Actually - actually Korzybski - this is the second part of this afternoon's lecture - actually, Korzybski is a tremendous study. There's no doubt about it. Any man who starts in on communication systems has got himself a - he's got himself a terrific subject. And he can beat this subject to pieces dozens of different ways.

The only thing that I have to - fault I have to find with Korzybski's work - I make this point very pointedly - is every time I'm having trouble with a pc of recent years, I'm having trouble - some trouble with Korzybski because Korzybski made this rather fatal error: instead of trying to merely codify communication, which in itself had not been done - it would have led him into everything - he tried something else. He tried a discipline-restrictive therapy and when this was applied, it put communication brakes on people's communication systems, which is the only place we fall foul of Korzybski. Actually, everywhere in Korzybski's work we are in total agreement. There's nothing... Some of his work is - the old man should have worked a little harder and a little longer, actually. If he'd worked a little longer he would have found a heck of a lot more answers.

This is October the 29th, afternoon lecture.

It's the only worthwhile piece of work done. If I'm kidding Korzybski, it's in a much broader, more interested spirit.

We have been covering, here, all kinds of highly factual, basic, fundamental material. I'd like to point out to you, every few lectures or every few times in a lecture, that we are dealing with a simplicity which stems from, as far as we've been talking here, a definition of space.

For instance, I wouldn't even stoop to kid any one psychologist, except William James. And he actually is quite interesting. They call psychology a science; it would be a science if William James had been able to codify it for communication. Because as far as I can find out, he's the only source for modern psychology. He wrote a book, very nice book. Did you ever see his book - 1898, I think it is, something like that. Very nice little book. If somebody had read that they would have been in good shape, too.

The next thing that you might puzzle on is a definition of life, a definition which would include all life, not just the MEST universe.

All right. Continuing on this study of the particle.

Now, the second we do this - second we do this, we have to evaluate an absolute zero and realize that zero has a gradient scale. It's very simple.

There are an enormous number of therapies which you could employ which would have to do with only communication systems or lines - lines.

We have a - there's a little doll lying here on the table and there's no doll there now. I just moved this doll and now the place I moved the doll from is a zero of dolls. But get the limitation of the zero. It has to - you have to say, "There's no doll there now," implying that a doll has been there.

If you've got a preclear - if you've got a preclear that you just can't tolerate anymore, just start running lines on him. The genetic entity is entirely convinced that he is a particle on a line - he's a message going somewhere. He is the most convinced character you ever heard of. So much so, that the second you go into lines, the pc quite normally - this is not unusual, I don't care where he is on the Steps - will suddenly discover the line that the GE thinks he's traveling on through time and will find this line leading back through the genetic line (two uses of the word "line" there), right straight on back into graves, not his own as a thetan, you see, but graves of Grandpa and Great-grandpa, and back through time. And this line, as a line, has been going on and on, and it will show up as a slightly gold-colored, rather soft, expandable piece of stuff.

Mathematical zero, as a symbol, is entirely inarticulate and inadequate. It's like saying we'll consider this whole society an egg. There's just that much a variation in zero. Let's just call this whole society and sum up this whole society as "egg." That's the same way of saying, "Something is nothing, there's nothing there."

Once in a while, somebody runs into this when they're starting to run past lives or something of the sort, and they start to run out GE material madly and then are able to prove, convincingly and conclusively, that "I am my own grandpa." See? And that comes from processing a line.

Now, man has a tendency to avoid motionlessness. In fact, it's the one thing which he can't assimilate unless you simply just shove it at him and cram it down his throat or wring it around his neck - nothingness!

They get the idea - as a matter of fact, this statement is made in Book One. It says, just for sake of illustration, with the limited communication facilities available there, it says as an analogy and for sake - supposing we were on a railroad track which started someplace and went someplace in time, and people don't know why they're going where they're going, but they know they're on their way somewhere; and everybody kind of agrees that this is his feeling about it if he thinks it over for a while.

& Do you know this is to such a degree that there is -

Well, what are we going to do with this? We're going to find that any time the pc is a line, he is not source-point and he is not receipt-point. So, if he's not source-point he, of course, is unable to give himself commands because he can only give himself commands if he can make postulates. And he can only receive commands, adequately, if he is at the receipt-point of the line. And so we find people as out of communication as they are on or are the line and as in communication as they are the terminals of the line. Therefore, lines on any level of case process with the greatest of ease. You can process them almost endlessly. But they sure process and they sure are interesting, and they sure will spin a low-toned preclear.

Nothingness, you see, has actually just now, with this work in Scientology, come up for inspection. Do you know that I don't think you'll find anywhere in the history of man anything which is a good, solid dissertation on the subject of zero or nothingness. I just don't know of one. I'm not terribly well read, I mean, I don't read Greek and I don't read Latin, I don't read German which immediately throws out the three most important source languages we have. At the same time, just knowing what people have brought out of those languages and what papers they seem to have paid some attention to, so on, I just don't know of one. I've had - never had a hint of one.

But there is a process that you could employ on it. You could have the fellow mock up a line - "Now, get the idea that there should be something on one end of it and there should be something on the other end of it and should be something on one end, should be something on the other end, should be something on...”

