Okay. Do we have any questions here?

Well, I'm glad to see you people today. How are you doing?

Right.

Audience: Okay. Fine.

Male voice: This is known that — but, you know, most psychics and mediums and such like that, I mean most of them are pretty nuts. But I was just kicking — mingling around in some of the other countries, and I have seen some phenomena which leads me to think that there may be — put it — disembodied thetans who can sort of, from time to time, pick up somebody else's body. What do you think on this?

Ah, you're doing all right. Couple here — couple here are wondering how they ever got on the cause side of auditing.

I think they're thetans.

I'll tell you something that's quite remarkable, you know? The person who is preclear first has a tendency to be more subjective about it all. And for a short time, when he starts to audit, he is quite likely to continue to be subjective. And in the processes you are doing, subjectivity is the first manifestation, so it's accentuated in this particular unit more than it ordinarily would be.

Male voice: I know they're thetans.

Now, you are not, you know, processing somebody to find out how to do it. There were some people that were still doing that Monday, and they still had an idea of learning how to do it. But this is not a drill. This is not a drill. The auditor is supposed to be doing it and he is making a Clear. This is not a drill. Reading a book last night about submarine service — very interesting — got me all restimulated. This is not a drill.

But I think there are thetans around that don't have bodies.

Well, today, I'd like to talk to you about Clears — third lecture on the subject of clearing people. I'd like to talk to you first about the history of it.

Male voice: But who can pick one up for a short while and do what they want to do and then drop it again?

Of course, as you may or may not know, I spent quite a bit of time in the Orient when I was a kid. And very young men are quite impressionable, are quite easy to work with, and they'll buy almost anything that has enough impressiveness and so forth. And I spent the first year or so at this, buying almost everything, absorbing the thousand smells of the East and making friends, for the most part, with white people at that time. And later on I began to slip from grace in the eyes of the white people and I began to make friends with the native peoples. Of course, I don't think you could really call a Chinese a native — he is too deeply rooted for that.

No. All those I ran into couldn't have one. They couldn't control one anymore.

But it was a white man that alerted me to this sort of thing. His name was Major Ian Macbean of the British Secret Service.

Male voice: Ah . . .

In those days the conduct of the American tourist was so flagrant, so reprehensible — he was dragged exclusively out of Keokuk and Des Moines — that, one went easy in the Orient about being an American. I mean that. The American always had a hard run in the Orient. And about the first thing I picked up from Major Macbean was a very fine British accent.

They could influence one.

He was a graduate of several universities. He was a very learned man — a rather splendid fellow. At that time he was in his early thirties, but he actually looked like he was in his fifties. Because he was a good scholar and because he knew his business about the Orient, the War Office early in World War I, had sent him to Gallipoli, naturally — that being about as far from his talents as they could get.

Male voice: Oh, that's what it is.

He had a twin brother. And if I remember rightly he was a lieutenant at fifteen or sixteen, and he was a captain at seventeen, by line of casualty. They just grabbed these people out of school, you know, and threw them into uniform. He was a good officer. His twin brother had been killed, and he himself had been all but crippled with a bayonet in his guts at Gallipoli. They put barbwire under water there, and when the landing craft tried to land their troops, it was very embarrassing. They didn't get our later techniques.

Have you ever seen a deer know you were there?

But anyway, this man, by reason of having been an invalid for a long time and so forth, had increased and doubled and returned to his studies, you might say, and here he was, if I remember rightly, he really was in charge of British Secret Service in the vicinity of North China — in that area. He was a very, very fine man — none better. He probably passed to his reward long since — picked up another mock-up that he's probably being careful doesn't get sent to another Gallipoli.

Male voice: Yeah.

But this fellow was, evidently, essentially very lonely. None of the whites out there shared any interest or enthusiasm in what they term "the native customs," and that these native customs had more historical background than any white custom that was around, seemed to miss them. It's like you're shoved a book when you're in grammar school, and this book says it's a history of the world. And you find yourself reading about the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans and the French and then your own country. And where are you? You've read the history of the world? Well, the teachers in this day and age seem to think you have. Truth of the matter is, civilizations existed, flourished and died much fancier than anything we had a thousand years ago, and we pay no attention to it.

You find in the lower rungs of life this sixth sense — a communication line which actually exists through mest and energy and warns a person, one way or the other. And many times this can easily be confused with a pure telepathic. But it has a communication line. The awareness which receives it, however, is so alert — so hysterically alert — as to not connote a calm look. And remember, he doesn't know — he merely supposes. So that you get this harmonic activity going on.

If we would merely include the Persian civilization, we would have a few of our more flagrant sources for some of our customs and activities. For instance, I think the Persian civilization even gives us such intimate things as Satan. That's the most intimate god known to the white man, I think. He never really finds out about the other one.

Now, one of the things that is baffling in looking at these states — something I had to get used to: The only thing wrong with a thetan is some aspect of being a thetan. There isn't anything else. And you can take any aspect of being a thetan and magnify it out of proportion to other aspects on a downscale basis, and you can get something that's a pretty credible thing but which is way out of gear. It's an oddity that the only thing wrong with a thetan is being a thetan. Not that there's anything wrong with being a thetan, you understand? Get the remark in its true framework here. But if you look over aberration, you'll find out that those things which are most basically and natively a thetan or closest to being a thetan, are the aberrations, which is quite remarkable. For instance, you take somebody with an invisible field. These invisible fields can be real tough on an auditor, see? They're — can be a little bit rough to get rid of. He can get rid of them now. He's got the techniques to do so. But before, they were totally resistant. Well, what's a thetan but an invisible thing?

And we would have to look very strongly at China to get any kind of a realistic background of our methods of warfare and our cookery. It's quite remarkable. You look over the cookery of Italy even at this time and you're looking at basic Chinese cookery as brought back by Marco Polo. It's quite interesting — noodles, spaghetti, you know? Quite remarkable.

If you want to — here's a handy rule to look over the scale of what's most likely wrong with somebody, is just find that thing which is most thetanesque — you see, there is something wrong with him, but that thing which is most thetanesque will be the wrongest. It's out of gear. Well, this gives people the idea that there's something wrong with being a thetan. So, they'll — really will try to trap thetans and bang them down Tone Scale, and do all kinds of silly things, you see? But the thing which persists is the thing which is out of gear. And actually what it is, is an effort to return to his own identity, and he picks the only thing he can pick up that he recognizes is his own identity and exaggerates it. And it gives you a very mad view. And they will exaggerate this to some fantastic degree.

