm not giving you opinion. When I'm giving you data, I'm giving you data: The data is tested, the data works, the data is inexorable as geometry. And then to make life more interesting, I very often give you my opinion of the data.

Logic 1: Knowledge is a whole group or subdivision of a group of data or speculations or conclusions on data or methods of gaining data.

My own philosophy, my own method of existing is far, far different, perhaps, in many cases than the data itself, because I've selected out, after all, certain randomities.

We have said, in that, knowledge is data – knowledge is data. It's facts or data. And we don't, notice, say about what. We don't say it's data about anything, we just say it's data. A datum is a fact. It would have some identification, then, with space, time, energy or matter, or some combination thereof. And that would be a datum; it would be a descriptive thing. It could be the thing itself or it could be a symbol representing the thing itself See how wide our definition is here.

There are certain things which I have decided to be mad at in this universe. I've decided to be mad at psychiatrists. There is no reason why I should be mad at psychiatrists. Really, the sensible thing for me to do about psychiatrists is simply go over and talk to them, make a couple of patients well, show them how they can make bigger fees, pat them all on the head, and you've got Dianetics and psychiatry. But there's no randomity there. No randomity at all.

Now, Logic 2: A body of knowledge is a body of data, aligned or unaligned, or methods of gaining data. There it is.

They're never going to hurt a preclear, really. I can rave and rant about electric shock and prefrontal lobotomy – you can pick them up in the next life and they'll be as good as new.

Now, Logic 3 is: Any knowledge which can be sensed, measured or experienced by any entity is capable of influencing that entity.

All right.

And that is a rifle shot straight into Kantian reason. That is a good, solid, big, heavy-caliber rifle shot. That is a declaration of independence over the types of nonsensical, mystical balderdash they were passing out 160 years ago, and which killed the ability to think in man more than anything else I know.

Therefore, what I give you is data. The data in these Axioms is pointed up very sharply. And you can tell very easily what is my opinion or what is my side comment or my randomity, and what the datum is. The data stands, as itself, as close to pure knowledge as is available.

The philosophy was one of the beautiful control mechanisms. It said "All knowledge that is any knowledge at all transcends the realm of human experience and therefore a human being can never contact it and never know it, so knowledge is beyond knowing for you. Back into the pit, you slave, back into the salt mines; you will never know."

This data I'm giving you now on the Axioms falls into three categories. The first is what we're going to call the Q list. There's nothing in mathematics even vaguely approaching this, but Q means the top level from which we are now working – the top level from which we're now working; the highest echelon from which all other things are derived. Knowledge is a pyramid, and knowledge as a pyramid gets itself a common denominator which evaluates all other data below it. At this point of this pyramid, this top point, we have what could be called a Q, and it could be also called a common denominator. It is in common to every other datum in this pyramid full of data.

And that was the byword: German transcendentalism. And that ruled the world of knowledge and philosophy and laid poor old Philosophy in her grave for about 162 years. Interesting, isn't it?

Now, at any level of this pyramid – any level – we have a greater complexity of knowledge. At any level in this pyramid, as we descend down the line from that common denominator, we find it less and less able to be recognized – this common denominator – in the data. It's less and less obvious what its common denominator is, but that doesn't make that common denominator any less a common denominator or any less workable. And the Q from which we're operating now evaluates all the data in the material universe.

They said all knowledge is above the realm of human experience. Well, just look at that for a moment, and you'll find out: How can knowledge be above the realm of human experience if the human being is even using the word knowledge to describe it?

That's a small statement, but I'll make it bigger. The Q we're operating from now evaluates all the data in any universe, and it's not near high enough as a Q. There's a higher Q than this, and I'm fishing for it now. Have it one of these days and what do you know, we'll have a simpler pyramid. Right now the pyramid is pretty simple.

It says anything can be sensed by an entity which can influence the entity. Anything can be sensed by the being in some fashion or other, otherwise there isn't any such thing as a one-way flow.

So, if you can envision knowledge as this pyramid – and that's one of the oldest symbols there is for knowledge, by the way. You see in Masonic emblems, you see in Egypt, all over the place you see pyramids, conical objects, that sort of thing. That's what they're trying to represent. The datum I am giving you first appeared here on earth eighty-two hundred years ago. The analogy of knowledge and the pyramid. They've been stumbling along with it ever since. You even find it in Mayan culture, and so on.

That's what it says in electronics. It says a flow that can run this way on a wire could be rigged to run the other way on the wire. And it says if you get a flow coming this way on the wire, you can measure it as coming this way on the wire. That's all. And it says that we are not then governed as dirty little puppets of some sort or another, all busted up and kicked into the gutter and used any way anybody cares to use us. No, it says we are beings capable of knowing. And that's all that Logic says. We are beings capable of knowing. And that is actually something that will probably always go unremarked, but that is what broke the back of the human mind – just that.

Well now, if you could envision, then, our datum here, you can see that we're dealing with something which can be found in every scrap of knowledge or action or material or space or time or beingness of any universe.

And the first statement I ever made on that was: They keep telling me in the psychology department, they keep telling me in India, they keep telling me here and telling me there that it's all too complex for anybody to know about. Well, I am affected by the activities of the human mind and the activities of other minds. And if I am affected by them, I know I can know about it.

Now, we had an earlier pyramid. It was no less applicable, but it had a lower-level Q, or CD, and that is survival. Survival is our past Q. We were operating from "life is survival": goal of life is to survive. To survive employs space and time. And that word survival, by the way, evaluates this life, it evaluates most things. But it doesn't evaluate everything. The thing it doesn't evolve is all universes, because you don't have to base a universe on the tenet survival. You can have an instantaneous universe which has no time in it. Hence the word survival was betrayed.

And everybody said, "Oh, no, no, no! Nnnnnn! Nasty, nasty, you must not touch." And boy, a lot of them are sorry I did. But don't let me catch anybody here falling in that same pit of saying it's all too complex, or agreeing with somebody saying we can't know about it, or we don't have the right to know about it, because experience has told us adequately, by this time, that we have every right to know about the human mind.