This was puzzling to me when I was studying mathematics. One "studies" mathematics in this society, by the way. It's quite amusing. There's no definition out in the universities today for mathematics. That one is sitting in the Logics that you have in the book

And what are you doing there? You're doing Change of Space Processing and actually, just doing nothing but Change of Space Processing between two mocked-up terminals, and you're prying him out of being a line.

Handbook for Preclears, just so someplace there'll be a definition for mathematics. It's a - it's a word which is defined in the dictionary. It is not science or a system in definition.

The only thing wrong with him, you might say, in - with regard to communication, is he is the message, not a giver and receiver of messages. And as long as he's the message. Did you ever see a letter write a letter? That's a communication lag; it's a letter writing a letter. A letter is the particle on this line and he's got this and he's sizzling down this line and there he is but he isn't ever going....,

One says, "There are lots of mathematics;" very grandly. You don't run into any mathematics until you get to theory of equations. What is mathematics? Well, if you study theory of equations - that esoteric thing which is supposed to follow after the fellow's imagination has been completely deleted by studying differential calculus and integral calculus and a few other things. You can get up to theory of equations but you still aren't looking at definitions of mathematics. You're looking at - I never could quite get the professor to say what you were looking at, but it was interesting. It must have been, lots of hours were spent in the room. And you had to get the idea that this was a theory of what you equated and that sort of thing.

Try and get in communication with somebody driving a car while you re driving another car. He knows he's a particle and he's on his way. So, he's neither full or good source, and he's never full effect. In other words, he can't get good sensation, he can't get well and thoroughly betrayed. And he really can't well and thoroughly betray anybody. It's kind of a desperate situation to be in for a pc who is on the band which - where he has to destroy and he really can't get to the point of command where he can issue the commands to destroy, and he can't quite get to the place where he could even be destroyed. See, I mean, he's having a rough time of it.

Well, the fellows that have been to work in this field would have done much better if they'd simply applied themselves to epistemology and stopped removing themselves one step over into a thing called mathematics because - never doubt this - any work with symbols which symbols can change and alter in form is doomed to an enormous amount of inaccuracy.

Well, war does this to people automatically. Does it to them quite rapidly. The overt act-motivator sequence is also discoverable in here. But a fellow puts a rifle to his shoulder and fires the rifle and then he's at the other end and he receives the bullet. Well, doggone it, it's just not - for some reason or other in the basic plans of design, the body was not well constructed as a bulletproof vest and it just doesn't work like a good bullet absorber; it just won't.

It's like trying to build a small house - building with symbols - like trying to build a small house out of rubber sponges. See, they just keep bouncing around. It's a very bad analogy; there can't be as bad an analogy. I've almost plumbed the depths when I say "building something out of symbols." You can get the idea of nothingnesses that are not quite nothingnesses but that are somethingnesses.

You know that it'll take sometimes only one bullet, two bullets - not efficient. No efficiency in it at all and yet in War, people are expected to go out and put these bodies tip as the recipient of a missile which is above the tolerance level of that with which they're trying to receive it. So a soldier immediately starts going out of communication - just across the boards goes out of communication with the society, with his family, with the army. And eventually the army has got some kind of a....

Now, we've had - we've had some illustrations here of somebody fighting nothing, nothing. Terrible concept! If you want to just keep running a preclear on this, you'll have him berserk; he'll be practically out of his mind before you get him through, not out of his head! (That being some slight difference.)

You know, by the way, the way ants run is very interesting. They're run by an entity setup and the entity will run a lot of ants. You think of entity as - ants as individuals and they're not individuals in the sense of the word. They haven't got anything in them; there's nothing in their heads; they're just being run; they're manipulated entities. Very interesting little machinery. And they're being run very efficiently,

The methodology of symbolism itself... Imagine the conceit! What gets me every once in a while in this society is you find such terrible conceit sitting here and there, and it's usually the conceit of "This set of symbols which we have sitting before us and which we have arranged, so forth, are terribly important, although they explain nothing! Terribly important, these symbols are." And somebody is supposed to sit down and memorize symbols which lead to no end. There's no end product on these symbols at all except some more symbols. And here's a - here's a fantastic thing because a symbol can always shift. For any given moment it has a precise definition, but you add time to a symbol and it's licked, because it has no form.

And a soldier finally gets to a point where the general is the brain and he is just sort of an automaton that gets put up and so on. You make a fellow who's been a private for years and years and years, and make him the command point, and a hell of a thing happens: He can't give any commands. Now, we do something else. We get somebody who's been a corporal for a while, and the immediate thing he does is start looking around for the source of command. He hasn't got one, see; we make him a general and he starts looking around for the source of command and he just raises hell with himself. He'll look to his family or to God or to witchcraft or some other doggone thing.

Take this thing called "freedom." Take this thing called "democracy." Today they - you - everybody practices democracy. It isn't democracy, it's some kind of socialism. I don't know what kind of a socialism, it's invented all the time. But we're fondly believing that our forefathers fought for democracy. They didn't, they fought for rugged individualism. Well, democracy is different than rugged individualism; democracy is considerably different. Democracy is establishment by the major amount of force in the community, which is to say the most votes.

Here we had both Napoleon and Hitler; neither one of them could issue a command that he knew was a command. To issue a command drove Hitler into a towering rage. He knew he couldn't issue a command, therefore he had to stop it before it started, which is anger. Stop it as it starts or stop it before it starts: that's anger.

So, we - they have this muddy picture every time we go into symbols.