But anyway, here was this tremendously ancient civilization founded on civilizations they still had trace of that were now dead. And it seemed to be a long look, and it was a very interesting one. And through Macbean I made the acquaintance of many men who were extremely — well, you might say, expert in the lore of Asia in general and particularly in the world of mysticism, occultism, so forth.

We get a medium who is mad as a hatter, hypnotic as can be, but is holding on violently to total knowingness, see? Well, we don't have to ask the question, "How total is the knowingness or how accurate is it?" We merely see somebody who has become anxious about becoming mest and is therefore violently being a spirit. But what are they being? They're being the only aspect of a spirit which they can still attain. And they will exaggerate this — totally out of gear.

But mysticism/occultism isn't our source. Our source, actually, is magic. Magic is something that, today, is performed on a stage with prestidigitation. But magic actually has a much more vivid and noble history than a stage magician. It is quite remarkable that the magician attempts directly to use spirits to perform his will. And that is his basic modus operandi. That is his goal in practicing magic.

Now, this medium can't do things on her own determinism, let us say — doesn't recognize it as a thetan characteristic, see? This being cannot actually control her own or another's body — doesn't recognize that as a spiritual activity, don't you see? So they deny a whole bunch of thetan activities and exaggerate one, way out of gear, and we get all sorts of manifestations as we go down the line.

And thus we find in the days of Kublai Khan, in North China, a corps of magicians who were employed to blow up storms to obfuscate the enemy, who were employed even in such mundane affairs as serving dinner. And they would conjure wine bottles through the air — they would fly through the air and pour a drink and fly back onto the sideboards, you see? The magician was not really germane or native, you might say, to China; he was an imported article, but he certainly flourished in China. And Kublai Khan's corps of magicians had continued in continuous line on down to the empress dowager that we cooked up a reason to knock off back in the Boxer Rebellion at the turn of this century. That's right. The British insisted on selling opium; she said no. And she said no a little too forcefully.

All a neurosis or psychosis is, is an exaggeration of an ability. The ability goes out of control and so forth. So therefore, we can look at any two thetans: one is being a medium and the other is being a thetan, see? — very, very totally. That's fine, see? One is sane and the other isn't. And we get all tangled up. We know it's possible, see? We know, ourselves, subjectively that it's possible to do these things. We have some reality on the fact that this person who is strictly fruitcake can do these things, you see? Funny part of it is the person can do these things but otherwise is crazy. Well, what's happening here? We just merely have an exaggeration of an ability without its accompanying abilities. And therefore, it looks very isolated and very crazy. You have to regain ability by regaining abilities.

She had a young son who had a troop of acrobats come in and demonstrate to her that — to show you how low magic had fallen to this time — a troop of acrobats come in and demonstrate before the empress dowager that they could not be hit or slashed with steel. These acrobats were called Boxers. And they would slash at each other in very intricate patterns with very, very sharp weapons and not hit each other at all. Somehow or other they'd miraculously escape unscathed from these rather savage skirmishes, and the empress dowager was very impressed.

You know, I think most of those people in the Orient were simply exaggerating one ability or another, don't you see? And anybody can exteriorize on an inversion. Life can become so untenable that you can no longer confront it.

By the way, I was given the treat of watching a troop of Boxers (probably the last surviving troop of Boxers in the Forbidden City of the late twenties) actually go through their paces. And it had my breath very held — believe me. Scimitars and battle-axes and swords of various kinds flourishing through the air with such velocity and intricacy that you became certain the sword, last time, had passed immediately through the man's body.

Well, for instance, what chance has some Indian to be at cause over life who has to step over cockroaches as they scuttle across the walk? You've probably seen them do that.

And the empress dowager watching this show was convinced, and so was persuaded to declare war on the white legations which were in China at that time. Quite an interesting piece of chicanery — a far cry from Kublai Khan's magicians. She was persuaded by her son, then, that his troops could not be touched by the bullets of Her Majesty's marines or our marines. And they were very badly disabused of it. Nevertheless, that resulted in the deposing of the empress dowager, and the long line of magicians in China fell into entire disuse and decay. That was the end of that.

Audience: Mm-hm.

And the last of them was used as an intelligence agent by Major Macbean. Whatever his name was, it was a very, very fancy name — I couldn't remember it and I never put it down anyplace — he was known as Mayo. Mayo is actually colloquial for merely "good." And the old man was certainly good. He was, at the time I knew him, eighty-seven years old and he was as agile as a rubber doll. He was quite remarkable. But he was used as an intelligence agent. I have no doubt but what he used to go home into the apartment, throw the mock-up on the bed and look around and see what was going on, write his reports and collect his silver.

What chance has he, see, if he must consider this sacred and that sacred and this untouchable and that untouchable and he must have nothing to do with mest of any kind and so forth? He's going up the spout, that's for sure.

But this old fellow was the last surviving magician of the line that came in with Kublai Khan. Now, lord knows how long that line had been before that. And he supported himself — besides his Mex dollars from the British — he supported himself with displays of magic (merely prestidigitation, no more than that). And I made his acquaintance, and we became very good friends.

Now, the odd part of it is it's quite a game in itself. And it has its recompense. We used to get people every once in a while — they go up the pole. They hit one of these things and exaggerate them like mad and be mad as hatters for a month or two. Maybe some of you have gone up the pole. I know I was up the pole once for about six months — glorious sensation — didn't get anyplace. It's not necessarily being mad; it's becoming much too certain and not knowing quite what you're certain about.

The old man could do some of the more remarkable things, such as do a front somersault and plant a pottery urn on the floor; do a back somersault and have a small tree; do a front somersault and have a full-grown orange tree with oranges on it. They would just appear, flip, flip, flip. And, then, do one more flip and a bowl of fish would appear on the floor with the fish swimming around merrily. Now, he carried all of these things under his gown, and by a series of hooks would detach one item and attach the item he picked up to his belt, and throw his skirt down and cover them. It's quite remarkable. The old man was getting old. There was an occasion when he was giving a show and he did not get his skirt back down, and there was his belt with several things appended to it. But this old man knew his business. He knew his business.