Now, what is this other Q? We've had two or three, by the way: There was this survival and then there was the higher level of self-determinism as beingness. And now we have the Q of self- determinism defined.

And it's told us something else: That there are two additional rights that man has to have before he can achieve political freedom. And one is the right to his own life and the other is the right to his own sanity. And those had better be added to the rights of man. And if you today are fighting a revolution or find yourself fighting a revolution, it will add up eventually to fighting for those two rights: one's right to his own life and his right to his own sanity.

Q simply means the most common datum that sums all other data and the point from which we are operating. It does not say there is no higher point. It does not say that point does not exist. Q says that point up here above the pyramid is probably attainable, but we aren't there. We aren't there. We're operating from here. And this, by the way, is quite satisfactory as an operating point at the moment. If it weren't satisfactory as an operating point, there wouldn't be any subject of Scientology or Dianetics. This is Dianetics and this is Scientology. They're operating from a higher Q. All right.

Now, right here on Earth, right to one's own life would be quite revolutionary. But it applies to the whole MEST universe – the right to one's own sanity. Because throughout this universe, that is the line that has been denied. Nobody had any right to his own sanity. So the declaration is very simple. It says "You have a right to know. And if you have a right to know, you really should have a right to continue knowing." That, of course, is just an interpolation by me and an opinion by me. That's not necessarily data.

And we get the first of the Qs, the first of the list of Qs: The common denominator of all life impulses is self-determinism.

Now, a corollary: That knowledge which cannot be sensed, measured or experienced by any entity or type of entity cannot influence that entity or type of entity.

The common denominator of all life impulses is self-determinism. And that's Q 1.

If it can't be sensed, measured or experienced by him it can't influence him. So let's have done with voodoo, mumbo jumbo and the great god WallaWalla. Just skip them. Because any time you feel yourself creepily wondering whether or not you aren't being influenced from some direction, go find your auditor. For two reasons: (1) You'd have to be in awfully bad shape to be so influenced, and (2) because 99 and 9999999 percent of the time... And 100 percent of the time you could identify it. So what you're protesting against would be your inability to identify. And if you can't identify something immediately, what do you know, it's not important.

Q 2: Self determinism may be defined as the location of matter and energy in space and time, as well as a creation of time and space in which to locate matter and energy. Got that? That's self-determinism. Nice high Q, isn't it? Works, though. Oh, that's terribly workable.

So, just on the subject of knowledge, we are dealing with the level of knowledge. We're dealing with epistemology, actually, that branch of philosophy which has to do with identifying the identity of knowledge. And that, by the way, is Scientology; the therapy is Dianetics.

I got this, by the way, by watching empirically the behavior of what they laughingly call electricity – and suddenly spotted what was left out of it. And what was spotted and left out of it was the fact that every electrical generator has a base and is entirely and completely dependent upon its base. And the electrodes, in the absence of a base – the terminals, in the absence of a base – simply snap together and you get no electrical flow. And the essential part of any generator is its base. And what does a base do? That's actually the metal base of the motor, you see? It's fastened down to Earth and Earth is fastened down in the gravity system of this solar system, and that's fastened down in the universe in some fashion or other. And what's that base doing?

Now, Logic 4: A datum is a facsimile of states of being, states of not being, action or inactions, conclusions or suppositions in the physical or any other universe.

That means that everything in this universe, actually, by succession of points, is appended to that base one way or the other. And it says that that base is imposing space and time upon the terminals in an electrical generator. So it says, therefore, that all of these fancy formulas about electricity have had a missing element in them. And maybe that doesn't impress you, but we just got through upsetting – with that, the entire study of elementary electricity becomes upset; you've added something new to it. From James Clerk Maxwell on to present time has not seen very much added, but plenty down here in the field of complexity.

I'm going to make a change on this. I have just a moment ago defined a datum for you. I said a datum was a symbol of, or the actual thing, of space, time, matter or energy in any universe. It was a symbol of space, time, matter, energy or any combination thereof. Or it was the matter, space, time, energy itself, symbol of. That's a datum. In other words, it is any scrap of or any combination of or a symbol of any scrap of or any combination of any universe: datum – no matter how great, no matter how small. And that's a datum.

Now, let me give you another example of this. Down here, this big field of complexity. And anybody can get more complicated. Any dope, any fool, can come along and say, "Well, let's see, you've got it nice and simple, now let's make it complicated. Now let's get it more complicated. Now let's say that in order to study Scientology, you have to master the Siamese alphabet backwards. Now, let's see, after we've known that, let's go on and get a more complicated datum and an even more complicated datum and an even more complicated datum, and this is the stuff from which we're now going to jump off. The complicated of the most complicated that we can possibly complicate, and we're going to jump off from this point that E=mc2 by the square root of mice. And how you ever get this back to the other, we're not interested in. We're going to go from that point... If you don't know what that point means, just to hell with you. Just the dickens with you. We don't want anything more to do with you. If you don't know that E=mc2 divided by the square root of mice, why, you got no business studying this subject, and we flunk you right now." Typical. Typical in the evolution of a science is to go on and get more complex and more complex and never dream for a moment that you'd better look for a simplicity.

So that change should be noted by you.

And you think I'm just talking about modern scientists, but I'm not. I'm talking about the boys that came after the lads eighty- two hundred years ago in the upper highlands of India, and the later people from there, the Vedic people, and the later people than that, the Runa Vedic, and the later people than that. And boy, they really got it nice and complicated. Do you know that every essential datum – every essential datum – of evolution, of anything and everything you want to think of, is contained in mysticism and in the basic Hindu writings and in the Vedic writings? Do you know evolution is in there? Do you know the Darwinian theory is in there? You know everything is in there? I don't know anything that's left out. They're all there.

A datum is not a facsimile. I am very relieved and pleased to tell you that a facsimile is not necessary to the process of thinking, but is a record of the process of thinking which is used by people in thinking. In other words, there was another method of thinking. And in better knowing that new method of thinking, we have much wider powers of thinking. But this was in the realm of discovering something new, whereas the facsimile system is actually – as all these datums were slanted – wholly Homo sapiens. That's how Homo sapiens thinks. And we're having to use this whole list of Axioms, and this is the changes you'll find in it: the whole list of Axioms now are applicable to the thetan. So we have a list of Axioms which apply to Homo sapiens, and the ones I'm giving you now apply to a thetan. They're up-strata each time, a little bit – a little higher knowingness.