So, we got this - you see now? When the fellow is a particle on the line he's always expecting a source.

This sort of thing led Korzybski to write an enormous tome trying to tell people why no two people could ever converse because everything they said was impurely understood by the other one, so he was - that book called Science and Sanity is undoubtedly a very great work and I'll read it someday. I got past the first page of it one time, but... Have you ever read the first page of Science and Sanity?

Now, why do people keep wanting God? Because they're a message on the line; they're not the start, they're not at A - they're not at A. People only really want God when they're almost to B. Why is this?

Male Voice: Yes.

Do you know, you'd take this A-B thing we've been using here - the one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. And we could actually mark it off exactly by the dynamics. And we'd mark it off on the dynamics from A down; we'd mark it off - we'd measure off - it's ten inches long, let's say - this - ten inches long this A to B interline, which is the message line and we'd mark it off in units of ten. All right, we've got the first unit of ten or one-tenth of the line. We'd go one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight in that first unit. And then we'd go, on the next unit of ten, oh, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight; and we'd go on, theoretically, down till we got to the fifth unit, the end of the fifth unit, and then we would mark it off on inverted one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. And then reinverted on the six-to-seven unit: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. And then reinverted on the eight-to-nine: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. And then from nine to ten we needn't bother because that's that. You see how this line could look and what this communication unit could be? All right.

Tell you what - now, have - you're sure you read the first page? It's a very interesting Page - you can't find on it what the book's all about. And the book ends the same way because I read the last page.

People go around wanting to know what started them on the track. What is the reason why they are living? Pc comes to you and asks you the reason why he's living. He tells you, the second he tells you, he says, "I think of myself as a letter in a postbox." "I think of myself as a marble rolling down the street which has been sent by some small boy, and which is liable to collide with another marble someplace or another or maybe just the gutter." "I don't know where I'm going." "I didn't send me." "Here I am." "I don't know what's wrong with me." "Well, here I am, a sort of a message, and I just got sent up to your doorstep and I sort of fell over the doorstep." "I had a dream last night that said I should come to you." When they get real bad off and they're down there about the eighth gradient: "Last night I had a vision, and it told me that I should come to you and tell you that you were to help me."

By the way, I had an editor friend one time and he used to buy stories and he used to find out what stories he was going to buy simply by taking up stacks of manuscripts as they came in and he'd read the first paragraph and he'd open them up to the middle and he'd read a paragraph and then he'd read the last paragraph, and they integrated into a story, he bought the manuscript without any further questions asked, because practically none of them did.

Help him what? You know, you get an immediate response if you said, "Help you to get where? Huh?" You get an immediate response; he's a message. He's a Western Union telegram; he's a letter; he's a postcard. He's saying, "Having wonderful time. Wish you were here." And he's carrying this arduously through trillions of years of space and he hasn't anybody to deliver it to.

And if you apply that test to a story in a magazine you'll - and then read the story itself you'll be amazed to discover that it's a quite accurate test. It's a test of the consistency of the story - quite accurate. The story which doesn't do that isn't worth reading to a large degree because it just starts - kind of starts nowhere and goes nowhere and gets noplace in the middle.

Can you imagine the postman down here with a bag full of mail and so forth, not knowing where any of it went but being forced to deliver it somewhere?

Well, when you start out to define how nobody can talk to each other and you're using words to do it, you wind up by not talking to anybody - Q and A.

Why do people keep pieces of paper? The first thing - first thing you - in - diagnostically it's very interesting: if the preclear opens his pockets and has - boy they're really just stuffed with old pieces of paper the like of which you never saw - old envelopes. Lady opens her purse and it's just jammed with old envelopes and old scraps of paper and old letters. I've seen people carry around in their purses as many as fifty letters, a terrific pack of letters, just never get rid of them. They're a message going somewhere.

Now, Korzybski has an enormous number of very, very clever ideas. They've been explained to me by my friends and I appreciate it very much. I know quite a bit about Korzybski's works.

People save scraps of paper. That's merely because in this society messages are written on pieces of paper. See, they're the message; they're not source for anything and they're not...

Bob Heinlein sat down one time and talked for ten whole minutes on the subject of Korzybski to me and it was very clever. This was a number of years ago and was very, very clever. Of course, I found out later that Bob Heinlein had - that was his viewpoint on what Korzybski should have written and was mostly taken from Hayakawa, but that was explained to me by another friend who talked three whole minutes on the subject of Korzybski. But this other fellow was quite accurate and he was very convincing - the number of times he pounded the table with his fist convinced me utterly, and so I know that there is something in there; I'm just sure of it. I haven't read that book but I'm sure there is.

Now, if you suddenly were to take this person - this person might be very naive, might be very, very sweet, very innocent and something or other - and if you were to suddenly hit them, they would be rather confused, see. They wouldn't quite know why they were being hit because, you see, they can't receive anything.

But I am also sure that every time I processed a preclear who was a general semanticist, I practically had to shoot him to get him off the couch. Now, is there some connection between these two data?

So, it must be that you think you're hitting something else! Psychoanalysis. You see that? You slap this person who is a message and this person cannot receive anything, so it must be that you are actually beating up Mama or Papa in your mind. You must have a misconception entirely as to what you're hitting.