Now, the production of some of this phenomena lies in the field of Black Dianetics as well as clearing. You have to get somebody totally off balance or get him to manufacture, exclusively, elation particles or something. You have to unbalance him in order to ascend him this far out. Truth of the matter is, as much joy, verve and so forth, as that, is recoverable when a thetan recovers a great many of his abilities, you understand? But you could make him recover one of them selectively and have him be very, very happy about this thing.

And Macbean was rather interested to find out that a friendship had grown up between the old man and myself. And he didn't go into it very far — being a very wise man — but he said, "You know," he said, "Ron," he said, "you keep going this road very far," he said, "and you're liable to run into something you won't understand." He could always make these gorgeous understatements.

Now, many of us has had little odds and ends of this sort of thing turn on, and we wonder how in the name of common sense we're doing this, or something happens. We slip on the banana peel of our own common sense, and off it goes — we turn it off. But the most common one is to find out that you are inventing all the problems you are involved with so that you can solve them. You find that out suddenly. It'll stay on variably. You may leave it on for only five minutes; you may leave it on for five or ten days. And then you'll decide that's all for the birds, that you're not going to get anyplace doing this, and suddenly it goes off. You realize somehow or another that you turned it off but you're not quite sure how you turned it off. Well, the funny part of it is, you're not quite sure how you turned it on either.

Well, there — Mayo made it clear to me that there was really magic — real magic — and then the kind he was showing the public. And through these good offices I, later on, found myself up in the Western Hills. Somebody, one day, challenged my ordination. You know, they said, "You've given yourself an ordination." No, I'm afraid my basic ordination is much older than most ordinations in the Christian church.

Well, you recover one of these abilities suddenly in an isolated sphere, and it throws everything you're doing totally out of balance. You're actually taking a preview of what it's like to be an OT. Only, if you were an OT, there wouldn't be any mystery about it, don't you see? And you wouldn't turn it back off again. Get the idea?

But the point is that I not only ran into something I didn't understand, but something I was darn sure, I figured, I'd better find out about. If this sort of thing was going on, on this planet at this time, and if everybody was being totally stupid about it, then there must be two worlds in progress — at least. And one world didn't understand the other world.

These exaggerated abilities — sudden exaggerated abilities — you can call them manics. The ability to feel well, the ability to feel powerful, the ability to be elated, the ability to be totally happy — these things can turn on with no counterbalancing factors of any kind and nothing else to accompany them. They sit there as a lone rock and they get battered by the seas of fate until you blow them up. And you say, "Well, I want nothing more to do with that." It's quite amusing.

Later on, in India and other places, I was convinced of two things. One, that the Asiatic magician, seer, the wise man and the holy man, that these were all very, very wise and had a great deal of information. I came to that conclusion. But the other conclusion I came to was that it wasn't doing them a bit of good — came to that conclusion very broadly — that they were intensely impractical. Therefore, their great wisdom had never been integrated. Whatever it was, we could say today it has not — it was not integrated with livingness. And when a man sought this trail, he parted from this life — that we could say.

You'll turn these things on in preclears — much more likely to with the processing of 1950 and '51 than with the processing of the last few years. And it's improbable that you will turn this phenomenon on very much with the processes you're using at this minute.

The nonsense of the Indian rope trick — I've often offered students to show them the Indian rope trick if they would chip in. So far none of them have been willing to pay for it, and I've never shown it to them. But such things as the Indian rope trick done on mass hypnosis, such things as the inurement to pain where an individual can lie on a bed of spikes, such things as being able to make objects levitate without visible means of support, all very wonderful — no doubt about it at all. But they could not conceive that it had anything to do with living.

Beauties of Dianetics — the beauties of Dianetics consisted of, of course, turning on phenomena — all manner of phenomena. I've seen somebody go into a total "feel wonderful" — total, see, for about three days — just turn on suddenly in a session, you know? Person wouldn't go on being processed. They felt too wonderful for words.

Well, I very far from became an expert in all these lines; I merely probably came to know more about them than other white men ever had, but that wasn't very much, you know? But I came to that basic conclusion: that no matter what they knew or how much they knew about it, it wasn't doing them a bit of good. It had not been integrated with the business of living or getting on in the world.

I learned by about '53 not to pay too much attention to this, and not to let them get out of session because they'd fall flat on their faces and probably be sick as dogs in two or three days, you see? They'd had an experience, however, and to that experience they're liable to cling.

Here we had basically two paths. Over here, you studied, you disciplined yourself, you worked very arduously, you tried for an ascension of yourself over matter. That was on one route. It took you a long time. You worked very hard at it. And over on this other route, you lived. There was nothing in between, nothing in between. Livingness had nothing to do with the skills of the higher mental planes.

I had somebody one time in '53 — all of her life she had been "waiting for the light." And I ran her on something about spotting spots in space or something of that sort — some kind of a contact process. And the next thing you know, the light that she had been waiting for was moving right straight in on her and she got into the middle of it. And she said, "That is wonderful. That's just what I've been waiting for. How gorgeous this is. How beautiful this is."

And I was an intensely practical young man — disgustingly so. I told Mayo one time, I said, "That's very nice. But I can't see that it has any use." The philosophy of these people (he had shown me something or other) and the philosophy of these people is best expressed with the amazement he turned on me: "To use this?" he said. It was a brand-new thought to really use this in some fashion. "Yes, but," he said, "who said that things had to be usable? Who said they had to be practical? Who said they had to have any connection with anything?" And, of course, I realize, coming out the other end now, that he was totally right. There's no reason why things have to have a reason. But he believed this to the exclusion of the fact that when he began to entertain people with magic, he put on a belt with small hooks and hung pots and urns and orange trees and fish bowls and wedding cakes on them, you know?

And I kept right on processing her — what a violent thing to do. Now, actually I didn't push her up high enough for her to tolerate the fact that I had done her out of it. She's never forgiven me. It was a "beautiful experience." I was moving her right into the middle of an electronic implant with the processing, you know, and moving her right on through it. And I moved her right on through and out the other side. But she conceived that the only game she could have would be to wait to move into the middle of it. That was the only game she had. And I moved her into the middle of it. She was, therefore, perfectly satisfied.