There isn't any reason, really, why you shouldn't be studying mysticism right across the boards – no real reason at all – except for one thing: they booby-trapped it or they didn't know. And for every correct datum in mysticism, there are a dozen incorrect data. For every correct datum in mysticism, there's a misevaluation. For every correct datum in mysticism, there's a reversal of fact, so that if you enter in and use that data, you will be smacked flat. If you want to finish yourself completely and utterly, get standard works on mysticism and practice them just exactly the way it says and you'll be a dead duck one day. And the reason for this is very simple: (1) nobody wanted to integrate the information completely, because it was much more fun some other way; and (2) boys along the line had no slightest desire for anybody coming after them to really know. They had no desire for that, and so they booby-trapped it just as though they'd laid land mines across the line.

Now, Logic 5: A definition of terms is necessary to the alignment, statement and resolution of suppositions, observations, problems and solutions and their communication.

Let's take the subject of the chakra – very interesting. There are seven of them. And what do you know! It says right at the beginning there, "Man is a mind who owns a body. He is not a body who owns a mind." It says, "This is the crown chakra. The crown chakra is in the head, it's in the skull. There are seven chakra in all. And now it's the last one which one approaches."

"If you'd argue with me, define your terms." That's just taken straight out of Voltaire's mouth and made more complicated. And we can change that Logic 5 a little bit this way: A definition of terms is necessary – a definition of terms. We can go worse than that and we can say a definition of data. You've got to describe what data you're talking about before you can talk about the data.

"The crown chakra is the last one which one approaches." Get that. Says that right there. There's the true datum and the false datum. If you took it as the last one to approach, and if you did to the other chakra in the body – the other zones or centers, which are not really beings but which we call entities – if you did nothing but process those and you took up the crown chakra last, the crown chakra would not come free with any ease at all. It would take a terrifically specialized technique.

Definition (and by the way, this is a very, very slippy thing) – this is the definitions of definitions. A Descriptive definition: one which classifies by characteristics, by describing existing states of being.

If you started in with the crown chakra and said, "Beat it, bud," he would. But if you address the other, if you address chakra number seven and work backwards up the line toward the crown chakra, you would probably have your preclear in a condition whereby he was so stuck in his body that only super-super-human- being techniques would free him. That's the way you pin him down.

Example: People are insane and there are five classes of insanity. One is schizophrenia, another is manic-depressive, another is dementia praecox, another one is oh, I don't know, over the barrel and another one is the polka. These manifest themselves by having that... the patient itches, and so on. What is schizophrenia? Schizophrenia applies to a patient who itches. Difference: some schizophrenics don't itch. Now get that, that sounds awfully wicked of me and vicious, but you know I had to wade through all that stuff. You don't have to and I had to.

If you get your preclear to deny the MEST universe and deny it and deny it, you start up a one-way flow of the uncontrollability of force and he will be unable to manufacture enough energy to keep himself afloat. The data is all there; it's all there. It's been there for eighty-two hundred years.

I waded through it under the supposition that I could find something out. You know, I'd get bashed in and mowed down by these words, words, words. Well, that's definition by classification: describing different states of being. That's a very bad way to define.

Now, it should strike you as very alarming that somebody would really booby-trap this line. But let's be kinder about it and let's merely say, "Well, they didn't have a process." And you'd probably be closer to the truth, because there's so much truth in it that the added booby-trapping goes unnoticed. And when people try to practice it – oh, boy. You are going to find this out: When you have a preclear who has been deeply, deeply steeped in mysticism, he's going to be much harder to work. Because those things are angled toward pinning him down, pinning him down but good. All you have to do is reverse mysticism and handle him that way.

Now, we get definition, Differentiative definition: one which compares unlikeness to existing states of being or not being.

So, where you see these techniques crossing, remember this: that we are studying a Western extrapolation from basic mechanical principles learned almost entirely and wholly from basic studies of electronics, but with at least very sufficient knowledge of mysticism and Hinduism to suddenly recognize these data when they show up and suddenly say, "Boy, that is why!"

"Smallpox: Smallpox is different from other illnesses because it leaves poxes." "Diphtheria is diphtheria because it is not like smallpox."

I spent a lot of time when I was a kid watching little matches float around the bowl. I could push them around a bowl once. I could sit still and do this and read minds and read books. But it's very funny; they've got it fixed that if you do them the way they say, the technique will leave you, the ability will desert you. Isn't that horrible? They tell you all these things are possible and then fix you up so you can't do them. The way you're supposed to practice them is the way that ends your doing of them.

Well now, those are ridiculous examples of this type of classification. But it's circular reasoning. And you be careful of this when you start studying something. Read it over, and if it's just saying that it is classified by being classified, or by things that are like it, that's a pretty kind of a poor definition. And it's classified by things which are unlike it, that's a poor definition for the observable reason...

Now, you don't have to take my word for that. You'll see before the end of this course if you want to go back and study that material. That material is rich, though. And I'm not condemning the material, I'm just warning you in handling it that you might as well be sitting on a lighted bonfire juggling skyrockets. It's just about that safe. I'm just warning you, don't cross them up until you've got your track very straight and you know this orientation which you're handing out very well. And then pick up that subject if you want for a scholarly study and look it over, and you will, I'm sure, be saying much what I'm saying: "Gosh! If they just hadn't booby-trapped the line, if they just hadn't misevaluated this data, look where we'd be today! Look where we'd be. Isn't it a shame!" And I know you'll be saying that.

Now, the Associative definition is: one which declares likeness to existing states of being or not being.

All right. So your Q 2 reverts right back to elementary electricity, and it tells you that the law of alternating current has to have an additional factor in it in order to make it work: a base. And what's this base got to do with it? Well, it's got a lot to do with it. It tells you that your preclear, in trying to operate, is actually operating with energy, and that you make energy by locating it in space and time. You make energy, you create energy.