I had one little girl who had taken in the university something that was called semantics. I don't know whether they follow Korzybski or who, but this girl had a communication lag that you couldn't have reached in a jet plane in hours. And finally, I tried to figure out what this was all about because I wasn't in communication with this girl. I'd say one thing and she would sort of dazedly look around and wonder if I'd said something else.

They will actually, occasionally, explain to you... One they will very often explain to you is they don't want to hurt you. Here's this character, see, no biceps, nothing, you know, and you cuff them or something, and then they will stand there and they'll look very, very confused. And you say, "Now get to work" or something of the sort; they'll still stand there. They just don't...

So I just took up the whole subject of words, immediately, and just started sorting through words and all of a sudden she looked rather sad about it all. Seemed like the professor had been very good looking and it was his foregone conclusion that no two people could ever find out what each other was saying simply because the words were all completely inexact and carried no exact meaning, one to the other. And she had thought this over carefully and had decided it was true and hadn't talked since. She couldn't communicate. She knew that everybody she talked to got some different meaning out of what she was saying.

And you'll find out if you talk to them a little bit later that they didn't want to hurt you. They never received it at all. You see, they're more liable to receive than to hand out a message but they can't receive a message, they can't receive a blow. And there you have anesthesia. People are actually mocking themselves up so they can't receive these things. They know they can't receive these things, so actually, they mustn't feel them if they hit them. See, if they get hit by something then they couldn't have been hit by something because they're not at B; they're not a source; they're not a communication receipt-point. And if they're not a communication receipt-point, that must be your mistake, you dummy.

So I sat down, I looked at her for a little while and all of a sudden picked up a book and threw it violently against the wall. She looked in that direction. "What do you think just happened?"

And with this, you get into all of the completely silly, stupid lines of conversation which take place concerning arguments, quarrels and so forth.

She says, "You threw a book at the wall!"

If you understand this and appreciate this and look it over very carefully, all of a sudden those things become very comprehensible to you. The fellow can't receive a communication.

I said, "Did that carry an exact meaning to you?"

And all he's doing is explaining he can't and he's explaining at the same time that he can't be the source of a communication, so all he does is explain to you, consistently and continually, that he didn't say that.

"Well, I don't know why you threw the book at the wall."

So, an argument consists of - is, "You didn't say that," and "I didn't say that." And you've got the model argument. Which is the same argument as, "I know you're not at A and I know I'm not at B because we're both particles." And the main part of arguments concern themselves with "We can't possibly be arguing, because there's nothing to argue about because we couldn't he in communication with each other, actually, because we're both particles."

"No! No! Just the fact that I threw the book at the wall, did that carry an exact meaning?"

If you want to really set somebody back on his heels, just explain to him on that routine, but quietly, without the emotion because believe me the emotion communicating a word, as a beam or something of the sort, is far more communicative any day of the week, far more communicative than a word, anytime - has an energy slam - has a hammer and pound of energy, don't you see?

"Well, you threw a book at the wall."

Now, the particle - you could call this "the particle theory of personality." (Somebody can write a book about it someday.) "Particle Theory of Personality: This theory was originally developed..."

“Yeah, you know I did that? Well, could you consider that a communication?"

Where is he on this communication chain? Because he will behave proportional to where he is. You could make up the most beautiful communication system that would illustrate this. It'd be - only be any good if it helped you with a case. Well, it happens that this really helps you with a case.

"Well, I'd hate to receive it. Yes, it - I see, it - what do you - say, there's something here," see.

You ask this guy to put up some anchor points. Then you ask him to receive some anchor points. And eventually, the significances of - any significance merely has to do - "Why I am a message." That is significance - "Why I am a message." "Why I am not source." "Why I'm not receipt-point." "Why I am a message." You see? It's very simple. All right.

Of course, we could communicate, and I did it with MEST actions because words are symbols which represent, in every case, the action of the MEST universe. And all language is MEST universe derivation. And it is carried on air particles which vibrate against eardrums. And if people have lived a similar time track - they have lived in one society - or if they have studied the language extremely well against the background of living in a similar society, they know exactly what they're saying; there's no doubt about it at all.

Now, any time, any day that you can get somebody, then, to send and receive communications and just neglect modus operandi to a large degree of exactly how he's doing it, but just steer him into some pattern or another that he will accept - boy, we're really cooking as a process.

Completely aside from that, here again, is the scientist trying to materialize everything by dematerializing entirely. What he's trying to do is dematerialize - and doesn't realize - is that the only - the only complete spiritualist - the only complete spiritualist in the country is really the leading atomic physicist. See, he doesn't know that he's a spiritualist.

Now, how would you do that? Sports will do it. Why is it that you get somebody out, operating in sports and so on... Well, there are sports that don't do it. Swimming doesn't do a thing for anybody's mind, not a thing. Muscles don't develop in swimming, other things happen that don't happen in swimming. A person gets very pliable; they get very limber when they swim; they get very easy to handle, too.

Now, you see here that this similarity of experience brings about an ability to interpret and extrapolate the thought processes of somebody else. You see that that could occur, don't you? What do you know! The fellow that tries to do it that way will go mad. He gets into the same boat of this poor little girl who had been taught general semantics in college. Because people think they're talking with language!

But the game of catch is pretty good. Why do people stand around and play catch just by the hour? That's self-explanatory - back and forth.