Now, I'll let you in on something: he could do it without the belt! The remarkableness of the man is manifest in just one physical item: he was eighty-seven years old and he could do standing front flips and standing back flips without the use of his hands — very, very, very agile. And yet, when he began to use something, he used something that was pure chicanery. But when he began to talk of ancient wisdom, why, he talked of things that were marvelous and beyond, at least, my understanding — not totally.

But what would have happened to her in the next twenty-four hours? She would have been totally satisfied, and then whommm — bang. As a matter of fact, this particular case was taught to see while exteriorized and though blind — was a very valuable attribute, and yet she wanted nothing to do with that attribute at all. She was still playing this old game of waiting for the light.

He probably put up with me for various reasons. And the wise men I ran into probably put up with me for various reasons. Because I assure you I was a very bumptious young man. I saw no reason to sit still until your legs were warped just to get someplace and do something.

Once in a while you'll have a preclear start to gibber about the fact, "Well, I — I know what we're doing now; the light is turning on." You know, you're hitting one of those old religious implants.

Occasionally one of these old fellows, in a temple or someplace or another, would take a look at me and begin to serve me tea and cakes with considerable reverence and awe, and so forth, and I suppose that was just some buildup that Mayo sent on in advance. But they had me earmarked. They had me earmarked, long ago. All right.

That's the time to say, "Oh no!"

Now, these people — these people are supposed to possess considerable powers. But my conclusion was that they couldn't use them. And if I couldn't use something, I didn't want it. My havingness was not down to a point of where I could leave a beautiful vase parked upon a shelf and just know that I had had it. Just to know I had it was not enough. To keep some bric-a-brac in a vault someplace and just be satisfied to know that I had it in a vault someplace, I'm afraid that wasn't my idea of havingness. A much more active — perhaps if lower toned — idea of havingness is to be able to use it, and not be so much in awe of it that you could not handle it. I imagine there are people that have one of Napoleon's false teeth or something that they never dare get it out and touch it. It's just too valuable, you know? Something has been in the family for years and nobody has ever wrapped his hands around it. It's just there and it itself becomes a tradition even though it is an object.

Fortunately, you have a process that doesn't leave them parked. They keep going upscale. Don't think preclears won't occasionally try to quit on you, though, because they still do. They think they're attaining something or going in a direction they don't want to go in. They feel that they're maybe losing a game that they think is terribly valuable. And you have to slug them on through. Well, unlike this person in '53, you'll win up to a point of where they'll be satisfied with where you got them. If you left them at some interim point, why, this manic would simply fade out.

Well, when I finally came back to America — forced back to America, practically at a pistol point (a wonder my father didn't add a squad of marines to it — the amount of squall I put up.) I came back and I went to school. My scholastic record is — it's not just a mistake, it's a cataclysm. I had all the virtues of being a very, very quick study and all the liabilities of not wanting to waste my time in class. And between these two, I used to make my dean and other people very unhappy.

Here is an exaggerated ability — an ability to feel wonderful, something like that — an ability to feel all-knowing.

Mathematics department called me in one time and informed me that I had just performed the amazing feat of having flunked every subject in their department in that semester. They said that had never happened before. So I took them up on it, and I made them promise to give me an examination and give me the grade of my examination, if they would, please. And with great security, they did so. But I went home and I read the textbooks very fast and went back the next morning and got a hundred on their exams. Whew!

Female voice: I did that yesterday.

But, that was a very unhappy period to me because I found myself in an entirely unreal world — a world quite as unreal as the world of the supernatural, the magical. A world where everything was convincedly mest; where matter, energy, space and time, alone, occupied any interest point at all. I found myself in a world where a man might as well know the answer just by knowing the answer but went through a bunch of mathematical manipulations to attain it which always seemed to me rather odd. If you know the problem, you certainly don't need much via to find the answer. And yet I found a whole cult of worship in the world of mathematics; they all but burned joss before the altar of their scrap paper. They would do the most remarkable things just to put something in mathematical terms. And they could never get it through their heads that they had the answer in its form in the first place before they could phrase it.

Yeah.

That shortsightedness was such a blind spot to me — on their part — that I'm afraid I didn't respect them. I saw them as wild-eyed, and if you please, as stupid, as irrational, if you please, as fixed, as psychotic as any madman I had ever seen in the Western Hills spinning on his heel for the good of some particular deity.

It's fascinating to take a look and find out a piece of what you could become. But it's only a piece of what you could become, and that's what's wrong with it. It's a little pie slice a millimeter wide, and you can have the whole pie, so why settle for a small slice?

Now, because these men are not seen against any other scene, we do not realize that their "dedication" is a fanaticism. There is no more dangerous fanaticism in the world today than the fanaticism of science, which puts a subject above a man. That is very, very dangerous fanaticism. "In the name of science . . ." they used to say in the horror pictures. You see Bela Lugosi in the Murders of the Rue Morgue, working for science. It didn't matter how many young girls got knocked off, he was working for science. Oddly enough, even though they made fun of it way back when, that is the dedication of science. It doesn't matter how many people go by the boards as long as the subject, the equation, stays in the air.

Yes?

Now, the Asiatic says it doesn't matter how many men or women or children go by the boards so long as the deity, the principle, the secret password stays in the air.

Male voice: On this mock-up process, is there any value to having the preclear do something with the mock-up after he's made it, or should you just neglect that?

I don't think there's very much difference between these two, except this: one is in the direction of spirit, the other is in the direction of the physical. They're equally fanatic.

That's a very good point. That's a very good point. You, today, neglect that.

Somebody steps up to me and says, "We're going to give you an opportunity to get shot off in the next rocket and we're not going to make any preservations for you to get back."

Male voice: Okay.

I would say, "Oh, you're going to give me this opportunity, eh? Well, that's very, very white of you. I, however, feel that I must decline."

Let them accumulate, because if they are accumulating, he is on an obsessive continue of mock-ups and he wants them, and his mechanisms are keeping them pulled in toward him, you see? So he's going on unconsciously making them after he has made them. He makes a mock-up and then something takes over and continues its automaticity. Well now, to ask him to do something with the mock-up is not bad, it's merely a waste of time. The thing will act, eventually, as a remedy of havingness. And it just squares. Got it?

He would undoubtedly tell me, "Well, you'll do it in the name of science." That's very interesting. Why not in the name of Yahweh, you see? Why not in the name of many other things? But the truth of the matter is, the only thing live around there is he and me. Get the idea?