Now we get an Action definition: one which delineates cause and potential change of state of being by cause of existence, inexistence, action, inaction, purpose or lack of purpose. That sounds complicated, but that's not.

But the MEST universe has the most remarkable factor about it. And this is not a Q; I mean, this is just a comment on it. It has a remarkable factor. And this factor I'd hate to think was completely true, but it just kind of seems like it is. As far as this universe itself is concerned, you can create energy into it but you can't destroy energy out of it. It has a self- perpetuating law in it called the conservation of energy, which makes it an expanding universe, because you can actually create energy into it.

A definition should contain within it both the cause and remedy – the cause, effect and remedy: "Measles is that illness which causes children to break out in rashes and is cured by serum so- and-so, so-and-so." You could then go on and say it's similar to some other things. But get that: it's a good definition; it tells you at least what cures it – kind of a little bit of what it looks like and then what cures it. That's a good definition.

Now, they try to tell you you can't, but it's a very, very silly thing that no proof in any laboratory ever showed up on production of energy. They haven't got that one rigged. They can show you the conservation of energy once created – that once energy is created it is conserved, and it's conserved from there on out. But here's the other one: They try to infer that you can't create energy, but they have never proven it. They have never proven it.

Now, if you could also say – you could say this with certainty – "measles is an illness which is caused by the virus measleus..." Nobody knows what causes it, by the way; they pretend to have taken some pictures with an electronic microscope of the measles virus recently and-hm-hm. Then they found a bunch more that were just like it and they didn't cause measles, and that was very upsetting. And then the ones they did find didn't cause measles invariably. But they released a big news story about it when they found it. Anyway, they never release the third and fourth news stories; that makes it tough for us. We come along, we have something new that will make you well and everybody says, "We know these things that are new and make you well that appear on the front pages of the papers never make anybody well the third week. So we know that they're not there."

Now, once an atomic bomb has blown up, the laws of conservation of energy go into effect. But it's a great question as to whether or not the laws of conservation of energy also say you can't create energy. Nobody's entered that side of it; they kind of haven't – let's leave that one alone. They say once you blow up energy or try to destroy energy it'll merely convert and the energy is still there. And that's perfectly true. And that's a hideous fact. Here you've got an expanding universe that is unkillable. And when you have licked this law of the conservation of energy, you have licked the MEST universe for once and for all.

Well, anyway, descriptive definitions are just fine, but an action definition is what you want to demand. And learn to demand one of the physical universe. What's the cause of it? What's the effect? And what remedies it? Or what changes it? And demand that of your definition. And if you can demand that of your definition, there isn't a problem under the sun, in this or any other universe, that'll defy your understanding or resolution. Just demand those things: What it is, what causes it, what its effect is and how to alter it. And you can solve it. Any mystery of anything under the sun, by the way, resolves under the same conditions, just by definitions only.

But there's a big joke about it: You don't have to lick the MEST universe. All you have to do is change your space-time ratio. Change your space-time ratio and the MEST universe isn't there. You just create some space and time that's not MEST-universe space and time, the MEST universe disappears. That isn't even for you. I don't know but what we all did this, it wouldn't disappear forever. I had a friend that used to say, "You know, I think if everybody suddenly believed that Ford cars wouldn't run, they wouldn't run."

Now Logic 6 – and please know Logic 6! Please, please, I ask you this. If you don't know anything else in this subject, know Logic 6.

All right. The next Q is something there isn't; Q 3: The identification of the source of that which places matter and energy and originates space and time is not necessary to the resolution of this problem. Not necessary to the resolution of this problem. And you can add to it, at this time. In other words, that simply says that the source of this Q is not necessary to the resolution of the problem at this time. And true enough.

Logic 6 is: Absolutes are unobtainable. There's no absolute universe. There's no absolute Clear. There's no absolute right, there's no absolute infinity, there's no absolute zero, there's no absolute wrong, there isn't an absolute black, an absolute white – nothing. And so don't let anybody say to you, "A Clear and yappity-yappity-yappity-yappity-yappity-yappity-yap."

So if you want to really go mad, go chasing after the source of what locates matter and time. And every time you try to do this, of course, you're going to say, "Well, it exists in matter and time, but it doesn't exist in matter and time because it can make matter and time. And then you've got a seniority to matter and time." And you're chasing from here, and looking – you're looking in matter and time for something which is not matter and time. And that would be the silliest thing there was. I mean, frame of reference.

And you say, "Well, where do you get that?" And they say, "Well, it's yappity-yappity-yappity-yappity-yap, and it follows, therefore, they would be perfect. And this last person you processed – Theta Clear – came down and my wife was minding her own business and... Well, that's what happened. And therefore, he couldn't have been Clear because he wasn't perfect and good."

Now, you ask somebody why he's on the track. He isn't going to be able to tell you why he's on the track except in terms of time. He's going to always be looking for prior cause – prior cause, prior cause, prior cause, prior cause, prior cause. And that's "reason why" – means there's a reason that goes before this moment. Cause is before this moment. Every time you ask, "What's the reason the MEST universe..." the cause lies before this moment.

Doesn't follow. It's completely a non sequitur identification of perfection with a term which you have. All Clear means in the first place is taking enough numbers off so you can add something else up on the machine. It's an adding-machine term; it's an electronic-computer term, is where it came from. It means to clear the computer so it'll think.

Now, of course, if you chase that down to moment zero, there's got to be a cause for moment zero. Well, the way they've shilly-shallied around with this and double-logicked it out of existence is say, "Well, it's really circular. And when you get back to the beginning of it... Therefore, you'll find it all there, and that's the way you go backwards around this thing."

And it doesn't say how well it's got to think now; you just clear it up so it can think better. You clear a human being up so he can think better and you have a Clear. You've done a clear. You can do a clear of this lifetime, you can do a clear of the whole track, you can do a clear of this person to such a degree that he can create his own universe, or you can clear this person in such a way that he's cleared of the MEST universe and can go then and create his own universe. In other words, you have terrific selection here.

It's a big joke. The space-time is created. And it's created not by something esoteric, not by something strange, but it's created by a beingness which is most remarkably like you. As a matter of fact, it is you.

Absolutes are unobtainable!