The amount of conversation in which you engage is mostly pleasant and idle and needn't carry any direct meaning; it's a rather pleasant interchange or a somewhat disagreeable interchange that one has to go through or some such gradient as that.

Well, now you in an office can do this. You can tell the child, instead of asking him to touch the room - he's making the room a receipt-point; he knows it's not a receipt-point too, you see, he knows it's not a source-point, not a receipt-point; if - he knows it's not a source-point because it couldn't be, because it must be on a line too, because he's probably in the wall. He's not responsible, is what it all comes under. He's not responsible as long as nobody knows where he is and after a while he loses himself.

And it would certainly surprise the living daylights out of you, if you found out that you were making motions with various forms such as larynx, mouth and so on, and the other person's eardrums were violating [vibrating] violently, and that one had interposed this tremendously complex communication system between two beings, so I guess they could be surprised. It's about the only explanation because they don't pick up their meanings that way; practically useless. It's a communication system.

So, you could have some kid come in and you weren't able to do anything much with pictures or something of the sort and you would take this little doll like this, and you would say, "Catch." That's it. What do you know? It's processing. See, "Catch."

Therefore, this MEST universe gives you various forms on which you can agree and words can be defined from this and it's all very beautiful and all that sort of thing. Well, when it comes down to meaning, thetans, one to the other, depend for their certainty upon action. The interaction of anchor points is about all that carries any meaning.

Now, the funny part of it is, is he's probably (if he's in there seeing you) further down toward B, than he is distant from A, so he's trying to prevent catching more than he is trying to prevent source. So, if you were to give him a bunch of BBs and a BB gun and have him stand up and fire at a target for a long time, he'd probably feel wonderful - he'd just probably feel grand when he got that through.

The more attention one pays to noise as noise, the more attention one pays to words as very meaningful things which have to be studied hard, the harder it is to do anything.

Or if you were to give him a deck of cards and have him put his hat on a chair, and throw the cards into the hat - there's a very definite acceptance level there. How many cards can he get in the hat? It's a game. He'll stand there and pitch cards into the hat and pitch cards into the hat and pitch cards into the hat. You're making him be a source-point for particles.

It is absolutely extraordinary, utterly fantastic, that the communication system of the MEST universe can carry on it any message. It is the most - the greatest tribute to a thetan I know of, that he can actually make it work. But as far as communication is concerned, the ability to know what the other fellow was saying or know what the other fellow was thinking, it's only the thetan who can't look that is ever fouled up about it.

Now, another thing happens. A fellow - there is a point of the case where an individual decides he's got to be a source-point. This is the last ditch. He's at the wrong end of the line when he's doing this ordinarily but he's got to be a source-point, so therefore, he's mocking himself up on a circuit bypass, which is going all the way from somewhere near B, but not at B, clear on around to A and he eventually winds up kind of talking to himself but he knows he's got to be this source-point.

If a thetan is too deeply mired into significance, and if he's practically plowed under with the wonderful reason why the significance which underlies something or other - he, no matter how grand the words, no matter how they're strung together, never seems to be able to convey any message or receive one. and that's what we. know as "out of communication." This person has accepted symbols as his mode of communication. And having accepted the symbol, the symbol now does all the work and he is entirely dependent upon a set communication system before he can do anything. He has stopped looking and started talking. It's perfectly all right to talk; it is an accepted mode of communication I sit to you here - sit here and talk to you and it's perfectly acceptable. You know what I'm talking about. I don't think there's many questions in anybody's mind as to what I'm talking about or what I'm saying.

Now, he can - theoretically could shuttle himself around to that source-point but it requires that he be at B and then at A, and A and then at B. And so he gets a one-way flow. He is near B, but he's trying to be A, and he just keeps on doing this. He's near B and he has to be at A. So, he has got a circuit mocked up so that - to reposition himself at A. And he's just got that circuit there and he's just got that circuit and he's just got to shift himself around to where he can be up there at A. He's got to - somehow or another.

There isn't any question in my mind when you say things. And there isn't anything mystic about this. It's just the fact that although it's fun, don't let it whip you.

And of course, the more velocity - this is the horror of it - the more velocity he puts on the communications at A, insisting that he is at A, the more hit him at B. That's real grim; the more he's hit. Anything he does will recoil on him. Why? Because he knows he's at B but he knows he's got to be at A, but he knows damned well he's not at A. Meter a while he'll start to blame it all on God, and angels are talking to him and giving him the hot dope before he passes it along.

If you wanted to have a real good time with a preclear, just start out with the subject "communication system" or "systems;" and start applying to it any kind of process you know - any of these processes we've gone over in Dianetics or Scientology. Just start working with this whole subject "communication systems," and you'll find out that you have this enormously complex thing where you have lines and relay points and interruption points and waiting sidetracks and it's the most fabulous thing you ever heard of! It's set methods of communication, and when all dependency for the communication is put into the method of communication in a government you get bureaucracy which never does anything. The paper chain is carrying the entire responsibility, and so it is in polite conversation; they expect the word and the form to carry the entire meaning.

& That's the church. They do that wonderfully. The church is down there in the ninth portion of the track. Somewhere in that vicinity. Ninth and tenth portions of the track on this little analogy, that's him. And these people will always tell you, "We carry to you the message of god. And we're against idols. That's why you've got to come in and worship at the feet of the cross." I shouldn't have added that, that sounds sarcastic. It sounds as though I have something against the church. And I have nothing against the church, because it actually can't receive anything. See? It would really protest if you really tried to give the church anything.