Male voice: Thank you.

So, here were two very extreme viewpoints. I had found fault with one — the earlier one — because it had no practical application. On the contrary, people would fight if you tried to apply it practically. A fellow could excite dust devils and blind people, and yet I have seen them permit a whole monastery to be searched from top to bottom and robbed by itinerant soldiers. I said to the prior one time when this had happened — I wasn't there — and I said to him, "Why didn't you whip up a couple of dust devils?"

Okay.

He looked at me rather sourly and he said, "That would have been sacrilegious." In other words, it had gotten too valuable to use, you understand?

Male voice: What prevents a Theta Clear from becoming an OT? It's not his banks.

Now, similarly, you will see a day — you will see a day when quantum mechanics will not be used because it's too sacred. A whole nation going by the boards, but nobody will use an atomic warhead because it's too sacred. The sacredness merely means that there isn't enough of it, you have to safeguard it and you have to protect it.

What prevents him from becoming one? Oh, insecurity.

Well, in this rather meandering story I have given you here, you should be able to grasp the fact that I was given the opportunity to see that there were two worlds. And I saw, additionally, that those two worlds were not separate. I saw that every scientist was walking around as a spiritual being, unable to grasp the fact; and that every spiritual man was walking around as a material being and was unable to grasp the fact. And the common denominator of it is that they were unable to grasp the fact.

Male voice: Unfamiliarity?

So, I embarked upon the rather perilous adventure over a long period of years of grasping the fact if I could. And the horrible forecast of Major Macbean came true. I ran into something I did not understand.

Yeah. Unfamiliarity is a better phrasing of it.

Now, we are not dealing in Scientology with a compromise between these two schools. I found out that the data in both schools was relatively unusable. All it might serve to do was simply point out the existence of the schools. Therefore, any search undertaken had to be undertaken quite freshly. And after I got out of — I was not expelled from the university; I simply left of my own accord. The — well, as a matter of fact I was very well liked at the university, right here in town but not by my professors.

Male voice: Right, sir. Thank you.

And I began to see that there was more that could be done in life — and something else. I graduated into the midst of a depression. I found out that I could write fiction. I supported any research or investigation which I did simply with the writing of fiction — made a pretty good job of it, too. I used to make about a thousand dollars a month, had a good show of it.

You could probably turn loose a Clear and he would eventually become an OT. I mean, it probably would happen. I watched somebody become — who is half-Clear, becoming Clear without processing. You know, they're just working on up the line. Every couple of days I see this person, this person tells me a couple of new cognitions. It's interesting — I mean, the trap is sprung. Remember, I used to tell you with what terrible difficulty a person must hold an aberration into place?

But it wasn't until 1938 that I could put my finger on anything. And at that time I had a common denominator. I didn't realize it then — I realize it now — that it was the common denominator of mest and the common denominator of a spirit. So, it was the common denominator of these two worlds. And that was simply: survive. They were both surviving.

Audience: Yes. Mm-hm.

And anything, even today, that comes down to practical use and that does produce a result breaks down to this basic idea: The dynamic principle of existence is survive. We have not, at this moment, avoided it one iota. As a matter of fact, I became quite pleased a few weeks ago to find out that our Clear Procedure checks very thoroughly against "The dynamic principle of existence is survive." There was a common denominator. Maybe there are other things, but I don't know that they were that pervasive or that common or that continuous. But, certainly, "survive" was continuous. Both of these universes had, then, this as a common denominator.

It's an arduous thing to do. They're fairly easy to tip over. And you start to spring the trap and it goes on opening.

The odd part of it is, is it was what was wrong with both of them. They were surviving, and you couldn't do anything about it — very remarkable. So, as we look over the world of survival, we find out that the survival to a scientist is anything which apparently goes on forever and on which he can lay his hands. That is survival and that is the thing which he worships. And to the person who is working over here in the field of the spirit, anything spiritual which goes on and becomes very old and which he cannot lay his hands on is worshiped. Both of them wind up in an attitude of worship.

Yes?

And in 1938 I decided that man deserved a breakthrough on the idea of worship. I see no reason to worship anything, anywhere — highly iconoclastic. But I don't see any reason why any subject of investigation should wind up in the world of worship — quite remarkable. I mean, why should it? Why not just understand it? Anything one starts to worship is something he can't understand. So, therefore, the dynamic principle of existence, when it came into being, came along with this little maxim (at the time I didn't think it was more than a maxim): If one could understand everything, nothing could touch him. In other words, being secure or safe depended upon understanding. Understanding seemed to be the one denominator of human action that could be undertaken with no liability. Trying to understand very probably could wind up with a liability, but understanding couldn't. And this came up at the same time as the dynamic principle of existence — very, very remarkable — understanding.

Male voice: What is the relationship of a black and white field to what we've been doing — that is, the field of black and white process?

Now, man had made a fetish out of knowingness and unknowingness, as in Herbert Spencer's work. But knowing, understanding are really two different things. And when we look over this world of knowing — when we look over this broad world of knowing, we're evidently merely researching data or identifications of some sort or another. And to it we have to add no spiritual quality at all. You know it, you see? Well, that's not the same as understand it. Understand infers a rationalization of two data. There are two data involved in an understanding rather than one. It is knowing how two data can live together, knowing what relationship exists amongst data, knowing where what is, and why. We actually took off at that time in the field, if you please, of epistemology — the study of pure knowledge. Wow! More asinine things have been said about pure knowledge than about any other item. There's more unknowing incomprehensibility in textbooks on the subject of knowledge than anyplace else. A philosopher seems, in the past, to have been dedicated to the idea that to write about knowingness one must be unutterably incomprehensible.

Turning black fields white?

The Critique of Pure Reason — oh no! I mean, how — the only reason it could go on being translated and published and published and published on up to the present time, would just be one reason only: somebody hopes that somebody, sooner or later, will be able to read the whole thing and understand what it's about. The man, then, turns around and writes himself another book. In The Critique of Pure Reason, he explains conclusively that man is sustained by an innate moral sense, and then writes another book and tells you how he gets paid for it; and infers that he has it because he gets paid for it. I think that Immanuel Kant couldn't. They called him the Great Chinaman of Königsberg, but he would have driven even a complicated Chinese daffy. I don't recommend your reading this book, unless you want to see how bad it can get. Man's innate moral sense that he would have in any wise — that is always native and with him at all times, and then he writes another book and says the reason he's got it is to get — he gets paid for it. He didn't even make sense with himself. This is in the field of epistemology.