And we get to Q 4 which is: Universes are created by the application of self determinism on eight dynamics.

This is the primary error that Aristotle made. It doesn't seem to be a very important datum. But it can gum up the whole field of thought. They kept saying there's right, there's wrong. The world is laid out for most men in terms of black and white. And I'm sorry to say, for an awful lot of engineers, they let the thing categorize itself into yes and no and maybe. The yeses and the noes they use they think are absolutes.

And we get to Q 5 (it's really just a reversal): Self determinism, applied, will create, conserve, alter and possibly destroy universes. And now that's the one cautious point I just gave you a moment before. I said I'm not sure that this material becomes destructible, simply because the MEST universe has this silly law of conservation of energy in it. The law is observably there.

I took an engineer one night who was working on logical machines – he was working on strategy machines, rather. And he was working on these machines, and I explained to him, "You are working on three-dimensional logic just because you have such a thing as Boolean algebra which you apply to a telephone switchboard. The person's 'in,' 'not in,' 'maybe he's in.' 'Yes-no,' 'Yes-no,' 'Yes-no.'"

All right. Those are the Qs and that's all the Qs there are.

I said, "Just because you're doing that is no reason it applies to logic. I can demonstrate to you that there's at least twelve values in logic."

You want to evaluate these eight dynamics, they're simply the eight dynamics and they come in later when we talk about the MEST universe. When I said they're applicable to all universes – and we just said that – of course, we find that they're applicable in a specialized case to the MEST universe. That's a specialized case.

"Oh," he says, "no, no. There are only three values in logic," he says. "There's yes, no and maybe."

Now we get into the Logics. The Logics are the forms of thought behavior which can, but do not necessarily have to, be used in creating universes. These Logics have been used in creating the MEST universe; that's obvious. But they do not necessarily have to be used. We call these Logics. And this could be called "How to Think," and it's a very specific section.

"No, no. There are twelve." And I proved to him utterly and conclusively – he finally agreed to me – that, well, if you wanted to be sticky about the whole thing, there were twelve values in logic.

And I want to call your attention to the Qs, just the Qs – when I said Q 1, Q 2, Q 3, Q 4, Q 5, the sentence which immediately followed those – boy, call each one of those a datum; call them a datum of considerable importance to you. And it doesn't have anything to do with opinion. That's data. That's usable data and you need it.

There was "not-so-maybe maybe," and there was "a-lot-more-maybe maybe," and so forth, and I could show him how you could work this out and make Boolean algebra come out a little bit better. And so he bought it; he bought it. And I did the meanest thing a guy can do when he does that: I sold him this thing lock, stock and barrel, Brooklyn Bridge and Empire State Building and the president of the United States thrown in. He was all set to go out and build strategy machines which had twelve knobs on them instead of three, when I proved to him just as easily that there was eighteen-valued logic. That was very mean.

Now, a graduation of importance is you're going to use the Qs and the Logics just like mad in processing. I mean, you've got to be able to practically see everything through the Qs and the Logics, just all the way along the line. You've got to evaluate material with respect to these data that I'm giving you, one right after the other. Otherwise your processes will bog down. You will be confronted with things which are to you unknown merely because you're not operating along the line of the Logics. You've run in on yourself some arbitrary of which you may or may not be aware. But these are the least arbitrary of arbitraries. The Logics now could be called "How to Think"; they could also be called "How to Evaluate a Preclear." They could also be called "How to Diagnose." They could be called a large number of things. And each one of these data is quite important to you in processing.

Because the truth of the matter is that logic is infinity-valued; there's an infinity of values in logic because logic is a gradient scale. And you'll take that up in just a moment. And I've just been talking about it – Logic 7: Gradient scales are necessary to the evaluation of problems and their data.

Now, actually, you will be expected to know, as professional auditors, the Qs and the Logics by just rote: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Give an example of this: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What a bore! I mean, on that level. Yeah, well, this is easy as saying food is necessary to man: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And that's the one you're going to use in processing. And you're going to use that and use that and use that and use it and use it and use it in processing. So get it, get it well; know what we mean when we say a gradient scale. A gradient scale means a progressive scale from "none of," to a "slightly little bit more than none of," to "a lot more than none of," to "a lot more than none of" till "you almost got some" – just little tiny grades. Mmmmmm! And boy, you can connect any datum of the physical universe to any other datum in the whole physical universe with a gradient scale.

These data should be that ordinary to you. Make them ordinary and used and stirred up and misused and abused and kicked around and evaluated any way you want them until finally, by golly, they're your data. Because if you know these data, you can actually list thousands of projects. Thousands. That's interesting, isn't it?

You can make, by logic, anything happen to anything. By logic, you could actually be circuitous and laborious enough to go around Robin Hood's barn far enough and to show that it was a gradient scale enough, of all the gradient scales that there were enough of, and you would come up in the end with a connection between, and prove to somebody completely and utterly, that Camembert cheese was the sole diet of rabbits – and if it weren't, it sure should be.

You can invent all kinds of techniques with these. And you can do this with these: you can use these in the field of pretense – like mad. You can leave one of these factors out of what you are saying, and what you are saying will appear to be entirely logical to somebody else and will be utterly unworkable.

Now, that is an idiocy, really, and would show up in the logic as an idiocy. That's because it isn't a true gradient scale.

You could take these and leave one out or use one in some fashion or other to apply to and evaluate the whole field, let us say, of surgery, and evaluate the whole field of surgery this way and write a book about surgery. And three quarters of the surgeons in existence would read that book, let's say, and they'd read that book and they would be very struck by your tremendous command of this problem. Oh, they'd be delighted. And the other quarter of them want to kill you. Or maybe there'd only be a quarter of them that'd be delighted and the other three quarters would want to knock you off.

The true gradient scale with which you are working is the gradient scale between the static zero and the all-motion infinity of theta and MEST.

But if at any time you find that your knowledge of this has not made you more powerful or has not made your beingness more hardly felt by others, or if you find out that you're having a little bit of a difficult time trying to convince somebody of things, you just haven't learned one of the Logics, that's all. Because these all alone on an educational basis – if your education was oriented around these, you would be a vicious character, that I guarantee. Vicious character. Nobody could have coped with you. You'd have been able to say, "Well, Mama, da-da-da."