Have you ever talked to anybody who was a letter-perfect person in politeness and manners, and who, at the same time, had no oomph? You have to look kind of close, because sometimes you don't see that they're there. Here are these forms flowing. Communication - there's air waves and vibration; there's nothing giving them a shove, there's nothing backing them up.

& Same way, you try to give ...

Do you know one of the most maddening personalities to be up against is a fellow who realizes he's about to arrive at that horrible place B and has got every brake set, the emergency brakes set, gravitrons set, skyhooks set, grapnels set and repulsors charging full speed at B and detractors and so forth and you try to give this fellow something. He can't receive anything. He can't receive and this is terrible. And that to a large degree was your parents.

You know when somebody is being polite, unless you're too mired in significance. If you're too mired in significance, you're always wondering what was behind what he was saying. "What's behind what he's saying?" This immediately says, "I am uncertain if there is a terminal communicating to me!" That's all that is. And that's one of the worst things that can happen to a thetan: is he gets communicated to and he can't see where he's being communicated from! He'll go daffy but rapidly.

You come in with a stone, you come in with a word, you come in with some advice, you come in with a helping hand to push the car tire around to the back of the car after the tire's gone flat and so forth, and "Now, be careful of the tire." You of your own good free will have decided to put the tire away, you know, and help them out, and pick up the tools, and "Be careful of that and do this and do that and do something else." They can't receive it without jumping into source-point. Do you catch? Typical. Little kids are the most desperate kids whose parents could take nothing. And they never realized this about their parents. A preclear will realize this on Acceptance Level Processing.

We had an experience here yesterday, had to do with a - with an "episcopatory" or whatever they call these - a "rectorium," and we have one across the street. And one of our boys, unfortunately - unfortunately for probably the sanity of this poor boy, gave him a message from God in a ball of light. Ah, yes. It's fortunate he gave him a ball of light. Why didn't he just give him the message and make it obvious that the message was on some sort of a system.

"Now let's See mock up your parents and have them accept something."

The thetan will believe then that he thought of it as a self-defense. If he can't find any system to attribute it to, he will then consider that he thought of it. It's his only defense. "I'll take the responsibility for it, I thought of it." Then he'd go along for a little while and then he'll get a hidden communication; something will say, "Kill yourself."

"Ahhhh!" Just the thought of the parents accepting anything will sometimes blow off locks just by the ton "My parents accept something! Oh, no!"

"What was that talking to me?" as the actual system really slowed down, see. "What was that talking to me? What direction did it come from? How did I perceive that? Where is it? What's taking place there? Uh..." And then, "Well, I don't know, I might - I talk to myself sometimes; it's probably something that I thought of and I probably am just feeling low today and it's because it's a gloomy day and it's just a idle thought that occurred to me." Now, that is stretched out. That sequence is very stretched out. Here is the way it would look in its normal time span: "Kill yourself."

Now, why is Acceptance Level Processing such an interesting process? It's trying to determine - it's trying to plow somebody out of that position which is close to B, by permitting him to accept something. And one breaks that up by showing him that somebody else will accept something too. But if it just goes on for its own sake on the hope that by some necromancy something weird and terrible and wonderful is going to happen, it'll fail.

"Oh, well, hell. It's just gloomy today1 of course, I'd think of such a thing."

Now, notably lacking and never mentioned in SOP 8 is "source level." What is he willing to be the source of? Just never mentioned there. But of course, it goes along hand-in-glove at Step IV. At Step IV the person is not getting there because he's so afraid of receiving something that he can't receive any good benefits from a process, so he will block all of these and if you do process him, they go out and waste it.

What's he trying to do? He's trying to substitute significance for the lack of a line. If he can't find the position, he has to assume he must have done it and if he can get any kind of an idea at all that it has an exterior position to himself and it's talking to him - uuuuuuuu!

You know how they waste it? Just get the idea, now, of being processed up into beautiful condition. Now, go getting sick. See, that's wasting processing.

The fellow who has voices talking to him inside of his head is much better off than the fellow who has voices talking to him from way outside his head. Odd that psychiatry classifies people quite in reverse. People who have voices talking to them from the outside are sane and those who have voices talking to them from inside of their head are very often classified as insane. As a matter of fact, I read a paragraph in one of their innumerable, contradictory books which had to do with just that. It said that one could always tell whether or not a person was psychotic, because the spoken voices - the speaking voices and so forth - were invariably inside the person's head if the person were psychotic. Couldn't they face the idea that these voices very often come from outside?

Now, get the idea of being of - in beautiful condition and telling the auditor it didn't do you a bit of good. That's much less vicious; in some way the same thing.

Now, you can set up the great god Throgmagog - article one, "Dianetics: Evolution of a Science" - anytime you want to on a pc who is slightly hypnotic. You get something that looks like E-therapy, and that was, by the way, the source of E-therapy, much to my disgrace; even said so by the boys doing it. You set up the great god Throgmagog and he processes the preclear.

We were also talking about they waste energy. Determined that a line - having a communication line is wasting energy. See? That's the way you'd waste it. And then having a MEST line would be wasting actual communication lines. So, anybody that's using MEST lines is actually wasting communication lines but they're already there because the fellow has to waste energy. Isn't that wonderful?