Male voice: And flows and so forth within their field.

Of course, his great contribution was something else. And it laid directly across our paths. And you've heard me make snide comments about Immanuel Kant before; if you've never read him, you won't know why. But, actually, the man laid a proposition across our track, across the track of man and across the track of understanding, the like of which nobody had ever run into before. Now, I won't pretend to be an expert in the field of philosophy. A definition of a philosopher, in the modern university, is one who has read the philosophers. My definition is: it's one who can philosophize. I leave it to you which is most useful to a society.

All right. This merely puts the preclear at cause — whatever he can do with them. And when we used to turn black fields white, he found he could do something with them. And this was evidently his total encouragement. Now, as far as flows are concerned, he had been the subject of these flows, and he himself had never made them flow. And we had the automaticity being taken over by the preclear, and of course, made him feel better.

This thing called transcendental logic — oh no! You say, "How could anything like this lie across our paths?" Well, do you know that when you try to talk to somebody in a university, you're talking across this unstable fixation which I'm talking about right this minute? He believes, if you please, that there is a body of data which exists above all other data, which is unknowable, will never be reached by you or him or anybody else — what a defeatism! Look — look, it's an utterly impossible proposition. But it has been rammed down the throats of every Bachelor of Arts that ever came near a course in philosophy. You see that? He says a body of data transcends all knowledge in some fashion — that there's some big stuff up here someplace that you're never going to have anything to do with, ever. And its definition is: that nobody could have anything to do with it. It transcends understanding.

Male voice: Mm-hm.

Well, I settled that in Dianetics: Evolution of a Science. Remember that? It says if you can — if you'll never reach it by any route, it certainly can never reach you, so to hell with it. That, as far as I was concerned, wound up Kant.

A black field is a not-know and is a bad one because it does this: it prevents him from having. A black field is a resistance toward an inflow. Now, you start to process him on keeping things from going away and you're liable to excite these black fields because they're doing exactly the contrary thing. And as a result you get many phenomena occurring.

But, the jungle through which I had to machete my way was tremendous. It was both a spiritual jungle that said it took a hundred and ninety-nine years of sitting in a contemplative attitude and then never doing anything with it. One of the basic laws of this spiritual world was idiotic; it says you can only be trusted — you could only obtain power when you can be trusted with power. Therefore, you have to prove you're totally weak before anybody gives you any strength — what a gorgeous thing. They're waiting for somebody to hand them some strength, huh? — by showing they can be trusted with it.

I don't know that I understood your question totally — is that. . .

Strength doesn't come from anyplace except the fellow. I'm probably stirring up some old banks here. Nobody is going to give you power because you can be trusted with it. If you've got power — real power — you can be trusted with it. That we had to find out, too. So, there's that idiocy, you see, going on and on and on.

Male voice: Well, that seemed to be a little bit different kind of a field than the field that we seem to be working with here, and I'm a little bit confused on the mechanics.

The field of philosophy and understanding is totally jammed, saying nobody could ever understand any part of it. And we get into this gorgeous thing of Spencer's knowable and unknowable. It's a gorgeous potpourri. Here, again, is a world of the unknowable.

No, a field is, I'm afraid, just a field. They have all kinds of different aspects and manifestations . . .

Well, to get around these scholars more than anything else, in Book One you will find that the world of knowledge is divided into the knowable and unknowable, and you can skip the unknowable. That actually doesn't come out flat-footed and give you the whole story, but it merely says — actually infers — that if you can't know it, it can never know you, so skip it.

Male voice: Just apparencies?

I didn't say it didn't exist, and the Great Chinaman of Königsberg was probably the greatest liar of all time. What a swindle to invent a body of knowledge you will never know about. He infers it can affect you totally. Man, I guess he certainly ended cycle on philosophy. As a matter of fact, there have been no really great philosophers since Kant. That threw them all into apathy.

. . . they have tremendous differences of rationale behind them but they all surrender on the same laws.

Now, there was another fixation which confronted us, and that was the fact of "knowledge for its own sake was good enough." Now, this had begun to enter the world of the material as well as the world of the spiritual. Knowledge for its own sake was good enough. You didn't have to do anything with it. It didn't have to be true. You just apathetically sit there and look at it.

Male voice: Okay.

Out of this same philosophy we got the chap who took an observation and found the eighth planet. He published the fact. Everybody scoffed at him — boo, jeered. The guy — I've forgotten who it was — but he, some very popular philosopher of the day, had just written a book proving that "because seven was a perfect number, there could only be seven planets." And the world of knowledge accepted the philosopher and paid no attention to the observation made by this historic astronomer. They didn't even go out and look because it had been conclusively proven by logic that there couldn't be eight planets. And that the man had seen one had no bearing on it at all. We had the whole field of authoritarianism, then, in our teeth.

You bet.

What is authoritarianism? It's, "Because — because I say so, it is true; don't look." That's its byword. Now, it constitutes a major breakthrough to cancel out one of the bugbears of philosophy, to break through the various cordons of resistance such as this thing: "The authority says this is the case. Therefore, it is the case. Don't look. The motto there could be "Obey; don't look." And obviously we needed another approach — not the authoritarian approach.

Male voice: You mentioned one time you wanted to find out if persons who not-knew an object — and can pass his hand through it.

Now, we still see around us — but most of us pay very little attention to it — we still see the world of authority. There are authoritarian subjects that totally depend on authority, not observation. Amongst these: social sciences, composed of sociology, psychology, several other things. It's the world of: "It's in the textbook, so it's true. Don't go find it out for yourself. Don't look at it."

Yeah.

Here we get the crime — you want to know how intimately this joins up — you get the crime of psychiatry. Whereas every day in a sanitarium they shock, oh, lord knows how many people — blow their brains out with high voltages, break their spines, kill every — I think they kill a person every twenty shocks or something on this order. It's sort of — they maim him every twenty shocks — I've forgotten what the exact datum is, but it's either kill or maim every twenty shocks.

Male voice: You remember in the student who not-knew other people's pictures . . .

And they know this doesn't do them any good. They will tell you so. But the world of authority has decreed it, and therefore, it is not up to you to do otherwise than to electric shock people or accept electric shocks. They could observe directly that it has never helped anyone and yet they do it.