Theta is a theory – it's just a theoretical thing; it's a theoretical zero, an actual zero with no motion, no wavelength. And an all-motion thing would be something in the vicinity of MEST. That all-motion thing would be – let's see, something that would be terribly all-motion (I mean, would be way up the scale on it) – would be something like the stuff of which the companion star of Sirius is composed: one teaspoonful of the companion star of Sirius brought to Earth would weigh one ton.

Mama would say, "Oh, my God, I've got to give him another shilling." It'd be totally unanswerable except by one thing: force. But there's even a way to get around that.

Now, boy, that's getting up there to an all-motion. And I imagine that that would make plutonium look like a cap in a cap pistol. That stuff really must be unstable. But just exactly what element this would be or where it is on the periodic chart I wouldn't be prepared to say. But it's evidently there, by the behavior of that companion star.

There's a technique for children. Teach them sometimes and watch what happens to their parents and nurses. It would be horrible. But it's by the application of the gradient scale. We'll talk about gradient scales here in a moment. But the application of gradient scales has, in such an application – just inexorable. I mean, it would just march through anything.

But the point I'm making is, you're getting up toward an all- motion. Matter is almost an all-motion thing; it's getting heavier and heavier and there are more and more vectors, more and more vectors to less and less time, less and less space, time and space decreasing, decreasing, decreasing. So you've got a gradient scale from zero to all-motion, theta to MEST – meaning, by MEST, the MEST universe, this universe, this MEST universe. So you see what that is and how that works out? You've got a gradient scale running from zero to MEST. See where man stands on it?

The little child says to Mama the first day, "Mama? Mama, do you want to kill me?"

You look at the tone scale. The tone scale is a gradient scale which runs from theoretical behavior of theta down to the complete MEST, which is much below where you generally pick up the tone scale – complete MEST: wavelength, motion, and so forth, of this character. All right.

"Oh no, of course, Johnny. No, no! Whatever put such ideas in your head? Hrrww!" (What's this child been learning? The idea!) "Of course I don't want to kill you. The idea, huh! No!"

What's the gradient-scale principle? It is more of it and more of it and more of it, or less of it and less of it and less of it on the same subject.

"Are you sure, Mama, that you don't...?"

Now, how red is a red bicycle? The mind answers that. You can see that there's a pretty red, red bicycle, isn't it? I mean, there's a red, red bicycle there. How red is a red bicycle? All right. Let's take a look at a red bicycle and find out how red it is. Well, there's a gradient scale of redness, isn't there? So we'd have to know where we were on this pale pink up here to this deep, deep infra of some sort. It's a gradient scale of redness. It'd pass through Chinese red and it'd go through salmon down below it. Up above it, it'd go through scarlet, carmine. How red is red? It's a gradient scale of redness.

"No!"

How sick is your preclear? He has no absolute illness. He's on a gradient scale. And every preclear is on the same gradient scale. He's somewhere on the scale and the behavior at that point of the scale is that behavior for that point of the scale. You know how bad off he is. And at the same time, you know how "enMESTified" he is. He's as bad off as he's bogged down in MEST. So you see what you have: a gradient scale between theta and MEST, which is also the gradient scale of sanity.

Daddy comes home, goes in, talks to little Johnny. Says, "Johnny, we're not trying to kill you." He halfway wants to send for a psychiatrist or something. He's worried. He gets real worried. He wonders what's happened at school. They question him.

And how many things does this gradient scale represent? Well, it represents an awful lot of things. It represents the activity of energy; it represents a lot of other things. You should know about a gradient scale, you should be able to think in gradient scales and you should always know this about gradient scales: That when your preclear is bogged down, you didn't apply a gradient scale. You gave him too much. He can do whatever you want him to do if you give him little enough of it to do at first.

Well, you just warn Johnny that all this catechism is going to take place, and you say, "It's going to cause a terrific hubbub, but just keep on asking the same question. Don't vary it, don't extrapolate on this, don't get fancy, don't invent anything. Just say, 'You sure you don't want to kill me?' And you keep that up for a week."

You can use a gradient scale in this fashion. If I never taught you anything tonight but this, it'd have been all right as a night well spent. And it's just this fact, just this datum: Your preclear can do anything you want him to do, providing you define what you want him to do – especially to yourself – and then give him a small enough bit of the gradient scale to do of it. And the process works like a dream if you do that. And if the process breaks down on you, it's because you don't understand the gradient scale or because you haven't given him little enough. There's [a] much-less point on the gradient scale.

"And the next week you start in, 'Do I have a right to live?' And all week long, at odd intervals through the week, you say to your parents, 'Do I have a right to be alive?'"

You want him to imagine a body. You say, "Go ahead and imagine a body." And he doesn't imagine a body, he can't imagine a body. And you say, "All right. Imagine a head." He can't imagine a head. You say, "All right, can you imagine one hair?"

And they say, "Of course you have a right to be alive! Oh, my God! Oh, the idea! Well... Poor little fellow, he's been overworked too hard," or something of the sort. But boy, he makes the point.

No, he can't imagine one hair. Don't throw in the sponge, because there's a lot more gradient scale left.

Then, "Do happy people live longer than sad ones?"

"Can you imagine a fingernail paring?"

"Well, yes, Johnny, of course they do! Of course, you have to take life this-and-that, but happier people live... I mean, a person has to be happy to... What are you trying to get me into, Johnny?"

"No."

"Well, I just wanted to know. Are you sure of that? Well, then, do I have a right to be happy?"

"Well, can you imagine one cell in a fingernail paring?"

"Yes, of course. Blah, blah, blah..."

"Yes. Yes. Yes, I guess I could imagine that. Yeah."

Well, then the next week following that, "Do you want me to be happy?" Gradient scales, see?

"All right. Now let's see if you can get two cells."

Little more, little more, little more – you're making the parents, the teachers, make a postulate, a postulate, a postulate, harder and harder. They finally are totally convinced that their lives are going to be practically devoted to the life of this child. And he swings it in this way: he explains, "Then, I don't have a right to own anything, do I, Mama?"