How can you do this? You just set up, not a viewpoint, but a communication source-point. And you can set up a communication source-point anyplace you please.

All right, do you see a little plainer now what this communication source setup is?

Now, the fellow sets up a communication source-point and then forgets about it. What's a circuit? He set up a communication source-point and then he's forgotten about it. Then he overlooks this in his modus operandi. He will look at this: that he has had to set up a communication receipt-point because his communications aren't going anyplace satisfactorily. Now, that's where you get that funny little technique of the person sitting in one chair, and then turning around and facing himself saying, "Why don't you answer me?" That sort of thing. You blow ridges and you'll blow all sorts of odds and ends in the case, just because people just don't answer fast enough and communication lag and so on. Well, there's - he's mocking up a communication receipt-point. Well, he does that all the time; they don't bother him. It's communication source-points that he mocks up, because he becomes the effect of them. And when he mocks up a communication source-point and forgets about it, you have a circuit, and that's what a - what a circuit is.

The first and foremost thing is, for your preclear in this universe, space - first and foremost thing. Is he willing to be the source of no space? B is not necessarily, by the way, a condensed area of space, but he has begun to believe it is. Is he willing to be condensed space or is he willing to condense space? And you'll have to get him out on the basis of "is he willing to make space?"

Now, people who have - are having trouble with position are having immediate trouble with communication source-points and communications receipt-points, so they don't know who's talking to them. "Kill yourself;" the voice says and the guy stops, "Well, I guess I'd better" All right.

Now, it tells you that the closer one is to B, the more he is liable to condense space. And this is borne out in actual processing. You know, none of this material would be worth a nickel if it didn't get borne out with examples themselves.

When we - when we look at the communication source-point and the communication receipt-point, and we have a preclear who doesn't know where he is or where his source- or receipt-points are, he has gone down into a level of uncertainty which demands any kind of a certainty, so he'll pick tip anything. He'll let some kind of an old, moldy, decayed body nailed to a cross or something like that talk to him - he'll get visions from. And of course, some adventurous thetan going around can always mock up a ball of fire for one of them.

You'll find out that people who are shortest on space are the people who are in the seventh, eighth and ninth gradients. And the people in the ninth gradient, as I've just drawn up this little line for you, they're really so short on space that they will get violently sick at their stomach sometimes when you ask them to mock up something. And I would say, that would be the - actually, that condition would be the beginning of the tenth gradient - the last gradient. See, they just get violently sick.

But you notice that all creditable visions - those visions which are credited by the Catholic church, which is an expert on visions, they get them all the time, people writing in all the time they've had visions - they call for of necessity, the existence of a source-point for the communication in the form of some sort of mock-up, and they've laid this down as their - part of their rules. Now, I haven't stated it the way they state it. "Did he appear to you?" which means "You didn't just hear him, did you? I mean, you saw him too? Oh, you saw him too! Oh, oh, well, well, come on in, we'll canonize you. Got fifty bucks or...?" What is it they charge now for a canonizntion? Anyway or can you buy them? Oh, that's right, they have to be "posthumorous."

Now, a good condition should be that a person just goes from A to B and back to A and is liable - and can go to B, and go to A, and go to B, and go to A - people get real sick if you start shifting positions in space.

The point I'm making here is that the communication source-point must be identified, and the thetan's utter passion for knowing where he is comes about when he's confused about communication source-points and communication receipt-points, He wants-he wants to know where he is. Well, if he knows where he is, then he figures out - he'll be able to figure out where the source- and receipt-points are, second. Well, when he starts getting bad off, he doesn't know about this. Now, you'd say when a thetan starts getting bad off. And when he starts getting to be human, my God, even any old, moldy engram that comes along can start talking to him suddenly, see? See, anything can happen from there on. He just - he's there - he doesn't even know he's there; he thinks he's a body and so on, being run by God, he - or something - he's in horrible condition.

What's important about all this? Is the line important? Is that gradient I've been giving you so carefully important? No, it's only important so that you have a graph with which you can communicate. You can see something and if you can see this graph, you see, you've got a communication standard, just like the Tone Scale chart - you can see this as a communication standard. That makes for communication because communication depends upon agreement to some degree.

Well, position in this universe is more than a defense; it's an utter necessity. If a person doesn't know exactly where he is, then anything can happen to him. So geographical position - it works out immediately that if you're going to operate in this universe, then geographical position becomes, immediately, the most important thing which a person can have because this we call "certainty." Certainty of what? He knows where he is. Why does he want to know where he is? Because he's surrounded by source- and receipt-points. The second he finds out who he is, then he can identify the rest of it.

All right, if your preclear is sitting in a fixed attention position or an unfixed poten - attention position, follows that he's neither at A or B.

Well now, his gradient scale of processing is ordinarily to do - to get rid of or do something about the source-points. It wouldn't occur to somebody who was doubtful about where he was that anybody could be so far gone as to not know where he was. This was Dianetics to some degree. I couldn't quite get it through my thick skull that the people themselves got lost. This didn't sound reasonable or natural to me, that the people themselves were lost.

Now, A and B are not absolute points, and we come right back to what I was talking about first - zero - the gradient scale of zero.