Yeah.

A psychiatrist once told me, I could be arrested and thrown in jail if I did not follow the prescribed treatment in handling a psychotic case. But the prescribed treatment is killing them or injuring them and never making them well. Now, there's where the world of authority leads you. It leads you into total irrationality and psychosis. Authoritarianism is the invitation to madness.

Male voice:. . . and not-knew that consideration . . .

And we are probably the first major breakthrough of this century on that particular subject. It has been broken through before. Many men have been burned at the stake for saying, "I have looked, and what you have said is not true."

Right.

And they say, "Well, here we go." They could even take a man like Galileo and imprison him.

Male voice:. . . not-knew his own pictures, not-knew that consideration, was up at Tone 40 for a brief bit.

Of course, they didn't get very far with Galileo. He — after they wound up, after the whole trial and hocus-pocus was all gone through, he said, "And still it turns."

Right. Is that right?

Now, those breakthroughs all add up and probably give us our opportunity to make a breakthrough. But don't forget that we broke through in defiance of authority. And don't, therefore, ever set up an authority.

Male voice: Yeah.

Now, once in a while you may get confused about this because I apparently am setting up an authority. No. I am simply setting up an exactness of observation. I say, "The data observed looked this way, and before you depart too far from it, these were the hard-won data. Now, after you've looked at these or after you have looked around their vicinity, why, go on and look elsewhere."

He was up at Tone 40 for a brief bit?

Now, we've been doing things in a very fast way, and therefore, it has made it necessary at times to say, "Do this," you see?

Male voice: Yeah. He could not-know the object and not-know that consideration.

Well, man has been looking at random in the world of the mind, the world of the spirit and the physical universe for a very, very long time. And we didn't have time to look at random. We had a much better possible route. And that was the route of bringing people up to a point where they could look. Do you see that? And that, of course, would be the final breakout against authoritarianism. The final breakout would be to put a man in a position where he could observe.

Yeah. He would be. He would be.

Authoritarianism, arbitraries, are only accepted so long as no one is permitted to look, or so long as no one can look. And after you've been told not to look long enough and often enough, you get so where you can't look. So, our route was the accomplishment of an observation platform from which a man could observe, and from these observations make up his own mind. And that observation platform is what we call Clear.

Yes?

Therefore, the state of Clear does not give you total knowingness. It could, but it depends to some slight degree upon the individual himself. The state in itself turned out to be totally worthwhile, which was a surprise. It tells me now that having gone through these — well, it's twenty-five years, I guess (something like that), of rather steady research. And the last seven (ten, really) — I've known about Clears for ten years. And I could never put my finger on the button or know just why it was that I could take somebody and by working with him some long number of hours achieve a result, and then another auditor couldn't do it. And I'd try to tell the other auditor how to do it, and then I'd have to articulate what I was doing and this would mess me up in what I was doing. Like you ask an actor to explain how he acts, and he all of a sudden falls on his face.

Male voice: Why in this process do you mock up the item with reference to the body?

You had to articulate all this and then communicate it over here, and then you had to have the least — the method least subject to difficulties, you see? You had to have a better method in order to communicate the method. All of these things have been going on here for this last ten years. But all we have achieved — all we have achieved is a state which can be tested objectively and subjectively.

Now, what's this, now?

Now, the basic definition of Clear must be somebody without facsimiles. You'll find the only basic liability a person has is his facsimiles. And mental image pictures is the only liability he has because they hold overt act-motivator mechanisms. And every other phenomena we have ever discussed are all resident in pictures. So if he goes on having these pictures he doesn't want and can't think with, and they're out of control, then his whole past is shoved in his teeth. The mystic calls it karma — his karma. Well, his karma is just a , series of pictures, you see?

Male voice: In the Creative Processes . . .

But all these misdemeanors are held there. And the girl ruins her beauty and the man ruins his strength with a clutch on these pictures, evidently. And basically a Clear was simply: Get rid of the liability of the pictures — in other words, get rid of the screen. And a person can then observe and know directly; he can communicate directly and he certainly can understand because his understanding is not impeded by a great many artificial arbitraries which have been carefully installed into him. He becomes free, then — free of what? Free of the liabilities of his own barriers.

Right.

But these barriers were resident somewhere, and that was probably the greatest discovery I ever made — is that the barriers were somewhere, that they existed somewhere, that they had mass, they had residence somewhere. In other words, they weren't just you making up your mind. Basically, we say, all you had to do was change your mind and you could have been Clear in the first place — there's nothing to it. I don't know. Why didn't you? Why didn't somebody do it? Well, that's because he was mocking up at the same time obsessively, and didn't know it, all manner of barriers against his changing his mind. Very complicated picture, isn't it?

Male voice:. . . well, previously you had not mocked them up with "To the right of that body," "To the left of that body," as a particular part of a command.

So, it apparently looks like the fellow is doing it all to victimize himself, but it's out of his control. And you ask him, "Why don't you just stop it?" — and he can't. You know, it's a — you challenge a fellow for doing something that he cannot do otherwise than.

Mm-hm.

And, therefore, there was a screen between a person and his ability to observe. There was a screen between himself and the various things that he could observe. So anybody, then, could tell him lies. So anybody could lead him astray. So a whole life could go awry. So it could become psychotic and unlivable — in two universes, if you please, could become psychotic and unlivable — one, in this totally materialistic universe of science and the other, this totally unreal, impractical, too-sacred-to-use universe of the spirit.

Male voice: In this process where — we're running right now, I want to know why it is that it is now done that way.

And these two universes, alike, were unusable. Why? Because as he departed into them, he picked up liabilities concerning both which eventually barriered him and made it impossible for him to observe. He could no longer look. But who was blinding him? Well, actually, somebody else had, but he had a picture of it, so you could say, basically, he was. So all man became subject to authoritarianism no matter how cruel or arbitrary that authoritarianism was. No matter how impractical it was, he became a victim of any irrationality.

Orientation.

Therefore, the goal, the end product — of course, it was dreamed basically and very early, a wonderful dream — a man might be free. Man might be free of the concatenation, from generation to generation, of his errors. And that was a big dream in itself. For a long time I was afraid that his freedom would result in total inaction. I was afraid that if he went on acting in this universe, the liabilities would be such that he would simply become entrapped all over again. There are many things that could have gone wrong. There are many things that could be wrong with the state of Clear. I'm happy to tell you that these things aren't wrong with the state of Clear; but that it's just luck.