"No, can't do that. I can just get one cell."

"Why, yes, of course you do! Your dolls and so forth."

"All right. Well, get that cell and now put it over on the mantelpiece."

"Well, if you owned anything... I could have something I owned, couldn't I? I mean, if I owned something, wouldn't I have the control of it if I owned it?"

"Oh, I'm having an awful hard time moving it out of the center of the room."

"Well, of course."

You say, "Well, how about putting it over by the door?"

"Well, do I have a right to own anything?"

"Mmmm, I couldn't do that."

"Well, of course you have a right to own anything."

"Well, how about moving it over to the other chair right near you there."

"Well, stop bawling me out about my shoes then. Are my shoes mine or aren't they?" You see how insidious this is? This little kid would wind up – it's a lead-pipe cinch – with the household running. How is he doing it? He's making them make, by gradient scales, stronger and stronger postulates in his favor. And you just draw a curve, and what stronger postulates there are, it'd get to a point where, yes, he should help his father share the profits of the business, if you wanted to go to that. And the parents would not quite know what had happened to them.

"Doesn't seem to want to go."

Now let's work it in reverse: Let's want to deny somebody some power or some ability or an ownership. Just cut it back one shade every week or every day – just cut it back a hair. Ptock! Just a hair: a little less, a little less, but so tiny in the cuts that he would never quite notice this, and get him each time to agree to them. Because, in essence, that would be it. Each time he must agree that this is the best thing to do.

"Well, how about making it roll over and go one millimeter?"

And how do you do that? You keep saying harder and harder how hard he works, how much responsibility he has to carry. You sympathize with him and you gradually get him to turn over more and more, and you get him to rest oftener. And as you walk in on that track... What do you want to do to this guy? Kill him? Because he'll quit after a while. He'll give you all of his business, he'll be so happy, he'll be so grateful that you did it. And he'll go off someplace and sit down, and then gradually, because times are hard, the next thing you know...

"Yep, I reckon I can do that."

Now, the best example on this is the camel that walks into the tent. The camel that walks into the tent is a beautiful example of gradient scales.

"Now can you make it go two millimeters?"

How do you use these things, then? You look for, in the real universe, problems, or you find problems in the real universe, or you find problems in the universe which you have created, which is your own universe. How do you solve them? These Logics will help you out, to understand and to resolve problems. When I say your own universe... You know, you've really never lived in any other universe than your own? You are trying to put your own universe in contest with the MEST universe. And you're trying to make the MEST universe gilded by your own universe or straightened up by your own universe or otherwise. And the MEST universe keeps saying to you, "I am real and you aren't. And the reason I can do this is because I can hurt you. I am the MEST universe and I can hurt you, I can crush you. You have to agree with me; I do not have to agree with you."

"Well, I can make it go one and a half millimeters."

And so a fellow breaks down eventually and has no universe. The universe has demonstrated it's so powerful and it's so strong and it's so unreasonable that it can do anything.

We eventually get this cell moved, and we get it moved to the door, we get it moved to the mantel. And then we find that we can get two cells and we can move them to the door and put them on the mantel. And then we get this other thing, and the first thing you know, you say, "How much cells you got on the mantel now?"

All right.

And he says, "Ulp! I've got several."

You say, "You got enough for a fingernail paring?"

"You know, I think I have."

"All right, put them together as a fingernail paring."

"Well, what do you know! I got a fingernail paring." Gee, it'll be so prized, he'll be so proud!

When you get up the line in tone, you won't really be in good communication with how tough this is for some preclears. You'll say, "Oh... ah, let's see. Let's mock up London and all the inhabitants and yeah, get it down to the last hair, and so on, and get the smell of the whole place, now."

Guy says, "Ha, I'm sorry, you must be talking to somebody else. I can't do that." And we finally get him down to where he has one electron going around the ring.

Boy, that's good. He's now got one electron going around the ring. By golly, once he gets something like that, too, it's hell to make him get rid of it.

Now you have to make him get two of it, three of it, six of it, eighty of it, millions of them. Gradient scales. If you can't create much, create a little. If he can't envision much time, have him envision little time. If he can't get out of present time very far with recollection, gradient scale.

"You say you can't remember people?"

"No.

"Can you remember your wife?"

"Mmm... well, not really."

"What's the last thing she said to you when you left home?"

"Mm-mm. No."

"Well, did she ever say anything to you?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm sure she did."

"Well, remember one of those times."

"No, I couldn't do that."

And you say, "Well, now, you say you don't remember people. Now, how about me? How about me? When you first walked into my office, you remember me sitting there?"

"I thought you were standing up. I... no, I can't remember that."

"Well, now, where were you when you walked into the door?" (You know, like these quiz programs? They give you all the answers?) "Where were you when you walked into the door?" You see?

"I don't remember that."

Believe me, his sanity depends on your getting him to remember some tiny gradient of time. And you finally work it down to this: You say, "See my hand there on the chair?"

"Yep!"

"Now note where it is."

"Yep!"

"All right. Now I'm going to move my hand back on the chair here. Where was it?"

The guy will say, "Right there. What do you know! Right there." And the guy's liable to brighten up and look like he's about to cry or something of this sort. You would be utterly amazed at the change that can come over a preclear like this sometimes.

You look at him and you say, "This isn't possible."

One fellow walked in one day; everybody had been processing him. He was from some God-forsaken place – New York or someplace. And he was... Everybody had been processing him and so on, and they never thought to ask him the magic question, "Can you remember something real?" This is the one question you must always ask a preclear if he appears even the least bit vague to you. "Can you remember something real? Can you remember a time when you were really in communication with somebody? Something like this – just a little scrap memory that you know is true, that is of the MEST universe?" Because that's the way you get him back on the MEST time track and then into his own universe. All right.

And this fellow had never been asked these questions. He'd been processed by auditor after auditor after auditor after auditor, and this fellow is sitting there with lenses to his glasses that you couldn't have measured with an ax handle! He's sitting there with his... with just... oh! Boy, he was in bad shape.