It worked, then, that anytime anybody could have a - he could then - all you let him do was identity the source-points in the facsimiles which were talking to him and those were talking to him continually. A thetan now and then passing by saying, "Hiya, Bub," we could take care of, see, because it wasn't repetitive. But these consistent, continual, hammer-pound dramatizations and so forth that were coming through from the engram bank - well, we could get rid of those. But in order to run one, a fellow had to know what? He had to know where he was so he could find the source- or receipt-point.

Just to be very extreme, you could consider the whole universe a gradient scale of zero. If your preclear wants to see the whole universe, he enters it at a point so close to an absolute zero, when he's only looking at the MEST universe with MEST eyes and you're utterly astonished how close he is to an absolute zero, what there is to see. Gee!

Well, now, with Theta Clearing we find the same condition occurring; we find those people can be theta cleared with the greatest of ease who know where they are in the first place; that's a Step I.

And as he goes up on the line, far from being only empty space, the amount of something in this universe is fantastic. It's almost jammed from anchor point to anchor point. It's crowded and that's the main trouble with it because of course, you see, it's only a concept of space.

Now, what's this gradient scale of Steps right on down through VII? Just a gradient scale of being lost. See, they don't know where they are. And the less they know where they are, the more they can confuse communication source- and receipt-points.

Now, the universe, this universe, is incapable of receiving anything; it's very close to a B universe. See. It can't receive; it mustn't receive anything. But boy, it'll certainly conserve energy; it'll sure save it. It's the one thing that it's agreed upon on every hand is, it's got to conserve energy. Your preclear is right in there pitching on that because it's so close to zero so close to an absolute zero. All he could see of it, you see: it's so close to an absolute zero, there's no abundance of anything. So, he's got to be awful careful and everything's got to be saved.

Now, you know this graph that we use just continually of the eight anchor points - one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight - and with a little diagonal line in the middle of it. One end of it's A and the other end of it's B, and this little diagonal line in the center of that space. Well, boy, he's having an awful time; he's having an awful time with A and B, because he might be at A, and B might be talking to him or he might be at B with A talking to him or he might be somewhere in between. Or he might be beyond either one or off the communication channel entirely and still getting backflashes or talked to.

Now, we go back up scale and we start looking, and looking, and looking and, by golly, there are more fascinating things to see than you ever heard of.

The only way he can resolve this, as far as he's concerned, is to consider something himself, and then find out where he is in relationship to one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and then he will know whether or not he's at A or B, you see? Simple.

Now, the one prohibition is they've got a reverse vector going in this universe and that means simply that they say, "Insanity is seeing things." That's not true; insanity is not seeing things.

Well, if he knows where one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight are with relationship to himself, then he can spot A and spot B. Is he them? Well, up to that point he doesn't know that. "Am I they?" That's what his continual question is: "Am I they? A? B?"

Now, where is zero? Where is nothingness? Man in his words, words themselves, is unable to define a "nothingness" without defining it in terms of a somethingness. So it's just a relative value - things are motionless. Nothing itself is no-thing. Nothing is defined as an absence of something.

Well, of course, he can't be A and B if A and B are a communication system set up whereby something starts at A and goes to B and come backs to A again. See, he can't be - he doesn't get dumbfounded or confounded or - he's just - we just consider this a line with source. And he can't be at A, because he's got to go; if A is the start, why, then he knows he can't start and he can't be at B because he'd have to arrive to be at B; and he doesn't dare arrive, so he can't be at A or he can't be at B. So A and B must be other points. That's what - the guy thinks he's a line; he thinks he's on the line or he's a particle on the line or he is the line. See? He is the line sending himself someplace. Well, he's the communication that's being sent. Do you see how that is? Very simple.

It's inconceivable, then, that there could be an existing state of; actually, really nothing - not even an absence of a thing. You see? The language - I just suddenly slam into the end of track on language. Limitation of viewpoint of the language itself is right there.

Well, I know that this produces an awful chaotic state in a case if you start processing the lines. See, what do you do? You start processing the lines. And these things will swell up and smack him every time. If you start processing communication lines just as such on a case, without rehabilitating the individual's position, not even as a terminal - just if you don't rehabilitate his position (his geographical location), with regard to the points in which he - which is deter - which are determining the space he's in, he gets into trouble every time. We just... Why? Is because that line is full of particles which are going someplace and he merely identifies himself now with these particles, and so he gets smaller and smaller and smaller as a person. See?

Just try to express in MEST language "no-thing."

Male voice: Just ask the person to get a concept of his raw material.

And what's that? Nothing?

Male voice: That's right.

It doesn't work on me; I get the whole universe.

Male voice: That's right.

Hm?

Male voice: That's right.

Oh, I thought you were asking for a concept of nothing.

Male voice: Not necessarily, what's the whole universe?

Well, it's a thing.

Male voice: Gradient scale of nothing.

Hm?

Male voice: Gradient scale of nothing.

Mm. See, you can look at this either way and it'll come out the same way.

But if you think there's an absolute something, you're in for a grave surprise. You think there's an absolute nothing, you're again in for a grave surprise - terrible.

Your preclear, being a message going from a thing to a thing through nothing, of course, is in for a grave surprise because he's no such thing. He's source- and receipt-point. Closer you can get him to these two points, the better off he's going to be, the more able and the more motion he's going to be able to go into. But don't think that motion is the end of theta, it isn't - motionlessness is.

Okay.