Male voice: Orientation . . .

Now, all of this research adds up to just this fact: I don't believe that the mystic ever produced a Clear. I do not believe that the state of bodhi existed in more than one man. I do not believe that a createdness of a point of observation was ever done before. I really think we're brand-new.

Body is his commonest reference point. And all the time you're doing it, this — and I told you, this process has a lot of tricks connected with it. There are a tremendous lot of sneak plays. Well, that keeps the body from going away, too.

To agree with people, populaces and so forth, we could go on and call this a state of bodhi; we could call it almost anything. But the truth of the matter is, I think we have something that is brand-new in this universe, which is a total freedom to observe and to play a game.

Male voice: It sure does.

Total freedom to observe might be worthwhile all by itself. But the Asiatic taught me that if he observed totally, he did nothing about it. So, therefore, I do not think he observed. Watching a Clear in action, I find him perfectly able to undertake action and I do not find him acting like an Asiatic who has sat and contemplated his navel for the last fifty years.

Mm.

Therefore, because I can test the state, because I know it clearly, because we have great certainty on it, we now know more about it than the men who were teaching me. That is for sure. Because we have the object itself that we can inspect, and that is very important. But more important than that, we can become, without dedicating several generations to a monastery, capable of observation ourselves.

Male voice: That's what — / just wondered if that was . . . Well, I had discovered that, and I thought that. . .

So, therefore, I believe we have attained the first major breakthrough man has gotten in this universe for a very, very long while. It is almost totally accidental that it took place since it was accidental that my basic antecedents would take me into the Orient and then bring me face-to-face with Western engineering — wow! To confront the rather high, do-nothingness but very wise state of the Asiatic holy man and to actually partake of this, and to look at it with something like horror that people could be so idle and know so much and do so little; and to turn around on the other hand and confront the brutality of engineering, was probably too great a disparity on both hands. And out of a state of shock and an inability to reconcile them, I did what has been done here, and we have accomplished the breakthrough.

That is the reason.

But, however it is, it took both. And in working with Clears, remember that it takes both the spiritual and the material to carry on; it takes both. And people who go on one road or the other get nowhere. And I think, however, that we haven't gotten nowhere; we've definitely gotten somewhere. And I think somewhere in the immediate future you will have a better viewpoint of this than all of my words could tell you.

Male voice:. . . was intended.

Thank you very much.

Yeah.

Male voice: All right.

As well as keeping the preclear oriented.

Male voice: Right.

Second male voice: You might say, it helps keep the body from going away.

Oh yeah. Yeah. I can see what you would mean, there.

Yes?

Male voice: What would you call a Clear who was getting processing?

That's not so bad — that's not so bad. And I was trying to figure out what you should call them, and I finally decided you would probably call them pre-OTs.

Audience: (various responses)

A pre-OT — yeah. Clear was a very finite state. It didn't imply doing anything. OT simply implies being Clear and doing something. So, you would have a state of pre-OT.

A Clear can be processed, by the way, which is quite remarkable. You can run an awful lot of Havingness on a Clear but what are you doing? You're actually jumping over from the definition of Clear which is the second universe of the mind being cleared up, and you're now clearing the fourth, the physical universe. And you'll clear that up, too. And the gradient scale of that probably has a lot of connectedness connected with it, and then mocking it up. Got it?

Male voice: Sure.

Female voice: I was kidding someone, telling him he'd be the first non-Clear to make an OT. Could a non-Clear make an OT?

I should not think so. We might have a case of somebody not being Clear but being about as Clear as pea soup, performing some function of an OT, you see, an exaggerated ability of some sort or another — a terrific liability to doing this. But I bet there are plenty of people here who have seen such a person — had actually one OT or two OT isolated abilities in a mass of pea soup.

Yeah?

Male voice: The principal thing on that as I see it is one of — one, of responsibility and two, of Straightwire between cause and effect.

Right. Right. Very definitely. Yes. He doesn't take any responsibility for his gift, by the way. That's why a medium always has to be operated by somebody else — on automatic.

Second male voice: Because that can be triggered in an entirely different area, too. I know someone who was doing this who was quite sane.

Oh yes.

Second male voice: But it wasn't that that was doing it. It was a different game. It was a game called husband-wife relationships that was causing it and the husband was psycho. And that was what was causing it, I bet. I just cognited on this.

Yeah. Yeah.

Male voice: So it's not always quite direct.

Right. No. No. I myself could do a swami act the like of which you never saw the like of. I used to be very much in demand around Washington, here, when I was going to school and when I was a writer around here, just on this basis — swami acts.

I sure had one FBI agent going crazy, though. I think I've told you that story.

Audience: No. Tell us.

Oh, a bunch of girls, government attorneys, they were all girls and attorneys, and they lived in an apartment. And they used to have me over to their parties every once in a while. And one night the party was going very dull, and I felt a somewhat fatherly interest in these girls so I busted out a deck of cards and started telling fortunes. And I told their fortunes to all comers and so forth. Of course, I was reading their pictures. I'd carefully restimulate their pictures and read them. I know that's what I was doing now. And this amazed them and so forth, and it was all going along wonderfully. I had a bath towel wrapped around my head.

And they had an FBI agent there. And this FBI agent took himself very seriously as a sleuth. So he came over and he got his fortune told, and I told him the number of the case he was working on before I got through. And he was very upset because it was a very secret case. And I told him all about it and told him where he'd find the man he was looking for and so forth, and did a bunch of swami stuff on it and appeared very mysterious and then called for the next one. And we were just going through the run this way.

And this guy, after I unwrapped the bath towel and had myself a drink of scotch, got me over in a corner and he said to me, "How did you know that?"

And he was being very upset by now, you see, and so on. He didn't have to put on an act. Other people weren't standing around looking at him, you know? And he was kind of shivering and he was asking me very searchingly about this. So I quieted him down. I pulled the deck of cards I'd been using out of my pocket, turned the backs of them over and showed him that they were readers, which is to say that they were a marked deck. And he looked at this and he said, "Oh!" with a great sigh of relief.

Well, that was the end of that party and that's the end of this question period.

Thank you very much.