And I looked at him and I said, "Well, now, let me see. Can you tell me something that's absolutely real to you? Really real to you?" He thought and he thought and he thought.

"Well, can you remember a time when you were really in communication with somebody?"

He said, "Just now with you. Yeah!" He said, "Just now with you." Kaboom! Beautiful shape.

I said, "Now can you remember something real?"

"Yes!"

Something else, something else, something else – brrrrrrr, boom! Just like a big-toothed saw going through that reactive mind, or through those ridges – picking them up, picking them up, identification, identification. Saw him around the next few days, happy as a clam.

That is the break point of a case. Cases break in little, sudden jumps. You will see them happen. Sometimes you'll process this case and you will process it and you will process it and you will say, "Oh, no!" And you'll process it some more and you'll process . "Something must be happening," you say, "by the gradient scales alone. He must be coming up a little more slowly than I can notice it. I hope. And it probably isn't happening, probably isn't happening."

But one day he walks in and you say, "All right," rather wearily to yourself, "let's get a time when you were... Well, no, let's mock up...

Preclear will say, "What's the matter? You feel confused or something?"

And you'll say, "Well, no, not... not... not really. Of course, I've been processing you for a long..."

"Well," he said, "I didn't know." He said, "Am I making you upset?" He said, "Well, maybe I better run out all these sessions on you. Yeah!" And the guy will brighten right up and feel wonderful and go home and just be in beautiful shape and be at work the next day. And you'll ask him next time, you say, "How's your lumbago?"

"Oh, my lumbago is – oh, been ages since I felt any lumbago. I mean, wonderful st..."

You say "What broke this case?" Well, very amusing. What broke this case is you broke him on help. You see, a man gets bad off in various ways. But you could take any psychotic and you could put him on an E-Meter and you could find out something in the universe which he was still capable of helping. He's still capable of helping something somewhere. Maybe all eight dynamics are wiped out to 7.99999, but there's this one-millionth of a dynamic that he can still assist. And maybe that was you.

Or maybe it was the cat as he came in the door. And you didn't know how low this preclear really was. Maybe you didn't test him adequately or something. And all of a sudden you found something he could help. Now, it's just a tiny little thing, but if he can help that he could help something else, he could help something else, he could help something else. He could feel he could help a lot more than that. And all of a sudden he can help himself. And that's where you're trying to get him. He's just sunk on the whole subject of trying to aid anybody.

Why? Because all the people that have been around him since time immemorial have been convincing him that he was of no use to them. He was on an "I've got to be needed," and everybody kept saying to him, "We don't need you. You are of no use to us." And then suddenly one day he finds out he can help something.

Now, your process is definitely indicated there on a gradient scale. Help this, help that, help something else. And you can actually drill him on this and make him mock up things to help. And the first thing you know, by golly, he'll be a cock of the walk. He'll be in beautiful shape. Gradient scales.

If you can get him... his attention in any way, any preclear can find a little bit of what he has to do to get well. And boy, that's an important one, because it also permits you to figure out what's right, what is wrong. There's a gradient scale of rightness, a gradient scale of wrongness; there is no absolute right, there is no absolute wrong. Right above that, "Absolutes are unobtainable," and below that, "Gradient scales are necessary to the evaluation of problems and their data."

Now, it's very possible that auditors, here and there, in the last class, might somehow have missed this datum, because I didn't stress it very hard. And I've been observing their work and I've been observing that their work fell down only on one thing, really: the gradient scale and a knowledge of how to use it. The gradient scale. They'll have the preclear mock up this, that, something else, something else, and then do things to them.

"I can't." He says, "I can't do it." And the auditor throws in the sponge! Hmm.

Next time I catch an auditor doing that I'll make a gradient scale out of him. Because if you ever made up your mind that you're going to have the preclear do something, don't leave the ground! Don't leave the subject! Don't leave the preclear until you make him do enough of it to keep him from invalidating himself! Because if you set up something for him to do and he doesn't do it, he goes eight feet below ground. But if he can do a little tiny bit of it, he's happy. He's real happy. Then he feels good.

And I won't mention any names – we just had the case of that this afternoon, the preclear in this case having a little bit of difficulty (not very much) getting out of a corpse somewhere on the track and out of his body in present time.

The auditor says, "All right." He says, "You say you'd let down all of your teammates – you'd let down all of these teammates if you did any of these things, and so on? Well, mock up your teammates and shoot them all down." Now, maybe he said only mock up a dozen teammates or maybe only mock up one teammate and shoot this teammate down. And maybe he might even have said, "Take this teammate and make him lie on his back." Maybe he got to that gradient scale. But it didn't work and the preclear couldn't do it. And the preclear was lower than a snake when I saw him; he was quite low. And he didn't attribute it to just that fact.

What was the proper thing to do? Well, this is a problem of teammates. You don't have to know its details, it has no real bearing on the subject or the case even. But here it is, the auditor has already, for some reason best known to himself, given the preclear something to do. And now he doesn't work down the gradient scale. He's asking the preclear to do the most extreme thing on the gradient scale: destroy. Destroy. That's tougher to do than create, any day – in processing. So he's asked him to destroy something that he has been given to believe is deterring the preclear from getting well. Now, aren't we getting interesting.

What he should have done is bring the fellow down to a point where he could handle the teammate, just handle him. Just move him in time and space a little bit or change his uniform buttons. Just change something about this teammate. And if he couldn't do something to the teammate, let him get a ring that belonged to a teammate. Or if he couldn't do something about a ring that belonged to a teammate, have him do something like cover up a footprint a teammate has made. And if he couldn't do that, have him go over and pick up a piece of bread that a teammate has just thrown aside. Or have him pick up an empty cartridge that the teammate has just fired and has thrown away – anything that has to do with spacing [placing] in time and space, and a little bit of it.

And that was what the solution to that problem was. And it comes under the heading of knowing what a gradient scale is and how to use it. If you can get him to do a little bit of it, you can always get him to do a lot of it – by gradient scales. And gradient scales solve right-wrong. They solve valuations for the preclears. He's on two-valued logic, and you're all of a sudden moving him over. He wants to know if something's right or wrong. How do you answer the question? Just tell him about gradient scales.

All right.